Did IVs, Egg Moves, and Breeding Ruined Pokemon?

[hope4896]

So I watched a video form ProtoMario a few hours ago, where he briefly discusses the separated views on "legal breeders" and "legal hackers", and what he thinks about competitive battling. Although the video was pretty much to make fun of a certain group of dramatic Poketubers, I wasn't surprised that the comments section are filled with toxicity, like how the legal players rant about  why genning is wrong, and how the hackers defend themselves that one should not be a tryhard breeder for a child's game (I'm just gonna ignore the Poketuber part).

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf9hpBBIVZ0&t=540s

 

Now here's my little rant about breeding:

 

Genning is unfair, time wise and rng wise. But lets face it, breeding should have never been a thing in Pokemon, a game with the slogan "gotta catch em all" .

 

The probability of hatching a mon with competitive IVs are ridiculous. Not to mention move breeding , which if not planned well, will cost your newly hatched mon to have lowered iv's for having the wrong move giving parent, and making your next steps in breeding even more tedious. And lets talk about the morality in breeding. You capture a lot of the same mon, and throw away those with ridiculously low IVs, and keep those that are potential parents, thats messed up. You eventually have your parents to mate, you breed dozens of eggs, keep the ones with desirable IVs, and throw away those you dont need newly hatched, THROWING LVL 1 BABIES into the wild.

 

You would think that constantly changing parents to further improve their child's IVs is a smart strategic move . But think about it, what this means is that your making your Pokemon's kids FUCK EACH OTHER, so that you can eventually throw them away when you have their most talented offspring.

 

And you say that genning is immoral.

 

Pokemon should not be an eugenics simulator. People are supposed to have fun with the ones they capture, and not being constantly unsatisfied with the Pokes that are supposed to be their favourite mon. And dont make bottle caps that have ridiculous rarity to max out that 1 iv, instead make trials, the kind that you're required to pass with your prided Pokemon so that you could improve its IVs until it surpasses its genetic limits. Nature? Do psychotheraphies, where you can talk to your Pokemon and make it change personality time to time. And ffs gamefreak, boost ability capsules so that they include hidden abilities! People in real life can surpass their limits by learning , thinking, training. And Pokemon cant do that? If Gamefreak comes out with a way to completely shut down hacking or genning. I'll totally agree with them, but FIX YOUR GAME.

 

Once again, no offense to breeders, especially the breeders guild in Reborn that has supported us from time to time. It's just that I find the concept of "Only the talented could help you win" so wrong .  They had so many plot points that could be much more realistic, and they just have to make IVs a thing.

 

[Alistair]

Pokémon, teaching kids eugenics and breeding techniques used by the Nazi regime (1 Godwin point for me) since gen2

 

I'm not very interested in breeding (or the competitive scene for that matter) myself, but if I had to mention one thing that shouldn't exist in Pokémon, it's not Mega Evo, it's not Z-moves, it's not even Budew... it's indeed flippin' IVs.

 

Why oh why are IVs even a thing. Their sole purpose is to turn otherwise perfectly fine mons into garbage compared to other specimens of the same species. Competitive players are obviously going to use mons with perfect IVs, tackling the chore of breeding them when needed, whereas others like me just have to catch mons for their journey and pray they don't have terrible IVs (hooray for a Magnemite with 0 IV in Special Attack).

 

To some extent the same can be said of natures, although at the very least it is possible to put some thinking in what nature to use for a mon, as there might be several ways to play it. IVs on the other hand are just plain dumb.

 

Sorry for the rant but this thread is the perfect place to rant about IVs soooo... ^.^'

[IntSys]

Instead of me answering that question directly, how about we ask other questions relating to the topic first?

Why do IVs exist?

 

As I see it, it's exactly because of what it says on the tin. Individual Values. Without IVs, Pokemon of the same species would be... the same. Completely. What's the difference between my Alakazam with 6 31 IVs and your Alakazam with 6 31 IVs? Functionally, they're the same. Natures are also implemented as supplementary to this system, as well as the "personality" flavor texts in Generation 4 and beyond, as a way to tell us what the Pokemon's good at.

 

 

Why do Egg Moves exist?

