Regional Debuff

[jovial heart]

you mean forcing people to breed all?

wasn't this deemed too boring in a previous discussion?

Dev channel conversations getting forgotten 🤪

[next hazel]

Sorry, I mean, flat limit on non-native Pokémon.

[stone badge]

What now you want people to use the built in search function?

[next hazel]

Like, you breed your Kantonian Pokémon to 1000 attack in Kanto, but it will not deal more than 200 in Johto. So you are forced to breed Johto Pokémon.

[wide acorn]

true. we are basically discussing how to balance the game, and what that rebalancing means for the challenge

[jovial heart]

but what about later regions? Battle Frontier?

what about subregions? Sevii? Orre?
Magikarp Jump?

[nimble marsh]

it wouldn't be difficult to exempt BF from any debuffs.

[jovial heart]

Magikarp Jump impossible with that system unless someone finally gives it Kanto debuff PLEASE lol

why is it still Alola? 😭

[next hazel]

I want to remove the debuff there.

[stone badge]

Wouldnt that just be changing those mon to Kanto natives in the code? Im assuming that their marked as Alolan natives? Despite being a Kanto subregion

[next hazel]

But, now, you are talking about turning the debuff into a buff, so...

[jovial heart]

not quite. Magikarp Jump is an Alola subregion

[next hazel]

No, Magikarp are Kanto native. And their subregion is an Alolan subregion.

[jovial heart]

so, currently, Magikarp Jump has Alola debuff

[stone badge]

Oh right, had that backwards

[jovial heart]

and the Magikarp there are considered Kanto for the debuff

so they get debuffed in the one region that asks for their presence lmao

[stone badge]

I mean, easy change

[jovial heart]

I tried to fix it but Damage Calculator didn't want to cooperate 🤔

[nimble marsh]

The entire HP curve/distribution is going to be overhauled with almost any fix, so it shouldn't be an issue.

[jovial heart]

it still needs to not be Alola

but that's a different topic lol

[next hazel]

I mean, it was an example. General rule would be a flat limit on non-native Pokémon attack. Any breeding would still be effective, but not for the region the Pokémon is not native from.

[jovial heart]

I think that's needlessly punishing

[next hazel]

How so ?

[jovial heart]

ok so a non-native would have a cap?

which means I'm forced to breed the new ones, like it or not

[next hazel]

Soft cap, yeah.

[jovial heart]

may as well put debuff at 0% maintained then lol

like, if you are gonna force me, really force me

[next hazel]

No, that is way different.

[jovial heart]

is it though?

[next hazel]

I mean, that is the point of the debuff.

[jovial heart]

would I notice? Will it show that it's at the soft cap?

[stone badge]

If noticiable, personally I think a flat limit like that would be very poorly received

[next hazel]

Yes, 0% means you can not rely on non native Pokémon. While a flat limit would mean you can rely on them up to a certain point.

[jovial heart]

ok, but would I know?

would the game prevent me from hatching it?

or could I happily never notice and then wonder why I'm at the same attack?

[next hazel]

I mean, if you are average player and do not read the sign, yes, you could never notice.

[jovial heart]

that's bad design

I want "something" to know I'm at the soft cap

give an icon on the egg or something, anything, don't let me be an ignorant forever

[nimble marsh]

achievement for hitting the (region) cap

[next hazel]

You can get a ⚠️ on the Pokémon, saying its attack gain is not effective anymore in the current region.

[jovial heart]

I would ask for Hatchery Helpers to have a "go to next mon after cap"

although I suppose I could switch all my breeding to Johto in the modal

to prevent that issue

[wise mica]

I don't think the idea of a cap applied individually to pokemon is a good idea because it reduces flexibility too much. I think I like a cap on non-native damage as a whole though.

[nimble marsh]

overall cap would be less punishing to mono-challenge runs (possibly completely irrelevant to them)

[jovial heart]

nah, I'm ignoring my own challenges for this to see how this idea would work

like, I can always just disable it. I can live with that

[next hazel]

You can reuse the debuff related setting to hide Pokémon at cap instead, lul.

[nimble marsh]

a per pokemon cap would likely have to be low enough to make some mono runs near impossible if not outright impossible

[jovial heart]

but as a player, not sure I would want my early Pokémon to go from non-ideal to basically useless

[next hazel]

Not useless, that cap would have to increase with new region, as the base attack requirement increases as well.

[jovial heart]

then again, others may see this soft cap as a sort of "completion" goal

also Hisui is gonna suuuuuck

[nimble marsh]

framing is everything - make it a chievo, like you're supposed to try for it.

[next hazel]

We can do exceptions, lol.

[jovial heart]

but why though?

[next hazel]

Just like you want an exception for MJ.

[jovial heart]

why would we have a new soft cap in the next region?

[gilded dune]

If it needs such a drastic exception for one of the main regions, it's probably a bad idea

[jovial heart]

oh, so people have a new goal to hit?

and then go back to breeding the Pokémon that actually do help

[nimble marsh]

a known limit would mean it'd be much, much easier to balance each region properly. You'd be able to rely on the fact that "The most Attack a player can have when they get here is X".

[jovial heart]

can't overbreed, true

[gilded dune]

MJ is not a main region

[next hazel]

I mean, if we do a constant % debuff, Hisui is going to suck anyway.

Everyone nerfed to 40% except a few new Pokémon, lul.

[jovial heart]

yeah that one will probably have to scale less drastically with those HP walls compared to something like Galar

[next hazel]

Because bigger numbers better than going back to low numbers every new region.

[jovial heart]

I mean Kanto to Johto, say the cap is 100... then in Hoenn what... 200?

