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I would say that if you need to turn off or ignore game features to make a game hard, it's not a hard game. It's an easy game that you can make reasonably hard, but it's still really easy by the rules it gives you because the exp share is given to you as a tool and not a difficulty setting.
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Apr 23, 2016 18:28
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Geostomp posted:How do you go this long without figuring out that Pokemon-amie had real benefits? Happiness does gently caress all outside a couple moves and evos, and it just seemed like a more abstracted version of that. If I hadn't looked it up I would have had no idea.
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Apr 23, 2016 18:54
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SkyTalon2314 posted:Diantha in XY isn't a slouch either, though her most notable thing is that her M-Gardevoir is at max rank with Pokemon Amie. This means it has all the Hax you've been using up to that point, in a nasty package. +Crit rate and +Evasion on something with 165 SpA is scary. She does not.
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Apr 23, 2016 18:58
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Mega-Gardevoir is trivialised in a game that also introduced Mega-Gengar without gating it behind the ending like some other Megas. The cruellest thing they did to Gardevoir was give it an extra weakness to Gengar.
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Apr 23, 2016 19:27
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I did not know that about Poke Amie, though I haven't really delved deeply into XY (I think I've only run through the whole game 1 1/2 times). Do the colors of the puffs mean anything?
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Apr 23, 2016 19:37
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Spatula City posted:I did not know that about Poke Amie, though I haven't really delved deeply into XY (I think I've only run through the whole game 1 1/2 times). Do the colors of the puffs mean anything? Nope, the frostings are used to say what level a puff is, but flavors are irrelevant.
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Apr 23, 2016 19:45
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Well, allegedly they are supposed to correlate to the colours and flavours of the contest treats and thus be preferred by specific Pokemon just like them, but I've never noticed any signs of Pokemon preferring one over another.
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Apr 23, 2016 20:01
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Roro posted:Well, allegedly they are supposed to correlate to the colours and flavours of the contest treats and thus be preferred by specific Pokemon just like them, but I've never noticed any signs of Pokemon preferring one over another. I think the Bulbapedia page claims that if you feed a Pokemon a fully frosted and decorated puff of the color it likes best, it gets six little hearts instead of the five any other flavor of that level puff would give. But I have literally never seen that happen so... *shrug*
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Apr 23, 2016 20:24
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I think I've seen 1 heart of variance between different colours of puffs of the same tier, so the taste thing may be true? I might be misremembering, though. It's not a big deal even if it does exist. Lately, when I use Pokemon Amie, I just let Unlimited Head It run out two times, give the resulting puffs to the pokemon, pet it until it's bored again, rinse and repeat. It's pretty easy to get a full heart per session without getting bored, and it pays off in cute messages in combat.  Edit: The best thing about Pokemon Amie is being able to pet your pokemon as a reward after it knocks out a foe. Everything else is kind of detached from the main game, but this little bit is well-integrated and just adorable. 
Aithon fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Apr 23, 2016 |
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Apr 23, 2016 20:40
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BlazetheInferno posted:
 I am trying to find somewhere that corroborates this short of me cracking open my copy of X and going back to fight her myself. Which I might just do. My friend and I were taking her on at about the same time and noticed an odd number of crits, but the most telling thing was her M-Gardivoir dodging 100% accurate attacks like Thunderbolt. Then again, it's been a couple years, so yeah. I'm going to go back and refight her, see what I can see, and report back. I haven't transferred over everyone to Alpha Sapphire, so I should still have a good team.
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Apr 24, 2016 02:22
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Seriously?! Do uhh... do you have a source for this? I've never noticed it...
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SkyTalon2314 posted:
Yeah I fainted her Gardivoir in one hit, so I'm not sure about this, dude.
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Apr 24, 2016 02:39
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Alright, I tried to replicate it, and nadda. So according to Science, that means I was mistaken. No biggie. I'll go back and strikeout my previous statement. I'm not sure what I saw when I faced her all that time ago, but if I can't replicate it, I can't prove it. 
