New Gameplay Features/Mechanics Discussion Thread

[Bguy7]

It's not you, nor your team. The Battle Tree is definitely harder. At least the Maison started out with non-evolved pokemon, but now they're not only fully evolved, but the trainers can also use Z-crystals and switch out their pokemon. To top it off, the AI seems smarter as well and I keep coming across a suspicious amount of trainers that have a pokemon in their first slot that's either faster than my Kartana or cancel out it's ability.

Alright then, that's too bad for me and any other non-competitive trainer who wants to meet up with the returning characters. Oh well.

Now that you mention it, there really is a lack of dungeons. Other than Poni island, I can only think of Diglett cave and Seaward cave. Ten Carat Hill isn't even that big. I mean there are Trial sites, but they don't lead to another part of the region like dungeons usually do.

I wouldn't even call Seaward Cave and Diglett's Tunnel dungeons. Maybe this is just me, but I define a dungeon as being an obstacle to be overcome, not just a path to take. They were both somewhat short caves completely devoid of any puzzles. The former was completely optional, mostly pointless, and had no trainers. A case could be made for Diglett's Tunnel, but it just wasn't on the same level of caves like Mt. Moon or Mt. Coronet.

Not sure I'd call it lame though, since I enjoyed the playthrough and evil team more than usual, they must have done something right with that. Team Skull I found to be especially more interacting with the community on a more personal level, with how they seem to know the Kahunas/captains/Hau, interrupt trials, occupy a town while Nanu keeps an eye on them, these 2 grunts we keep running into, Guzma having some personal issues with Kukui etc. Didn't really miss the raid honestly.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the game regardless of its lack of dungeons. It's just one thing that was oddly and inexplicably missing from the game, which could have been made better had they been included. It's just one part of a greater whole that's missing.

 

[Tropios]

Alright then, that's too bad for me and any other non-competitive trainer who wants to meet up with the returning characters. Oh well.

I really wouldn't call myself competitive either, but putting Kartana and Tapu Koko on Isle Evelup overnight and teaching them some better moves doesn't require much effort. You'll manage The Battle Tree is surprisingly fun when you get the hang of it.

 

[Ophie]

I know what you're saying and agree. I think it comes from a scaling down of some of the gameplay, likely to make it easier. If you think about it, Vast Poni Canyon is the only real dungeon in the entire game (and they even make that easy by having Lillie follow and heal you). Without dungeons, there wasn't really anywhere to have these fights with the teams. Both the lack of dungeons and raids against the team(s) were pretty lame.

Not just a lack of dungeons, but each location is substantially smaller than those in X and Y. You move from place to place incredibly quickly, sometimes too quickly for it to make any impression on you.

 

[Victreebong]

I'm an outside-the-box thinker, and Anger Point is one of those abilities I like to contemplate to find uses for. While I agree that Crabominable has a lot of wasted potential, I do see it working a lot better in double or triple battles than single battles, where you can deliberately invoke Anger Point, it has the low Speed to use the boosted Attack immediately, and a lack of resistances isn't as much of a concern in that Crabominable might not be attacked every turn and you can use Protect and still move the battle forward.

Possible uses for Crabominable is something I'm currently having thoughts about. When I saw its attributes, I knew people would see it as a joke character, which to me meant, "I've got to use this in head-to-head play!"

(Sorry to dwell on my post guys, but I just really want this Pokémon line to be better.)

Crabominable resists Frost Breath, and is slow. That's TWO boons for it in Doubles format, where Trick Room can completely blow the game wide open. A single intentional Frost Breath from something that has little Special Attack can make it a monster in one turn. Coincidently, Bruxish of all things is the best partner for Crabomnable;

- it gets Frost Breath,
- it has low Special Attack,
- it has priority,
- it can set up Trick Room,
- it shares no weaknesses (and resists things the other is weak to) and
- it has the ability Dazzling to prevent priority.

