Making Pokemon harder - Problems and solutions

[Lugruf]

Yesterday I saw in the forum a status about making a Pokemon game as difficult as Dark Souls and that made me think about Pokemon's game mechanics and how to push them in order to make a Pokemon game more difficult. I also want to open the discussion and know what you think about the topic.

I encountered four main problems in the game's mechanics:

Symmetry: Combat in Pokemon was originally thought for PvP. The idea was that a player could train his favorite mons and then fight against his friends. For this purpose, the combat system was made symmetrical. This means that both sides play with the same rules. In Dark Souls for example, when you fight against a boss, this is infinitely stronger than you. It will use different attacks to the ones you use, and there's no way for the player to control that boss further in the game as a character. In Pokemon, however, you know that any opponent you encounter will have some of the 720 mons you can also have, and will use the same moves you could also be using.

Solution: This is actually the easiest problem to solve, and it can be done in many ways. One of them is limiting the mons, items and tutors available for the player, so that the opponent plays with an advantage. For instance, he might have Aegislash, leftovers or the TM for ice beam before the player, thus making the combat harder for the player. Increasing the level gap is also a way of making the combat assymetric, as well as introducing fakemons that the player can never get such as the pulses.

Breeding and training: There's no doubt that breeding, either nature, moves or IVs and EV training give an advantage to the player over the people who don't do them. The problem is the following, you can't make your game so hard that doing this is compulsory, because there are many players who just don't want to do so. And you can't have them hit a wall at some point in the game because their pokemon are not good enough, basically because this would reduce your player base a lot.

Solution: I think that IVs, EVs, natures and egg moves need to be added to the story. The thing is that you can't force your player to grind, so you need to add throughout the story other ways of getting the same results that don't involve grinding. The psychologist is a good example (although I think it should let you choose the nature straightaway instead of being random and forcing the player to soft reset). The same way I think there should be IV stones, friendship berries, EV enhancing items, tutors for egg moves and those sort of things along the story so that the player's mons improve without having to stop the story to breed or train and most importantly, without forcing the player to grind if he doesn't want to.

Randomness: One of the main problems with Pokemon is it's huge dependance on RNG. We can all tell about matches that were won already until Focus Blast missed three times in a row. This happens also in the story mode. In a strategy game, a boss is supposed to test the understanding of the game mechanics of the player, and therefore, if the player made the right choices he should win the match. Now lets suppose I have a Typhlosion, and I'm fighting against a pokemon which is weak to fire. So I use Heat Wave. Now, there's a 90% chance Heat Wave hits and I win, but there's also a 10% chance for the attack to miss. Even more, there's a 0.625% chance for Hat Wave to miss and for my opponent to strike back with a critical hit making my mon faint. If this was a nuzlocke, I would probably ragequit now. I mean, it's very frustrating to make the best possible decision and lose because of the RNG. Besides, there's also the opposite scenario. Let's imagine a 6v1 boss fight, that can outspeed my whole team and OHKO them with a 90% accuracy attack. I can just soft reset until he misses and I can land a toxic, and then stall him to death with protect. I don't really feel like I deserve to win this fight, I've won due to the RNG, not my ability.

Solution: Unfortunately, I have no solution for this.

About ways of making a Pokemon game more difficult, there are many and each one has its own pros and cons.

Increasing the level gap: This is probably the most straightforward way of making a game difficult. The game is easy? Make the opponents stronger. This, however, may lead to frustration if the difference is too high, as it can make the player feel that the game is unfair and that he can't do it. It may also force players who don't want to breed or train EVs to do so or to quit the game.

Using legendaries as bosses: Legendaries, mechanically speaking, make great bosses. They are stronger than other pokemon and usually have unique moves and abilities that give them some advantage, so they are perfect for those 6v1 fights. They have a very big problem in my opinion: I need a reason to fight a legendary. You can't introduce a fight against a legendary pokemon just because. You can't put Kyogre, the legendary pokemon that created the seas and almost flooded Hoenn and blahblahblah... in a cave just because blocking my way and expect me to like that. In game design, that's called ludonarrative dissonance. When the game's mechanics and its lore are giving you opposite mesages.