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Apr 24, 2016 06:33
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Update 13: Feeling Japanese Just before we begin, there won't be any real progression in this update and there will be a lot of words as I go over some very interesting and not well known features. So consider this a combined Update and Side Notes.  Goldenrod City  Welcome to Japanese Crystal! We're in this version because of a pretty large building. Welcome to the Pokemon Communication Center. Let's see what this place has to offer. Pokemon Center To begin with, this place does function as an actual Pokemon Center, so you can heal your Pokemon no problem.  The second floor also remains the same, allowing you to trade and battle with your friends over Link Cable, the usual.    But there's a lot more to this place otherwise. However, a lot of it is unavailable since we have yet to connect to the Mobile Adapter GB for the first time. But once we do, then we can trade and battle with players all over Japan for just Ľ10 (not including carrier service fees). But once we do do that, we can access all areas and even change the music! Pokemon Communication Center  Let's walk through walls and discover all the features we have. The Administration Office has three staff members talking about the facility and computers that have documents and support options for this new fangled technology.   As with most games, going through doors and that only warps you to somewhere else on the same map, so we can head up and be back in the main center, though none of the people are loaded, cause what would be the point?  The next facility is the Trade Center, allowing you to trade with other people all over Japan in what is a precursor to the GTS. By using a peripheral called the Mobile Game Boy Adapter, you could connect your GBC, GBA or GBASP to a compatible mobile phone. The standard cable was blue, but yellow, red and green cables were compatible with different phones. Though the most well known game it worked with was Pokemon Crystal, it also worked with a number of other games, mostly for the GBA, including Mario Kart, Napoleon and Mobile Golf. Only five titles were released internationally and all mobile features went unused.  Finally, we have the Pokemon News Machine. For Ľ100/month, you could learn about the latest news, which was updated monthly and compiled data from players around Japan. You could also participate in minigames and quizzes and even obtain some very rare event only items. This includes the Odd Egg we currently have in our inventory. The event, beginning from January 27th 2001, let you obtain an Egg Ticket from the Day Care Man, to redeem at the Communication Center. This allows you to get a rare baby Pokemon with the Egg move Dizzy Punch and has a 50% chance of being shiny. It's just given to us in the international versions, though there are a couple more exclusive events we didn't get, such as the distribution of the Bluesky and Mirage Mail. There's one more event we'll go into later.  To go into further detail, the Mobile Game Boy Adapter was released on January 27th 2001, as a collaboration between Nintendo and Mobile21, which was jointly owned by Nintendo and Konami. Two months in and the peripheral had only sold 80k units, as the only game to make extensive use of the device was Pokemon Crystal and mobile phones were still relatively new, so young players of the game wouldn't have one. This was the main reason we didn't get this device in the West: it sold poorly and Nintendo of America were unsure how well mobile phones would sell. It was just a bit too early for such a crazy device. The service shut down December 14th 2002 and all features in both Crystal and Stadium 2 that used this device are dead and gone. Sounds familiar to the GTS, right? There are further features of the Mobile Adapter GB that we'll go into when we see them. But for now, the Pokemon Communication Center is just a glorified Pokemon Center now. Though I should note that connection between friends is still possible if you use a peer-to-peer network. This still allows you to access the two new menu options: MOBILE and MOBILE STADIUM, which only appear when you successfully connect to the mobile network. The full title should be MOBILE CENTER, but it was too long to fit in the menu, so it's just MOBILE. The Mobile Center let's you set up your profile for Pokemon News purposes and lets you access the Battle Tower when it becomes available outside Olivine City. We'll be going into this later. You could also use a Card Folder, to check your profile and manage a contact list, similar to the Pal Pad, though with phone numbers instead of friend codes. The Mobile Stadium, meanwhile, allowed you to take timed mobile battles from Crystal (10 minutes max) and replay them in full 3D on Pokemon Stadium 2 via the Transfer Pak, similar to the VS Recorder. An example of such a battle can be found here.  The last thing to really note about the whole package is the Mobile Trainer. Included with every package of the Mobile Adapter GB, this was a general guide and help menu for the new system and allowed you to set up and change your registration details and see your remaining balance. You can only access these features when you're connected to a mobile phone. You could even sign up to an email system that let you text other players and also connect online to the Mobile System GB homepage, which published various articles around different titles. For a clearer look at the program, I recommend this video.    There's not much else to really note about the Pokemon Communication Center, there's a lot to cover and it was a pretty deep and useful system that was unfortunately short lived. As a small easter egg, the designs of a Pokemon's stat screen are different in Japanese.  Even the Pokedex looks different. Pokemon Center But now we're back to our regular English playthough. And you'd think we'd be done, but there's just a little more to show off. Now when they translated this game for international audiences, there was a decision to dummy out all of the Mobile Adapter stuff. But that doesn't mean they removed it from the game. Far from it, they simply made it inaccessible. In fact, there's an unused warp to the Administration Office in the Goldenrod Pokemon Center. Now what if we used a code that changed unused warp tiles into holes we can fall though?      Tada! We're in a legitimate map in the game's coding. Only the Administration Office is available and the entire thing is translated, meaning the decision to dummy out the mobile stuff happened after they'd gone forward with it. There's even translations in other languages! Though the English version progressed the most.     : When my first try worked, I was so impressed that I got the shakes!  "less technology."There's actually more to the Communication Center in reference to the Ruins of Alph. Those secret chambers only available in Crystal recently appeared according to the scientist there, but in the Japanese version, he theorizes they exist due to the opening of the new Pokemon Center and the radio waves from there are conflicting with the natural radio waves the Unown produce. This fits in with the opening of the game, where the Unown communicate to Suicune, alerting it to the Ruins of Alph. For whatever reason, this was not included as part of the game's story, but we'll be getting into that in a few updates.   