It also has average speed which can be somewhat (not ideally) circumvented with Aqua Jet. This means if you set up Trick Room with the fish, stuff cannot bypass the Trick Room and have to be slower than Crabominable to catch up. If you get off a Frost Breath, you now have a ferocious sweeper with scrumptious STAB on your hands. Doing all of that with the stats of Bruxish and Crabominable, that's a different story. But if this thing ever wants to take off, there's where to start. Tapu Lele is the next best teammate in Doubles, but it doesn't get Trick Room or a sure fire critical hit move. Tapu Lele is the glue to most teams anyways, and has better partners that can support it as well.

 

[Tropios]

Not just a lack of dungeons, but each location is substantially smaller than those in X and Y. You move from place to place incredibly quickly, sometimes too quickly for it to make any impression on you.

Do we actually move through them faster than usual? It still takes way more time to finish the main storyline than before. There are a lot more areas than, but if lot of them are smaller than what we're used to and we move through them so quickly, it wouldn't take 5 to 20 hours longer to finish these games.

 

[Xuxuba]

Do we actually move through them faster than usual? It still takes way more time to finish the main storyline than before. There are a lot more areas than, but if lot of them are smaller than what we're used to and we move through them so quickly, it wouldn't take 5 to 20 hours longer to finish these games.

I did take slightly more time to finish S&M's main storyline than XY's, but that was mainly due to S&M having over 6 hours of cutscenes/obligatory dialogue and not because the game had more areas and we didn't move as fast as Ophie described.

Overall, i felt like this game had less cities, dungeons and buildings, but it had more fields. The fields and cities were usually bigger than XY's, just not as big as Lumiose, but we also moved faster through them without having much reason to explore, and, like Ophie said, we didn't spend enough time on them to make any impression.

 

[Tropios]

I did take slightly more time to finish S&M's main storyline than XY's, but that was mainly due to S&M having over 6 hours of cutscenes/obligatory dialogue and not because the game had more areas and we didn't move as fast as Ophie described.

There's absolutely no way the cutscenes and obligatory dialogue take up 6 hours more than they did in XY. If you mean that they take up 6+ hours total, then XY's would take up 3-5 and I'm talking about a bigger difference than 2 or 3 hours longer. I mean we know for a fact that Alola has almost 20 more explorable areas if I remember correctly, but I also think we can all agree some of them were smaller than usual, so I find it hard to imagine we move much faster.

 

[Xuxuba]

There's absolutely no way the cutscenes and obligatory dialogue take up 6 hours more than they did in XY. If you mean that they take up 6+ hours total, then XY's would take up 3-5 and I'm talking about a bigger difference than 2 or 3 hours longer. I mean we know for a fact that Alola has almost 20 more explorable areas if I remember correctly, but I also think we can all agree some of them were smaller than usual, so I find it hard to imagine we move much faster.

I just meant it had 6 hours of cutscenes and obligatory dialogue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_MT9q54MGY

Well, XY barely had any cutscenes aside from the legendary part and the beggining of the game, and it definetly had way less obligatory dialogue, since most of the main storyline's dialogue was Team Flare's and Team flare members' dialogue was usually just a few lines and their storyline ended when we weren't even finished with the badge quest.

So i really doubt S&M's main storyline lasting a bit more than XY's is due to we not moving faster/we having more areas to explore and not because of all the cutscenes and obligatory dialogue. Overall, i felt like Tauros was way faster than any bike or rollerskate and that we had less area diversity.

 

[Tropios]

I just meant it had 6 hours of cutscenes and obligatory dialogue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_MT9q54MGY

Well, XY barely had any cutscenes aside from the legendary part and the beggining of the game, and it definetly had way less obligatory dialogue, since most of the main storyline's dialogue was Team Flare's and Team flare members' dialogue was usually just a few lines and their storyline ended when we weren't even finished with the badge quest.

So i really doubt S&M's main storyline lasting a bit more than XY is due to we not moving faster/we having more areas to explore and not because of all the cutscenes and obligatory dialogue. Overall, i felt like Tauros was way faster than any bike or rollerskate and that we had less area diversity.

Well even if there's way less of it in XY, it isn't going to be less than half.

