On Evolution Costs

[M&F]

Balance between Pokémon in ASB is always a kind of crapshoot -- movepool isn't the sole factor, as speed and type combination matter, and worse, movepools can't be defined as good simply based on how sizeable they are. Some Pokémon have huge movepools that become almost completely useless under the right circumstances, and others have few moves but just the right ones lying around in there. So, I should mention that first as far the discussion goes on whether any part of the evolution cost interacts with balance between different species.

The separate cases -- and for that matter, rarities as a whole -- are simply arbitrary differences established between Pokémon that feel like they should be different. I mean, we can discuss until we're blue in the face whether a Salamence is better to have than a Furret, but not only can we not objectively put one ahead of the other, it also is that Salamence is simply considered a more impressive Pokémon, so people find it worthwhile to put more effort into getting one, and get more bragging points out of having one. That's more or less the gist of the differing evoltuionary requirements. They're not mechanically important, but they just make sense, and things just making sense is one of the guiding principles of ASB.

Anyway. Ramble on, ramble off, the numbers mostly look good, although I'll agree that 9 EXP for pseudo-legendaries is a bit overly much. Lowering it to 7 might be an overcompensation, though. 8 EXP would probably be better. A good bit less... jagged.

It's also as good as time as any to mention: some other time, I was thinking of changing up Rare Candies, so that only a certain amount of EXP gained by means of those can actually count towards an evolution. This way, Rare Candies would have a nifty utility in contributing for evolution when you're just that last bit short and couldn't get that one KO you needed, while also not being overly useful to the point we absolutely have to put strict limits on their availability.

 

[Meowth]

Has the availability of Rare Candies ever really been high enough that such measures are necessary? I mean, now you can't siphon off excess EXP from other Pokémon and turn it into Rare Candies they're pretty much only obtainable in tournaments, so it'd take forever to evolve pretty much anything solely via Rare Candy.

 

[M&F]

Their avaliability has become this limited exactly because they were a jot too useful and that'd cause all kinds of problems. If they were nifty rather than extremely valuable, it wouldn't even be much of a problem to siphon EXP off Pokémon for Rare Candies again, probably.

 

[Lord of the Fireflies]

I think one Rare Candy per evolution would be a neat way to accelerate the process while not making it entirely unbalanced would be cool. Also, I think the idea of using unnecessary exp. to form new Rare Candies is very neat, and was kind of disappointed when it was removed. Upon reading MF's arguments, I get it now, but fixing a usage limit drastically reduces the brokenness, as does the new exp.-based damage system. Another nerf that could be applied is making Rare Candies cost 2 exp. points to produce rather than one, so you would have to think it through before doing any conversion.

So let's say you have a Cyndaquil with only 1 exp. point, you can turn it into a Quilava with a Rare Candy, but can't use two Rare Candies if it has no exp. point. The second and last Rare Candy you can use on it is as a Quilava. Elektrike can only have one Rare Candy.

IMO, it would further balance pokémon between one-, two- and three-stagers as well as remove the problems we had before.

tldr; Allow exp. conversion into Rare Candies BUT:

1) Only allow one Rare Candy per evolution.

2) 2 exp. -> 1 Rare Candy (not necessary imo)

 

[Eifie]

I thought before it was actually 3 exp per Rare Candy?

 

[Meowth]

Yeah, the conversion definitely never was 100% efficient.

 

[Superbird]

It was 3 EXP -> one Rare Candy for a chunk of money, and it was meant as an incentive to use pokémon that were already fully-evolved while not wasting the experience. The reason it disappeared wasn't that Zhorken and the ASB Leadership Team said no - it was simply that that business was conducted in a personal shop, and that idea was nixed. It just hasn't ever been re-implemented.

 

[Lord of the Fireflies]

3 exp.....!!!

I cannot see how it would in any way be "too useful", especially with the new damage system.

 

[ultraviolet]

It was 3 EXP -> one Rare Candy for a chunk of money, and it was meant as an incentive to use pokémon that were already fully-evolved while not wasting the experience. The reason it disappeared wasn't that Zhorken and the ASB Leadership Team said no - it was simply that that business was conducted in a personal shop, and that idea was nixed. It just hasn't ever been re-implemented.

well, partly - also because we wanted to shake things up for balance reasons. it was kind of the richest people that ended up buying rare candies, and the consistent problem we had in the last ASB is that the gap between the richest/most experienced players and the newbies was pretty big. I think we've done a pretty good job of making sure that isn't the case this time around, but yeah, we still haven't implemented everything yet.

re: pseudo-legends, I am also in the 4 > 8 camp.

