Suggestions for improving gameplay

[dondon151]

Nope, you're still not getting me. I wouldn't breed the Mareep. I'd take the one at level 50 and go. The difference between you and me (as far as I can tell) is that you don't want to work particularly hard for what you use, whereas I appreciate the hard work that goes into raising a new pokemon, but still won't do it unless I'm forced to because I'm lazy. That's why I like event pokemon, and new wild pokemon being lower levels, it forces me to train them.

I'm totally getting you. You would use the L50 Mareep if you had the option to choose between L50 and L10. What I'm saying is that if you (or anyone else) really cared about the loss in satisfaction from grinding it up from L10, then you would just breed it to get a L1 Mareep. Since you probably don't care about that satisfaction per se, then you'd rather take the L50 Mareep.

Edited July 27, 2014 by dondon151

[Felicity]

I'm totally getting you. You would use the L50 Mareep if you had the option to choose between L50 and L10. What I'm saying is that if you (or anyone else) really cared about the loss in satisfaction from grinding it up from L10, then you would just breed it to get a L1 Mareep. Since you probably don't care about that satisfaction per se, then you'd rather take the L50 Mareep.

Correct me if i'm wrong, but Don here, is advocating the options and choice that comes with the lv l 50 mareep. Why you would Want to breed a mareep is beyond me, seeing as you can save scum and it's moveset is obtained via level up or Scale, but that's just taking it too literally.

[Sheep]

I'm totally getting you. You would use the L50 Mareep if you had the option to choose between L50 and L10. What I'm saying is that if you (or anyone else) really cared about the loss in satisfaction from grinding it up from L10, then you would just breed it to get a L1 Mareep. Since you probably don't care about that satisfaction per se, then you'd rather take the L50 Mareep.

Yeah, ok then. I guess it's really a trade off between realism and convenience then isn't it? On the one hand you have low level pokemon joining your party (which is more like what it would actually be) and people have to work to raise them but you have the unintended side effect of discouraging their use. On the other you have high level pokemon who probably shouldn't actually be found at that level joining your party but it's easier to integrate them into your team.

Obviously you advocate one option whereas I advocate the other. Again it's not really our decision though, so assuming you've said everything that's on your mind ('cause I know I have) we can leave it here can't we?

Additionally, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to do this (even though I don't really represent anything to do with the game) because it's always good to get different opinions and view points on things. Who knows? Maybe stuff will change because of what you've done here. Maybe it won't, but if you hadn't brought all of this up it certainly wouldn't have. That's not to say I support the changes you're suggesting though.

[derekwst3]

wow I left after the first comment.....this went on longer than I would of expected lol

[dondon151]

Correct me if i'm wrong, but Don here, is advocating the options and choice that comes with the lv l 50 mareep. Why you would Want to breed a mareep is beyond me, seeing as you can save scum and it's moveset is obtained via level up or Scale, but that's just taking it too literally.

Well, I do think, "why would you want to breed a Mareep for in-game purposes?" because it seems like an entirely pointless activity to me (especially when it's possible to just hex edit the save data and save a load of time).

But you need only take one look at the Team Showcase forum to see the number of players breeding Pokemon and advocating the breeding of Pokemon to understand that some people enjoy doing this, and they have every right to continue doing so.

Yeah, ok then. I guess it's really a trade off between realism and convenience then isn't it? On the one hand you have low level pokemon joining your party (which is more like what it would actually be) and people have to work to raise them but you have the unintended side effect of discouraging their use. On the other you have high level pokemon who probably shouldn't actually be found at that level joining your party but it's easier to integrate them into your team.

I believe there can be a solution where both kinds of player would be satisfied. Type 2 players have the option of more easily integrating freshly caught wild Pokemon, who are innately at a disadvantage because they start with 0 EVs. Type 1 players have the option of breeding and min-maxing to their hearts' desire.

Additionally, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to do this (even though I don't really represent anything to do with the game) because it's always good to get different opinions and view points on things. Who knows? Maybe stuff will change because of what you've done here. Maybe it won't, but if you hadn't brought all of this up it certainly wouldn't have. That's not to say I support the changes you're suggesting though.

No problem, I appreciate your responses.