It took me 15 hours longer to complete, which I doubt is all due to dialogue. Also, I never used Tauros just to move around, I'd feel like I'd miss half of the region that way... Area diversity is personal I guess, I think we had more.

 

[Xuxuba]

Well even if there's way less of it in XY, it isn't going to be less than half.

It took me 15 hours longer to complete, which I doubt is all due to dialogue. Also, I never used Tauros just to move around, I'd feel like I'd miss half of the region that way... Area diversity is personal I guess, I think we had more.

15 hours longer than xy? what were you doing throughout all of your jorney? I spent like 90% of my time doing sidecontent like the festival plaza and barely using tauros to explore bc it was too fast and yet the time i took to complete would be barely any different from xy if it weren't for the cutscenes and obligatory dialogue.

 

[Tropios]

15 hours more than xy? what were you doing throughout all of your jorney? I spent like 90% of my time doing sidequests and barely using tauros bc it was too fast and yet the time i took to complete was barely different from xy.

Just going through it honestly, nothing special, talking to all noc's but not doing all side quests and catching all Pokémon. It's probably different for everyone, but my brother still took 7-10 hours longer and I've seen people who spent even more time on it. Maybe that's more the reason why you felt it's smaller and I felt it's bigger than story or time spent in areas.

 

[Xuxuba]

Just going through it honestly, nothing special, talking to all noc's but not doing all side quests and catching all Pokémon. It's probably different for everyone, but my brother still took 7-10 hours longer and I've seen people who spent even more time on it. Maybe that's more the reason why you felt it's smaller and I felt it's bigger than story or time spent in areas.

7 hours longer still is comprehensible, but over 15 hours longer? That's an exaggeration, especially for someone who didn't do any side content.

If we are talking about 7 hours longer, then i really doubt the fact the game had over 6 hours of cutscenes/obligatory dialogue didn't play any part on it. Besides, you have to take into account that you said you never used tauros, which is this game's substitute for a bike/rollerskate. If you were to explore every single one of kalos areas without using the rollerblades and the bike, you would probably spend a really long time on it.

 

[BlitzGirl41]

7 hours longer still is comprehensible, but over 15 hours longer? That's an exaggeration, especially for someone who didn't do any side content.

If we are talking about 7 hours longer, then i really doubt the fact the game had over 6 hours of cutscenes/obligatory dialogue didn't play any part on it. Besides, you have to take into account that you said you never used tauros, which is this game's substitute for a bike/rollerskate. If you were to explore every single one of kalos areas without using the bike and the rollerblades, you would probably spend a really long time on it.

Everyone plays at different speeds. There's no reason to go about questioning someone's experience. I'd be more curious if someone claimed they beat the game in just a few hours, since cut-scenes can't be skipped. I probably had a total of 40-50 gameplay hours clocked by the time the end credits rolled. Sure, I beat the game in a little over a week, but I played for large chunks of time in single sittings over the Thanksgiving weekend. A lot of my time was dedicated to exploring and catching Pokemon, whereas the story itself wasn't that large of a time sink.

 

[Tropios]

Everyone plays at different speeds. There's no reason to go about questioning someone's experience. I'd be more curious if someone claimed they beat the game in just a few hours, since cut-scenes can't be skipped. I probably had a total of 40-50 gameplay hours clocked by the time the end credits rolled. Sure, I beat the game in a little over a week, but I played for large chunks of time in single sittings over the Thanksgiving weekend. A lot of my time was dedicated to exploring and catching Pokemon, whereas the story itself wasn't that large of a time sink.

Exactly, I also spent 45-ish hours on it by the time I became champion, while I beat ORAS in 30-ish and XY in slightly less I believe. It's not like I didn't do any sidequests, I just didn't go back to battle the captians or explored Haina desert before the league and I only bothered catching the new mons. I barely ever use the bike either, for the same reason I didn't really use Tauros, but I did use the rollerblades all the time.

I just realized I should also take into account that 7 trials and 4 kahunas probably also requires a bit more time than 8 gyms and that we didn't have Poké-pelago, the Festival Plaza and Refresh in gen 6, all of which I used frequently. (We had amie which is basically the same, but it was less integrated so I never really used it.)

