Pokémon: How meta are you?

[Razentsu]

I played competitive Pokemon, and it was great. EV training, IV/Nature/egg move breeding takes time, but I think it's awesome that you can manipulate your Pokemon's growth beyond simple levelling and evolving. You can grow a Pokemon into many different directions. You can build your Pokemon in a way to best fit your team strategy.

Even with all the number crunching, there's no real "best" way to build your Pokemon, and there is no "best" team or strategy. You can follow the "meta" and play a standard team, but that's not going to make you stronger than the average competitive player. It's the boldness to think outside of standard play and to experiment that will make you great. Also, you still have to be good at actually playing the game.

You have to make quality decisions, analyse your opponent's strategy and common tactics, and be brave enough to make some reads. It's almost like a turn-based fighting game.

Pokemon very closely resembles Virtua Fighter because of how heavily it is based around mind games. You need to be able to evaluate your options as well as your opponent's, and predict which option he/she will take.

Will you take the option that both you and your opponent know beats and only beats your opponent's obvious "best" option? Or will you base your decision around your opponent's likely "lesser" option at the risk of letting his "best" go through? Maybe you'll play it safe and choose the option that grants you a slight advantage on either option? Or perhaps you think your opponent will play it safe, so you plan to do something risky to create a huge advantage for yourself?

And of course, there are many more questions to ask yourself depending on the situation. But the point is, Pokemon is a lot like Virtua Fighter, you are very often called to reads and tricky decisions. It's a very deep game.

 

[emeraldrafael]

I get it and went at it, but it was just too time consuming and robbed some of the fun of the games. I dont mess with IVs though I wouldnt even know mine (ive seen the calculaters just dont care to bother with them since they dont change like EVs).

 

[Ratties]

First, what the fuck is an EV? Second, what the fuck is an IV?

Seriously, I have been playing Pokemon for give or take 80% of my life (14 out of 18 years) but I've never played anything past gen 3 cause all the pokemon past then are more or less shitty IMO so unless they were introduced past gen II this is some seriously complex shit for me to have not known about it in the 3000+ hours I've spent in gen I alone.

Well the Pokemon past gen 3 are not shitty. Alot of the older Pokemon games are like a broken down station wagon. Literally everything about gen 1 is a broken piece of crap. The game has nostalgia, thats all it has going for it. Frankly, Gen 2 has more crappy Pokemon than good ones. Lots of the games that are enjoyable today is because of the 4th gen. Alot of problems got fixed in the 4th gen. Now most people think that the first 3 gens are the best because thats all they have played.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

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]

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.

 

[AeroZeppelinSevenfold]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.