Edited July 27, 2014 by dondon151

[OLKv2]

The walking back and forth is awful and just made to pad the game out longer, which is bad design. There is no challenge or joy to walking to one area, only to have to walk back across the entire city to talk to 1 person, and then walk all the way back to the area you were just in just to proceed. It's unneccesary padding.

Also I agree about nightime. It's way too dark, you miss routes and cave openings because of how dark it is

[Personthing]

I am le dumb.

Edited August 1, 2014 by Mighty Kamina

[DJ Mewdeon ft Dan Punk]

One thing I'd also like is if the road in the Obsidia ward got fixed after Shelly or Shade's gym so that you don't have to go through the Obsidia slums every time you want to go to the Onyx Ward/Coral Ward/Byxbysion Wasteland/Apophyll Beach/Azurine Island because that gets annoying really fast.

Uh, y'know there's a Cut-able tree on that road that disappears after you finish destroying that PULSE so the one tile path is cleared ... not sure how you missed that, but you don't need to go through the Slums after getting Cut/beating the PULSE unless you want to.

[Personthing]

Uh, y'know there's a Cut-able tree on that road that disappears after you finish destroying that PULSE so the one tile path is cleared ... not sure how you missed that, but you don't need to go through the Slums after getting Cut/beating the PULSE unless you want to.

I am apparently blind.

[Alilatias]

Um, hi everyone. I just started playing Reborn about three weeks ago, and am currently up to the Crustle puzzle. The slowdown + night time color have combined to give me an actual physical headache, so I've decided to stop playing until tomorrow morning. Reading through the topic, I see those two issues will be addressed soon, which is good.

This is pretty much the hardest Pokemon game I've played by far, but it's a very fair kind of difficulty. I've honestly never played any Gen 5/6 games, so many Pokemon are rather new to me. A lot of the things I've wanted to say have already been addressed earlier in the thread, but there's one issue I feel that I should comment on. The low level issue. Know that this is my first playthrough, so what I have to say about Reborn should be based on that. Things are obviously much easier on subsequent playthroughs, if one decides to restart and play through again.

On one hand, I don't see that much of a problem in having Pokemon that are usually seen as endgame or high tier metagame material join late in the game at low levels, since I already realize this game is all about effort. However, I felt that from the Wasteland onwards, several factors had combined to make grinding up the new members of your team increasingly tedious.

I mean that for one, there's a big difference between being given a Lv. 10 Mareep when your team is around Level 20-25, and a Lv. 10 Ralts when your team is in the 45-50 range. (Or a Lv. 3 Audino that I ran into in Route 1, is that Pokemon so good to warrant them being in the wild at such a low level when the rest of your team is level 50-60? It's not a Pokemon that evolves either, does it?)

Also, I noticed a sharp decrease in the amount of trainers to fight in general after that point. That means less EXP to go around, I had to begin fighting tons of wild Pokemon for the EXP to keep up. It's a rather jarring and very sudden shift in design. That coupled with the certain new Pokemon joining at very low levels is rather off-putting.

To understand where I'm coming from, let me describe my entire playthrough thus far. In general, I've never hit the level caps, and never used Common Candy for anything other than de-leveling Pokemon for the purpose of learning moves. Although my whole team was usually within 4-7 levels of the cap when fighting the gym leaders, and that's after fighting everything I could and doing a bit of grinding off of wild Pokemon.

Beginning to Second Badge

I chose Froakie with Protean as my starter, because I was completely unfamiliar with both and wanted to try them out. I did a lot of exploring, fighting all the trainers I could while trying to decide which Pokemon I should catch and use, and ended up with a team of Froakie, Noibat, Litleo, Budew, Gothita, and Pachirisu. All in the level 12-14 range by the time I challenged the first gym. I ended up barely winning with Froakie being the last one remaining, relying on using Protean to switch between Ghost and Water type through Lick and Water Gun.

Later, I swapped out Pachirisu for Plusle. Thunder Wave and Fake Tears really helped me against PULSE Tangrowth and the 2nd gym's Cradily, although I had to spam Tickle with Gothielle in order to drop Cradily's attack down to manageable levels. Although having Cradily being that difficult to defeat is a fair trade for basically every other Pokemon wasting half their turns using Nature Power Sandstorm against Noibat. It's at this point that I realized I didn't really run into any wild Ground or Fighting type Pokemon prior to the 2nd gym, and the lack of either is something that is haunting me throughout the whole game (although that's more of a personal problem today).

