SwSh About difficulty and art style of Sword/Shield

[Alola]

Ultra Necrozma is literally the poster child for why Pokemon can't get too hard though

Full move-sets for Rivals & Gym Leaders, smarter AI, and the occasional held item are no where near Ultra Necrozma's difficulty.

 

[godiego]

Full move-sets for Rivals & Gym Leaders, smarter AI, and the occasional held item are no where near Ultra Necrozma's difficulty.

no video game company is going to make serious investments in AI. Civilization and Fire Emblem, among numerous others, that are more dependent on AI don't. it's expensive and doesn't produce returns. they, like virtually anything else that does "easy" or "hard" simply ups stats. full move-sets is a scapegoat, especially if they're not even good movesets. battles are too short to produce anything out of having sufficient moves and on top of that, lest they're optimized you just make it a risk the AI fires off a bad move. you're kidding yourself if they'll actually do anything to improve difficulty. not even mentioning the fact that the series as a whole is still pretty braindead, no matter how hard you all want to try and convince yourselves that the older installments were significantly harder.

why not instead play a challenging game, then?

 

[Alola]

no video game company is going to make serious investments in AI. Civilization and Fire Emblem, among numerous others, that are more dependent on AI don't. it's expensive and doesn't produce returns. they, like virtually anything else that does "easy" or "hard" simply ups stats. full move-sets is a scapegoat, especially if they're not even good movesets. battles are too short to produce anything out of having sufficient moves and on top of that, lest they're optimized you just make it a risk the AI fires off a bad move. you're kidding yourself if they'll actually do anything to improve difficulty. not even mentioning the fact that the series as a whole is still pretty braindead, no matter how hard you all want to try and convince yourselves that the older installments were significantly harder.

The Battle Tower, Battle Frontier, Battle Subway, Battle Chateau, Battle Tree, etc. makes your entire point moot about AI investment, at least for Game Freak specifically. They're capable of increasing the AI level for general gameplay, despite the lack of credit you give them.

why not instead play a challenging game, then?

Because I don't solely play Pokémon for the challenge?

 

[godiego]

the battle facilities don't have that great of an AI either (even compared to Pokemon) and even aren't hard to boot lol

 

[Camille]

I don't care much for the art style, but I'm glad they didn't bring the chibi models back. I'd like them to change some of the flying models that were designed for Sky Battles, especially Xatu, Swellow and Skarmory.
As for difficulty, they should definitely bring back larger teams with full movesets and hold items. The Elite Four members should use 5 Pokemon each, and the final two Gym Leaders 4 or 5. The Pokemon used by Trainers should award more experience for taking them down than the wild ones again, since the change in S/M made grinding more tedious and didn't make much sense in-universe, as it is canon that Pokemon raised by Trainers are stronger than those in the wild.

 

[CynthiaLover]

As long as the hand-holding in these games aren't insanity provoking, like in SM, along with needless cutscenes explaining the hand-holding, then I think we'll be okay in terms of difficulty. If what they said is true, then this set of games will be a bit more tailored to competitive players, so they might up the challenges a bit more.

I do agree with @Camille above me, as a good way to increase the challenge levels is to flesh out opposing teams more. Generic trainers need to have at least 2-3, or at least in early game, with their rosters going up a few notches as the game progresses, and no less than 3 for Gym Leaders. again, the number going up in the later half. E4 should have at least 4-5 apiece, as they are some of the big shots, while the Champ has to, obviously, have a full team (without the glaring collective weaknesses and pushover Mons like Diantha had). Held items should be executed outside of things like a Sitrus Berry, especially with Gym Leaders, E4, Champ, and maybe even the generic Gym Trainers, just to prove that they're top of their class. And, as I said before in another thread, the ability to rematch trainers, who will get stronger over the course of the game, would be an excellent way to grind for EXP and cash, like in ORAS. Also, upping the AI's smarts wouldn't hurt, either, as the last time we had a really good AI was back in BW (or possibly even Platinum). They can keep the AI down for the early route runts, but crank it up over time, with the last few areas being pretty smart battlers. After all, by that point, even rookie players will have gotten the hang of things by that point, so giving the AI some extra brainpower by the later half would make for a welcome challenge.

That's my two cents on the subject. Would be really nice of GF did something like this for these games, as an actual challenge would be nice for a change.

