Re: Humbid0 Games
Actually, the enemies won't get exponentially harder because Pokemon cannot level-up against weaker opponents.
In other words, your opponent cannot level-up a second time.
You'll never find yourself in a battle against an opponent 2 levels above you.
Unless you have one monster that you've farmed exp for (by letting them kill one of yours, letting them level, and then killing them) and you haven't done that with the rest. I see your point, but that wasn't entirely what I was getting at. My point was, allowing them to level up means that there's a huge gap in difficulty levels. Either they're really easy - they're one level lower than you. Or you have to use a potion (or just outnumber them) - they're equal level than you. If you don't outnumber them, or have a potion on hand, the battle just got pretty difficult, since every evenly matched monster will leave yours at 1 or 2 hp. If they do manage to kill one of yours, the battle suddenly takes a huge jump in difficulty - and that's pretty easy to do, with the way you've set up stats. Maybe tweaking the others will fix this; as it is, letting enemies level up has too much power attached to it.
I deliberately simplified things for myself by removing most of the stats.
Maybe I should add some random variation in each Pokemon's attack power and HP. That way, with a large enough variation, even the same battles will play out differently... in theory. But I'd need to be careful not to negate the strategic significance of weaknesses.
You might not even have to vary their HP or attack power if you didn't want to, putting more moves in the game instead. That would make your job easier but still allow for battles to be different each time other than "I hit you, you hit me, repeat until you're dead and I'm almost dead because I attacked first," because you'd be able to use moves of higher power.
You can get actually get an Onix elsewhere in Pewter.
What makes Brock's battle unique is Brock himself.
His unexpected CUT attack is strong against plant Pokemon which would otherwise be excellent in a battle against rock Pokemon.
And his "harden" ability forces you to strategize a little.
That's just my point. The fight against brock ISN'T unique because you can get all of his pokemon before you fight him. I was talking about the fight against the original brock, in red and blue versions.
Although my game isn't perfect, I pretty sure it's better than the original Pokemon games. When I tried playing Pokemon Blue, I noticed that most of the time, I was walking back and forth, fighting the same Pokemon over and over, with the same attack. Repetition is boring.
I think I've managed to add at least some variety by starting everyone off with 2 moves, and adding a level cap to discourage staying in one place for long.
But I admit that most battles fall into a common strategy of using Pikachu's stun, followed by Spearow's sand-attack.
At least rock Pokemon discourage you from using Pikachu since she's weak against them.
Hmmm... I have a different experience of the original pokemon games then. Personally I never had to grind in the original pokemon games; I found traveling from one area to the next usually leveled my party sufficiently. To each their own. You've streamlined the leveling system and took out much of the grinding, but made it a bit harder to level up as a result (not necessarily a bad thing).
I admit that meeting trainers with unique Pokemon would make them more memorable, but I've limited my game's plan to have only 16 Pokemon because I'm going to be drawing all of them.
And I want each area to have at least 2 Pokemon each.
Fair enough. How many gym leaders are you planning on having? If you don't have very many of them, as in two or three, maybe they could each have their own unique party of non-catchable pokemon (only one or two) that you could find pictures on google images or something so you wouldn't have to draw them. That might add a little to the camera sidequest too - trying to survive against these slightly powered-up versions of monsters while snapping a picture of them.
I might sound like I'm being a little defensive, but I'm glad to get feedback like this. It's always helpful for me to re-think things once in awhile.
Not at all. I appreciate the response and the way you're keeping an open mind about your game - and of course the fact that your motivation hasn't died out for this one (yet haha =P). Keep up the good work.
@Fanta: I don't feel your unwarranted attack deserves a response, but try reading into the tone of my post a little more. The reason I pointed out mechanics from the original pokemon games was because they were there for a reason: they worked. Try taking a game design course at whatever university you go to; a lot of them are opening them up now - you'll see that there's actually a lot of thinking going on behind choosing whether to put in this mechanic or that. I'm trying to improve Humbird0's game, not turn it into a carbon copy of another one - it just so happens that his game mimics another one that was extremely successful, and with good reason.