[next hazel]

We already have that bigger number philosophy as the first route of a new region has more HP as the last route of the previous region.

[jovial heart]

but it gets sillier when the walls get bigger

[nimble marsh]

200 total attack does not seem reasonable. o.o

[jovial heart]

so say Alola -> Galar... a few of my Alola mons are already at the soft cap most likely lol

[next hazel]

I do not know the numbers, it would need math. Also, that limit would be a % of base attack not just X attack points.

[jovial heart]

oh, I was meaning hatches but 100 hatches all is more than enough to beat Johto in AC so the numbers are bad lol

[nimble marsh]

oh you're thinking of per pokemon

I thought that wasn't feasible due to challenge runs

[jovial heart]

I think challenge runs are getting ignored here to better reach a consensus

[nimble marsh]

fair, as long as it doesn't make them impossible

[jovial heart]

I'm aware I can disable the thing if I deem it bad

which is why those buttons there let me disable things 😉

[next hazel]

I think a cap for all the Pokémon is meh, because which Pokémon would you put in that cap ? Which would be excluded ? How would it work with gems and effectiveness ?

[jovial heart]

Martius' idea would make a bunch of challenge ideas impossible, yes

[next hazel]

In the challenge, at least.

[jovial heart]

but I'm ignoring it because I wanna see how it would work

I know many people, even normal players, would hate this

as it means if I have a favourite from early region... well, that one is useless now. Forever.

and don't tell me it works for Battle Frontier, I hate Battle Frontier lol

[wise mica]

All non-native pokemon as defined by who gets debuffed today. The cap can be auto calculated based on something like saying assuming all pokemon have been breed 10 times, have resistant (if unlocked), etc. This also naturally means the cap increases as you unlock more regions.

It would not make your favorite pokemon useless because if you really, really love one and overbreed it to insanity then you get the benefit of hitting the cap while ignorning everything on every other mon

[jovial heart]

I will hit the cap and then it can't help me anymore

[wise mica]

Even ignoring challenge runs, I don't like how little flexibility a per-pokemon cap gives. It just doesn't seem fun.

[jovial heart]

like, cool, I reached a goal, but...

good-bye little fella 🤪

[wise mica]

That doesn't really seem like it would be a problem to me because hitting the cap just means it's high-time to go to the next region. If you mean end-game, then there's nothing much to do anyway and the cap wouldn't apply to BF of course so

[jovial heart]

this system seems like it doesn't mix well with said Battle Frontier

because that one will take all, no?

then again in endgame you can go back to breeding all and keeping your [Insert Final Region] damage at a fixed value

I suppose this would be better for regions, eh

as even if you had reached BF 20k, you would still struggle in Hisui because soft cap lol

[steady laurel]

You can have an arbitrary designed number as a cap for non native region pokemon.
It was an improvement to my first suggestion of a hard cap that I discarded because I thought we still wanted to have ability of self-imposed challenge run with debuff on

[next hazel]

OK, lets say you have 40K attack in Kanto, but the cap is 20K in Johto. Which Pokémon gets to attack ? What if my Ponyta is more effective against that Scyther, but all the Pikachu get to attack instead ? Is my Magmar becoming useless because the limit is already reached at Onyx ?

[jovial heart]

oh, I hate it! But I'm leaving that aside to see how it would work

I can see the advantages of such a system

I can highly dislike something but still interact with the idea. After all, that's how discussion should go 😉

[next hazel]

In any case, I prefer a constant % debuff (or buff, depending), but, we are not really heading to it, if heading to something at all.

[jovial heart]

like, yeah, it would make balancing regions easier. It would make even old players be able to enjoy new content...
Except subregions added to earlier regions

as they would go and destroy em still lol

[next hazel]

We can not fix everything anyway, lol. A % debuff would not prevent people from overbreeding then destroying the new regions even with Gyarados to 40% of its best.

[steady laurel]

Because if the goal is :
Make people breed every pokemon or at least a larger panel of pokemon. (then the goal of the challenge is in direct contradiction to some self imposed challenged, but that's the same with the dex challenge)

You can simply limit non native pokemon to an arbitrary given attack. Making players having a cap coming to a region (pokemon capped value * number of available pokemon non native from this region)
And then within the region, no cap for native pokemon.

If you don't hard cap, that means you can completely disregard the debuff and still breed the same pokemon over and over again, simply is a little longer

You can also have some kind of logarithm growth but at some point it's nearly the same as a hard cap and might be more annoying to balance

[jovial heart]

I mean if the idea is to force people to breed natives, your idea works well

then no matter how many times you breed that Gyarados, you won't be able to destroy Hisui lol

endgame people moving from BF 10k to losing 90% of their damage once they see Hisui sounds comical though lol

[steady laurel]

That was more than that with magikarp jump and was to me the most refreshing region to play

[jovial heart]

bet some would love it. Some would hate it. Like everything in the universe

[next hazel]

Liar, you had that 3M attack Magikarp at this time.

[jovial heart]

I can see the appeal of no matter how much you do in this patch, still not being able to just win

and not because the Devs decided to make Hisui 1T damage

but rather because of the whole thing working differently

[steady laurel]

Only about 1M but yeah I couldn't blast through magikarp jump entirely

[next hazel]

They get to enjoy the progression again, lmao.

[jovial heart]

indeed

again, I can always just disable it for my dumb ideas. I can live with that. Maybe not all the challenge-runners will though 🤪

[next hazel]

I had 600K on Magikarp at this time and had to breed the other a bit too, lul.