Nuzlocke: A nuzlocke (and all of its variants) is a fantastic way of making a Pokemon game harder by limiting the resources at the player's disposal. You know that you will have the opportunity to capture a limited amount of pokemon during the run and that they might die. It also introduces the idea of defeat to pokemon, which it doesn't exist otherwise. You can actually lose a nuzlocke, if all of your pokemon die. This adds a whole new layer of difficulty and strategy to the game. It comes at a cost however, and although small, it's really frustrating. It's the scenario explained above when talking about randomness. There's a chance of me making the best possible play and still losing, which should make no sense. And even if the chance of that happening is really small (0.625% in the case mentioned before), it exists, and it does happen. I think it's okay when a pokemon dies due to a player's fault but it feels really unfair when it faints because of that very unlikely worst case scenario.

Monotypes: Monotypes are a great way of increasing the game's difficulty too, not only because they limit the player's potential pokemon pool but also because they make the team inherently weak against certain types. Try defeating Charlotte with a grass monotype for example. However, the problem with monotypes is that this is not a choice the designer does, it's done by the player. It's the player who decides to play a monotype run of the game instead of playing the "vanilla" game. The best the designer can do is try to allow monotypes by putting a big diversity of pokemon in the early stages of the game. It's true that a game could be designed specifically for monotype, but it hasn't been done yet.

Better AI: This is, in my opinion, the strongest resource for making pokemon more difficult. It is, however, the most difficult one to carry out too. Probably the most difficult battle in pokemon is one against another person. It is the most interesting one to play too. Imagine if all the concepts of competitive play, and all the moves and items from the metagame that are not that useful in story mode (who plays pursuit or defog in story mode for example?) were not just playable, but relevant. Imagine if each boss fight wasn't a fight against an overpowered rival with a dummy AI but a competitive battle. However, as I mentioned before, having the machine playing as a human being is really difficult, requires lots of design, complex programming and testing and it's unfortunately quite out of scope yet.

Now I would like to know your opinion. How would you make a pokemon game more difficult? What other problems do you encounter in the game's mechanics and what solutions can you give for them?

Edited April 30, 2016 by Lugruf

[Masquerain]

They can just start with giving us a challenge mode since they will never make pokemon games harder by default , what with it being oriented around kids and stuff. Challenge mode that is actually challenging, where the AI is set to the absolute max and opponents fight competitively. Can't be that hard to let people choose their level of difficulty.. Other games already do it , Pokemon needs to follow (even the gen 5 challenge mode wasnt that much of a challenge and they axed it). But in all honesty, introducing difficulty modes should satisfy everyone. You don't wanna grind? Play on easy. You want a challenge? Sure, we have a higher difficulty mode.

Super training already exists for EVs and I don't think it's really slow to maximize your EVs, but there are already "shortcuts" being introduced gradually - join avenue had training regimes , Kalos has a berry juice shop and whatnot. They are limited but they are still something. There's also carbos, zinc etc. Having IV stones eliminates some of the purposes of breeding and it feels like giving your pokemon steroids to enhance what they were born with .. Don't think that's logical because we can't change what we were born with, neither can pokemon. But with training, you can enhance your capabilities, friendship also grows over time and that makes sense for EVs and friendship. TLDR I view it as handholding and spoonfeeding to make all these things easy for us. It makes sense that you have to put effort into improving your pokemon team instead of having all the steroidsitems readily available to you.

