Introducing: The Bond System! (An experimental rework/concept for Pokemon)

[Sodsire]

The Bond System

Have you ever imagined a Pokemon game where your time and friendship with your Pokemon mattered? Like in the Pokemon anime? Well here's an interesting concept I've been cooking.

Grab your favorite snack and drink, and get comfy because this is a long read! :>

 

When I looked into developing my own Pokemon fan game I started by researching the common flaws of Pokemon gameplay. (vanilla and fan-based) As you would expect, a lot of it came down to uninteractive/too much grind. Wishing for more replayable/post game content. Oh, and there was possibly the slightest chance that someone could've mentioned something about the balance of Pokemon games (lol). For awhile that's all I really saw, but then I noticed that there were a few mentions of "What if the friendship mechanic was better?" and "I wish my friendship with my Pokemon team meant something like in the anime battles." The gears in my head started turning,- I was on to something with potential! With the power of coffee, a half an hour long Google Slides presentation with the bois at 2:00am (I wish I was joking) and a couple of weeks I had done the unthinkable! Coming up with one original idea! This was easily one of my top 8 accomplishments in my lifetime. But enough with the silly talk, here's the good stuff:

The Breakdown

 

• Natures are replaced with a new mechanic
• Breeding for IVs is not mandatory in the long run.
• Abilities have progression
• And every Pokemon has a Bond Rank (C rank by default)

 

Don't worry these will be addressed below! Now observe:

Bond Rank Progression

 

The most important thing I wanted to do was avoid was adding more mindless grind to the game. So I integrated the bond rank progression with the best parts of Pokemon gameplay- The gym/major plot related battles. Upon defeating a gym leader all Pokemon in your party will raise their bond rank by one. 

 

This creates an interesting dilemma: Should you keep using the most optimal teams to beat gym leaders? Or should you bring the Pokemon you plan on investing in, even if they're unoptimal for the battle? How much are you willing to greed to get your bond ranks as early as you can? These stakes are even higher for Nuzlocke challenges too!

A secondary effect of this progression system is that when you catch your Pokemon is important. There can be a lot of unique applications with this in fan games with having limited/rare early encounters with a Pokemon and a consistent encounter later in the game. The D & F ranks can also be utilized for Pokemon that are hard to train, or for lore reasons, etc.

 

Battle Styles

 

Next up is battle styles! (name not final, yes i know they're a thing in Pokemon LA) These replace natures. I think we can all agree that trying to get a Pokemon with the right nature can be tedious whether you're encountering them in the wild or breeding the most optimal Pokemon. Well I say that's lame and that should be obtained through the power of friendship!

 

 

Basic Battle Styles (BBS) are available at a B rank and Advanced Battle Styles (ABS) are available at a S rank. The BBSs are designed in a way to give a 10% boost to the chosen stat with no downsides. The reason being is, that is what we do with the 20 natures to begin with (excluding the 5 neutral natures). So I just simplified it to 5 BBSs. The ABSs on the other hand provide dual stat bonuses, but have considerable drawbacks. For example, the Striker Style gives you bonus Speed and Attack, but at the cost of lower Defense and Special Defense. You may notice that the Hybrid style has no drawbacks, and that's because Pokemon that battle using both attacks have it rough already. :(

 

Signature Moves & Abilities

 

Signature moves and abilities already exist in Pokemon, but I want to add a little more depth to them! Signatures moves are obtainable for free through the A Bond Rank. This also means that the Bond System assumes that all Pokemon have a signature move and/or ability begin with. This allows the game designer to hand craft moves and abilities for the more unfortunate Pokemon,- the downside that the moves and abilities are handcrafted. (and need to be balanced, and that's a ton of effort! lmao) An experimental concept I came up with are Ability Branches- these are mini skill trees that let abilities scale with TP investment. Example below:

 

Jerry (the beloved Gastrodon) shares the same Ability Branch with Seismitoad. But the ability Storm Drain comes at no cost because Storm Drain is Jerry's Signature Ability in this example. And Seismitoad is yucky and has to invest 3 TP to get Storm Drain. Theoretically, Ability Branches can hold multiple potential abilities for a whole family of Pokemon, do keep in mind that only some signature abilities will be shared between Pokemon. Some abilities do have to be kept exclusive to certain Pokemon for the sake of balance. I'm looking at you huge power Azurmarill.

 

What the heck is TP? And why is it in my Pokemon Game?

 

Trait Points (TP for short) is the "currency system of friendship" and is gained by raising your Bond Rank (see the Bond Rank chart above) "And they said you couldn't buy love with money!" Rather than abstractly explaining what it is, let me show you what you can get with TP. I have not implemented or tested the Bond System yet, so please take these numbers with a grain of salt.

 

Trait Point Costs (5 TP at S Bond Rank)

• Choosing a Battle Style (1 TP for BBS/2 TP for ABS)
• Learning egg/tutor moves* (1 TP per move)
• Upgrading abilities through the Ability Branch (1+TP)
• Opting in for Alterants- Mega forms, Z-moves, terastalization, etc. (2+ TP, varies on the balance of said mechanic)

*This may be necessary if Pokemon Breeding is replaced all together

 

That is probably still a pretty vague way of showing how TP works so here are a couple examples:

 

 

Perfect Friendship! (S Bond Rank)

 

Only through the perfect bond will your Pokemon be able to abuse utilize Alterants! Something that applies to all Pokemon though is the ability to change/max out your Pokemon's IVs however you please. Eventually your favorite Pokemon will fix their own RNG! And of course, you get access to ABSs to further optimize your stats, if you choose to do so.

