Zelda, I was totally unaware that Blizzard allowed you to publish maps with a white-list. Absolutely wonderful if you can.
I recall some sentence in their ToS for the editor, that it is not allowed to restrict access to the map and have users pay for full access or something, so a white-list for testing might be somewhat of a grey area.
The first zone could use a good variety. Ratata and pidgey equivalents are boring. Psychic, fighting, fire, or ice would be an interesting change.
I don't mind the first few zones being a little more basic, however I would like those basic Ratatas and Pidgeys evolve into something quite epic and powerful, like for example in Black&White you had Lilipup, your basic starter trash, which evolved into Stoutland, who was kinda badass and quite powerful as well, with decend stats, a strong ability and not a bad movepool (especially with Return, one of the strongest normal-type moves available, available very early in the game as a TM). Patrat, which was your Ratata didn't do quite as well, his Watchog evolution was one of the best HM bitches early on, though, who could learn cut, strength, flash and... stone smash, I believe?
Of course, there were others that were totally useless in the beginning as well as later on, well.
I would love to see a different set of starters as well, its always the same fire/water/plant stuff. Granted, the stone-scissors-paper system makes these types obvious choices, but there have to be other similar combinations, right?
You could go with the approach of Black&White (not sure if earlier editions had this as well): There are all kinds of trainers and most of them would be one-time only, but a certain kind would always fight you again when you came by. Granted, it was kind of crappy, because they never or only slightly leveled up, so it was more of an annoyance than any help, but with proper leveling in mind, this could work out great.
Also, random shouldn't be an issue, you can just randomize them at startup, then save their current monsters and restore them when fighting them again + add some random new ones.
I don't think, that it would be needed for trainers to actually gain experience, but I would like something like at certain points in the story, the trainers you have already beaten go like "I became a lot stronger since we fought last time. Wanna try again?" and get some levels on their old starmon, probably new attacks and evolutions, maybe even a couple more monsters. However, for parts not relevant to the current story, this should be optional, since it would be frustrating having to face all trainers over and over every time you walk through an area.
Or maybe they just get stronger every time you fight them, so they can become really challenging and an effective way of training (with some sort of limit obviously).
And to answer your previous question regarding PvP item use- it used to be that you simply couldn't use items in PvP at all. But I've been told that the new games allow item use in battle, but in a regulated way. You can't just use any item you bought from the story. Basically (at least as far as I can tell), you get a point each turn, and all the available items cost a certain number of points. So after x turns you save up enough for a potion, after y turns a hyper potion, etc... It's not connected to the items you purchased in the story.
Nah, in story you can still use all items at will, and in pvp you are limited to 1 item per pokemon you can give them to hold. Only specific items are useable here, no hyper potions for example, only berries, certain passive items with very specific effects, for example an item, that prevents a 1 hit kill if you are at full hp before the attack, or items that raise your attack/sp-attack/speed by 50% but lock you into one move, once you used it.
I've read a fair bit about competitive pokemon dueling (never really played it, though), and while it is true, that one-shotting is very prevalent, there is still a great deal of tactics and prediction involved. The pokemon are categorized in tiers, based on stats, abilities, movepool and general usefulness. Most of the legendary pokemon get into the Uber tier, which is commonly considered quite imbalanced. The commonly used tier for duels is the first below the uber tier, all ubers are banned here. Still a huge amount of one-shotting is possible, however you have a very powerful tool to counter that: Prediction and switching out. In this tier, there are no pokemon, who can just one-shot everything. Switch into one of the many available dedicated tanks, and you can usually tank a lot of hits, especially if you know your opponent's pokemon and swap into something he can barely touch.
Point being, this appears to be quite a delicate balance from what I have read, so just increasing all hp by 200% could seriously mess with that, dedicated tanks could become way stronger now, especiallly considering recovery moves usually restoring a percentage of your hitpoints, which was balanced by the fact that you usually could deal enough damage to mitigate this healing. At 200% hp, you would need to deal twice as much damage somehow to counter that.
But well, thats only really an issue in PvP. In story mode, where you have serious advantages like the ability to swap your pokemon for every battle without using up a turn and using as many items as you want, also the enemies hardly ever switch their pokemon, you are right, it could probably make the game more interesting than the usual one-shot party.
