How do you play Pokemon games?

[Reincarnatedwolfgod]

there people who play breed the perfect team, iv train them, to create the best possible competitive team for online battles. I have zero interest in have competitive Pokemon and I don't involve my self in online battling.
there poeple who take on a hardcore challenge such as the Nuzlocke Challenge [http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Nuzlocke_Challenge]. I don't do that.
some try to "catch 'em all!", all 719(?) Pokemon... I personally think those people are insane.

I just work towards beating the elite four. After words I do some post game stuff and stop playing when run out of interesting things to do.

with changes made to exp share for Pokemon x and y on words how played the game changed as well.

before x&y- I would have 6 pokemon as part of my main team and 1 maybe 2 extra Pokemon I could switch out for a when needed. Having a team big Pokemon all at a decent enough level that you can switch out at as needed is not viable with out a shit ton of grinding and a lot of time on your hands.

after x&y- If you only have 6 main pokemon that you use thought the game they will be op if you used the exp share the whole time. If want a small team while not wanting to be over ten levels higher then all your opponents in a battle use the exp share. On the filp side using it and makes having a large team of battle ready Pokemon viable. then I feel a pokemon getting a bit over leveled I switch them out with another Pokemon who needs the experience and levels more. I personally find making playing like that viable has made the game overall more interesting to play since I now a big verity of battle ready Pokemon to choose from.

I am playing omega ruby currently with the exp share and a big team of battle ready Pokemon to choose from. I could go back to previous generations of Pokemon games and play them but I would miss being able to play like this.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

The only thing I've never done in Pokemon games is do the Contests. It really doesn't seem that fun to me.

Other than that, I've done pretty much everything. I've done the Nuzlocke Challenge twice, and I've done type runs if I'm feeling kinky and/or bored.

The Battle Tower is alright. I only did it once just to see what it was like, and I stopped since I clearly wasn't as hardcore as the people in there.

Most of the time I just play it like normal. Finding a perfect balance of my team and I try to mix things up with every new game. In X, I tried out a grass type and I'm pretty much enjoying my Gogoat. If I feel like it I will "catch 'em all", but really I just built up my team and go after the Elite Four. After that then I just see what kind of stuff I can do after the "main game" is finished, and if I want to do another run.

Exp Share I tend not to use since it's broken most of the time. I know in X & Y it was broken as fuck, and I never had to level up most of my team. I even got into trouble a few times since my Pokemon were way over powered and couldn't be used inside a battle without them having a hissy fit and not cooperate. In the Ruby and Sapphire remakes it's decent again, but I use it every now and then if I'm in a grinding session.

 

[Dragonbums]

When I finish playing Pokemon I start EV/IV breeding and training up all over again. It's what kept up the longevity for me.

And now that contests are back into the foray I'm gonna play around with that as well.

 

[Scarim Coral]

These days (from White, Heartgold, X and Alpha Sapphire), I capture whatever Pokemon for my Pokedex while I breed the ones that will be part of my party (try to breed out the ideal nature most of the time depending if RNG is on my side). Once I beat the Elite 4 I pretty much stopped playing it and no, I don't take part in online battle.

Granted I have done these in the past which are a factor on my current play on Pokemon-

Diamond- I capture them all, well the enough numbers to give me the certificate (I ported my Ruby and FireRed collections over). I was a genius to breed out the Johto starters from Colosseum and trade them over the ones I needed for my Dex (this was before Heartgold and Soulsilver came out).

Ruby- I took part in the contest mainly I gotten my Gardivor the highest ribbon you can get in the game. I also took part in the ingame tournament thing (having 3 level 50 or 100 and having no items on you other than the one attach to your team).

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I play them whenever I'm in 1999-2001 and I'm about 10 years old. And I do not care for anything other than Catching 'em All.

 

[Madkipz]

there people who play breed the perfect team, iv train them, to create the best possible competitive team for online battles. I do not do that, hell I don't even partake in online battles.
there poeple who take on a hardcore challenge such as the Nuzlocke Challenge [http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Nuzlocke_Challenge]. I would not do that.
some try to "catch 'em all!"... but I think those people are insane.

