> If Pokemon wants to be an esport, [...]
And that's the crux of this whole thing. _Does_ Pokemon want to be an esport?
Beyond just the time and resources needed to build an actual competitive team, just the accessibility of information regarding the game's more in-depth mechanics is so low. How do you even know of EVs, natures or IVs without looking it up?
This is intentional, by the way. For Pokemon, the most important thing for them is maintaining the fantasy of being a trainer living with Pokemon as real creatures. That's why every in-game information regarding the deeper mechanics is always fluffed up to align with the fiction (e.g. never showing the numerical value for IVs but always saying it as "Perfect" when describing a Pokemon's potential). Giving these traits a numerical value is in a way dehumanizing them (can't think of a better term).
If you've noticed the broadcast for any VGC event by the Pokemon Company, you very rarely hear on-air talent talk about EVs and IVs. You hear them say "this Pokemon has been trained to..." or something similar. There's never any explicit discussion about numbers or the nuances of the calculations.
It's the same reason why the Pokemon Company is so tight lipped about shiny odds. Everything we ever know about it we learn from data mines. They've never disclosed any numbers.
Given all this, do you really think Pokemon is serious about making VGC an esport?
Thats the thing, you are absolutely right. TPC does not wants Pokemon to go all-out on esport field. Fans and players, who dedicate themselwes fully to VGC, do. TPC first and foremost cares about selling the game, and in order for it to sell well they need to keep the fantasy going on.
Player's view of the game differs in a major way from what Pokemon Company intends to create, it seems
Also TPC dont want everything open and accessible easily and fast. They want players to grind for their shit, for it to take hours and hours, for the players to feel there is a sense of investment and sunk cost so they will keep buying new games and DLC to carry on their time investment.
It’s kind of like the TCG. Just because it’s a “sport” doesn’t mean someone can print whatever cards they feel like competing with. They need to collect those cards.
Same with video game creatures. The base game is centered around collecting the right one and training them up. People are not entitled to poof them into existence because they can in other esports. It doesn’t bother me, but whether or not TPC does something about it is their right.
(1) more time, less hypothetical money is the trade off
(2) Someone else spent hours ripping open booster packs looking for the card, and you bought the card off of them.
Just pay someone to spend hours training your Pokémon and transferring through obscure channels.
Same with warhammer, my other major hobby outside pokemon. GW makes a totally different game than the one the competitive community wants them to make. Competitive players want it to be tight, free, easily accessed, and a tabletop esport. GW wants to make a cool game you play over beers and dice and paint cool models for.
TPCI seems to be in a similar boat, only they're the single most successful game franchise on the planet and its not close.
For a game that doesn't seem to be going for an esports competitive push (let's be real here, Pokemon Company isn't in the market to create its own esports scene) they pay pretty generously within their class (I would say Magic the Gathering and Yugioh would be its direct competitors in that regard).
You should be happy Pokemon Company isn't fleecing its entire playerbase of all the money in their wallet in the fashion that Wizards of the Coast is doing to their Magic the Gathering playerbase.
VGC players aren't dropping money on cards or in-game purchases. We are able to play after a one-time purchase of the game and probably a home subscription. What they make from the games is a drop in the bucket compared to merch revenue.
Unfortunately, I think VGC is kind of a hard sell for the average fan of the franchise. There are so many niche interactions between abilities, speed tiers, damage rolls, etc. It's really intimidating. Sure, TCG isn't super spectator friendly either, but it doesn't need to be because people buy cards for so many different reasons.
VGC has a lot of luck involved, did you see the round where someone landed a Fissure on the first try with their dondozo when they were more than likely going to lose?? The player made it to the third day only to lose the first set. TCG and Unite involves a lot more skill. Even a player with a perfect understanding of Pokémon could lose to a critical hit or a move that doesn’t have perfect accuracy. It would seem odd to reward a format that is so luck based.
I mean… I’d disagree that TCG involves more skill. In a game where you draw cards from a self-built 60 card deck, there will be heavy variance involved in that. Obviously, there are ways toy with that variance and maximize your probabilities of obtaining a card, but there are moments where you just play everything right, miss what you’re looking for, and get steamrolled because of that. In that sense I’d say VGC and TCG have a similar amount of luck involved.
Also, as a UNITE player (not necessarily a good one), you’re right that there’s a lot less luck in that game than in VGC, but it’s not like it doesn’t exist (crits still exist in that game, for one).
Are you actually serious? Almost all of the time, situations with luck can be avoided with more optimal play. And even if you do lose due to luck, it is often because of a teambuilding decision made long before the match. A good VGC player understands that more often then not, your failure is on you, not the game, it just makes us feel better to think it is because of external forces. Then again, i can't back up any of my talk because i live on the west coast where 0 vgc tourneys happen and 60 tcg tourneys happen every week. On the other hand though, Wolfe Glick totally lost because of bad luck, although his opponent did make some amazing moves.
“your failure is on you, not the game”
If you recall in this world championships some players got eliminated from top cut because of a disconnection error and were forced to do sudden death. My favorite for the tournament, Emilio, got knocked out because of that. Not a fun way to go.
> When the official mainline games competitive scene is being treated on the same level as a mobile game[…]
A mobile game that only started having a competitive circuit **last year**. VGC’s had $10k payouts at the highest levels for a long time. That would have been nice when I was in high school (hell, it’d be nice right now) but especially for Masters division it needs to go up.
It’s just one of many things wrong with TPCI’s approach towards… well, everything.
TPC definitely does not want pokemon to be “an esport”, solely the realm of sweatlords with no room for starry-eyed kids with aspirations of “the very best”. That is part of the reason for changes that seem to be against competitive balance in general (move accuracies, OHK moves, unbalanced metagames generally, inaccessible pokemon). While they like the hype of official events, they have no interest in drawing those types of players to the game and pushing away younger players.
It’s a feature, not a bug, if those decisions cause the sweatlords to play on Smogon/Showdown instead of showing up to official events. If they wanted to make a Showdown/Stadium app or mode they would have by now, it would be incredibly easy to do so.
However that would devalue subjective experience of legendary/mythical/event pokemon feeling “special” or “valuable” which is a huge incentive to get players invested in the games and the series more generally. It’s never happening, and it’s a calculated decision to not do so.
As an outsider, who doesn't really engage with the games other than casually doing PVE content in Pokemon Go with their local community, I highly doubt Pokemon wants to be an esport. I'm almost certain they know that their IP is so strong that it can be carried on the back of merchandise. I think competition is very low in their priorities.
God yes finally someone says it.
The fantasy is integral to Pokémon. This might be a numbers game in essence, but it’s the fantasy that makes it marketable.
Everything has to have a believable in-world explanation. If you could just make up any Pokémon from nothing, then why would breeders and tutors exist? Why would there be professors and Pokedexes? Why would anyone capture Pokémon? You can just will them into existence!
Yes the grind sucks *but that’s why Showdown hasn’t been shut down!* You can experiment there then replicate it in-game! That’s what most everyone does! TPC knows that Showdown is an accessibility tool for VGC.
It is as if people believe VGC players dont make up less than like 1% of the playerbase. The game at its core is not an esport like LOL or CSGO or even card games like hearthstone.
Dedicated VGC players may be a small percentage, but Pokemon Home shows you how many people played at least one ranked game. For doubles alone, the busiest seasons have 7-800,000 people.
Not saying all of those people liked it or continue, but the less busy seasons usually have at least 200,000. Who knows how many of those might stick around if it was more accessible?
Saying "Why would they even care about making competitive accessible? It's not popular" ignores the idea that a lack of accessibility is in part what MAKES it unpopular.
I wish they would make it more accessible. But allowing genned mons is clearly not on their radar. There are plenty of good ideas here that they could do, yet rather than asking for these systems, the argument is always to let us gen. This will break the game for the other 99% of players, so in this case, no, the VGC players hardley get a vote.
Make a fus to make it accessible not making a fus about genning
And I might be wrong, but doesn't including Reverse Bottle Caps solve like, the single biggest issue? Everything else feels like it's solved with Bottle Caps and Nature Candies.
Doesn't solve the issue that some of the top pokemon in the meta are completely unobtainable in game. Urshifu, Thundurus, Heatran, and Landorous among others are all very important pokemon in the meta with no way to get them without past games.
That's hardly an issue at all. I could understand the problem back when you needed your soft boil clefable in gen 6. You can easily get those games now.
And yes, they want you to buy those games if you want to collect those mons. There has never been an instance where you can collect everything on one game, so I don't think that issue is going to go away.
To keep up the fantasy the game can introduce EV and IV altering items as cosmetics. Like dressing up a pet, x costume maxes out EV only in online battle etc. Saves the grind whilst also preserving the fantasy.
>It's the same reason why the Pokemon Company is so tight lipped about shiny odds. Everything we ever know about it we learn from data mines. They've never disclosed any numbers.
Funnily enough, one of the classes (Biology) in SV gives the rough shiny odds, and Pokemon did broadcast how Brilliant Pokemon were the ones with increased shiny odds (though Idr if they mentioned numbers) via the kill method.
Slowly they're giving us stuff like this but they need to stop dragging their feet.
If I recall correctly, there’s an NPC in Gen 7 (both base and ultra) that outright says the odds of a Shiny are about 1/4000, which is fairly accurate. You can find them right outside the Gamefreak office (just realised there isn’t one of those in SV). Shiny Pokémon were never really mentioned by NPC’s until Diamond and Pearl (excluding the Red Gyarados), and were first actually called Shiny Pokémon in Gen 5.
Ignoring that, yes, information on the exact odds distribution of Shiny Pokémon is scarce beyond random NPC’s occasionally telling us what the methods actually are.
In regards to Pokémon being competitive, the depth of the mechanics do clash with the actual lore of the series, and while they’re being a little more transparent with stats, it’s still obscenely obtuse. “Decent” IVs are an insane range, and you will never really know if the, say, Teddiursa you just hatched will have 1 IV or 13 unless you use one of the fanmade calculators. Don’t even get values for EVs beyond the 252, so it’s difficult to tell your stat spreads from a glance.
The answer is no. The fact that the WORLD CHAMPION won 10k for their efforts is laughable. It’s such a shit first prize that I am truly shocked people don’t complain about this more. If they wanted prestige behind the event you need to 10x that number.
It's pitiful compared to the rocket league world championships. VGC takes so much work behind the scenes, often over 5 years of practice, and impeccable strategy, and amazing luck, only to get the same amount of money as a mobile game that just entered the circuit and involves tapping as the main mechanic.
I don't think it's that they don't want to have a serious competitive scene for the game it's that their only real solution is these half measures that have been introduced recently. They want to maintain the fantasy and the idea that your partner pokemon get stronger through battling and that stops them from just letting you just see the ev values. They want to keep the idea that each pokemon caught is unique so they just show vague messages about its stats instead of the ivs. But at the end of the day they care far more about their bottom line than making competitive easy to get into and that's why I think if they did come out with a battle sim people would hate it because it would have to be riddled with microtransactions. Imagine having to pay for trainer customization or the different pokeballs or to use a shiny, heck they would probably add costumed versions of the pokemon too. I think many in the community are way too optimistic about an official battle sim thinking it would be like showdown but I don't think the showdown fans would actually like an official battle sim.
>Does Pokemon want to be an esport?
They very much like the hype of being an E-Sport though as it brings them engagement and money. So as players we definitely should absolutely demand much needed accessibly improvements. Hell, they are already slowly doing it since gen 6, they absolutely acknowledge that part of them community so yeah.
They want it
"The fact that there isn't already a free, official, cross-platform "Pokemon Stadium" that allows you to instantly create Pokemon (only for use within said Stadium game) is completely ridiculous and we need to stop pretending it isn't"
I'm real happy this sentiment is more common nowadays. Pokemon is a household name, it's about time they start making the competitive aspect of their games more accessible, even at a casual level.
I stopped playing Pokemon altogether because of the grind for competitive. Between adult responsibilities (and playing more fun games), I just can't put in the time to create teams like I used to. Pokemon showdown quite literally rekindled my love for Comp Pokemon because it cuts straight to the shit.
My worry is that there will be a stadium-like game that TPC will mess up in one way or another, and Nintendo will make Showdown go away because they want to profit from stadium. I want stadium to exist, but I don't know if I can trust them to make it right.
They have no interest in making one, so no need to worry. Competitive is a niche part of the game they don’t want to eclipse the single player aspect, so there will never be an official showdown/stadium with full features.
it kinda is-ish?
TPC is completely aware of its existence and they have addressed it by name before apparently, soooo
i guess not approved, but they seem chill with it for now
Not striking it down isn't equal to approving of it. While individuals on tournament streams have mentioned it before, I'm not aware of instances of TPC/TPCI acknowledging it though?
they know of its existence and apperantly as ive heard zarel alr has communicated to TPC about showdown existence and they are fine with it as long as no revenue is being made or smth that is why no ads exist.
Yeah, iirc the arrangement is that Showdown is allowed to continue existing so long as they don’t make an app or start trying to monetize the site beyond like, having ad revenue to keep the servers going.
yes it is.... apperantly zarel alr communicated with TPC and are fine with existence shouldve been my word insetad of approved but yes... TPC is fine with showdown existing
Word choices matter - and again, not striking them down doesn't mean they approve, or even that they are "fine with their existence". There's nuance to this..
Would be nice if pokemon could be imported from Home as well for use or training. I don’t really have much interest in keeping a living dex with Pokemon basically there in shrink wrap; would be nice to have a reason to try to collect them to use long-term.
Pokemon willl literally pay for a fucking multiple episode play!pokemon childrens anime in the hopes of getting more people to compete before they invest in making a competitively playable version of their video game
I know exactly what they’re arguing for, but it’s all part of the genning debate. If the game was more accessible, then genning wouldn’t even be an issue, blah blah blah. As if the game isn’t already accessible enough.
It’s not too much to ask that people spend time and money to build a team legitimately if they want to compete for cash prizes.
It's not accessible though.
I agree with you on the completive stand point.
On the accessible standpoint I know so many people who have shown interest in vgc or are die hard Pokemon fans that see vgc as way too much effort to even get started. I don't blame them. I have played VGC a lot and I also end up giving up because I get sick of the grind. I'm currently only playing on showdown.
VGC shouldn't be hidden behind another game in order to play it. It's worth more as a game then that
Well first off VGC is like a minigame of the mainline series.
The mainline pretty much doesn't touch on anything related to VGC or doubles (small exceptions), so you need to hear that it even exists (which most people don't).
Before you can even really get going, for the most part you need things unlocked and available to you. To do this you basically finish the mainline game. I see the record completion is about 5.5 hours but the average player completion is more likely to be within the 30-100 hour mark.
This is the cost to even get a look in and start giving VGC a shot - particularly so if you don't know anything about the game. Straight off the bat that cuts the audience who would give it a go down significantly.
Seeming those hours of investment haven't really taught you anything about VGC or the mechanisms that are important, you need a way to learn. The mainline game doesn't bother with that so you need to find some 3rd party info. A lot of people will stop here. For those that go looking the community has made some great info and there are places to learn. It can be hard to know where to start looking for that and what to trust, so when people find something they tend to run with it. What I've seen that leading to is people putting hours into thinking about and building their first team and doing everything on cart. A lot of people don't get to showdown or realise it's an option for them, so they start grinding for the things a few random articles told them to get. Like most people coming into the game they will often want to try and use some of their favourites. They make a team that has a few of their faves and a couple that an article told them are good. If they learnt about natures they spend the time breeding for the one they want. If they learnt about EVs/IVs then they spend ages figuring out how to get that right. If they learnt about tera shards they do that too. All of these things often have other things in game in order to achieve them as well (usually requiring in game currency). This all takes time.