Pokemon is not a game that is compatible with Dark souls difficulty (Hell, DS isn't THAT difficult if you learn the boss patterns). In Pokemon, however, if a guy has 6 mon that are 15 levels higher than yours, chances are that no amount of strategy is gonna help you (maybe if you're really lucky and pull every single gimmick you have off). That's counter-productive because a game should not be stupidly hard or annoying, it should be just right. NPCs battling competitively is really the most they can do (That includes having a full team of 6, evolved, items and movesets, also switching when needed etc) + things like what Reborn has, such as field effects, making you do events to obtain some better pokemon and whatnot

[Ironbound]

If you ask me, customizing and changing IVs and egg moves (I.e bypassing breeding or 'grinding' as you say) is a detraction and not an addition to the level of difficulty in a Pokémon game; breeding is an integral part of Pokémon mechanics that makes a giantbimpact on the Pokémon. The old 'no-pain-no-gain' adage will have to apply here to reward the player with superior odds, increased surety and better moves.

Changing Natures with the psychologist is one thing, but being able to maximize or customize IVs is taking it too far in my opinion. Besides, a great way to make a game more challenging is to limit moves and breeding options, which Reborn does well. Personally, part of the reason I enjoy Reborn is because I can gloat after breeding up an army of trophy mons with the best available moves, and using innovations and replacements when a Pokémon cannot learn its best moves ASAP.

As for other ways to challenge the player, one can always have a longer story or intricate puzzles with secret rewards, which Reborn again has. Ultimately, one must remember that the main series Pokémon games are always designed to be simple for the children whom it is aimed at. Interested players can always modify it for themselves by imposing restrictions, or by customizing difficulty like BW2 allowed (only wish it was in built in the start of the game insead of being a post-game unlockable). So I guess sone amount of self-imposition will always be needed, depending upon the indivifual players' tastes.

Tldr; most of the stuff in Pokemon is fine as it is difficulty-wise. GF certainly could start catering to older or more challenge-seeking players by creating difficulty levels and variations of the game which bar easy access to strong Pokemon and impose level caps, or new dynamics with terrains like Revorn, or which restrict the availability of moves via tutor or TMs.

EDIT: Masquerain ninja'd most of my point about Challenge modes and difficulty levels. Oh well.

Edited April 30, 2016 by Viridescent

[Samalet]

You don't wanna grind? Play on easy.

If you have to grind to get through a game, it's badly designed. Having to grind only makes a game more tedious, not harder.

[Masquerain]

If you have to grind to get through a game, it's badly designed. Having to grind only makes a game more tedious, not harder.

It would hardly be called grinding even. With the exp share, o powers, pokemon amie enchancing exp we have now, it's super easy to merely fight wild things you encounter and oh,what's this? Your team's already overleveled. Even in a challenge mode, you would not really have to grind like you have to grind in..say.. some mmos

[Ironbound]

A very valid case. I also support the view that a player should be able to choose his own impositions. It'd be nice if GF acknowledged a Nuzlocke mode, or any of its variants.

[Lugruf]

The thing with breeding and training is that I don't mind doing it my main Reborn save file, because it's a game I love and I know I will spend lots of hours playing it. But I don't want to breed and train EVs in every single pokemon game I start. It's just tedious.

I agree with Sohn der Höhe, if a game forces you to grind, that's a proof of bad design.

Edited April 30, 2016 by Lugruf

[Commander]

A very valid case. I also support the view that a player should be able to choose his own impositions. It'd be nice if GF acknowledged a Nuzlocke mode, or any of its variants.

Personally, I disagree with this. It was a fan made idea and I love the thought that it's just so easy to cheat or find loopholes (gotta love Kit's Nuzlocke hell moments) it makes staying true to the challenge harder and more rewarding.

I agree with Sohn der Höhe, if a game forces you to grind, that's a proof of bad design.

I generally agree with this which is why I kept the lucky egg and exp share available at the very beginning of the game. The only true consequence is that it gives way too much experience and really accelerates the process of raising a new mon. That's part of the reason behind the five level shift which really did change how the start of the game is played.

