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Not Enough Experience?


Octavius

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This is my second time trying Rejuvenation (I tried it back in ep. 6, both on normal difficulty), and I still find myself giving up on it partway through. There are a few main contributors in this matter, but one that leaves me particularly flustered is the horrid pacing in experience gains between gyms. While some gyms felt lackluster because my team had sizable level advantages (looking at you, Keta), others just left me scratching my head and saying, "how are my mons supposed to be able to fight this? There haven't been any trainers!" Two particular offenders for me were Marianette and Angie. In both cases, the stories leading up to their gym battles were completed devoid of trainers or any way to gain enough experience to be competent in their gym battles. Marianette was particularly awful: there was almost no experience to gain between her and Keta, yet a ridiculous ump in level cap.

 

In both cases, my team barely gained a level or two (not to mention this situation is horribly exacerbated if trying to raise a new team member via exp. share), leaving me incompetently under-leveled for each gym battle.

 

Has anyone else experienced this problem? If not, what was your experience like? Did I just miss something?

Also, after beating Angie, Aelita wants to battle me, but ONCE AGAIN, her team is literally 5 levels higher than Angie's was, and I was already a little under-leveled for that fight. I don't mind challenges in Pokemon games; quite frankly, I welcome them. But this is just ridiculous. It's bad game design and it's turning me off from wanting to continue playing. I don't mean to sound whiny, but is it even worth it to finish Rejuv through the current episode? I'm about ready to call it and try Insurgence or something instead.

 

I appreciate your thoughts, everyone.

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The gap between Keta and Marionette is definitely brutal.  On hard, I had to grind to the level cap (before losing still) and then used every Rare Candy I had to force Brione to learn Moonblast (and evolve) before lowering it and finally winning.  A different team might have done better, but I worked with what I had

 

Even though I was almost at Angie's level, her custom move makes for a very efficient cheap STAB move that mowed through most things in two hits.  Unless you have a steel type (which you can have at this point), it's just a hard gym.

 

Getting past Angie, I didn't find any other leader to be as challenging (even beating two first try).

 

Honestly, level grinding becomes less of a hassle after Marianette because of the free Audino trainers, though it can still be grindy at times.  

Edited by seki108
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3 hours ago, Octavius said:

This is my second time trying Rejuvenation (I tried it back in ep. 6, both on normal difficulty), and I still find myself giving up on it partway through. There are a few main contributors in this matter, but one that leaves me particularly flustered is the horrid pacing in experience gains between gyms. While some gyms felt lackluster because my team had sizable level advantages (looking at you, Keta), others just left me scratching my head and saying, "how are my mons supposed to be able to fight this? There haven't been any trainers!" Two particular offenders for me were Marianette and Angie. In both cases, the stories leading up to their gym battles were completed devoid of trainers or any way to gain enough experience to be competent in their gym battles. Marianette was particularly awful: there was almost no experience to gain between her and Keta, yet a ridiculous ump in level cap.

 

In both cases, my team barely gained a level or two (not to mention this situation is horribly exacerbated if trying to raise a new team member via exp. share), leaving me incompetently under-leveled for each gym battle.

 

Has anyone else experienced this problem? If not, what was your experience like? Did I just miss something?

Also, after beating Angie, Aelita wants to battle me, but ONCE AGAIN, her team is literally 5 levels higher than Angie's was, and I was already a little under-leveled for that fight. I don't mind challenges in Pokemon games; quite frankly, I welcome them. But this is just ridiculous. It's bad game design and it's turning me off from wanting to continue playing. I don't mean to sound whiny, but is it even worth it to finish Rejuv through the current episode? I'm about ready to call it and try Insurgence or something instead.

 

I appreciate your thoughts, everyone.

For me, these were also some of my hardest battles. Marianette's Bewear completely destroyed my team, over and over. What I like about Rejuvenation though, is the audino trainers make exp pretty easy to get, the only problem is crappy evs. I don't remember if you can access them for those battles, but I don't think you can. For those in particular, when I realized I couldn't beat them I started testing their team and trying to find weaknesses. Basically all my battles were like scout missions, and I was leveling up a bit in the process. Eventually I would come up with a stategy, and adjust it until it works. Try to plan out every move, and if you can't think of a winning combination, then add luck to the mix. A couple times I had to rely on chance, and ended up beating Angie with something like a 5% success chance after many tries. Just think of a strategy, and take into account the possibility of move accuracy and status ailments in particular. Also, on battles where I had access to the region and audino, I would scroll through pokemon and try to find a team that counters them. That is how I ended up beating Amber, since I had a terrible match-up originally. Honestly, just keep trying at tough battles with different ideas and it will work out eventually. 

Edited by Matt_
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Thanks for the replies! This post isn't so much me complaining about 'not being able to get past certain boos fights'. I've been playing Pokemon competitively since gen 4 and have been top ten Showdown ladder in multiple tiers in multiple gens. I'm doing ok in that department! This is about Rejuvenation as a game being shamefully grindy. I don't have a problem 'winning' boss fights, so to speak; I just find that I would rather play another better-designed pokemon game than grind out experience from audinos for every single gym because of how poorly paced the game is in terms of exp. My question, therefore, is "does the game get less grindy after, say, Angie?" Because if it doesn't, I'm probably just going to try another game.

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56 minutes ago, Octavius said:

 My question, therefore, is "does the game get less grindy after, say, Angie?"

Disclaimer: I don't know how familiar you're with the characters and leaders of this game, so I try to avoid spoilers.