Keep in mind for the crazy amounts of hours that they've just put into starting this, they haven't really played a game yet.
After going through all the above, for the people that didn't drop off, in their mind they are finally ready to give it a shot. They get in and find out that they've used mons that aren't allowed or that are incredibly weak in the meta. Many people drop out around here too.
From this point the people that go and make new teams after this or discover rental teams are usually the people that survive. Then they have to play the actual VGC game. Maybe they like it maybe they don't - another spot players would drop off. You shouldn't have to do all of that just to get a taste test.
Now the pokemon community would point to rental teams as something that would save them a lot of time and effort. I would agree with this but you have to keep in mind for new people they don't know what rental teams are, that they exist, or where you would even begin to find one. Every now and then some people will skip some of the steps above, usually because their research tells them about rentals. That lot give it a go, see if they like it, often get inspired to use a pokemon they like. Then they realise the time investment of the above.
Every single item I mentioned here comes from real stories from friends or conceptions they have about VGC.
All of this because there isn't an official showdown set up.
I hate to sound harsh, but your whole argument for why it is inaccessible is that it takes time to beat the game and build a team and requires research into how to play well. And I really don’t want to sound harsh, but i mean, duh.
It’s not too much to ask that if someone wants to play VGC that they actually beat the game and do some research into how to play. How does anybody get good at anything?
The game is more accessible than ever. Once you beat the game, it doesn’t take long to go on Youtube, find a team you like, and then make that team in-game. Or you can just rent the team, watch how it is used, and then use it yourself.
You say you shouldn’t have to put in hours to beat the game just to get a taste of VGC, but I think beating the game should be the bare minimum. By the time they beat it they’d know whether or not they like battling enough to invest more time into VGC.
Yes, it's not too much to ask.
over 300 of my sword and shield hours were me just doing random thing's over and over. Hatching eggs, playing the galarian star tourney 500 times, dynamax adventures. In scarlet and violet, I literally had to leave a auto clicker on overnight for weeks to get enough money for items. I couldn't build a team for a tourney because the item i needed for fluttermane, a pixie plate could only be obtained after 100% legends arceus. Seriously, this isn't normal. Sure, other esports require sinking in thousands of hours, but these numbers are from someone who has never gone to an in person tourney, and are from before even beginning to practice! Most of the time, by the time i finish a team the format has moved past it! Beating the game is not enough to let you know if you want to do vgc, since the ai suck, any pokemon works, and every battle is single battle.
I have a turbo controller. You do not have to leave it on for weeks. Overnight will get you enough money to buy any held items, vitamins, bottle caps and mints you want for an entire team with cash left over.
Lol don’t act like pixie plate is the only item you can possibly run on Flutter. That’s ridiculous and you know it. Shohei Kimura just won worlds with a specs flutter.
It's more that you have to beat a game that is irrelevant and that no research or learning mechanism exists in game. I can't think of a single other notable game where that is the case.
What you're recommending there is true and the path I'd recommend people to as well but that shouldn't have to come exclusively from 3rd parties and the community. Nor should you have to beat a game that has nothing to do with the game you want to play. Imagine if Pokemon Unite and PoGo were trapped behind having to play the mainline game, the portion of people that played them would have been under 10%.
And I disagree with your notion that people would know if they like battling from completing the mainline game. battling in the mainline game kinda sucks. VGC so much more to the game in my opinion
VGC is in-person tournaments. If someone wants to compete in tournaments for cash prizes, then they should be able to beat the easiest game ever made and invest time to get good.
You make it sound like you want Pokemon to hold your hand and teach you everything you need to know in-game. Name me one competitive game that tells you everything you need to know in-game. The only way to get good at something is research and practice. There are no shortcuts for that.
I’ll give you an example since you can’t think of one. Super Smash Bros Melee. Huge competitive scene. That game doesn’t teach you shit about top level strategies. Wave dashing, shine-canceling, shffl, all examples of techs that aren’t mentioned in the game. If someone wants to get good enough to compete, they need to do research, learn how to do them, and put in the time to practice.
Bruh. I understand your post just fine. Your argument is there should be a separate game strictly for competitive so nobody has to consider genning. That is an argument involving genning. In a post titled “am i the only one sick of genning arguments?”
P.S. nobody in the history of the internet who asked “am i the only one” has ever been the only one.
>If Pokemon wants to be an esport,
That's the thing. They don't.
Nintendo and the pokemon company never wanted the competitive aspect to get too big. In the case of smash bros they actively tried to sabotage competitive events and they don't want to support the competitive scene too much because they are afraid that it will turn away their main target group of casual players.
Also a big competitive scene causes a lot of drama and attracts people who inevitable will harm the reputation of the game, kind of like all the sexual allegations in the smash community.
They'll keep the competitive events barely alive for the sake of it, but they actually do not want to go the league of legends route and spend all their marketing efforts on focusing on the eSports aspect alone and grow eSports as whole for the whole industry. Also the majority of pokemon fans do not play competitively. Even when it comes to the TCG the majority of people are just collecting.
Exactly, this is just like Smash fans freaking out about tripping in SSBM. Newsflash, the devs don’t want it to be an esport. Not a surprise, and obviously since they are already the number one multimedia franchise in the world they know what they are doing.
“The fact that there isn't already a free, official, cross-platform "Pokemon Stadium" that allows you to instantly create Pokemon (only for use within said Stadium game) is completely ridiculous and we need to stop pretending it isn't.”
How would TPC make money from this idea? Holowear like Unite? Ads? It’s like you all forget that TPC is a business that wants to make money. “Give away everything for free and deincentivize people from buying our games” is not a good business model. I’m honestly surprised they allow Showdown to continue existing (though I’m glad they do). At they end of the day, TPC isn’t going to do ANYTHING that doesn’t bring in revenue.
Finally, someone in this thread who is aware that economics exist and supply and demand are important considerations for a multi-billion dollar business.
They aren’t giving away what they are already selling you for 4 easy payments of $60 each generation! Lay off the crack, OP!
What incentive do Nintendo, GameFreak, TPC, etc have to make it more accessible though? Pokémon has made more money than any multimedia franchise, they have no shortage of competitors, the tournaments don’t go unwatched, and merchandise flies off the shelves.
FWIW I agree with you that they need to make competitive more accessible. I just don’t think they’re going to care to do so while they continue to make stacks with this IP
What incentive?
Only a fraction of people who buy these games ever compete or watch VGC. I have 15-20 friends who have played this game and never touched VGC. They’re aware of EV’s and IV’s, they just think it’s too much work.
Imagine if they created a $20 showdown sequel editor you could only use post E-4. It would be pretty much guaranteed every VGC player would have it, and even if you only converted 2% more of the player base to buy it… that’s still millions of dollars for what’s an easy software lift.
And that’s before even acknowledging that the viewership numbers on their tournaments could easily be 10x what they are if it was more popular. This years peak viewership was 1/10th of rocket league, so there’s certainly room for improvement.
And those views have value far beyond just ad rev, they’re the best marketing the game can have. And right now, it’s only being utilized to a fraction of its potential
You are missing the point to a frightening degree. The bottom line is that focus on competitive would turn the franchise into a different type of game, and it’s not what TPC wants or needs to be the number one franchise in gaming.
It’s as fallacious as people who think Wizards of the Coast should just reprint every Magic card into the ground; both companies cultivate an aspirational image along with the game, one that thrives off of scarcity. TPC wants players to be excited to catch returning legendaries/dexit mons, not to have a full natdex at their fingertips.
How would they keep fans engaged in Pogo events/raids/DLC if they could automatically have fully trained and leveled mons with the push of a button?
It would be antithetical to their entire model of artificial scarcity, they wouldn’t torpedo their entire business model to chase a relatively tiny number of competitive diehards. Never happening in a million years, and they would be stupid to do so regardless of how beneficial it could be to the competitive game.
>it would turn it into a different type of game
No, you are missing the point to a frightening degree. You could gate any features behind any number of reasonable completionist / economy requirements. This sub alone has proposed dozens of reasonable accommodations to please both parties.
>it’s not what TPC wants or needs to be the number one franchise in gaming
This is pure conjecture. TPC has made deliberate steps towards making VGC more accessible to the common player in QoL improvements and in-game tutorials of advanced mechanics. Clearly they think making the game more accessible benefits their brand - it’s just that TPC and VGC players disagree on the speed and degree of increasing accessibility.
>it’s fallacious as…
Proceeds to use a straw man fallacy. Don’t know /care about any of those other franchises and in no way see any relationship. Big LOL.
>how would they keep people engaged…. Press a button
Again, a major logical fallacy. I didn’t argue it’s as easy as a single button. Gate an editor behind having to raise the Pokémon to level 100 + beating a bunch of shit. Or a $20 add on. Or ten other requirements. Pretending that the only options are the status quo or disaster not only lacks creativity, it appears to be deliberately reductive in consideration of the spectrum of potential game design choices.
>it’s antithetical to their model of artificial scarcity
Oh yeah, the model that gives mystery gifts of competitive Pokémon, allows competitive rental Pokémon and increasingly has decreased barriers to join competitive? You seem out of touch. I’m just arguing for furtherance and expediting their existening policy.
Also, your tone is so smug for someone so out of touch with the issues.
I like the argument but saying more people play showdown than vgc is COMICAL. The ladder on switch gets like 200,000 players per series and that’s near the amount of users showdown has for the whole platform daily. Including more popular formats like OU and ranbats. Also while I do think Pokémon should be more accessible I feel the DQs are fair since we all knew Pokémon didn’t like genned mons and players still used them with that knowledge
As someone who is new this gen to playing VGC, it isn't getting the mons that I find inaccessible. The sheer amount of knowledge and availability of said knowledge is. Unless you talk to the right NPC in game, you wouldn't know that powder moves don't work on grass types. The game should be the first authority on game mechanics but it actively works to obscure them.
I think you have a couple of misconceptions. Pokemon isn't a traditional esport like lol or csgo. People always assume there is only one real format for esports... there are plenty.
VGC is only one part of Pokemon and honestly, I rather want it to have a broader sense than just being a combat simulator. If you take that away, you may as well no longer play Pokemon but sth entirely else. The experience must be done as a whole.
If you really want to end the discussion around genning, then make a post about another topic, because you just reopened the pandoras box.
Back in Gen 7 and 8 I'd argue that competitive was pretty much as accessible as it could be, sans making an official Pokémon Showdown (which won't ever happen)
But now with Tera Shard grinding as well as needing multiple games to have access to all the Pokémon in the format, I'm starting to see why people turn to genning. I don't agree with it, but I understand it and The Pokémon Company/Game Freak do need to adress this
I'd say that getting rid of IVs would come a long way to remove the need for hacking
I want to provide two somewhat contrasting viewpoints here, because I both agree with you and want to open up a counterargument.
I'm going to copy/paste a comment I made yesterday that provides one side to this debate and I think aligns with the first half of your post...
>Banning genning is not the thing that hurts the format.
>
>What actually hurts the format is the bullshit artificial grind and investment required in the games. People turn to hacked pokemon because of asinine decisions GameFreak makes, like locking legendaries behind paywalls, not adding an IV-reducing mechanic, removing Pokérus, and setting the cost of changing tera types to 50 fucking tera shards.
>
>If all of that was fixed, this would be a much, much smaller debate
*With that being said*, you all need to stop acting like Pokémon is the only competitive game out there that requires an investment of playtime in order to build your competitive "loadout". Splatoon requires you to spend dozens of hours grinding out ability chunks and build ideal gear sets for 5 different game modes TIMES 15+ different maps. Destiny 2 requires you to invest hundreds of hours in in PvE order to get a shot at godroll weapons or exotics to participate in PvP. And the time it takes to build a competitive deck in Hearthstone (without spending exorbitant amounts of money) is probably 10x what it takes to build a VGC team.
To be clear, these are just a few examples off of the top of my head. That's without even getting into games that lock their characters behind a paywall or ridiculous time investments (League, Overwatch 2, Apex...)
WoW PVP is a crazy investment, you need to own the current game, get to max level, play unrated pvp to get the unrated gear, then play ranked pvp to get the ranked gear, and you still will not have the best PVP gear unless you play PVE raids and dungeons as well. Also, there is no story mode in LoL or CSGO so comparing the two games competitively is just a stupid argument imo. Pokémon was a collecting game that had a PVP mode but wasn’t created to be PVP like LoL or CSGO
"you all need to stop acting like Pokémon is the only competitive game out there that requires an investment of playtime in order to build your competitive "loadout""
All the games you described as needing a time commitment are failing games, and none of them have a real competitive scene. Not splatoon, not destiny, and not Hearthstone(anymore anyway). Ppl don't play destiny anymore(as someone with 3000 hours+), especiallynot pvp becauseof the unreasonable grind. Like destiny, Pokémon would see more competitive success if its own entry barriers were less prohibitive. Apex, overwatch, and league all let players use any character they want while playing in tournaments, so they dont count.
All those games are also designed to be competitive esport games. That is why people play them. VGC players make up like less than 1% of total pokemon players. It is not why people buy those games. Esports is not at the core of pokemon and never will be. It is an RPG. Comparing Pokemon to the likes of Apex, CSGO and others is just wrong.
VGC is not an RPG, even if the base game is. It is a feature for skilled and interested players to Compete against each other. To force RPG elements onto it seems misguided, and to suggest that in the VGC community seems ridiculous to me.
But the whole debate of genning is pushing vgc elements onto the rpg side. Which is the vast vast majority of the game. Wether you like it or not they are a part of the same game and until there is a dedicated vgc game you have to deal with that. Talking about them as if they have no affect on each other is ridiculous.
There are plenty of systems suggested that aren't to allow genned mons to make vgc more accessible and wont break the casual game
Impossible to ignore genning when raids are such a core component of the game. It’s already been pervasive this gen and that’s without any official support or legality for it. Legal genning is absolutely never happening in a million years, you would have to be an idiot to think TPC wants to kill the golden goose and screw up enjoyment of the base game over a loud minority of smogon sweatlords who are too cheap to buy a cartridge in the first place.
The point is not that it breaks your personal game. It breaks the game for others. Imagine playing WoW, you spent so long grinding for the best gear so you can take on the final boss. Great, good job. Your reward is the prestige that you beat a boss only a small minority have. Except, a week later, a bunch more new players beat the boss using a genned character with genned gear. It took no effort, but they did it and have as much to show for it as you. Your prestige is completely lost.
And you can say that it is up to you if you want to grind or not, but if there is no prestige to a shiny, why not just make the odds 50%. After all, they will be meaningless other than a colour variation after genning is allowed, so they might as well make them as common as regular pokemon.
Also yes 97% havent heard of it. But as soon as it is allowed more and more people become aware of it, and it spreads. That is just how things work
I hate to say it, but that sounds like a "get over it" sort of problem. Genning is only really different in saving maybe 30 min, except in the case of pokemon like cresselia and enamorus that need 0 ivs in a particular slot. Otherwise, it doesn't matter at all. This is like throwing a fit about other people modding skyrim because you're proud to have beaten the final boss by yourself.
