Commander

Again, you people are putting way too much though into this. All Reborn leaders in the normal game can be swept very easily due to a whole bunch of things. The same goes for hardcore to a point. This is all just theoretical, but if Bennett is in the E4 and he does use that field, which is one possibility out of many, there's quite a bit that can be done to beef up the E4. If all members are beefed up, the focus on one leader will be significantly smaller given another would be near impossible without a well rounded team. The E4 is a collective thing and it's difficulty is not based on a single person. Bennett would be a really good first member since his overall team would be much weaker than any other possible candidate.

I'm just going to get my point across before going into detail: "The game is as hard as you want to be." Cheating is just a very ambiguous term. I cheat in order to make the mod of hardcore. I needed levels and certain mons for testing leaders and their gimmicks/competence. Then for the other project I needed 31 IVs and perfect(ish) EVs for testing. That's why there's a debug mode in the first place. Heck with a couple additions people could even possibly do some gamebreaking stuff. No I mean literal break the game causing it to crash (for that purpose, I may remove online features from the mod). I'd say cheating is more frowned upon as it's going against the creator's wishes in which they try to design an experience people will enjoy. I can kind of understand why people would want to go back to older episodes for TM breeding, but I feel the newer episodes are heading in the right direction. Some people don't like the new changes which is why the older episodes are still being used. If you do that though, you're really only hurting yourself from the full experience.

Should've changed it to dude or kid instead of guy. To be honest, guy is usually referred to as a male figure, but it can be used as a neutral term of slang. It's just used very rarely in singular form which is probably why nobody has really heard of it being used or it might sound a bit jarring.

Shade's AI...needs to be changed. Like I seriously need to adjust it to 90 or something to help him out because it's not just you. Will work on it after the CoM second round of testing begins.

Between Inuki, Amethyst, and I (for Hardcore), at least one of us will be able to salvage his team. I fixed the Terra fight and let me tell you that it was pretty much me facedesking so much to try and get her to be competent. Ciel is...getting there.

This is a very hard question to answer as it's more than just a simple yes or no. Sometimes I wonder about whether or not the late game is harder than regular Reborn and then I look back at the originals PBS file and go "OMG, how did I do that?" The leaders do get more difficult as you progress the game, but once you settle on a good team, you'll never have to switch out again. Agate City is that point which is why the later game moves so much faster. You actually have TMs, mons good enough for the E4, and leveling really starts to level out demoting constant switching. So you've already been able to become really strong at this point. Hardcore also is a very misleading way as it's not a game that brutally beats you to the ground for no reason. The first Fern fight I didn't give him a perfect coverage set, but actually just evolved his team and that's it. It's a warning to players maybe they should think about their team and what they need before entering and Exp Mine (aka the Meteor grunts). And since different leaders have different stratagies, you'll always find one easy and one...the most evil thing in the world. If you're worried that the future leaders will get too easy, we started peaking our strength around Aya. And if you are super worried that enemies can only be up to level 100 due to cap making for no challenge, I got this:

I have a very good explanation why Venomoth has Signal Beam instead of Silver Wind: I forgot. But in all seriousness Signal beam has more chances of being used over Silver Wind as then it'd just spam Psychic or Sludge Bomb due to Stab stuff. I'll have to test it out at some point to see how well it works.

If you were unable to turn the forest field into a burning field, everyone's lives would be so much easier. I literally tried for hours to get that Illumise to Rain Dance so this was my temporary solution until Episode 16. TBH, I did not expect such a delay to the episode which is why I'm working on some things now in preparation for it. Switching Armaldo back into Crustle would've been my next solution due to how strong that thing is. I mean one possible solution is to force fight Shelly again if you use the burning field tactic, but that's just as bad as the perma-rain. As for the idea politoed comes in and casts rain if burning field is activated, that is in no means a bad idea, but a very complex one. It'd require me to tamper a bit with the field data more specifically the burning field and while I'm not a programming expert, I do have a general idea how that would work. It's just kind of complex and I'd have to redo it every single episode update. Vs giving the option of perma-rain which quite literally is just a copy and paste which I have to do every episode anyways. Part of the reason Rain Shelly is so broken was also due to lack of water types with the other being I really turned up her bulk mostly due to being a bit PO'd after recieving what felt like 40 complaints of Shelly being ridiculously easy. The rain ain't why she feels overwhelming but a big part of it so I might turn it down a couple notches and probably remove Confuse ray from Illumise in exchange for Thunder Wave.

