Pokemon Too Competetive?

I mean Pokemon was always meant to be competitive, but not to the point to where it was either get an EV trained team or prepare to always lose.

What happened to the times where you would fight your friend and they used their favorites, you used yours and you came up with your own strategies?

I miss the old days.

If you don't want to EV train, you can still battle other people o.o Just... go find a casual league or fight your friends? I do that all the time. You can choose the level of competitiveness and probably find a good place to do it.

(and Competitive battling isn't that hard, if you use Shoddy or whatever, anyway)

Well I have a competetive team but with HG/Ss coming out, that's going to be my laid back game.

And all my friends like to use their ubers D:

Then kick their asses with non-ubers. :3 it's fun to see a Bibarel take down a legendary (my friends have done this to me. It's hilarious.) or similar. With the right combos, it's not hard to pull off.

I do competitive play on Shoddy Battle and casual play in the games. Unfortunately, the few people I know who play Pokémon are usually not willing to battle me out of... Well, I don't mean to brag, but, intimidation. After all, there's only one person I know in real life who goes to Shoddy Battle every now and then, and that person doesn't get competitive there and tends to get ass kicked anyway.

I still remember the day I took down my friend's Lv. 70something Infernape with my Lv. 60something (now Lv. 95) Golduck.

I've never seen the big deal about EV training anyway. Guess I'm just too lazy~

The only reason I'm making a big deal about it is because I like playing the game. But I don't want battling to feel like a chore.

I mean now a days, the only people willing to do quick battles are people who make their teams perfect. I always wanted to have a Johto battle with my original Johto team.

I can't stand the whole "competitive battling" thing.

First of all, it involves waaaaaaay too much level-grinding (that's what EV training is, pretty much... endless battles against specific Pokémon to boost your stats in a certain way.) It's especially bad considering that Pokémon games don't really require any level-grinding, in most cases.

Second, competitive battling people tend to be assholes. Not all of them, of course (during the week or so when I tried out ShoddyBattle just to see what it was like, I bumped into a lot more decent people than I would've expected), but it's got to be at least 75%. The ones who don't even like anything else about Pokémon, but play the online battle simulators all the time anyway, seem to be the worst from what I've seen. I don't know if the competitive battling community somehow encourages people to become assholes, or if assholes are just drawn to it for the same reasons they're drawn to sports games, college fraternities, and 4chan... but there are a lot of really horrible people in the "competitive" community, compared to the Pokémon fandom as a whole.

So yeah, the competitive battling thing has gotten way out of control. It wasn't too bad back when it was limited to a handful of small groups on the Internet who basically stayed away from the rest of the Pokémon fandom, but now that it's all over the place it's gotten pretty annoying.

At least it isn't quite as bad as the competitive Smash Bros. players.

EV training isn't really that bad anymore with the Power+ items and easy-to-obtain vitamins. It truly makes a difference. And I still use my favourites, or whatever. A strategically raised Pokemon will beat your average uber.

EVs and Natures make teams a little more personal and varied. In the RBY/GSC competitive scene, everybodys' Pokemon had the exact same stats and more than likely the exact same moves.

Also, Shoddy sucks >:( Where's Competitor?

Kabigon said:

And all my friends like to use their ubers D:

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This is a long video and in two parts, but is still pretty cool. just goes to show that strategically-raised Pokemon can be awesome and that Cradily kicks ass.

I used to dislike EV-training because I felt like it was all about raising a million clones based off of Smogon's guides, but then I realized I wasn't being creative enough. There really are a lot of different things you can do. I like training UU Pokemon the best.

...of course, most of my "competetive battling" is done at the Frontier, so yeah.

...I don't get the appeal of competitive battling. I look at tiers and know some stuff about it, but I'm not intensely into this.

I remember there was an article on Penny Arcade that fairly accurately what I'm trying to get at here. I might have to venture into the Labyrinth Teevus Tropus to get to it, though. *shudder*

I EV train my favorites and then just play on PBR random WiFi. Is Venomoth a good choice, EV'd or not? Probably not, but I don't care. I use one 'cause I like him. When I see a team composed of Garchomp, Gyarados, Infernape, etc., it just pisses me off because I know that person is just using that team for nothing but sheer power, not for fun. I hate that part of competitive battling. The part I DO like is the challenge that battling a living, thinking opponent is.

In short, competitive battling is awesome as long as the point of Pokemon (training a team of your personal choice) is not forgotten in favor of some stupid "OU" team. It's for FUN, not to win. And Smogon just bugs the crap outta me.

Kam said:

...I don't get the appeal of competitive battling. I look at tiers and know some stuff about it, but I'm not intensely into this.

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It's more intense/strategic and easily more fun, especially when playing in other tiers. I dunno about you, but I like a challenging match.

I'm lucky because most of the Pokemon I like (Swampert, Bronzong, etc.) are OU. Not sure why they are.

Aforementioned article: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/07/23/pokemon/

Mudkip said:

EVs and Natures make teams a little more personal and varied. In the RBY/GSC competitive scene, everybodys' Pokemon had the exact same stats and more than likely the exact same moves.

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Quick correction: IVs have been around since RBY.

Well, they don't change a lot, but Pokémon wouldn't have the exact same stats that way.

Metallica Fanboy said:

Quick correction: IVs have been around since RBY.

Well, they don't change a lot, but Pokémon wouldn't have the exact same stats that way.

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I think you meant to say EVs, which is true; but they were static and their basic function was to separate "wild" from "trained" and weren't customisable at all. This is why rare candied Pokemon suck in comparison.

Although I agree with the OP, I have to say that this isn't the playerbases fault at all, it's Nintendo/Gamefreaks for creating imbalance in a game that lends itself so easily to competition. I mean, really, wouldn't it be great if each Pokemon has similar Base stat totals and we could all play with whatever we wanted? Hopefully someday something like that will take place, but for now I'm stuck playing UU or NU with maybe 1/4th of Smogon/Shoddybattle players because my favorites aren't up to the task.

Mudkip said:

I think you meant to say EVs, which is true; but they were static and their basic function was to separate "wild" from "trained" and weren't customisable at all. This is why rare candied Pokemon suck in comparison.

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No, I'm sure IVs were there since day one.

I mean, I remember reading something along the lines of "Pokémon in GSC have the same IVs for Special Attack and Special Defense becuase that allows them to be compatible with RBY".

EDIT:

Medical Meccanica said:

Although I agree with the OP, I have to say that this isn't the playerbases fault at all, it's Nintendo/Gamefreaks for creating imbalance in a game that lends itself so easily to competition. I mean, really, wouldn't it be great if each Pokemon has similar Base stat totals and we could all play with whatever we wanted? Hopefully someday something like that will take place, but for now I'm stuck playing UU or NU with maybe 1/4th of Smogon/Shoddybattle players because my favorites aren't up to the task.

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Basically, you want them to make it so nearly 500 Pokémon are pretty much equal in skill? That'd be nigh impossible as far as I'm concerned.

Metallica Fanboy said:

No, I'm sure IVs were there since day one.

I mean, I remember reading something along the lines of "Pokémon in GSC have the same IVs for Special Attack and Special Defense becuase that allows them to be compatible with RBY".

EDIT:Basically, you want them to make it so nearly 500 Pokémon are pretty much equal in skill? That'd be nigh impossible as far as I'm concerned.

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IVs were around since day one. But I said nothing about IVs.

I like Smogon. :( People actually figure out what works well and share it and argue about it.


I like thinking of viable teams and never actually doing anything. Competitive battling's kind of dumb but fun anyway.