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Resource Union Street - Casual Discussion Thread
- Thread starter TMan87
- Start date
Rest assured, it wouldn't. Keywords like Lucky/Unlucky would be for writing facility content like Poke Balls or different arenas more clearly and easily.
Double edit: I've worked on rule 1.2 "Numbers", finally. I have a couple of lines I'd like to cast re: this finally-written set of rules:
Informal survey, how has Boasting changed your interest in TLG? If Zapdos or Moltres (or, for some reason, Articuno) was something you wished, would you ever bother risking PvP for a chance at them, or would you just leave that rotation of TLG alone knowing there's a PvE way to eventually get those Pokemon? Does the chance to get them faster have appeal? Does the idea of just having more PvP have appeal, even if you could get the Pokemon easier elsewhere?
Double edit: I've worked on rule 1.2 "Numbers", finally. I have a couple of lines I'd like to cast re: this finally-written set of rules:
- Are there any values missing from the list of obligate integers, that really shouldn't ever be allowed to be fractional?
- Can you think of any rules or effects that refer to "weird" calculation steps (e.g. not "base", "final", or "original"), and should they still work that way?
Informal survey, how has Boasting changed your interest in TLG? If Zapdos or Moltres (or, for some reason, Articuno) was something you wished, would you ever bother risking PvP for a chance at them, or would you just leave that rotation of TLG alone knowing there's a PvE way to eventually get those Pokemon? Does the chance to get them faster have appeal? Does the idea of just having more PvP have appeal, even if you could get the Pokemon easier elsewhere?
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I think that for legends who are available both by boasting and through TLG, I’d prefer to obtain them by boasting. High-level content can be quite draining, exacerbated by the unique format and arenas of TLG. Therefore, the opportunity to secure coveted rewards—in general, not necessarily exclusively through boasting—from content that isn’t level four is greatly appreciated. It should be noted, however, that I haven’t participated in any TLG this gen, and I find myself increasingly hesitant to engage in much high-level content going forward, so my opinion may be skewed in that regard.
Honestly I simply would not bother with a TLG if I could get that same legend in a boast. Part of this is because I’m not the biggest fan of the “First to KO wins” style of matches.
The bigger problem though is trying to find matches in the first place. In order for a TLG to fire, you need four different users who both do not have the legend and that want the legend. If nobody wants the legend because it’s perceived to be exceptionally bad or because a majority of the player base already has it, then the TLG will simply never fire. A couple of examples: epicdrill has been signed up for Thundurus since July 23, 2023 and has still not fired. The last time Regieleki was offered through TLG, it never fired despite getting 3 people on the queue. I have proposed in the past that we consider an alternative reward to lure in players that already have the legend, and I still think that is the best way forward.
Beyond TLG itself, Boasts integrate better into the existing leveling system. If I can level and obtain a legend in the same run against a preset team, why would I risk fighting a PvP match against the best players in the game for only a legend? Especially if players with exclusive Mega Evolutions needing very specific counters (coughTyranitarcough) are in the pool.
EDIT: About the only benefit I see to running TLG over Boasting or other reward avenues (raids) is that you get the legend at a higher base level. I’m not sure it justifies fighting a high level player over Trevor with some boasts.
Overall I just find Boasts to be more worth it than TLGs.
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Boasting has done little to affect my interest in TLG because I've never had much. Although I do enjoy the competitive aspects of this game, TLG rarely offers rewards that are sufficiently enticing to motivate my participation, and I don't want to spend my limited BBP time in a pool I've joined for the sole purpose of filling space when I could be building a team for tournament matches or high-end PvE content. The chance to acquire minor Legendaries as part of my usual progression experience is thus a great convenience.