Now I'm going to break down what makes a Pokemon game difficult since it's very hard to lump it into one single section (take notes people):

A 6 vs 1 Scenario

This type of fight is very difficult to make...well difficult since there are so many ways to cheese it such as Destiny Bond, T-wave, Featherdance, etc. What most RPG makers do is make bosses immune to status effects such as death and others have such a low success rate they're obsolete. Legendaries themselves aren't as strong as they look which is they require a pretty big (10) level gap to make them so scary. The only solution to remove cheesing would have to be through a field effect since legendaries even have their limits.

A 6 vs 6 Scenario

This is pretty much a computer vs the player and with base essentials, this is lop sided in the player's favor. Switching is the biggest factor as they switch too little too late often, but that doesn't mean they can't be hard. Another big disadvantage is the fact the player has "unlimited items" along with the shift ability which can make a tricky scenario quite easy. Removing these two factor will greatly increase the difficulty of any type of playthrough.

Now let's look at the computer's team. There's a lot of thinking that has to go into what to give them. A team of all legendaries could be weaker than a grass monotype if the designer isn't careful. The AI isn't the worst thing in the world, but it takes some time getting used to as it will f up some clever strategies. The big goal is to try and make a solid team of 6 instead of 5 meh Pokemon (2 could be pathetic one shots) and one super powerhouse. It's pretty much putting all your eggs in one basket.

Monotype vs Non-Mono

This is a very interesting scenario as you may just jump on the train and say "the non-mono will always be stronger." I'm going to try and give an analogy of why this is both true and false. Picture a swordmaster who has spent many years honing his swordsmanship. He knows all there is about his blade techniques and even his faults. Now picture another man who has spent all his life learning how to wield a variety of weapons such as lances, swords, and axes. When it comes to a sword fight, the swordmaster would easily win, but maybe the other man is able to use a lance instead giving him an advantage and being victorious.

A monotype uses a type to the fullest of its abilities, which makes it both the most threatening and least threatening fights in the games. Non-monos generally have a constant difficulty but due to their variety, they can't always cover everything. So in the long run, I've learned non-monos are harder to make super difficult to face due to their limits.

Levels are a misconception

Here's a question I ask you: on average in Hardcore, how much higher do you think a leader's highest leveled Pokemon is above your own? How much do you think their lowest is? The first answer is 3 and the second is one below your own. What do you think regular reborn is? The same exact thing, but the only difference is you don't have to fight or worry about a level cap in regular reborn.

Here's something I really want to drill into people's heads: if you have to make a full team of the opponent's Pokemon 5-6 levels higher than the player's, then it's a poorly built team. I mean obviously you have to give some Pokemon a huge level advantage such as Volbeat due to its stats, but nobody wants to face a lead 47 Medicham with low 40 mons and that being the easy mon on the team. I know how easy it is, but spend some time working on bosses instead of using a program to level spike them.

Expect the Unexpected

There's something in difficulty such as going into the unknown or a surprise factor. If you don't know what you're opponent is or is using, you can't necessarily prepare that well for them. Randomizer's run off of this fact which is how they can extremely flux in difficulty. It's difficult to program (more like time consuming), but if you make bosses have sets of teams that switch up, the player will have a very, very hard time trying to exploit them.

That's not the point of this section though. Some pokemon are just glaringly obvious what they are known for and what they're going to do. Gengar obviously will run Shadow Ball and Sludge Bomb, etc. My point is you need to get creative as when something unexpected comes out of the blue, it keeps people engaged and rethink they're tactics. Let's say the player sees a Typhlosion, knowing its only Grass move is Solar Beam, they send out Swampert thinking its safe. Suddenly it Power Herb Solar Beams to one shot it. A variety of teams is far more interesting than the strongest mons making the strongest team which are all heavy hyper offensive.