[wise mica]

What I was thinking was it'd be after type calculations, but there are other options of course. In that case yeah, getting Magmar any stronger is pointless if your Onyx is so overbreed that he carries the entire pokedex worth of damage cap

[jovial heart]

but this does mean that the preferred method of breeding would be.... Times Hatched lol

which is comical to me

[next hazel]

For non-native, yeah.

[jovial heart]

as once you go to the next region you would keep more damage if you have many Pokémon at soft cap

instead of beating the region with a single one

[jovial heart]

no, in general

because then in the next region, my current native will become non-native

[next hazel]

After type would be a mess as well, lol. But at least there would be no difference between Gem and No Gem Challenge.

[steady laurel]

I would have thought lowest attack

[jovial heart]

and to get the most attack from them

ah, true, this works with Attack, not number of hatches

[noble hull]

happiny getting some love

[jovial heart]

then what's the point of BE

only for Battle Frontier progression?

[next hazel]

Short-term attack gain, as it is now.

[jovial heart]

would be silly to breed like that

[steady laurel]

BF, and numbers go big

[next hazel]

You want BE for native Pokémon if your goal is to go through all regions as fast as possible.

[jovial heart]

but you won't see those numbers outside BF

[steady laurel]

Also faster progress within a new region

[jovial heart]

because of the cap

[opaque lotus]

I think it should be a soft cap for non-natives, lets say, cappes at 25% of you attack and each point of attack past that only contributes 0.1

[jovial heart]

but then you are gonna suffer a bit with next one and so on

I mean, breeding high BE from current Region will forever work too

[next hazel]

That is % debuff with extra steps, lol.

[steady laurel]

Yeah a bit more.

[opaque lotus]

but if it is not scaling and will work forever

[jovial heart]

considering the number of Pokémon + Gems

[steady laurel]

At least it has to be from current region.
Not from any region as it is the case since sinnoh because debuff becomes negligeable

[jovial heart]

probably high BE from current Region > breeding by Lowest Attack

oh well, if this is what is decided... at least it does accomplish the "we want people to breed from this region"

[next hazel]

If you have regional debuff on, you already only see your true attack in the BF.

[jovial heart]

all I breed increases my attack

a soft cap means I can breed this Kanto Pokémon forever but my Galar attack will never move

not the same

[steady laurel]

And that also means one thing.
Joey will be more relevant as a huge boss !

[jovial heart]

Joey can now only be beaten with Johto Pokémon?

that's eh... certainly something

[steady laurel]

Yeah

I wonder if I would be able to beat joey, I don't think I would
Definetely wouldn't only 4 johto native fighting poemon and I breed only two of the 4 totaling 300M attack

[next hazel]

Fine, it was not meant to be beaten, you guys were just mad enough to set it as an actual goal.

[jovial heart]

anyway, the poll is outdated now lol

but, if anything, people want badges to do something so something was learnt from it

[noble hull]

didnt think that idea would be so popular since it barely had any votes at the start

[frank dove]

I think making badges doing something related to the debuff makes balancing and progression a mess

[next hazel]

I think so too. Even though I agree with the need for badges to be more relevant.

[jovial heart]

I think it's good to consider them for something

but maybe not the debuff, yeah

[opaque lotus]

maybe badges increase roamer chance

[nimble marsh]

That'd be... interesting to code in.
Wouldn't it worsen the "focus on the highest BE" pokemon issue? I do like that it involves player choice, but feel like it'd be very unpopular.

I don't pay much attention to BE myself; I'm tossing everything into the pile until it's shiny, then it gets yeeted. But once everything is shiny, there's mathmatically a "correct" subset of pokemon to breed.

yeah no it's good. Toss those ideas on the table, give 'em a poke.

[dull aurora]

...hey discord, "12+ new messages" may technically be accurate but. it sure isn't informative

[flint tinsel]

I do still like the idea of the debuff becoming stronger as you progress further away from its native region - the badge idea sounds nice in theory but sounds like it would be way more complicated to balance for rather than a consistent debuff in the region

[dull aurora]

Re: caps, I feel like even the more gentle caps or diminishing returns proposed* don't really fit the game. Pokeclicker is a number go up game at heart; making number go up less just feels wrong. It also seems like a great way to frustrate endgame players** who would suddenly find number drastically down.

*that I admittedly skimmed discussion of
**though anyone who's played that much must already enjoy suffering

[flint tinsel]

I don't like the idea of capping pokemon attack at all personally

[nimble marsh]

I think putting badges in our back pockets as a possible lever is fair; they could do any number of things, it doesn't have to be a debuff reduction.

[opaque lotus]

I like the idea of a soft cap a la BTD6 HP gain and if that is how it worked when I played I would have kept the challenge on instead of disabling it

[nimble marsh]

How have other idle/clicker/incremental games solved this problem? From my limited experience they mostly don't - early game content quickly gets invalidated by the newest unlock and so on and so forth. It's a constant tidal wave of "get the next thing".

[wide acorn]

it's a bit counter intuitive too when we have cross-gen evolutions

[flint tinsel]

I don't mind the older regions eventually becoming redundant over the newer regions since that's just how pokemon kinda works now

[noble hull]

cookie clicker has synergies and heavenly upgrades that constantly change best building until you get to the very end

but it doesnt apply here ofc

[dull aurora]

Actually, I'd like to go back to the idea of buffing native species instead of debuffing nonnatives. It got semi dismissed because native species are an increasingly small percentage of your pokemon, but there's a simple fix: make the native species debuff scale!

