What if weather, but too much? Let's Play Pokemon Emerald

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > What if weather, but too much? Let's Play Pokemon Emerald

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

I remember people being real angry about Fire Red and Leaf Green being ways to get people to pay Nintendo more money just to catch 'em all (because those were gen 3 compatible).

It turns out to have been true, sorta...

The virtual console allows you to extract pokemon from the virtual console versions of Gen 1 and send them to modern games, showing that with enough effort, Nintendo could've found a way to make Gen 1/2 compatible with Gen 3 back then. But they didn't. They remade the games instead.

But it's a bit too long ago to still be pissed about that.

The funny thing is, because every game changes what moves every pokemon learns naturally, the virtual console releases allow people to have pokemon with moves they could ONLY have in gen 1 in modern games now. It expended the competitive pokemon scene a bit by 'allowing' moves that have been illegal on the latest gen ever since the release of Ruby and Sapphire.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2018 20:50

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 07:19

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Solumin posted:

I have several thousand hours sunk into RSE. (they were released when I was a lonely young teenager, ok?) This gen has some of my favorite starter designs, and a lot of the new Pokemon are really cool. I'm really happy to see someone visiting it again.

Same, I really like this gen's music.

Also, what the hell is going on with the oldale slogan? "Oldale Town/Kotoki Town: Where things start off scare."

Crosspeice typoed that one. It is "Where things start off scarce".

# ¿ Feb 9, 2018 23:47

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

AlphaKretin posted:

Sapphire was my introduction to the series, so Gen 3 has a dear place in my heart.

Ah, kids these days.

Lemme tell you, when I was young, Gen 1 was all we had, and we ENJOYED that pixelated monochrome mess. :colbert:

# ¿ Feb 10, 2018 10:22

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Crosspeice posted:

Oh yeah, if you press Select, your hand turns yellow. This lets you pick up Pokemon without confirmation boxes, letting you move stuff about really quickly.

WHAT?

quote:

If you hold A while your hand is yellow, you can scroll over and select multiple Pokemon at a time, letting you move entire boxes in one go. Why yes that is amazing.

WHAT???

# ¿ Feb 11, 2018 00:22

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Hobgoblin2099 posted:

Why is he huffing and puffing? Asthma?

It's because he's been breathing that volcanic ash particulate for years now. That stuff is just as bad as asbestos. He's gonna die of a horrible lung disease soon, but he's the kind of person that goes "I've always lived here and I never had any problems so I don't see any reason to leave now." Buy his flutes while you still can, you might well be his last customer.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2018 23:07

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

There was the time early on in the anime where Team Rocket went all "but what if we use ALL THE STONES SIMULTANEOUSLY on an Eevee". But because they're incompetent fools, it never went beyond a daydream.

If I lived in the Pokemon World, I'd totally try that, for Science. I'd even raise and play and cuddle with the Eevee myself, if I have to. For Science.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2018 23:20

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Explopyro posted:

I'm glad you liked my suggestion for Pelipper This is looking like a solid contest team.

Now, for another of my weird obsessions in this game.

The Safari Zone Pokeblock mechanics are really weird. I see what they were trying to do, I think, sort of running with the "bait" concept from the Kanto safari zone and asking "what if we let you customise it?". I think it could've been a lot of fun. But there are so many hoops to jump through, and so many limitations (you have to make them in advance, and the Pokeblock Case has a maximum capacity of 40!) that I don't think anyone really ever used it.

I also don't think it was thoroughly quality tested, because a lot of things behave... strangely, even beyond the "escape factor bug". Bulbapedia's information isn't entirely correct either; I've been trying to work it out for a while (quite casually, and I still have a lot more data to gather, so I can't offer firm conclusions yet; if there's any interest, I can report back when I know more). I find it fascinating that this game's been out for so long and nobody seems to have concrete information on this mechanic; I've done a lot of googling and not found anything.

To make a long story short, it does seem at least to work as intended with single-flavour pokeblocks in the feeders (i.e., red/blue/pink/green/yellow). If you use one of those, it causes ~80% of the pokemon that appear to have a nature that likes that flavour (so, e.g., a red pokeblock will get natures that boost attack, Lonely/Brave/Adamant/Naughty). Contrary to what Bulbapedia claims, it doesn't restrict anything, and every nature is still capable of appearing (even those that dislike it).

Where it starts to get really bizarre is when using pokeblocks with more than one flavour. I haven't tested every combination yet, as there are a lot of possibilities and I'm trying to make some scripts to expedite collecting the data, so I have no firm conclusions yet. But, for instance, if you use a purple pokeblock with equal quantities spicy and dry... well, in my test I caught 420 pokemon and 342 of them were Mild, Rash or Quiet (and of those, 186 were Rash, which is another layer of strangeness). From the way it's supposed to behave, you'd expect Lonely, Naughty and Brave to be equally frequent, but they appeared no more often than any others. (There's not a simple explanation either; in some cases, such as berry blending, spicy can get negated by dry, but you get a similar result with a block that has equal spicy and sweet instead so it isn't that). I'd been hoping to just be able to test a few representative cases to figure out how it works, but every result has contradicted my expectations enough that I decided I have to do it exhaustively if I want to understand it. But it's tedious work and I have a tendency to procrastinate.

Long story short, if you want to use the feeders, stick to single-flavour pokeblocks. (It's also worth bringing either the Acro Bike or a pokemon knowing Sweet Scent, so you can trigger encounters without taking steps.) If you want good news, at least the feeders don't care how well-made the pokeblocks are, so you can phone it in with the minigame. Overall though, everstone breeding is a much easier method of getting a pokemon with the nature you want, and that works on everything (once you have access to Ditto, anyway) rather than just the small number of pokemon available in the safari zone.

I have also been unable to replicate the "escape factor bug" personally. I didn't try very hard, mind; that said, it's also hard to tell if it's working, because there's no way to waste an arbitrary number of turns and see that the thing is unable to flee (all you can do is throw balls and pray not to catch it). I seem to remember having tried this a while back, followed the strategy and still had the pokemon flee. But it's entirely possible I could've done it wrong, so let's not read too much into that.

First random thought: Maybe for the Feeder, it takes only the flavour of either the first or last berry that went into the pokeblock?

# ¿ Mar 28, 2018 07:02

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 07:19

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Revival herbs were in Gen 2, right? Did they heal fully there?

I wouldn't know because only EVIL PEOPLE who HATE THEIR POKEMON would ever use bitter medicine.

# ¿ May 14, 2018 20:01

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > What if weather, but too much? Let's Play Pokemon Emerald