 

In my experience, yes and no. For instance, the level gap isn't that horrifying between the leader that comes after Angie and the next one after them. However, that's where the good news end. You see, the levels now skyrocket again. At the end of current release I was consistently around 10 levels lower than my opponents - I played on Intense, so that is a contributing factor. Still, I had like 8 Pokemon I used, so rotating more than that means you have to spend quite some time grinding EXP, in other words, battling Audino trainers.

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Actually, this has been a bit of a concern of us (I remember talking about Angie in particular), and part of the rebalancing of the game in v10 is so we can balance experience gain better between major trainers. Audino trainers mainly exist as a quality of life option for training up anything new to the team that is ridiculously low leveled, and shouldn't be an excuse for poor exp management.

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Yeah the Audino trainers are nice as far as quality of life is concerned, so kudos there, but a few areas need extra trainers penciled in so players aren't 5 levels below where they should be. You mention Angie, but Marianette is the worst offender (at least that I've experienced so far). Assuming you're a dev with access to this info, look at the difference between Marianette's team and Keta's team, then see how many trainers there are between them for the player to make up 10 levels worth of experience--experience spread across an entire team, mind you. It isn't there. Not to mention some starters don't even fully evolve until after Marianette's Level 35 cap. 

Which isn't to say that the Marianette fight is 'too hard', per se, but the Marianette battle is unreasonable and un-fun due to the player being laughably under-leveled and under-equipped for it (in terms of not having fully evolved starters, almost no useful held items, etc.).

 

For example:

17 hours ago, seki108 said:

The gap between Keta and Marionette is definitely brutal.  On hard, I had to grind to the level cap (before losing still) and then used every Rare Candy I had to force Brione to learn Moonblast (and evolve) before lowering it and finally winning.

Fortunately, Brionne evolves into Primarina at level 34, but seki108 even had to use Rare Candies to get there. 

Edited by Octavius
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i definitely agree with you, the difficulty is just unreasonable at some points, and the trainers with audino are boring(plus they kill the pokemon i want to train, so whats the point)...marianette fight was pretty easy, though, meowstic destroys bewear.

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30 minutes ago, Octavius said:

Fortunately, Brionne evolves into Primarina at level 34, but seki108 even had to use Rare Candies to get there. 

Technically, I leveled it up to 42 with Rare Candies, which is where Brionne learns Moonblast---and subsequently evolved--, then leveled it down.  It was the only way any team combo I had could take down Beware; she was honestly hard for me.

 

However, your point still stands that this is an absurd gap with little experience gains at this point in the game.  With about 8 mons at the time, it was a grindy time.   

 

I do think the Audino trainers later on are a good substitute to level faster.  Though they are actually difficult with some mons (when they are in the grass field), they are at least free (unlike Insurgence).  They can be grindy if you have a team of 12 on rotation, however.

Edited by seki108
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11 hours ago, Octavius said:

Thanks for the replies! This post isn't so much me complaining about 'not being able to get past certain boos fights'. I've been playing Pokemon competitively since gen 4 and have been top ten Showdown ladder in multiple tiers in multiple gens. I'm doing ok in that department! This is about Rejuvenation as a game being shamefully grindy. I don't have a problem 'winning' boss fights, so to speak; I just find that I would rather play another better-designed pokemon game than grind out experience from audinos for every single gym because of how poorly paced the game is in terms of exp. My question, therefore, is "does the game get less grindy after, say, Angie?" Because if it doesn't, I'm probably just going to try another game.

For a little why, but there is a pretty major jump on the latest leader if I recall. I had to grind up for a long time, and get a new team member. All in all, it doesn't get much less grindy, so it comes down to your investment in the story. I was really into the game, so I wouldn't hesitate to rebuild my team to continue playing. If you don't think continuing the game is worth the grinding, then probably try another game. Although, sounds like the levels are being re-balanced for episode 10, so maybe consider playing then. Good luck!

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A few things: 

 

First of all, @Zargerth, I love the Xenoblade Chronicles pic. That is one of the all-time greats (and might have the best story and soundtrack of any video game, ever). It's a shame my boy Shulk sucks in SSB4. At least they got some of the amazing music into the game, though.

 

Second of all, @seki108, my apologies! I was thinking Primarina learned Moonblast on evolution, but it learns Sparklng Aria instead. I misinterpreted the situation and subsequently misspoke. Thanks for the clarification!

 

And lastly, @Matt_, yeah if they fix the experience gaps even just a little bit, I think I would be more interested in playing. The grinding is actually what takes me out of the story the most. And I'm not super into the story anyways with all the crazy magic stuff (Karen making those bikers her slaves) and extra-dimensional stuff (Nim is kind of annoying for me) and Valarie LITERALLY CARVING STAIRS INTO THE SIDE OF BLACKSTEEPLE MOUNTAIN IN MERE MINUTES

 

But yeah, I still would like to beat the game and see what else there is to see (and so I'm fully informed in being able to discuss things), so episode 10 seems like a good time to try and pick things back up. Thanks!

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@Octavius I haven't gotten to that point in the game yet, but I must admit it turns down my enthusiasm to actually get to that point.

 

Now don't get me wrong, I love hard pokemon games and that was part of the reason why I adore Reborn so much even if it made me struggle in a few places. However reborn did pretty good when it came to experience so i never felt that I had to grind and grind and grind. Heck training up a new team member wasn't that bad. However I believe that there is good difficulty and bad difficulty. Now in my opinion lack of experience between gum battles is bad difficulty particularly in a game that often forces you to run more then 6 pokemon which only exacerbates the issue.

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