It's Not the AI, it's you

Too many times I see people throwing punches at the AI when something is too easy. The AI is faulty, I have had my own cases of it screwing a strategy over, but 7 out of 10 scenarios, it's the designer at fault. Offensively, the AI is fantastic, but defensively it takes quite a bit of work. Instead of throwing a hissy fit why a certain Pokemon wouldn't use a move, I asked myself why it didn't. I've managed to solve many of the "AI not working" problems just through some minor adjustments (only one I couldn't solve is Illumise using Rain Dance).

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I'm just going to end this by saying Hardcore is not the limit of the difficulty of what a Pokemon game can reach. I mean the leaders are not even close to their maximum potential since I designed it for almost any Pokemon to be usable, but only if you have the skills to use it. I even stated I could make a harder version of it if I really wanted to. I just don't think there's a big enough audience to cater to a game that punishes you for not using certain mons and resetting over and over again. With the current system though, it is possible to make.

[Zargerth]

I prefer not to play with self-imposed rules. This means I don't do Nuzlocke or monotype runs etc. While it puts your abilities to a test, at the same time it restricts the Pokemon - and thus tricks and tactics - available to you, as well as punishes you for trying new strategies. In fact, because of the "fainted Pokemon are to be released" rule, you can't afford to try something that may or may not work.

I'd say it's bad game design if the game forces the player to:

- breed for IVs and/or egg moves

- EV train your team

- use certain Pokemon to defeat a boss/leader

Some of the things listed happen to an extent: you gain EVs by defeating opposing Pokemon and you most likely can't beat PULSEs with a team of Cascoons. My point is that they shouldn't be required.

I think strategy and synergy for the opponent (and their team) is far more important than just to raise their levels to ridiculous heights. Levels are important, of course, but levels shouldn't be the only factor that contribute to the difficulty of the game.

[FairFamily]

First higher lvl's and legendary pkmn are not the way to go, Pkmn Rejuvination intense mode tried it and I found it more frustating then anything. In fact they went even a step further and gave costum OP moves. On top of that they alligned the battle settings so ridgedly that it detracted the options to point you're almost forced to run certain mon/moves. My favorite example would be against Amber, the fire gym leader, she was fights in a volcano with sun up, double fight to boot. Basically her thyplosion just OHKO's almost everything with eruption. My counter: Ditto, I copied her thyplosion and swept her. I won the fight with 3 pkmn: a ditto, a houndoom and an escavalier. I didn't even see the sets of half her team, since I just outsped and OHKO's it. The moltress didn't even stood a chance. It wasn't satisfying but I won. Same with all the overleveled pkmn. It was basically after I reached the end of episode when I finally felt the moment to just EV train my team that the difficulty became acceptable. Not a nice experience.

Second I think nuzlockes and mono types restrict the player too much to make it any fun. I really want to do a monotype but I can't find a type that would satisfy me. It's just to restraining to me.

So how would I do it:

First I will embrace randomness and accept it as a variable on which the player can play with it. My rejuvination team and my offensive reborn team both have a special water pkmn: vaporeon and greninja. Both have access to surf and hydro pump, yet my vaporeon has surf and my greninja has hydro pump. Why does this matter vaporeon doesn't need the sxtra damge while greninja really does. So I traded reliability for damage but eventually I will get the misses and I will have to work around it. Of course I have to dal with the downsids as well. The biggest problem is that it is too binary. So how do I do it. Remove easy saving, this way you can't just soft reset for every fight to manipulate the rng. Which means that over the long run the player will get his expected pay off.

Secondly I will lock out moves,items and mons as well but for other purposes (progression mostly). How I want to deal with symmetry is team locking and varied situations. I would lock teams for a few matches and in those matches have a variety of foes: doubles, singles, different fields, different weather, ... . This means that I force my player to be prepared for all these situations, yes he can take the same tools as one of your bosses but he will get the wrong tools in the other fights. So I break the symmetry by breaking the symmetry of goals of the player and the npc, rather then breaking the symmetry between the teams.

So basically I want a gauntlet of stong trainers where you can't save in between and the trainers have to be vary different.

