Taking the RNG out of Pokémon

[Sylvan Nephilim]

Players often complain about random chance deciding games of Pokemon. But what would Pokemon look like without without random chance? In a Pokemon game without random chance, secondary effects would always occur and moves would never miss. Critical hits would also have to be different somehow. Ideas on what this would look like:

1) Status effects are applied in stacks. Each stack would be a tenth of the full status condition. Flamethrower, which has a 10% chance to burn, would instead apply 1 stack of burn, which would damage HP by 1/80 and decrease attack by 5%. Lava Plume, 3 stacks of burn, damage HP by 3/80 and decrease attack by 15%. Sacred Fire, 5 stacks of burn, which would damage HP by 1/16 and decrease attack by 25%.

I'm not sure how flinch, freeze or sleep would work like this.

2) Instead of accuracy, moves have cast times. Innaccurate moves would take longer to execute, and would impose a speed penalty for that turn. A level 50 max speed Starmie using 80% accurate Hydro Pump would have 146 Speed instead of 183.

OHKO moves would still be broken.

3) Critical hits would be telegraphed at the end of each turn. The Pokemon would start glowing or something, letting you know exactly what's coming.

Still random tho.

4) Double Team would make a shadow clone every time it's used, letting your opponent choose which one to attack. If the right one is chosen, the opponent takes damage. If hit by a multi target move, the opponent takes reduced damage depending on how many shadow clones there are, then all the shadow clones die.

Still random tho.

THOUGHTS, FRIENDS?? :]]]

[SJMistery]

interesting, but too hard and confusing to actually hardcode in the game

[Sylvan Nephilim]

Have you ever coded something, Dragon Knight?

[Etesian]

Sounds fun, although changing the kind of burn according to the move seems unnecessary (especially cause you nerfed it to hell and back). The regular 1/8 HP 50% Attack burn is fine as it is. Flinch, freeze, paralysis, etc. could be the same, Headbutt would add 3 stacks, when you get 10, the foes flinch. Sleep's duration would be tricky. Your post doesn't state if it would also be an RNG thing as to when Critical hits can occur, detecting them is another thing. Maybe making it so that, at 0, every 16th turn is critical, while those with Super Luck (automatic +1) would crit on every 8th turn. Moves like Night Slash would still be problematic though.

Doing that for Double Team would sound like a real pain to implement, if used in a single battle, you would have to turn the fight into a (at most) 6v1 (although 5 of those wouldn't move), imagine if both foes in a double battle did that. It also doesn't cover Minimize. If accuracy is bound to speed increases, evasion could be as well. Boosted accuracy and evasion increase speed, reduced acc and eva decrease speed. Might make those moves actually worth it. The multi-hit moves part is also not that good, as evasion goes to +6 while Multi-hit moves hit up to 5 times, maybe you hit all but the real one? It also wouldn't make sense with moves like Dual Chop.

You'd also have to remove a "core" part, because the damage formula has a modifier which multiplies the damage by a random value between 0.85 and 1.

Edited August 12, 2014 by Etesian

[Sutoratosu]

After reading this, I honestly prefer to just keep the random chance in the games rather than eliminate them... so complicated sounding...

[Felicity]

Naw, i prefer he awesome moments and flukes that come from the RNG. The moment you hit that clutch parahax or crit are so goddamned happy, it is too good to dismiss

[Raindrop Valkyrie]

Most of these changes just punish the player for using something else. The Stacks thing is also nonsensical, and really just promotes switching, not to mention most times it is impossible to hit something 10 times with a Flamethrower and not have it die or be such a horrible match-up you shouldn't be sitting there hitting it with it in the first place. Statuses don' really need any change imo.

The Cast Time thing is very bad. It makes all the power moves hella bad to use, and makes users of things like Superpower/Close Combat, even more powerful, or broken in some cases. If they are faster than you, it doesn't matter their defenses dropped, not to mention you will most likely be running straight up weaker moves. Also, what about moves like Aqua Tail? That move has 95% accuracy, but it gets no bonuses of any sort. Why should it lower your speed when it is already a poor choice, this just makes things that have to take it for coverage feel even worse about it. Not to mention what would be all the calcs for the percentages?

The Critical Hit is calculated during move use. If it showed up at the end of the turn that would say to the player, hey stupid attack next turn. This promotes the player to attack (and is still RNG), but now it punishes you for using a non-attacking move. Basically, oh you didn't attack? Welp too bad no crit for you.

Double Team is still broken, in fact, the mini game described still has the same problem and is just as frustrating for the player. (not to mention how bloody hard that would be to program in the random thing and have it display images and keep track of which is the real one, and shuffle it everytime you make a new clone so they don't know where they are still anyway.)

Basically, at least to me, these changes make it worse than anything, and are more stuff to just remember. A lot of them unnecessarily punish players as well and therefore none of this solves anything and more or less would add many more problems than the Few RNG like things.

