Mionee

I think you are underestimating a large proportion of your userbase which absolutely does not interact in discord/community/whatever. For every toxic interaction, there are dozens and dozens of invisible positive ones. I have introduced many friends to this wonderful game and they all have loved every bit of the challenge; yet they are not part of the discord, not even part of these forums even. I myself barely post here at all, only noticed this announcement like two weeks after it was posted, and am completely unaware of all the negativity mentioned in the announcement. The loudest voices will always be the most virulent and negative ones. People who are satisfied rarely express it out of nowhere, so of course I imagine almost all the feedback you're getting is negative, and it's understandable it gets tiring. Personally, this decision deeply saddens me. Of course, I understand that you have probably already considered this angle many times already before coming to a decision, and ultimately if you are not having fun anymore due to the overwhelming negative sentiments, it is of course the correct course of action - but I wish you could see all the positivity this mode also brings to the table and why it is (in my opinion) totally worth the effort, development time, etc. Personally, I treated the past few episode releases with just as much excitement as an AAA game release or something similar, and that was due to the existence of Intense. I would never enjoy the game that much, despite its incredible qualities, if it didn't satisfy that itch. Yes, the community will be able to recreate it, but it's not really the same thing, y'know? That said, I am not your friend or anything, and maybe I'm completely wrong, but based on the past few posts it feels like the past year or two have been heavy on you, so please take care of yourself first and foremost :) and if that can help relieve some of the stress, then so be it.

Yeah, everyone knows. That's why the OP is trying to use a Steelix and praying for parahax. I see. The entire post is about that one pokemon even. Not the field in general, just how it affects Aegislash. Not the "bad game design" or whatever else, just their (legitimate) frustrations with how Aegislash is hard to deal with. But yeah, sure, the discussion isn't about giving tips against it, and the OP totally didn't end with an attempt at giving a way to deal with Aegislash. Ah, well, whatever.

Not too sure why trying to help is met with such passive aggressiveness, but you do you my dude.

Any random foul play user that can live a hit will absolutely destroy that poor aegislash. If you're really desperate and can't find one:

I personally haven't noticed v13 being more or less difficult than the previous versions of the game. I did, however, notice a lot of friends who were overly relying on items and switch mode having a harsh wake-up call since v13 doesn't let them use that anymore. Out of curiosity, did you use items before? While Melia and Geara are definitely stacked fights they're far from unbeatable even with trash tier mons, Here they are getting beaten by LC mons, without even a full team in Geara's case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxjbnWrNG10&list=PLvLVu3yu-0q0uewKyvHn0VRT6V86jZ7s7&index=10 / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eSkOE1dd0g I do however agree that the fields ought to be more dynamic, as I too absolutely hate when a field cannot be changed at all. That said, note that even in those cases you can *always* summon certain fields with pledges, weathers, etc. However I don't have an issue with leaders having countermeasures to field changes. Of course they want to preserve their advantage, so I think it's good that Amber continually tries to revert the mountain back to her volcano top. It would be very boring if you could just put every fight into a garbage field without them being able to do anything about it,. Regardless, the difficulty is imo just right. Personally, I'd even welcome even harder fights if anything. There's Normal and Casual for a reason, and honestly, there's nothing wrong with playing those difficulty modes! I don't recommend any of my friends to play intense unless they're really feeling masochistic and that's the way it should be, imo.

Yeah, I think it knows if you did something *other* than an attacking move (ie switch, item, whatever). But it defo doesn't know which *move* you picked (move as in, an attack command only). I play with no items so I'm not too sure how much it adapts to those, I'll trust your word that it does indeed know when you heal.

As a general rule of thumb, the AI doesn't know which attacking move you will pick* or what you will do in general**, but the AI knows everything about your moveset, your stats (even your IVs and everything), your items, yadda yadda. *at the very least it doesn't know enough to use sucker punch accurately. **It does have a degree of info, since its move selection can vary depending on whether you stay in or switch to another pokemon. It definitely doesn't know which pokemon you're sending in though and absolutely doesn't predict it - the only case I encountered this was a chandelure that would switch out if I used any move and stay in if I swapped to another pokemon. 99% of the time it doesn't take that into account at all and behaves the same way regardless.

I personally see no issue with it as long as you have access to the items that lead to it being actually possible within a realistic timeframe. I've done manual breeding in countless Pokemon games already, with boxes full of perfect parents for every egg group (including one rejuv playthrough), and I honestly cba wasting more hours on this in new playthroughs or new games. My general rules: - Before Destiny Knot, I catch pokemon normally, and just reroll IVs randomly until I get something half decent (not fishing for 31 Atk Adamant, but something like 20ish atk 20ish speed will be good enough). - After Destiny Knot/Power Items and once I have access to enough species to breed the IVs down to every egg group, I feel free to edit custom perfect IVs through debug. For non-breedable Pokemon, I still stick to randomyl rerolling until it's decent like mentioned above. - if I want to edit movepool, I am very careful about egg moves and make sure I actually possess all of the correct mons to chain moves down to the potential baby. If I don't then I make sure I catch the pokemon myself, doing necessary events/exploration if needed.

As someone who plays only with baby pokemon from the LC tier, I have a slightly different crest-related suggestion in mind: making crests available to the whole evolution line whenever possible. Wouldn't change much for 99.9999% of players so it's probably not worth the time implementing it, but other than that I can't really see Drowzee or Turtwig becoming unstoppable menaces to game balance and it's a change I'd personally love~

As one of those people who find the current Reborn way too easy, this post gives me so much joy! Reborn is by far one of the most hooking fangames I've ever had the pleasure of playing and not finding that much enjoyment in it anymore due to the difficulty level always left a bittersweet taste in my mouth because I really, really love the game otherwise. I really look forward to yet another masochistic baby run on the new difficulty mode!

