Competitive Pokemon IS Pay To Win (if you don't cheat...)

[@brodi4523]

One thing I think needs to be mentioned is that with the 3DS eshop being shut down new players wont even be able to go back to those older games to transfer up if they don’t already have a 3DS with bank

[@xangelxal4855]

Even worse with people with games from the gba or ds. Since unlike bank, pokemon transporter wasn't made free before it's closing

[@MaiaNetliss]

@@xangelxal4855 hacking your 3ds is incredibly easy and since they don't want to sell these things to us anymore its perfectly moral to pirate them. nintendo can kick rocks.

[@serpentmaster1323]

Lets also remember that not only was poketransfer not made free, but also unlike bank the less-mentioned poke transporter was never listed on the shop. Unless you knew it was a kind of dlc for poketransfer and knew to open it and download it, you could have gotten one and missed the other, like I almost did.

[@Glassbox613]

Theyre forced to mod their ds and it makes me so mad.

[@MaiaNetliss]

@Glassbox613 forced to? More like get to. I've had mine since Covid was in full swing, and I use it constantly. Playing a pokemon rom hack on the go is so nice, and being able to download whatever eShop stuff I want even with the service down is great.

[@azeria1]

I wish people would focus on the biggest issue the fact several top sixteen matchs had to go sudden death because gamefreak cant run events properly literally changed the result of the tournament in the end

[@BoucheronsNo.1Fan]

This is the true issue right here!!

[@DarkKerialstraz]

For someone not invested too much into VGC, what does "sudden death" mean? Timer ran out?

[@DigitalStarry]

@@DarkKerialstrazthey had network problems and disconnects and because it would take too much time to restart a match they had to do sudden death to get it over with quickly

[@baitzadasuto]

​@@DarkKerialstrazsudden death is first to ko an opposing pokemon wins

[@idontwantahandlethough]

whoa, that's incredibly lame! Imagine if you were playing soccer and all the sudden the ref just goes "ok it's shootout time!" after playing for 15 minutes. It's a different game with different strategies, as far as I'm concerned it kinda ruins the whole thing :/

[@Huggbees]

As a really jaded adult who grew up with this series, I followed along with your great explanations. But I'd imagine this all to be mind numbingly confusing to anyone not familiar with the games. And this is a series made for 10 year olds. Why does Game Freak continue to get away with making products that are openly hostile to the consumers?

[@WolfBergMenace]

Because competetive Pokemon is not the focus of the Pokemon series. It is a jrpg in which youre supposed to catch funny creatures. I highly doubt the regular 10 year old cares about EVs, IVs, Natures and wanting to win tournaments.

[@imablisy]

You know, it's funny you say that it's made for 10 year olds. I always do these videos in the context of "Masters", which is the VGC tournament for adults. But how the heck are junior and seniors, which are the two leagues for kids under 18 and like 12, getting these pokemon. They're fully dependent on parents for the mons.

[@Tylerr_Creative]

I feel it’s cause Competitive Pokémon is a massive oversight that TPC tries to clout chase while also doing the bare minimum. It’s honestly sad how little they care to make the experience anything better then a hassle. Also remember the rewards for winning VGC is worse than winning TCG

[@gondriano]

May I ask: except for the topic of 0 IVs in a stat. What exactly has not been vastly improved with every Gen? It is so ridiculously easy to create a perfect Mon in Gen 9 with all the tools we have.

[@kieraneavis-harmes4243]

@@gondriano Raids are a huge pain and are necessary for tera shards. Availability of pokemon is split between games meaning if you want a 100% legal team without trading you have to have multiple games.This is only more frustrating with the recent bans cus if you got traded a hacked mon you can't use it even though trading is a mechanic that they want us to use. Effort Values are either slow via wild battles or a huge amount of in game money. Breeding in gen 9 is inferior to gen 8 much slower and relies on sandwiches. Ability patches and other useful items are scarcely obtained. Resetting EVs requires berries that are hard to obtain. Getting apricorn balls requires you playing the league for a chance at getting the ball you want. all of this on top of 0 IV being one of the most important stats a pokemon can have and the limited time a person has to grind for all the items they would need is why despite all the improvements its still not enough. The experience just isn't streamlined enough and just isn't worth the hassle. If you play the game a lot and do lots of raids i'm sure you will have most of the items you will need but for those who play the game every other day or month those items are limited. There are many that only ever play the game during events, competitions or ranked so Hacking as a shortcut doesn't seem all too surprising.

