Actually playing Pokemon Platinum now

[farla]

(Wow, the new trade center is just weird. I mean, they made a huge improvement, only it ignored the root of the problem (why have only seven display at a time? Why? Why introduce new things to fix problems that are only problems because of the seven display thing?). It also seems to have some weird interactions with older games, like they're getting updated on new pokemon at a different rate, as I found as I traded my brother's pokemon back to Pearl. Although there were compounding factors, namely that people kept trading for the ones the Pearl game was offering. Why do people want L100 abra? I assumed I was getting them because people hack them up so they'll have a pokemon that satisfies any requirements, I didn't think anyone actually would trade for them?

(I do think the OT display is all kinds of awesome, and frees me from feeling obligated to nickname my shiny masses. Now if Nintendo would just stop fucking with my game in response to me mass uploading shinies, life would be just awesome.)

Anyway, it occurred to me while I was doing all the trading, offering shiny hoothoot for regular brother's hoothoot, that I have an action replay now and can play through the whole game with shiny codes on if I feel like it. So that's what I plan to do.

Oh, and also? Now they make you delete saved data to start a new game. What the hell? I seriously can't figure out why they did this. It's all kinds of obnoxious, kind of like how they tell you twenty times that you're overwriting data every time you save. YES NINTENDO THAT IS CALLED SAVING MY GAME THANKS IF I DIDN'T WANT TO DO IT I WOULDN'T BE SAVING NOW WOULD I.

...so anyway, the game is really pretty, even if I do question the feasibility of mixing a short skirt with a scarf. My avatar is not bright.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I'm pretty sure that the people who are asking for level 100 abras are trying to clone their pokemon in the GTS. Abra is just faster to select, being at the very top of the list, and is something nobody would have at level 100.

I imagine it would be fun to hack a bunch of abras and keep them handy in case I run into someone trying to clone a pokemon. That way I can snatch it up, laugh evilly, feel kind of bad for a moment, then go back to laughing evilly. ^___^!

[negrek.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that the people who are asking for level 100 abras are trying to clone their pokemon in the GTS.

This. I was going to say this when I first read this entry before thinking, "Wait, I think that glitch only works in D/P." Then I realized that a) of course the glitch still works in Platinum because they can't change the coding to avoid it, and b) it doesn't matter, because pokémon uploaded in D/P still show on the Platinum GTS.

Anyway, I've also heard that some people like to "showcase" pokémon on the GTS, putting them up for difficult/impossible trades so that people can look, but not touch. Seems stupid to me since there's always the chance that someone might have a high-level abra lying around (I dunno, left it in the daycare and forgot about it or something) or will just hack to steal it anyway. If the same pokémon is there every time you search for it, they're probably showing it off; if it's there and then gone right away, it's probably getting cloned.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Eh, I'd say the real problem is that Nintendo, in their zeal to encourage trading, set things up so you always have to have a pokemon in there to see the most trades during a search(because truly it is the lack of bidoof offers for zapdos that is the greatest problem the center could face). So if you want to search around for a trade without interference, it's convenient to put up something that people won't trade for, or a long-shot trade that will take a while.

Plus, most of the impossible trades for rares/high levels tend to be along the lines of darkrai. And for every person taking advantage of the fact that's an untradable pokemon, you have to bet there's another dozen who don't know you can't trade a darkrai, because it's not like Nintendo tells you in any way beyond the fact your trade never goes through and that, if you had a darkrai, and the darkrai didn't have a classic ribbon, you'd be told that you couldn't trade it, which isn't really helpful to most people.

[negrek.livejournal.com]

Oh, duh, I forgot about that too. Usually when I'm looking for something I just throw in fodder asking for whatever pokémon I'm after, so on the off-chance that somebody trades for it I'll at least get the species I'm after.

[farla.livejournal.com]

No, I mean, I was putting up some of the many, many L100 abra people gave me when I was offering RareShiny#2130 for abra. So I'd offer a L100 abra for my brother's hoothoot (because it's easy to find L100 abra, since the system isn't clogged with them) then in the time it took me to switch games someone else would have traded for it.

I finally had to give up. (And for duping, it's much safer to ask for a level-nine-and-under abomasnow and it's not like it takes much longer.) But I don't get why people would be willingly trading for them that enthusiastically. Unless Nintendo finally did that thing where they automatically match two offered trades, I guess.

