Pokémon: How meta are you?

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Trippy Turtle

Elite Member
May 10, 2010
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Just in game I don't care and try to use original teams and don't bother with EV's. But by god in competitive do I get my teams down to the dot. Remember people, speed is king.
 

Shinsei-J

Prunus Girl is best girl!
Apr 28, 2011
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I just go with natures and maybe a bit of EV's because I play a bit with my friends but I don't use the best pokemon....
Using the ones I like is much more my style so it's a little frustrating when I can't compete because of stats while they use the most powerful pokemon. That being said I often beat them with my Ambipom.
 
Feb 8, 2009
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I would love to get into the metagame, and I have tried. But I just can't. IV's are completely ridiculous thanks to the community around them. The majority of meta players will tell you that to compete with others you need to have perfect IV's and certain EV's. EV's I can live with. That is doable. It makes sense as a mechanic as well and adds strategy to the game.

I see what they were going for with IV's. They are meant to make all Pokemon be different from each other, to make them individuals. Well that kind of backfired, because what you get instead is a bunch of people tirelessly breeding and hatching eggs and whatnot so they can get 31 extra points in every stat for every Pokemon. If everyone is just going to use the 31 extra points and become equal with everyone else, then why don't they just take them out? If everyone is going to work to get equal stats anyway, what is the point in making them waste hours of their life on tedious tasks?

I understand the strategic concept, and it's nice to have that for the people that want more out of the games. But even the most hardcore players should agree that these systems are a little ridiculous. I mean the game doesn't even tell you about them. I found out about it on the internet. That's kind of weird. Hidden stats that greatly improve your characters are found by looking around on the internet.

The TL;DR version is that I don't like the needless work of IV's, and the whole hidden stats system could use some revising to make competitive battling a little easier to get into, and also FUN, instead of a chore.
 

idon'tknowaboutthat

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Nov 30, 2009
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Dude, EVs are da shit. Even non-competitively, why not do it? You get better pokemon! Just memorize the EVs for pokemon, especially wild ones you see a lot, and know what type of stats your party pokemon are good for, eg. a Jolteon=speed, Pinsir=attack, so on. Easy. Bulbapedia is your friend, use it.
 

SuperSuperSuperGuy

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Jun 19, 2010
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Meh. I mostly play in-game. I follow the metagame on occasion, and I sometimes do some damage calculations and stuff, and while natures do matter, to an extent, I don't bother EV training or messing with IVs. I REALLY try to build the best in-game team I can, though, based on abilities and moves. Otherwise, I don't really get into the metagame.

Besides, I'm more of a theoretical guy. I think about the metagame more than I dabble in it.
 

nyttyn

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Sep 9, 2008
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Toxinthegreat said:
x-Tomfoolery-x said:
Metagame can bite my ass. It's not in the spirit of Pokemon. I play with the monsters I like, and build my team for fun.

It turns the game into this.

This, so many times THIS. I played the metagame for a bit and boy was it boring as shit. No team originality, with 90% of teams playing with DW Politoads on a Water team. It really was not fun at all. Stick to catching them all folks, or else you'll have no fun at all.
As a competitive player - this pisses me the hell off. Who are you to tell me what is fun? Ingame is fun too, yes. But you know what else is fun? Successfully predicting that their scizor will use Protect, therefore using Feint on your Hitmontop so your 3% Volcarona can kill both and the low hp Cresselia beside it in the last turn, securing you the win.

It seems to me like you're just bandwagoning the sentiment that somehow competitve players are complete tryhards that have sticks up their ass and never have fun.

That's because we find competive play fun. And you don't.

You find mindlessly spamming Ultra Balls at legendaries for hours until you catch them fun, and I find spending hours of investigation, theorizing, and testing to craft a truly optimal team fun.

Simple as that.

P.S. We still try to have fun knowing Pokemon is a unbalanced game. Look up tiers, bro. We have environments where crappier pokemon can shine (UU/RU/NU), and we keep the pokemon who would be used on literally every team locked away in Ubers.
 

MeChaNiZ3D

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Aug 30, 2011
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I am JUST meta enough to worry about natures and personalities, and slightly about EVs. But generally fuck EVs and IVs. That's where it goes from a fun little modifier that ensures no two Pokemon are the same to ridiculous levels of grinding. It's not like I even PvP, I just like having strong Pokemon, but I would never be bothered with IVs.

As for my general catching habits, for the first few generations I tried to catch 'em all. Once I realised you had to be Japanese and practically buy every Nintendo console for that to happen, I stopped bothering. Now I catch maybe a total of 25 Pokemon per game, not including legendaries because I don't use them. I will train my starter to level 20 before the first gym, and up 10 levels each gym after that, and try to cover all types with the rest of my party, which are generally around level 60 by the Elite Four. The Pokemon I catch are only the ones I need to use HMs, or powerful ones I intend for my Elite Four team/general team.
 

redmoretrout

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Oct 27, 2011
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Nope, I've never been interested in the whole professional gaming scene. Whether it's mastering the most complex and damaging combo in a fighting game, Finding the most efficient strategy in an RTS or whatever Pokemon algebra your talking about.

I play a game for a week or two, grow bored and retire it for a year or so. I suppose I just don't have the that competetive spirit that seems to drive the "meta" gaming community.
 