Honestly, I think it might be worth considering the idea of completely revamping the TLG prize pool in favor of higher-tier Legendaries, and then cyclically assigning all of the former prizes to Boasts. The more competitive format would receive slightly better/more worthwhile prizes (e.g. Galar Birds, Hoenn Regis, missing TLG trio/quartet members) to reflect a prospective player's lower odds of winning, while the easier format would receive nearly guaranteed prizes that are—at best—marginal improvements over purchasable Pokemon. Also, flowing from Maxim's point on TLG player availability, changing the TLG reward structure in so drastic a fashion would attract interest from new players and past winners alike and ensure a steadier rate of match generation for at least one full pool cycle.
Note, though, that my perspective includes the opinion that Legendaries of the caliber won in TLG matches often lack the movepool, typing, or Abilities to function as much more than boring STAB-type-only beatsticks that fail at higher levels of play, which means I primarily join TLG pools to collect Flying-types or unique trophy 'mons with potential future usability.
Honestly, I think it might be worth considering the idea of completely revamping the TLG prize pool in favor of higher-tier Legendaries, and then cyclically assigning all of the former prizes to Boasts. The more competitive format would receive slightly better/more worthwhile prizes (e.g. Galar Birds, Hoenn Regis, missing TLG trio/quartet members) to reflect a prospective player's lower odds of winning, while the easier format would receive nearly guaranteed prizes that are—at best—marginal improvements over purchasable Pokemon. Also, flowing from Maxim's point on TLG player availability, changing the TLG reward structure in so drastic a fashion would attract interest from new players and past winners alike and ensure a steadier rate of match generation for at least one full pool cycle.
Note, though, that my perspective includes the opinion that Legendaries of the caliber won in TLG matches often lack the movepool, typing, or Abilities to function as much more than boring STAB-type-only beatsticks that fail at higher levels of play, which means I primarily join TLG pools to collect Flying-types or unique trophy 'mons with potential future usability.
I think there was already a Tier 2 TLG, targeting exactly those players who had already gotten all of the Pokemon from the current TLG pool (Tapu Koko, Tapu Bulu, Tapu Fini), offering a legendary of a higher tier (Tapu Lele), but I don't think it's ever fired. Maybe Tier 2 TLGs could be explored more?
Boasts are supposed to offer out-of-season legendaries, so putting Boast legendaries on a rotation would defeat that purpose, I think.
I think the reality is, most TLG legends are trophies. There are a few, like Zapdos, that are quite strong, and there are others, like Moltres, that are playable but not better than comparable purchasables, but a lot of them are just trophies that sit in your profile for bragging rights. If there are alternate ways to get TLG legends, then people who want them as trophies will just use the alternate ways and not bother waiting for TLG to rotate in.
Additionally, the people who derive significant benefit from TLG are new players who win a level 3 mon when their total pool is small, vastly accelerating them towards having a playable team. It feels strange, to me, that a format designed around level 4 play gives relatively insignificant rewards to people who actually join when their mons are at that level, while joining when you have relatively few mons that aren't necessarily level 4 gives huge benefits if you manage to win. I think it's reasonable to have a competitive format focused around lower level (like level 2, maybe?) play that newer players can participate in that gives lots of help with levelling a team, and TLG has rewards geared towards such a format while being designed around level 4 play.
Also, aside from like Zapdos and Tapu Bulu, which are just generically good, most of the TLG mons if you're using them are going to be very situational, and mostly picked up for a specific facility run that gives a legend as a reward, like how I'm going for Tapu Fini as part of my Loyal Three team right now. In cases like that, you're not likely to want to wait until the TLG rotates in to finish setting up your team for that facility, so you'll try to get it through boasts because then you can get it quicker.
Overall, I think TLG play's difficulty relative to boasts warrants more rewards than just a couple extra levels on the won mon, and introducing legends as rewards for boasts also brought to light some preexisting issues with TLG, including the fact that the rewards are mismatched to the level of play and level of pokemon expected. It made sense last gen, when none of the high-tier legends were available and TLG rewards were all the legends that were offered, but I think this gen there's a massive discrepancy in effort vs reward when it comes to like, fighting N to choose between what are easily the two strongest Technique Control options in the game right now when compared to fighting a TLG to get a Zapdos, a strong but not top-tier meta mon.
