Idea 3 ideas: Stats, QoL & Visuals

[dmmnajws]

Hi! I've got three ideas. The first and third ones can be a little more controversial, depending on the opinion. I would say 1. and 3. are ideas, 2. is a request.

 

1. Stats: To make legendaries "special", allow them to level up beyond 100, even if just a little bit. Same for Ultra Beasts.

Motivation:
Tried to convince a friend to try Vortex. As an hardcore Pokémon fan he was turned off by the possibility of a lvl 100 Rattata being as powerful as a lvl 100 legendary. He said he felt like legendaries weren't special enough, even though they are rare. I've never thought about this, until he pointed it out. What if legendaries could go up to 110? Some may say it's unbalanced, but in that case, so are "variants". It's a thought.

2. QoL: When we click a Pokemon's name to open its #ID entry, it shows the Stats, Info, Attack, Evolution. Add a section with "Owned Variants", so we know what other variants of that pokemon we have (something like the design with the 6 balls with the ones we don't have greyed out, as appears in the Pokedex).

Motivation:
Whenever I'm "mass-evolving" Pokemons, it quickly becomes painful and error-prone to open the Pokedex > write the evolution's name > view from there.

3. Visual: This is a very personal opinion - Revamp the "Metallic" variant.

Motivation:

I'm fully aware some people may like the Metallic variant, but it never clicked for me (I wonder if this is the same for others though). Here's why:

1. I used to play back when Ancients were a thing. I'm not aware of the context for the change. Ancients weren't great, but they were much more interesting both visually and conceptually;
2. Metallic looks like a washed out and ugly version of the "Normal" variant;
3. Mystic & Dark already look similar to Normals, so if you have all 6 variants of any given Pokemon lined up, it looks extremely lazy and only shiny and shadow stand out (try it yourself);
4. I was wondering how easy it would be to revamp the "Metallic" variant as efficiently as possible. I made some assumptions about the internal architecture of PV and made a very simple script that grabs all sprites in an input/ directory, and outputs all sprites converted into an automatically generated, but concise variant into an output/ directory. This makes it easy to come up with something interesting other than just saturation/contrast/brightness changes, without the pain of editing each sprite manually. I believe updating the sprites would be as simple as running the script > revising the output > substituting the sprites in the database with the ones generated by the script. The configurations for the custom variants are pretty much endless, but as a POC, I set up a "radioactive" variant, to test it out. In this example, the script is configured to apply to each sprite a hue change (completely random, re-running the script would generate different colors) + a subtle blur effect that adds a kind of "glow" to the sprites. Check it here (this is photoshopped with the sprites generated by the script, for the purpose of demo): 

 

Thank you for reading!

Edited June 9, 2022 by dmmnajws
The image I posted has better quality now.

[billabob]

2 hours ago, dmmnajws said:

What if legendaries could go up to 110? Some may say it's unbalanced, but in that case, so are "variants". It's a thought.

I really like the rest of your suggestions and would be happy to see them, but not this one. Personally I love the teambuilding possibilities afforded by the game in its present state, for example my sidequests team contains a Dunsparce and it absolutely destroys most Pokemon. The rest of my team is just an assortment of my favourite Pokemon, and I never found myself lacking options, with one exception... you need a Victini/Eternatus/Necrozma to deal 500 damage to shinies and metallics without a supereffective move, nothing else has powerful enough moves. So there's always going to be a spot or two in your team filled by one of those 3 Pokemon.

IMO it would be incredibly boring if the only "optimal"/viable Pokemon were legendaries, if you do clan battles all you'll see is normal variant legendaries and starters, giving legendaries such a huge boost to their stats would make it even worse... compare the top 20 teams in official Pokemon battling tournaments 20 years ago to today, there used to be quite a variety of teams and strategies people would use (someone even made 2nd place with a gimmicky Shedinja team in 2009) but nowadays you'll see the same 6 or 7 Pokemon in the same order. 

 

Variants are unbalanced? Maybe. The only useful offensive Pokemon are Dark variant, with Mystic being a good option for catching and for battles you're having trouble with (thanks to the RNG factor). But every Pokemon has a Dark variant, every Pokemon has a Mystic variant, your hand is never forced and you're never forced to go with a legendary because the ones you wanted have artificially lowered stats in comparison

[dmmnajws]

I see what you mean @billabob. Your argument made me realize the comparison of "variants being unbalanced" vs. "lvl 110 legendaries being unbalanced" is not really viable, and you're right. My perpective is also that of one who hasn't done any clan battles, so it was a bit "incomplete", thanks for pointing that out!

Edited June 10, 2022 by dmmnajws