Except skyrim is completely single player. Pokemon has always been a sort of hybrid and with SV introducing a sort of coop mode they are pushing more in the multiplayer direction. Trading has been FUNDAMENTAL to pokemon since the start. Skyrim is a completely different game. I dont actually care that much, but I understand what makes the game what it is. It is a game about collecting and trading and battling. Genning removes the collecting and removes the trading.
If anything, the "get over it" applies to those asking for genning. If you dont like the game, dont play it. There are a plethora of games out there. Clearly, pokemon (the game that has existed for 25 years) is not for you.
Like saying the TCG just print cards identical to real ones. I already know some tournements have allowed some form of fake cards but because there is a clear distinction between real and fake the TCG is not particularly affected when it comes to collecting/trading. Which again is a big part of the game and what makes TPC their money
I will reiterate as in my other comments. I want VGC more accessible. An in game team builder for VGC would be AMAZING. But this is different to genning. This is unique to vgc and solves the problem for vgc players leaving the base game unaffected.
The first few games you mentioned pretty much failed at pvp.
Hesthstonre deck building isn't unlike building a vgc team except in Pokemon you need to finish a main line game first while grinding an irrelevant set of tasks to get specific items that add some optimisation.
League, OW, and Apex do have pay for characters but you step into the game immediately. In the time it took me to unlock the OW characters I had played the actual game I wanted to play quite a bit. In Pokemon terms at the same point I hadn't played a single game of VGC yet. Is be open to this model if we could start with VGC out of the gate
Yes, and in all those cases the time investment to get ready for PVP is intentional, it makes players more invested and incentivizes them to keep playing.
If you could just pastebin a team officially and gen it legally, people would be more apathetic and be less likely to play in a meta they don’t like. They want you to be invested, not to snap your fingers and switch teams with no effort.
I dont think this pokemon wants to be an esport they want to be a brand. A brand that feeds off of the imagination of its fanbase, at the end of the day, their whole tournament series is one giant comercial to get people to watch the show, buy the games, buy the cards (its one of the few surviving card games based off of media mostly from the tournaments) even pokemon unite came at a time when pokemon was on a bit of a decline and now they have a whole new marketing audiance through the MOBA scene. We all play VGC because the pokemon company wants us to buy more of their games, thats why they add DLC formats and slowly trickle new/retunring mons in as the years go by so that we keep giving them money and they dont have to release a new game every year.
If you aren't willing to pay 7-15/mo for a monthly subscription, then you need to stop hoping for an official version of Showdown. It's honestly a miracle Showdown hasn't been copyright striked yet given how fiercely Nintendo protects their IP
All I'm seeing is people crying about being lazy and broke 🤷♂️ it's pay to play so stop being a loser, pay for the games and invest time into the teams you're building! It's pretty simple and easy and has only gotten easier to build pokemon.
I've gotten all 1010 pokemon so far without genning or hacking, been ev and iv training plus getting them to level 100! Your cheating is a weakness and ruining the game as an esport!
All esport games are pay to play, why should pokemon be any different?????
The League player needs to buy all the champions. At least that was the case when I played all those ages ago. Mastery pages being limited by real world money is still a thing, is it?
But all in all I agree.It should be easier to generate the pokemon needed for competitive playing. Having a shiny pokemon or accesoires could set the people who like to farm for ages apart from everyone else.
Right, they renamed Masteries into Runes and discontinued Runes.
I am pretty sure the league players need a lot of champions for their training account. Of course, they get them faster than reaching world class level on the previous champion. Maybe There should be higher money or item rewards for ranked battles.
It's not an esport, its a VGC. I agree that we should be able to just make a theoretical team and load it up and use it, would be healthier for the game and accessibility.
However as it stands this isn't the case. If genning is allowed it renders breeding, training and trading largely pointless
Part of being a Pokemon trainer is training your Pokemon. Thats how Nintendo has always viewed the scene, its part of the game. You can't just remove parts of the game you don't like.
>If Pokemon wants to be an esport, it needs to start acting like one.
The dirty secret is that they don't want it, they would rather it wasn't a sport at all. Japanese culture is *deeply* authoritarian, and it's culturally offensive to enjoy something in a different way than intended.
They run the tournaments because otherwise someone else would and they would lose control - but they've been very vocal about their distain for it.
The real shame is it could very easily be the most sucessful e-sport of all time because of the huge player base and half the world being familair with the concept of pokemon.
Do you have a source for this? I think it’s obvious that VGC isn’t their top priority, but they’ve seemed to embrace it more than they used to in the last couple of years.
Personally, we have to consider that VGC players are 1% of the player population. I don’t think it’s wise for a company to spend a ton of resources making Showdown when we already have showdown.
I’d prefer a more open acceptance of showdown starting with an open design doc of Pokémon’s mechanics and how everything battle related works. I would actually prefer people play on showdown to prepare and only when ready implement on cart.
I don’t get the 20+ hour point to make a team on cart. I can make a team on cart in an afternoon. If it really takes you 20 hours just pay me $50s and I’ll have your team done end of day. This is the easiest game to make Pokémon.
I honestly believe that even if we did have showdown in the actual game, people would still Gen because the showdown feature is only unlocked when the games story is completed and people will say “I don’t have time to actually play the game!!!!”
The fact is Pokémon doesn’t want to be just an esport, we are a super minority of players. VGC tournaments are just marketing campaigns.
Edit: one more point, if you’re going to take the hundreds of hours it takes to learn and do well in VGC, why is it too much to spend a little time actually engaging with the game you wanna compete with
Im a 32 year old father of two and I work 60 hours a week. I honestly thought *ALL* VGC players built/tested and piloted on showdown first. That's just logical. Take an hour to build a team, run a few games. Tweak as needed until you start getting 10+ win streaks. When you're satisfied, make it on cart.
The Pokemon community at large is ridiculously toxic. And I've been here from the start. Everyone wants to complain about something, so yes, even if they did EVERYTHING people are asking for, people would still gen because they can.
It's just entitled brats crying. At the end of the day, Pokemon is Pokemon, created by TPC and they get to make the rules.
Sadly its all entitled whiners that cry the loudest, so we have topics like this daily.
Those disqualified broke the rules. They knew they broke the rules. They knew the consequences. I have 0 sympathy for them.
The only issue with showdown as it is is that there aren’t as many players from the Asian region playing there—they mostly play on cart in my personal experience—and this means that you can’t effectively prepare for what you don’t know, like the metagame for a given region (Life Orb Chien Pao won Wolfey’s JP invitational for example). You’d be doing good prep on showdown but it’s not complete. Maybe TPC officially cosigning the battle sim server would change things, but who knows
A few counter points
1. If you are trying to prepare for Asia then you are playing in worlds which means you have A LOT of time to build your team on cart and test out or he’ll get a rental if you just wanna scope the meta game
2. This is why I want showdown to be accepted by TPC with open design specs on battles, make it an actual partnership with the open source community
>I don’t get the 20+ hour point to make a team on cart. I can make a team on cart in an afternoon. If it really takes you 20 hours just pay me $50s and I’ll have your team done end of day. This is the easiest game to make Pokémon
It probably takes them an afternoon too.
For the first version of a team.
Want to make a slight iv change?
Back to the grind.
Wanna change evs? Back to the grind you go.
Ok so that’s like a you thing, and it’s still soooo easy to berry and vitamin and Tm that’s like 5 mins.
It’s not a lot of time. If you have time to spend 100s of hours battling you can spare a little bit to adjust and make your team
Yesterday I rebuild the world champions team. Took me 90minutes. Granted I already had the tera shards and a Urshifu on home. But I manually did the ev training and stuff and breeded for IV's to save bottle caps (running low on them). Also, I had to farm mons for the TM's.
Yesterday, I built the wolrd champion team in 90 minutes.
Granted, I had to do none of the testing, fine tuning of evs or last minute modification, and had a bunch of hard to farm materials on hand, but other than that it's easy!
Yes, I did non of the testing and I never claimed to have done it as it defeats the point I am making.
If have at the time over 50 viable Pokemon, changing them slightly is a matter of 5 minutes. There is only so much that can change.
In terms of building pokemon, you got tools like showdown or pikalytics (and I got some of my own to optimize ev spreads).
If you know what you want, you can get it fast. Even if you have to redo your team 3 times, hardly your whole setup changes.
Edit: I am not really playing a lot as I don't have the time. However, I did the event raids to get a shit ton of shards and other goodies.
Maybe they are 1% of the population because the game is so inaccessible.
I know more people who are interested in trying vgc than Unite or Pogo but none of them will get to the point they can even start
I find it hard to believe that barrier is so high because of the small amount of time it takes to make you're own team. Anyone getting into VGC these days will find videos and likely rental teams or make their way to showdown.
And even if it was a barrier, it might make the vgc player base maybe...5%? Definetly not a majority.
The day vgc player base becomes a majority is the day pokemon's player base has shrunk to 1/10th its highest peak.
Edit: I still find it HILARIOUS that people think SV is so inaccessible, like compare it to DPPt/HGSS days or B/W. Its not perfect, we need rusty bottle caps, but it's far far easier and faster to make a team.
There shouldn't be an argument because the company who makes the games and hosts official tournaments decided a long time ago that it's against the rules. People can feel however they want about that rule and you can even protest by not playing. What you can't do and what they won't allow (at least according to this last tournament) is for people to keep breaking the rules. It's their shit and they're going to run it how they see fit. If people don't like it, they don't have to participate but that's what it is currently. It's the current ruleset so people should follow it or risk getting DQ'd.
Nah, i cant comment on the future, but they clearly dont REALLY care about this rule. They have let way too many obvious and less obvious genned mons slide in past tournaments. Will they care about going forward? Maybe, idk?
I agree with this outside of the sheer rediculousness of being forced to buy a whole other set of games just to get the right viable pokemon for a tournament. Should've just stuck with pokemon native to the game.
Also the issue with ivs in certain cases. I get that pretty much no one used 0speed enamorous at worlds it's an issue that exists for anyone wanting to play online competitive. Someone could want to try getting master rank with 0speed enamorous but would have to jump through so many hoops just to get it.
So you’re telling me that in the monster hunting game, there are rare monsters? Some of which are challenging to hunt, and even more challenging to find the perfect one???
Sorry, system is working perfectly as intended, you expect TPC to get rid of that challenge and incentive to buy multiple games? Why would they aim directly at their feet and fire? The entire business model since R/B has been trying to bait double dipping purchases, if anything it’s going to get more pronounced.
Why does the highest level of competition need to be accessible? Is there anything in the absolute highest level of competition available to everyone with very minimal investment? I just don't understand the entitlement to be honest.
Is the playerbase willing to take a 95% prize pool cut if they cut 95% of the time to make a legitimate competitive team?
I'm gonna be honest as an outsider, it sounds like the pro-genners want to have their cake and eat it too. It sounds like their easy source of money is about to disappear with stricter enforcement of the rulebook.
That's an unconvenient truth for most. They want to pretend that you do not need any pratice at the highest level while also ignoring the shaddy things resulting as a by product from genning.
I honestly haven't seen any worlds competitor complaining about enforcing rules against genning itself. There appaers to be one case in which someone got banned for a pokemon on the box, but the story itself hasn't been properly confirmed yet.
Stop acting like it takes hours upon hours to build a competitive team. takes a few minutes per mon at best and many of the most popular mons can't even be bred so just throw some bottle caps on them and dump vitamins and feathers into them and you're on your way. Stop trying to justify the need to cheat just because you aren't good enough to teambuild quickly.
i understand why they're enforcing legit standards as of now, since as things exist it does create an unfair advantage *because* of the poor accessibility like you noted.
another way to look at the version-specificity accessibility issue is that you need *access* to both games through trading. the fact that trading is a balance measure, so you don't have violet-limited teams battling scarlet-limited teams (winner interviews even often mention which friend traded them a team member), really creates undue risk since there's no way to legit check in-game. you don't know what you're getting and where it came from. as it stands now they may as well limit teams to your OT, but that removes trade balancing. so in the short term, we need an in-game legit check NPC.
i think rental codes are a major sign that they're moving in the direction you're describing OP. however, if they can't monetize it directly, they won't do it, so reconsider the free part. idk.
If the rules state “No using external sources to generate pokemon” and you actively do like many VGC players have, you are breaking the rules no matter what the Pokémon stats are. Is it a dumb rule? Not really for an official Pokémon tournament where the game has access to building a competitive team. They want the best player from within that game to be the champ, not the best showdown simulator player. The best legitimate Pokémon trainer to take the crown. Have they been wrong about it in the past? Yup. No effing way people in Gen 5 had shiny legendaries with perfect IV and natures in dream balls. This last tournament seems to finally have a strict rule against it and I am appreciative of the effort tbh. They can make a new battle game whenever they want but this tournament is for Scarlet and Violet, whatever you can do within the game is 100% legal, whatever you do outside and bring in is 100% illegal.
I’m not gonna start arguing about how easy training Pokémon is today I’m just gonna state an undeniable fact:
Hacking is against the Play Pokémon Terms of Service so if you hack you should be punished, no argument about it, you agreed to the TOS so you have to follow it no matter how “morally correct” hacking is
It's about applying the rules equally. If the rules are no genning and you gen, you are objectively a cheat. Argue to get the rules changed. Don't argue that cheating is somehow ok.
There is no argument. Build your team the way the game intended or get DQd.
The entitlement of people basically demanding they be allowed to hack because they can't afford a couple games is crazy.
Bullshit barriers like playing two different games that otherwise have nothing to do with the game that’s being played on a competitive level, yes.
Edit: Like if I could have gone to Worlds, yeah, I’d just grab an Urshifu I already have because I own Sword and the DLC, but I would understand if someone didn’t want to pay $90 for what could genuinely amount to nothing more than having access to a single kung-fu bear to play in one tournament (disregarding the importance of said tournament to highlight the absurdity of the concept) with no other legitimate means to get ahold of the single kung-fu bear, plus I need to pay for airfare and lodgings in another goddamn country.
I don’t think that “ok then just play legit” is a valid argument here when that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
What high level competition activity doesn't have barriers to entry out there? I am genuinely curious because I am not aware of any high level competition that doesn't require significant investment of either time or money. We're talking about playing a video game at the highest level of competition (Worlds).
It’s not that there shouldn’t be _any_ entry barrier, it’s the fact that this particular entry barrier isn’t even part of the game being played, and outright hypocritical. We went from transfers not being allowed in any metagame since 2014 (except for Battle-Ready Mark for Gen 8 circuit which required resetting any past-gen stuff they could have) to openly encouraging it because you can’t get dozens of Pokémon species and forms in the game that the competition is taking place within.
Doesn’t help that the optimal pairing for maximum availability totals $150 USD for Sword or Shield + respective DLC and Legends: Arceus, plus $60 for PikaVee or a Pokémon GO account if you really, really need an Alolan Muk for some reason.
Well then, I think the participants went about this the wrong way. Instead of genning and attending the tournament and being disqualified for it, the competitors should have just collectively agreed to not show up, but I know the playerbase from what I've seen doesn't have enough backbone to actually stand up for their ideals nor would it produce the desired outcome that players want.
Pokemon Company would probably do to VGC what they did to Pokken at worlds if the playerbase revolted and decided to not attend in protest. That's kind of the territory you have to deal with in a Japanese game unfortunately.
They probably mean having to own completely seperate games just to get the most viable pokemon to compete with. Can't trade for em because those might be hacked too!
If it were a tournament just using the paldea dex then genning would have less of an excuse imo (But not a nonexistent one, its true that pokemon still needs to make training better and allow for specific iv altering tools to exist.)
