Spam Lounge 2016

[Gooman]

I played a bunch of Pokemon Online back in the day with VenomFrog/Jafar and Swimming, but eventually lost interest because the comp Pokemon metagame is just kind of an eternal shitshow. I go back and play Showdown every now and again, but every time I quit faster as I get reminded why I didn't like it. Still think the "standard" mode of play should just blanket ban everything with BST > 550, and then spot ban issues below that (a la Aegislash and Wobbuffet) because legendaries and psuedo-legendaries are just so above the powercurve thanks to inflated speed stats.

I nabbed a couple of shinies because of how easy Sun & Moon made it. Cutiefly, Rockruff, Wishiwashi, and Lurantis, iirc. Meant to get Araquanid as well but stopped playing before that.

[quilteej]

I still haven't played sun or moon, did they increase the encounter chance or introduce a new method of increasing the chance? I always play showdown in the UU tier, you see some more interesting teams there. I always thought battling against CPU opponents with your underleveled pokemon was a more enjoyable challenge but I haven't felt underleveled in pokemon since platinum. I heard sun and moon had more difficult boss encounters than the previous few games. If the sequels keep that up then i'll seriously consider buying one

[Jacio]

S/M introduced a new way to chain for shinies that's a birch to get into the right cycle for (cause you'll need pretty specific pokemon/moves/items to get right), but once you're in it, you're golden and are almost guaranteed a shiny if you're patient

The level curve in S/M stays pretty solid till you hit the last island, then you'll most likely find yourself underleveled, which is nice cause it adds a bit of spice. Boss battles were neat, and i thoroughly enjoyed them because some of them were pretty hard (looking at you, Lurantis), but the trial leading up to them was always so *lame*. I wish i could say a bit more on the matter, but i stopped playing after i got a bit into the last island... whoops

[Gooman]

I liked the trails quite a bit; they weren't trying to be hard before the boss battle, and usually did a pretty good job of being funny.

Chaining is also pretty easy, all your really need for most pokemon is a high-level false swiper with leftovers and a bunch of leppa berries (which are super easy to get a ludicrous amount of via the islands). The patience is really the key, you can pretty easily get one after an hour but sometimes it can drag on to like three. Chaining also gives you the benefits of better IVs (as in the more you chain the more perfect IVs the wild pokemon will have), which is mostly useful for getting a good set of breeding ditto's. Chaining dittos is kinda weird but very easy with a certain setup:

Lead off with a trubbish that only knows recycle so that ditto copies it, switch to a munchlax that switcheroos a leppa berry to it, bam you never have to worry about a it running out of PP and struggling to death. Switch to your false swiper, put up a substitute to prevent hidden ability dittos from transforming (oh yeah chaining also nets you hidden abilities), get to chaining.

[Jacio]

Ooh true, getting those 4 IV Dittos is another huge part of chaining

And yeah, i've got a good setup for it with a couple of Smeargles, i was just annoyed when i tried using pokemon that didn't have all the right moves and i was left in cycles where i just couldn't win, which i guess is my fault (also, trying to get a Galvanize Geodude without it self-destructing... i GTS'd that one in the end)

As for the trials, i did enjoy that humor aspect of them. I have a gut urge to give a 1:1 comparison to gyms, which WERE trying to be at least a bit challenging before the final boss, but that's not really the case. Like you said, in this game it's all easy until the very challenging boss, which works in a different way. I really liked the setting that the Grass and Ghost trials set up

I don't want to sound overly critical of S/M, i really really enjoyed it, i just wanted to voice some gripes i had here and there, haha