Second Badge to Apophyll Island

I made three changes in my party by the time I reached the Poison gym. I swapped out Pachirisu for Emolga, and quickly swapped that for Mareep. I also swapped out Litleo for Growlithe. I found the Poison gym incredibly difficult until I decided to catch a Bunnelby and evolve it to Diggersby. I backtracked to the Move Relearner to teach it Bulldoze, and he basically steamrolled the gym. He didn't earn a permanent spot on my main team though, I wasn't sure what I wanted to drop for him.

When I reached Shelly, she was basically destroying me. It was by that point that I ran into Murkrow, and caught one with the Prankster ability to replace Noibat. I was planning on using the Murkrow's Mist to clear away Volbeat's Tail Glow, but it turns out all I needed to do was to have Ampharos use the Thunder Wave and Confuse Ray combo. I'd actually end up using this combo (+Leech Seed from Budew line) all the way until Chrysolia Forest, where I had to drop Confuse Ray for Signal Beam.

The hardest part about Shade was actually the Rotom at the beginning, absorbing Thunder Wave and having no weaknesses that I could exploit. Actually, I've found that for the majority of the gym fights in Reborn, I had to exploit the weaknesses of the Gym Pokemon's secondary types instead of the main one. I don't recall having to really take that into consideration in the official games.

That same combo allowed me to handle Kiki's Medicham, although I had to temporarily swap out Murkrow for Aromatisse. Never used a Fairy type prior to this. Set up the attrition combo in order to have Aromatisse safely set up Calm Mind + Draining Kiss/Moonblast. Probably not the most efficient strategy, but it worked out for me.

As an amusing side note, it was at this point that I found the ice cream shop at Opal Ward. The very first time I visited it, I saw a type of Ice Cream being sold for 20,000. I didn't know what Ice Cream did in general, so I only bought Berry Ice Cream. When I found out that the Berry Ice Cream was better than Super Potions, I came back to get more and noticed that the ultra expensive ice cream was gone. I just looked it up today in order to make sure I wasn't hallucinating at the time, and now I know that I saw something that was super rare. And I'm sad now. :<

I never did manage to beat Solaris' Garchomp. I had a long winded strategy involving mass Intimidate swapping + Leech Seed and Toxic, but it was so reliant on the RNG cooperating with me for like 30+ turns that I decided to give up instead of looking for a Pokemon with Destiny Bond (especially when he used a Full Restore to clear Roserade's Toxic). I will say this though: Going in with rain allows you to tank Garchomp's Fire Fang, if he decides to use it instead of wrecking you with everything else. I intend to beat him on my second playthrough no matter what.

Wasteland to Route 2

My main team at this point was Greninja, Arcanine, Roserade, Gothielle, Ampharos, and Murkrow.

The overall lack of optional trainers to fight forced me to grind against wild Pokemon quite a bit outside of the Wasteland Gym. Eventually I figured out that the Macarggo back at the Island gave far more EXP and you had a guaranteed way of fighting them, so I took Diggersby and grinded him up. Taught Diggersby Dig (heh), which helped a lot more than I thought it would. I still couldn't decide who to drop for him in my main team though.

I swapped out Gothielle for Ralts/Gardevoir by the time I reached the Chrysolia Forest (found the Magnet Powder at Blackstream Factory allowing me to obtain her before 7th Street), but because there weren't that many trainers to fight, it took me all the way until Route 1 to get Gardevoir up to speed with the rest of my team. And that was after spending half an hour grinding the Ralts off of Noibat in the Railway just to evolve her (switching her out against wild Pokemon in the Chrysolia Forest didn't yield that much better EXP, and my stronger Pokemon were always getting status'd/had a huge chunk of their HP chopped off upon switch in, resulting in a lot of frustrating trips to the Pokecenter).

Ice gym was surprisingly easy. Greninja took out Froslass and Cyrogonal with Dark Slash spam. I had problems with her Lapras, but it was nothing Ampharos and Roserade couldn't handle. I think I had more problems with the bug boy before the gym battle.

