Alpha mechanics

[Volpi]

I love the new addition of these alphas and how you have implemented them for the most part.

 

I do 100% agree that it was a good change to render Endeavor useless against Alpha Pokemons as this move would make the catching experience trivial.

 

I think there are a few more moves and abilities which are troublesome to have against alpha for similar reasons

 

Moves

 - Pain Split

 - Seismic Toss

 - Night Shade

 - Super Fang

 - Trick

 - Switcheroo

 - Encore

 - Power split

 - Trick Room

 

Ability

 - Unaware

 - Wonder Guard

 - Prankster

 - Imposter

 

I would be happy to go into depth at how any of these moves or abilities causes unfair advantages that trivialize the catching experience of some of these pokemons I've seen you adding which has quite some creative and challenging movesets if it was not so easy to cheese.

 

Among other things, there is nothing stopping me from leading a Cottonee and depending on situation, I will switcheroo a choice spec / choice band / lagging tail / Iron Barb on the pokemon (in the situation of Iron Barb, I will come in and return it as opponent is put down on 1hp without me attacking it once.

 

Unaware allows me to ignore the fact that I am dealing with a +6 in everything as I can easily tank the attacks while resting seismic toss /night shade thunder waving/yawning curse/cosmic power.

 

Wonder Guard would allow me to switch between 2 shedinja to refresh the ability.

 

Imposter allows me to both scout unseen moveset for information and copy all stat changes to wear down opponent easier in a 6v1 rather than a boss fight.

 

Pain Split will do what endeavor already did, but down to 11hp instead and lasts for more turns so timer balls can be attempted more often with this cheese.

 

Super Fang, Seismic Toss, Night Shade are all static damage moves which would require some adjustment to be relevant for alpha fight without trivializing this.

 

Trick / Switcheroo / Encore allows me to lock opponent into one move and from there I can adjust to any 1 of his 4 moves even if having to deal with all 4 could be troublesome.

 

Power Split allows me to remove the potential damage threat from this boss entirely except of crit, and I would be able to use shell armor for making that 100% safe.

 

Trick Room would take away the danger of this alpha achieving a setup to +6 where I am allowed to PP stall and put the alpha back asleep as I like.

 

 

Even after removing all of this, I believe there is plenty of creative solutions available to handle the catching of Alphas for the playerbase, but that it will actually feel like a real challenge at least to some degree.

 

If you were to also prevent people from using shell armor after doing these changes, I believe we would all be able to wipe on alphas due to RNG from time to time but still have plenty of time to catch them with more than 98% success rate within 75 min for 1 character.

 

This would only truly hurt people who either try a bad catching strategy, or try to get for multiple characters

 

 

________________________________________________________

 

Side Note.

 

Maybe it would be worth to add a warning for when people try to buy an Alpha from GTL that no longer has its hidden ability.

This one in the picture sold within 4 minutes and I doubt the buyer knew it didn't have its hidden ability.

[IIZapperII]

Alphas only catchable with Master Balls soon™

 

[suigin]

You forgot to list spore, false swipe, hypnosis, thunder wave, stun spore, sleep powder, glare, ice beam / ice punch (can freeze), tri attack, sturdy, damage in general, status in general, boosting, using balls and items.

I really want a hardcore Alpha catching experience for real hardcore gamers

[NotMyWaifu]

I don't think they should go as far as removing everything under the sun that isn't a direct attack or directly lowering something's stats. There is some room between trivializing something and just being good for something. There should absolutely be some utility pokemon that are specifically good for alphas. It's healthy for there to be more PvE niches.

 

Endeavor Aron wasn't exactly healthy. It's extremely low effort to get, just a level 1 sturdy aron with a tutor move could bring the alpha to 1hp in a single turn. With a shell bell it could live and stall out more turns if the opposing pokemon had a healing move. Berry juice could let sturdy tank multihit moves so long as they hit twice. If alpha pokemon are meant to be a longer fight that you need to prepare for, endeavor's damage output is too high and aron is too fast to prepare. It also worked against essentially every alpha so long as you had a pokemon with soak.