In a regular pokemon metagame? Of course not (although, debatable, pincurchin is actually lowkey good lol). In a game such a Rejuv pincurchin would be absolutely bonkers, yes. I would always want terrain setters on my teams regardless of their power levels, and yes i'd rather have a pincurchin over a garchomp in many many battles. It's just way too disruptive for AI strategies, completely blocks most of their seed usage, would make most of their movepools which are tailored to abuse fields a lot worse, etc. I think the abilities should be kept to post-game, not the mons themselves. They might be balanced in a regular pokemon metagame but they certainly are not given the importance of terrains in games like Reborn or Rejuv. It's the same reason you'd almost never use moves like Grassy Terrain/Electric Terrain/etc in regular games, but in Rejuv it's not exactly unusual to keep those moves around. Even end-game 'minibosses' can be completely destroyed by a single mon on the correct terrain, as a matter of fact Gogoat with Grassy Terrain/Bulk Up/Horn Leech totally destroys the kingdra battle 1v6 for example and there are many similar battles that would be completely trivialized if you could setup electric terrain or whatever for free. It goes way, way beyond just having a speed boost blaziken or w/e OP mon. Adapting to fields and/or finding ways to change them into fields more suitable for your team is, imo, the bulk of the fun of battles in rejuv compared to regular pokemon games, and adding the ability to just negate fields for free in every single battle would destroy that.

I'd be genuinely concerned if terrain setters weren't kept for post-game. Maybe a more elegant solution could be to enable access to hidden abilities during post-game (for these specific mons at least, maybe even in general) Terrain gimmicks are what keep fights interesting. Imagine fighting Souta or Adam without their terrains lmao, at least right now if you want to change terrains you need to waste some turns.

Echoed Voice is not working properly. It's basically working as Fury Cutter 2.0 atm, when it should work completely differently. The counter should not be on a pokemon-per-pokemon basis - it should increase as long as it was used by any pokemon the turn before (misses, immunities, etc, still work to increase the counter). That means that if you outspeed, use it, then faint, send a new pokemon and use it again, it should deal additional damage as if the chain was uninterrupted. It means that if the opponent used it last turn, and you use it the following turn, you get increased damage. If your partner used it in a double battle last turn, the mon that didn't use it should get increased damage the following turn regardless.

Kowapugunga whatever the whale in a sidequest. And all the goomy formes. Big Betty might have custom stats too? It felt stronger than a regular Emboar, maybe it just has busted EVs instead. Also this Tuff-Puff stuff is very very interesting!

What about machines? Claydol/Magneton/Golurk/Sigilyph? I had a magneton tank a +4 Surf from Clamperl with a Deep Sea Tooth with comfortable health, that's Blissey level of bulk.

I can't use crests on my baby pokemon I wish they applied to the entire line. On a conceptual level I'm not a big fan of the Leafeon/Glaceon ones, or Torterra one. I haven't figured out a way to know in advance if a mon has a crest or not (is there?), and it feels like swapping resistances without telling the player is a bit unfair. I love the Infernape one, as basic as it is, because Infernape always had a great defensive underused movepool (Will-O, Bulk Up, CM, Slack Off, SR), would be even better if it could give some kind of defensive ability like Regenerator instead of blaze/iron fist to really fit the theme I have no idea what the Spiritomb one *really* does but it sounds cool. Claydol is cool too finally giving it the offensive pressure it needs. I also don't think I have all crests unlocked yet since I see some mentioned that I don't know about xD

The imbalance is part of the fun. It's Pokemon (aka glorified rock paper scissors) versus an AI that can be outsmarted and predicted, you can win even with completely garbage useless pokemon (see: my LC run with 0 items). Removing the 'option' to just steamroll enemies by simply spamming appropriate stab moves on strong attackers is not removing options, it actually opens up a lot of different various strategies and lets a lot of moves/mons shine that would otherwise be completely pointless to use.

I'm surprised there's nothing for beating the machines attacking you in the Pyramid, or for beating Aelita/Melia when teamed up with Naganadel. Karma? Could you elaborate :o?

That's my main squad. Evolutions are cheating anyway :^)

Wide Guard

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvLVu3yu-0q0uewKyvHn0VRT6V86jZ7s7 just leaving that here, dont think intense is too difficult or unfair in any way no, v11 AI is extremely predictable if anything, maybe too predictable even

1) Using a Pokeball while a partner pokemon is in the middle of Bounce/Fly/etc will keep the partner stuck doing nothing for the rest of the battle (and I'm pretty sure they're still considered in the semi-invulnerable turn so they dodge everything lol, you could potentially abuse this with toxic spikes or something). Didn't test if it happens as well in regular double battles, but it's extremely easy to replicate with Aelita's Hawlucha. 2) Generally speaking the AI tends to adapt decently well against Wide Guard usage, and avoids using AE moves when one of your mons has been shown to have Wide Guard, however Erick's signature move (Thunder Pulse) seems to completely disregard that,. He keeps spamming Thunder Pulse every turn regardless, I assume the move isn't properly labeled as an ae move or something.

v10, just a month ago or so. My first run was still in v10 and was just your run of the mill standard run, my second run started from scratch in v11 and just finished yesterday. It was a run with only baby mons on Intense and no items in battle, aka ultimate masochism, but very fun nonetheless.