[nimble marsh]

Yeah, pokemon is rather unique in this context because there's more to them than just "Random production building #827"

[nimble marsh]

based on how many natives there are? or how many non-natives? or both.

click attack becomes mostly irrelevant after a few regions

[flint tinsel]

I wouldn't mind a buff over debuff but if its still to be kept as a "challenge" for r2c, the debuff I feel is a more interesting challenge to work with rather than just the flat buff to new natives

[dull aurora]

Either? Both? My initial zero-calculations thought was +50% to native species for every additional region cleared. We could easily also scale it further for smaller regions.

[flint tinsel]

I'm playing devils advocate and don't really mind my attack/numbers dropping if I know that's part of the challenge to then account for and change my breeding accordingly

[nimble marsh]

For me at least "how much the HP bar goes down a second" is a much more relevant feeling metric than the actual number.

[hardy hinge]

I just want to say that I said that it should be a native pokemon buff as one of the first things I said

[dull aurora]

Nothing stopping us from combining a native species buff and a nonnative debuff, really. Your existing pokemon don't need as harsh a debuff if natives get a buff on top of it.

[hardy hinge]

^

[wise mica]

I would think it should be (# total pokemon obtainable) / (# total native pokemon obtainable) so that it scales appropriately for smaller and later regions.

Based on Redzep's table from earlier that would put Galar at nearly 10x just from the sheer number of pokemon released before. Which I think makes sense because of how much time was spent in the previous regions.

[hardy hinge]

People don’t like it when numbers go down

Numbers go up brbrbr

[nimble marsh]

A buff always feels better than a debuff, look at the WoW sleep fiasco

even if it's the exact same thing

[flint tinsel]

numbers temporarily going down is part of the challenge, no?

[wise mica]

Regardless of buff vs debuff, when you move from your current region to the next region your numbers would go down, or am I misunderstanding the idea?

[dull aurora]

Did Redzep's table count dex numbers or separate forms? "Obtainable pokemon" would have to only count main and regional forms to avoid balance shifting whenever a special form got added

[frank dove]

dex, see: kanto/johto

[wide acorn]

it is, but the point of the challenge is to balance the game, which buffing could do too

[wise mica]

Here's the link, like wormania said I think dex #1301997073880711178 message

[dull aurora]

Ah right. I don't think that accounts for regional forms though, which we do consider to be native for debuff purposes.

[wide acorn]

that means it works better because less kantomons lol

[nimble marsh]

A good solution should:

• heavily encourage the player to catch and breed native pokemon
• not cut off any existing avenues of play
• preferably use bonuses over reductions
• keep the "numbers go up" feeling of an incremental game
• keep newly unlocked regions from feeling trivial to complete

[frank dove]

that last one makes a lot of options impossible, including other items on the list

unless you're only taking about kanto -> johto etc, and not the upcoming regions

[hardy hinge]

the last one is possible for new players

but for existing players....... no

[native mortar]

Sounds like it's more concerned about normal progression, not about players at endgame breeding forever while waiting for a new region to be added.

[hardy hinge]

Yeah

[nimble marsh]

Yes, this would be for the "average player experience" aka, newly started file doing R2C and not a file that has had years to level up before a region comes out.

understandably the game will never be balanced around that

[dull aurora]

Hm. To overcomplicate things, I'm thinking about native buff plus nonnative debuff plus gym scaling. Here's some fake numbers:
-nonnatives start at 25% damage, scales up to 50% after defeating the champion
-natives start with +25% damage per region cleared, scales up to +50% post-champion

Which would look like:
-Johto: natives start 5x better than nonnatives and end 3x better
-Hoenn: natives start 6x better and end 4x better
...
-Galar: natives start 11x better and end 9x better

Both the starting and ending numbers could be anything. Could also just limit gym scaling to natives for more incentive to breed them.

[flint tinsel]

I personally don't like the idea of non-native mons becoming better in a non-native region and it would be a nightmare to rebalance taking all of that above into account I think

[nimble marsh]

correct me if I'm wrong, but umbral's suggestion on non-native scaling only gives them less of a debuff after the region is "done", aka post-Champion

at which point the player should have a substantial investment in native mons

[dull aurora]

My thought process was that early in a region is when we most want to discourage relying on old mons, but it would probably be fine to keep a flat debuff instead.

[nimble marsh]

newly arrived in (region) is the point where the player is most strongly influenced to rely on their existing pokemon, agreed.

[dull aurora]

Nope, the idea was to slowly scale with every (required?) gym badge earned. IMO nonnative species should still be decently useful towards the end of a region, especially since not every region ends with the champion, Galar especially.

[nimble marsh]

so the power curve for non-natives might look like that?

[dull aurora]

But I do think nonnatives shouldn't become too much better, certainly not more than native mons do. Thus natives scaling more from badges than nonnatives.

Maybe? I'm guessing the troughs are new regions, but I'm not sure what exactly the height is. Modified attack?

Does that count attack increases outside the debuff?

[wide acorn]

i'm following your natives example but can you also give example numbers for non-natives?

[nimble marsh]

green line would be total (Non-native) pokemon attack, going up over time as badges are acquired, then the drop would be from switching to a new region and having no badges. Presumably doesn't go down to baseline because more breeding has been done during the interm.

[wide acorn]

dunno about embri's chart

[dull aurora]

Gotcha. That looks about right then, though with breeding in there it's not much different than a just flat debuff.

[dull aurora]

Example numbers of what kind?

The examples are already relative to nonnatives

[nimble marsh]

All the non-natives would be "1" in the examples. you can think of 'em like ratios

Galar: 1:11 -> 1:9, in favour of natives, etc.

[wide acorn]

oh, i see it now

thanks

[dull aurora]

I gotta go handle dinner, but I can try to write up a more detailed explanation later.

oh hello poll. wasn't expecting badges to be so popular when I mentioned it offhand

[coral oriole]

would variants like megas and galarian slowpokes be debuffed at kalos and galar set?