 

[colours]

Difficulty in Pokemon games is always something I've had mixed feelings about. But I truly think difficulty options or no, making Pokemon "difficult" in practice just doesn't work.

What do I mean by this?

Not even in B2W2 was the difficulty implemented super well. You increased the intelligence of the AI and increase the levels and the IVs, and that's about it. But the big thing is this: there is absolutely nothing preventing the player from bruteforcing through the whole game by overly grinding, becoming overleveled and just steamrolling through everything. This fundamental "issue" (not really an issue but more like an aspect of Pokemon) is exactly why implementing difficulty modes won't work without making it frustrating and just flat-out not fun. There's a difference between making a game appropriately challenging, and then there's the kind of difficulty that isn't really fun that works against the player and ruins the whole experience. I feel like this is the kind of challenge people are looking for, which I don't see why this should be the case.

"but colours, Game Freak managed to make Battle Frontier/Battle Maison/etc difficult!"

But you see, this is glazing/ignoring over the restrictions in place at those institutions. Such as: you cannot have duplicate items, you can only have three Pokemon at a time, you can't use Potions, etc. All of that combined with the increase in the AI's intelligence and the fact that your level is equivalent to theirs makes for a much more challenging experience overall. But this can't be applied throughout the whole game as that would be terrible level scaling.

So how would proper difficulty mechanics work in Pokemon?

As I said before, the truth is: it doesn't, to an extent. Game Freak already tried this approach with Totem Pokemon and even gave them stat boosts and competitive movesets to try and make it more challenging to the player. But as long as you knew what you were doing (which applies to literally every boss fight in every RPG ever), and you were appropriately overleveled, they were never really all that hard. Heck, Totem Kommo-o, the final Totem Pokemon that was supposed to be the hardest, could be one-shotted by a Ribombee that you've managed to pick up on your journey. The Growlithe that you get on the first route in SM is pretty much fundamental to destroying Totem Lurantis, etc.

I guess making the AI more intelligent overall and having more "competitive" movesets (at least, for the case of Gym Leaders and the Elite Four) would alleviate some difficulty concerns, but that's not preventing you from sending (insert overleveled Pokemon here that has the type advantage) and just massacre everything.

The point being: it's a lot more difficult than it seems to implement proper difficulty mechanics in Pokemon without introducing team restrictions, which is why Nuzlockes are a thing.

 

[BlueWaves]

Am I the only one who is kind of disappointed Ohmori is directing these games? I was really looking forward to the work of the young staff and see what they could create in contrast to older staff of GF did, but with Ohmori directing, what was even the point? Someone who’s an older staff of GF is still directing the games, so he’ll probably push old ideas while rejecting new ideas. I wanted to see an original work of GF with the younger staff ( Don’t count USM because they were based on SM) with little to no influence from old staff.

Difficulty in Pokemon games is always something I've had mixed feelings about. But I truly think difficulty options or no, making Pokemon "difficult" in practice just doesn't work.

What do I mean by this?

Not even in B2W2 was the difficulty implemented super well. You increased the intelligence of the AI and increase the levels and the IVs, and that's about it. But the big thing is this: there is absolutely nothing preventing the player from bruteforcing through the whole game by overly grinding, becoming overleveled and just steamrolling through everything. This fundamental "issue" (not really an issue but more like an aspect of Pokemon) is exactly why implementing difficulty modes won't work without making it frustrating and just flat-out not fun. There's a difference between making a game appropriately challenging, and then there's the kind of difficulty that isn't really fun that works against the player and ruins the whole experience. I feel like this is the kind of challenge people are looking for, which I don't see why this should be the case.

"but colours, Game Freak managed to make Battle Frontier/Battle Maison/etc difficult!"

But you see, this is glazing/ignoring over the restrictions in place at those institutions. Such as: you cannot have duplicate items, you can only have three Pokemon at a time, you can't use Potions, etc. All of that combined with the increase in the AI's intelligence and the fact that your level is equivalent to theirs makes for a much more challenging experience overall. But this can't be applied throughout the whole game as that would be terrible level scaling.

So how would proper difficulty mechanics work in Pokemon?