[@theversatilehunter3651]

It would be so easy to just let you see IVs in the menu with a button press... Like in every romhack ever

[@Kalenz1234]

IVs are fairly easy to keep track of. EVs are the bigger problem.

[@murkydover]

You can see IVs in USUM easily

[@Hyuduro]

Couldn't you do that in Sun and Moon?

[@murkydover]

@@Hyuduro Yes you can. I've played USUM and was able to see them from the PC box. You could also see EVs from the summary screen

[@icantthinkofaname4723]

It'd be even easier to just remove IVs as a whole. IMO that's the real solution here.

[@WhyThatS3rious]

super stupid that they still have not introduced a "rusty bottle cap" type item that reduces the iv of a single stat to 0.

[@KrystaSaff]

I feel like the bottle cap item should just let you specify what value from 0-31 the individual IV is.

[@Shero1337]

Whats the benifit of an iv being 0?

[@WhyThatS3rious]

@@Shero1337 for competitive batteling you sometimes want a stat to be as low as possible. For example in a trick room Team (slowest Pokemon moves first) you ideally want a 0 iv speed stat to be as slow as possible (as fast as possible under trick room). There are other examples, like taking less damage from foul play as a special attacker.

[@los-lobos]

I used to think bottle caps made increased EVs 💀

[@degenerateinthecloset]

also an ev graph, and iv graph that shows exactly how much ivs and evs you have, how many distributed in each stat, and how many are remaining

[@LifeOrbes]

Also important to remember this is all for one team of six pokemon. And for a specific set for each mon. Back in rhe B&W days I remember genning like 6 different Jirachis, Landorus-T's, Tyranitars for different niches/teams like imagine you go through this whole process just to find out your team sucks/doesn't work in the meta.

[@pommyadam]

oh the meta's changed and you need a different non-31 IV Cresselia now? welp, time to replay the entirety of Black/White 2 best case that's another 4 hours onto your grind

[@Mustache99]

The Only way to obtain jirachi Is with another game or Pokémon TV, so It's a huge effort

[@sexycowman]

I got my legit Jirachi from Channel yesterday

[@Toribori88]

You also can get Jirachi when you have a save file from Sword/Shield and a version of BD/SP to obtain it there.

[@snailymitch]

To be fair every competitive player just uses showdown to actually test their strategies, the only reason people grind together their own team is just so they dont have to deal with TPCs hack check which means most are created a couple of days before a tournament. Though, you still need to constantly create new teams throughout the year to keep up with the meta, and it says something about how awful TPCs treats their players that they're required to use an unofficial battle simulator just to test a team.

[@BobfatherGaming]

Trade validation needs to have exactly as much scrutiny as tournament validation. If you could trade a rando for an Urshifu and be confident it wasn't hacked, that would greatly alleviate a lot of these concerns. If surprise trade can regularly give you a hacked pokemon, it's silly for them to suddenly pretend they care about genning during the world cup.

[@Marcos.ribeiro94]

But if they had the same validation I'd be able to get a urshifu without buying sw/sh and the DLC and they would lose 90 dollars. They can do it, but they won't.

[@SirenXD.]

I had people on Reddit dogging on me for having this take. The vast majority of people who gen Pokemon, push them through the trade system. Generating Pokemon is not accessible on the Nintendo Switch. They should just start bopping distributors and the problem would be nowhere near as prevalent. They also shouldn't allow hacked Pokemon to unintentionally end up on someone's game (i.e. through surprise trading). Players can't check if something is legit, they are just expected to know. It's stupid. There are more cheat bots for raids and trades streaming on Twitch at any given time than there are people actually playing the video game.

[@rafaelzamudio354]

​@@SirenXD.They don't expect people to play competitive, that's the thing. Pokemon wasn't made with competitive players in mind, and will never be. That's the reason IVs and EVs exist, to differentiate every pokemon. TPC never wanted their games to be an e-sport, but people made them one. It's a constant struggle between what the fanbase (or just a small fraction, let's be real) thinks the game should be and what the company thinks it should be.

[@SirenXD.]

@@rafaelzamudio354 They lose money on the events, they added a ranked ladder, they continue to add items/resources in-game to make closing the gap easier. They literally run all of the events. They obviously want people to play. Also, casual players shouldn't be getting hacked Pokemon either. Why would that be good for the game?

[@rafaelzamudio354]

@@SirenXD. No, they were forced but TPC would gladly shut down all of that of they could. It's the same reason with Smash, those games aren't made with competitive players in mind, they want little Timmy to get a random Urshifu through wonder trade and use it against his friends or some random online, not on a high competitive level. For them, the Pokémon games are about having fun, not about killing yourself for a 0 IV Cresselia because she might get hit with Foul Play

[@TubularToob]

I love competitive pokemon and completing my dex, but this is a perfect example why I’ll always just save the competitive part for Showdown.

