Less damage?

[Bing]

If you watch the anime, the pokemon take massive damage and still keep fighting.  But, if you play the games, even the most sturdy pokemon can get one hit koed. 

I propose that you lessen the damage that moves do.  I feel that this would open up strategies other than just pick strong move and attack.  It would allows slower defensive minded pokemon to actually matter, and it would increase the use of moves like toxic, sleep powder and so on....


The lengthened battles would be better, because personally I think the current battles are over too quick sometimes.

[Jerry]

Not a bad idea... I would rather suggest that this becomes a sort of option. Like before you agree to battle (PVP), you will agree on certain options such as double battles, certain restrictions, no restrictions and add this idea to it.

Sometimes, one wants the battle to be quick, but I admit that it's too quick at other times

[greybomber]

If implemented correctly lowering damage could have a huge effect on passive moves like sand-attack and tail whip etc. maybe they might become useful -.- I was always for white mages in FF but never used them because they were so crap.

it also alows for alot more skill to be involved rather than herp derp this move is the best I'll never use anything else again. but you don't want to confuse players, most pokemon fans have played all the games and have a huge feel for what a move does. I always hated incorrect implementation.

[Noah_Road]

This is could be good or bad. The "Slower deffence-minded pokemon" you are talking about are used just as often as the faster offensive ones. Pokemon like Blissey (Chansey in gen 5), Jellicent, Skarmory, Forretress, and Ferrothron are all slow and deffensive but most of said pokemon are in the top 10 used pokemon list competatively. Toxic and sleep powder are also used often. Lowering damage wouldn't make them anymore viable than they already are. On the other hand though, lowering damage would make these pokemon even more useful to a team as they would be even harder to take down.

This is where the negative side of the idea comes in. If these already deffensive walls are harder to take down, how would that affect battling? The offensive output would have to increase and people would start to only make offensive minded teams to counter the deffensive threats. With the lack of offensive and deffensive ballance comes a lack of strategy and therefore the battle system would probably fall out of what it was ment to be. This may or may not make the intended point of forcing more strategy and thought into the game redundant.


This completely depends on how much damage is reduced from the game and how the mechanics will change because of it.

[greybomber]

The intended idea is to make the battles last longer, just because the defences are high does not mean that offensive teams will be created, I think the goal here is to shape it so battles have a more tactical approach rather than you either attack or defend. Things like safeguard, tail whip and sand-attack (as said earlier) don't get used that often, if battles lasted 5 maybe even 10 turns those become a more appealing choice.

Those wall type pokemon don't need an offensive pokemon to balance it but just give them a weakness and it eliminates that problem. or better yet don't give the pokemon with high defence any more defence and just flat out balance everything.

Whatever the strategy used I think (and this is a personal opinion) the goal here should be to make the game a little more challenging by giving more def and hp and less attack and making battles longer.

[Noah_Road]

Most competative battles last about 100-200 turns. Safeguard isn't used as often because it doen't fit onto many sets and because not many pokemon get it.

Those wall type pokemon don't need an offensive pokemon to balance it but just give them a weakness and it eliminates that problem. or better yet don't give the pokemon with high defence any more defence and just flat out balance everything.

This is counter-productive. Stronger offensive measures are counter/weakness to the wall type pokemon mentioned above. That wouldn't eleminate the problem, only start the problem I stated earlier. Giving defenve boost to only some pokmeon and not other would throw off the ballance of the game and make the battling unstable. Moves like tail whip are not used often because there about 900 other moves that are better; about 20 of which do the same thing but are btter choices to use. Battling is already long enough, if 2 well trained teams are battling against each other, it would already take about 20 minutes. A longer battle and deffence boost/damage reduction is not needed.

[greybomber]

Hmm I guess you PvP alot more than me, I've never experienced long battles it's usually just a couple of strong hits and it's over for me.

So I propose a completely different change, give the goddam AI some skill.

But I must say you know alot about PvP surely there must be some way to incorporate the moves that are now currently useless.

[Bing]

My overall idea is not just "longer battles" but better ones.  I'm tired of one hit koing people and having it happen to me.  I just feel that it would make battling better and open new strategies. 

[Noah_Road]

Normally, you only see the OHKOing in competative battling when each trainer has a team full of 100. There are many ways to avoid this and spread out the battle. Since this is a pokemon mmo, not everyone will have a perfectly EV'd team. This reduces the damage output significantly. Next, since people are not just going to be battling like crazy and the need for competative battling isn't as neccesary, people will have more time to make creative sets that aren't bent on destroying other teams but helping for quest/proffesions instead.

In a pokemon mmo I used to play before it shut down (Pokenet), I once had a 3 hour battle using an Infernape and a Skarmory while they were using a Swampert and a Nidoqueen. Mind you we both had a plethora of full resotres and a few revives. Point being is that in an mmo, people won't be just OHKOing you right and left unless your pokemon in underleveled.

Also, you can EV train your pokemon to a more deffensive build so it will last longer. As for using usless moves such as tail whip, just don't use them. They aren't ment to be used in battle if your over lv6. There are other moves such as Energy Ball, Psychic, Focus Blast, and Icy Wind that have the same stat lowering effect but are ment for actual use.