 

[Lord of the Fireflies]

Well, you still need a bunch of exp. to even buy does Rare Candies, thus spend time in battles for an ultimately inefficient result.

...and I realize we want everyone to have fun in ASB, which is 140% achieved now, but I fail to see how a "gap" between long-time players and rookies is bad. I feel that if you've been battling and reffing and discussing ASB for a long time, it's only fair you have an edge, accessibility-wise. And frankly, when you're new to something, it's only normal that you have to spend time getting used to the game and raise your level of skill (in that case the exps of your Pokémon) before you can battle on an equal footing with someone who's been playing for years. Rookies can battle each other, or set some rules to circumvent the gap, as in ban Pokémon with too much exp or demand only first-stagers. I really, really get where you're coming from and caring for balance between pokes as well as players is something great about tCoD ASB, but rewarding patience and skill is something we shouldn't overlook.

IMO the incredible money discrepancies that we witnessed in the old league was because of shops, and the owners of the useful ones quickly got thousands of asbucks simply because they were there at the right time. Now that everything is handled by the bank, the only thing that can get us ungodly amounts of cash in an ungodly amount of reffings, which is amazing for the league.

 

[ultraviolet]

[...] but I fail to see how a "gap" between long-time players and rookies is bad. I feel that if you've been battling and reffing and discussing ASB for a long time, it's only fair you have an edge, accessibility-wise. And frankly, when you're new to something, it's only normal that you have to spend time getting used to the game and raise your level of skill (in that case the exps of your Pokémon) before you can battle on an equal footing with someone who's been playing for years. [...] I really, really get where you're coming from and caring for balance between pokes as well as players is something great about tCoD ASB, but rewarding patience and skill is something we shouldn't overlook.

well, um, yes? why would we not reward people for playing longer? obviously you should have an edge in the game if you've been playing longer, I didn't say that shouldn't be the case. What I meant was that there kind of wasn't much of a middleground due to a number of factors (one of which was indeed that people owned vital businesses for basically no reason). There was also the fact that happiness-evolving pokemon (like riolu and eevee, some of the more popular pokemon in the league) didn't actually need EXP to stay evolved, so you could make rare candies in Lacuna Labs from them without making much of a sacrifice at all, particularly because you could then sell rare candies for a pretty nice amount.

I dunno! Lacuna Labs was pretty inefficient, but it still ended up being extremely popular. If you can get free EXP by taking it from a pokemon that doesn't actually need it and putting it onto another one, that's still kinda imbalanced. It was a pretty nice money sink, though, so that's something to be considered as well.

 

[Eifie]

Okay, well, with a unanimous yes vote (albeit by only a small portion of players, but if you didn't feel like voting that's on you I guess), I guess we'll be changing up the evolution requirements in accordance with this scale soon! Pseudo-legends will have exp requirements of 4 -> 8, and baby Pokémon will require 3 happiness to evolve instead of 4. This will not be official until it's actually implemented in the database, which hopefully will not take too long.

Feel free to continue the discussion on rare candies here, and if you think any Pokémon merit a change in rarity or an exception within their rarity for evolution requirements, you're also free to post about it here.

(Also, I guess we'll put Beldum in rarity 7 with the other pseudo-legends, since I guess it was only in rarity 8 because of its catch rate anyway.)

 

[Eifie]

I'm just gonna keep a running tally in this post of Pokémon whose experience requirements are going up because of this change.

Marill -> Azumarill: 4 exp -> 6 exp
Slakoth -> Vigoroth: 2 exp -> 3 exp
Vibrava -> Flygon: 5 exp -> 6 exp
Beldum -> Metang: 3 exp -> 4 exp (this is a paid evolution anyway, so I'm actually just going to leave this one as it is)
Gible -> Gabite: 3 exp -> 4 exp

(I don't know why I had the brilliant idea of adjusting all these manually while absolutely starving. At least I'm done now...!)

edit: I should probably make it clear that while I've made the changes, you're not going to be seeing them in the database for a while.