Map seems to be coming along nicely, though. I dislike the kind of harsh cuts into battle mode, maybe smooth the zooming in part a little. Same for the camera circling around the battlefield.
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I recall some sentence in their ToS for the editor, that it is not allowed to restrict access to the map and have users pay for full access or something, so a white-list for testing might be somewhat of a grey area.
I don't mind the first few zones being a little more basic, however I would like those basic Ratatas and Pidgeys evolve into something quite epic and powerful, like for example in Black&White you had Lilipup, your basic starter trash, which evolved into Stoutland, who was kinda badass and quite powerful as well, with decend stats, a strong ability and not a bad movepool (especially with Return, one of the strongest normal-type moves available, available very early in the game as a TM). Patrat, which was your Ratata didn't do quite as well, his Watchog evolution was one of the best HM bitches early on, though, who could learn cut, strength, flash and... stone smash, I believe?
Of course, there were others that were totally useless in the beginning as well as later on, well.
I would love to see a different set of starters as well, its always the same fire/water/plant stuff. Granted, the stone-scissors-paper system makes these types obvious choices, but there have to be other similar combinations, right?
You could go with the approach of Black&White (not sure if earlier editions had this as well): There are all kinds of trainers and most of them would be one-time only, but a certain kind would always fight you again when you came by. Granted, it was kind of crappy, because they never or only slightly leveled up, so it was more of an annoyance than any help, but with proper leveling in mind, this could work out great.
Also, random shouldn't be an issue, you can just randomize them at startup, then save their current monsters and restore them when fighting them again + add some random new ones.
I don't think, that it would be needed for trainers to actually gain experience, but I would like something like at certain points in the story, the trainers you have already beaten go like "I became a lot stronger since we fought last time. Wanna try again?" and get some levels on their old starmon, probably new attacks and evolutions, maybe even a couple more monsters. However, for parts not relevant to the current story, this should be optional, since it would be frustrating having to face all trainers over and over every time you walk through an area.
Or maybe they just get stronger every time you fight them, so they can become really challenging and an effective way of training (with some sort of limit obviously).
Somehow I got the urge to hug a doll...
You don't happen to have a "Hug" attack, do you?
Nah, in story you can still use all items at will, and in pvp you are limited to 1 item per pokemon you can give them to hold. Only specific items are useable here, no hyper potions for example, only berries, certain passive items with very specific effects, for example an item, that prevents a 1 hit kill if you are at full hp before the attack, or items that raise your attack/sp-attack/speed by 50% but lock you into one move, once you used it.
I've read a fair bit about competitive pokemon dueling (never really played it, though), and while it is true, that one-shotting is very prevalent, there is still a great deal of tactics and prediction involved. The pokemon are categorized in tiers, based on stats, abilities, movepool and general usefulness. Most of the legendary pokemon get into the Uber tier, which is commonly considered quite imbalanced. The commonly used tier for duels is the first below the uber tier, all ubers are banned here. Still a huge amount of one-shotting is possible, however you have a very powerful tool to counter that: Prediction and switching out. In this tier, there are no pokemon, who can just one-shot everything. Switch into one of the many available dedicated tanks, and you can usually tank a lot of hits, especially if you know your opponent's pokemon and swap into something he can barely touch.
Point being, this appears to be quite a delicate balance from what I have read, so just increasing all hp by 200% could seriously mess with that, dedicated tanks could become way stronger now, especiallly considering recovery moves usually restoring a percentage of your hitpoints, which was balanced by the fact that you usually could deal enough damage to mitigate this healing. At 200% hp, you would need to deal twice as much damage somehow to counter that.
But well, thats only really an issue in PvP. In story mode, where you have serious advantages like the ability to swap your pokemon for every battle without using up a turn and using as many items as you want, also the enemies hardly ever switch their pokemon, you are right, it could probably make the game more interesting than the usual one-shot party.
Nice trolling :/
Map seems to be coming along nicely, though. I dislike the kind of harsh cuts into battle mode, maybe smooth the zooming in part a little. Same for the camera circling around the battlefield.