 

Simply put, it's to reward breeding. It gives breeding more meaning than just getting certain Pokemon that must be obtained through breeding.


Why does breeding exist?

 

Breeding... Makes Pokemon just a tad bit more realistic. It's an attempt to get closer to how actual animals work.


Now, to answer your question, did IVs, Egg Moves, and Breeding ruin Pokemon?

 

From your post, I guess that you mixed Pokemon in general with competitive Pokemon. I ask you this: Did the above three actually ruin your experience when you're playing any of the games in the main series? Did having a Pokemon with single-digit IVs make your game literally unplayable? Did not being able to use Egg Moves without breeding make your Pokemon utterly unusable?

One could argue that the first gap between casual Pokemon and competitive Pokemon is breeding, and that is very much true. I ask you this, though: Is it worth it to sacrifice individuality in the actual Single-Player gameplay for a more accessible competitive environment?

Game Freak found a solution in Gen 7 that doesn't sacrifice one another, with Hyper Training. For those who don't want to go through the pain of eugenics, grinding your Pokemon to Level 100 can provide you with the same result.

Egg moves stayed as they are, as, again, they need to reward breeding, or else it'd just be a useless function.


Long story short, my answer is: No. They did not ruin Pokemon's Single-Player gameplay. They're also no longer ruining competitive gameplay, with a simpler, eugenics-less method provided to you.

[Ojama Yellow]

the only way breeding, ivs and everything can ruin your ingame pokemon experience is if you want to use the team you used ingame to beat the e4 instantly to go online and play against competitive players. that way youre going to get fukt.

 

that being said, im a nuzlocker. im used to playing with the mons that are given to me rather than the 'perfect' pokemon. and tbh, I prefer it that way as well. like mentioned in the first post, I dont particularly like the concept of catching a pokemon, using it to breed, and then discard it for its genetically superior offspring.

god damn, typing it like that makes it sound even worse. even though theyre technically only pixels on a screen.

because of that, I generally dont breed in any game. including reborn, rejuv, and all that. to the point where I refused to pick up the mystery egg in rejuv because I had to breed for that.

also, some of you need to realize that ivs, evs and natures generally exist for competitive use. you can easily beat any core series or fangame (including reborn and rejuv) without the need of genetically 'perfect' pokemon. if you have less ivs than the max, your pokemon is far from garbage. well, maybe not reborn hardcore or the most difficult rejuv mode or something, but you get the idea. heck, im pretty sure ive used 0 iv mons often enough. I dont even bother to check up on them unless its reborn/rejuv, and thats because theres an option that allows me to.

 

last but not least, going to voice an unpopular opinion here. genning is definitely cheating, but I dont feel like its unfair. I have a reasoning I swear. you know what I find unfair? having to breed tons of mons, discard all of them bar like three, breed them again because they dont have the necessary moves, then grind them up taking into account that you need to defeat these very specific pokemon to have it grow the way you want, then as soon as those are fulfilled you can freely grind, as soon as you hit level 50 start battling online, realize your team isnt working after all and start the process all over again. gen VII is more kind in that aspect with the bottles or w/e theyre called but really. you have to go through literally all of this bullshit to not get your ass kicked in the worst way possible as soon as you turn your wifi on for competitive play. I get that genning is a spit in the face of people who actually do like to breed their mons, but really, I feel like the people who dont have as much time but do have some great plans for teams and want to battle online get spit in the face just as hard.

 

just my opinion, tho. feel free to disagree.

[seki108]

None of them play a role in ordinary pokemon Gameplay, so no.  You can make an argument about them ruining competitive, but I don't think so in that case either.  Also, in reverse order, you listed a scale of midigating-concern.  

 

--Breeding in general, even in Gen 2, allowed for a player to more easily obtain a low-encounter rate pokemon, which fits perfectly into the "Gotta catch em all" motto of early games (especially when trading was concerned).  It also makes much more close to breeding (though no-consequence inbreeding is still a thing..........)

 

--Egg moves (and TM breeding) started as a way to spice up move pools and to make you not be restricted by the 'one TM per game' rule.  They are just a little bonus for those willing, and I've even done it one or twice in regular gameplay for an extra move.  Not mandatory, but a full feature.