You see...this is the problem. You rely on competitive thinking for your strategies which require precise calcs. By the time you reach the E4, Pokemon levels will be around 95 while Bennett's Volcarona is 100. It could also be running timid which would really help it's speed a lot. Most players are going to have speed IVs at 20 on average along with uneven EV allocation so 100 EVs. Bennett's could invest 252 EVs in speed. The only Rock mons that are available with that speed are Aero and maybe Archeops. Do you know when Aero is available? Episode 16, but people were able to get it early due to being able to walk around. You could throw in the face Garchomp or T-tar will be available but they'd be obtained at level 1 right before the E4. That's a few hours worth of extra training just to get a mon to simply outspeed another which the average person would rather go straight to the E4 and win rather than wreck them. I'm definitely not saying they'll be OP and broken, but just don't expect an easy win on a field effect because who knows? We could actually be facing Laura and not Bennett as there's a possible 10 candidates for E4.

So right now we're reaching the halfway point in testing (though some people may not think so since all fights have been drafted). I haven't exactly finished all of the eventing but most of it will be done bar one room I'm not doing and one bigass event of around 200 lines or something. It's not long, just really tedious and time consuming. I'm not going to make a sign up template, but I'm going to be really pick who I have go for the first round of beta testing. I'm only looking for 2-3 with four at the most. I'm not looking for bugs in particular but kind of thoughts on fights/concept, ai exploits and funkyness (I can't control all of it unfortunately), whether a fight is too easy/hard/just right, and even open to suggestions. While I prefer skilled battlers, I don't want to see things like "This fight was good" or "I think this needs work." BECAUSE THAT DOESN'T HELP ME. Sorry, but one liners do drive me up with all. Anyways, it won't be ready for a day or two so there's no rush to submit an app.

14 + 41 + 83 + 42 + 34 + 93 = 307 days when you add all the episodes that were covered in previous times. There's also Ame's health to consider so that'd add another 90 days to the mix so 397 days should be the expected time of the episode release. That was also when Ame was younger and had more time to work on it plus Reborn had far, far less features. So 400 days is not that extreme of a timeframe for this episode release in my honest opinion.

...I could've sworn it did. I suppose that'd be Leavanny's job then. And no, the only fake move I ever did was on two Pokemon solely for the purpose of stopping from attack spam.

Let me tell you about Weather: it doesn't make or break a fight, but most people don't use it. I don't see regular pulling a BS move like I did with Shelly in which Bennett gets Perma-rain, but let's not get too into how difficult a leader is. I'm working on something E4ish but on a much grander scale so I can tell you that you might be thinking about this wrong. You'll be facing 5 leaders in a row with a finite amount of PP if you don't bring ethers and elixers. You are also limited to six Pokemon so you'll need to have a pretty solid team. The E4 should be midway Hardcore levels of difficulty so you won't be able to curbstomp any leader with just a single Pokemon. In the CoM project, Trevor literally got down to his last Pokemon against Shelly while I only lost a couple. She certainly wasn't a cakewalk as people might've expected at that high of a level. Bennett is never going to be super tough due to singles syndrome but I could see him using that field kind of well. I expect sticky web Forretress and either Perma-sun or Sunny Day to boost his Volcarona's power really high up. Anything that doesn't resist Volcarona will be nearly one shotted by it since there isn't anything that outspeeds it and it'll be hard to OHKO. You could say rock type, but Giga Drain is a thing. The other Pokemon could be used to help settup or slowly take down the other Pokemon on your team. It's just kind of Reborn's thing to make leaders good and their aces generally super strong (whether or not that's intentional). For Hardcore, I do have to limit how difficult they can be so I might not give Bennett a perma weather unless he badly needs it. Rain will likely be it since I can use Steel types safely(ish) and use other Pokemon with that field. I'm just saying it's very possible to make his team difficult but Burning field is definitely going to hurt most of his mons in the long run. I predict he'll be the first person we face and the first person usually is the test and the one we have to face the most anyways (kind of like Sidney in the Hoenn games).

