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

[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.