 

[Xuxuba]

Well, one thing is to say it took you 40 hours to beat the game while also doing side content stuff, like completing the regional dex, playing on the amie/refresh/super training, having fun on contests and secret bases... But if you just went through the dialogue and moved from town to town, then you have to admit you're either exaggerating or you took an absurd amount of time to just press A and move around, because S&M's main storyline, without any kind of side content, certainly doesn't take 15 ~ 40 hours more than XY's to beat.

Anyway, none of this really matters, because the amount of time you take to finish the main storyline =/= the amount of areas a game has and how quickly you move around. I can take a really long time to read the text and spend 10 hours on amie and super training if i want to, it's not going to make the world bigger just because it added some hours to the game.

 

[Tropios]

Well, one thing is to say it took you 40 hours to beat the game while also doing side content stuff, like completing the regional dex, playing on the amie/refresh/super training, having fun on contests and secret bases... But if you didn't do any kind of side content, just went through the dialogue and moved from town to town, then you have to admit you're either exaggerating or you took an absurd amount of time to just press A and move around.

Anyway, none of this really matters, because the amount of time you take to finish the main storyline =/= the amount of areas a game has.

But I didn't say I didn't do ANY of that? I just said I didn't do ALL and I definitely used pelago and the likes a lot.

I thought this wasn't about the amount of areas though? Either way, I never said that and Alola does have about 20 more areas than Kalos, you can go to serebii's pokéarth and count it.

 

[Baggie_Saiyan]

I've just hit Mount Lanikala and have clocked in 55 hours exact.
I wanted the game to take at least 56 hours to complete and looks like it's going to happen. I thoroughly explored everything and there were occasions where I was Shiny hunting / breeding that buffed it up but I do the same all Pokémon games. Omega Ruby I have clocked 64 hours in and it's been out for 2 years.

There is literally so much to explore and so many side quests / stories in the game, this game is brimming with content. It's been almost 3 weeks I've had the game and still haven't completed it that's a first for me, new Pokémon games don't come very often so I figured I'd enjoy it as much as I can and now Bank is right around the corner too.

 

[Xuxuba]

But I didn't say I didn't do ANY of that? I just said I didn't do ALL and I definitely used pelago and the likes a lot.

I thought this wasn't about the amount of areas though? Either way, I never said that and Alola does have about 20 more areas than Kalos, you can go to serebii's pokéarth and count it.

Then you didn't understand my comment, because the whole time i was talking about Ophie's comment:

Not just a lack of dungeons, but each location is substantially smaller than those in X and Y. You move from place to place incredibly quickly, sometimes too quickly for it to make any impression on you.

Then you said a game that takes a lot more time to beat the main storyline can't have less areas nor be as quick to move around as , then i just said that i agreed with Ophie and that the reason why you take longer to beat the main storyline is not necessarily just due to the amount of areas the game has, but it could be due to several other stuff, such as the cutscenes, the obligatory dialogue and the side content.

Also you can't really assume a world is bigger just looking at how many names the pokéarth mentions, since you can have 3 routes that aren't even the same size of just 1 route and that it has way less buildings than those 3.

 

[Tropios]

Then you didn't understand my comment, because the whole time i was talking about Ophie's comment:



Then you said a game that takes a lot more time to beat the main storyline can't have less areas nor be as quick to move around as , then i just said that i agreed with Ophie and that the reason why you take longer to beat the main storyline is not necessarily just due to the amount of areas the game has, but it could be due to several other stuff, such as the cutscenes, the obligatory dialogue and the side content.

But Ophie also said there wasn't a lack of dungeons, just that they are smaller, which I agreed with. The part where I didn't agree was that you move through it almost too fast for it to make any impression on you, but I guess it just depends on your personal pace then, because I didn't move through it as fast and it did leave an impression on me.

 

[Azery]

I didn't like the lack of dungeons all that much but honestly, Vast Poni Canyon is my favourite area in the game. The music, the sense of finality and the areas you can crawl through. I loved it all honestly. If only it was slightly bigger...