As I said before, the truth is: it doesn't, to an extent. Game Freak already tried this approach with Totem Pokemon and even gave them stat boosts and competitive movesets to try and make it more challenging to the player. But as long as you knew what you were doing (which applies to literally every boss fight in every RPG ever), and you were appropriately overleveled, they were never really all that hard. Heck, Totem Kommo-o, the final Totem Pokemon that was supposed to be the hardest, could be one-shotted by a Ribombee that you've managed to pick up on your journey. The Growlithe that you get on the first route in SM is pretty much fundamental to destroying Totem Lurantis, etc.

I guess making the AI more intelligent overall and having more "competitive" movesets (at least, for the case of Gym Leaders and the Elite Four) would alleviate some difficulty concerns, but that's not preventing you from sending (insert overleveled Pokemon here that has the type advantage) and just massacre everything.

The point being: it's a lot more difficult than it seems to implement proper difficulty mechanics in Pokemon without introducing team restrictions, which is why Nuzlockes are a thing.

Not to mention that difficulty was horribly executed in BW2. First you had the beat the game to unlock the difficulty ( What's worse is that Pokemon doesn't have any option for second save files- if you want to play again, you have to delete your save file and start all over. ) Second, difficulty was version exclusive- Black 2 players could only have challenge mode, while White 2 players could have only easy mode, meaning if you wanted to play on challenge mode on White 2, you needed someone from Black 2 to unlock it, who had already beaten the game. What!?

 

[techitisJ]

I guess everyone has their own opinions with the art style. I personally think they look great but I understand if you don't like 'em as much.

I do hope we get a difficulty setting for these games though. I don't see it happening too much, but it has been something fans have been demanding back and they have mentioned they wanted to make this game great for old and new players. So maybe. While I personally won't be too bothered if we don't get it because I prefer catching all the new different Pokemon and learning about them, and the story of the games, rather than the battling, I know a lot of people do really want this so I hope we will see some difficulty settings for the people who want a challenge.

 

[Lone_Garurumon]

I really don't care about the artstyle either way if I'm gonna be honest, aside from the fact that the starters loom weirdly fakemon-y. Not sure why, but they just have that "this looks fanmade quality" to them. Not sure if that's good or bad at this point.

Difficulty in Pokemon games is always something I've had mixed feelings about. But I truly think difficulty options or no, making Pokemon "difficult" in practice just doesn't work.

What do I mean by this?

Not even in B2W2 was the difficulty implemented super well. You increased the intelligence of the AI and increase the levels and the IVs, and that's about it. But the big thing is this: there is absolutely nothing preventing the player from bruteforcing through the whole game by overly grinding, becoming overleveled and just steamrolling through everything. This fundamental "issue" (not really an issue but more like an aspect of Pokemon) is exactly why implementing difficulty modes won't work without making it frustrating and just flat-out not fun. There's a difference between making a game appropriately challenging, and then there's the kind of difficulty that isn't really fun that works against the player and ruins the whole experience. I feel like this is the kind of challenge people are looking for, which I don't see why this should be the case.

"but colours, Game Freak managed to make Battle Frontier/Battle Maison/etc difficult!"

But you see, this is glazing/ignoring over the restrictions in place at those institutions. Such as: you cannot have duplicate items, you can only have three Pokemon at a time, you can't use Potions, etc. All of that combined with the increase in the AI's intelligence and the fact that your level is equivalent to theirs makes for a much more challenging experience overall. But this can't be applied throughout the whole game as that would be terrible level scaling.

So how would proper difficulty mechanics work in Pokemon?

As I said before, the truth is: it doesn't, to an extent. Game Freak already tried this approach with Totem Pokemon and even gave them stat boosts and competitive movesets to try and make it more challenging to the player. But as long as you knew what you were doing (which applies to literally every boss fight in every RPG ever), and you were appropriately overleveled, they were never really all that hard. Heck, Totem Kommo-o, the final Totem Pokemon that was supposed to be the hardest, could be one-shotted by a Ribombee that you've managed to pick up on your journey. The Growlithe that you get on the first route in SM is pretty much fundamental to destroying Totem Lurantis, etc.

I guess making the AI more intelligent overall and having more "competitive" movesets (at least, for the case of Gym Leaders and the Elite Four) would alleviate some difficulty concerns, but that's not preventing you from sending (insert overleveled Pokemon here that has the type advantage) and just massacre everything.