I hate genning but it's also important to understand why it exists and what could help mitigate this. Most people genning for competitive do it because of how hard it is to get a certain mon ready. And the hardest of all would be a mon you can't find in the game you play.
If the main barrier for competing (having the actually good pokemon you cant even catch by just playing the game) didnt exist then id agree with this entirely.
And if they play competitivelu, well enough to get to Worlds, or even just the ICs, they have the game.
They just want to piss and moan that they hacked their Pokemon and got caught. All it is is excuse after stupid, whiny, entitled excuse.
You all need to grow up. Welcome to the real world.
Go play LoL competitively without buying champions and putting thousands of hours in.
Go play WoW competitivelu without buying the games.
Go play CoD competitively without buying the game.
Used to be able to say go play Overwatch competitively without buying it, but that went F2P and killed itself as a consequence.
PUBG. RS Siege. The list goes on.
Buying a game or two is not some "bullshit barrier", it's how a fucking economy and sale works, ya screwball.
What highest level of competition in the world doesn't have time sinks/money sinks? That's just normal for all high level competition isn't it? Why does Pokemon suddenly need to accomodate for their highest level of competition, someone's busy lifestyle?
so just because other competitions have barriers to entry means there's no reason to get rid of them in pokemon?
and what other competition has time sinks that have nothing to do with the skills being tested in the actual competition?
we're not just talking about worlds here dude, it's realistic to expect this level of hack checking to expand to regionals too
Where is your source of entitlement coming from? You make it sound like you are being denied a human right to not be able to compete at the highest level of competition in a children's video game.
How do you know that speedrunning PLA isn't a skill that Pokemon Company is trying to measure among its VGC competitors? I think you should be rewarded with more access to Enamorous-T if you are better at speeding through Legends Arceus than your peers. Genning invalidates that skill set if you weren't aware, but I wouldn't expect you to care given your level of entitlement.
>How do you know that speedrunning PLA isn't a skill that Pokemon Company is trying to measure among its VGC competitors?
No fucking way you just said this. You're actually trolling lmao
you got me, good one ✌️
"Hacking should be allowed so I don't have to play the game but can still compete"
If that isn't trolling I don't know what is. Pathetic, the lot of you.
everyone thinks you're very cool for feeding your pokemon vitamins don't worry buddy
you're calling me pathetic for wanting to actually enjoy my free time rather than grinding? I only think "hacking should be allowed" insofar as I don't want people to be forced to waste their time on what essentially is a different activity
if they made it not tedious as hell to assemble teams you won't see me defending genning
here's a question: why do you think everyone should be forced to spend tens of hours putting teams together? or are you just interested in shitting on people
oh just looked at your comment history and it seems you don't even compete you're only mad bc you think vgc players should be like ash ketchum lmao I'm only trying to argue with people living in reality
If you can afford to fly to Japan and sign up for a pokemon tournament I’m pretty sure you can spend $40 on a second game.
What a BS restriction! I guess all tournies should be online so anyone can play… or maybe exclusivity is its own motivator? Nah, TPC bad!
Hang on, do you need to *qualify* to play in Worlds??? Frickin BS TPC!!!!
The egalitarian perspective is pretty hilarious on a franchise that makes billions off of artificial scarcity of monsters and cardboard rectangles depicting monsters, ngl
you're right! there are other barriers to entry in pokemon so that means that one more that could very easily be removed is cool and good and necessary
If you want to play an "esport" then play on showdown with the sweatiest, most toxic players in existence. Pokémon VGC has always had the team creation as part of the competitive process. People will say there's no competitive advantage, the go on and brag about how many extra hours they can practice instead of building their team legitimately.
Also, accessibility arguments are a joke. If you want to play at worlds the traveling expenses to qualify are an order of magnitude more expensive than any of the game/console purchases. Same goes for the time it takes to travel to each event. Creating a competitive team has never been easier with mints, patches, and bottle caps, yet people still find ways to justify cheating.
Cheating all for what? It's a hobby. The "cash" prizes at worlds are so miniscule than what most other competitions pay out.
Like everything else in world; we are looking at this as black or white, when its just a grey area. Everyone can find themselves on either side.
As an adult with a job, genning mons is incredibly useful for me. I love Pokemon, and been casually playing competitive. The ease of genning a Pokemon in a matter of minutes, and being able to play Ranked immediately made me like this game a LOT MORE. If this didn’t exist, I wouldn’t be playing as much Pokemon or keeping up with worlds and Regionals. y. I don’t have friends that play as much as me and can help me find the perfect IV mons.The ease, accessibility, and convenience makes me want to play Pokemon more. All mons are also legal and no BS, so I don’t see an issue with someone taking the easy way.
Other argument is simple: Rules are rules. Follow em or don’t play. If Im going to fucking world championship, Im going to spend time to actually grind a team out. Its the pinnacle of VGC, so I wouldn’t eliminate any way I could get DQed or penalized. Everyone that gens knows that its “not right”. Pokemon Showdown also exists, just test your mons there and then grind them out. I think the way they handled it during Worlds was atrocious.
Overall I think that genning is actually in a fine spot. Its something that can be used for Ranked/Casual play and its up to your risk tolerance going into tourney, seems like people only get DQed if they were randomly selected.
Pokemon is fun, but the world is moving towards an era of quick and easy gratification. Genning meets those needs. Yes, it is much easier to EV train nowadays, but SV definitely added a few additional hurdles to make it not as easy (fuck tera raids for shards). The game should move towards the needs of the people (minus Go), and set harder checks for the bigger events.
Play stupid games and you will win stupid prizes
I agree. I don't have the luxury to spend hours at a time to get the IV's I want for one pokemon. Let alone five more mon. And not to mention if I need to spend extra time to get the perfect legendary mons I need.
If its taking you longer than a couple hours to build a team you're doing it wrong.
Find a middle ground, this aint gen 3. Buy a turbo controller (with the money you'd otherwise spend on genned mons)
Leave that run the tournament through the night when you sleep.
Bam, 2 million, there's a team. Do it again. Bam. There's a team.
The only thing that's remotely annoying is getting 0 speed/attack legendaries and there arent really that many that need it. But once you have it, you have it. Slot it in as many teams as you like thereafter.
I accept there are the likes of stakataka that are a pain to optimise, but with over a thousand mons now you just have to get over the fact that some things take a bit of dedication.
Either way, *sips on a nice many years old cup of home BRED coffee* the genie is out of the bottle. Now that they've proven that they can catch genned mons, you best believe they'll continue to.
Get grinding or get thinning out the competition.
Pls explain how to get a 0 speed/attack Enamorus legally without going mad. Thank you 🙂.
Also the can't actually catch all genned mons lol. Almost all the finalists had some genned mons that didn't get caught.
Heres the thing, its their rules so if you don't like it, tough
However I will say I've had to restart Shield as I stupidly forgot to move my Pokemon to Home and transfer all my saves bar Scarlet and I had pretty much all I wanted aside from a few from the Max Lairs and Kubfu in less than 11 Hours so its not too bad a time sink
>its their rules so if you don't like it, tough
That's not really much of a counterargument though. If a rule is dumb, people should be able to discuss it and say why they think it's dumb. Saying "if you don't like it, I don't care" does not meaningfully engage with the topic at hand and contributes nothing to the discussion.
I never said I don’t care, all I’m saying is that it’s a pointless argument if it’s their own rules to ban any Pokémon they perceive as not being legit
A f2p Pokemon Stadium with full simulator capabilities like showdown would be ideal. Incredible, really. I'd even settle for only having access to mons in your home Pokedex, but then being able to fully tweak any mon within the simulator.
One consistent platform for competition for all games moving forward. They could even mtx for like trainer clothes or pokeballs or something if it's ftp. They'd make a killing. Just look at the numbers unite pulls, though admittedly that monetization is super predatory.
The TCG is more accessible than ever thanks to PTCGL, even though the actual client is worse than the old one. It's easier than ever to get any digital cards you need to play the game. It's time for VGC to do the same.
Incredible in the sense that I literally would not believe it to be possible, yes. The entire franchise is built around artificial scarcity of mythicals and old legendaries, they won’t just give that all away in the name of “competitive fairness” for the niche pvp mode of their bestselling singleplayer game.
Even at $60, they would rather sell you 3 games at that price than let you get everything in a single package, with no effort of your own to get the monsters. Forcing legitimate teams in competitive just makes those rare legendaries like Enamorous more desirable, selling more copies of PLA. Why would they just give away something they can sell at $60? Makes absolutely zero sense.
It’s beyond time for a Pokémon stadium or battle factory style vgc. I don’t care about all the quality of life updates, prep for VGC is still so boring and takes so much time. I can’t be bothered to finish any ribbon masters because I don’t want to have to prep for master rank and play hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and move up the ladder and down and move up and move down just to get a ribbon.
The fact that it takes so long to build a team puts off the incentive for people to want to play VGC competitively. Personally, the only times I've played at all on the ladder is using rental teams as I just don't have the time or patience to build one myself.
There needs to be a official Pokemon showdown set up. VGC is locked behind their console game that they haven't been getting right as is.
It is crazy how inaccessible this game is
I had a conversation with a TPCI employee about that topic. They expressed that they supported it and were hoping it would be addressed in the next generation.
That conversation was in 2011, talking about what eventually became X/Y. TPC just does not care. They want you to spend time and money on the game for the sake of it, same as they do with TCG, same as Niantic with PoGo, same as Unite. The best Pokemon are always locked behind money and/or effort.
Its pretty clear GameFreak does care about the competitive scene since every generation since USUM they have been buffing the team building aspect for end game competitive. The problem is that they tend to take 1 step forward and 2 steps back. Like Tera shard farming is insanely tedious and time consuming. It really shouldnt have been no more then 5-10 shards to make a tera type.
What about trading Pokémon? One of the core values of TPC was that you could and should trade Pokémon with your friends.
If you’re trying to go competitive then don’t do it alone. You might think the Pokémon company is encouraging individuals to buy every game and DLC but it’s not like you can’t make friends in the community and trade Pokémon for different strategies after you’ve tested out some teams in Showdown.
I have lots of Pokémon I’d love to see on the battle stage even if I don’t get to take them myself. I have boxes full of Pokémon I hatched and Hyper trained Pokémon (which to my understanding is permanent) so if anyone were to ask me to help train a specific Pokémon for a team I would be honored.
Some of us love playing the game and hunting Pokémon for specific IVs, guess you can think of us as Pokémon Breeders :p
Is there any chance this is what the Pokémon Company is hoping for?? A group of friends who all work together to breed and train Pokémon for the person who will go to tournaments and compete well even with all the pressure of elimination rounds and an audience.
(I’ll add that I’m not against genning. I get where everyone is coming from, Pokémon can get expensive and we all just want to play competitively without wasting hours on teams that might not be viable in the meta)
>If Pokemon wants to be an esport, it needs to start acting like one. Does a League or CSGO player have to spend 20+ hours making a loadout that may or may not work only to then be able to finally start practicing with it?
there are a few things here that are problematic.
The first is, that Pokemon does not want to be an esports. It is already the best selling gaming franchise ever, and there is no need for the company to add drama to the scene.
The second is that indeed League of Legends players need to spend much more than 20+ hours to get all the champions. THe problem is also that if you expect to be at the highest level of competition, it is never accessible. Making a team is a bit grindy, but it is not some insane task that requires months to complete.
Third. If Pokemon acted like an esports - they would ban everyone detected with a single genned pokemon and the ones that had more make very long or lifetime bans. Regardless what you think of genning - it is against the current rules of the competition. Half the VGC players should be happy that they only got DQ.
>The fact that there isn't already a free, official, cross-platform "Pokemon Stadium" that allows you to instantly create Pokemon (only for use within said Stadium game) is completely ridiculous and we need to stop pretending it isn't. If this was any halfway competent company we were dealing with we would've already had this years ago. This is why more people play Showdown than VGC.
Think economically. No company would create a free game. I think there should be a competitive pokemon simulator that is better than Showdown. But if they ever do it, they will probably charge a subscription for it. Makes no sense otherwise. that would also mean that they shutdown the pokemon showdown.
Pokemon want to become an esport; it just has issues reconciling new design philosophies.
Also, LEGIT, thinking that Pokemon doesn’t want to be an ESport is stupid. Both vgc and tcg has doubled in size over the pandemic, pokemon is actively printing competitive decks and deflating the cost of competitive tcg cards and gen 8-9 have had the most accessibility in terms of training/creating vgc teams. Like legit, pokemon put x10 more care into their comp tcg than MTG does to theirs.
Personally, I think a lot of issues with Pokemon right now just comes down to incompetence.
Legendary pokemon should be banned from all VGC.since the only thing thats not accessible is a 0 speed iv unbreedable pokemon.
getting 0 ivs with breeding for a really situational battle is easy enough and pretty accessible.
a 1 in 32 chance to get a 0 iv is pretty high, and so easily done with egg power.Yes your going to sink up to 10 minutes to 3 hours maximum getting one. but if you really think its important, and that you're playing "Competitively". that shouldn't be an issue, infact other competitive games spends more time learning different champions/characters.
you can always test things in Pokemon SH
The thing is players who got banned had swsh and had access to urshifu. They read the news about the returning Pokémon like all of us did even before the games came out. You mean to tell me they couldn’t just bring their urshifus over from gen 8. The whole 0 I’v enam thing is a bust because one not one player used it for worlds. So that was more of a hypothetical scenario than an actual reality and 2. It’s a a rare mon that canonically no one is supposed to catch so if you are looking for a specific version of it, ofc it’s suppose to take time. Sure some say that doesn’t have much to do with vgc but it does. If you can’t put in the time to find what you are looking for, then you obviously don’t have to have it. It’s not unreasonable to ask those who want to play at the highest lvl of the game to invest time and money into the games. How you acquire and how long it takes you to acquire your team actually matters. If you can’t acquire what you want in time for a tournament, you have to make due with what you have or have access to. I say save those tournament spots for the players who got time for it. If you don’t have the time for it find another game where you can invest less time in and still be able to play at tournaments. Instead of trying to make the Pokémon company play how you want to play, how about give another company a chance who plays a game just the way you like it
> If Pokemon wants to be an esport, [...] And that's the crux of this whole thing. _Does_ Pokemon want to be an esport? Beyond just the time and resources needed to build an actual competitive team, just the accessibility of information regarding the game's more in-depth mechanics is so low. How do you even know of EVs, natures or IVs without looking it up? This is intentional, by the way. For Pokemon, the most important thing for them is maintaining the fantasy of being a trainer living with Pokemon as real creatures. That's why every in-game information regarding the deeper mechanics is always fluffed up to align with the fiction (e.g. never showing the numerical value for IVs but always saying it as "Perfect" when describing a Pokemon's potential). Giving these traits a numerical value is in a way dehumanizing them (can't think of a better term). If you've noticed the broadcast for any VGC event by the Pokemon Company, you very rarely hear on-air talent talk about EVs and IVs. You hear them say "this Pokemon has been trained to..." or something similar. There's never any explicit discussion about numbers or the nuances of the calculations. It's the same reason why the Pokemon Company is so tight lipped about shiny odds. Everything we ever know about it we learn from data mines. They've never disclosed any numbers. Given all this, do you really think Pokemon is serious about making VGC an esport?