 

Trick and switcheroo are completely fine with choice items because they come with significant preparation and drawbacks. You need to get a choice item to trick which is a good amount more expensive than an aron. If you lock an alpha into a move you have to have something that can take that move repeatedly. Even if you do, you are still potentially going to have to deal with the alpha mon using struggle because it will eventually run out of PP. Lagging tail and sticky barb are arguably more risky because the pokemon is still free to select any of its 4 moves. Magic bounce, fling and taunt also shut this strategy down entirely.

 

Seismic toss and night shade are completely fine, their damage output isn't that high.

Super fang's damage output is only high for one turn, it's not as free as endeavor and is fine imo.

Setting trick room to deal with something that has boosted speed is completely healthy.

Power split is fine because these alphas will still hit hard and lots of them either boost their stats with moves or use status.

 

Pain split is the only move I really agree with you on and it's only because you can get it on a low level pokemon with sturdy. It's basically aron except with more PP for endeavor.

 

As for the abilities:

Preparing an unaware mon so you can deal with the boosts is precisely what they want you do do with how the fight is designed. It's not a foolproof strategy either.

Wonder guard has been nerfed in PvE already precisely for this.

Prankster adds +1 priority, you still need to outspeed anything using a priority move and dark types are completely immune. Cottonee isn't as problematic because it dies without sash.

Impostor ditto is giving up a full team slot just to scout the moveset, that's completely fair.

 

You should be able to mostly prevent yourself from wiping if you prepare well, I don't think we should try to completely remove someone's agency by disabling shell armor. Taking away a lot of strategies just isn't a good thing imo.

 

1 hour ago, Volpi said:

Side Note.

 

Maybe it would be worth to add a warning for when people try to buy an Alpha from GTL that no longer has its hidden ability.

This one in the picture sold within 4 minutes and I doubt the buyer knew it didn't have its hidden ability.

Alphas without the HA won't have a diamond next to their sprite, it's pretty clearly visible and you can also just filter the GTL to only show you alphas with HA.

[HumongousNoodle]

9 hours ago, Volpi said:

 

 

Wonder Guard would allow me to switch between 2 shedinja to refresh the ability.

 

 

This isnt how wonder Guard works.

The turns dont refresh on switch.

[Volpi]

13 hours ago, NotMyWaifu said:

I don't think they should go as far as removing everything under the sun that isn't a direct attack or directly lowering something's stats. There is some room between trivializing something and just being good for something. There should absolutely be some utility pokemon that are specifically good for alphas. It's healthy for there to be more PvE niches.

 

Endeavor Aron wasn't exactly healthy. It's extremely low effort to get, just a level 1 sturdy aron with a tutor move could bring the alpha to 1hp in a single turn. With a shell bell it could live and stall out more turns if the opposing pokemon had a healing move. Berry juice could let sturdy tank multihit moves so long as they hit twice. If alpha pokemon are meant to be a longer fight that you need to prepare for, endeavor's damage output is too high and aron is too fast to prepare. It also worked against essentially every alpha so long as you had a pokemon with soak.

 

Trick and switcheroo are completely fine with choice items because they come with significant preparation and drawbacks. You need to get a choice item to trick which is a good amount more expensive than an aron. If you lock an alpha into a move you have to have something that can take that move repeatedly. Even if you do, you are still potentially going to have to deal with the alpha mon using struggle because it will eventually run out of PP. Lagging tail and sticky barb are arguably more risky because the pokemon is still free to select any of its 4 moves. Magic bounce, fling and taunt also shut this strategy down entirely.

 

Seismic toss and night shade are completely fine, their damage output isn't that high.

Super fang's damage output is only high for one turn, it's not as free as endeavor and is fine imo.

Setting trick room to deal with something that has boosted speed is completely healthy.

Power split is fine because these alphas will still hit hard and lots of them either boost their stats with moves or use status.

 

Pain split is the only move I really agree with you on and it's only because you can get it on a low level pokemon with sturdy. It's basically aron except with more PP for endeavor.

 

As for the abilities:

Preparing an unaware mon so you can deal with the boosts is precisely what they want you do do with how the fight is designed. It's not a foolproof strategy either.