 

[I liek Squirtles]

I think Unown should be brought down a tier. I don't think a floating character that only knows one move is worth $20. The rarity tier is based on the rarity in the games, right? Even though they're usually found in only one place, they absolutely infest their habitat.

 

[Vipera Magnifica]

Loudred definitely should not need 9 EXP to evolve into Exploud.

 

[Eifie]

Loudred definitely should not need 9 EXP to evolve into Exploud.

Yeah, under the scale it's reduced to 6. As I clarified in my edit, these changes are not going to be live until Zhorken manages to get through and review my ever-growing stack of pending commits.

 

[Keldeo]

@VM: It'll need 5 6 experience once Eifie's changes go through, I think. edit: And ninja'd, oops.

Anyway: I think Magby/Elekid and Petilil/Cottonee should be in the same rarities as each other, like the other version-exclusive counterpartmons (ex Rufflet/Vullaby, Caterpie/Weedle), but right now Magby's in 6 and Elekid's in 7, and Petilil's in 4 but Cottonee's in 3.

 

[Zhorken]

I'm finally looking at the pull request with this overhaul in it (eheheh) and I'm not really sold on tying exp requirements to rarity? As other people have said, rarities are pretty damn arbitrary and it would be nice to be able to overhaul them at some point without forcing ourselves to redo exp again when that time comes.

As it stands, exp requirements actually are based on in-game evolution levels, in a slightly roundabout way:

1 of 2 → 2 of 2:
< lv. 30: 3 exp
lv. 30-39: 4 exp
≥ lv. 40: 5 exp

1 of 3 → 2 of 3:
< lv. 20: 2 exp
lv. 20-29: 3 exp
≥ lv. 30: 4 exp

2 of 3 → 3 of 3:
< lv. 40: previous stage + 4 exp
≥ lv. 40: previous stage + 5 exp

... Barring a few odd exceptions (Flygon???) which I'm guessing just arose from Negrek having to enter all the evolution costs at once when the hack was new.

But yeah, I'm definitely in favour of changing things, but it would make way more sense to me to keep them based on game data, and just pick new thresholds and costs, and/or pick a separate set of numbers for Unova Pokémon, and/or make some manual case-by-case tweaks. Like. Why rarities?

 

[Eifie]

I'm finally looking at the pull request with this overhaul in it (eheheh) and I'm not really sold on tying exp requirements to rarity? As other people have said, rarities are pretty damn arbitrary and it would be nice to be able to overhaul them at some point without forcing ourselves to redo exp again when that time comes.

As it stands, exp requirements actually are based on in-game evolution levels, in a slightly roundabout way:

1 of 2 → 2 of 2:
< lv. 30: 3 exp
lv. 30-39: 4 exp
≥ lv. 40: 5 exp

1 of 3 → 2 of 3:
< lv. 20: 2 exp
lv. 20-29: 3 exp
≥ lv. 30: 4 exp

2 of 3 → 3 of 3:
< lv. 40: previous stage + 4 exp
≥ lv. 40: previous stage + 5 exp

... Barring a few odd exceptions (Flygon???) which I'm guessing just arose from Negrek having to enter all the evolution costs at once when the hack was new.

But yeah, I'm definitely in favour of changing things, but it would make way more sense to me to keep them based on game data, and just pick new thresholds and costs, and/or pick a separate set of numbers for Unova Pokémon, and/or make some manual case-by-case tweaks. Like. Why rarities?

Some of the rarities do seem kind of arbitrary, but overall I think the ones that give differences in evolution requirements make sense. Basically all the two-stages evolve with 3 exp under this scale, except for:

• the rarity ones (which imo are not arbitrary at all, they're those beginning-game Pokémon that you can catch and evolve really easily)
• Golett and Bergmite (which we never actually decided on; I think I left them at 3?)
• fossils that don't evolve at a lower level
• Noibat
• Eevee (Eevee is kind of idk, so maybe we'd change that.)
• Larvesta, which I actually forgot to mention initially. I kept it at 5 exp, since it evolves at the highest level of all in-game and Volcarona is supposed to be very special and all that.

