Topic: Pokémon Sun & Moon - Discussion & Speculation

@Araquanid can't you get them via pokepelago?

@Meowpheel Its RNG based + you have to wait 24 hours for them to come back with the items (assuming that they did find an ice stone out of all of them). So impatience.

I did just go to one of my friend's twitch streams and one of his mods helped me out. If anybody needs ice stones I have plenty.

@Araquanid Each gym haad a different puzzle and while every trial is visually distinct I find it hard to justify the change when each trial felt more similar than each Gym. Maybe needs to be worked on.

Additionally the performance can be atrocious at times, the story is very laid out and if the Aether Foundation was called Team Plasma Id say wed done this villain before.

New Pokemon are pretty cool though some are for some reason as rare as blood in rocks again but it feels better than XY. Visually superior too minus frame issues.

Difficulty feels just right though at times it did get overwhelming and Id say half of that was due to simply being swarmed. Guzma feels like a good challenge. Totem Lurantis and Mimikyu can go die for all I care. That felt far more untested and brutal than challenging.

Also on that note gotta say difficulty selects would be nice. I know GameFreak hates using their good ideas again but I cant see my siblings having /fun/ at a few moments here. A few too many in fact.

Overall, its nice but not what Id bill as great like everyone else. Got a lot of issues to iron out and some balance to be applied. When I feel parts of a game arent fun its a problem.

Difficulty toggling is kind of hard to program in Pokemon when anyone can just transfer/trade for a level 100 to stomp flat any trouble areas.

@meleebrawler They've done it before, and there are the restrictions on traded Pokémon in the game after all, for a reason. It was to stop you doing that period.

@meleebrawler For the story mode he means, its not hard to buff a pokemon on a trainer's team by 5 levels, or give it really strong TM moves (so you fight a trainer with a level 10 poison sting spinarak? Now its a level 13 poison jab one).

Although post game none of it really matters. Like everybody, no matter what difficulty you're doing, you'll just spend the other 99% of your play time breeding, using GTS, or battling players online, or simply retiring until the next game. I'd rather just get by the 1% of my playtime faster so I can get to work with why I actually do play this franchise (to build innovative sets and get competitive.)

I will say sun and moon flat out did a good job making that 1% wish it was longer, while being already very long. At the start everything was beautiful, and despite being slow, made you want to actually look around unlike x/y or oras (one which just looked uninteresting and unimportant everywhere and the other you've been to before in gen 3). The story itself has a lot of really good twist, and while pokemon is a franchise that screams cringe, cheese, and anticlimatic moments when it comes to story ( latias/latios in oras), these games really did a good job making moments feel exciting, serious, and making the story interesting... which I find really well done considering the biggest twist with lusamine and lillie was a dramatic sitcom skit, but it was well done enough with the introduction that it wasn't cringey like one.

@Araquanid Yeah, but my point still stands. If you don't bring in overpowered mons from elsewhere (them not obeying consistently isn't much of a deterrent when you're 4X stronger than everything), then all the added difficulty does is add a few more hours of forced grinding. And just like you said, it's such a small part of the game comparatively that it would ultimately add very little to have added arbitrary difficulty. There's a reason fan-made restrictions like Nuzlocke remain popular, because they actually do change the way you have to approach things.

Your thoughts on the story, got me thinking on how Mystery Dungeon feels like the polar opposite of the main series. The plots in those games are usually fantastic and a great reason to play them, but then I usually lose interest in the post-game pretty fast due to limited multiplayer not providing much of a fun incentive to grind. Glad to hear Sun & Moon proving that good story and multiplayer don't have to be mutually exclusive.

@Araquanid @meleebrawler Perhaps I shouldn't have said difficulty select. I should stress difficulty is a spectrum and I think this game rests on the higher end, with some unfair aspects. What it could do with, is an option to tone it down. Works both ways ya know?

I wouldn't say Sun and Moon have a good plot. Some of the characters are good, yes, but the things binding them...good god. That was one note predictable. There are even some issues here and there.

1: When soummoing your legend of the day, where did you and Lillie learn the song? Anyone? Coz I sure as hell missed that one.

2: Could've done more with Lusamine. So much more. She feels like Cyrus in Diamond and Pearl, there briefly until you need to beat em up. At least Platinum fixed Cyrus, who knows what the possible Stars will do for Lusamine.

3: I like how Gladion is positioned as a rival of sorts, yet you battle him near the start of Island 2, can see him in a hotel near the end of it, see him in Battle Royal(e) (Pokémon cant spell), meet him on Island 3, battle him at the end of that, and then he vanishes again until he turns out to be a rival at the end. Underutilised is the word for that kid.