Wonder guard has been nerfed in PvE already precisely for this.

Prankster adds +1 priority, you still need to outspeed anything using a priority move and dark types are completely immune. Cottonee isn't as problematic because it dies without sash.

Impostor ditto is giving up a full team slot just to scout the moveset, that's completely fair.

 

You should be able to mostly prevent yourself from wiping if you prepare well, I don't think we should try to completely remove someone's agency by disabling shell armor. Taking away a lot of strategies just isn't a good thing imo.

 

Alphas without the HA won't have a diamond next to their sprite, it's pretty clearly visible and you can also just filter the GTL to only show you alphas with HA.

HA Diamond

Spoiler

The guy who runs away from shinies even with prevention tools asking if the person is sure if they want to run is also the guy pointing out there is a small icon to indicate the hidden ability on an Alpha in a GTL where 1 out of 500 listings doesnt have its hidden ability?

 

I am sorry, but just like how you can make mistakes, so can anyone else and pokemmo is full of people that both lack critical information and does make mistake on regular basis.

 

Now to make it perfectly clear. I am one of the people that is profiting on this

Spoiler

I already sold 3 alpha garchomps without hidden ability for full price as well as 1 garchomp 5x31 with hidden ability which covered the cost of 3 prism scale, 2 comp garchomps and more. I am not asking for this change because I am being hurt. I am suggesting it because I dont think the dev want me to abuse their current system to near borderline scam people in GTL (although I still think of this as people scamming themself)

Imposter ditto.

Spoiler

You don't only copy the type but also all his stats. This is the boss stats you are copying. This is not to lose 1 slot but rather gain a full scale advantage and very easy chipping down at start of battle vs strong alphas before letting your Breloom adjust for the last 3-15% to a 1hp situation.

 

Again this IS something which make the alpha trivial and removes the boss aspect from such a fight.

 

Now if you look at all the moves I addressed in the damaging type moves, you can see a clear theme that all of them relies on static damage which ignores stat boosts which is the issue that should put them up for debate.

Static Damage moves

Spoiler

Now Seismic toss and Night shade not being something OP that still takes 2-3 turns to chip down the alpha would be a fair criticism if we were to disregard how neutral 80 power attacks from level 100s such as Breloom is more like a 5-7 HKO on some of these alphas. (Even more after some stat boosts)

 

That is why I added them to the list as well as Super Fang which still has its cheese.

 

Prankster

Spoiler

There is no skill attached to this idea of adding sticky barb to your opponent and take it back 4 turns later with the use of prankster and this is how you do it:

 

Turn Timid 31 IV 252 Speed Whimsicott will outspeed anything at level 70 before stat boosts so with Prankster you can outspeed anything but extreme speed to give it the item. Now if you die. No issue, you brought 2. Now if you for whatever reason can't sub stall it until it is 1hp. Put an unaware pokemon and teleport the turn it chips down to 1hp.

 

You used 2 pokemons to put something bulky without recovery moves at 1hp which was too strong to use Breloom for. All you need now is to put it asleep/paralyzed and chug balls. No skills required.

 

The 2nd prankster with trick/switcheroo Pokemon can even have Lagging Tail to make it slower after being put on 1hp.

 

Trick Room

Spoiler

is completely fine in a competitive setting, it is something else in a boss fight where it makes the boss strengths an weakness. This opens up for many sort of strategies that would be impossible if not for trick rooms.

 

Unaware
 

Spoiler

Instead of preparing unaware to negate all the stat boost by just switching in. Why not make us prepare for the stat boosts by forcing us to set up instead along with it to tank it.

 

And sure, we can setup with a shell armor pokemon and do this consistently, I am on the edge anyway about that ability. But I truly believe Unaware makes the Alpha, just another normal version of its species.

 

And before you want to point it out for me. Unaware is perfectly fine in a competitive setting such as PvP, that is not what we are discussing here. It is rather how Unaware affects something that is supposed to be sort of an miniboss and how it makes it nothing else than a bag of cash that wont fits into your timer balls.