[Sylvan Nephilim]

Woah there, this is supposed to be a fun thread. Here, have a cinny bun.

Edit: And by this I mean I'm more interested in hearing your ideas if you have any, than hearing why mine suck.

Edited August 12, 2014 by RumbleTTT

[Raindrop Valkyrie]

You asked what I thought, just giving you feedback on it. And I am not angry or anything. That might not be the most well put together thing and I could have used a better tone.

You ideas also don't suck, I can see where you are trying to go. But when it comes to game design I am just pointing out why they won't really work and are a little flawed. I Really appreciate what you are trying to brainstorm, but I kinda like a little bit of randomness. Especially since some of it can be played around in Pokemon. I do agree sometimes that random crit sucks, but crit happens, and you got to roll with the punches. I like that somebody can turn it around for themselves even if it is total luck.

The other thing is, I don't really know if the RNG can be "solved" in Pokemon games. It is a bit ingrained in the game at this point and it's mechanics. The Formula would have to be highly played with to achieve something.

I am a big believer in, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Really sorry if you thought I was trying to be a jerk or something, I just thought I would give some of my insight since I know a bit about game design (I hope to work in the field one day.), and thought I would just throw my 2 cents out there. I mean you did ask what we think.

[Chevaleresse]

I think just flat out removing anything that has a less than 30% chance of happening would be a good start. The next and probably final step would be applying a pseudo-RNG system similar to that of Warcraft 3 and Dota 2 (both highly competitive games) that increases the chance of a random event happening the more times it has a chance to. (E.g, first attack has a 5% chance to crit, then 10, then 15. I don't know the exact formula used to fix these to the proper percentages.)

[Raindrop Valkyrie]

That is a possibility....But I can understand why Freeze is only ever a 10% chance etc. Mostly since that is the most broken status, and it is good it is pretty much impossible to reliably have it happen. Also I assume with that Change, Serene Grace would have a doubled rate of the chance happening going up.

((Also in DoTA pretty bloody funny when they get a bash first hit, at least to me, since everyone rages so hard when it happens.))

[Shanco]

Most people will take simplicity; after all, you have to keep in mind the audience as a whole.

Posting more later

[Sutoratosu]

Is the "Random Numbers Game" present in Pokemon really so bad? Yeah, sometimes the opponent gets that 1/10 chance burn to trigger, or manages to get a crit, and yeah, those times suck...

but you know what? Sometimes, Life sucks. And when it does, you just get over it and keep pressing on.

Edited August 15, 2014 by Stratos

[Raindrop Valkyrie]

as I always say. Crit happens. (mostly because I can't actually swear, and don't want to.).

[crashteamalphing]

don't forget the damage rolls, those are also dictated by an RNG. Speed ties also dictated by an RNG. Attacks like Assist, Metronome too. Some abilities like Moody. Magnitude's power. there's a lot more to change than what you said if you want to completely erase any trace of RNG.

[Shanco]

This guy gets it. There's a lot to remove.

I'd also argue that while the odd critical hit or freeze is frustrating, the people who do it for fun (which would probably be a vast majority) would appreciate the spontaneity of events tied to the RNG. If there wasn't any RNG, I'd argue that it would grow stale quickly.

[Chevaleresse]

*cough*pseudorng*cough*

literally all the game needs is a mechanic to balance out streaks, especially since crits ignore negative modifiers now

e.g. if i've attacked ten times already and gotten zero crits at 1/8 chance, there should be a mechanic that ensures i'll get a crit within the next couple attacks

conversely, if I have critted three times in the last four attacks I shouldn't get any for a while

[Momotaro]

I didn't read most of it, but the thing is, RNG is something that is ALWAYS going to be set in any RPG type of game, it's how it works, even Action RPGs (and I believe MOBAs) have it, maybe differently, but still have it. Dodge chance, miss chance, burn chance, etc. It can't be escaped because if there wasn't an RNG chance, it would either mean that there will be no status affliction, or it would just turn out to be what roleplayers call "godmod".

"I will attack you, but you can't dodge, ever, it will kill you, you can't do anything about it."

It's a rock, paper, scissors(RPS) game with a huge gamble in it. The RPS part is like the strategic thinking on what the opponent will do, and the gamble is on what actions you make will affect you or your opponent (move that might miss, move that will cause affliction, move that is faster but might not be powerful enough).

Those stack ideas you mentioned are great, but it's not for a turn-based RPG game like Pokemon, it would be more for a game where at least you can move your own character and such so you can dodge those moves that will always give you an affliction, and even so, since it's game breaking to keep effects the way they are in Pokemon, would be slightly changed and "nerfed". In other words, it's more of an Action RPG kind of idea, or a game where there is some level of "cooldown" (which is dumb cuz I hate RPGs like that).