 

Q/A

 

Q: What happens to friendship evolutions & moves?

Spoiler

A: Friendship evolutions can be set at a certain Bond Rank- probably B and A rank. Moves like Return and Frustration can have power based off of Bond Rank too! For my game I plan on adding more moves that behave like this.

 

Q: You have addressed everything but effort values, what gives?

Spoiler

A: I think the grind for effort values can be a bit annoying at times,- specifically when you're trying to remove EVs to make a certain EV spread. So for my game I'm going to choose to add a system that gives you EVs like stat points when your Pokemon levels up. A solution like that doesn't need to integrate with the Bond System and is a lot simpler that way.

 

Q: Are natures just gone then?

Spoiler

A: Functionally yes, but they can still remain as a thing for flavor, like characteristics. Although those are assigned based off of IV numbers. I'd say that more natures could be added as flavor too.

 

Q: How does the Bond System work thematically?

Spoiler

A: In a battle sense, I think a trainer and Pokemon bond when they persevere through a challenging battle, like a gym battle or major boss fight. But, from a more realistic perspective of friendship I think there is potential to have small cutscenes that happen when you raise a bond rank- like Fire Emblem Support conversations. I want to keep the system open ended if other people want to use and/or adapt it into their own projects.

 

Q: Is there even a point to Pokemon Breeding anymore?

Spoiler

A: Besides egg moves or getting perfect Ivs pre-S Bond Rank no. Personally, I don't have fun with a Pokemon game when I have to get a bike, find the longest straight line in said game and then proceed to go back and forth all in the name of getting the perfect Pokemon. With my game I'm probably going to replace Pokemon Breeding with the Bond System all together. I'm sure that some smart people will come up with ways to make Pokemon Breeding a more enjoyable mechanic, and maybe even integratable with the Bond System.

 

Final Thoughts

 

Here are the goals the Bond System:

• Take away the grind for hunting natures and breeding for perfect IVs
• Make Pokemon "builds" a lot more customizable
• Create a system where Pokemon are able to be balanced through custom/signature moves and abilities
• Simplify complicated Pokemon mechanics at glance (like Ivs) by integrating them as a reward for defeating gym leaders

 

But the real reason why I even posted this- I need your feedback! There's a lot of cool veteran trainers here and I intend on making a Reborn-like fan game using this system. Your thoughts, questions, ideas and constructive criticism are all welcome here! Heck, you can even come up with theoretical build ideas using the Bond System with custom abilities and moves like the Garchomp examples!



Thank you for your time! Sodsire out!

[OmegaSolare]

Perfect! 1000/10! The bond system looks very great compared to the original one. I want to try that one.

[Sodsire]

10 hours ago, SolareInferno said:

Perfect! 1000/10! The bond system looks very great compared to the original one. I want to try that one.

Thank you! That means a lot. The trick is going to be implementing and balancing a system that has a drastic change of mechanics. I'll make sure to showcase it when I get a presentable vertical slice of my game. :>

[Asnaeb]

This looks really promising and creative! Congrats, man. I really got excited while reading. And there is nearly limitless options. Like Achievement Points in Rejuv. but for pokêmon. For example, when your pokêmon won a number of disadvantaged match-ups(like garchomp beats 5 or 10 ice or fairy types) it gets a TP. I like rotating my team members in games like Reborn so I wonder how much your game will force the player to use less pokêmon but I'm really hyped to try it! I hope you can make your game succesfully, I'll be waiting. 

[Sodsire]

39 minutes ago, Asnaeb said:

This looks really promising and creative! Congrats, man. I really got excited while reading. And there is nearly limitless options. Like Achievement Points in Rejuv. but for pokêmon. For example, when your pokêmon won a number of disadvantaged match-ups(like garchomp beats 5 or 10 ice or fairy types) it gets a TP. I like rotating my team members in games like Reborn so I wonder how much your game will force the player to use less pokêmon but I'm really hyped to try it! I hope you can make your game succesfully, I'll be waiting. 

For my game I definitely intend on there being a lot of well crafted, unique challenges to overcome. I watch a lot of different people do hardcore nuzlockes of fangames and rom hacks, and what I love the most is seeing some people plan out these highly optimized no-lose strategies, and then some people just pull some random Pokemon out of the box and barely make it out alive because they improvised on the spot. Everybody has their own unique way to tackle challenging battles in Pokemon! Hopefully the bond ranks don't end up forcing people to exclusively use the first decent 6 Pokemon they find. I'll admit that I was considering a more casual audience for that type of mentality,- if you want to use your 6 favorite Pokemon regardless of their power then you definitely should be able too. I'd like to see some guy take a Butterfree all the way to the end of my game just because it was their favorite lol. I will definitely monitor the power level of bond ranks early on to make them worth considering but not the end all be all.

Also I'm planning on having more than 8 gym battles for my game (I don't have an exact number quite yet.) The amount of S Rank bond Pokemon that I would like the player to have in the end game should be around the 12+ figures. I'm also potentially considering a limited amount of secret items that raise a Pokemon's bond rank by one stage.

It makes me genuinely happy to hear that you are really excited about this system! Just for that, I'll spill a bit of info:

I have been... misleading... when saying there are "gym leaders" in my game. They may be similar in role to gym leaders but they each watch over something important to their region.
That's all I can say for now, but I am thankful for your kind words ;)