How to enjoy Pokemon

[Pearwood]

Firstly I have to say I agree with the last Extra Punctuation - 100%ers of the latest generation of Pokemon can probably be diagnosed with OCD, however I find myself having little projects in it that fill up the pokedex bit by bit. At the moment I'm building up a team composed entirely of eevee evolutions, before that I was trying to get a team of pseudo-legendaries. After my eeveelution team I'm going to try to fill as much of the Unova pokedex as possible since I already have most of the pre-evolutions so may as well. Basically I just think of something that'd be a cool idea for a team and go out to make it happen and before I know it I should have been asleep several hours ago and the sun is rising.

I never really got into battling online because I never understood how to boost EVs and IVs or any of that stuff and breeding just for a good nature just seems annoying. Egg moves sure, just for the nature though? Doesn't seem worth it, I have a glaceon with a bad nature for special attack and she still packs a hell of a punch. So basically the point of the thread is how do you play Pokemon? Do you just follow the story and put it down at the end, do you do competitive battling, do you just do whatever you think would be cool?

 

[WrongSprite]

I play it 'till I've finished it. Got badges, defeated elite four etc. Don't really care for collecting them, I just put together a team that kicks ass, and beat all the NPC's.

 

[thedoclc]

Frankly, there's nothing short of it dispensing crack-cocaine directly into my central nervous system which could make me enjoy Pokemon. And you know what? That's perfectly fine. I'm not going to give anyone grief for having preferences which are different than mine, which is pretty much half of Yahtzee's comedic schtick.

Yahtzee is funny, but he is not some intellectual whose words drip with brilliant insight and wisdom. Nor am I going to sit there and say someone who wishes to 100% a game I couldn't bring myself to 1% is somehow wrong. (I'd also not make light of a rather troubling illness; if you've seen someone with OCD, you're not going to toss that out casually.) That's a pretentious "No True Scotsman" kind of thinking.

 

[Pearwood]

Frankly, there's nothing short of it dispensing crack-cocaine directly into my central nervous system which could make me enjoy Pokemon. And you know what? That's perfectly fine. I'm not going to give anyone grief for having preferences which are different than mine, which is pretty much half of Yahtzee's comedic schtick.

Yahtzee is funny, but he is not some intellectual whose words drip with brilliant insight and wisdom. Nor am I going to sit there and say someone who wishes to 100% a game I couldn't bring myself to 1% is somehow wrong. (I'd also not make light of a rather troubling illness; if you've seen someone with OCD, you're not going to toss that out casually.) That's a pretentious "No True Scotsman" kind of thinking.

I do know someone with OCD, I was joking. I've actually never known any mentally handicapped people really take offense at lighthearted comments like that, self-depreciating humour is pretty common with them in my experience at least. And I certainly wasn't saying anything about Yahtzee being right all the time, I was saying in this particular situation I agree with him. The purpose of bringing him up was to provide an example the majority of people reading this thread would be familiar with, this allowed me to summarise my opinion in a simple sentence rather than take up a paragraph.

 

[Pearwood]

Yeah I just started on that, I kind of walked right past it when I was in that city for the gym and I just found it again last night.

 

[DEAD34345]

I won Pokemon yellow years ago when it first came out. I tried using Pikachu on the first gym (Rock) but it was useless, so I used a Pidgeotto instead (The one you find in the forest). I then went on to beat the entire game using nothing but that Pokemon.

That is the only time I have ever enjoyed Pokemon, and no matter how many times I have tried to get into the game since, I just don't seem to enjoy it any-more...

 

[kaioshade]

I adore Pokemon, and it has pretty much been all i have been playing the last few weeks along with Ghost Recon Shadow Warrior. (The GF took my 360 for a while)

I pretty much play the game until i feel im done with it. I like to catch a ton of pokemon, but im not going to drive myself insane trying to get ALL of them. I might trade for a few version exclusives, and i do some battling (smogon can DIAF though) and generally have fun with the game.

I think its when people treat pokemon like a WOW raid (ie work instead of fun) when people start to say things like players have OCD or something similar.

 

[leedwashere]

I have mild OCD tendencies, but the only way its manifested itself in my game life is through numbers. I'll go back to a pokecenter after almost *every* battle to have the amount of PP for my moves at full, even if the move has, like, 35 uses >.< I'll do the same thing with other games and bullets, where I'll go out of my way to reload every chance I get, or even better do all I can to not use bullets at all. I can't count the number of Mass Effect 2 battles where its taken me extra long to clear out a room simply because I just sat there waiting for my powers to recharge so I didn't have to use a bullet and no longer have the full amount of ammo. ::cough::

That being said, I genuinely enjoy breeding pokemon. Not going after crazy IV and EV control, but just catching everything and getting eggs so that I can raise it starting from level 1. In fact, in Black, I'm still just past having beat Clay since every time I find something new, I catch two, breed them and raise it up to the current level of everything else before I can move on... but I do it not because I feel compelled, but because I like knowing what moves things learn and so forth. I also enjoy using these guys in battle tower type events, but I've never competed against other people online or anything.