The last is breeding and training and to be honest I think that we have to restrict the options more while allowing the player to choose more easily. For instance a badge allows a player to increase the maximum IV value of his team by 2 which he then can improve by buying a IV protein. Same with EV's: for instance the first badge allows 20 EV's to be located each mon. Combine this with early access power items and friendship berries and you're set.

[CURIE]

We actually did get a brutally hard Pokemon game.

Super Mystery Dungeon

[Masquerain]

We actually did get a brutally hard Pokemon game.

Super Mystery Dungeon

It surely was harder than the other MDs but emeras balanced things out

[CURIE]

It surely was harder than the other MDs but emeras balanced things out

You obviously haven't 100%ed it.

That's okay, I haven't been able to do it yet either.

[Alextron]

How to make a pokemon game harder?

1.When your pokemon faint they lose exp

2.you can only have a set amount of items (for example,you can only have 5 hyper potions 5 full heals etc)

3.Disable soft reset button (silly,right?)

Now i suppose im gonna be criticised badly beacuse my ideas are too extreme :I

[Masquerain]

You obviously haven't 100%ed it.

That's okay, I haven't been able to do it yet either.

Nay, I haven't. It did nothing to motivate me to care about 100%ing it But the story itself was not brutally hard, ever.

How to make a pokemon game harder?

1.When your pokemon faint they lose exp

2.you can only have a set amount of items (for example,you can only have 5 hyper potions 5 full heals etc)

3.Disable soft reset button (silly,right?)

Now i suppose im gonna be criticised badly beacuse my ideas are too extreme :I

you shall , probably with the same comments that these things only make games tedious rather than hard

Edited May 2, 2016 by Masquerain

[CURIE]

Nay, I haven't. It did nothing to motivate me to care about 100%ing it But the story itself was not brutally hard, ever

So why say the game isn't hard if you haven't even played 10% of it?

[NickCrash]

The above discussion belongs to a PM.

How to make a pokemon game harder?

1.When your pokemon faint they lose exp

2.you can only have a set amount of items (for example,you can only have 5 hyper potions 5 full heals etc)

3.Disable soft reset button (silly,right?)

Now i suppose im gonna be criticised badly beacuse my ideas are too extreme :I

These are not extreme ideas, but they add cheap difficulty. For people like me who grind their pokemon till they faint and another gets their turn, this is a pointless way to increase difficulty.

The item limitation is seen in Gen1. It was merely frustrating. An item Embargo while facing bosses might be more beneficial as it resembles real battling more.

We didn't have soft-reset in cartrige games, so we closed the console and re-opened it. This way, it's the same. Close the program, and reopen. It's just tedious.

Might as well save before you switch between boxes, and have TMs be used only once.

[Ironbound]

Might as well save before you switch between boxes, and have TMs be used only once.

O God no. That was about the one and only thing I disliked about Gen4 in retrospect: TMs being single use. That and the fog weather.

[Alextron]

Just thought of something.

What if,when you enter a gym you can't get out until you beat the leader or your pokemon faint?

And also,you can't heal your pokemon outside of battles (in the gym ofcourse).

Edited May 3, 2016 by Alextron

[Masquerain]

Just thought of something.

What if,when you enter a gym you can't get out until you beat the leader or your pokemon faint?

And also,you can't heal your pokemon outside of battles (in the gym ofcourse).

I believe nobody would ever beat a later gym in that case, unless you use said battles to heal your team THEN ? If that's possible even.. Regardless, it would be a hassle.

Also, well people would merely let their team faint in order to get out I guess, it would be impossible for nuzlockes, that's for sure

Edited May 3, 2016 by Masquerain

[Alextron]

I believe nobody would ever beat a later gym in that case, unless you use said battles to heal your team THEN ? If that's possible even.. Regardless, it would be a hassle.

Also, well people would merely let their team faint in order to get out I guess, it would be impossible for nuzlockes, that's for sure

At least I tried