Like with the Japanese version, we have the map of the full Pokemon Communication Center (referred to as the PokeCom in international versions, though ultimately unused), but there's no way to access this map properly without changing a warp in the game's coding. Only the Administration Office has a direct link to the international game. But that's everything to do with the Japanese version of Crystal, we might come back a bit later for a couple of other reasons, but now we move onto something else entirely.  Goldenrod City  Welcome to the Japanese version of HeartGold! I didn't go over the Game Corner in the SoulSilver update, for good reason, cause we're gonna be going over it today. Game Corner  The inside of the Game Corner looks like it usually does, right? Well everyone's familiar with the international version, we'll talk about that in just a moment, but for now, we can't do much here, we're missing something very important.  No, not TM87 Captivate. You can obtain this much later in the game, but you do have to buy it, so Japanese players get a nice little freebie here, like they usually do.   We actually need to head back and get the Coin Case, since you get given that automatically in the international versions. It's where we found it in GSC, in the Underground.  And look at this crazy bullshit, we can buy coins here! Woah.  Anyway, let's do some goddamn underaged gambling already!  The slots this time around follow the DPP feature of playing a minigame on the other screen. While you had to wait a while for Clefairy (or Ditto) to pop up, Smeargle is here from the start.   The first mechanic is Smeargle's mood and can range from -15 to +15, from happy to angry, basically. When it's happy, its mood will slowly go up (to moody) every time you don't win on a given spin. But once it's already moody, it'll go up by a varying amount when you line up two Poke Balls, or two 7s and gently caress it up.   If you keep missing, then Smeargle will get angrier and angrier. The main reason for doing this gives it a higher chance to unleash its anger on the coloured background. Green denotes normal play, blue gives you a higher chance of landing Pikachu or Marill. And red gives you a higher chance of landing Poke Balls or 7s. Once it changes the background, it'll then go to a random happy value, so if you keep loving up, eventually it'll just make itself happy instead of relying on your bitch rear end.  But I eventually get some wins. Go me.  The real fun starts when you roll a 7 or a Poke Ball. This begins the bonus round. Bonus Round  The bonus round has you matching up the three starters using three panels. Thankfully, two of the panels are locked in and the speed is low enough to make the match relatively easy. But you do need to make it an exact match, or you won't get coins, so you still need good timing.  It's relatively simple and you've got 15 rounds. So if you've got good timing, then you can rack up coins pretty quickly.   However, randomly, with the chance increasing the more you win, they start getting pretty nasty: requiring you to stop all three panels with it going pretty fast. These were my best attempts at stopping them.  But there we go. After 15 rounds, I racked up around 250 coins and completing the panels gave me 25 coins a pop.  After completing the bonus round, Smeargle will always change the background to red, meaning...   We can jump right back into a bonus round. This is a very useful way to chain jackpots and you should, since it's an actual mechanic. The formula to calculate payout in a bonus game is 20 + d * Floor(n / 2), where d is the difficulty, either 1, 2, or 3 and n is the previous number of successes in the current game. The difficulty increases each time clear a bonus round and start a new one. This can give you jackpots of over 400 coins if you keep winning and winning. You may also have noticed that the jackpots for lining up 7s or Poke Balls increased as we played. It increases randomly whenever you don't score a jackpot to entice you into playing further and resets whenever you come out of a bonus round. But that's everything to do with the slots. It's definitely a fun little diversion, probably one of my favourite minigame uses, it's pretty cool to try and game the Smeargle system. But now it's time to move on to what you've all been waiting to talk about. Game Corner To conform with new PEGI ratings that made the slot machines useless in European versions of Platinum, so the game stayed at 3+, instead of 18. All western versions of HGSS have no slot machines either, as gambling is becoming more and more reviled in video games aimed at a younger audience, but they created a brand new game that isn't technically gambling. The slots and the Japanese map is still in the game, but you need to change your warps. If you try and play any of the machines though, you'll play the new game instead.   : My heart pounds with excitement when people enjoy my Coin game! Why don't you play my Coin game? You can get fabulous prizes if you manage to collect a lot of Coins.Let's play.   Saves making an Underground trip to find this. Now we can play a game.   Welcome to Voltorb Flip. It's much different to the slots and you can get consistent and high payouts if you're good at maths and strategy, with just a slight amount of luck to carry you all the way. Let's see how it plays.  It's listed as a combination between Minesweeper and Picross. What you need to do is flip over the tiles to score multiplier cards to increase your payout. If you find all the x2 and x3 cards on the board, you win and move on to the next level. But if you flip over a Voltorb, it explodes and you lose all your coins, since it's technically a x0. There's also x1 cards, but those are pointless to find as they add nothing to your score, except if it's the first card you find, since it gives you 1 coin, but it's not necessary. You're told on the side how many points a row or column has, so the higher the number, the higher chance of x2 or x3 cards. And of course, if there's a high number of Voltorb, then you're gonna have some fun.    Before we start puzzling things out, there's a few steps you need to take when you start a game. First, any row or column with 0 Voltorb can be flipped no problem, since there's no chance of failure. You can see our coins are racking up and we haven't even started yet. From here, we need to start working things out.   Next, take a look at the rows and columns and any of them that have their points and number of Voltorb equal 5 exactly, you can put down whatever mark you want to make sure you never flip them over. There's no point flipping them over, since x1 cards are meaningless to your score and Voltorb of course end your run. It's easy to figure out, if you subtract the number of Voltorb from the 5 panels and the points you can gain from that row or column equal the number of potential panels to flip over, then they're all x1. We'll be using maths a fair amount now. Carbon Dioxide has this to add, as I only really started playing this game properly for the update: quote:The more complete strategy requires a small change to the sum of points and Voltorbs = 5 rule. It's as follows: still calculate that sum. If it's more than 5 and you have flipped blocks in that row/column, for each 2x subtract 1, and for each 3x subtract 2 from the sum. If the result equals 5, there's nothing left of value in that row/column.  Now we've worked out all the panels we have no need to flip over without moving into the guessing... now we guess. The best way to figure it out, is to find the most likely panel to contain a x2 or a x3. Usually this is where the highest points on the board intersect, but keep the number of Voltorb on that row in mind. This is the part of the game where you just flip things over and hope for the best. But, once you flip something over, you can then do some subtractions and work out whether there's anything else on that row or column worth going for.   : You've found all the hidden x2 and x3 cards. This means you've found all the Coins in this game, so the game is now over.  : Congratulations! You can receive even more Coins in the next game! Now we can move on to the next level. As you'd expect, you have more Voltorb show up, but also more x2 and x3 cards, giving you a really big bonus if you play lucky.  So here's our level 2 board. We unfortunately have no clean rows, nor any that add up to 5. So we just skip straight to the guessing games.  It's pretty simple, just find the most likely multipliers and work from there.   And before long, we're in the clear.   Overall, while this game isn't particularly difficult, it does require an annoying amount of luck and guessing, once you figure out what panels to ignore.   But it's not long before we reach level 5. There's 7 levels in the game and from level 6 on is when you can get over 600 coins a round, no question.   Okay, pretty lucky how we can ignore three rows and get a high scoring bottom row.   Sometimes the game psyches you out if you want to flip over a card that's either a multiplier or a Voltorb. But I will admit, I'm pretty good at maths, so I wasn't worried. Well maybe 99% sure. And congrats if you noticed a couple of errors I made working out if a row or column was now useless, so I'm surprised I've got this far, honestly    And now it's level 8! But how come? The only way to get to level 8 is to win 5 games in a row. Thankfully it doesn't require beating level 7 five times in a row, but it can be tricky regardless. This is where the big bucks are from and since this is the hardest match, let's go over our tactics.   We can wipe off one column and then go on by hoping the high points intersecting work out.   Some more reasonable guesses and then we can work out some more useless rows.   Okay, we're nearly done. Can't be much more to go. Can you work it out?   And there we go. That jackpot total is pretty insane, since getting to level 8 only gained us like 1000 coins.  And you can keep on going until you fail, or you get 50k coins without stopping. Once you get rolling, you can get insane coins from this game. Now if you fail, you'll drop down a few levels and lose all the coins you'd gained in that level. How many levels you drop down is determined by the added value of the cards you've found so far in the level. So if you find a Voltorb right away, you're going right back to level 1.   : You can exchange your Coins for prizes with the two gentlemen at the table over there.    We have a nice array of pretty expensive prizes. It's the same in the Japanese version, but you can buy your coins there, so those prizes are easier to get. But really, Voltorb Flip can be a lot of fun and you can get some mad coins quickly, but it's understandable why it's quite a divisive game. Game Freak just played it safe from Gen 5 onward and just removed the Game Corner entirely. So RIP.  And that's it for this update and indeed everything about Goldenrod City. Next update, we'll be back to our English version of Crystal as we finally move on to new locations. Crosspeice fucked around with this message at 07:17 on May 1, 2016 |
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Apr 24, 2016 17:54
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I wonder how much less divisive Voltorb Flip would be if they still let you buy the damned coins. As it is, you either have to get very good at it, resign yourself to grinding coins on the low levels, or give up and use a solver to make the grind go faster(but not faster than just buying coins would be). I liked the minigame myself, but the fun wears off fast when you have to play it over and over and over and over for the prizes.
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Apr 24, 2016 18:16
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Man, to think that in the past you needed to pay, have a cellphone, a special cable and live in Japan to trade with others, and now the 3DS alone is enough and you can trade everywhere with everyone! It's such a gigantic change. It makes me feel like that fat guy from the beginning of every game.      Technology sure is incredible. Also I hate Voltorb Flip entirely because you couldn't buy coins so the easy way to ignore the terribleness of the Game Corner was removed. I'm so glad it isn't a thing anymore.
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Apr 24, 2016 18:34
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Okay, I have two things to say: First, I wouldn't take the fact that that dummied out mobile area has been translated to mean that they planned to bring it to the west. In other games, obvious debug areas and the like have also been translated. I always figured that the translators basically get a script in some text editor and they just have to replace it line by line, and it's more effort to check which things shouldn't be translated than to just translate them as they run into it. Of course that's followed by some actual testing to see if the translations make sense, and in that case the dummied out areas might not be tested properly, but the translation is there. Secondly, You did not mark the blocks in the 2nd and 5th column with 1s here. It didn't matter in this case but it can be important for later levels, to realize there's nothing of importance left in those columns. See, you already got a 2x in the 5th column, which means there's only 3 points and one Voltorb left, divided over four spaces. So three 1x and one 0x. The more complete strategy requires a small change to the sum of points and Voltorbs = 5 rule. It's as follows: still calculate that sum. If it's more than 5 and you have flipped blocks in that row/column, for each 2x subtract 1, and for each 3x subtract 2 from the sum. If the result equals 5, there's nothing left of value in that row/column. What you're mathematically doing there is reducing all 2x's and 3x's to 1x's, after which the normal 5 rule applies. In this case, this rule applies for the 2nd and 5th column, leaving only the top and bottom blocks of the 1st column as possibilities. I was gonna say you have to guess between those - but that's not actually the case. Looking at the 1st and 5th ROWS, it turns out that both have points left in them, and we just found out those can't be in column 2 - 4. So at this point we know with certainty that both the top left and the bottom left block contain points and it's safe to flip both of them. There are many cases where you actually need to guess in Voltorb Flip, but this situation is not one of them. Just requires a bit of thinking. Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Apr 24, 2016 |
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Apr 24, 2016 19:22
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Yeah, there's a few times where I didn't recalculate all of the rows and columns after getting a multiplier, so the screenshots reflect that, since I made them just after I did something so I wouldn't have to go back if I then immediately did something else and mess up the capture. I got pretty drat lucky in that run, I was not expecting to make it to level 8 on my first go around. I am no means an expert in this game, I only properly started playing it so I could show it off in the update, so I'll add in your stuff.
