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Question for anyone who has played Pokemon
RollieJoe
Member UncommonPosts: 451
My Google-Fu has failed me so I'm hoping someone here who has played one of the Pokémon video games can answer a question for me.
My understanding is Pokémon are strong and weak VS certain others, for example a Fire Pokémon won't hurt a Water Pokémon much, but a Water Pokémon will hurt a Fire Pokémon a lot. It also looks like you are allowed to have a large variety of Pokémon each fight (6?) and switch them out every turn.
If all that is true, what gameplay mechanic prevents people from constantly switching out Pokémon, every turn, trying to counter the opponent's Pokémon? Is it just a matter of hoping someone eventually brings out a Pokémon the other player doesn't have the counter to? Or is there some penalty for switching them out too much?
Thanks!
Comments
The only penalty is that your opponents gets the free move while you switch, either setting something up you don't want them to (Swords Dance, etc) or taking a free hit on your new pokemon which, if done too much, can wittle down much of their health.
There ARE moves that lock Pokemon into place and will prevent switching, though you'll have to get the perfect timing to really make use of that (or your opponent needs to make a massive mistake).
Similarly, there ARE moves that more directly punish switching, such Spikes/Toxic Spikes, and there are moves that clear those (Rapid Spin). And just as in the first generation, there are moves to force switching.
But even with all that, the metagame of Pokemon features lots and lots and lots of switching. Correctly predicting your opponent's switch can easily win you the match.
Switching is a large enough part of Pokemon that people have developed scout builds with Pokemon. A Scizor with Choice Band was a common scout when i stopped playing, seeing as Scizor has a very high Attack and can learn STAB U-Turn.
So people would send him out, and select U-turn. Most opponents would immediately switch on seeing Scizor to get someone strong against him out; so they'd switch, Scizor's U-Turn would hit (for a good bit, more than likely) and then you'd get a free switch to counter your opponents new switch, and they wouldn't be able do anything about it.
Thanks Kaijin I really appreciate your detailed reply.
Cleared up my question 100%
Theres a giant Meta game behind pokemon that A lot of people don't know about, I'll try to give a short example of this.
Pokemon Have their base stats, Hp, attack, Defense, special defense, and special attack, these are visible to everyone - But what you can't see are the "EV" (Effort values) and "IV" (Individual Values)
IV's are not visible in game and generated when first encountering/catching a pokemon, they cover the same stats Hp, attack, etc, and range from 1 to 31, meaning that you could catch a Pidgey that is incredibly weak with all IV's at 1, or one thats really strong with all IV's at 31. (Nearly impossible to get unless you are a very patient pokemon breeder)
IV's can only be found out by using a Third party "IV Calculator"
Then there are EV's, everytime your pokemon beats another pokemon, It'll gain EV points, EV points decide how much a specific Stat will rise upon level up, for example if i beat a Caterpie, My pokemons EV stats will go up by 1 In health, 4 points of EV translate into an additional point of health, you can have a total of 510 EV points on every pokemon, with 252 maxing out a specific stat ( It allows up to 255, but those last 3 points wouldn't do anything )
As for switching, this is really something you have to learn by playing and reading, I'd say a good place to grasp the basics of this all would be trying PokeMMO, a fanmade MMO where EV's are visible, so you can get a good grasp of whats going on.
You will find that some pokemon have higher health then others, for example Snorlax and Blissey/chansey make great Tanks, they have high values and with the item "Leftovers" held by them, they'll constantly heal a % of their health every round, the higher a pokemons health pool, the more effective Leftovers will be, which is why they're often used to avoid/Tank hits that would've otherwised killed the pokemon currently in play.
I think this is where I'll stop, there are many pokemon, but not that many that are good for competitive play, look around online, play the games, do some research, and maybe you'll understand one day, i sure as hell didn't when i first found out IV's and EV's existed.
Do u know if it will be possible to track IVs and EVs in 6th gen?
I've no solid information on this, but I think they mentioned they'd make them more visible at least. Don't know if they'd go so far as to just straight up have the raw numbers available.
Maybe some sort of facility and some rater that makes mention.
Actually, here: http://pokemondungeon.net/2013/06/round-table-reveals-tons-of-new-x-and-y-information/
Thank you, this was helpful