I just work towards beating the elite four. After words I do some post game stuff and stop play when run out of interesting things to do.

with changes made to exp share for Pokemon x and y how played the game changed as well.

before x&y- I would have 6 pokemon as part of my main team and 1 maybe 2 other ones I would switch out for when needed. Having a team big Pokemon all at a decent enough level that you can switch out at as needed is not viable with out a shit ton of grinding

after x&y- If you only have 6 main pokemon that you use thought the game they will be op if you used the exp share the whole time. but on the filp side using it and makes having a large team of battle ready Pokemon more viable. then I feel a pokemon getting a bit over leveled I switch them out with another Pokemon who needs the experience and levels more. I personally find making playing like that viable has made the game more interesting to play since you now a bigger verity of battle ready Pokemon to choose from.

I found myself tinkering with the battle maison and trying out EV / IV training them during X and Y.

You may want to just go try out Pokemon Showdown.

 

[totheendofsin]

I'm in the process of putting together a living pokedex, basically actually having every single pokemon at the same time, it's actually not as hard as it sounds, especially since as of ORAS you can get most of the legendaries and starters with just those two games (the only ones not present are either in XY or event legendaries) and those tend to be the hardest to get

 

[SD-Fiend]

I'm working on my living dex. It's going a bit slowly however since I've gotta breed and evolve what i'm missing.

 

[AuronFtw]

Erm... bit of history from a longtime pokemon PvPer - back in the day, nobody who seriously did the PvP bothered with breeding. Metas shifted so quickly you needed multiple teams with many fillers capable of swapping in on the fly - and getting them all with max EVs/IVs/natures/egg moves would take thousands of hours minimum.

So... everyone hacked. Action replay was the name of the game back when I competed seriously - tournament staff would check to make sure every pokemon was legit upon registration, so obviously you couldn't go in with wonder guard spiritombs, but it was SO much easier to simply give yourself a max "legit" pokemon than it was to deal with the awful bullshit grind of breeding. Once online/wifi trading got started, the hacking shifted online, with services like pokegts letting you spawn, dupe and edit pokemon on the fly and trading it straight to your game.

And nobody gave a shit. Even the event managers at the time knew everyone hacked. Everyone involved in the competitive/"esports" aspect understands the skill required to compete in PvP - knowledge of the metagame, knowledge of what every skill does, flawless memorization of the type chart, what builds are common on what pokes so you know when to swap out and when to stay in - is all totally separate from the bullshit, tedious grind that constitutes pokemon breeding. Breeding has nothing to do with skill and everything to do with RNG, and thus it has been thoroughly hated by the PvP community from the beginning.

The biggest changes to breeding have been at the behest of the PvP community. Slowly, over many years, the breeding has become less shit - as of gen 6, both parents can pass down egg moves, natures, and abilities. IVs are still (largely) random, and thus are terrible. To breed an actual max IV pokemon, you will likely need to fill boxes upon boxes of hatched pokemon. It's very, very stupid. Also as of gen 6, EVs are trainable via a slow, boring minigame - manually EV training is still faster to do in bulk (with 4-5 pokemon at once via exp share + held items + pokerus) and for defensive/utility pokes, but for a single sweeper the minigame tends to be fine. That said, it's still a massive time requirement to actually get into the PvP at any real level.

The best pokemon PvPers tend to use online services for the majority of their battling - the original was an IRC arena about a decade ago, back in gen 3 - all text based. You could set up a party with legal EVs/IVs/items/movepools etc and battle other players. Over time, more user-friendly options have popped up, including smogon's pokemonshowdown, which is the most popular one currently. It's a great place to familiarize yourself with the meta and get copious amounts of actual PvP in without any of the bullshit related to breeding.