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Apr 24, 2016 19:45
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It is really cool how Nintendo never really drops their ideas, they just file them away for when they have better technology. This to the Global Trade, the Gamecube's failed 3D to the 3DS, the original Duck Hunt and similar games to the Wii, the GBA Cable to the WiiU. Its really cool looking back on things and seeing how the different ideas and concepts have evolved to work with the advancing technology. Carbon dioxide posted:First, I wouldn't take the fact that that dummied out mobile area has been translated to mean that they planned to bring it to the west. In other games, obvious debug areas and the like have also been translated. I always figured that the translators basically get a script in some text editor and they just have to replace it line by line, and it's more effort to check which things shouldn't be translated than to just translate them as they run into it. Of course that's followed by some actual testing to see if the translations make sense, and in that case the dummied out areas might not be tested properly, but the translation is there. I don't know about today's standards what with voice acting being a thing, but I can confirm that this is how things were done for a lot of older games. Most games wouldn't need full sections of it outright removed, so taking the script itself and translating that was usually the easier option. Then just go back and remove whatever part needed to be removed.
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Apr 24, 2016 20:54
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Carbon dioxide posted:First, I wouldn't take the fact that that dummied out mobile area has been translated to mean that they planned to bring it to the west. In other games, obvious debug areas and the like have also been translated. I always figured that the translators basically get a script in some text editor and they just have to replace it line by line, and it's more effort to check which things shouldn't be translated than to just translate them as they run into it. Of course that's followed by some actual testing to see if the translations make sense, and in that case the dummied out areas might not be tested properly, but the translation is there. If you ever play a game and see some odd wording that seems just a tad off, thats typically the cause - the original word has multiple meanings and the translator didn't pick quite the right one. QA and play-testing (hopefully) catches these, but it's not uncommon for stuff to slip through.
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Apr 24, 2016 21:13
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I wasted ages on Voltorb Flip to get a Dratini and some TMs for it when I first got to Goldenrod. Then I was promptly slaughtered by HGSS's damned lack of exp coupled with Dratini's high exp needed.
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Apr 24, 2016 21:29
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Arcade Rabbit posted:It is really cool how Nintendo never really drops their ideas, they just file them away for when they have better technology. This to the Global Trade, the Gamecube's failed 3D to the 3DS, the original Duck Hunt and similar games to the Wii, the GBA Cable to the WiiU. Its really cool looking back on things and seeing how the different ideas and concepts have evolved to work with the advancing technology. Haifisch posted:I wonder how much less divisive Voltorb Flip would be if they still let you buy the damned coins. As it is, you either have to get very good at it, resign yourself to grinding coins on the low levels, or give up and use a solver to make the grind go faster(but not faster than just buying coins would be).
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Apr 24, 2016 21:41
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Wasn't the reasoning behind staying Cartridge based because it was "Harder to Pirate"? Which is obviously not true, given the ROMs and ISOs that exist of older Nintendo games.
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Apr 25, 2016 04:38
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Silegna posted:Wasn't the reasoning behind staying Cartridge based because it was "Harder to Pirate"? No I believe in that case it was because Nintendo wanted to reduce load times. Unfortunately, since cartridges were much smaller than CDs in terms of how much space they could hold (and the N64 itself being a nightmare to develop for) that led to 3rd parties fleeing to Sony during the N64 era.
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Apr 25, 2016 04:42
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Now, I DO believe that deterring piracy was the reason the Gamecube used proprietary discs instead of DVDs.
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Apr 25, 2016 04:46
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Waffleman_ posted:Now, I DO believe that deterring piracy was the reason the Gamecube used proprietary discs instead of DVDs. Same reason Sega went with GD-ROMs with the Dreamcast. Too bad they included a highly exploitable way to run code off CDs that completely negated it. All thanks to a silly deal with a music label that made them support running bonus material off retail CDs (which left them with no way to lock out unauthorized discs).
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Apr 25, 2016 05:29
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Silegna posted:Wasn't the reasoning behind staying Cartridge based because it was "Harder to Pirate"? To be fair, when you're talking about piracy prevention, it's really aimed at delaying pirates rather than stopping it forever. A huge percentage of sales happen in the first week/month. So if you can hold off piracy for six weeks, you're already way ahead even if it does eventually get cracked. I have no idea how well Nintendo's cartridge based system worked on that front though.
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Apr 25, 2016 11:44
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Some anti-piracy measures are quite inventive and funny. Take Earthbound, which had like 5 layers, and each layer would only become obvious after playing through another part of the game, the final layer only triggering during the final boss fight (and DELETING YOUR SAVE). http://media.earthboundcentral.com/2011/05/earthbounds-copy-protection/index.html Or certain later gen pokemon games, where in pirated games you'd simply not get any experience (or barely any), which made it very annoying if not impossible to play. Of course, all of these measures have been circumvented later on.
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Apr 25, 2016 17:14
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Was it true that the SS Anne sailor would tell you to "buy this game or DIE"? E: My favourite one is the original Megaman X which throws you back to the intro stage every time you shoot something that blocks bullets - but you keep your weapons. It's pretty cool to be able to revisit that level and try out your new guns, see how it makes things easier and I don't think they ever made it a real feature until what, X8? Dabir fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Apr 25, 2016 |
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Apr 25, 2016 17:19
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Dabir posted:Was it true that the SS Anne sailor would tell you to "buy this game or DIE"? Yes. If you were playing a hacked version of the game. It's not in the actual game at all.
