PvE vs PvP Pokemon

[xEtownbeatdown]

So I was thinking today how improperly the PvE aspect of Pokemon actually prepares you for PvP. Watching competitive matches shows just how much of the game changes once you've entered the end-game and start considering battling other people. I know, there are NPC's you fight throughout the game that can't make choices like an actual person, but, its more so the mechanics of the battle that are completely different in PvP.

For one, throughout the entire campaign, you are prompted that "Trainer A is going to send in Pokemon A, will you switch Pokemon?" For someone that has never ventured out of the main game and into battling, they probably assume they are going to receive this same message when a trainer sends in a Pokemon. Strategically, this is a big factor in battling and obviously isn't included so the opposing trainer isn't given an edge. I'm curious how much of the game would change if being asked if you would like to switch during PvE would make? It develops your battling strategy in how to prepare for the change in battle based upon which Pokemon is next. While most, if not all, trainers do have type themes, some Pokemon with dual typings do make it mandatory for a switch-in. Just a thought.

Competitive movesets are really expected of the user to learn on their own. Sure, Smogon and other like websites are designed for you to help, but, the game never really discusses it. I think it could be useful to improve the competitive landscape if the game could offer a "preparing for competitive battling" tutorial. Some move sets like priority, switch initiative, status, Buffing and Debuffing are all incredibly important to competitive that really are rarely used in PvE. Double battles make large use of Wide-Guard, Protect, Substitute, moves that effect multiple pokemon like Surf or Earthquake etc. The point here is, for the common Pokemon player, I think some info on this inside the game could be beneficial for moving on past the Elite 4 and into the Pokemon Battle scene.

I may be entirely off in my thought process here but it's really just my opinion on how battling is treated in PvE vs PvP in Pokemon. I honestly think it would be a refreshing change to the game to include something to help the end-game part of Pokemon more than just collecting and trading. I'd love to hear your thoughts or opinions on this!

[Black117]

Honestly I do agree with what you say regarding how the player to environment settings in the main series Pokemon games actually prepares very little to some of the more competitive games around given how deep the Pokemon metagames (Smogon, Battle Spot, VGC) can be. To be honest, the TCPi/Game Freak have only started to acknowledge (or say) the existence of the competitive Pokemon communities and say that players should be looking to get perfect IVs in there battle-ready Pokemon with the release of XY and new beginners guides like the recent "strategy" on Pokemon.com. Back in the old generations of Pokemon, only a handful of people either knew or was active in the competitive scene. Most players learned how to EV train with sits like Gamefaqs, Smogon, Serebii, etc while the games like Emerald and Platinum has a significant difficult increase from the story mode to the Battle Frontier. Though it may sound a bit unfair comparing the story mode and BF together, if we are talking about the PVE in the main series Pokemon then yes Pokemon has done a poor job at it considering you have to look up to these sites like I did back then. Like seriously c'mon... you really think that a in-game team is able to make a serious run at the AIs at the Battle Tower who actually uses optimally trained Pokemon for their time?

At the same time, Pokemon advertises their game to the younger audiences so most of these kids don't even care about the true battle mechanics of the game unless they are curious. If we are looking for a better PVE , then its best to improve the quality of the in game story AIs and level progression. Game Freak practically killed this off when they released the obviously broke new experience system and the EXP Share as the improved Exp ALL from the Gen 1 games, except any player can easily now overlevel against the opposing gyms or boss/rival battles. I know people will say just turn the thing off but it doesn't really help the newcomers when it comes with competitive at all and they'll just assume having high level Pokemon is the "best way" to be competitive which we know isn't the case. I think if Game Freak/TCPi want to improve the PVE settings then its probably best to implement actual "level limits" based on the highest level Pokemon of the Gym Leader's "main" Pokemon, more "competitive/optimal sets" for AIs, diverse gym leaders even using Weather/Field changes, and possibly other potential changes.

Now probably the fan-made games (Reborn, Insurgence) are the best example of this as they game creators assume that these aren't just beginning trainers, and do have AI difficult spikes frequently than the main series counterpart games. However I do think that with the Pokemon World Championships getting larger and large along with more in game references to the these competitions (like having to face-off against more VGC player's teams on the PWT in BW2 and the random AI references in the Battle Resort) will they actually start focusing on the overall game difficulty so lets hope that's the case.

[evilsabre]

1st thing i do now when i start a pokemon game is change the battle format to so i don't get the option to switch. But in reality the main story can never really prepare you that well for competitive i think that should be more the job of the post game non story content like maison and frontier etc. for example a battle dome in the vgc doubles format with balanced vgc styled teams would be a very good way currently the maison just tries to counter your team or hax you out which also poorly prepares people.

the 3 things gamefreak really need to do to help prepare:

post game swaps from singles to primarily doubles which makes the game more fresh.

encourage battling trainers with the levels set at 50

make ai more about outplaying rather than countering pre battle (will take time but you have alot of data from battle spot etc of how people play and this is the change that will bring the biggest sense of satisfaction to post game content getting haxed out by ai using fissure etc is not fun as you can't improve vs that in a meaninful way you can get better at beating actualy vgc teams etc