BL = OU aka what tier it can be played in since BL isn't a tier (just shift it up from the BL) NFE = PU since they are pretty bad and that's as low of a tier as they can go (some NFEs are given a tier iirc) That's just a logical guess given how tiers work.

If Arceops is you're issue, that's easy to counter. It's choiced so just have a Pokemon weak to EQ come in and switch if you think Serperior can take two EQs...which is a little risky but once you knock it down to half, it's completely worthless.

For Juila, I have no idea unless you ran a hustle Raticate since nothing uses evasion in that Gym iirc. Cain's Nidoran has Hustle so it happens and you were probably RNG Blessed. Florinia's Cacturne has Sand Viel (Not sure if it has bright powder) so that happens. That's my attempt to get Spikes working. I tried/10. The only leader you should really worry too much about evasion hax is Serra as I don't use it that much outside of her. When I do, it's only one mon. Unfortunately, that's a glaring weakness in the Pokemon Formula, not Reborn or hardcore. Either side could be playing the best they ever had and a miss could screw them over. Edit: I forgot, male and female meowstic have two different learnsets I think female is the offensive one and you also get access to Shadow Ball later.

I'm not really sure what the community stance is on TMs and modding in final staged evolutions. Usually I say breeding moves and that's it since TMs will be available down the line. I mean they won't make a difference for broken easy effortless sweep for selections 1,2, and 3.

This one I can answer myself. Releases will actually be 1 gym per episode type deal although some episodes may have more than one badge depending on what the team ultimately decides. I did design this with kind of a three arc system with the first arc possibly being the only arc if it puts too much stress on the team to go for a full on project. The current story has been drafted up to episode 8 which after a couple episodes will make some final decisions where to go with the plot.

First off, we decided not to make updates due to infrequent flex of progress due to many of us working on other projects combined with school. I also stepped down from my involvement other than drafting the original storyboard which also slowed progress. Once progress was getting close to completion, we would make updates and announcements instead of giving empty or worthless news and excuses why the first release isn't out yet. That's why we decided to keep any progress underground just in case something does happen so that we don't have a ton of super disappointed people. The other reason is that things are subject to change based on our abilities due to the lack of artists in our department. In truth, I wanted this to stay hidden and buried after all the shit that hit the fan and stuff. Would you really blame me after an incident that could've involved me losing ace occurred due to some unnecessary drama? The current team (Snow, Jacob, Trevor, and I) is on good standing and most of the work falls onto Jacob with me only jumping in to give a couple pointers. Unfortunately, we can't show off any progress at this point since most of it is super spoilery and for other reasons. And just as an FYI, please don't answer questions addressed to our team for us.

For Shelly, I generally agreed which is why 2.1 added a lot of things to try and counter her issues. Part of it is the Perma-rain which is unfortunately a necessary evil since everybody kept saying she was pitifully easy by lighting the field on fire. In E16 version, I'm actually going to give the option whether or not to fight her in Permarain and those that do get a free early Shellos. Serra will also be getting a similar treatment in order to satisfy two different wants. As for Solaris, he's an interesting case. I've had teams he's completely smoked and if I could replace something more suited for him, I would. I suppose I'll add his battle on the survey if he needs buffed. Eh, I know that's due to how Essential AI's has been built, but I believe that some of those issues should be fixed in Episode 16...we hope. I'll describe essential's AI by saying it's like duck tape holding an airplane in the air. Reborn is able to mask it a bit better since they write AI coding in along with making some mons wipe before they do anything buggy. I do a lot of testing, but it being only me, I can only manipulate a skewed hyper offensive AI so much. The Corey buggyness I'm aware of as it's an unusual play with a special Qwilfish. Swalot...is a problem child due to an AI coding that prevents stall teams from working...at all. I did have plans on bringing a couple guys on board...unfortunately, I've only been able to one additional staff member (Solarance isn't part of the team). Once the final episode hits, that's where I'll get into permanently fixing errors instead of manipulation since AI coding won't be changed that much then. (Right now, I only do minor fixes such as Mega Sceptile's type error otherwise it'd take months for episode updates).