 

14 hours ago, IIZapperII said:

Alphas only catchable with Master Balls soon™

 

Please argue my points rather than make your own understanding of my arguments.

 

I am perfectly fine with us being able to chip it down and catch them with our regular balls. But I do argue for this to be a challenge for us to overcome indeed. Moves that goes by static damage calculation is up for debate, any moves that is calculated based on stats of your mons and the boss is still free to take advantage of as you can imagine.

 

14 hours ago, suigin said:

You forgot to list spore, false swipe, hypnosis, thunder wave, stun spore, sleep powder, glare, ice beam / ice punch (can freeze), tri attack, sturdy, damage in general, status in general, boosting, using balls and items.

I really want a hardcore Alpha catching experience for real hardcore gamers

If I should go by your logic, am I supposed to come with ridiculous claims such as:

"We should just send everyone their alphas for when they have to sleep and cant be online for catching the alpha because it is unfair for them to miss out on pokemons"

 

You never stated this, and I never stated anything about any of the moves you brought up, so unless you want to argue for statements you never made, dont attribute me for statements I never made and argue them....

 

 

 

[IIZapperII]

29 minutes ago, Volpi said:

Please argue my points rather than make your own understanding of my arguments.

 

I am perfectly fine with us being able to chip it down and catch them with our regular balls. But I do argue for this to be a challenge for us to overcome indeed. Moves that goes by static damage calculation is up for debate, any moves that is calculated based on stats of your mons and the boss is still free to take advantage of as you can imagine.

I think it is understood that what I said was a joke xD.
 

Obviously alphas should be harder to catch than normal pokemon but I don't see the need to make them that hard to catch, they are a permanent feature and accessible to almost all players similar to gym leaders and E4 rerun.

The alphas are not like the bosses of the official seasonal events like halloween, which are only available for a few days and with a difficulty for the most experienced players, I think the idea is that everyone has some more permanent activity to keep us entertained in the game without making it too difficult for only experienced players can do it.

So in this case the alphas starter could have a difficulty similar to the one you want, unlike the other alphas the starters are limited and we only know that they could come out in events like the 10th anniversary.

[Elizn]

59 minutes ago, Volpi said:

You don't only copy the type but also all his stats. This is the boss stats you are copying. This is not to lose 1 slot but rather gain a full scale advantage and very easy chipping down at start of battle vs strong alphas before letting your Breloom adjust for the last 3-15% to a 1hp situation.

 

Again this IS something which make the alpha trivial and removes the boss aspect from such a fight.

 

Now if you look at all the moves I addressed in the damaging type moves, you can see a clear theme that all of them relies on static damage which ignores stat boosts which is the issue that should put them up for debate.

Going off that logic then when we battle Impostor dittos, we can't use low level leads so the Alpha copies our low levels stats, making it an easy cheese by sending out a Lv.100

 

False Swipe can leave Alpha's at 1 HP. Should that be banned as well?

 

Honestly, reading the suggested stuff to be banned Vs Alpha's is literally, if it serves a credible way to make it even slightly easier, ban it.

 

Alpha's can be a bit difficult to catch normally anyway, but because Seismic Toss from my Lv.100 Clefable does static 100 damage it should be banned? (I dont have one but you get my point lol)

[Volpi]

10 minutes ago, Elizn said:

Going off that logic then when we battle Impostor dittos, we can't use low level leads so the Alpha copies our low levels stats, making it an easy cheese by sending out a Lv.100

 

False Swipe can leave Alpha's at 1 HP. Should that be banned as well?

 

Honestly, reading the suggested stuff to be banned Vs Alpha's is literally, if it serves a credible way to make it even slightly easier, ban it.

???

No?

 

Ditto

Spoiler

This is a joke fight and we all know it. And that is perfectly fine.

 

It is not meant to be hard. But this is 1 case. Why are we going to ignore the match designs of all other alphas and base our entire discussion upon how one Pokemon works?

 

It is meant to be a joke and a brief break in between other alphas and gives us an easy Alpha IV breeder.

 

There is nothing wrong with having one simple fight in between other challenging fights.