[actonthat.livejournal.com]

The most amusing thing about the 'you are overwriting your data with more recent data' meassage, which I assume was put in place to remind stupid people that they can only have one game file, is that as of the fourth gen, YOU CAN'T OVERWRITE AN OLD GAME FILE WITHIN THE GAME. Besides being stupid, what the fuck? It just makes the redundancy of 'beware of saving!!' all the more... fuckery.

[farla.livejournal.com]

...dammit! You're right.

I really don't get what was wrong about the way they did it in the first gen. If you try to save over a different game, there's a warning, otherwise it just goes through. Simple. Everyone can figure out that saving = saving your current progress over your past progress all by themselves when, after saving the second time, they didn't get any option to select a different file. And it's not likely a player could do anything drastic between save one and two that would need advance warning about the fact you're overwriting the save.

Or, if it's really necessary, why can't there be a way of turning it off? They have an options menu, and obviously if you're capable of getting to the options menu, navigating it, and telling it to turn off the extra save warning, you're competent enough not to need one.

And while I'm wishing for impossible things, wouldn't it be awesome if you could change the battling difficulty to advanced or something so the computer would stop being stupid at you all the time? (THIS DOES NOT REFER TO CHEATING WITH THE ODDS IN THE COMPUTER'S FAVOR NINTENDO DO NOT THINK I CAN'T TELL YOU FUCKERS.)

[actonthat.livejournal.com]

It's pretty amazing that there's been like zero improvement in the AI since 1995. There's only so many times you can have one HP left and still win because your opponent kept using calm mind when their stats were already at max before it makes you want to throw the thing against the wall.

Are the odds actually in the players' or computer's favor? I always kind of felt something was a little off, but also kind of figured I was being a sore loser.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Computer's. It's most noticeable in special endgame places like the battle frontier or in Stadium, but I've heard the numbers are slanted to a lesser degree in the main game.

I don't, in principle, disagree with the idea of giving the computer an advantage. What bothers me, though, is that it ends up making entire strategies (and pokemon that can only feasibly use those strategies) off-limits. You want to use attract/confusion/paralysis/accuracy lowering moves? Too bad, because they don't work for you! You don't have a perfect accuracy move? Too bad, enjoy spending the battle watching every move miss!

As to how smart it is...I think the computer isn't incompetent, but deliberately doing it. Like, in the first gen, the first rival fight was hard and I'd lose plenty of the time. Now we finally have that first rival fight on equal levels back, and yet for some reason it's not hard. Sometimes it even seems like the computer switches strategies when my pokemon get really low on heath, so I can get a few extra hits in while they're wasting time leering.

I should probably go see what the hackers have found out, since now I'm really curious.

[actonthat.livejournal.com]

IMO, the computer's advantage is that it gets whatever team it wants, with whatever moves programmed in. I feel like the accuracy %s are that way for a reason, and if they want to make things harder, just raise everyone's percents, or give the computer attacks whose effects occur more frequently by definition. *shrug* The math of it all is really interesting to me, so it just strikes me as odd that that's the only way they see it possible to make the game harder.

Honestly, I've sometimes wondered that if the move selection isn't determined by some kind of RNG.

There's just so many obvious ways to lay out the battle system better that it's boggling.

[farla.livejournal.com]

See, the thing is, stuff like giving the computer better moves runs into the same problem, that, within the system people want the ability to use the same kind of pokemon/moves/strategies.

Really, if they're going to cheat, the real solution would be to look at the same system the game normally uses to raise difficulty, levels. For extra-hard fights, just up the pokemon's stats. It could be just hp and/or defense, or it could be all of them, but that'd make the pokemon harder in general, as opposed to penalizing people for using the more advanced strategies rather than plowing through on brute strength. And it'd make for a more enjoyable game, since it's more fun going up against a high-defense opponent you have to use a strategy to take down than a low-defense one that just happens to dodge 70% of your attacks.

[bay115.livejournal.com]

Heh, you and Act talking about accuracies reminds me as to why I hate the Elite 4 in my Sapphire game. Whenever I try to use Confusion, Paralysis, etc., I have no luck. However, when the Elite 4 does it, works almost all the time. Even when I use something else like berries or the flutes to snap my Pokemon out of Confusion or whatever, next turn my Pokemon becomes confused again. -_-

[farla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the numbers are severely skewed both ways in the computer's favor.

(I wonder if there's a way to hack that?)