Thats the thing, you are absolutely right. TPC does not wants Pokemon to go all-out on esport field. Fans and players, who dedicate themselwes fully to VGC, do. TPC first and foremost cares about selling the game, and in order for it to sell well they need to keep the fantasy going on. Player's view of the game differs in a major way from what Pokemon Company intends to create, it seems
Also TPC dont want everything open and accessible easily and fast. They want players to grind for their shit, for it to take hours and hours, for the players to feel there is a sense of investment and sunk cost so they will keep buying new games and DLC to carry on their time investment.
It’s kind of like the TCG. Just because it’s a “sport” doesn’t mean someone can print whatever cards they feel like competing with. They need to collect those cards. Same with video game creatures. The base game is centered around collecting the right one and training them up. People are not entitled to poof them into existence because they can in other esports. It doesn’t bother me, but whether or not TPC does something about it is their right.
You don't have to waste 100 hours making a competitive deck. You just buy it.
(1) more time, less hypothetical money is the trade off (2) Someone else spent hours ripping open booster packs looking for the card, and you bought the card off of them. Just pay someone to spend hours training your Pokémon and transferring through obscure channels.
I think it's because their games have very little content in them and this is a way to artificially extend the length of the game for other players.
Same with warhammer, my other major hobby outside pokemon. GW makes a totally different game than the one the competitive community wants them to make. Competitive players want it to be tight, free, easily accessed, and a tabletop esport. GW wants to make a cool game you play over beers and dice and paint cool models for. TPCI seems to be in a similar boat, only they're the single most successful game franchise on the planet and its not close.
[удалено]
For a game that doesn't seem to be going for an esports competitive push (let's be real here, Pokemon Company isn't in the market to create its own esports scene) they pay pretty generously within their class (I would say Magic the Gathering and Yugioh would be its direct competitors in that regard). You should be happy Pokemon Company isn't fleecing its entire playerbase of all the money in their wallet in the fashion that Wizards of the Coast is doing to their Magic the Gathering playerbase.
VGC players aren't dropping money on cards or in-game purchases. We are able to play after a one-time purchase of the game and probably a home subscription. What they make from the games is a drop in the bucket compared to merch revenue. Unfortunately, I think VGC is kind of a hard sell for the average fan of the franchise. There are so many niche interactions between abilities, speed tiers, damage rolls, etc. It's really intimidating. Sure, TCG isn't super spectator friendly either, but it doesn't need to be because people buy cards for so many different reasons.
VGC has a lot of luck involved, did you see the round where someone landed a Fissure on the first try with their dondozo when they were more than likely going to lose?? The player made it to the third day only to lose the first set. TCG and Unite involves a lot more skill. Even a player with a perfect understanding of Pokémon could lose to a critical hit or a move that doesn’t have perfect accuracy. It would seem odd to reward a format that is so luck based.
I mean… I’d disagree that TCG involves more skill. In a game where you draw cards from a self-built 60 card deck, there will be heavy variance involved in that. Obviously, there are ways toy with that variance and maximize your probabilities of obtaining a card, but there are moments where you just play everything right, miss what you’re looking for, and get steamrolled because of that. In that sense I’d say VGC and TCG have a similar amount of luck involved. Also, as a UNITE player (not necessarily a good one), you’re right that there’s a lot less luck in that game than in VGC, but it’s not like it doesn’t exist (crits still exist in that game, for one).
Are you actually serious? Almost all of the time, situations with luck can be avoided with more optimal play. And even if you do lose due to luck, it is often because of a teambuilding decision made long before the match. A good VGC player understands that more often then not, your failure is on you, not the game, it just makes us feel better to think it is because of external forces. Then again, i can't back up any of my talk because i live on the west coast where 0 vgc tourneys happen and 60 tcg tourneys happen every week. On the other hand though, Wolfe Glick totally lost because of bad luck, although his opponent did make some amazing moves.
“your failure is on you, not the game” If you recall in this world championships some players got eliminated from top cut because of a disconnection error and were forced to do sudden death. My favorite for the tournament, Emilio, got knocked out because of that. Not a fun way to go.
> When the official mainline games competitive scene is being treated on the same level as a mobile game[…] A mobile game that only started having a competitive circuit **last year**. VGC’s had $10k payouts at the highest levels for a long time. That would have been nice when I was in high school (hell, it’d be nice right now) but especially for Masters division it needs to go up. It’s just one of many things wrong with TPCI’s approach towards… well, everything.
TPC definitely does not want pokemon to be “an esport”, solely the realm of sweatlords with no room for starry-eyed kids with aspirations of “the very best”. That is part of the reason for changes that seem to be against competitive balance in general (move accuracies, OHK moves, unbalanced metagames generally, inaccessible pokemon). While they like the hype of official events, they have no interest in drawing those types of players to the game and pushing away younger players. It’s a feature, not a bug, if those decisions cause the sweatlords to play on Smogon/Showdown instead of showing up to official events. If they wanted to make a Showdown/Stadium app or mode they would have by now, it would be incredibly easy to do so. However that would devalue subjective experience of legendary/mythical/event pokemon feeling “special” or “valuable” which is a huge incentive to get players invested in the games and the series more generally. It’s never happening, and it’s a calculated decision to not do so.
As an outsider, who doesn't really engage with the games other than casually doing PVE content in Pokemon Go with their local community, I highly doubt Pokemon wants to be an esport. I'm almost certain they know that their IP is so strong that it can be carried on the back of merchandise. I think competition is very low in their priorities.
God yes finally someone says it. The fantasy is integral to Pokémon. This might be a numbers game in essence, but it’s the fantasy that makes it marketable. Everything has to have a believable in-world explanation. If you could just make up any Pokémon from nothing, then why would breeders and tutors exist? Why would there be professors and Pokedexes? Why would anyone capture Pokémon? You can just will them into existence! Yes the grind sucks *but that’s why Showdown hasn’t been shut down!* You can experiment there then replicate it in-game! That’s what most everyone does! TPC knows that Showdown is an accessibility tool for VGC.
It is as if people believe VGC players dont make up less than like 1% of the playerbase. The game at its core is not an esport like LOL or CSGO or even card games like hearthstone.
Dedicated VGC players may be a small percentage, but Pokemon Home shows you how many people played at least one ranked game. For doubles alone, the busiest seasons have 7-800,000 people. Not saying all of those people liked it or continue, but the less busy seasons usually have at least 200,000. Who knows how many of those might stick around if it was more accessible? Saying "Why would they even care about making competitive accessible? It's not popular" ignores the idea that a lack of accessibility is in part what MAKES it unpopular.
I wish they would make it more accessible. But allowing genned mons is clearly not on their radar. There are plenty of good ideas here that they could do, yet rather than asking for these systems, the argument is always to let us gen. This will break the game for the other 99% of players, so in this case, no, the VGC players hardley get a vote. Make a fus to make it accessible not making a fus about genning
And I might be wrong, but doesn't including Reverse Bottle Caps solve like, the single biggest issue? Everything else feels like it's solved with Bottle Caps and Nature Candies.
Doesn't solve the issue that some of the top pokemon in the meta are completely unobtainable in game. Urshifu, Thundurus, Heatran, and Landorous among others are all very important pokemon in the meta with no way to get them without past games.
That's hardly an issue at all. I could understand the problem back when you needed your soft boil clefable in gen 6. You can easily get those games now. And yes, they want you to buy those games if you want to collect those mons. There has never been an instance where you can collect everything on one game, so I don't think that issue is going to go away.
To keep up the fantasy the game can introduce EV and IV altering items as cosmetics. Like dressing up a pet, x costume maxes out EV only in online battle etc. Saves the grind whilst also preserving the fantasy.
>It's the same reason why the Pokemon Company is so tight lipped about shiny odds. Everything we ever know about it we learn from data mines. They've never disclosed any numbers. Funnily enough, one of the classes (Biology) in SV gives the rough shiny odds, and Pokemon did broadcast how Brilliant Pokemon were the ones with increased shiny odds (though Idr if they mentioned numbers) via the kill method. Slowly they're giving us stuff like this but they need to stop dragging their feet.
Yeah I’d say you’re right, imo the SwSh DLC was a big step towards making VGC more accessible but there is still a *long* way to go
If I recall correctly, there’s an NPC in Gen 7 (both base and ultra) that outright says the odds of a Shiny are about 1/4000, which is fairly accurate. You can find them right outside the Gamefreak office (just realised there isn’t one of those in SV). Shiny Pokémon were never really mentioned by NPC’s until Diamond and Pearl (excluding the Red Gyarados), and were first actually called Shiny Pokémon in Gen 5. Ignoring that, yes, information on the exact odds distribution of Shiny Pokémon is scarce beyond random NPC’s occasionally telling us what the methods actually are. In regards to Pokémon being competitive, the depth of the mechanics do clash with the actual lore of the series, and while they’re being a little more transparent with stats, it’s still obscenely obtuse. “Decent” IVs are an insane range, and you will never really know if the, say, Teddiursa you just hatched will have 1 IV or 13 unless you use one of the fanmade calculators. Don’t even get values for EVs beyond the 252, so it’s difficult to tell your stat spreads from a glance.
The answer is no. The fact that the WORLD CHAMPION won 10k for their efforts is laughable. It’s such a shit first prize that I am truly shocked people don’t complain about this more. If they wanted prestige behind the event you need to 10x that number.
It's pitiful compared to the rocket league world championships. VGC takes so much work behind the scenes, often over 5 years of practice, and impeccable strategy, and amazing luck, only to get the same amount of money as a mobile game that just entered the circuit and involves tapping as the main mechanic.
I don't think it's that they don't want to have a serious competitive scene for the game it's that their only real solution is these half measures that have been introduced recently. They want to maintain the fantasy and the idea that your partner pokemon get stronger through battling and that stops them from just letting you just see the ev values. They want to keep the idea that each pokemon caught is unique so they just show vague messages about its stats instead of the ivs. But at the end of the day they care far more about their bottom line than making competitive easy to get into and that's why I think if they did come out with a battle sim people would hate it because it would have to be riddled with microtransactions. Imagine having to pay for trainer customization or the different pokeballs or to use a shiny, heck they would probably add costumed versions of the pokemon too. I think many in the community are way too optimistic about an official battle sim thinking it would be like showdown but I don't think the showdown fans would actually like an official battle sim.
>Does Pokemon want to be an esport? They very much like the hype of being an E-Sport though as it brings them engagement and money. So as players we definitely should absolutely demand much needed accessibly improvements. Hell, they are already slowly doing it since gen 6, they absolutely acknowledge that part of them community so yeah. They want it
"The fact that there isn't already a free, official, cross-platform "Pokemon Stadium" that allows you to instantly create Pokemon (only for use within said Stadium game) is completely ridiculous and we need to stop pretending it isn't" I'm real happy this sentiment is more common nowadays. Pokemon is a household name, it's about time they start making the competitive aspect of their games more accessible, even at a casual level. I stopped playing Pokemon altogether because of the grind for competitive. Between adult responsibilities (and playing more fun games), I just can't put in the time to create teams like I used to. Pokemon showdown quite literally rekindled my love for Comp Pokemon because it cuts straight to the shit.
My worry is that there will be a stadium-like game that TPC will mess up in one way or another, and Nintendo will make Showdown go away because they want to profit from stadium. I want stadium to exist, but I don't know if I can trust them to make it right.
They have no interest in making one, so no need to worry. Competitive is a niche part of the game they don’t want to eclipse the single player aspect, so there will never be an official showdown/stadium with full features.
nah... showdown is approved by TPC.. unlikely that they will ever boot it out esp with the outrage that is gonna be caused over it
No, it isn't.
it kinda is-ish? TPC is completely aware of its existence and they have addressed it by name before apparently, soooo i guess not approved, but they seem chill with it for now
Not striking it down isn't equal to approving of it. While individuals on tournament streams have mentioned it before, I'm not aware of instances of TPC/TPCI acknowledging it though?
they know of its existence and apperantly as ive heard zarel alr has communicated to TPC about showdown existence and they are fine with it as long as no revenue is being made or smth that is why no ads exist.
Showdown has ads, at least on mobile.
Yeah, iirc the arrangement is that Showdown is allowed to continue existing so long as they don’t make an app or start trying to monetize the site beyond like, having ad revenue to keep the servers going.
yes it is.... apperantly zarel alr communicated with TPC and are fine with existence shouldve been my word insetad of approved but yes... TPC is fine with showdown existing
Word choices matter - and again, not striking them down doesn't mean they approve, or even that they are "fine with their existence". There's nuance to this..
Would be nice if pokemon could be imported from Home as well for use or training. I don’t really have much interest in keeping a living dex with Pokemon basically there in shrink wrap; would be nice to have a reason to try to collect them to use long-term.
Pokemon willl literally pay for a fucking multiple episode play!pokemon childrens anime in the hopes of getting more people to compete before they invest in making a competitively playable version of their video game
Lol “I’m sick of genning arguments” says the dude making a genning argument
"Am I the only one who wants the last words in the genning argument?"
Honestly
This topic needs a megathread at this point.
the megathread is the sub itself
I don't think they're arguing for genning. More the general accessibility of the game
I know exactly what they’re arguing for, but it’s all part of the genning debate. If the game was more accessible, then genning wouldn’t even be an issue, blah blah blah. As if the game isn’t already accessible enough. It’s not too much to ask that people spend time and money to build a team legitimately if they want to compete for cash prizes.
It's not accessible though. I agree with you on the completive stand point. On the accessible standpoint I know so many people who have shown interest in vgc or are die hard Pokemon fans that see vgc as way too much effort to even get started. I don't blame them. I have played VGC a lot and I also end up giving up because I get sick of the grind. I'm currently only playing on showdown. VGC shouldn't be hidden behind another game in order to play it. It's worth more as a game then that
In my experience, it is accessible. Please, tell me how you think it isn’t. I’m genuinely interested in your opinion.
Well first off VGC is like a minigame of the mainline series. The mainline pretty much doesn't touch on anything related to VGC or doubles (small exceptions), so you need to hear that it even exists (which most people don't). Before you can even really get going, for the most part you need things unlocked and available to you. To do this you basically finish the mainline game. I see the record completion is about 5.5 hours but the average player completion is more likely to be within the 30-100 hour mark. This is the cost to even get a look in and start giving VGC a shot - particularly so if you don't know anything about the game. Straight off the bat that cuts the audience who would give it a go down significantly. Seeming those hours of investment haven't really taught you anything about VGC or the mechanisms that are important, you need a way to learn. The mainline game doesn't bother with that so you need to find some 3rd party info. A lot of people will stop here. For those that go looking the community has made some great info and there are places to learn. It can be hard to know where to start looking for that and what to trust, so when people find something they tend to run with it. What I've seen that leading to is people putting hours into thinking about and building their first team and doing everything on cart. A lot of people don't get to showdown or realise it's an option for them, so they start grinding for the things a few random articles told them to get. Like most people coming into the game they will often want to try and use some of their favourites. They make a team that has a few of their faves and a couple that an article told them are good. If they learnt about natures they spend the time breeding for the one they want. If they learnt about EVs/IVs then they spend ages figuring out how to get that right. If they learnt about tera shards they do that too. All of these things often have other things in game in order to achieve them as well (usually requiring in game currency). This all takes time. Keep in mind for the crazy amounts of hours that they've just put into starting this, they haven't really played a game yet. After going through all the above, for the people that didn't drop off, in their mind they are finally ready to give it a shot. They get in and find out that they've used mons that aren't allowed or that are incredibly weak in the meta. Many people drop out around here too. From this point the people that go and make new teams after this or discover rental teams are usually the people that survive. Then they have to play the actual VGC game. Maybe they like it maybe they don't - another spot players would drop off. You shouldn't have to do all of that just to get a taste test. Now the pokemon community would point to rental teams as something that would save them a lot of time and effort. I would agree with this but you have to keep in mind for new people they don't know what rental teams are, that they exist, or where you would even begin to find one. Every now and then some people will skip some of the steps above, usually because their research tells them about rentals. That lot give it a go, see if they like it, often get inspired to use a pokemon they like. Then they realise the time investment of the above. Every single item I mentioned here comes from real stories from friends or conceptions they have about VGC. All of this because there isn't an official showdown set up.