 

If we are going to base our arguments on Ditto, we might as well bring back endeavor Aron because it is all trivial. Is that your argument? I really dont understand what point you are making with this one example.

False Swipe
 

Spoiler

Alpha stat changes is applied to a level 100 using false swipe at it... So how is this anything like using Seismic toss which is static 100 damage? Your false swipe will do like 16% damage to a Gabite lvl 70 with rough skin before stat bonuses while flamethrower doing 80% of your breloom or dual chop breaking your sub and do 28% on 2nd chop. After the first stat change, you are at high risk of being swept going by false swipe

 

 

Quote

"... if it serves a credible way to make it even slightly easier, ban it."

 

Spoiler

No. this is you putting words into my mouth.

 

I never mentioned False Swipe or any other moves which is calculated on the stats of the alpha.

 

 There is plenty of ways to make Alpha slightly easier that I am perfectly fine with people doing.

 

Use screens. Use torments, use protect, use AI manipulation, use immunities, use false swipes and status effects, use setup moves and become bulky AF and rest to remove all status moves as much as you like.

The alpha would still be able to capture and honestly, this is stuff that is available to the entire playerbase.

 

Quote

Alpha's can be a bit difficult to catch normally anyway, but because Seismic Toss from my Lv.100 Clefable does static 100 damage it should be banned? (I dont have one but you get my point lol)

Spoiler

Yes. Seismic toss should not do 100 damage to a Alpha pokemon with normal health pool, but higher base stats that as result take less damage from all other moves than those based on static damage.

 

I don't get why this is hard to understand so I don't know how to explain to you this....

 

I will still try

 

You picked false swipe as potential banned move and suggested I was in favour of this...

 

False Swipe will do less damage to an Alpha than a pokemon that is not Alpha but same species.

 

Seismic toss will do the same damage to an Alpha as a pokemon that is not Alpha but same species.

 

False swipe that would normally leave said pokemon at 1hp after 2 turns, now needs 7 turns to make it 1hp

 

Seismic toss which would leave the pokemon at 13% after 2 turns still leaves the pokemon at 13% after 2 turns.

 

 

Clearly what I am arguing for is rather to make moves such as false swipe and other things viable again. But to limit the potential I have to take advantage of unforeseen flaws in the design of an alpha fight.

 

Endeavor was such an flaw and was limited.

 

Pain split is up for debate

 

Other static moves are less effective than these 2 but still more effective than other moves would be as the design stands today.

 

 

 

Last words and I will just go back to abuse every flaw I find in the fight and laugh at people not able to see them after this

Spoiler

Once the static damage calculated are removed from a boss fight and certain broken strategies limited, people will strategies and communicate. They will find ways around the opposing challenge of capturing these Pokemons and they will all be able to do so quite consistently while we will have this intended fight with a strong Pokemon that smacks us around if we are not careful with how we approach it and just run blind into any pokemon using the same strat for everything and their mother.

 

Leave it in, and we will have a situation like the gym reruns where 95-98% of the gym rerunners using torkoal whimsicott double typhlosion watch Anime while getting their 2 hours run completed with a small 1-5% trying to optimize this strategy for 30-40 minute save and earn a bit more daily doing so. 

 

Most casuals will not see anything of what I bring up being removed as an issue as most casuals dont even know this makes the fight easier.

 

 

 

 

 

Alpha HA

Spoiler

Most players didn't know Alpha without HA was a thing couple of days ago while I didn't speak about this.

Now there is 9 pages with Alphas without HA as 2 days ago, it was 1-2 page(s).

 

Guess who is the one that still buys them. People that haven't seen Alpha not having HA being a thing. And who is that? People that plays the game less and get the information later.

 

I am happy to take advantage of this, but I am also aware what I am doing. If nothing is done, I can sell flips for another 3 days and posting pictures of pokemons without HA being sold for the same as Pokemons with HA.

 

I can make screenshots of people complaining about it in discord servers

 

And I can screenshot my own OT being relisted by the guy who really thought he had done a good deal buying my Alpha, got mad about what he received, and now is trying to double his money by relisting it for more than he paid.

