Pokémon Team Regulations
Probably the most dramatic changes I have in mind regard the way that teams are built. Rather than receiving their choice of up to six basic/baby pokémon at the start of their career, a player would apply for a bank account first, then have the opportunity to purchase their team with what funds they were given. All pokémon and evolution purchases would be possible through the approval center rather than private businesses, with pokémon being priced according to rarity. Therefore, a beginning trainer could choose to spend as much money as they wanted on their team initially, and the rarity of the pokémon selected as their starters would determine how large their squad would be, due to financial restrictions.
Pokémon that evolve by leveling would require only battle experience to evolve—the process would be free, at least in terms of money. Battle experience would be defined as being used by the trainer in a battle, and pokémon of higher rarities, which tend to evolve at higher levels, would require more to evolve than more common pokémon. Pokémon that evolve through other methods would have some further requirement, such as holding a particular item in battle (see the Pokémon Customization topic for more information on held items), in addition to battle experience, but all pokémon save those considered prohibitively difficult to use in battle (beldum, caterpie, etc.) would be required to see some action before they could be evolved.
These changes are intended to stamp out something that rather bugged me about the old system—that people who almost never battled but were able to earn a lot of money through other pursuits could amass huge teams of rare and heavily modified pokémon simply by sinking a lot of cash into their teams. Meanwhile, members whose primary source of income was battles would be able to develop their team at a much slower rate and were often at a disadvantage against richer players simply because they didn’t have access to such monetary resources. This system also ensures that players would need to use underevolved pokémon more often if they hoped to advance their squad, rather than always pulling out their big guns and just letting the unevolved creatures hang out in their profile until they had enough money to evolve them, as was common practice under the old system. Thus, the experience requirements are designed to challenge players to play outside their comfort zones and to actually play in order to increase their team strength.
Of course, the rarity restrictions on pokémon also mean that it would be more difficult to obtain some of the more desirable pokémon, such as salamence or metagross. What with the high initial investment required to obtain a bagon or metang, and the further high costs to evolve them to their middle and final stages, such pokémon would be far more uncommon on teams than they were under the old system, and what people had them would have had to work hard to obtain them. I also feel that obtaining a dragonite or something similar would be, while more frustrating, more rewarding as well, as one would need to grow accustomed to battling with it both as a dratini and a dragonair before making the final evolution, rather than simply being able to plunk down some money and see it reach max power in under a week. Thus, as I stated in the news announcement, I was looking to make the game a little more challenging and realistic for, just as in the games and anime, while rattata may be a dime a dozen, only very dedicated trainers will be able to find and raise a garchomp.
Finally, although the total number of pokémon a trainer would be allowed to keep would not be restricted, trainers would need to select an active squad that would be available in any given battle. The rest of their team would be stored in a PC, with a fee charged whenever the trainer wanted to withdraw one of them. In battle, trainers would be able to select only from pokémon on their active team when choosing what to send out, and alterations to active squad composition would not be possible after a referee has called for either battler to send out their pokémon. The active squad would probably be larger than six—at the moment I’m thinking fifteen or so.
The intent with this change is to prevent people with huge teams from having a dramatic advantage over newer opponents. While a player with a full active squad against someone with only six (or fewer!) would indeed be at an advantage, it would be far less dramatic than an advantage of, say, thirty to six. Additionally, the restrictions on altering a player’s active squad would prevent trainers from being able to “stack” their team against a certain opponent, for example by pulling a bunch of pokémon good against that player’s squad out of storage or going out and buying a bunch of new ones just before a match starts and when their opponent is unable to respond.
Unfortunately, the necessary result of these changes would be that players would have to keep track of more information about their pokémon than they previously did. Creating and maintaining a profile would have to be mandatory, simply to keep track of a person’s active squad. Beyond that, people would want to keep links to what battles certain pokémon had participated in, as well as a record of what items they had on hand, though these would be sort of “on one’s honor” records—you could always just not keep them if you weren’t fussed about not being able to evolve your pokémon. This is what I had meant about increasing complexity; however, I hope you’ll agree that these changes wouldn’t make it terribly difficult to maintain a squad or put an unnecessary burden on battlers. Push comes to shove, we could always just make “profiler” a job and have a select few people get paid to watch over the records, but that would mean that people wouldn’t have much control over their profile.