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Apr 25, 2016 17:27
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Getting a Gen 5 game to work in an emulator is a pain. No EXP unless you patch out the antipiracy program. Good luck FINDING that patch.
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Apr 25, 2016 22:11
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I've not played XY or ORAS, so I don't know if it's changed, but I really don't like the fact that you're still limited to 7 characters for your name, while you have 10 characters available for your Pokémon names. I always have to shorten my name to Khel.  Silegna posted:Getting a Gen 5 game to work in an emulator is a pain. No EXP unless you patch out the antipiracy program. You don't need a patch. The patched versions have been the standard since shortly after the patch was found/made. You can easily play any game from Red/Blue through Black 2/White 2 on emulators with no problems.
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Apr 25, 2016 22:53
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Kheldarn posted:I've not played XY or ORAS, so I don't know if it's changed, but I really don't like the fact that you're still limited to 7 characters for your name, while you have 10 characters available for your Pokémon names. I always have to shorten my name to Khel. Huh. I just guess I'm not looking in the right places. And I get angry about the character limit too.
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Apr 25, 2016 23:03
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Waffleman_ posted:Now, I DO believe that deterring piracy was the reason the Gamecube used proprietary discs instead of DVDs.
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Apr 25, 2016 23:11
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Kheldarn posted:I've not played XY or ORAS, so I don't know if it's changed, but I really don't like the fact that you're still limited to 7 characters for your name, while you have 10 characters available for your Pokémon names. I always have to shorten my name to Khel. This has, in fact, changed. I believe you now have 12 spaces available for both Trainer and Pokémon names.
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Apr 25, 2016 23:24
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Carbon dioxide posted:Or certain later gen pokemon games, where in pirated games you'd simply not get any experience (or barely any), which made it very annoying if not impossible to play. I still remember when Serebii was doing his reports on BW, he called the fact that he wasn't gaining EXP a tutorial mode, before trying to figure out why he wasn't getting EXP well past the first route.
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Apr 26, 2016 08:28
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AradoBalanga posted:This was also allegedly one of the reasons Nintendo opted to region-lock the 3DS, since the DS was one of the most pirated platforms in recent memory. The other main alleged reason was to clamp down on Japanese gamers reverse importing games because Japan has stupidly expensive prices for games compared to international prices. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, people have found ways to get around that roadblock with homebrew apps. Unfortunately my rear end, they've probably lost more money with me than gained it since games like SRW UX that I was going to buy I just didn't bother with. I wasn't buying an entire 2nd 3DS just so I could play imports.
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Apr 26, 2016 09:57
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Onmi posted:Unfortunately my rear end, they've probably lost more money with me than gained it since games like SRW UX that I was going to buy I just didn't bother with. I wasn't buying an entire 2nd 3DS just so I could play imports.
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Apr 26, 2016 22:08
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MagusofStars posted:Correct. Just giving someone a script is how virtually all text only games were translated prior to the advent of voiced characters (even now, they'll often still do it for things like readable books or other pure text things). In fact, it was typical that the translator didn't even play the game or might not even be a gamer period. If this kind of thing interests you, then say goodbye to the rest of your day.
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Apr 27, 2016 23:14
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Update 14: Park and Ride Oh hey, it's that time to evolve some stuff we have. Here's the list  HP: 85 | ATK: 76 | DEF: 64 | SP.ATK: 45 | SP.DEF: 55 | SPD: 90 | TOTAL: 415  #020: Furret HP: 55 | ATK: 35 | DEF: 50 | SP.ATK: 55 | SP.DEF: 110 | SPD: 85 | TOTAL: 390  #031: Ledian HP: 70 | ATK: 55 | DEF: 55 | SP.ATK: 80 | SP.DEF: 60 | SPD: 45 | TOTAL: 365  #054: Flaaffy HP: 55 | ATK: 45 | DEF: 50 | SP.ATK: 45 | SP.DEF: 65 | SPD: 80 | TOTAL: 340  #068: Skiploom         This is the state of our team as of this update. I'll be doing this after every gym battle or so, if I remember. So anyway, let's finally leave this drat city and go on to new adventures. Route 35 "a favor?" : Can you take this POKéMON with MAIL to my friend? Hmm, Route 31 is quite a ways back, but maybe we'll be going back there fairly soon, who knows?  : My pal's a chubby guy who snoozes all the time. You'll recognize him right away!  : ROUTE 31! Oh yeah, there was a weird tree brocking the road. I wonder if it's been cleared?  Say hi to Kenya. He'll be joining us for a few updates so we can deliver him to the fat man. Interesting letter, too, what could it mean???   New route means new trainers! Here's one now.    And there they go.    : I found a useful item shopping, so I bought it with your money. Sorry!Huh, we were that close to another item. Neat.  "them."Guuuurl, they just look so pretty, right? I love how they compliment my jacket.   "stuff!"Ah, a fire type trainer.    