 

Disclaimer! I do not claim to have discovered this flaw in the system as I have seen others use it before I spoke about this being a thing.

 

But I do claim that people who took use of this has potentially made a lot of great flips selling both HA competitive viable Pokemons with perfect IVs for more than the cost of IV+Prism Scale comps and Alphas missing their HA for the same as Alphas with HAs. This is profit they are able to make because of an inconvenience in game understanding and lack of warning when trying to buy something which isn't what it appears.

 

This is basically the 2012 scam of selling Pokemons with 31 EVs in all stats. I find it funny, and I do enjoy these tricks

 

I also acknowledge that these are quitting moments for the victims as they either learn from their mistake and get better or they get demotivated by their loss and find it not worth their time to overcome all the lost progress they just encountered.

 

I do find it cute that I need to advocate for casuals in a game which up until now basically wrap them in blankets and protect them from all sort of regular scammers.

Take my word for it on this. I scam players for fun and I know what consequence I cause on some of these players I scam. 

 

[DragoTamer]

I'm confident I speak for many when I say no thank you. 

 

I do agree that a warning when purchasing an alpha that is missing their HA would be nice

Edited October 25, 2022 by DragoTamer

[ThoroBR]

26 minutes ago, DragoTamer said:

I'm confident I speak for many when I say no thank you. 

 

I do agree that a warning when purchasing that the HA is gone would be nice

i can't agree more..

my op, now:
you can make the game as hard as you want, in the end, the house (players) always will win, meta is meta for a reason, good players always will find some way to do things better, easier and more profitable... imo they should be rewarded instead. 
 

the best argument is the reality, devs made endeavor aron, 10min after nosepass arise. 

tl:dr devs and casual players should learn with tabletop rpg, the dungeon master shouldn't play against the players, just deliver a fun game.

[yongsan]

On 10/24/2022 at 3:58 PM, DragoTamer said:

I'm confident I speak for many when I say no thank you. 

 

I do agree that a warning when purchasing an alpha that is missing their HA would be nice

100% Agreed.

 

On 10/23/2022 at 4:45 PM, Volpi said:

Even after removing all of this, I believe there is plenty of creative solutions available to handle the catching of Alphas for the playerbase, but that it will actually feel like a real challenge at least to some degree.

On 10/24/2022 at 8:12 AM, Volpi said:

I am perfectly fine with us being able to chip it down and catch them with our regular balls. But I do argue for this to be a challenge for us to overcome indeed. Moves that goes by static damage calculation is up for debate, any moves that is calculated based on stats of your mons and the boss is still free to take advantage of as you can imagine.

I completely do not follow OP's logic on why this needs to be a 'challenge' that we need to overcome. Why exactly does it need to be some kind of puzzle we need to solve?

- Let's say all your nerfs are implemented, and you 'figure out the puzzle.' Now you know how to catch alphas without any of the listed suggestions - are you gonna ask for a nerf again?

Even with all the current strats available, plenty of my friends spend more timer balls than the Alpha was worth on the GTL to catch it.

To me it makes 0 sense why any user would literally be asking for devs to nerf our ability to catch mons during limited time events.

If a challenge is what you want, go make it a challenge for yourself. Limit yourself to not using any of the suggestions you listed - don't drag everybody else down with you.

 

FYI - I rarely spend more than 15minutes catching any alpha, and even the current state I consider too long given:

1) the limited time you have to catch them. 

 

2) not everybody is monitoring Alpha swarm appearances like a hawk = we don't have 75 minutes to catch.

I found out about Ditto this morning 45 minutes into the swarm so I only had 30 minutes to get there and try and catch it, and I was in a 3k+ queue.

Most of us don't start right when an Alpha spawns, and there are long queue times - you still want to make this process take longer?

 

This is quite honestly an asinine take to me. 

If you want a challenge, do it yourself.

[LovRUS]

you forgot to mention, "using pokemon while catching alpha is broken, we need to punch one on one with the alpha pokemon like a real pokemon trainer in movies or anime to grow our bond with that alpha"