 

[TH3_D15HWA5H3R]

without pants... its the only way

 

[ZtH]

With Black and White I decided to try something a little different and so I've been focusing not on the more competitive aspects of the game, but rather on doing things kind of like Ash. It makes things more difficult to fight through the elite 4 with non fully evolved pokemon and it makes me feel more accomplished after when I don't use the most powerful pokemon at my disposal to win. I've pretty much just been trying out niche strategies and using underpowered pokemon to shake things up a bit from my normal "get best team and then dominate" playstyle.

 

[Rofl-Mayo]

I prefer to create teams that interest me and then do competitve battling. I'm actually working on an eevee evolution team too, I just need the Glaceon.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

I get my shits and giggles from the Battle Tower/Frontier/Subway. And a fair bit of competitive play.

Natures and EVs are all I really care about. IVs are way too much fucking work.

Even then, since Battle Tower/Frontier/Subway reduce the level to 50, I find that EVs don't matter so much.

 

[Pearwood]

With Black and White I decided to try something a little different and so I've been focusing not on the more competitive aspects of the game, but rather on doing things kind of like Ash. It makes things more difficult to fight through the elite 4 with non fully evolved pokemon and it makes me feel more accomplished after when I don't use the most powerful pokemon at my disposal to win. I've pretty much just been trying out niche strategies and using underpowered pokemon to shake things up a bit from my normal "get best team and then dominate" playstyle.

Yeah I do that, usually accidentally. I did have a victini this time around because my god victini is adorable but the others were stuff like archeops and jellicent who weren't that good. They were decent but that damn hydreigon at the end came close to wiping out my whole team.

I really want to play "competitively"... that is to say, I want to battle against people who have teams of pokemon they actually like/are interested in, not people who have steroidal pokemon teams and really cheap tactics/pokemon (I remember there was a trend with Blisseys or something that made people virtually unbeatable

I like using Blissey, I seem to remember it being far from unbeatable though, itty bitty defence.

 

[ZtH]

With Black and White I decided to try something a little different and so I've been focusing not on the more competitive aspects of the game, but rather on doing things kind of like Ash. It makes things more difficult to fight through the elite 4 with non fully evolved pokemon and it makes me feel more accomplished after when I don't use the most powerful pokemon at my disposal to win. I've pretty much just been trying out niche strategies and using underpowered pokemon to shake things up a bit from my normal "get best team and then dominate" playstyle.

Yeah I do that, usually accidentally. I did have a victini this time around because my god victini is adorable but the others were stuff like archeops and jellicent who weren't that good. They were decent but that damn hydreigon at the end came close to wiping out my whole team.

I really want to play "competitively"... that is to say, I want to battle against people who have teams of pokemon they actually like/are interested in, not people who have steroidal pokemon teams and really cheap tactics/pokemon (I remember there was a trend with Blisseys or something that made people virtually unbeatable

I like using Blissey, I seem to remember it being far from unbeatable though, itty bitty defence.

I've gotten swept by that lousy chandellier a couple times because my team has a terrible track record against fire types. Also Blissey is very strong competitively just because it walls such a significant portion of the pokemon in the game. TO take it down you need to catch it on the switch with a surprise physical move or use a mixed Special/Physical wallbreaker. It can be tremendously annoying to play against.

 

[MorsePacific]

Play it through the end, catch whatever I want, cheat to get the rest when I'm done.

 

[Vern5]

How to Enjoy Pokemon:

Recipe 1. Grilled Magikarp.

OT: I play until I have a perfectly balanced group of pokemon suited to destroy any trainer in less than a minute. But all that really means is that I've beaten the elite four. Woot, end of game.

 

[Pearwood]

I've gotten swept by that lousy chandellier a couple times because my team has a terrible track record against fire types. Also Blissey is very strong competitively just because it walls such a significant portion of the pokemon in the game. TO take it down you need to catch it on the switch with a surprise physical move or use a mixed Special/Physical wallbreaker. It can be tremendously annoying to play against.

Ah I just switched out to my zekrom and took that one out nice and quick. Yeah I know blissey is annoying to play against but not really unbeatable because it has such low physical defence and attack.