Rache

Randoms has been excluded from tournaments due to the lack of preparation required to play it. We were concerned that giving it the same treatment as other tiers would result in it being favored too heavily as a main tier by too many players when it's intended mostly as a for fun mode and as a starting point for PvP newcomers. Keeping tournaments exclusive to normal tiers is a bit more incentive to try them over sticking to randoms forever, so it's unlikely that this will change.

We would much prefer to encourage the market around PvP than to destroy it out of spite.

With the exception of Speed Boost Blaziken, the remaining unimplemented hidden abilities are being saved for later to ensure that we have meaningful rewards for future content and/or to shake up PvP when it becomes stale. We don't believe that it's wise to drop them all at once. Sharpness is a regular ability rather than a hidden one, so was implemented alongside the gen 9 learnset changes. It was run by the tier council before its implementation and deemed suitable for a test, whether it's too much for the meta has yet to be decided.

This boss fight is incomplete and will be more interesting for the final release.

It doesn't make Chikorita good, but the wilds around the gym will be bumped up a bit for players who haven't picked up another party member by the time they've reached the gym.

Thank you to everyone who responded and who will after this, it's greatly appreciated. They don't exist at all in MMO and to my knowledge don't exist anywhere in the originals either, it's just easier to remember cases of bad luck than good luck. Alphas have some resistances to a few cheese strategies, accuracy drops are one of them. They still work, but not as well. The storylines are balanced to be somewhat challenging for casual players with non-optimal teams. Making them difficult for veteran players or changing up the battle format is likely to be offputting for a lot of newer players. There's a chance that we'll consider a hard or NG+ mode in the future, but it'll be a long time away if it ends up happening. This gym ended up being a tough one to balance. In my own playtesting with extremely average teams, he was very difficult with a team of 6 (levels 17/25/25/25/25/26), to the point that the Gengar ended up needing to be adamant + minimum IVs/EVs to feel reasonable. A fully evolved starter with a super effective move has an easy time with this fight, but Shadow Ball being mandatory on its moveset (it's the gym TM) combined with its high special attack and speed makes it OHKO-2HKO a lot of first and middle evolutions which struggle to do much back to it. It's very scary if you're not overleveled. His team was intended to be a level higher though (27/27/29), it looks like the PTS is using slightly outdated builds. This isn't intentional, they'll function like other regions do for the live release. The region is very mean to it by default unfortunately, there's not much I can do to make it even close to being as good as the other starters. It has a lot of trouble on its own so it really needs early teammates, any of the various flying or normal types on the early routes will make a playthrough with it feel a lot better. The Magby might beat you if you're on low HP, trying to rush on minimum battles, or get very unlucky with a turn 1 burn, but it's not threatening enough to really wall players at this point in the game. It's adamant with 5 IVs across the board, so Chikorita pretty easily wins the 1v1 if it's lv9. If Chikorita is lv8, it deals 14-18 damage (Magby has 19HP) which a weak wild catch can then finish off. If lv8 Chikorita wins the speed tie on turn 3, it also wins matchup entirely. Multiple Potions are given early on as well, so there are a lot of options to handle it. The lure locations for the starters are final. It has 100 base speed, it's faster than it looks. This one's pretty similar to the Gengar mentioned above, it's easy if you have the right team for it but pretty hard if you don't. Spreading exp across a team of 6 and none of them carrying electric moves makes beating it pretty close. Level doesn't really mean anything in a boss fight, they're balanced around their extremely high base stats. This fight is easy for thematic purposes, it's there to show you how much stronger he is than you and everyone around you. I'll tone down the early-game statuses, I can see how this is a bit unfun. A lot of early-game species learn these moves at very early levels. This boss fight is incomplete, it'll be more interesting for the live release. The Charizard was replaced as it was removed from the regional dex. We don't intend to make starters obtainable outside of their main regions, and bringing in a foreign species isn't very suitable either. The Ampharos was included due to its relation to the dragon type ("Denryu" as you mentioned, + dragon-type mega) and its basis in canon. It also has valuable synergy with the rest of his team. It provides a much-needed electric resist, its weakness to ground is well covered by his many flying types, and offensively it's a solid answer to water types carrying ice moves. Its Focus Blast hits many of the rock types that threaten the rest of his team as well. Its other moves are Dragon Claw, Fire Punch, and ExtremeSpeed. Draco Meteor is its big nuke, but it isn't helpless against most opponents after using it. Meganium having a good matchup in at least one major battle is a good thing, it's terrible compared to the other starters for most of the region. I don't feel that two pseudos is unfair, his original team contained three. I did consider Lapras in place of Ampharos, but that only compounds the team's rock and electric weaknesses while not offering much in return as he already has multiple water types. Arcanine is a much weirder choice - I understand the justification, but it's extremely loose and most players will just see a dog. I try to avoid Eviolite in story builds, it confuses people. No trainer in this game has impossible moves. Access to event and egg moves is the gimmick of the PokeFan class, Pikachu can learn ExtremeSpeed and Petal Dance legitimately. Another PokeFan has a Smeargle with Frenzy Plant (which is balanced by its terrible stats), I'm assuming you mixed the two of them up here. If you started soon after the PTS launched, you likely missed some of the TM replacements, some more interesting moves were made available throughout the storyline (elemental punches etc). The all-TM-shop and various tutors haven't been implemented yet, but will be before launch. We'll probably throw in a Heart Scale farming location somewhere too. A few of the early-game rock types will be removed or leveled down a bit, but not by much. Facing a type disadvantage should be encouragement to pick up another party member. This is a pretty reasonable request.