4: Ultra Beasts. Oh they could be so much more. You battle one after Island 2, then they get unleashed after Island 3...for a cutscene. Even other legendaries have impact when they appear. All you see is UB02 for a short cutscene, and UB01 being kinda creepy. Powerful, to be feared beasts? Show don't tell.

The more I dissect my opinion on this game and notice story notes missing, aspects that are half baked or game design issues that could easily be fixed, mostly by Game Freak NOT dropping one of their good ideas for once, the more I realise....yeah I don't really like it that much. I want to, but I cant.

And having just gotten to the final battle with creepy woman of the day, I can say screw Clefable. Don't appreciate being walled by Cosmic Power and smacked around with ONLY Super Effective moves and Toxic Spikes via Metronome.

Actually regarding the game design here. Ive fought every trainer so far, and been on par or 1 or 2 levels down, right until Island 4 where the game decides to skyrocket. Trainers get 3-4 levels above your very last battle, which was okay, but now having beaten all of them,, and sitting in the low 40s, why on this Earth is Lusamine Lv50? Why? I get it, EXP Share should be used, but you give us an option to turn it off, I'm going to do that, and the game was challenging, little too brutal at points, but a good challenging. Rewarding I'd say. And then it slaps you, repeatedly, for making that choice. Why? That's not good design.

@BLP_Software I think toggling Exp. Share is your easy/hard mode to work with.

I personally never blacked out (whited out?) once in my entire playthrough. I had Exp. Share on, but even then I was always just there with levels.. usually I'd have my best above level everything, but my everything else was under leveled vs. important characters. I'd say my playthrough could've been just a party of 3 since most of my pokemon were irrelevant and mostly there for an extra turn or two to spam max revives. Although i did have very frustating/hard moments, in particular mimikyu totem + haunter SOS with confuse ray nearly swept me. Lusamine would've been harder if I didn't have a sword's dance ariados that swept her 6-0 both times while she metronomed random stuff. (He was 3 levels below clefable)

To the points,

1) Good question, yea I completely agree here. I had the same thought at the time.. I'm assuming maybe lillie just studied the song in her books? She's been to the library and at the lab she has an entire bookshelf. However I'm more worried about where the hell did we learn the song? Lillie has done her research but I've been murdering rattatas my whole life so when did I learn the song?

2) She still feels pretty flessed out. Her "collection" is freaky, her relationships tie her into why she's such a big authority figure (cyrus, is he the leader cause he owns a crobat? archey, did he sink a ship and slave the rest of team aqua? Lusamine is part of a big family and her station offers a lab for other's job opportunities. They think its a big experiment for the better but lusamine's heart is her true intentions). Overall, I will say she's very well designed and explained. Normally I look at boss characters and just see another grunt but with stronger pokemon and just being there during important times but lusamine gets much more personal with how many links and relationships she has with people you've met. I honestly don't know what's missing with her.. hell lillie leaving flat out explains what's up with lusamine and why the ultra beast (or nihilego alone) is such a horrific creature with her current condition.

3) I just wish you could repeatedly battle him post game, like you can generally rebattle rivals every day in the previous games.

4) This is where a third game or a complete generation skip zygardetears can fix this. It feels like there should be more ultra beast or you should be allowed to visit the ultra space much more rather than being there for cutscene purposes, or just for a story moment (gen 4 distortion world). It'd be cool if even 20 new pokemon where made and catchable in ultra space for the third game, almost like a micro region.

In the next games, I expect more emphasis on ultra beast, and mega evolution since they had a pretty long break without worrying about it, and now they have so many pokemon they can give megas too (very upset that in sun and moon most of the mega stones are infact unobtainable, making some megas completely nonexistant in these games.)

After getting Bagon to finally appear, getting salamence was practically effortless.

The battle even made munchlax evolve. How nice.

I wonder how much the FPS will drop in a multi battle this time.

I wish I could change the online battle scene.
It's boring to see the same digital stadium since XY.

@Araquanid We've been playing Poke Flutes or coloured ash flutes for years now with nary a moment of instruction. Besides, if Lillie knew the song and you didn't, she could easily have taught it and rehearsed together.

I'm practically rearming my team with only Kanto pokemon (except Popplio). Have a Growlithe, Kadabra, Butterfree and Magnemite by now.
Oh, and one of those little birds you can caught in route 1. Its a damn glass cannon!

@meleebrawler I mean, they could have instructions painted next to "made in china"

You know, I hated the idea of Battle Royal. They wanted to make the community favorite free for all a thing, but failed at it since the rules are completely different.

