Is Resource Management Dead in Reborn?

[LordWallace]

Guess I had to make a thread questioning what I perceived to be a departure from earlier versions of the game I noticed after I started from the beginning in Episode 16, and it's something I can't say I'm all too thrilled about.

 

One of my favorite aspects of challenge that Reborn presented in the past was resource management, particularly when it came to how much money you could earn and had to work with to buy items. More skilled and methodical players were rewarded since they don't have to use as many items to find victory and perhaps had enough extra money for goodies like PokeSnax, Repels, and Link Stones early on while players with less foresight and inferior preparation/skill faced running out of money later on or were barely scraping by to buy essentials.

Even higher class trainers and Gym Leaders often didn't give you an extraordinary sum of money and the average bum or Meteor Grunt gave next to nothing.

 

At first I didn't really notice a change going into my 4th playthrough of Reborn because I simply assumed I had just been getting better at the game (plus Torchic is 2gud) and that's why the early game grind wasn't leaving me as dry for cash as in previous playthroughs. But then I began to notice that generic Meteor Admins in the mid game left behind huge sums of money each and before I knew it, I had already hit over 200,000 pokedollars without really even trying to amass wealth by the time I beat PULSE Abra. Here I knew something was off for sure and confirmed it by comparing how much money Radomus gives you in E16 compared to a previous playthrough that I had uploaded to YouTube that iirc was in E14 when I got to Radomus then.

Turns out, Radomus now gives over 3x more money in E16 (from 6,000~ which imo was just fine to 21,000~ now) and I presume prize money has been boosted for most everyone else as well, the change feels that dramatic.

I went from carefully calculating how much of each status I could expect in the next area/important battle to determine how many of each status curer I could afford to buy, to indiscriminately buying 99 of each and having cash to spare for 99 Repels as well, all well before what you could consider "late-game" (which for me personally starts at Agate Circus).

 

And don't even get me started on the rematchable trainers in Grand Hall, all of whom give loads of cash and can be fought as many times as you want. I only recently discovered them but, with all due respect to Amethyst, they're laughably easy to abuse. Not for the EXP necessarily, but because they're bursting at the seams with cash with a Department store a few blocks over (granted you still need the stickers but still).

In this regard I think Rejuvenation hits it spot on, not in regards to resource management in general, that game has its own issues in that category (berries OP), but with "grinding trainers", which consist of just Breeders with Audinos that give virtually no money. In a game with level caps EXP isn't nearly as valuable a resource so it makes sense for Reborn and Rejuvenation to minimize the amount of time you spend grinding if you need to but money management is still a huge element to me of the Reborn experience that I feel was unjustly trivialized in the new updates.

 

That's just my two cents though that I thought would be valuable to share since I know a lot of you won't notice due to starting right at E16's content.

Thanks for hearing me out, if there was an important reason for this change that I completely missed I'm totally open to hearing it. And if someone already brought this up then I guess I'll feel dumb for typing all this out for nothing.

[Monochrome_Complex]

I feel like the grand hall guys shouldn't pay you anything at all, or maybe just once a day and not a whole lot. You're absolutely right in that they're too easy to abuse.

 

Now Radomus is a rich dude so TBH I feel he should pay up quite a bit but I'm not sure why Meteor grunts would be paying much.  Personally I don't buy that much anyway so I don't pay that much attention to my savings after early game but I can understand and agree that the game doesn't emphasize resource management as much as before, to its detriment.

[sandy]

i found it quite odd when i beat the trainers in the grand hall and i was paid the same amount that  i got for beating this episode leader 30,000 poke this allowed me to wipe out all the money i needed for all 3 projects bar one poke for 2 of them since i can only completely fund one of them this episode.

 

it was indeed alot more resource management orientated at the start yes i will agree there  i kind of expected us to get more money the higher ladder  we got but not to the point where a farmable trainer gave the same prize money as a gym leader

[Tartar]

Even during EP15 the game was incredibly frugal in giving money to the player. This made money virtually worthless as there is nothing you can buy of value. Even revives and whatnot (ie. Blue Moon Ice Cream) isn't needed all that much, which makes it so you're you're super wealthy at the end of the game, which is quite a detriment to the overall gameplay.

