[DubskiDude]

- 13 May 2016 15:30 #173572 You realize that these sidemods are being re-written by the same people making the core mod...?
Just because its not in the official mod doesn't mean that it is not apart of the final product. The point of side mods is to give people the option to add it or not. If its in the core mod then those features are forced into play...

No, I didn't realize, but is there a reason for those mods not being a part of the main product? If a developer would answer this question for clarification, I would appreciate it. I would also question whether or not it IS part of the final product, else I figure it would be part of the main Pixelmon package.

I'm also not looking for the perfect server. I'm only offering sensible alterations to the core package. I also only play singleplayer, so setting up a server doesn't matter that much to me personally, though I think my suggestions could better the server-side experience too.

As you use up the Quick Balls you throw, allow the opposing Pokémon to attack your Pokémon each time, and can't weaken the Pokémon while using this strategy, this exploit isn't particularly game-breaking. There is also another limiting factor if the opponent is fast enough that you can't run away reliably.

Not true. I'm going to assume that Pixelmon uses the Gen5 catch rate system; if not, let me know. But let's break down the numbers.

We'll take a level 70 Raikou for example. Using this Quick Ball strategy, I can enter a battle and throw a Quickball. According to Dragonflycave's catch rate calculator for Gen5, the one Quick Ball has a 5.239% chance of catching Raikou. If it fails, my Pokemon gets attacked. I then try to flee, and if that fails, I get attacked again. Rinse and repeat until I am able to flee. I can then reheal as needed and enter the battle once more to repeat the process.

Now we'll try with a level 70 Raikou with 10% or HP, and using Ultra Balls to catch it. At 10% or less HP, an Ultra Ball has a 5.994% chance to catch - less than 1% of a difference compared to a Quick Ball used on turn 1. If Raikou is Poisoned, Burned, or Paralyzed, the Ultra Ball's chance raises to 8.123%, and if Frozen or Asleep, it raises to 11.917%. But we must also consider the time and effort it takes to even get to this point, with Raikou attacking us back while we attempt to weaken it - therefore both methods involve Raikou attacking us. The Frozen and Asleep statuses are obviously temporary, too.

I would hypothesize that in the time it would take to get Raikou into the previous scenario of being weakened and status-inflicted, I would have been able to throw AT LEAST 3-4 Quick Balls, if not more. If I'm able to get off 4 Quick Balls in the time it takes to weaken Raikou legitimately, I would have already had a 19.36% of catching it. That's almost a one in five chance without having to legitimately fight Raikou. See how this is exploitable? The Quick Ball method also allows the player to attempt a catch even without a team capable of weakening Raikou. As long as the player has enough revives and Quick Balls, a catch is definitely possible, and having a functioning and very trained team wouldn't matter.

Revives are currently bugged on servers; this will be fixed in the next version. If you try on singleplayer for the time being, you'll see that right-clicking the air while holding one will bring up an interface to use it on a Pokémon.

I'm not sure about an interface... from what I saw, it was me holding out a Revive, and right-clicking would use it on the "selected" Pokemon shown at the left of the screen, which is hard to discern because the "selected" Pokemon only has a blue circle in the middle of its pokeball symbol (and sometimes that blue circle is only a half circle, and if the pokemon is fainted, no circle shows at all). I learned recently it works better than what I initially thought when starting this thread, but it still has its issues.

Boss Pokémon are still wild Pokémon, just at a higher level than your Pokémon. Therefore, they will continue to have random moves from their level-up movepools. Even if type advantages can be exploited, this is not necessarily a bad thing, and is not something that will always be possible.

Kind of unfortunate. But that brings up another point - Pokemon that have no damaging moves. Early game I caught a Flaaffy that knew no damaging moves, and so did my friend. I think there should be something in place to make sure that doesn't happen, because I don't believe that happens in the main games; that is, unless you're catching Pokemon like Magikarp. IF this move-checking system is possible, I think a boss algorithm derived from that should be made to make sure each boss has at least 2 damaging moves that are different types from each other (i.e. boss Gengar knowing Shadow Ball and Dark Pulse). Both of these methods, if possible, would help smooth out catching pokemon for your team so that they can fight right off the bat, and keeping bosses from being exploited and keep them challenging more consistently.

With the large number of items in Minecraft and the unaccounted high variance in spawn rates, a raw percentage of Pokémon drops is a horrible metric for an item's rarity. Several Pokémon that drop glowstone dust spawn commonly in common biomes, and you only need four glowstone dust to make a PC.

Fair enough. Though if every Pokemon Center had a PC like I had suggested earlier, then this point would be obsolete.

[Some Body]

- 13 May 2016 16:11 #173576

is there a reason for those mods not being a part of the main product?

Sidemods are not included as they are optional add-ons that not everyone will use. They also usually only have to be installed server-side for any player on the server to use them.

The Quick Ball method also allows the player to attempt a catch even without a team capable of weakening Raikou. As long as the player has enough revives and Quick Balls, a catch is definitely possible, and having a functioning and very trained team wouldn't matter.