The point being: it's a lot more difficult than it seems to implement proper difficulty mechanics in Pokemon without introducing team restrictions, which is why Nuzlockes are a thing.

Let's be honest, every stat-based game has this problem to some extent. Any game with increasing stats can be brute-forced if you take long enough to try. You don't need to go nuts with giving the opponent huge levels or always scale them to be 5 levels above you or whatever either. All they need is decent, roughly competitive level set-ups designed to play to their strengths and counter their weaknesses. Fighting type Gym? The leader's Pokemon have some Dark and Rock type moves to counter people trying to cheese their way through with Ghost, Flying, or Psychic types. Combine this with the AI to switch Pokemon as necessary to pull out the moves they need, held items, and a decently sized team relative to your point in the story with a proper levelling curve to account for the exploration the player's likely to be doing, and you're golden.

I feel like the most important points for all of this though are: at least 3 distinct settings which play with team composition and levels, And DYNAMIC DIFFICULTY. If the player ever feels like the game is too easy or hard for them, let them go into the options, and freely change around their difficulty to their leisure. So many games these days offer dynamic difficulty you can change during gameplay, and the system is so helpful for anyone to be able to use, that I honestly feel like there's no excuse not to put these in your game to some extent.

People of all ages and skill levels play Pokemon, and simple difficulty settings like this help make sure everyone can get the most out of whatever experience they're looking for.

 

[colours]

Let's be honest, every stat-based game has this problem to some extent. Any game with increasing stats can be brute-forced if you take long enough to try. You don't need to go nuts with giving the opponent huge levels or always scale them to be 5 levels above you or whatever either. All they need is decent, roughly competitive level set-ups designed to play to their strengths and counter their weaknesses. Fighting type Gym? The leader's Pokemon have some Dark and Rock type moves to counter people trying to cheese their way through with Ghost, Flying, or Psychic types. Combine this with the AI to switch Pokemon as necessary to pull out the moves they need, held items, and a decently sized team relative to your point in the story with a proper levelling curve to account for the exploration the player's likely to be doing, and you're golden.

I feel like the most important points for all of this though are: at least 3 distinct settings which play with team composition and levels, And DYNAMIC DIFFICULTY. If the player ever feels like the game is too easy or hard for them, let them go into the options, and freely change around their difficulty to their leisure. So many games these days offer dynamic difficulty you can change during gameplay, and the system is so helpful for anyone to be able to use, that I honestly feel like there's no excuse not to put these in your game to some extent.

People of all ages and skill levels play Pokemon, and simple difficulty settings like this help make sure everyone can get the most out of whatever experience they're looking for.

You're right, and that's exactly the thing though: it doesn't matter what "competitive" set-ups the Gym Leaders may or may not have. At the end of the day, they will have a ceiling to how high their level would be, and all the player would have to do is grind past that level and obliterate them. Take the first Gym Leader of most Pokemon games for example: they usually top out at level...11-12 or so (let's estimate here because that's easier). All you'd have to do is have the patience to grind to ~15/16 (this isn't particularly difficult to do), and depending on if you have the type advantage, just cheese the Gym Leader entirely. It'll still be "easy" regardless of difficulty options set.

What separates Pokemon from some other RPGs is that Game Freak doesn't have the freedom to artificially inflate Pokemon's stats for the sake of difficulty. How Pokemon works is that if you're at a certain level, your stats must be at a certain point. So you can always grind past that level and make quick work of anyone in the whole game.

The more that I think about it though, there is one way that difficulty would work: add EVs and IVs where appropriate to the opponent's Pokemon, and allow Gym Leaders/The Elite Four to give their Pokemon the advantage by giving them X-Attack/X-Sp. Attack/X-Speed/whatever. Doing this, depending on the Pokemon, would allow the Gym Leader/E4 to be on at least somewhat even footing with the player even if the player is higher level.

The big problem with this is that it'll be a wasted turn so you can just use that turn to like.... lower their stats and use status effects, therefore making that turn pointless, but hey.

This is why I've always been a huge fan of how Totem Pokemon worked in concept. Game Freak introduced a boss-type Pokemon with boosted stats and competitive moves designed to be a challenge. Whether they actually do become a challenge is a different thing entirely, but I massively prefer this approach towards standard Trainer matches because there's more room to work with here to create a challenge for the player.