 

One of my favorite parts of the earlier parts of Reborn, was that the game when it treated us like a hobo, giving us no money and forcing us to scavenge dumpsters and whatnot for pretty cheap items. And finally when we were given one super-potion felt incredibly satisfying. In the end, the game would benefit from having a nerfed money acquisition speed. 

Edited January 16, 2017 by Tartar

[Marcello]

I should point out that we noticed during the development of E16 that money being won in later parts of the game was far too low (I.e. The E16 leader was giving something ridiculous like 3000 or somesuch). We adjusted it for the release but it turned out our adjustments were a bit too heavyhanded and it is indeed now the case that money gained across a lot of the game is rather high. It will likely be reined in somewhat for E17 but as we're so late in the game, it's only natural that resources will be nowhere near as scarce as they once were no matter how far we rein things back.

[Tartar]

1 hour ago, Marcello said:

I should point out that we noticed during the development of E16 that money being won in later parts of the game was far too low (I.e. The E16 leader was giving something ridiculous like 3000 or somesuch). We adjusted it for the release but it turned out our adjustments were a bit too heavyhanded and it is indeed now the case that money gained across a lot of the game is rather high. It will likely be reined in somewhat for E17 but as we're so late in the game, it's only natural that resources will be nowhere near as scarce as they once were no matter how far we rein things back.

2

Well, even back in EP15 one ended up with way too much money since you didn't really have to use all that many items throughout the game. Adding a cash-sink like the renovations in EP16 was a great idea, but adding others earlier on may once more return the feeling of poverty that characterised the early game of Reborn. 

 

[FairFamily]

Well resource management is dead in pkmn anyway. Resource distrbution is not controllable, soft resetting of a mining rock is a thing. on top of that you can't stop the gold flow. I mean the ability to infinitely create money  is there even if you were to reduce the value of rebattling trainers to zero. People will simply place a forum post "fastest way to earn money?" and people will start posting things like 5 pickup pkmn + compund eyes thief pkmn in an area with 50% minior chance. Even rarer items are not really stopable, I've got a team with 3 leftovers and still have 2 leftovers left. Trading makes this problem even worse.

[sonzo90210]

Well for I kinda found it pretty much fair in my retrospective. I wasn't the typical competitive trainer or whatever it's called these days so I technically used unconventional teams throughout. Despite the heavy amount retries I had to do and beating the game, you could say I only wound up with a little over 150,000 by the end of the previous episode. I farmed I mind you but it wasn't really much coming from the trainers in the which I only used to increase the number of pokeballs I had. Though maybe it's because I never consider buying potions and such in substitute for the power items, minerals or something like the macho brace. There has been a slight increase in the more recent episode but it's still not too bad but still better. The difficulty of the fights makes it more challenging for me and I pretty much like it so far. This is just my take on it anyway.

[PokeFailure]

As someone who grinds the double trainer battle for like 140,000$ per match (or something ridiculous) I can just do that battle 5 times and buy 35ish rare candys, Instant levels to level 80 pokemon.

 

It makes late game grinding more or less nonexistent if you can beat a trainer for infinite amounts of pokedollars, For the early game it made sense for us to struggle but once you're about 2/3 through the game you're at the point where the grind is unnecessary. 

 

Infinite $$$ is a problem, but it just makes the inevitable easier and saves you some time (That Alt 3x speed thing is easily the best new feature though) 

[LordWallace]

Yeah dont get me wrong I don't think there's much of a problem with upping the ante in terms of throwing money at the player in later parts of the game where they can now purchase more expensive items and invest in the cash sinks of E16, they've more or less completed the rite of passage of the rest of the game and it wouldn't be fun to restrict the player financially by that point, plus I suppose it extends the immersion a little bit by making the player feel like they're truly of higher status compared to earlier parts of the game now that they're stronger and have so many badges. I was just a little off put by how nonexistent the financial strain was in earlier parts of the game in the last couple updates. 

[Felicity]

I'm waiting for another scam event that needs you to pay 1 mil for a magikarp.