Having an insufficiently trained team means that your Speed stats are low, and you'll fail to run frequently. Revives aren't exactly the cheapest items either, so if you're expending Revives on your weak Pokémon per Quick Ball attempt, the cost makes the technique less exploitable then you're making it. Things like Smoke Ball and Run Away can help, but the former requires luck with special drops, and the latter requires you to sacrifice a Pokémon to get a low-leveled Pokémon with Run Away in safely. This is not to mention that you can do this even more easily and cheaply in the games than in Pixelmon due to the existence of soft-resetting.

I'm not sure about an interface... from what I saw, it was me holding out a Revive, and right-clicking would use it on the "selected" Pokemon shown at the left of the screen, which is hard to discern because the "selected" Pokemon only has a blue circle in the middle of its pokeball symbol

My mistake; there is no interface. Regardless, the selection method that Pixelmon uses is something that players get used to pretty quickly, and you can just move the selector around a bit if you get confused.

But that brings up another point - Pokemon that have no damaging moves.

Pixelmon handles level-up moves Mystery Dungeon style, with random level-up moves being chosen rather than the four most recent ones. Despite what you think, it is also very possible for Pokémon in the games to have no damaging moves if their level-up movepools happen to line up in a certain way. The random moves method also sometimes allows you to get some earlier moves that may potentially be desirable, without having to use a move relearner.

As said before, I don't see the occasional easy boss Pokémon as a bad thing. They will already never be consistent simply because some Pokémon are stronger than others.

If you get a Pokémon with no attacking moves, TMs exist, and you can also just catch another Pokémon or use the classic bait-and-switch. Alternatively, the /teach command exists if you're in singleplayer, and many servers give easy access to move relearners in multiplayer.

That said, I could add a config setting to make starting moves be determined like the main series games do them.

[DubskiDude]

- 13 May 2016 17:04 #173578 Having an insufficiently trained team means that your Speed stats are low, and you'll fail to run frequently. Revives aren't exactly the cheapest items either, so if you're expending Revives on your weak Pokémon per Quick Ball attempt, the cost makes the technique less exploitable then you're making it. Things like Smoke Ball and Run Away can help, but the former requires luck with special drops, and the latter requires you to sacrifice a Pokémon to get a low-leveled Pokémon with Run Away in safely. This is not to mention that you can do this even more easily and cheaply in the games than in Pixelmon due to the existence of soft-resetting.

If there's no change to be had on the Quick Ball, then I'm certainly not losing any advantage. Quick Balls will always be my go-to method for legendaries, though, since they're the fastest and most convenient method I've found.

My mistake; there is no interface. Regardless, the selection method that Pixelmon uses is something that players get used to pretty quickly, and you can just move the selector around a bit if you get confused.

I've had it several times where my team gets wiped out and there is literally no way to tell which is the selected pokemon, since the red circle that signifies fainting completely covers up the symbol that shows the selected pokemon, and I can't send one out physically to revive it. Its aggravating when I've flown far from a pokemon center, get trashed by an over-leveled wild pokemon, and have to waste a revive simply to figure out which pokemon is currently being selected on my menu. This definitely needs fixing. Possibly put the "selected" symbol AROUND the pokeball instead of inside it?

Pixelmon handles level-up moves Mystery Dungeon style, with random level-up moves being chosen rather than the four most recent ones. Despite what you think, it is also very possible for Pokémon in the games to have no damaging moves if their level-up movepools happen to line up in a certain way. The random moves method also sometimes allows you to get some earlier moves that may potentially be desirable, without having to use a move relearner.

If it does happen, I've never seen it (aside from the obvious Magikarp/Hoppip/etc). The random move algorithm is certainly useful in regards to getting earlier moves, but there's still the issue of catching a pokemon and having it be helpless in a fight right off the bat.

As said before, I don't see the occasional easy boss Pokémon as a bad thing. They will already never be consistent simply because some Pokémon are stronger than others.

I figure that's what the color-coding is for - to signify difficulty. The Gengar I killed (because it Struggled itself to death) was a red boss on top of one of those spooky towers. That didn't seem like a fair win to me at all. It was my only course of action, though, since my Pidgeot was my last pokemon and it only knew Tackle (pointing back to those random move algorithms) and I couldn't run from the battle.

If you get a Pokémon with no attacking moves, TMs exist, and you can also just catch another Pokémon or use the classic bait-and-switch. Alternatively, the /teach command exists if you're in singleplayer, and many servers give easy access to move relearners in multiplayer.

They do exist, but I don't want to waste my TMs on Pokemon that only exist on my team to fly, dig, etc. Bait-and-switch doesn't work very well for, say, my level 44 Pidgeot I caught during mid-game, or the Flaaffy I caught during early game. This goes back to the whole level-scaling problem. I didn't want to level up Flaaffy because it's a pain to find pokemon leveled low enough for me to kill, and I didn't want to grind on Pidgeot because he was already such a high level and it would take forever. Does /teach let you teach a pokemon any move? If so, that's kind of cheating, isn't it? Plus I don't play on servers. Though I do think move relearners should be in vanilla, definitely.

That said, I could add a config setting to make starting moves be determined like the main series games do them.

I would definitely recommend that. This would iron out those problems pretty quickly, combined with move relearners.