 

--IV's (and probably nature, since it plays a part and can't be changed).  As someone above said, this was originally intended to serve a making each pokemon unique.  Even in casual gameplay, this might effect gameplay/performance, but it isn't gamebreaking.  With the mediocre difficulty of most game (except if you did berserker/ no healing outsider center runs that my 7 to 10 year old self did......stupid embarrassing memories), you can make due.   These values are pretty much only relevant if you play in  Competitive scene....in which case, you have to adapt.   However, Perfect Iv's are not needed to excel (though decent ones are) and it becomes more of a nature battle.   (Unless I'm somewhat misinformed about the actual nature of competive play......mostly it's seocnd hand from others on here, so I could have misinterpreted some facts).

 

So no, Pokemon itself was no ruined at all by these things (and only enhance by breeding).  That being said, even I've jokingly said Competive Pokemon is basically Eugenics simulator......and it kind of is, depending on how far you go into it and how much time sinks in.  Feel free to However, with Showdown existing, much of the work is taken out by reducing this to button presses and copy/pasting if you want to play a Competitive game without sinking in hours and hours.  You still won't win without some level of strategy/teambuilding though.

Edited August 28, 2017 by seki108

[Alistair]

To the people who argue that IVs were primarily intended as way of making mons of the same species unique, yes, of course I do hear ya.

 

But maybe there would have been a better way to make them unique than basically making some have good stats due to their high IVs, and others have not-so-good stats due to bad IVs? What effect does giving them that kind of difference have, besides making you throw away the objectively inferior pokémon in favor of the other?

 

Pointing out that IVs are a thing that exists only to be considered in competitive play is a really, really weak argument. Because there is almost no strategic aspect in IVs. You want the most efficient mon? You give it 31 IV everywhere and call it a day. It's as simple and dumb as this. The ONE exception I can think of, is intentionally giving 0IV Speed to already slow mons in order to make them beasts under Trick Room.

 

Now, ofc Pokémons with bad IVs are going to be playable in the main game series and even in Reborn and Rejuv, without breaking a sweat. So no, obviously they're not responsible for "ruining" Pokémon in any way. However I honestly don't see any major reason for IVs to be a thing at all, since they're largely irrelevant in non-competitive, and a no-brainer feature in competitive.

[IntSys]

To address your concerns of how IVs are totally irrelevant in non-competitive:

Have you ever taken a second to look at your Pokemon's characteristics? Let's say you got a Serious Type: Null. Its characteristic is Proud of its power. One would expect a trainer to know their Pokemon's characteristics, much like how a dog owner would know how their dog behaves. Since the Type: Null is Proud of its power, you, as a trainer, should realize that its potential is greater in regards to its physical attacks, compared to its special attacks. Thus, you may want to use Multi-Attack over other 90 BP special moves like Ice Beam as long as it is not run as a coverage move, once it evolves into a Silvally.

Let's take a look at another example. You got a Jolly Crobat. Its characteristic is Capable of taking hits. So, you, as a trainer, should notice that this Crobat will be able to take more physical hits than special hits, and will probably be more willing to let it brace a Spirit Shackle from a Decidueye in a situation where you want to switch Crobat in, in order to KO it with Acrobatics.

Shouldn't the trainer be responsible for utilizing a Pokemon's potential to its fullest?

IVs exist to give Pokemon more individuality. The derived characteristics serve as a clue to how the players can utilize the Pokemon to its fullest potential. 

 

55 minutes ago, Alistair said:

But maybe there would have been a better way to make them unique than basically making some have good stats due to their high IVs, and others have not-so-good stats due to bad IVs? What effect does giving them that kind of difference have, besides making you throw away the objectively inferior pokémon in favor of the other?

You seem to be disregarding how not every single IV in stats have to be the same (ie. 31/31/31/31/31/31, 0/0/0/0/0/0).

Let's look at a better example. Say, Crobat A's IVs are 7/12/8/2/10/9, and Crobat B's IVs are 10/0/10/10/8/10. When you look at these two Crobat, you would be able to see that Crobat A would be able to utilize a physical set better than Crobat B, and Crobat B would be able to utilize a special set better than Crobat A.