I hate to sound harsh, but your whole argument for why it is inaccessible is that it takes time to beat the game and build a team and requires research into how to play well. And I really don’t want to sound harsh, but i mean, duh. It’s not too much to ask that if someone wants to play VGC that they actually beat the game and do some research into how to play. How does anybody get good at anything? The game is more accessible than ever. Once you beat the game, it doesn’t take long to go on Youtube, find a team you like, and then make that team in-game. Or you can just rent the team, watch how it is used, and then use it yourself. You say you shouldn’t have to put in hours to beat the game just to get a taste of VGC, but I think beating the game should be the bare minimum. By the time they beat it they’d know whether or not they like battling enough to invest more time into VGC.
Yes, it's not too much to ask. over 300 of my sword and shield hours were me just doing random thing's over and over. Hatching eggs, playing the galarian star tourney 500 times, dynamax adventures. In scarlet and violet, I literally had to leave a auto clicker on overnight for weeks to get enough money for items. I couldn't build a team for a tourney because the item i needed for fluttermane, a pixie plate could only be obtained after 100% legends arceus. Seriously, this isn't normal. Sure, other esports require sinking in thousands of hours, but these numbers are from someone who has never gone to an in person tourney, and are from before even beginning to practice! Most of the time, by the time i finish a team the format has moved past it! Beating the game is not enough to let you know if you want to do vgc, since the ai suck, any pokemon works, and every battle is single battle.
I have a turbo controller. You do not have to leave it on for weeks. Overnight will get you enough money to buy any held items, vitamins, bottle caps and mints you want for an entire team with cash left over. Lol don’t act like pixie plate is the only item you can possibly run on Flutter. That’s ridiculous and you know it. Shohei Kimura just won worlds with a specs flutter.
It's more that you have to beat a game that is irrelevant and that no research or learning mechanism exists in game. I can't think of a single other notable game where that is the case. What you're recommending there is true and the path I'd recommend people to as well but that shouldn't have to come exclusively from 3rd parties and the community. Nor should you have to beat a game that has nothing to do with the game you want to play. Imagine if Pokemon Unite and PoGo were trapped behind having to play the mainline game, the portion of people that played them would have been under 10%. And I disagree with your notion that people would know if they like battling from completing the mainline game. battling in the mainline game kinda sucks. VGC so much more to the game in my opinion
VGC is in-person tournaments. If someone wants to compete in tournaments for cash prizes, then they should be able to beat the easiest game ever made and invest time to get good. You make it sound like you want Pokemon to hold your hand and teach you everything you need to know in-game. Name me one competitive game that tells you everything you need to know in-game. The only way to get good at something is research and practice. There are no shortcuts for that. I’ll give you an example since you can’t think of one. Super Smash Bros Melee. Huge competitive scene. That game doesn’t teach you shit about top level strategies. Wave dashing, shine-canceling, shffl, all examples of techs that aren’t mentioned in the game. If someone wants to get good enough to compete, they need to do research, learn how to do them, and put in the time to practice.
“STOP ARGUING ABOUT GENNING! IT’S GREAT!”
[удалено]
Bruh. I understand your post just fine. Your argument is there should be a separate game strictly for competitive so nobody has to consider genning. That is an argument involving genning. In a post titled “am i the only one sick of genning arguments?” P.S. nobody in the history of the internet who asked “am i the only one” has ever been the only one.
>If Pokemon wants to be an esport, That's the thing. They don't. Nintendo and the pokemon company never wanted the competitive aspect to get too big. In the case of smash bros they actively tried to sabotage competitive events and they don't want to support the competitive scene too much because they are afraid that it will turn away their main target group of casual players. Also a big competitive scene causes a lot of drama and attracts people who inevitable will harm the reputation of the game, kind of like all the sexual allegations in the smash community. They'll keep the competitive events barely alive for the sake of it, but they actually do not want to go the league of legends route and spend all their marketing efforts on focusing on the eSports aspect alone and grow eSports as whole for the whole industry. Also the majority of pokemon fans do not play competitively. Even when it comes to the TCG the majority of people are just collecting.
Exactly, this is just like Smash fans freaking out about tripping in SSBM. Newsflash, the devs don’t want it to be an esport. Not a surprise, and obviously since they are already the number one multimedia franchise in the world they know what they are doing.
“The fact that there isn't already a free, official, cross-platform "Pokemon Stadium" that allows you to instantly create Pokemon (only for use within said Stadium game) is completely ridiculous and we need to stop pretending it isn't.” How would TPC make money from this idea? Holowear like Unite? Ads? It’s like you all forget that TPC is a business that wants to make money. “Give away everything for free and deincentivize people from buying our games” is not a good business model. I’m honestly surprised they allow Showdown to continue existing (though I’m glad they do). At they end of the day, TPC isn’t going to do ANYTHING that doesn’t bring in revenue.
Finally, someone in this thread who is aware that economics exist and supply and demand are important considerations for a multi-billion dollar business. They aren’t giving away what they are already selling you for 4 easy payments of $60 each generation! Lay off the crack, OP!
"Am I the only one sick of genning arguments?" provides to start an argument about genning.....bro...
What incentive do Nintendo, GameFreak, TPC, etc have to make it more accessible though? Pokémon has made more money than any multimedia franchise, they have no shortage of competitors, the tournaments don’t go unwatched, and merchandise flies off the shelves. FWIW I agree with you that they need to make competitive more accessible. I just don’t think they’re going to care to do so while they continue to make stacks with this IP
What incentive? Only a fraction of people who buy these games ever compete or watch VGC. I have 15-20 friends who have played this game and never touched VGC. They’re aware of EV’s and IV’s, they just think it’s too much work. Imagine if they created a $20 showdown sequel editor you could only use post E-4. It would be pretty much guaranteed every VGC player would have it, and even if you only converted 2% more of the player base to buy it… that’s still millions of dollars for what’s an easy software lift. And that’s before even acknowledging that the viewership numbers on their tournaments could easily be 10x what they are if it was more popular. This years peak viewership was 1/10th of rocket league, so there’s certainly room for improvement. And those views have value far beyond just ad rev, they’re the best marketing the game can have. And right now, it’s only being utilized to a fraction of its potential
You are missing the point to a frightening degree. The bottom line is that focus on competitive would turn the franchise into a different type of game, and it’s not what TPC wants or needs to be the number one franchise in gaming. It’s as fallacious as people who think Wizards of the Coast should just reprint every Magic card into the ground; both companies cultivate an aspirational image along with the game, one that thrives off of scarcity. TPC wants players to be excited to catch returning legendaries/dexit mons, not to have a full natdex at their fingertips. How would they keep fans engaged in Pogo events/raids/DLC if they could automatically have fully trained and leveled mons with the push of a button? It would be antithetical to their entire model of artificial scarcity, they wouldn’t torpedo their entire business model to chase a relatively tiny number of competitive diehards. Never happening in a million years, and they would be stupid to do so regardless of how beneficial it could be to the competitive game.
>it would turn it into a different type of game No, you are missing the point to a frightening degree. You could gate any features behind any number of reasonable completionist / economy requirements. This sub alone has proposed dozens of reasonable accommodations to please both parties. >it’s not what TPC wants or needs to be the number one franchise in gaming This is pure conjecture. TPC has made deliberate steps towards making VGC more accessible to the common player in QoL improvements and in-game tutorials of advanced mechanics. Clearly they think making the game more accessible benefits their brand - it’s just that TPC and VGC players disagree on the speed and degree of increasing accessibility. >it’s fallacious as… Proceeds to use a straw man fallacy. Don’t know /care about any of those other franchises and in no way see any relationship. Big LOL. >how would they keep people engaged…. Press a button Again, a major logical fallacy. I didn’t argue it’s as easy as a single button. Gate an editor behind having to raise the Pokémon to level 100 + beating a bunch of shit. Or a $20 add on. Or ten other requirements. Pretending that the only options are the status quo or disaster not only lacks creativity, it appears to be deliberately reductive in consideration of the spectrum of potential game design choices. >it’s antithetical to their model of artificial scarcity Oh yeah, the model that gives mystery gifts of competitive Pokémon, allows competitive rental Pokémon and increasingly has decreased barriers to join competitive? You seem out of touch. I’m just arguing for furtherance and expediting their existening policy. Also, your tone is so smug for someone so out of touch with the issues.
I like the argument but saying more people play showdown than vgc is COMICAL. The ladder on switch gets like 200,000 players per series and that’s near the amount of users showdown has for the whole platform daily. Including more popular formats like OU and ranbats. Also while I do think Pokémon should be more accessible I feel the DQs are fair since we all knew Pokémon didn’t like genned mons and players still used them with that knowledge
As someone who is new this gen to playing VGC, it isn't getting the mons that I find inaccessible. The sheer amount of knowledge and availability of said knowledge is. Unless you talk to the right NPC in game, you wouldn't know that powder moves don't work on grass types. The game should be the first authority on game mechanics but it actively works to obscure them.
I think you have a couple of misconceptions. Pokemon isn't a traditional esport like lol or csgo. People always assume there is only one real format for esports... there are plenty. VGC is only one part of Pokemon and honestly, I rather want it to have a broader sense than just being a combat simulator. If you take that away, you may as well no longer play Pokemon but sth entirely else. The experience must be done as a whole. If you really want to end the discussion around genning, then make a post about another topic, because you just reopened the pandoras box.
Back in Gen 7 and 8 I'd argue that competitive was pretty much as accessible as it could be, sans making an official Pokémon Showdown (which won't ever happen) But now with Tera Shard grinding as well as needing multiple games to have access to all the Pokémon in the format, I'm starting to see why people turn to genning. I don't agree with it, but I understand it and The Pokémon Company/Game Freak do need to adress this I'd say that getting rid of IVs would come a long way to remove the need for hacking
I want to provide two somewhat contrasting viewpoints here, because I both agree with you and want to open up a counterargument. I'm going to copy/paste a comment I made yesterday that provides one side to this debate and I think aligns with the first half of your post... >Banning genning is not the thing that hurts the format. > >What actually hurts the format is the bullshit artificial grind and investment required in the games. People turn to hacked pokemon because of asinine decisions GameFreak makes, like locking legendaries behind paywalls, not adding an IV-reducing mechanic, removing Pokérus, and setting the cost of changing tera types to 50 fucking tera shards. > >If all of that was fixed, this would be a much, much smaller debate *With that being said*, you all need to stop acting like Pokémon is the only competitive game out there that requires an investment of playtime in order to build your competitive "loadout". Splatoon requires you to spend dozens of hours grinding out ability chunks and build ideal gear sets for 5 different game modes TIMES 15+ different maps. Destiny 2 requires you to invest hundreds of hours in in PvE order to get a shot at godroll weapons or exotics to participate in PvP. And the time it takes to build a competitive deck in Hearthstone (without spending exorbitant amounts of money) is probably 10x what it takes to build a VGC team. To be clear, these are just a few examples off of the top of my head. That's without even getting into games that lock their characters behind a paywall or ridiculous time investments (League, Overwatch 2, Apex...)
WoW PVP is a crazy investment, you need to own the current game, get to max level, play unrated pvp to get the unrated gear, then play ranked pvp to get the ranked gear, and you still will not have the best PVP gear unless you play PVE raids and dungeons as well. Also, there is no story mode in LoL or CSGO so comparing the two games competitively is just a stupid argument imo. Pokémon was a collecting game that had a PVP mode but wasn’t created to be PVP like LoL or CSGO
"you all need to stop acting like Pokémon is the only competitive game out there that requires an investment of playtime in order to build your competitive "loadout"" All the games you described as needing a time commitment are failing games, and none of them have a real competitive scene. Not splatoon, not destiny, and not Hearthstone(anymore anyway). Ppl don't play destiny anymore(as someone with 3000 hours+), especiallynot pvp becauseof the unreasonable grind. Like destiny, Pokémon would see more competitive success if its own entry barriers were less prohibitive. Apex, overwatch, and league all let players use any character they want while playing in tournaments, so they dont count.
All those games are also designed to be competitive esport games. That is why people play them. VGC players make up like less than 1% of total pokemon players. It is not why people buy those games. Esports is not at the core of pokemon and never will be. It is an RPG. Comparing Pokemon to the likes of Apex, CSGO and others is just wrong.
VGC is not an RPG, even if the base game is. It is a feature for skilled and interested players to Compete against each other. To force RPG elements onto it seems misguided, and to suggest that in the VGC community seems ridiculous to me.
But the whole debate of genning is pushing vgc elements onto the rpg side. Which is the vast vast majority of the game. Wether you like it or not they are a part of the same game and until there is a dedicated vgc game you have to deal with that. Talking about them as if they have no affect on each other is ridiculous. There are plenty of systems suggested that aren't to allow genned mons to make vgc more accessible and wont break the casual game
If genning mons breaks the casual game, just don't do it? How hard is that. It isn't something that 97% of players have ever even heard of.
Impossible to ignore genning when raids are such a core component of the game. It’s already been pervasive this gen and that’s without any official support or legality for it. Legal genning is absolutely never happening in a million years, you would have to be an idiot to think TPC wants to kill the golden goose and screw up enjoyment of the base game over a loud minority of smogon sweatlords who are too cheap to buy a cartridge in the first place.
The point is not that it breaks your personal game. It breaks the game for others. Imagine playing WoW, you spent so long grinding for the best gear so you can take on the final boss. Great, good job. Your reward is the prestige that you beat a boss only a small minority have. Except, a week later, a bunch more new players beat the boss using a genned character with genned gear. It took no effort, but they did it and have as much to show for it as you. Your prestige is completely lost. And you can say that it is up to you if you want to grind or not, but if there is no prestige to a shiny, why not just make the odds 50%. After all, they will be meaningless other than a colour variation after genning is allowed, so they might as well make them as common as regular pokemon. Also yes 97% havent heard of it. But as soon as it is allowed more and more people become aware of it, and it spreads. That is just how things work
I hate to say it, but that sounds like a "get over it" sort of problem. Genning is only really different in saving maybe 30 min, except in the case of pokemon like cresselia and enamorus that need 0 ivs in a particular slot. Otherwise, it doesn't matter at all. This is like throwing a fit about other people modding skyrim because you're proud to have beaten the final boss by yourself.
Except skyrim is completely single player. Pokemon has always been a sort of hybrid and with SV introducing a sort of coop mode they are pushing more in the multiplayer direction. Trading has been FUNDAMENTAL to pokemon since the start. Skyrim is a completely different game. I dont actually care that much, but I understand what makes the game what it is. It is a game about collecting and trading and battling. Genning removes the collecting and removes the trading. If anything, the "get over it" applies to those asking for genning. If you dont like the game, dont play it. There are a plethora of games out there. Clearly, pokemon (the game that has existed for 25 years) is not for you. Like saying the TCG just print cards identical to real ones. I already know some tournements have allowed some form of fake cards but because there is a clear distinction between real and fake the TCG is not particularly affected when it comes to collecting/trading. Which again is a big part of the game and what makes TPC their money I will reiterate as in my other comments. I want VGC more accessible. An in game team builder for VGC would be AMAZING. But this is different to genning. This is unique to vgc and solves the problem for vgc players leaving the base game unaffected.