A side note on T2 TLG, that had problems in that it was revealed when a lot of people were taking breaks from the game, so its popularity suffered from that, and the format was honestly really bad because it relied on the second opponent signing up well in advance, making it a lot harder to plan your availability around it.
Additionally, the people who derive significant benefit from TLG are new players who win a level 3 mon when their total pool is small, vastly accelerating them towards having a playable team. It feels strange, to me, that a format designed around level 4 play gives relatively insignificant rewards to people who actually join when their mons are at that level, while joining when you have relatively few mons that aren't necessarily level 4 gives huge benefits if you manage to win. I think it's reasonable to have a competitive format focused around lower level (like level 2, maybe?) play that newer players can participate in that gives lots of help with levelling a team, and TLG has rewards geared towards such a format while being designed around level 4 play.
Also, aside from like Zapdos and Tapu Bulu, which are just generically good, most of the TLG mons if you're using them are going to be very situational, and mostly picked up for a specific facility run that gives a legend as a reward, like how I'm going for Tapu Fini as part of my Loyal Three team right now. In cases like that, you're not likely to want to wait until the TLG rotates in to finish setting up your team for that facility, so you'll try to get it through boasts because then you can get it quicker.
Overall, I think TLG play's difficulty relative to boasts warrants more rewards than just a couple extra levels on the won mon, and introducing legends as rewards for boasts also brought to light some preexisting issues with TLG, including the fact that the rewards are mismatched to the level of play and level of pokemon expected. It made sense last gen, when none of the high-tier legends were available and TLG rewards were all the legends that were offered, but I think this gen there's a massive discrepancy in effort vs reward when it comes to like, fighting N to choose between what are easily the two strongest Technique Control options in the game right now when compared to fighting a TLG to get a Zapdos, a strong but not top-tier meta mon.
A side note on T2 TLG, that had problems in that it was revealed when a lot of people were taking breaks from the game, so its popularity suffered from that, and the format was honestly really bad because it relied on the second opponent signing up well in advance, making it a lot harder to plan your availability around it.
Wow, it's been about two pages since I've done a proper radar post. There's a lot in the works, but much of it is new content (like facilities, mainly) that doesn't really constitute a rework of anything players are invested heavily into. This radar will focus on things that players already possess:
JC Work
Balance Patches
JC Work
We're hoping to, alongside the launch of Safari (if testing goes well), do a pass of JC costs and pay across the game to bring things into parity. JC costs post-Gen 9 have been kind of... dartboard in their methodology. The priority was to get content out first and worry about JC later, but later has become now and we can't kick this can down the road forever.
Our process will be something like this:
- Assign a JC value to every prize that a venue can award a player. (TC, RC, experience, Pokemon, and so on.)
- Assign each facility challenge a JC cost based on the rewards offered.
- Challenges that are expected to be longer (in real time) get to be more JC-efficient than faster challenges.
- Challenges that are PvP get to be more JC-efficient than PvE challenges.
- Assign the challenge a JC payout, based on desirability.
- Easier-to-ref challenges will destroy a little net JC, while harder-to-ref challenges will generate a little net JC.
I'm sure none of this sounds too shocking so far. One thing that may rock the boat a little is that we might increase JC costs and pay in lockstep, to give ourselves a little more granularity. This doesn't affect how things fit together, but it can impact any JC stockpile you may have, so we recommend burning your existing JC before it "depreciates".
Balance Patches
I'm sure players have seen me or other moderators refer to an upcoming balance pass, at least obliquely. Now that the shape of the patch has become clearer, I thought I'd set expectations around it. The patch is much like previous Pokemon, ability, and item changes... But all pushed together into one multi-post patch. Due to the sheer size, it's been referred to as "Season 2".