Another example. Porygon A's IVs are 24/10/17/15/20/5, and Porygon B's IVs are 2/14/9/20/12/15. At a glance, Porygon B only has a small advantage in Special Attack and a bigger advantage in Speed, compared to Porygon A. You would probably feel like Porygon A is the superior Porygon. However, those advantages alone are enough to determine how you should evolve and train them. Porygon A should be trained to become a bulky Porygon2 that makes opponents want to curse at you, while Porygon B should be trained to become a Porygon-Z instead, smiting opponents with Tri-Attack.

One more example, if my point isn't clear enough. Tentacool A's IVs are 29/4/31/25/27/30, Tentacool B's IVs are 12/20/11/12/9/31. At a glance, one would think that Tentacool A totally beats the pants off Tentacool B, with all the relevant stats in a roles that Tentacruel traditionally takes - Toxic Spiker + Rapid Spinner - being much higher than Tentacool B's. HOWEVER, Tentacool B would be able to utilize a surprising Swords Dance sweeper set better.


I hope that these examples have been helpful to you.

Edited August 28, 2017 by IntSys

[Alistair]

@IntSys You explanation is very clear and interesting. I thank you for it.

 

However, the reason why my post does feel like I'm thinking in binary mode (all 31IV or all 0IV) is because I was just wondering why a competitive player would even want to use something that's not all 31, provided it's technically possible to get that through breeding.

 

Of course, that's assuming one is willing to do all the breeding necessary to get these perfect IVs. If that's not the case, and we're looking to make the best of what mons we have, then of course your very good explanation and examples make total sense.

[Titania]

3 hours ago, Alistair said:

I was just wondering why a competitive player would even want to use something that's not all 31

There are 4 possible cases.  I'll list them in decreasing order of frequency of occurrence:

• If your Pokemon has no physical attacks, there is no point to having a higher attack IV.  In fact, you want the lowest possible attack IV in this case, because this will reduce how much damage you deal to yourself in confusion or how much damage is done against you with foul play.  It's worth noting the reverse does NOT exist: if your Pokemon knows no special attacks, there is no use to having lower special attack as of yet.  Pokemon Showdown in fact will now make this optimization for you automatically unless you tell it otherwise (it started doing that about a year ago, and prior to that virtually nobody had the focused attention to detail to get it right).
• You are utilizing hidden power.  Hidden power's type and damage are calculated from your IVs (from gen 6 onward only its type), so you need to set these properly to get the type you want.  It's worth noting that modern Pokemon only checks the parity of your IV for HP, so you usually only want 30 and 31 IVs this way...  unless you want 0 or 1 for your attack because of the reason above.
• You intentionally want a lower-than-usual-minimum speed.  This comes up for a bunch of reasons.  Here's a wholly-incomplete list:
  • Gyro ball.
  • Back in gen 5, where the typical Conkeldurr set ran a dark move for coverage, but it had to be payback.  0 speed IV Conkeldurr can go after Slowbro to ensure he hits it for full power.
  • In generations 3 through 5 ubers, where both Kyogre and Groudon are legal.  You want your team's weather to prevail, but these 2 Pokemon have the same base speed.  When they enter the battlefield simultaneously (such as if a double-KO happens or at the start of the battle) their abilities proc in speed order, so your weather wins out if you're slower - hence lowering your IV.
  • Pokemon that beget the mirror match often and know u-turn/volt switch: for instance Landorus-therian, who typically doesn't have a set enabling him to do much to a copy of himself.  If you lower your speed IV and the opponent does not, when you both u-turn out you will get to go second and have the counterpick on them.
  • The hypothetical last-Pokemon-showdown of Ditto vs Ditto, where if both players spent their EVs in the optimal way the slower Ditto will win the struggle war.
• To cross relevant HP divisibility thresholds that are otherwise unattainable.  Consider some examples:
  • Life orb Latios (less common in competitive play with the release of its mega stones and soul dew changes in gen 7, but still a very frequent set):  Everyone generally wants to run him with maximized attack and special attack parameters in their EVs, but this leaves him with 301 HP!  That's really wasteful, because you take 30 damage every time you attack.  Knock your HP IV down to 29 and you'll have 299 HP, only taking 29 LO recoil damage with each attack.  You break even on health in 2 attacks, and then profit after that.
  • Dugtrio:  It's commonly desired to have your Dugtrio be able to trap and kill Chansey, but this requires some capable specialization without giving up utility against other trappable targets.  The way of handling this was to run focus sash Dugtrio with screech, reversal, rock slide, and earthquake.  Everything kills Dugtrio in 1 hit anyway (2 hits with sash), so we don't actually care about our bulk...  except when it matters for triggering max reversal power against the only thing that won't OHKO: Chansey's seismic toss!!  If we use 31 HP IV Dugtrio, it will have 211 HP and 2 seismic tosses will reduce it to 11 HP which only generates 150 reversal base power.  For the full 200 power we have to get under ~4.17% HP, so this requires starting from 208 hp - an HP IV of 28.
  • Hawlucha:  The class gen 6 swords dance / substitute / high jump kick / acrobatics set with unburden and a sitrus berry.  Ideally we'd really like to set up our sweep from 50% HP (increases back to 75% after berry) so that it doesn't just end to priority.  But if we use a 31 HP IV we'll have 297 HP, which after 2 substitute applications puts us at 149 HP (sub eats 1/4th HP rounded down)...  which is more than half health, so we don't power up acrobatics or get the speed boost yet and have to sub a third time.  If we decrease HP IV to 30, we'll start from 296, which drops 296 -> 222 -> 148 = 50% HP, so we can unburden in just 2 substitutes.