The three-stages mostly evolve at 3->6, except:

• the rarity ones (see above)
• the rarity twos, which get their second stage one point earlier (those are also sort of early-to-mid-game Pokémon, so I would advocate for moving Pokémon between rarities instead of having random exceptions)
• the starters (just because)
• the "pseudo-legends"

So really, I don't find this very arbitrary at all. The tiers are very close together, allowing some variation for a few cases that feel like they should just be different.

 

[Zhorken]

Okay! Sorry for sitting on this so long. The update is up. I did end up switching back to a level system, because I really do think it'll be way more manageable going forward if I can use a script, but I tried to pick levels that mostly agreed with Eifie's numbers, and I picked a separate set of levels for Unova Pokémon so that they're in line with everyone else.

Spoiler: Non-Unova

1 of 2 → 2 of 2:

• 15‒35: 3 (everything else)
• 36‒40: 4 (Claydol (36); Medicham, Banette, Toxicroak, Clawitzer, Avalugg (37); Muk, Magcargo, Purugly (38); Barbaracle, Tyrantrum, Aurorus (39); Rapidash, Omastar, Kabutops, Wailord, Cradily, Armaldo, Drapion, Abomasnow (40))
• 48:    5 (Dragalge, Noivern)

• Buyable: 2 (baby bugs, Gyarados)
• Item-evo sibling: 3 (Slowbro, Glalie)
• Weird evolution: 3 (Lickilicky, Tangrowth, Mr. Mime, Leafeon, Glaceon, Sudowoodo, Ambipom, Yanmega, Mantine, Probopass)

1 of 3 → 2 of 3:

• 14‒18: 2 (starters, Pidgeotto, Nidorina, Nidorino, Kadabra, Flaaffy, Skiploom, Lombre, Nuzleaf, Vigoroth, Staravia, Luxio, Fletchinder)
• 19‒28: 3 (Golbat, Gloom, Poliwhirl, Machoke, Weepinbell, Graveler, Haunter, Kirlia, Loudred, Gabite, Floette)
• 30‒42: 4 (Magneton, Rhydon, Seadra, Dragonair, Piloswine, Pupitar, Lairon, Vibrava, Dusclops, Sealeo, Shelgon, Doublade, Sliggoo)

• Buyable, 7‒9: 1 (cocoons)
• Buyable, 20: 2 (Metang)
• Baby → basic: 3 (Electabuzz, Magmar)

2 of 3 → 3 of 3:

• 18‒40: 6 (Azumarill (18); Jumpluff (27); starters (30/32/36); Ampharos, Gardevoir, Luxray (30); Staraptor (34); Talonflame (35); Pidgeot, Slaking (36); Exploud (40))
• 42‒45: 7 (Aggron, Flygon, Walrein, Metagross)
• 46‒55: 8 (Dragonite, Tyranitar, Salamence, Garchomp, Goodra)

• Buyable: 2 (butterflies)
• Weird evolution: 6 (Magnezone, Mamoswine)

Spoiler: Unova

1 of 2 → 2 of 2:

• 20‒43: 3 (everything else)
• 50‒54: 4 (Mienshao, Bisharp, Braviary, Mandibuzz)
• 59:    5 (Volcarona)

1 of 3 → 2 of 3:

• 16‒22: 2 (starters, Herdier, Tranquill, Swadloon, Whirlipede)
• 25‒35: 3 (Boldore, Gurdurr, Palpitoad, Krokorok, Gothorita, Duosion, Vanillish)
• 38‒50: 4 (Klang, Lampent, Fraxure, Zweilous)

• Buyable: 2 (Eelektrik)

2 of 3 → 3 of 3:

• 30‒41: 6 (starters, Stoutland, Unfezant, Scolipede, Krookodile, Gothitelle, Reuniclus)
• 47‒49: 7 (Vanilluxe, Klinklang, Haxorus)
• 64:    8 (Hydreigon)

Notable differences:

• I made 2-of-2s generally more expensive than what Eifie had, because it was weird that 2-of-2s were on par with 2-of-3s. They still generally cost less exp than before, though.
• There's no 5 exp tier for 3-of-3s, either... I'm on the fence about that one though. Hmm.
• There is a 7 exp tier for pseudo-pseudo-legendaries like Flygon and Haxorus and some other late-but-not-that-late bloomers, though.
• I made buyable evolutions require a lot less exp, mostly so that I can just give all the Baby Bug Ball Brawl participants 2 exp.