HP: 70 | ATK: 20 | DEF: 50 | SP.ATK: 20 | SP.DEF: 50 | SPD: 40 | TOTAL: 250  #130: Marill  Hah, I need your money and experience and your crumbling relationship means nothing to me.  "girlfriend..."  "rely on him."    HP: 35 | ATK: 55 | DEF: 30 | SP.ATK: 50 | SP.DEF: 40 | SPD: 90 | TOTAL: 300  #022: Pikachu  Ahh, nostalgia. Anyway, Double Team (Kage Bunshin: Shadow Divide) is a Normal status move with 15PP that raises your evasion by one stage. It's either not too useful, or the most aggrevating move ever, your choice.   And the team overview is already outdated. That was quick.    "my boyfriend."Mine would say the same, IF I HAD ONE.   Man, remember when we used to learn via the radio? Good times.    Brawn beats brain, nerd.  "of wild POKéMON."The March/Lullaby songs aren't too helpful, since the encounter rate is usually high enough that March is unnecessary, while repels are much better and more consistent than Lullaby.   Two spinners, what fun, we'll go left first.    HP: 65 | ATK: 95 | DEF: 57 | SP.ATK: 100 | SP.DEF: 85 | SPD: 93 | TOTAL: 495  #151: Magmar  Some very good experience for Jeremiah and a bad time for Churchill. It's crazy how early it gets Fire Punch.    "wild POKéMON."Hopefully we'll see more Firebreathers. Magmar have a great exp yield. We'll talk about that after this update, why not?   Oh be-HAVE.    Good work team.  "prize POKéMON." : But your prowess electrified me! You're the best I've ever battled! Huh? You're the one who saved all the SLOWPOKE? Well, no wonder I couldn't beat you!: Would it be OK to get your number? I don't want to miss anything you do from now on!I like the idea that Marina mentions that she saved all the Slowpoke to basically every person she meets.  : Wow! Gee, thanks! Now I can call you anytime, whether anything's up for not. You know, just to chat!Girls don't like over eager guys friend.   Well yeah, cause there's policemen that try to fight me.    "own ways.": But don't overdo it, OK?  "appear there."Before we head into the building, there's still more to explore on the right. Surprise, it's another trainer.   Apparently roasted bugs are delicious.      : Do you get the feeling that there are more rare POKéMON around? I'm positive there are, so I look all the time. If I find one, I want to share the good news with everyone I know.  : If I spot any awesome POKéMON, I'll be sure to give you a call!  Eventually I'll get around to encountering those rare Pokemon, but can't do much until they call me and I need to not be on the other side of the drat region when it happens.   Oh goody, the Rollout TM. Wonderful. We also have this guy here, let's talk to him.   Gah! He was a trainer! I think he's the only one in the game to do that, though they do that more often in future generations.     : Try catching them with KURT's FAST BALL. Whenever I find a WHT APRICORN, I take it to KURT. He turns it into a custom BALL.Hahaha, if you only knew what you were talking about man...    HP: 60 | ATK: 40 | DEF: 80 | SP.ATK: 60 | SP.DEF: 45 | SPD: 40 | TOTAL: 325  #104: Exeggcute   And here's the last unique Pokemon we can find via Headbutt. We can't find Exeggcute anywhere else and now we have no need of Headbutt, except that it's still a really good early move.   There's an interesting event we could do today, but we'll save that for next update. For now, let's enter... National Park  If you thought the music in this game was good before, baby you ain't heard nothing yet. While most of my Top 10 consists of ORAS battle music, some of my favourite tracks are from Gen 2.   : ...Oops, I have to quit thinking like a teacher all the time. You must be a POKéMON trainer. Since you're working so hard, I want you to have this.  : Sometimes it will strike first during battle.Now we're getting to the good hold items. It gives the user a 20% chance of going first in its priority bracket. Very useful for slow Pokemon, but it is of course unreliable. Over the course of a game, however, it'll proc a lot of times, so I'll probably give it to Jeremiah, or a future slow team member.    : Let me tell you how proud my darlings make me.   There's a few trainers in this park, out by the grass. The only thing to really note about Pokefans is their Pokemon will always hold a Berry.    Hmm, maybe one day you'll get lucky.   : There are still lots of thing we don't know. But I know more than you do!  No. No you do not.    : For example... There are 50 kinds of TMs. Traded POKéMON level up faster.: Your knowledge is impressive! I like that! Want to trade battle tips? I'll phone you if I get good info.  While I don't really benefit from having your number, might as well. By this point, I'm cycling out numbers I don't need anymore, since I only realistically have 7 free slots.   The main park is shaped like a Pokeball and while the grass here is different and even unique, it has the same encounter rates as the normal looking grass.   And there's even a few new Pokemon we can catch here.    Her partner is around here too, but I can fight some trainers while I look.   ...you talkin' to me?    It wouldn't have been very long until we saw a Cubone anyway. As a result, we're boned.    "because I'm cute!"What can I say, I appreciate your hair colour.   "dislike us." : That's what being a FAN is about.   HP: 60 | ATK: 90 | DEF: 55 | SP.ATK: 90 | SP.DEF: 80 | SPD: 100 | TOTAL: 475  #023: Raichu   Goddamn that thing is frail (ignoring the fact that I was seven levels higher than it).   Well can't argue with you there.    Before we grab the last couple Pokemon, we can learn all about the wonder that is the GB Printer. Okay, actually, there's a gap in the fence we can go through.   There's quite a bit of walking, but there's a couple nice items around.   Down this stupidly long gap in the trees is the TM for Dig (Ana wo Horu: Dig Hole), which is a Ground move with 60BP, 10PP and 100% accuracy. It's taken a big hit since last gen, so there's not much point teaching it to a Pokemon, unless you want its effect of teleporting you to the entrance of the cave you're currently in.   