So yeah, lots of non-zero IVs in competitive play if you're doing it right.  Even if most don't apply that degree of forethought, it pays to do so and comes up quite frequently.  No comments on whether IVs are actually good for the game to exist or not though.  The only strong feeling I have is that EVs are a great thing for competitive play - they reward smart players TREMENDOUSLY in extremely complex and non-obvious ways.  You can even apply as much math as calculus to the EV problem if you want to truly do it right.

[FairFamily]

I feel IV's, nature , egg moves and breeding are failed idea in itself. IV's and natures served  to differentiate  pkmn from the same species from each other, just like EV served to differentiate trained pokemon over wild pokemon. I think it failed in that regard; for the majority of the pkmn I don't think their purpose would change depending on said IV/natures. You can say what you want but no amount of IV's/nature will make me want to run a physical gardevoir. I also treat all my opponents pokemons based on species, ability and moves. However what we do see is that in our own desire for perfectionism/best odds people tend to breed/soft reset pkmn for good natures, IV's,... . Instead of adapting to the nature/Iv's we just select the pkmn with the right natures/Iv's.

 

However IV's make for better pkmn. Take for instance Gardevoir again. The difference between 0 Iv's and 31 Iv's is staggering. The perfect lvl 100 Gardevoir has 12.6% more HP, 23.1% more attack, 22.9% more defense, 12.1% more special attack, 13.2% more special defense and 18.7% more speed. A psychock from the perfect gardevoir performs 55.1% better than the psychock of the weakest gardevoir when they are matched against each other. 

 

So Iv's/natures are relevant but they do not result in the desired outcome in my opinion. Egg moves/hidden abilities are a bit more different but i really wished you didn't need to discard your pkmn for a better version of the same pokemon.

[Alistair]

@Titania interesting. I was aware of cases 1 and 3, but not 2 and 4. Instructive reading. Expected no less from a teacher tbh

[Wolfox]

Honestly, I feel really simple in this case. If you wanna gen mons to play with friends and friends alone? do your thing. if you wanna play in competitions and such just breed if you have the time.

 

I won;t say the game was ruined by them, nowhere near it even. in fact, it opens up multiple ways you can play the game. If you wanna play PvP, then you can go through all the hoops and IMO it can be fun at times, or you can gen in the mons in if you're doing something with friends (Like the UCL with NAPPY, Nexus and the others was). if you just wanna casually play the games because you like that they're fun, you can still do so, nothing is stopping you.

 

And while your idea of sending babies into the wild is not inaccurate, those wild Pokemon were babies at some point in their lives, and most f the time they'll be sent of on Wonder Trade lately