Sucker Punch: a question for the devs

[MasamuneTenshi]

So uhm, I'm not 100% sure where to put this, because I don't think it fits into bug reporting. The thing is the following:

 

It's my first time using Pawniard in Reborn (or in anything else, for that matter), and I made sure to get Sucker Punch on it. I noticed the AI not playing around it in any way though, running pokemon weak to dark like Espeon and Gengar into it and just dying. I suspect that the AI either doesn't recognize it as a priority move, or doesn't know that there is a way to get around it by not attacking. Whatever the case, I wanna put this out there for the off chance that the devs are not aware of it, as I know the AI is being rewritten completely. And if you guys knew about this, maybe you can confirm or deny either of my suspicions.

 

Coincidentally, the AI is also completely unaware (pun?) of the Defiant ability. Shelly, who is a major problem in pretty much every play through for me, kept spamming Struggle Bug, giving Pawniard +2 attack every turn and running her pokemon into its Sucker Punch, making for the easiest battle I've ever had with her. Same thing with the Pulse Muk fight with ZEL, where they lead with Glaceon and hit Pawniard with Icy Wind, dooming all of the poor Eeveelutions. That's two things related to Pawniard that somewhat break the game honestly. In general this play through has been just about the easiest I remember having in Reborn, and that's with limiting myself to pokemon I've never used before, like Arbok (who does amazingly despite its lacking move pool until Gunk Shot and Coil), Linoone. and Klinklang.

 

Either way, thanks for reading, and any responses I might get.

[Reshy]

11 hours ago, MasamuneTenshi said:

So uhm, I'm not 100% sure where to put this, because I don't think it fits into bug reporting. The thing is the following:

 

It's my first time using Pawniard in Reborn (or in anything else, for that matter), and I made sure to get Sucker Punch on it. I noticed the AI not playing around it in any way though, running pokemon weak to dark like Espeon and Gengar into it and just dying. I suspect that the AI either doesn't recognize it as a priority move, or doesn't know that there is a way to get around it by not attacking. Whatever the case, I wanna put this out there for the off chance that the devs are not aware of it, as I know the AI is being rewritten completely. And if you guys knew about this, maybe you can confirm or deny either of my suspicions.

 

Coincidentally, the AI is also completely unaware (pun?) of the Defiant ability. Shelly, who is a major problem in pretty much every play through for me, kept spamming Struggle Bug, giving Pawniard +2 attack every turn and running her pokemon into its Sucker Punch, making for the easiest battle I've ever had with her. Same thing with the Pulse Muk fight with ZEL, where they lead with Glaceon and hit Pawniard with Icy Wind, dooming all of the poor Eeveelutions. That's two things related to Pawniard that somewhat break the game honestly. In general this play through has been just about the easiest I remember having in Reborn, and that's with limiting myself to pokemon I've never used before, like Arbok (who does amazingly despite its lacking move pool until Gunk Shot and Coil), Linoone. and Klinklang.

 

Either way, thanks for reading, and any responses I might get.

 

Problem is those are corner cases and it'd require adding specific exceptions into the AI for those niche cases.  It's possible, but it'd be complicated.

[Amethyst]

out of curiosity what version of the game are you playing on?

because 18.2 feature an ai updated that solved several bugs existing in 18.1 that sound like they could be contributing to what you're describing. for instance, speed checks for priority moves were broken, and type calculation for switches were broken it so it used to send out pokemon that were weak against yours instead of strong haha whoops
both of which are exactly why we did the update
if you're on 18.2 or later i'd like to know though
probably not much we can do about it regardless right now exactly because tweaking mid-flux is completely useless

but i'd still like to know and cry about it

 

defiant also concerning-- not sure how that is in E18 offhand but i see an extremely harsh reduction for it in our working scripts so i don't think it's been forgotten

 

 

regardless having easier and easier times getting through the game is somewhat expected, arbok is an early powerhouse,  i know klingklang can 6-0 some late-game fights with the right support and my best team got swept by a linoone once so honestly i ain't here to judge the little guys, they can pop off if played well

[MasamuneTenshi]

I'm on the latest version actually, 18.4 was it? I made sure to check back every now and then to see if anything new had come out after cas went crazy with a few releases during summer, but the last one was in July I believe and I definitely have that one. It didn't feel like a switching issue, like what can Shade even switch in that doesn't get destroyed by Pawniard one way or another. Maybe I'm slightly overthinking it too and the trainers just didn't have anything to play around Sucker Punch, and teaching the AI to switch in such a case sounds like hell. I actually read about the speed checks being broken back when they got fixed I think, made me crack up, as I never really realized they were broken. But yeah, Sucker Punch is tricky, I feel like the AI not realizing that it's giving you +2 attack every turn by spamming Struggle Bug and Icy Wind against Defiant is actually a bigger issue and probably a much easier fix.

 

That being said, I love the in depth response. Yes, it's of course getting easier every time you play the game, and this is like my.. 7th play through? Been like a year since I last played though. But I do feel like a considerable part of the easy time is this little Pawniard guy. I also discovered stuff like Julia getting completely ruined by freakin MUD SPORT. Klinklang has just been amazing all game, even with evolving so late, Gear Grind on level 16, or whenever it gets it, is just.. nice. And Arbok has been my go to for anything I couldn't handle right off the bat. Send in the snek, Glare, Screech, take it from there.

[Egzample]

I didn't notice such issues while playing sucker punch honchcrow (at last not to this extent, but I guess if I was actively trying to fool the AI with priority moves, eventually it will succeed), though I can confirm the AI sometimes goes nuts when it has no clearly good option to switch in (regardless if it is typing, entry hazards or whatever), like switching one after the other without doing any moves.

[MasamuneTenshi]

I have noticed some rather strange switches as well, but those feel like they've always been there, and in situations where the AI doesn't really have a good move or switch to deal with whatever you have out, so it doesn't really matter as it was gonna lose anyway. As for trying to intentionally fool it, that's not really what I was doing, it's just that Sucker Punch it Pawniard's best move, so it was always gonna use it a lot.