Murkrow was honestly quite a burden ever since I got him, and I didn't know I'd have to wait so long to get a Dusk Stone to evolve him because the first one is currently in a bugged area. I couldn't evolve him until I reached Iolia Valley, and by then he was already Lv. 57. I had to level Murkrow off of the grass and bug types in the route, especially the Heracross, because everything else would basically one-shot him. The huge amount of walking back and forth for Route 1's puzzle frustrated me a lot (I probably spent about 2 hours today going back and forth between the Tauros trying to remember where all the honey trees were), but it did allow me to grind up my Pokemon quite a bit in the absence of trainers.

I managed to defeat Arceus. All I needed to do was pray Arceus would use anything other than Judgment against Ampharos, then drop Thunder Waves until El ran out of Full Heals. Then Light Screen, Leech Seed, and have Gardevoir Calm Mind/Wish and then go on the offensive.

Radomus' Gym was surprisingly easy. I led with Ampharos and Greninja. Took out Reniculus ASAP, then disabled Exeggutor as I destroyed everything else that came in one by one, substituting the Greninja slot to deal with Metagross as needed. Honestly, having the chess field double the effects of stat boosting moves makes Calm Mind way too powerful in that fight.

Luna was really difficult. My biggest issue was honestly the Bisharp at the beginning, I had to basically pray for Arcanine to one-shot Bisharp. I had no fighting type moves, and I deleted Signal Beam from Ampharos in favor of Light Screen (which was a mistake, but I didn't want to backtack all the way to the move relearner). Gardevoir's Moonblast was the only move I had that was super effective against Dark, so I pretty much had to brute force my way through this fight by taking advantage of the secondary weaknesses of Luna's stronger Pokemon (Hyrdo Pump/Petal Dance against Tyranitar, Petal Dance would carry over to half of Malamar's HP, make sure Ampharos was alive when Honchkrow came out...)

Considering how long I had to wait to evolve Murkrow to Honchkrow, he's kinda disappointing. I feel like I should replace him with a fighting or ground type to cover my team's huge weakness to any decently strong electric or normal type, but I don't fully remember which ones are available at this point.

Crustle puzzle was confusing to me at first because I wasn't sure where I was supposed to go (where does solving the upward puzzles lead to? The downward ones?). On top of that, I'm totally disoriented by the lag and the fact that the whole place is in night time now. I'll come back with a fresh mind in the morning...

Edited August 3, 2014 by Alilatias

[canse]

I'm too lazy to read all that, i read 'til 3rd page, most of the things were answered anyways, i'm just gonna say this:

Growlith/Arcanine kicks ass, so it's right to be considered strong.

Mine surpassed my Typhlosion in lvls and power. :'(

[Darkforce35]

I don't know if this has been asked before, I'm pretty new to the forums, but is there a plan to implement any re-battle system for NPC trainers in order to make grinding a little less tedious for players?

[canse]

As you continue in the story so far some people battle you again, or new ones show up in the first maps, most of the time there are some strong ones in the main center which you get your starter, aside from that not really but there will definitely be a way in the future.

[Darkforce35]

I've already gone through all 12 episodes so I'm left with only the grand hall trainers, which led to my curiosity on the future addition of re-battling haha

[Ultra]

I too would prefer a re-battle feature to the current Grand Hall trainers. It would make grinding pre exp share easier for lower level pokemon, allow faster level gain while EV training, and all that's required is that you talk to the trainer again. Just get rid of prize money from subsequent battles to balance.

[TheRockGhost72]

Why are we still here?

[dondon151]

I'm too lazy to read all that, i read 'til 3rd page, most of the things were answered anyways, i'm just gonna say this:

Growlith/Arcanine kicks ass, so it's right to be considered strong.

It's not strong at all. It's an unevolved Pokemon that relies on an evolution stone obtained when the level cap is L45. It's fairly good after evolution because at least it gets coverage moves, but a lot of Pokemon have reached their final stages before L45. So Growlithe is actually pretty bad before then, relatively speaking.

Actually, scratch that, it doesn't even get good coverage moves. Crunch isn't spectacular, Outrage provides very little in terms of coverage, and CC is an egg move. Growlithe is not strong, lol.

I like Alilatias's post despite its length because it supports my point about trainer density from the perspective of a different kind of player.

Also, I have one more feature request: could we reorder the start menu so that Pokemon or Bag is at the top and not Pokedex? Very few people enter the start menu to use the Pokedex. Alternatively, is it possible to make keyboard shortcuts for the Pokemon and Bag menus?

Edited August 4, 2014 by dondon151