Yopaz

Sarcastic overlord
Jun 3, 2009
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I don't play competitive Pokemon nor do I care about getting every single Pokemon any more. However I guess I EV train, but I don't really pay much mind to it. I give my Pokemon the minerals I get and I use macho brace. That's how far I am willing to take it though.
 

The_Echo

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Mar 18, 2009
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I'm too busy trying to play all the games I want to play for the Pokémon meta.

I cannot even fathom what kind of person could spend hours on end doing all that bullshit.
 

cfehunter

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Oct 5, 2010
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EV training is easy enough and I've found myself doing it now and again just to destroy a friends team with lower level pokémon.
IV's are ridiculous and I'd personally like to see them removed from the game.
 

Ulquiorra4sama

Saviour In the Clockwork
Feb 2, 2010
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I have done a couple of my Pokemon this way, but ultimately it just isn't worth it. If it weren't for the fact that i was in school and public transport is very spread out i never would've bothered with all the grind.

You've sorta lost sight of what pokemon is about when you're using math and internet sources to maximize a party while others are having way more fun doing much less work. So when i get X or Y i'm probably just gonna train my pokemon the old fashioned way again.
 

AlbertoDeSanta

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Sep 19, 2012
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nyttyn said:
Snip Because long and rambley
See, I was going to respond with a very long post, but the fact is is that I don't care. I really don't. Your opinion? To me it's meaningless. And my opinion should be that to you.
 

nyttyn

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Sep 9, 2008
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Toxinthegreat said:
nyttyn said:
Snip Because long and rambley
See, I was going to respond with a very long post, but the fact is is that I don't care. I really don't. Your opinion? To me it's meaningless. And my opinion should be that to you.

Well, don't post blanket statements that infer your opinion is the undisputed truth, and all is k.



Also, EVs are absolutely nothing to train compared to other games, considering it only takes less then a mere 50-70 short battles to max out a mon if you're doing it right. and IVs and natures can be manipulated via predicting software easily.

It really isn't as hard or as tedious as you would think.
 

Scarim Coral

Jumped the ship
Legacy
Oct 29, 2010
18,149
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UK
At most, whenever I going to capture a Pokemon that's going to be in my party I try to capture the prefered personality that the other EV people say it's good for that Pokemon.
Now I said most since sometime it can take AGES to capture that ideal Pokemon with the right personality (alot of turning it off and back on) so there at time when I gave up or settle with the second best personality for that Pokemon.

Other than that I don't bother with the whole given those specific stat booster at the right time nor do I take them to specific area just to get the EV off from the defeated Pokemon (why should I bother fighting low level Pokemon for their EV but low exp when I can fight higher levels for the exp?)
 

Comic Sans

DOWN YOU GO!
Oct 15, 2008
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When doing single player I don't care at all. However, a few years ago I got heavily into the competitive scene on Shoddy battle, and it's some of the most fun I've had in gaming. I loved trying out teams with new EV combinations and movesets. While I agree that on a cartridge breeding for IVs is a pain in the ass (EVs are damn easy though), on a simulator where you don't have to worry about the actual training you can just focus on the team building. The PvP aspects of Pokemon are incredibly in-depth, and I spent countless hours crunching out teams, trying them out, and then tweaking them. Even managed to get an invite to Smogon's Policy Review back when they almost only had mods allowed in there. I don't have the time for it these days, but I look back on my time with the 4th gen meta quite fondly. It showed that there's so much more to those games than people give credit for, and that it has as much depth as you want it to.
 

Auron225

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Oct 26, 2009
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I heard about it once and took the time to educate myself on it for about 30 mins or so. From what I could gather, it meant considering every Pokemon ever for your team, getting a truckload of each of the 6 on your team to see who has the better nature/stats to begin with (which could also mean hatching lots of eggs and breeding in general) and running around grinding in the grass until it got to Lv 100 killing very specific enemies.

I just thought "Wow, what a fantastic way to make this game a very tedious chore that I don't even get paid for".

How about I have a Golduck in my team because I like Golduck? He doesn't have the best stats but he can learn ice and psychic moves and he looks cool. That's about as complex as it gets for me - I may look to see what natural abilities they can get and get "the other one" if the one I get first time around is very sucky in comparison but that's it.
 

Spambot 3000

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Aug 8, 2011
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I don't play the game for catchies. Battling, stats, numbers and data is all that it ever will be to me.
 

The Inquisitive Mug

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Jul 11, 2008
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Spacemonkey430 said:
Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't the constraints of the game make it so your EV and such training only goes so far? Like that Oshawatt of yours could only go so far stat wise. So it would seem to me that official tournaments would come down to the same generic set up of maxed Pokemon for everybody. Like I said it could be wrong but still.
You're correct. Your 'mon can have 508 EVs, max 252 per stat. IV's have a limit to how high a 'mon can have, but the number they are born with varries with each 'mon , even among the same species. You basically have to breed until you have a metric shit-ton of the same 'mons with the same nature, train them all with the same EVs, and use some sort of calculator (or if you're the shit, the massive formula) to figure out which 'mons would just be a massive waste of time to EV train. It's tedium.
 

IndomitableSam

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Sep 6, 2011
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Is it cute/awesome looking? Is it an element I don't have a favourite/requisite pokemon for? Then I'll catch it. I don't even try to catch 'em all, just the ones I want to use.