Probably the most dramatic changes I have in mind regard the way that teams are built. Rather than receiving their choice of up to six basic/baby pokémon at the start of their career, a player would apply for a bank account first, then have the opportunity to purchase their team with what funds they were given. All pokémon and evolution purchases would be possible through the approval center rather than private businesses, with pokémon being priced according to rarity. Therefore, a beginning trainer could choose to spend as much money as they wanted on their team initially, and the rarity of the pokémon selected as their starters would determine how large their squad would be, due to financial restrictions.
Pokémon that evolve by leveling would require only battle experience to evolve—the process would be free, at least in terms of money. Battle experience would be defined as being used by the trainer in a battle, and pokémon of higher rarities, which tend to evolve at higher levels, would require more to evolve than more common pokémon. Pokémon that evolve through other methods would have some further requirement, such as holding a particular item in battle (see the Pokémon Customization topic for more information on held items), in addition to battle experience, but all pokémon save those considered prohibitively difficult to use in battle (beldum, caterpie, etc.) would be required to see some action before they could be evolved.
These changes are intended to stamp out something that rather bugged me about the old system—that people who almost never battled but were able to earn a lot of money through other pursuits could amass huge teams of rare and heavily modified pokémon simply by sinking a lot of cash into their teams. Meanwhile, members whose primary source of income was battles would be able to develop their team at a much slower rate and were often at a disadvantage against richer players simply because they didn’t have access to such monetary resources. This system also ensures that players would need to use underevolved pokémon more often if they hoped to advance their squad, rather than always pulling out their big guns and just letting the unevolved creatures hang out in their profile until they had enough money to evolve them, as was common practice under the old system. Thus, the experience requirements are designed to challenge players to play outside their comfort zones and to actually play in order to increase their team strength.
Of course, the rarity restrictions on pokémon also mean that it would be more difficult to obtain some of the more desirable pokémon, such as salamence or metagross. What with the high initial investment required to obtain a bagon or metang, and the further high costs to evolve them to their middle and final stages, such pokémon would be far more uncommon on teams than they were under the old system, and what people had them would have had to work hard to obtain them. I also feel that obtaining a dragonite or something similar would be, while more frustrating, more rewarding as well, as one would need to grow accustomed to battling with it both as a dratini and a dragonair before making the final evolution, rather than simply being able to plunk down some money and see it reach max power in under a week. Thus, as I stated in the news announcement, I was looking to make the game a little more challenging and realistic for, just as in the games and anime, while rattata may be a dime a dozen, only very dedicated trainers will be able to find and raise a garchomp.
Finally, although the total number of pokémon a trainer would be allowed to keep would not be restricted, trainers would need to select an active squad that would be available in any given battle. The rest of their team would be stored in a PC, with a fee charged whenever the trainer wanted to withdraw one of them. In battle, trainers would be able to select only from pokémon on their active team when choosing what to send out, and alterations to active squad composition would not be possible after a referee has called for either battler to send out their pokémon. The active squad would probably be larger than six—at the moment I’m thinking fifteen or so.
The intent with this change is to prevent people with huge teams from having a dramatic advantage over newer opponents. While a player with a full active squad against someone with only six (or fewer!) would indeed be at an advantage, it would be far less dramatic than an advantage of, say, thirty to six. Additionally, the restrictions on altering a player’s active squad would prevent trainers from being able to “stack” their team against a certain opponent, for example by pulling a bunch of pokémon good against that player’s squad out of storage or going out and buying a bunch of new ones just before a match starts and when their opponent is unable to respond.
Unfortunately, the necessary result of these changes would be that players would have to keep track of more information about their pokémon than they previously did. Creating and maintaining a profile would have to be mandatory, simply to keep track of a person’s active squad. Beyond that, people would want to keep links to what battles certain pokémon had participated in, as well as a record of what items they had on hand, though these would be sort of “on one’s honor” records—you could always just not keep them if you weren’t fussed about not being able to evolve your pokémon. This is what I had meant about increasing complexity; however, I hope you’ll agree that these changes wouldn’t make it terribly difficult to maintain a squad or put an unnecessary burden on battlers. Push comes to shove, we could always just make “profiler” a job and have a select few people get paid to watch over the records, but that would mean that people wouldn’t have much control over their profile.