[dawn helm]

megas and regional forms (currenly) operate not the same

megas are the same region as their base form

regional forms are native to the region theyre named after

[spring glacier]

Ok this might be the stupidest thought I've had on this issue, what if previous regions pokemon could not level past the same level caps as Kanto badges in new regions

ie not being able to get previous regions pokemon to 100 before 8th badge

[dawn helm]

rip challenge runs

[spring glacier]

Eggs exist so no not rip challenge runs

[dawn helm]

yes let fairy mono just 1/216 those mystery eggs until they reach the only fairy in unova /hj

[jovial heart]

challenge runs can just... disable the challenge

[stone badge]

^

[wide acorn]

Way more interesting for a challenge but doesn't it mean even more kanto bias?

[spring glacier]

_me suggesting a badge level cap idea when I wanted badge level caps to have been removed since forever ago _ 🙃🙃🙃

[jovial heart]

remove badge level caps in Kanto, add them in later regions, perfectly balanced 🤪

[spring glacier]

No. It would just limit old pokemon from leveling up to be hatched while also maintaining the new debuff, new regions pokemon can still be put in breeding dungeon to get attack

But yea the universal dock thing kills the idea a bit

[wise mica]

Yeah... I like how close it is to canon but since you can move between regions it feels like it'd end up being pretty confusing

[next hazel]

Easy, change the hard cap into a soft cap : you can level up your Pokémon past level X, but only the attack at level X counts.

[steady laurel]

So that kinds of mean a % of that pokemon attack in the end

[next hazel]

It does, lol.

[flint tinsel]

Was there ever a final decision on this? I’m happy to look at potentially mathing out re-balancing for whatever the new debuff is proposed to be in the coming weeks

[jovial heart]

not really, nope

I mean after the poll was made some new ideas were tossed around so now we need a new poll

[opaque lotus]

I like the idea of a soft cap on attack

[flint tinsel]

I’m definitely for the losing power the further away you are from its native region camp but I just like the challenge of having to “rebuild” some of my attack each region

[jovial heart]

I don't like it because it goes against Battle Frontier lol

like, can't have "your non-natives are softcapped for next regions" and "Battle Frontier accepts all"; and make it work flawlessly

[flint tinsel]

So a new poll then?

[jovial heart]

I dunno what to write in said new poll

the option that won + these new ideas? That's unfair

the same ideas + the new ones? Then what was the point of the previous one?

[flint tinsel]

The previous one may just have to be scrapped bc people who chose the winning option may change their mind when presented with other new options

[dull aurora]

I’ve been sidetracked but have further thoughts on buffs vs debuffs and scaling I’ve been trying to put into words

eh, enough trying to math it out, short version it is

Basically I think there's three main questions:

1. How effective do we want a native mon to be relative to a non-native mon?
2. Should this ratio change within a region?
3. Should this ratio change between regions?

[dawn helm]

My 2ct

1. About double (aka 50%-40%), more difference feels too harsh for my liking
2. No, the badge idea was quite but at the end I feel like it would only complicate the process and a regular user wouldn't notice it OR if they notice it is confusing
3. It should sum to about the same unless unbalanced breeding

[dull aurora]

1 is straightforward, that's just the debuff percent question. Importantly, we can make any combination of debuffing nonnatives and buffing natives mathematically equivalent here, as long as we scale HP accordingly. I personally like including a buff to natives in some form, since "all your pokemon are worse now" just isn't as interesting to me.

[opaque lotus]

I think it should be a static 50% debuff

[flint tinsel]

50% feels pretty negligible imo

[opaque lotus]

maybe 30 or 40%

I think it should just be static

[dawn helm]

I like 40%, it's the narrow path between "strong old mons are okay but natives really take the cake"

(although my brain still goes to further away should get debuff more)

Rotating breeding rosters is something I would like to encourage but not only because one got even stronger mons, you know

With "buffing instead of debuffing" (where I still don't know which side Im on) I could imagine something like
Native mons have 2x attack, 1.6x in the next region, 1.3x in the next next region and 1x from there

A downscaling attack buff

[dull aurora]

2 is the badge buffs idea. IMO this would work well as a way to transition into new regions, with only natives benefiting from badges. That would let players rely on their existing party early in a region while increasingly incentivizing using new catches to progress.

[dawn helm]

Another thing for scaling beyond your native region imo could be post champion mons

Obtaining heatran after Cynthia only to be told "sucks to be you but your heatran doesn't help you much in unova" feels bad

[native mortar]

Could go with a legendary multiplier, to make them more useful than your average 'mon. I know it's come up a few times that legendaries kind of suck in general at the moment.

[dawn helm]

Well heatran doesn't suck

That's why it's my example lol

[native mortar]

"in general"

A weaker debuff, a special multiplier, whatever it would end up looking like. Point being that it would make legendaries a bit better, considering most of them are kinda bad in the current iteration.

[dull aurora]

3 is the ever-expanding dex issue. Every region progressed means a larger party with higher attack; starting regions with more attack means a higher difficulty spike to stay challenging; higher difficulty means new catches take longer and longer to be relevant. Partially this is just the nature of the game. I do think some sort of scaling for natives could be nice though. Right now we have the opposite and it's why we're here.

[dawn helm]

I'd propose a stronger held item exclusive to legendaries but let's not get too far away from the topic or else we'll get scolded :P)

[native mortar]

I don't think it's getting away from the topic, necessarily - if we're looking at regional debuff stuff, contemplating giving legendaries a weaker debuff falls in line.