We're not implementing romhacks or fangames, sorry.

It isn't, it just has high base stats for this part of the game. Infatuation is a 50% chance to fail to attack, it's pretty strong for an RNG-based effect. You were unlucky. These mechanics don't exist, they have the same odds that you do. These items are a bit too mean, she's being downgraded to an Oran Berry. Leftovers and Rocky Helmet are stronger than Sitrus Berry, and I'd rather reward players for thinking of alternative strategies than to punish them for it with a Lum Berry. This is nice to hear, thank you. I appreciate the feedback a lot, what feels right to me in terms of difficulty isn't always right for the playerbase at large.

They're not that high until the end of the story, gym 3 is set to 15 IVs / 24 EVs.

Its IVs and EVs are on par with gym 3 in other regions (quite low) and its evasion / accuracy / Attract luck are the same as any other mon. It's a pretty strong species for so early in the game though, so it will be losing its Sitrus Berry and Super Potion for the final release.

The goal of this PTS is primarily to test storyline balancing. In attempting to create a smoother difficulty curve, Johto's rebalance is experimental and quite a bit more involved than other regions. Trainers are more plentiful, their teams have expanded, and more evolutions are mixed in. Wild encounters have leveled up significantly throughout most of the region. When the region opens up after gym 4, the trainers on the path taken second become stronger after progressing far enough along the first path. If you have any feedback about a particular battle, please leave it here. Please also note the team you were using for it (including levels) and which direction you went first if it's after gym 4. If you encounter any bugs, crashes, or other issues, please report them via the support platform under Bug Report > PTS subtype.

Ball crafting probably won't be included in the PTS, but we'll try to have it done by the time the region reaches the main server. If not, it will be included in a future update. We don't believe that it will "ruin" the economy.

The shiny rate will be 0 during the test.

We don't arbitrarily add moves to learnsets, sorry. For a move to be added, it needs to be canon to at least one game in the series. It's never been able to learn Snowscape or Hail in any generation, so it can't learn it here either.

The PTS will be accessible to anyone when the time comes.

We'll most likely end up skipping the second Kanto. While it's great postgame content for an otherwise single-region game, it's very short and shallow on its own and doesn't add much to a game that already has five regions, including the same one with a full storyline. We'll probably try to include Mt. Silver and Red though. How that will be handled, you'll find out when the time comes. No, sorry. Check your pockets.

Reduce Level Scale to "None" and you'll both battle with your original levels.

Very moving, maybe with Johto.

This will be fixed next update, thanks for bringing it to our attention.

You can drag from outside or between the slots to highlight without an empty slot to work with. We'll likely be rescaling modded sprites in places where they don't properly fit in a future update. This is intended for keyboard and controller users.

You won't get in trouble due to other games on your device, regardless of how you obtained them.

It hasn't been added yet, but will be sometime in the future when we're not focusing on other features.

It's possible that one will spawn for early story players, yes. There's no completion requirement before they'll show up.

Maybe, depends on whether or not another staff member wants to host another one before the region is released. They will be moved, the safari was always intended to be temporary for them.