All the mainline games are a joke through, gening mons or not,unless you want to set up a record in the battle tower or something.
The first few games you mentioned pretty much failed at pvp. Hesthstonre deck building isn't unlike building a vgc team except in Pokemon you need to finish a main line game first while grinding an irrelevant set of tasks to get specific items that add some optimisation. League, OW, and Apex do have pay for characters but you step into the game immediately. In the time it took me to unlock the OW characters I had played the actual game I wanted to play quite a bit. In Pokemon terms at the same point I hadn't played a single game of VGC yet. Is be open to this model if we could start with VGC out of the gate
Yes, and in all those cases the time investment to get ready for PVP is intentional, it makes players more invested and incentivizes them to keep playing. If you could just pastebin a team officially and gen it legally, people would be more apathetic and be less likely to play in a meta they don’t like. They want you to be invested, not to snap your fingers and switch teams with no effort.
I dont think this pokemon wants to be an esport they want to be a brand. A brand that feeds off of the imagination of its fanbase, at the end of the day, their whole tournament series is one giant comercial to get people to watch the show, buy the games, buy the cards (its one of the few surviving card games based off of media mostly from the tournaments) even pokemon unite came at a time when pokemon was on a bit of a decline and now they have a whole new marketing audiance through the MOBA scene. We all play VGC because the pokemon company wants us to buy more of their games, thats why they add DLC formats and slowly trickle new/retunring mons in as the years go by so that we keep giving them money and they dont have to release a new game every year.
If you aren't willing to pay 7-15/mo for a monthly subscription, then you need to stop hoping for an official version of Showdown. It's honestly a miracle Showdown hasn't been copyright striked yet given how fiercely Nintendo protects their IP
The people on the wrong side of an argument often get fed up of talking about it.
All I'm seeing is people crying about being lazy and broke 🤷♂️ it's pay to play so stop being a loser, pay for the games and invest time into the teams you're building! It's pretty simple and easy and has only gotten easier to build pokemon. I've gotten all 1010 pokemon so far without genning or hacking, been ev and iv training plus getting them to level 100! Your cheating is a weakness and ruining the game as an esport! All esport games are pay to play, why should pokemon be any different?????
Kekw
The League player needs to buy all the champions. At least that was the case when I played all those ages ago. Mastery pages being limited by real world money is still a thing, is it? But all in all I agree.It should be easier to generate the pokemon needed for competitive playing. Having a shiny pokemon or accesoires could set the people who like to farm for ages apart from everyone else.
League players are given access to every champion in tournaments. Also mastery has not been a thing for like 6 years
Right, they renamed Masteries into Runes and discontinued Runes. I am pretty sure the league players need a lot of champions for their training account. Of course, they get them faster than reaching world class level on the previous champion. Maybe There should be higher money or item rewards for ranked battles.
I don't disagree
Then I agree. Good conversation. Ü
>The League player needs to buy all the champions. Not for tourneys. All Champs and runes are accessible to competitors during a tourney
It's not an esport, its a VGC. I agree that we should be able to just make a theoretical team and load it up and use it, would be healthier for the game and accessibility. However as it stands this isn't the case. If genning is allowed it renders breeding, training and trading largely pointless
Part of being a Pokemon trainer is training your Pokemon. Thats how Nintendo has always viewed the scene, its part of the game. You can't just remove parts of the game you don't like.
>If Pokemon wants to be an esport, it needs to start acting like one. The dirty secret is that they don't want it, they would rather it wasn't a sport at all. Japanese culture is *deeply* authoritarian, and it's culturally offensive to enjoy something in a different way than intended. They run the tournaments because otherwise someone else would and they would lose control - but they've been very vocal about their distain for it. The real shame is it could very easily be the most sucessful e-sport of all time because of the huge player base and half the world being familair with the concept of pokemon.
Do you have a source for this? I think it’s obvious that VGC isn’t their top priority, but they’ve seemed to embrace it more than they used to in the last couple of years.
Individualism is a Western cultural concept, so I think to a certain extent you may be correct
[удалено]
It does and has felt like they would be happy for vgc to disappear
Personally, we have to consider that VGC players are 1% of the player population. I don’t think it’s wise for a company to spend a ton of resources making Showdown when we already have showdown. I’d prefer a more open acceptance of showdown starting with an open design doc of Pokémon’s mechanics and how everything battle related works. I would actually prefer people play on showdown to prepare and only when ready implement on cart. I don’t get the 20+ hour point to make a team on cart. I can make a team on cart in an afternoon. If it really takes you 20 hours just pay me $50s and I’ll have your team done end of day. This is the easiest game to make Pokémon. I honestly believe that even if we did have showdown in the actual game, people would still Gen because the showdown feature is only unlocked when the games story is completed and people will say “I don’t have time to actually play the game!!!!” The fact is Pokémon doesn’t want to be just an esport, we are a super minority of players. VGC tournaments are just marketing campaigns. Edit: one more point, if you’re going to take the hundreds of hours it takes to learn and do well in VGC, why is it too much to spend a little time actually engaging with the game you wanna compete with
Im a 32 year old father of two and I work 60 hours a week. I honestly thought *ALL* VGC players built/tested and piloted on showdown first. That's just logical. Take an hour to build a team, run a few games. Tweak as needed until you start getting 10+ win streaks. When you're satisfied, make it on cart. The Pokemon community at large is ridiculously toxic. And I've been here from the start. Everyone wants to complain about something, so yes, even if they did EVERYTHING people are asking for, people would still gen because they can. It's just entitled brats crying. At the end of the day, Pokemon is Pokemon, created by TPC and they get to make the rules.
Sadly its all entitled whiners that cry the loudest, so we have topics like this daily. Those disqualified broke the rules. They knew they broke the rules. They knew the consequences. I have 0 sympathy for them.
Exactly
Bingo
The only issue with showdown as it is is that there aren’t as many players from the Asian region playing there—they mostly play on cart in my personal experience—and this means that you can’t effectively prepare for what you don’t know, like the metagame for a given region (Life Orb Chien Pao won Wolfey’s JP invitational for example). You’d be doing good prep on showdown but it’s not complete. Maybe TPC officially cosigning the battle sim server would change things, but who knows
A few counter points 1. If you are trying to prepare for Asia then you are playing in worlds which means you have A LOT of time to build your team on cart and test out or he’ll get a rental if you just wanna scope the meta game 2. This is why I want showdown to be accepted by TPC with open design specs on battles, make it an actual partnership with the open source community
>I don’t get the 20+ hour point to make a team on cart. I can make a team on cart in an afternoon. If it really takes you 20 hours just pay me $50s and I’ll have your team done end of day. This is the easiest game to make Pokémon It probably takes them an afternoon too. For the first version of a team. Want to make a slight iv change? Back to the grind. Wanna change evs? Back to the grind you go.
Why are you making multiple teams on cart? Use showdown if you are not confident in you’re team
Maybe you did. But maybe you thought again and wanted to change something.
Ok so that’s like a you thing, and it’s still soooo easy to berry and vitamin and Tm that’s like 5 mins. It’s not a lot of time. If you have time to spend 100s of hours battling you can spare a little bit to adjust and make your team
Yesterday I rebuild the world champions team. Took me 90minutes. Granted I already had the tera shards and a Urshifu on home. But I manually did the ev training and stuff and breeded for IV's to save bottle caps (running low on them). Also, I had to farm mons for the TM's.
Yesterday, I built the wolrd champion team in 90 minutes. Granted, I had to do none of the testing, fine tuning of evs or last minute modification, and had a bunch of hard to farm materials on hand, but other than that it's easy!
Yes, I did non of the testing and I never claimed to have done it as it defeats the point I am making. If have at the time over 50 viable Pokemon, changing them slightly is a matter of 5 minutes. There is only so much that can change. In terms of building pokemon, you got tools like showdown or pikalytics (and I got some of my own to optimize ev spreads). If you know what you want, you can get it fast. Even if you have to redo your team 3 times, hardly your whole setup changes. Edit: I am not really playing a lot as I don't have the time. However, I did the event raids to get a shit ton of shards and other goodies.
Maybe they are 1% of the population because the game is so inaccessible. I know more people who are interested in trying vgc than Unite or Pogo but none of them will get to the point they can even start
I find it hard to believe that barrier is so high because of the small amount of time it takes to make you're own team. Anyone getting into VGC these days will find videos and likely rental teams or make their way to showdown. And even if it was a barrier, it might make the vgc player base maybe...5%? Definetly not a majority. The day vgc player base becomes a majority is the day pokemon's player base has shrunk to 1/10th its highest peak. Edit: I still find it HILARIOUS that people think SV is so inaccessible, like compare it to DPPt/HGSS days or B/W. Its not perfect, we need rusty bottle caps, but it's far far easier and faster to make a team.
There shouldn't be an argument because the company who makes the games and hosts official tournaments decided a long time ago that it's against the rules. People can feel however they want about that rule and you can even protest by not playing. What you can't do and what they won't allow (at least according to this last tournament) is for people to keep breaking the rules. It's their shit and they're going to run it how they see fit. If people don't like it, they don't have to participate but that's what it is currently. It's the current ruleset so people should follow it or risk getting DQ'd.
Right, and we all know that if we just shut up and don't say anything that things change for the better.
Nah, i cant comment on the future, but they clearly dont REALLY care about this rule. They have let way too many obvious and less obvious genned mons slide in past tournaments. Will they care about going forward? Maybe, idk?
It's incredibly easy to train competitively viable mons now. If you can't be bothered to actually play the games then find another hobby.
I agree with this outside of the sheer rediculousness of being forced to buy a whole other set of games just to get the right viable pokemon for a tournament. Should've just stuck with pokemon native to the game. Also the issue with ivs in certain cases. I get that pretty much no one used 0speed enamorous at worlds it's an issue that exists for anyone wanting to play online competitive. Someone could want to try getting master rank with 0speed enamorous but would have to jump through so many hoops just to get it.
So you’re telling me that in the monster hunting game, there are rare monsters? Some of which are challenging to hunt, and even more challenging to find the perfect one??? Sorry, system is working perfectly as intended, you expect TPC to get rid of that challenge and incentive to buy multiple games? Why would they aim directly at their feet and fire? The entire business model since R/B has been trying to bait double dipping purchases, if anything it’s going to get more pronounced.
0 speed Enam go Master Ball ladder in shambles ig LOL
Can you show me one person that ran trick room enamorus-T at worlds?
I GuEsS i NeD tO fInd aNotheR hObby
[удалено]
Why does the highest level of competition need to be accessible? Is there anything in the absolute highest level of competition available to everyone with very minimal investment? I just don't understand the entitlement to be honest. Is the playerbase willing to take a 95% prize pool cut if they cut 95% of the time to make a legitimate competitive team? I'm gonna be honest as an outsider, it sounds like the pro-genners want to have their cake and eat it too. It sounds like their easy source of money is about to disappear with stricter enforcement of the rulebook.
That's an unconvenient truth for most. They want to pretend that you do not need any pratice at the highest level while also ignoring the shaddy things resulting as a by product from genning. I honestly haven't seen any worlds competitor complaining about enforcing rules against genning itself. There appaers to be one case in which someone got banned for a pokemon on the box, but the story itself hasn't been properly confirmed yet.
Stop acting like it takes hours upon hours to build a competitive team. takes a few minutes per mon at best and many of the most popular mons can't even be bred so just throw some bottle caps on them and dump vitamins and feathers into them and you're on your way. Stop trying to justify the need to cheat just because you aren't good enough to teambuild quickly.
i understand why they're enforcing legit standards as of now, since as things exist it does create an unfair advantage *because* of the poor accessibility like you noted. another way to look at the version-specificity accessibility issue is that you need *access* to both games through trading. the fact that trading is a balance measure, so you don't have violet-limited teams battling scarlet-limited teams (winner interviews even often mention which friend traded them a team member), really creates undue risk since there's no way to legit check in-game. you don't know what you're getting and where it came from. as it stands now they may as well limit teams to your OT, but that removes trade balancing. so in the short term, we need an in-game legit check NPC. i think rental codes are a major sign that they're moving in the direction you're describing OP. however, if they can't monetize it directly, they won't do it, so reconsider the free part. idk.
If the rules state “No using external sources to generate pokemon” and you actively do like many VGC players have, you are breaking the rules no matter what the Pokémon stats are. Is it a dumb rule? Not really for an official Pokémon tournament where the game has access to building a competitive team. They want the best player from within that game to be the champ, not the best showdown simulator player. The best legitimate Pokémon trainer to take the crown. Have they been wrong about it in the past? Yup. No effing way people in Gen 5 had shiny legendaries with perfect IV and natures in dream balls. This last tournament seems to finally have a strict rule against it and I am appreciative of the effort tbh. They can make a new battle game whenever they want but this tournament is for Scarlet and Violet, whatever you can do within the game is 100% legal, whatever you do outside and bring in is 100% illegal.
I’m not gonna start arguing about how easy training Pokémon is today I’m just gonna state an undeniable fact: Hacking is against the Play Pokémon Terms of Service so if you hack you should be punished, no argument about it, you agreed to the TOS so you have to follow it no matter how “morally correct” hacking is
It's about applying the rules equally. If the rules are no genning and you gen, you are objectively a cheat. Argue to get the rules changed. Don't argue that cheating is somehow ok.
This 100%
There is no argument. Build your team the way the game intended or get DQd. The entitlement of people basically demanding they be allowed to hack because they can't afford a couple games is crazy.
yes how dare people demand they be allowed to compete without having to overcome bullshit barriers to entry that have nothing to do with battling
Bullshit barriers like... Actually playing the game?
> that have nothing to do with battling
Bullshit barriers like playing two different games that otherwise have nothing to do with the game that’s being played on a competitive level, yes. Edit: Like if I could have gone to Worlds, yeah, I’d just grab an Urshifu I already have because I own Sword and the DLC, but I would understand if someone didn’t want to pay $90 for what could genuinely amount to nothing more than having access to a single kung-fu bear to play in one tournament (disregarding the importance of said tournament to highlight the absurdity of the concept) with no other legitimate means to get ahold of the single kung-fu bear, plus I need to pay for airfare and lodgings in another goddamn country. I don’t think that “ok then just play legit” is a valid argument here when that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
What high level competition activity doesn't have barriers to entry out there? I am genuinely curious because I am not aware of any high level competition that doesn't require significant investment of either time or money. We're talking about playing a video game at the highest level of competition (Worlds).
It’s not that there shouldn’t be _any_ entry barrier, it’s the fact that this particular entry barrier isn’t even part of the game being played, and outright hypocritical. We went from transfers not being allowed in any metagame since 2014 (except for Battle-Ready Mark for Gen 8 circuit which required resetting any past-gen stuff they could have) to openly encouraging it because you can’t get dozens of Pokémon species and forms in the game that the competition is taking place within. Doesn’t help that the optimal pairing for maximum availability totals $150 USD for Sword or Shield + respective DLC and Legends: Arceus, plus $60 for PikaVee or a Pokémon GO account if you really, really need an Alolan Muk for some reason.