 

[Lone_Garurumon]

The more that I think about it though, there is one way that difficulty would work: add EVs and IVs where appropriate to the opponent's Pokemon

I mean, they actually used to do this. Not sure if they still do. Cynthia's team was practically all ready for competitive with good IVs, EVs, and Natures.

 

[godiego]

I mean, they actually used to do this. Not sure if they still do. Cynthia's team was practically all ready for competitive with good IVs, EVs, and Natures.

they still do. the general break down is that generic AI trainers get 0 or 15 IVs depending on like Lass vs. Dragon Tamers and Ace Trainers. all generic trainers will use the last four moves that pokemon can learn. Gym Leaders and Rival have 20 IVs, Elite 4 have 25 IVs, and Champion has 30. Evil leader usually falls in between Gyms and Elite 4. SM changed it some with EVs being included and having a bit more variation in the 'formula.' LGPE was LGPE.

 

[Almonds]

They could give us difficulty settings from the beginning. They did mention in the direct that they planned the games to be enjoyable for both new and returning players, so there's that possibility.

 

[Boss1708]

I think a simple solution is to just enjoy the main game campaign for what it is, without looking for "challenge" in it. Just enjoy the overworld, the plot, the exploration. Leave the challenge for the postgame.

And then in the postgame, challenge yourself at the game's Battle Facility. Of course, it could get repetitive if the game only has one Battle Facility (the Vanilla Battle Tower clone). That's why I mainly play games with multiple battle options (Emerald, HGSS, Platinum, BW2, etc).

This doesn't mean I wouldn't like a more challenging main campaign as well, but as previous posts explain, the way Pokémon works, you can always just level grind.

 

[Bolt Strike]

I think a simple solution is to just enjoy the main game campaign for what it is, without looking for "challenge" in it. Just enjoy the overworld, the plot, the exploration. Leave the challenge for the postgame.

And then in the postgame, challenge yourself at the game's Battle Facility. Of course, it could get repetitive if the game only has one Battle Facility (the Vanilla Battle Tower clone). That's why I mainly play games with multiple battle options (Emerald, HGSS, Platinum, BW2, etc).

This doesn't mean I wouldn't like a more challenging main campaign as well, but as previous posts explain, the way Pokémon works, you can always just level grind.

Not only that, but if you're looking for a challenge and can't get it until post game, it makes the main game feel like a chore, you have to slog through an experience you don't want to get to the part you're actually interested. Difficulty options is by far the best solution here.

Also, what exploration? Pokemon hasn't been very explorable since 4th gen.

 

[Boss1708]

Not only that, but if you're looking for a challenge and can't get it until post game, it makes the main game feel like a chore, you have to slog through an experience you don't want to get to the part you're actually interested. Difficulty options is by far the best solution here.

Also, what exploration? Pokemon hasn't been very explorable since 4th gen.

I mainly play Emerald, HGSS and BW2, so I have plenty of exploration.

But I agree about the newer gens.

 

[Lunala]

X and Y are excellent in terms of difficulty.

That was probably why it was the first Pokemon game I'd completed in years.

It's not terribly fun to never finish a game. It's better if the game is easy like X and Y, that way I can complete it and not lose interest.

 

[FlashFire926]

Am I the only one who is kind of disappointed Ohmori is directing these games? I was really looking forward to the work of the young staff and see what they could create in contrast to older staff of GF did, but with Ohmori directing, what was even the point? Someone who’s an older staff of GF is still directing the games, so he’ll probably push old ideas while rejecting new ideas. I wanted to see an original work of GF with the younger staff ( Don’t count USM because they were based on SM) with little to no influence from old staff.

I disagree. Sun/Moon were the core series to push the most the most new ideas in a good while (regardless of what anyone thinks of those new ideas). Going off that we should see that in Sword/Shield as well

 

[henrymidfields]

X and Y are excellent in terms of difficulty.

That was probably why it was the first Pokemon game I'd completed in years.

It's not terribly fun to never finish a game. It's better if the game is easy like X and Y, that way I can complete it and not lose interest.

Same here, actually. I actually lost interest in Sun and Moon, especially after playing RPGs that had a "Very Easy"option (Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4), or battles that generally be over quicker (Final Fantasy 13). Just because we're adults does not always mean we can afford a challenge - Some of us like me have actual commitments, you know?