Alright, that's more or less everything, so let's grab the last two Pokemon here.   Time to join your sister/partner/heterosexual other in cyberspace.    Good to finally have these two obtained.   HP: 30 | ATK: 30 | DEF: 30 | SP.ATK: 30 | SP.DEF: 30 | SPD: 30 | TOTAL: 180  #102: Sunkern  Yep, that's Mega Drain (Mega Dorein), a Grass move with 40BP, 10PP and 100% accuracy that heals you for 50% of the damage done to the opponent. I mean, it's better than Absorb, but not by much...  With how many we still have left to catch, this is by far the last heart attack.    And there we have it, our fourth team member! Ahahaha... yeah, I'm kidding. I have to be.   Conveniently, there's PCs very close by and we'll need them, cause depositing a Pokemon now fully heals them. We'll be using Jeremiah a lot at the start of the next update, so it's very helpful.  Cause next time, we'll be participating in this Bug Catching Contest we've heard so much about. Crosspeice fucked around with this message at 01:13 on May 4, 2016 |
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Apr 29, 2016 04:31
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| # ? Jun 7, 2024 17:42 |
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Sides Notes 10: Experience and Its Eight Thousand Formulae Wanna talk about how Pokemon gain experience and that? No? Well okay, but I'm gonna anyway... Every Pokemon has a set experience yield. Before Gen 5, this was a number between 20 (Magikarp) and 255 (Blissey) that is plugged into the much larger experience formula that we'll be going into later. Next, all Pokemon are divided into various experience groups that each have their own unique formula to determine how much experience a Pokemon needs to reach the next level. In Gen 1 and 2, there are four of these groups (Fast, Medium Fast, Medium Slow and Slow), whereas in Gen 3 on, there are 6 (the two new groups are Erratic and Fluctuating). To see how much you need to reach level 100, there's a nice graph here. The two new groups have some interesting properties, but we'll talk about them in a future LP maybe. First up, there are fairly simple formulae on how much a Pokemon in a certain group need to get to the next level. The formulae are as follows, in the order of Fast, Medium Fast, Medium Slow and Slow, with n being the current level.     The Fast formula is, indeed, the fastest, with only 800,000 points needed to get to level 100. The group consists of mostly Normal types. The Medium Fast is the simplest of the formulae, needing 1 million, however, it's actually a slower growth than Medium Slow until around level 67. That's maths for ya. This is the most common experience group. Medium Slow has one hell of an equation and requires 1,059,860 exp to reach level 100 and is the second largest group. Now because of its funky equation, the inflection point (where the graph line has a curving point) is at level 4, instead of level 0, it means you need more experience to get from level 2 to 3, then it does to get from 4 to 5. This also causes the experience underflow glitch in Gens 1 and 2, which we'll talk about in a moment. Finally, the Slow group requires 1,250,000 exp to reach level 100 and contains a lot of rare and powerful Pokemon. So, the experience underflow glitch is because of how the graph works for level 1 Medium Slow Pokemon. They technically have -54 experience, but since the game doesn't recognize negative numbers, it instead interprets it as 16,777,162 instead. So when a Pokemon in that situation gains 53 experience or less in a battle, it immediately jumps from level 1 to 100 as the game determines its level based on how much experience it has. Obviously, you can't find any legitimate level 1 Pokemon in these games, so that explains why this glitch wasn't found. It was fixed in Gen 3, since those games use a lookup table instead of a formula. Alright, it's time to show how the game works out how much experience you get when you beat a Pokemon. The formula used is in every generation but 5, which instead scales things depending on the levels of the Pokemon in battle. However, out of the notation used, f, p and v are not factors in Gen 2, since those bonuses (Pass Powers, Amie Affection and Past Evolution Level) don't exist yet.  OKAY, let's break this bad boy down. First, a is equal to 1 if the fainted Pokemon is wild, or 1.5 if the fainted Pokemon is owned by a trainer; t is 1 if the winning Pokemon has the same OT as the trainer, or 1.5 if it was obtained in a trade (and thus has a different OT); b is the base experience yield that changes depending on the species; e is 1.5 if the Pokemon is holding a Lucky Egg, or 1 otherwise and L is the level of the fainted Pokemon. The last notation, s, relates to the amount of Pokemon that battled against the fainted Pokemon, which also relates to the Exp. Share, or the Exp. All. With the Exp. All, if it's not in the Bag, then s equals the number of Pokemon that participated in battle and did not faint. If it is in the Bag, then s is twice the number of Pokemon that participated and have not fainted in order to calculate the experience of the Pokemon that participated. Take that number and multiply it by the number of Pokemon in the party when calculating what the Exp. All gives out. Similarly, the Exp. Share does the same function, but the Pokemon holding the item gains half of the experience regardless, or split between how many in the party are holding an Exp. Share, as you can obtain multiple. Fun fact, in Gen 1, if you beat a level 2 Pokemon with the Exp. All, the experience given to the rest of the party will be 0. Cool. Phew, that was a lot of words and mathematics, but even something as seemingly simple as getting experience in battle can be a pretty long process with a number of factors. It does show how much effort Game Freak puts into this sort of stuff. Crosspeice fucked around with this message at 06:52 on May 1, 2016 |
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Apr 29, 2016 04:33
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