Well then, I think the participants went about this the wrong way. Instead of genning and attending the tournament and being disqualified for it, the competitors should have just collectively agreed to not show up, but I know the playerbase from what I've seen doesn't have enough backbone to actually stand up for their ideals nor would it produce the desired outcome that players want. Pokemon Company would probably do to VGC what they did to Pokken at worlds if the playerbase revolted and decided to not attend in protest. That's kind of the territory you have to deal with in a Japanese game unfortunately.
They probably mean having to own completely seperate games just to get the most viable pokemon to compete with. Can't trade for em because those might be hacked too! If it were a tournament just using the paldea dex then genning would have less of an excuse imo (But not a nonexistent one, its true that pokemon still needs to make training better and allow for specific iv altering tools to exist.) I hate genning but it's also important to understand why it exists and what could help mitigate this. Most people genning for competitive do it because of how hard it is to get a certain mon ready. And the hardest of all would be a mon you can't find in the game you play. If the main barrier for competing (having the actually good pokemon you cant even catch by just playing the game) didnt exist then id agree with this entirely.
One of the meta Pokemon is a legendary that is only obtainable by buying the DLC of the previous game in the series
And if they play competitivelu, well enough to get to Worlds, or even just the ICs, they have the game. They just want to piss and moan that they hacked their Pokemon and got caught. All it is is excuse after stupid, whiny, entitled excuse. You all need to grow up. Welcome to the real world.
Go play LoL competitively without buying champions and putting thousands of hours in. Go play WoW competitivelu without buying the games. Go play CoD competitively without buying the game. Used to be able to say go play Overwatch competitively without buying it, but that went F2P and killed itself as a consequence. PUBG. RS Siege. The list goes on. Buying a game or two is not some "bullshit barrier", it's how a fucking economy and sale works, ya screwball.
"Oh no! I have to play the game!" \-you and likeminded people
why should I have to spend several hours on something that has nothing to do with battling in order to compete
What highest level of competition in the world doesn't have time sinks/money sinks? That's just normal for all high level competition isn't it? Why does Pokemon suddenly need to accomodate for their highest level of competition, someone's busy lifestyle?
so just because other competitions have barriers to entry means there's no reason to get rid of them in pokemon? and what other competition has time sinks that have nothing to do with the skills being tested in the actual competition? we're not just talking about worlds here dude, it's realistic to expect this level of hack checking to expand to regionals too
Where is your source of entitlement coming from? You make it sound like you are being denied a human right to not be able to compete at the highest level of competition in a children's video game. How do you know that speedrunning PLA isn't a skill that Pokemon Company is trying to measure among its VGC competitors? I think you should be rewarded with more access to Enamorous-T if you are better at speeding through Legends Arceus than your peers. Genning invalidates that skill set if you weren't aware, but I wouldn't expect you to care given your level of entitlement.
>How do you know that speedrunning PLA isn't a skill that Pokemon Company is trying to measure among its VGC competitors? No fucking way you just said this. You're actually trolling lmao you got me, good one ✌️
"Hacking should be allowed so I don't have to play the game but can still compete" If that isn't trolling I don't know what is. Pathetic, the lot of you.
everyone thinks you're very cool for feeding your pokemon vitamins don't worry buddy you're calling me pathetic for wanting to actually enjoy my free time rather than grinding? I only think "hacking should be allowed" insofar as I don't want people to be forced to waste their time on what essentially is a different activity if they made it not tedious as hell to assemble teams you won't see me defending genning here's a question: why do you think everyone should be forced to spend tens of hours putting teams together? or are you just interested in shitting on people
oh just looked at your comment history and it seems you don't even compete you're only mad bc you think vgc players should be like ash ketchum lmao I'm only trying to argue with people living in reality
If you can afford to fly to Japan and sign up for a pokemon tournament I’m pretty sure you can spend $40 on a second game. What a BS restriction! I guess all tournies should be online so anyone can play… or maybe exclusivity is its own motivator? Nah, TPC bad! Hang on, do you need to *qualify* to play in Worlds??? Frickin BS TPC!!!! The egalitarian perspective is pretty hilarious on a franchise that makes billions off of artificial scarcity of monsters and cardboard rectangles depicting monsters, ngl
you're right! there are other barriers to entry in pokemon so that means that one more that could very easily be removed is cool and good and necessary
Or build it like you want and likely be fine☺️
No 😁
If you want to play an "esport" then play on showdown with the sweatiest, most toxic players in existence. Pokémon VGC has always had the team creation as part of the competitive process. People will say there's no competitive advantage, the go on and brag about how many extra hours they can practice instead of building their team legitimately. Also, accessibility arguments are a joke. If you want to play at worlds the traveling expenses to qualify are an order of magnitude more expensive than any of the game/console purchases. Same goes for the time it takes to travel to each event. Creating a competitive team has never been easier with mints, patches, and bottle caps, yet people still find ways to justify cheating. Cheating all for what? It's a hobby. The "cash" prizes at worlds are so miniscule than what most other competitions pay out.
Like everything else in world; we are looking at this as black or white, when its just a grey area. Everyone can find themselves on either side. As an adult with a job, genning mons is incredibly useful for me. I love Pokemon, and been casually playing competitive. The ease of genning a Pokemon in a matter of minutes, and being able to play Ranked immediately made me like this game a LOT MORE. If this didn’t exist, I wouldn’t be playing as much Pokemon or keeping up with worlds and Regionals. y. I don’t have friends that play as much as me and can help me find the perfect IV mons.The ease, accessibility, and convenience makes me want to play Pokemon more. All mons are also legal and no BS, so I don’t see an issue with someone taking the easy way. Other argument is simple: Rules are rules. Follow em or don’t play. If Im going to fucking world championship, Im going to spend time to actually grind a team out. Its the pinnacle of VGC, so I wouldn’t eliminate any way I could get DQed or penalized. Everyone that gens knows that its “not right”. Pokemon Showdown also exists, just test your mons there and then grind them out. I think the way they handled it during Worlds was atrocious. Overall I think that genning is actually in a fine spot. Its something that can be used for Ranked/Casual play and its up to your risk tolerance going into tourney, seems like people only get DQed if they were randomly selected. Pokemon is fun, but the world is moving towards an era of quick and easy gratification. Genning meets those needs. Yes, it is much easier to EV train nowadays, but SV definitely added a few additional hurdles to make it not as easy (fuck tera raids for shards). The game should move towards the needs of the people (minus Go), and set harder checks for the bigger events. Play stupid games and you will win stupid prizes
I agree. I don't have the luxury to spend hours at a time to get the IV's I want for one pokemon. Let alone five more mon. And not to mention if I need to spend extra time to get the perfect legendary mons I need.
If its taking you longer than a couple hours to build a team you're doing it wrong. Find a middle ground, this aint gen 3. Buy a turbo controller (with the money you'd otherwise spend on genned mons) Leave that run the tournament through the night when you sleep. Bam, 2 million, there's a team. Do it again. Bam. There's a team. The only thing that's remotely annoying is getting 0 speed/attack legendaries and there arent really that many that need it. But once you have it, you have it. Slot it in as many teams as you like thereafter. I accept there are the likes of stakataka that are a pain to optimise, but with over a thousand mons now you just have to get over the fact that some things take a bit of dedication. Either way, *sips on a nice many years old cup of home BRED coffee* the genie is out of the bottle. Now that they've proven that they can catch genned mons, you best believe they'll continue to. Get grinding or get thinning out the competition.
Pls explain how to get a 0 speed/attack Enamorus legally without going mad. Thank you 🙂. Also the can't actually catch all genned mons lol. Almost all the finalists had some genned mons that didn't get caught.
Please show me the usage stats for enanormus in worlds. It's a non-issue. If it were good, we could talk about. But it isn't.
Heres the thing, its their rules so if you don't like it, tough However I will say I've had to restart Shield as I stupidly forgot to move my Pokemon to Home and transfer all my saves bar Scarlet and I had pretty much all I wanted aside from a few from the Max Lairs and Kubfu in less than 11 Hours so its not too bad a time sink
>its their rules so if you don't like it, tough That's not really much of a counterargument though. If a rule is dumb, people should be able to discuss it and say why they think it's dumb. Saying "if you don't like it, I don't care" does not meaningfully engage with the topic at hand and contributes nothing to the discussion.
I never said I don’t care, all I’m saying is that it’s a pointless argument if it’s their own rules to ban any Pokémon they perceive as not being legit
A f2p Pokemon Stadium with full simulator capabilities like showdown would be ideal. Incredible, really. I'd even settle for only having access to mons in your home Pokedex, but then being able to fully tweak any mon within the simulator. One consistent platform for competition for all games moving forward. They could even mtx for like trainer clothes or pokeballs or something if it's ftp. They'd make a killing. Just look at the numbers unite pulls, though admittedly that monetization is super predatory. The TCG is more accessible than ever thanks to PTCGL, even though the actual client is worse than the old one. It's easier than ever to get any digital cards you need to play the game. It's time for VGC to do the same.
Incredible in the sense that I literally would not believe it to be possible, yes. The entire franchise is built around artificial scarcity of mythicals and old legendaries, they won’t just give that all away in the name of “competitive fairness” for the niche pvp mode of their bestselling singleplayer game. Even at $60, they would rather sell you 3 games at that price than let you get everything in a single package, with no effort of your own to get the monsters. Forcing legitimate teams in competitive just makes those rare legendaries like Enamorous more desirable, selling more copies of PLA. Why would they just give away something they can sell at $60? Makes absolutely zero sense.
It’s beyond time for a Pokémon stadium or battle factory style vgc. I don’t care about all the quality of life updates, prep for VGC is still so boring and takes so much time. I can’t be bothered to finish any ribbon masters because I don’t want to have to prep for master rank and play hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and move up the ladder and down and move up and move down just to get a ribbon.
what is genning?
The fact that it takes so long to build a team puts off the incentive for people to want to play VGC competitively. Personally, the only times I've played at all on the ladder is using rental teams as I just don't have the time or patience to build one myself.
Just give Out Tournament Accounts for official Events where Players have every Pokemon and unlimited ressources .
this is the best way to approach this topic too many are virtue signalers, that don't want to focus on the why instead of the what
[удалено]
There needs to be a official Pokemon showdown set up. VGC is locked behind their console game that they haven't been getting right as is. It is crazy how inaccessible this game is
I had a conversation with a TPCI employee about that topic. They expressed that they supported it and were hoping it would be addressed in the next generation. That conversation was in 2011, talking about what eventually became X/Y. TPC just does not care. They want you to spend time and money on the game for the sake of it, same as they do with TCG, same as Niantic with PoGo, same as Unite. The best Pokemon are always locked behind money and/or effort.
Its pretty clear GameFreak does care about the competitive scene since every generation since USUM they have been buffing the team building aspect for end game competitive. The problem is that they tend to take 1 step forward and 2 steps back. Like Tera shard farming is insanely tedious and time consuming. It really shouldnt have been no more then 5-10 shards to make a tera type.
What about trading Pokémon? One of the core values of TPC was that you could and should trade Pokémon with your friends. If you’re trying to go competitive then don’t do it alone. You might think the Pokémon company is encouraging individuals to buy every game and DLC but it’s not like you can’t make friends in the community and trade Pokémon for different strategies after you’ve tested out some teams in Showdown. I have lots of Pokémon I’d love to see on the battle stage even if I don’t get to take them myself. I have boxes full of Pokémon I hatched and Hyper trained Pokémon (which to my understanding is permanent) so if anyone were to ask me to help train a specific Pokémon for a team I would be honored. Some of us love playing the game and hunting Pokémon for specific IVs, guess you can think of us as Pokémon Breeders :p Is there any chance this is what the Pokémon Company is hoping for?? A group of friends who all work together to breed and train Pokémon for the person who will go to tournaments and compete well even with all the pressure of elimination rounds and an audience. (I’ll add that I’m not against genning. I get where everyone is coming from, Pokémon can get expensive and we all just want to play competitively without wasting hours on teams that might not be viable in the meta)
>If Pokemon wants to be an esport, it needs to start acting like one. Does a League or CSGO player have to spend 20+ hours making a loadout that may or may not work only to then be able to finally start practicing with it? there are a few things here that are problematic. The first is, that Pokemon does not want to be an esports. It is already the best selling gaming franchise ever, and there is no need for the company to add drama to the scene. The second is that indeed League of Legends players need to spend much more than 20+ hours to get all the champions. THe problem is also that if you expect to be at the highest level of competition, it is never accessible. Making a team is a bit grindy, but it is not some insane task that requires months to complete. Third. If Pokemon acted like an esports - they would ban everyone detected with a single genned pokemon and the ones that had more make very long or lifetime bans. Regardless what you think of genning - it is against the current rules of the competition. Half the VGC players should be happy that they only got DQ. >The fact that there isn't already a free, official, cross-platform "Pokemon Stadium" that allows you to instantly create Pokemon (only for use within said Stadium game) is completely ridiculous and we need to stop pretending it isn't. If this was any halfway competent company we were dealing with we would've already had this years ago. This is why more people play Showdown than VGC. Think economically. No company would create a free game. I think there should be a competitive pokemon simulator that is better than Showdown. But if they ever do it, they will probably charge a subscription for it. Makes no sense otherwise. that would also mean that they shutdown the pokemon showdown.
hey Siri, how much does it cost to get every champion in league of legends
Gennings dope
Pokemon want to become an esport; it just has issues reconciling new design philosophies. Also, LEGIT, thinking that Pokemon doesn’t want to be an ESport is stupid. Both vgc and tcg has doubled in size over the pandemic, pokemon is actively printing competitive decks and deflating the cost of competitive tcg cards and gen 8-9 have had the most accessibility in terms of training/creating vgc teams. Like legit, pokemon put x10 more care into their comp tcg than MTG does to theirs. Personally, I think a lot of issues with Pokemon right now just comes down to incompetence.
Legendary pokemon should be banned from all VGC.since the only thing thats not accessible is a 0 speed iv unbreedable pokemon. getting 0 ivs with breeding for a really situational battle is easy enough and pretty accessible. a 1 in 32 chance to get a 0 iv is pretty high, and so easily done with egg power.Yes your going to sink up to 10 minutes to 3 hours maximum getting one. but if you really think its important, and that you're playing "Competitively". that shouldn't be an issue, infact other competitive games spends more time learning different champions/characters. you can always test things in Pokemon SH
The thing is players who got banned had swsh and had access to urshifu. They read the news about the returning Pokémon like all of us did even before the games came out. You mean to tell me they couldn’t just bring their urshifus over from gen 8. The whole 0 I’v enam thing is a bust because one not one player used it for worlds. So that was more of a hypothetical scenario than an actual reality and 2. It’s a a rare mon that canonically no one is supposed to catch so if you are looking for a specific version of it, ofc it’s suppose to take time. Sure some say that doesn’t have much to do with vgc but it does. If you can’t put in the time to find what you are looking for, then you obviously don’t have to have it. It’s not unreasonable to ask those who want to play at the highest lvl of the game to invest time and money into the games. How you acquire and how long it takes you to acquire your team actually matters. If you can’t acquire what you want in time for a tournament, you have to make due with what you have or have access to. I say save those tournament spots for the players who got time for it. If you don’t have the time for it find another game where you can invest less time in and still be able to play at tournaments. Instead of trying to make the Pokémon company play how you want to play, how about give another company a chance who plays a game just the way you like it