[dull aurora]

Personally I don't really like pokemon continuing to get worse as you progress farther. Native vs nonnative is a clean dividing line, number of regions away is more arbitrary and confusing. It also just isn't that meaningful once we get rid of the current lack-of debuff. If difficulty goes up every region, and you're mostly investing in pokemon from that region to progress, then your strongest nonnative pokemon will tend to be from the previous region anyways.

That's all from me tonight though, I gotta sleeeeep

[dawn helm]

I think "new pokemon take longer to be relevant" is flawed logic because you're comparing total attack instead of attack gained
Ofc my cool 131k attack Rayquaza has more attacked than my newly catched toxtricity but from the point of reaching galar onward investing time into toxtricity is more beneficial than investing time into the debuffed Rayquaza because while it currently has higher attack it doesn't gain attack faster and that's really what matters imo

I know it's wasted effort at this point but I have to come back to the regional dex because the "your invest in previous region pokemon feels wasted" does get partially solved by some pokemon keeping their attack between regions as they're considered native. In the literal sense of native instead of "appeared here first"
Random mon: Aegislash. Is good against the champ so you breed it a bunch. Now you go to Alola, lose attack on Aegislash, finish the region and now that you're in galar your Aegislash attack is back at 100% (or more if buffed instead of debuffed). Your previous effort wasn't wasted. (Unless your name is venonat then you don't get the native treatment from Johto to paldea)

[flint tinsel]

But that just gives the problem of kanto being OP bc it’s hardly ever buffed

And doesn’t solve the thing of gyarados especially being broken 😅

[dawn helm]

I don't think a single pokemon from currently 1400 pokemon being good is a problem and im tired of pretending it is /hj

Gyarados being the good ol reliable is honestly an advantage in my eyes but the people are not ready for that conversation /nm

[gusty panther]

we need an efficiency cap. as soon as something goes over that cap it artifically adds egg steps to bring it back below /hj

[dawn helm]

We have a cap for low pokemon not to be horrible so I could see that even if I don't agree with that lol

[jovial heart]

It makes Johto have a 100% attack maintained for all Pokémon

[Insert joke about Johto being DLC] lol

I like regional dex. I dislike Game Freak's bias and we can't edit it ourselves or it would be even more arbitrary

[dawn helm]

With buff instead of debuff policy every that would be the case too

[jovial heart]

It will make all of Johto be 100% buffed

[dawn helm]

Regional dex in my mind is not compatible with buff instead of debuff philosophy

I look at the two separately

[harsh veldt]

IMHO I think just cutting the current numbers in half would work well? 5% per region instead of 10% per region. I know that was a discussed option before, but I'm not sure how popular it was. But this is a case where pushing the problem down the road is probably fine because we just aren't going to hit 20 regions any time soon.

Even with all of the main games plus separate regions for every Legends Game, for Ranger and for Mystery Dungeon, that's still only 13 regions. It'll take a literal decade at least to get close to 20

[dawn helm]

Going from Kanto to Johto with 10% attack kept 😔

[bitter oracle]

The problem isn't just the debuff hitting 100%, it's also the debuff not feeling effective in later regions

[gusty panther]

it can start at 50% in Johto and go -5% every region until you hit 5% and it stays there

[flint tinsel]

I still think another poll or something to get this decided ASAP is a good idea

[jovial heart]

Make it

I'm unsure what to write in a poll 2

Because some ideas keep popping up and no consensus has been reached 💤

[flint tinsel]

I thought I didn’t have poll perms oops

I’ll do it later today

[jovial heart]

Discord sucks so everyone can poll lol

[dull aurora]

That's not quite what I was trying to get at here: my point was about attack gained vs region difficulty. My game design philosophy is that players should be rewarded for making progress, but difficulty should outscale rewards. Right now, the debuff decreasing every region acts as an attack gain increase. If we replace that with a flat or increasing debuff, there's still scaling difficulty but there's no longer a reward for progress.

That's why I like the idea of increasing the amount of damage native mons do. It's a tangible reward for making progress, it encourages focusing on native species, it avoids the "just breed by efficiency" issues of the current system.

[flint tinsel]

Ok so I’ll make a poll but here are the options I’ve got, lmk if I’ve forgotten anything before I make it a proper poll - I didn’t include specific numbers bc I feel like that can be determined once the debuff/buff method is actually finalised. Whether the debuff includes regional dex or not I also feel like is a separate convo bc the main issue is avoiding the 100% Debuff and whether regional dex affected by that is secondary to actually deciding on the Debuff numbers themselves

1. Static debuff for each region
2. Debuff increases by 5% rather than 10%
3. Mon debuff increases the further away from the native region
4. No debuff, native mons get buffed instead based on the region

If I’m missing any options, let me know and I’ll add them, otherwise new poll will be up in a few hrs

[jovial heart]

I'm unsure if badges should be included as it's the only option that goes from harsh to lenient

[flint tinsel]

it was a popular option

[jovial heart]

because it's the most similar one to today's

so of course people are gonna prefer to keep their damage

they are not dumb 😛

[flint tinsel]

so get rid of the badge buff?

[dull aurora]

badges shouldn't be part of the poll because it's a different question entirely

[jovial heart]

it's just gonna win again and then we are gonna go in circles again

I'm sorry but it's a bad option

[flint tinsel]

fixed

[jovial heart]

badges maybe should do something but making them remove the debuff is just "the same as today but with extra steps"

if we want pain then that one is not good enough

plot twist: the first poll was to remove an option 🤪

[dull aurora]

it's not harsh to lenient, it's a possible mechanic that's compatible with whatever option we choose

[jovial heart]

I don't agree yet I would rather tackle the debuff first and the badges in a different thread

[bitter oracle]

Badges boost the type of the gym /j

[dull aurora]

for example, if we wanted debuff to increment by 5%, badges could be "you start with the 20% debuff and increase it by getting badges, up to +5% * regions cleared after beating the champion."