But yes - it's no mystery to longtime players that breeding is a massive waste of time. And because of that, nobody bothered. That's the primary reason nintendo shut down their gen5 trade servers - you were still able to create any pokemon up to gen 5 and trade them to yourself via poke bank, so the "market" was being flooded with dupes and fakes (not that it... matters, at all). Their anti-hack functionality is much stronger on 3ds, so they figured once they shut down the last-gen stuff, they'll be scot-free to force everyone to use their godawful breeding timesink.

Joke's on them, it's already been hacked.

Edit: More on point, though, how do I play pokemon games? Easy, they're some of the best-designed RPGs on the market. They fervently follow the "easy to learn, hard to master" adage in nearly every aspect of design. The campaign mode is easy enough for children to beat, allowing them to enjoy it and get a sense of accomplishment for winning, and the PvP is deep and complex enough for adults to enjoy and compete in, while also getting a sense of accomplishment for winning. Very few games are good at balancing the two - they're either ridiculously complex spreadsheet festivals like EVE or they're baby's first RPG like mass effect or dragon age. Pokemon found the medium, and has kept at it with every installment. I do wish they'd implement scaling difficulty for the PvE campaign, though; even passing knowledge of the type chart is enough to roflstomp through the story with no effort. Would like to bump it up to a meaty challenge. The fan-made Zeta/Omicron games were much harder, and more enjoyable to boot (not to mention the neat additions like HM items, IV stones, unlimited move tutors, etc).

 

[Flunk]

The first Pokemon game I caught all 150 Pokemon and found everything. Recently, if I play a Pokemon game I just play it single-player and damn the rest. I don't have time anymore, I'm a responsible boring adult now. I still haven't finished black so I can't buy Y...

 

[Zemaddog]

I'm a bit of nutter for filling the pokedex, to the point where I went beyond just filling the pokedex. I have all but 7 pokemon in my boxes in order of pokedex number with all but a few legendaries registered as caught in gen 6 (the 7 I don't have are all event legendaries). And because of pokebank I am able to transfer them to any other pokemon game and get the shiny charm (and the oval charm in X and Y). As of right now my Y pokedex has 717 registered pokemon and my omega ruby has 712 registered pokemon. All that grinding and it only took 235 hours of in-game time.

It's kind of funny because of the way the non-national pokedexes work in X and Y, I was able to complete the national dex before the mountain dex in Y...

 

[Raggedstar]

As a kid, I just played it normally. Maybe I would do Battle Towers/Frontiers, various contests, etc, but I wouldn't get too far (because they do require a certain level of competence in strategy/breeding). I beat all the contests in my original Sapphire though. I even imported my Tough Champion to my Alpha Sapphire to see if I can break time and space.

Since Gens 4 and 5, I've been getting more into the strategic side, like natures, abilities, IVs, EVs, etc, if not for real competitive battling, then just to get farther in the Battle Frontier. It's been an uphill swing to create the perfect teams (Gen 4 and earlier is a ***** for TMs, and breeding and competitive battling has only become easier to learn as the gens go by).

My current state is that I've beaten X and am currently breeding for 5/6 IVs (my standard run with X was very slow, at least trying to get proper natures). I completed my Pokedex and even found/bred my first shinies. With Alpha Sapphire, I'm breeding my team ahead of time so they would hold special meaning when I bring them with me to WiFi battles (it also gives more variety with the playthrough). It's also the first time I would be battling with my first shiny (fuck yeah shiny Salamence!) through the story. To balance out my 5 IV monsters, I'm not using XP Share and they're not EV trained (and I always send them over at Lvl 1). Only member of my crew that isn't IV bred is my starter, because he's supposed to be special.

I've pondered doing a Nuzlocke, but I don't have the patience to grind and I hold special attachments to my physical games.

 

[laggyteabag]

I try to catch every pokemon, but I have never succeeded. I also never try to make my team as optimal as humanly possible. I pretty much just use whatever pokemon look the coolest and stuff each and every one of them with damage abilities. None of this "raise attack/defence/speed/special attack" bullshit.