Said patch is slated for December 16 — the one-year anniversary of Gen 9 BBP. (Or somewhere in the neighborhood of that date. This is still BBP, after all.) It brushes up most remaining unloved targets for balance, while bringing the very best mons in line with their immediate competition — don't want to overpromise on this one. This also marks our first big pass for item balance, targeting problematic sources of damage creep such as (the good) Choice items and Shell Bell. It also also marks the large-scale implementation of Attack Aid, Defense Aid, Bonus-Proof, and Defense-Proof in lots of interesting places; which will have ramifications for how we itemize going forward. All of the squeaky wheels that I can think of off-hand are in here. It's big!
Which brings me to a preference question. Some players like playing a slightly newer version of the game every month, while others maybe want to play more than a single match before some part of the game is revised. There was a period over this summer where we were getting patches in less than four weeks, with Pokemon, condition, and other system changes. How fast is too fast? How slow is too slow?
This question doesn't really include corrections, which will happen whenever they're needed, like how I'm about to make Sleep Talk not auto-fail when you order it into an opponent who is about to Spore you, but hasn't yet. Those are fairly different from what constitutes a balance pass, or system change. (Though, I'm loathe to name all these types of things, and then have to remember what everything is named going forward.)
This post got a bit long, so I'll end it here with a quick slice of our near-term to-do list:- Pinnacle Raids: "The Fundamental Elemental Procession", "The Cataclysmic Clashing Colossi", and "The Source of the Enigma"
- November 2023 challenge (minor) Event
- Leveling Habitats: "Howling Pack Valley", "Canvas of the Scar Artist", and "The Path of Conveyed Flowers"
- 2-Trek Safari Habitats, and 2v2 Realgam Sims, to mirror the "Normal" and "Hard" divide between Raid types.
- Pinnacle Safaris: " Ancient Herald of World Peace"
- The Battle Tree, The Battle Pike, and ??? are still all steadily under construction.
While I have been frustrated by some nerfs in the past, overall I think that rapid iteration improves the game and gives me something to be excited about, and the impact of nerfs will lessen as more facililties open. In other words:
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yes, just like ursaring owners, you can get your loot.
new evolutions of existing mons get this treatment because we don't want people to be forced to meta-plan their purchases.
new evolutions of existing mons get this treatment because we don't want people to be forced to meta-plan their purchases.
it would be nice to have a way to sub "skip your turn" while asleep.
for example so you don't run into spiky shield or waste energy into protect.
it feels strange that it is trivially easy to skip a sleeping action as your main order, but as far as I know impossible to do it as a sub.
for example so you don't run into spiky shield or waste energy into protect.
it feels strange that it is trivially easy to skip a sleeping action as your main order, but as far as I know impossible to do it as a sub.
people may post nonsense orders (like "Be Asleep ~ Be Asleep ~ Earthquake") knowing that there's no chance that they wake up, but under the hood they still have an order to Struggle assumed by default. no turns are "skipped".
the only way to make a Pokemon do nothing and spend no resource is to spend their turn using a battle item such as medicine (which makes them Stand By). the fact that doing this still costs a finite resource somewhere is very intentional.
(on the off chance that an "um actually" is coming, having found some arcane way to skip a turn, direct it to the bug thread instead. this post can be used as proof that such behavior isn't intended.)
the only way to make a Pokemon do nothing and spend no resource is to spend their turn using a battle item such as medicine (which makes them Stand By). the fact that doing this still costs a finite resource somewhere is very intentional.
(on the off chance that an "um actually" is coming, having found some arcane way to skip a turn, direct it to the bug thread instead. this post can be used as proof that such behavior isn't intended.)
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right, the problem is that you can't substitute order struggle while asleep because it is illegal. that is my understanding at least.
I would be absolutely fine telling my sleeping pokemon to struggle if they would actaully attempt it.
to check my understanding, if struggle is ordered in main order while your mon is asleep, then no move happens, you gain 5hp and 3 en.