[jovial heart]

and I would hate it

[dull aurora]

so it's not really something we need to decide right now

[jovial heart]

I would rather badges did something else but not sure what yet

but the people did speak and they want the badges to be more than cosmetic. And yeah, that would be nice

[flint tinsel]

so do I leave it in the poll or not?

[dull aurora]

remove

before you make the poll though, I'm trying to make a couple graphs

[dull aurora]

oy, patience! I've got four paragraphs written here!! :p

[jovial heart]

L M A O

oh well I can pin whatever later

[flint tinsel]

ok 😔

[dull aurora]

which actually matters because the option I've settled on is two of them at once, which. poll can't really reflect as is.

almost done I promise

[dull aurora]

Okay, proposal for combined nonnative debuff and native buff.

The problem with the current debuff system isn't difficulty, it's that it makes optimal play samey. After the first couple regions, almost every new pokemon will be worse than the same handful of optimal mons, and they'll only keep improving in future regions. A smaller increase is a bad idea for the same reasons — any scaling will either let the same Best Pokemon overshadow the rest, or be too small to be meaningful.

The other possibilities are a flat debuff or one that gets worse over time. IMO a flat debuff is much better. "Number go up" is the core appeal of Pokeclicker; making number go down undermines that. Players should be rewarded for progress, not punished. The only reason to make a worsening debuff is to balance against players who've already done everything and just grind for months on end, and that's a losing proposition (and liable to piss the most hardcore players off).

So, proposal the first half: flat 25% debuff. That's around what people agreed was reasonable, it's halfway between the current Johto and Hoenn percentages, it's an easy-to-understand 1/4.

Now, difficulty vs attack scaling. Right now difficulty scales exponentially; I ran the numbers on champion fights and their HP pool slightly more than doubles every region. Attack scales linearly, with nonnative species dealing 10% more damage every region.

If we just switch to a flat debuff, difficulty will scale exponentially but attack won't scale at all. IMO this is bad game design. To make difficulty feel worth the effort, there should be some tangible reward for the player's efforts, even though it's outweighed by the next difficulty increase. We also want players to buy in to the new system, which they aren't going to do if it's only "we made your current pokemon worse". There needs to be a positive alongside it.

So, proposal the second half: native species get +10% damage per region cleared. Same scaling as the current mechanic, but instead of benefiting the pokemon players are already using, it benefits the pokemon we want them to start using.

Not fully sure how this will affect difficulty, but I don't think it would be all that much easier with current HP scaling. It might even be harder as it's the same +10% buff applied to much less of the party. This method would make grinding attack faster in new regions, but I'm not really concerned since players will have to use species with lower breeding efficiency. Plus by the time players can breed at 2x the speed of Kanto... they'll be facing a region 1024 times harder.

TLDR: Flip which of natives and nonnatives get scaling with region. +10% to natives for every region, debuff nonnatives to a flat 25%.

And here's the idea in graph form: attack percent by region, with red line for native percent and blue for nonnative percent. First graph is the current debuff mechanic, second is native buff scaling using my numbers.

And for reference, the current champion difficulty scaling, not that you can see much detail for the first couple regions.

[dull aurora]

(thanks for waiting for me!)

I guess this is a fifth option for the poll, static nonnative debuff + increasing native buff

[dull aurora]

Oh right I can make a poll too.

[stone badge]

Might just be me, but graphs are useless without legends. These are just colored lines with arbitrary numbers to me

[jovial heart]

Forgot to pin the poll yesterday. Oops

[dull aurora]

Unfortunately desmos’s built in legend was. completely unreadable.

But good point, added a better description

[flint tinsel]

so is this the plan?

[nimble marsh]

Seems reasonable on paper. But the proof's in the pudding, as they say.
Actually mocking up a simulation or fork where we test how this affects progress would be the next step I imagine.

[jovial heart]

ok so what are the tentative numbers?

that should be the next discussion lol

and with that a branch can be made to test some options

[wise mica]

These were the numbers thrown out initially. I'm a bit concerned because the Kanto -> Johto transition was the least fun for me. A 25% flat debuff seems like it'll make the game less fun unless the HP scaling is adjusted so that the graph is a saw shape -- For example increasing linearly while in Kanto and then a significant drop when you comparing the last Kanto route to the first Johto route. Then it goes back to increasing until the first Hoenn route, which is a significant drop compared to the last Johto route, etc.

Encouraging using a region's pokemon is fine but players need time to actually catch enough new pokemon to make a difference

I tried looking at the route normalization formula before but I'm not convinced I understand it well enough to offer a specific suggestion beyond what I said above.

[flint tinsel]

idk whether 10% buff is sufficient for people to not complain about it being basically nothing...what about 20?

[gusty panther]

25% flat permanent debuff (-75%) seems good to me
keeps certain mons relevant by virtue of just being ridiculously overpowered (see: things like Gyarados, Heatran, Manaphy and stone mons still being 3+ BE after -75%) while still not being "better" than good new mons

[dull aurora]

That was more or less my thinking too. If our goal is to encourage players to use native mons via a debuff, it has to be heavy enough to stop the best nonnative mons from outshadowing the majority of native mons.

[dull aurora]

Being able to immediately return to previous regions will help a bit. HP levels will definitely need rebalancing though, especially at the start of each region. I had a similar experience starting Johto and it would be very silly to make every other region's start like that.