Now its just a gamemode where everybody focuses the weak kid with the level 29 crabrawler (literally I think its stereotypical at this point that there will always be that one guy with a crabrawler.. in a battle royal.. but i guess its too early for good teams.)

However when I played more of it in battle spot (and yes, battle spot is WAY more enjoyable now, you can even set the battle spot rules before queueing up preventing the ORAS rayquaza spam), I actually really enjoyed it. There's a lot of laughable funny moments, I never thought I'd get so much enjoyment out of somebody leaving a pokemon at 1 HP and then KSing it with my hail storm. I legit love the gamemode, and its not because of my dumb luck with winning almost all of them, but rather its enjoyable, I never feel pressured to try hard and win, I just like to watch either the dumb %^#@ they do to each other or random funny moments like crits, low health and getting kills stolen, its overall fun. Even when I get taken out, there's mini enjoyment since now I'm going after that guy making it a bit more intense.

The only thing I may dislike is its a gamemode best played randomly without people you know, oddly its funner in battle spot. I can see me and my friends in a skype call and we all just make alliances to focus the other guy, which takes the randomness out of it. Against people you don't know, its very enjoyable as you worry about yourself and see other people doing strange things. I'll always love it when you protect or king's shield turn 1 and everybody focuses you and you switch out.

There's a little bit of strategy in it, like I said, its no pressure to win you just enjoy yourself (and I'm a VERY competitive person) but it seems the focus the weak kid actually gets tricky since if somebody else gets a kill, now you're tied and competing with that guy who may outspeed and end the battle on the focused kid's pokemon with more points then you, so you start to focus him instead to try and set him back so you can get the kill, then suddenly the third guy who's done nothing starts focusing you to try and get some kind of kill to even the game out. So there's a lot to it then making the in-game team kid shark bait.

All-in-all, I like it. It sucks to BP grind in since you want to win and its a 1/4 odds, it sucks if you're communicating in a premade game since there is always going to be that occasional trolling among the group to try and piss someone off (idk, its kinda fun when it ain't me ). However it gives me a good reason to go in battle spot, and frankly, its something I'll willing do in my spare time.

Finding 6v6 battles is tricky though, everybody has to be in festival plaza to be online, so if people are spending a lot of their time breeding or something, then its really tough to find people online or paying attention. You can send them the invitation and they might either just go offline after checking their lottery shops, or they may not be paying attention. Fortunately though, it does tell you what they're doing in the plaza and if they're accepting battles / trade request. So in comparison, you could send a battle invite to a passerby on oras and they're in the GTS, but in Sun / Moon, it will tell you if they're in the middle of a trade, on battle spot, in the GTS, or doing a mission. So there's never that "is this guy really here?" questioning.. you see a guy accepting battles just walking in the plaza, challenge him, he'll accept if he really wants to or if he's not afk. Its just really really hard to notice invites because unlike in oras, there is no sound notifaction.. you get a ding whenever somebody challenges or wants to trade in gen 6 with a big pop-up, but in sun and moon your screen just pops up with a very tiny (not really tiny but if you don't have glasses on when you need them, you won't know what it is or notice it if you're looking at top screen.) text bar. For example, I can have earphones on, but be looking at my computer screen and miss the invite because I looked away. In ORAS I could get away with doing this but this gen is more harsh on the paying attention aspect.

My complain with battle roayel is that it ends whenever someone has no pokemon left.

It would be nice if it would continue until only one was standing.
In the case for the player that lost, it should be able to either choose to continue watching or leave without cancelling the whole battle.

Well, I can understand why they did it that way.

Imagine being left out and waiting another 30 minutes to be able to play with your friends again because you were the first to go down.

It would be like being the first one to lose in a 4-player stock match in Smash. Except here every battle would last at least three times more.

@Gridatttack Yea, thats how I wish it was. I guess its to prevent situations like a 3 man stall game. For just leaving, perhaps they can't properly code it so that a player can stop watching without it counting as leaving/disconnecting. (an issue we've seen in gen 6 with unaware players in multis)

With the points system it would be a bit hectic. Sometimes with just focusing one guy, you could be 3 stars + 3 pokemon (6 points total) and the rest of the game would just be the other guys dying to you / splitting the score up when you already won. This is where more customization is needed and it seems they took a first step for battle customizations with disabling box legends and event pokemon. They should allow a mode where you can disable the battle ending when somebody is out, or even give you the option to turn off the points system so its last man standing wins.

Sorry if this was brought up already I looked around and couldn't find anything, but does this one always just show you "offline" unless your connected to the plaza? >.<

@OutCold Yes,

You're always offline, and when you enter the plaza you're always local wireless.

You can be globally online by connecting to the internet in the plaza, but the moment you leave you're offline.