 

[Rahkshi500]

I usually play the games for the fun of it. No Nuzlockes, no perfect IV Training, no long periods of breeding unless I really want a Pokemon with a certain Eggmove(s). I do, however, like to do repeated playthroughs of the games; I like to play through the stories again with new teams, since I like to collect Pokemon that I like and try them out, as well as to save up on Rare Candies and Master Balls.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

I actually got to the stage where I felt really guilty about catching all these pokemon and training them up for a single gym/event battle, then storing them forever on my PC and never using them, so now if I do a playthrough I catch nothing but the team I want to use. - I played crystal and then moved on to Heartgold/SoulSilver.

So my playthrough would involve gaining no more than 7 or 8 pokemon the whole game(with the ones I didn't need getting released into the wild so I never had more than 6). It actually meant that I didn't need to catch anything after the 3rd city or so, since I waited for the pokemon you are gifted to complete my team (the Eevee from bill, the mystery egg, the dratini from Claire etc.) although it generally made Ilex gym really difficult as I'd only have 3 pokemon, one of which was the useless Togepi.

 

[CrystalShadow]

I've not really played much beyond gen 2...

But I know I did quite a bit of EV training at some point, and tried (but failed, got stuck at 144 due to lack of people to trade with) to get all 150 pokemon in pokemon yellow. (Yes, i know, 151. But mew is basically impossible to get without either cheating, or having been in the right place at the right time.)

 

[Trippy Turtle]

I always just grab things I like and go through the game without grinding. I arrive at the elite four slightly underleveled and generally wipe a few times until I crit my way through or something.
Then I make a competitive team or 14.
Sometimes I make a theme for my teams like boneless or more than 4 legs or something.

 

[ccggenius12]

I catch one of everything I encounter, X is the only one which I've completed the base dex. Also as of x, I've decided that the starter isn't my actual starter. I'll use it until one of the one offs I catch has a favorable nature, and THAT is my partner. in X it was a Beedrill, and in Ruby it looks like it's going to be a Dustox. Funny thing, I took that beedrill to the pokemon rater after I beat the elite four, he had a perfect speed stat.
Also, X made breeding easy enough for me to finally give it a go. I never got around to having a complete team, but I've got 4 or 5 I want to use with 5 IVs, and another four or 5 that have 5 IVs because they were a step on the way to breeding the stats over. I soft reset until my event pokemon have a good nature, and in the case of legends, the 3 IVs in good stats. Also, in X, as soon as they became available, I caught everything of consequence in a luxury ball. Even the legendaries. My team's swag level could only be improved if they were shiny. (but who has the time for that.) The most exciting thing for me about Omega Ruby is that after I beat the story mode, I'll finally be able to catch myself a Harvest Phantump. I could never find an appropriate safari in X, and all the ones for trade were in normal balls.

 

[SuperSuperSuperGuy]

I just use whatever the heck I want. Changes to the EXP system, primarily with the way EXP Share works, make it easy to build an army of at least 30 different Pokemon and keep them all at a good enough level to take on whatever you need them to. My full team in Y version was huge, and my Alpha Sapphire team is even bigger. It's given me the opportunity to use and take advantage of Pokemon that would normally be considered not viable for most scenarios. Of course, the obvious downside to this approach is that few Pokemon in particular get a major chance to shine, and I tend to develop less of a "bond" with them.

In terms of stats, there are certain Pokemon for whom certain abilities or natures are inexcusable, as they are detrimental to the Pokemon's performance, at least comparatively. An Adamant Ralts, for example, is completely useless. I can deal with almost anything that's not a -Sp. Atk nature on a Ralts, but if I do get a -Sp. Atk nature on it, I have to breed it such that I can ensure I get what I need. However, it's pretty rare that that happens; I've only had to breed a Spoink (for the Thick Fat ability) and a Feebas (for a good defensive nature) to get good results.

I never went for a full Pokedex until Y version, but even then, there are a couple Pokemon that I couldn't get, all of them legendary. With Alpha Sapphire, the only 2 Pokemon that I can't get into my Pokedex are Arceus and Manaphy, and I could have sworn that I had a Manaphy somewhere...