I would be absolutely fine telling my sleeping pokemon to struggle if they would actaully attempt it.
to check my understanding, if struggle is ordered in main order while your mon is asleep, then no move happens, you gain 5hp and 3 en.
you want to use the following:
this sub will move your orders one step to the right if and when it triggers.
at the start of the next step after it triggers, when you receive orders, the order you had just tried to use will have been pushed down into that step.
[at optional timing] IF you are Asleep THEN push down.
this sub will move your orders one step to the right if and when it triggers.
at the start of the next step after it triggers, when you receive orders, the order you had just tried to use will have been pushed down into that step.
I thought the discussion yesterday meant this wouldn't work.
sleeptalk(tackle) ~ chill ~ chill
"at the start of the step if opponent is to use spiky shield and I am asleep then push down"
so my main order would be pushed down, but my held order would remain the same and would still execute leading to attempted orders being vs spike shield ~ x ~ y being
sleeptalk(tackle) ~ sleeptalk(tackle) ~ chill
sleeptalk(tackle) ~ chill ~ chill
"at the start of the step if opponent is to use spiky shield and I am asleep then push down"
so my main order would be pushed down, but my held order would remain the same and would still execute leading to attempted orders being vs spike shield ~ x ~ y being
sleeptalk(tackle) ~ sleeptalk(tackle) ~ chill
Ah. At risk of sounding crazy, I wasn't sure if the precedent had changed because a similar deal wasn't offered for Dipplin in the Teal Mask update. In retrospect, though, of course no one would have owned a Level >0 Applin!
As for the Sleep discussion: couldn't one sub to use Snore and push down? It costs exactly as much EN as Sleep restores each step, it wouldn't trigger moves like Spiky Shield, and it deals little enough damage to make an attempted Mirror Coat/Metal Burst-against-Sleep Talk play a waste of time.
you can sub snore if its exactly sleep talk you are worried about. less so if its something like metal burst, or maybe you just need the en depending on what the opponent does.
Maybe I'm confused; aren't we discussing substitutions that push down a Sleeping Pokemon's Sleep Talk for minimal resource expenditure? If your interpretation of Lou's sub is correct, and I believe that it is, then a net 0 Energy cost might be the best you can achieve. You're right that Snore won't help if you really need the extra 3 energy, but it's better than the alternatives of wasting a Sleep Talk move or writing a substitution that fails to accomplish its intended task.
The matchup vs Metal Burst might have been a non-sequitur here, but it's worth noting Snore deals ~7-10 damage when used by the average (Rank ~8 with possible Item) attacker. Metal Burst then retaliates for ~9-13 damage, which is reduced to ~4-8 total by Sleep healing, at a greater EN cost, so the Sleeping Pokemon still has the advantage.
The matchup vs Metal Burst might have been a non-sequitur here, but it's worth noting Snore deals ~7-10 damage when used by the average (Rank ~8 with possible Item) attacker. Metal Burst then retaliates for ~9-13 damage, which is reduced to ~4-8 total by Sleep healing, at a greater EN cost, so the Sleeping Pokemon still has the advantage.
no. the push is not the goal. the goal is to do nothing on the step. My previous understanding was that push would do that if you filled nothing in return, giving you a way to "chill" for 0 en while sleeping
Oh, well then I can't help; I haven't read anything that definitively supports recreating an "IF X THEN Chill" sub while Asleep. The best outcome from an energy perspective seems to be spending 3 EN on Snore and regaining it at the end of the step. I suppose this wouldn't help if the user would faint from energy exhaustion, though.
Boast suggestion, Experienced
all the ref's pokemon are +1 level.
2 or 3 points maybe?
all the ref's pokemon are +1 level.
2 or 3 points maybe?
I think that is easily at least 3 points, possibly more.
Also big fan of it, pls implement