I'm less sure what number is appropriate for the natives buff; I suggested 10% because I was concerned going would get complaints about making things too easy :p

[opaque lotus]

I’m going to make a graph for what I’m thinking to make, basically decrease debuff, flooring at 25%

[wise mica]

I thought 10% was per region unlocked, or were you thinking just flat 10%? 120% in Johto leading to 180% in Galar seems fine to me and gives more reasons to not take too long which seems good to me

[dull aurora]

Per region unlocked, yeah

[wise mica]

Being able to return helps but also... the first couple routes/dungeons in each region should be easy. Otherwise it feels like I'm being punished for not using native mon that I can't even access that easily

[wide acorn]

i mean you basically get 3 starters + their evos right off the bat, that should be a good start, no?

[wise mica]

It's a start, but I wouldn't call it a good one since you lost (effectively) 113. And especially because the first couple routes in Johto are half "Kanto" pokemon unless we want to bring back national dex

[nimble marsh]

There's the option of making the regional debuff scale based on how many pokemon you've caught. Unsure how that would balance around challenge runs, but it'd make the losses less harsh for the transition from Kanto > Johto while helping it stay relevant in later regions.

[gusty panther]

considering literal mono runs (one mon for the entire game) are easy to do now, it'd be a really funny challenge either way

[bitter oracle]

"Easy"

[gusty panther]

yes. easy to pull off and get to the part of the game that doesn't force arbitrary roadblocks at you not called "always be cbreeding"

[nimble marsh]

If that's undesirable, it's easy to set "Debuff amount = total number of pokemon in regions before this one". But it might be crippling to said challenge runs.

[jovial heart]

I'm using my null coding abilities to make Pokémon lose attack the further away they are from native region as a test lol

[flint tinsel]

The flat debuff and scaling native buff won out the poll so why look at that debuff option? /gen

[jovial heart]

Because I didn't understand it

And because the word buff, as much as I like it, means that it's no longer a "challenge"

[flint tinsel]

My thoughts exactly but the people have spoken

[jovial heart]

So?

I get it, you know? But I didn't understand. So I'm doing what I did understand

Considering code is mutable, do one and you probably have the building blocks for something else

[flint tinsel]

Just curious was all

[jovial heart]

No but seriously, I didn't understand

Flat debuff 25% is easy to return. If nativeRegion != playerRegion then 0.25. But the buff?

Is it like... Johto is 10% to Johto mons. Then Hoenn is 20% to Hoenn mons?

[flint tinsel]

Sounds like that is the proposal

[native mortar]

If Johto is your latest region, then native 'mons have +10% damage. If Hoenn is your latest region, then native 'mons have +20% damage

[jovial heart]

Hm... So Paldea is +100%

[native mortar]

Hoenn latest would mean going back to Johto, your Johto 'mons would be at +20%

The actual scaling wasn't confirmed, just the concept, with 10% used for the example

[jovial heart]

Ok so it's not a challenge

Eventually. Sorta. Hard to say.

Or rather it can't be called Regional Debuff anymore

Because it does both

Regional Attack Scaling

[native mortar]

Could the buff part be integrated into normal gameplay, with the debuff part being the challenge?

[jovial heart]

Yes it can. Code is cool

Gotta change some ifs here and there.

[native mortar]

Less of a "is this possible" and more of a "would this idea be considered"

[jovial heart]

Ah. Not a Dev. Can't say.

[umbral heart]

Don't HP amounts have to be reconsidered either route? I figured it was less about one option being easier and more about the way the concept of "use and breed native mons" was being communicated, with the results having similar time spent breeding to pass DPS checks or the like.

[next hazel]

No offense but we can not set the direction of the game based on polls.
At best, it helps define how the general public perceives the thing : you provide us with your feelings on a feature, we provide you with a solution.

[jovial heart]

That idea is easier to implement than what I was trying to do anyway

[jovial heart]

Nobody reads the pin 🤪

I did mention the whole game will need a rebalance

But a rebalance can't happen if people keep going back and forth about this

And I'm getting bored

[umbral heart]

Yes, reading the pin is why I thought HP was being reworked anyway.

[jovial heart]

I know I suck at math. And coding. But if nobody wants to test anything at all then nothing will happen

[umbral heart]

True, but I'm not seeing where people are going back and forth or refusing to test things.

[jovial heart]

I personally like buffing natives but then we have the "is this actually a challenge?" question

[native mortar]

That's why I was thinking the buff could be implemented into the normal gameplay, if there's going to be a rebalance anyways

[jovial heart]

So. Let me do this. I'll test one of the ideas. Then make another branch with this one. Then compare values

[umbral heart]

Gotcha.

[jovial heart]

That's another cool thing with coding. You can have multiple branches

I made this thread to hear opinions. Because I was intent on changing it to static

But some of these ideas are more entertaining

While others are good but cannot be called "challenges". Very complex

[opaque lotus]

If we are going to implement the choice on challenges then we could add all of these options

[next hazel]

I liked it the best but there is two issues : this is not a challenge as it makes Pokémon stronger; and if the challenge is disabling this buff, then the challenge mode actually removes the incentive to breed native Pokémon to progress through a region, lol.

[gusty panther]

but it is a challenge. for the at least 50% of players who coast on their highest efficiency descending breed strategy

[dull aurora]

As said earlier ^, if there’s both a debuff and a buff, the debuff could be the challenge

Disabling the challenge could mean no debuff, or it could mean higher native scaling

[wide acorn]

Ah, this is tricky, what a debuff is or isn't. But i do like the progress we've been making. I feel like if we figure out what the intended difficulty is like, deriving a challenge from that will be clear