[@lipika2841]

Let's assume we start requesting a battle sim from now. It could take yrs for that to reach TPC's ears cuz we're a mere tiny percentage of ppl on the internet among the thousands of the competition base. & even when we do finally gain their attention & they become aware of the issues, it's no guarantee that they'd still opt to agree to our demand & all that commotion would be for nthg.

[@chizzicle]

So about TMs specfically. I don't do comp, but I did love the TMs being reusable. Even for casual playthrough it was one more fun thing to collect, and having the complete TM set in your bag felt so satisfying, and then they changed it because gamefreak hates fun.

[@axis8396]

But it'd be fine if there actually only was one TM and it never breaks. Crafting is literally objectively worse than a system that already existed. And it's not a "trade-off" to get move reminder in the menu but remove reusable TM's, you could easily do both and it'd be a strict upgrade from any prior system the games have had but crafting exists (my personal speculation but let's be real) because a higher up said "people like crafting in games" and TMs were the only option for a system like that

[@magica3526]

@@axis8396 It is absolutely not "objectively worse". You can't say something is objectively true or a strict upgrade then say it's your personal opinion

[@HandheldGamer1991]

Its worse no matter how you look at it! Wtf are you even trying to accomplish by saying it isn't?! Freaking pokemon fans nowadays i swear they think everything is an attack on their beloved franchise.

[@magica3526]

@@HandheldGamer1991 no, i just care about game design. Consumable TMs lets them add crafting. Therefore, to people who like crafting, it's better. "no matter how you look at it" it's clear you only know how to look at it your way. How arrogant

[@fluidwolf]

@@magica3526 "It adds crafting so people who like crafting will like it" is such a weird take. People who like crafting systems don't just like any crafting because it is crafting. It has to actually add something to the game. Taking something you could already do and hiding it behind a grind isn't actually interesting.

[@ARoseUnheard]

The worst part is, all of that struggle to find a 0ATK IV Cresselia is simply to avoid higher confusion damage, and higher foul play damage. That's theoretically it. Two fairly niche things.

[@GoldenSunAlex]

Yeah, neither of which see a ton of VGC play. If people weren't so needlessly obsessed with 0 atk mons, you could get a vgc team within a couple of days.

[@theweirdlyfriendlymushroom7920]

​@@GoldenSunAlexit's not needless if you play at a High level. Those things can make the difference between winning or losing and you can't accept a disadvantage due to lack of preparation.

[@GoldenSunAlex]

@@theweirdlyfriendlymushroom7920 Yes, but my point is those aren't used at a high level. Unless you're doing a TR team, it's kindof meaningless. ospeed IVs aren't an issue to get unless you obsessively need 0atk ivs as well for something you'll never see.

[@theweirdlyfriendlymushroom7920]

@@GoldenSunAlex depends on the metagame. Earlier in the year murkrow was everywhere and he consistently runs full play, so in that meta It was needed to have 0atk IV. At worlds not many Pokemon used that move, but It was a possibility. It's not that in unseen so It cannot be ignored.

[@serpentmaster1323]

@@GoldenSunAlexI agree with this to an extent and I think it’s important to point out. But I don’t think this concern should be wholly dismissed. It’s simply optimal for cress to have zero attack, but I bet if we surveyed all of the cress at worlds, and crossed out all of the ones that were genned, most of them wouldn’t have zero attack for the reason you stated. The truth is it’s not as bad as the video paints to get competitive mons in some senses because of several reasons, the main ones being that you don’t have to manip (/excessively breed non ledgends)to get perfect stats because of hyper training, and most of the time you want a stat to be zero it’s for optimization in niche scenarios. But for speed, it’s because you actually need it for your team to function better in every battle, not just the niche ones. And even those niche scenarios can be the difference between winning worlds and loosing round 1 (because round one is often the most niche and most volatile, and sometimes loosing round1 does loose you the tourney(or at least a slot in top 8) by your resistance score.) But in other senses, it’s worse than the video paints, as choosing not to manip/breed and use hyper training may save you time and the need to use other games at the cost of not having totally optimized mons, but also costs you expensive resources. And you must use those resources for other teams at least twice and win regionals both times to make it to worlds in the first place, so your resources Will go down if you’re not consistently playing raids.

[@kartiksaraf4676]

I am at the point where you are evolving into Ursaluna. I think you should also mention that getting poke transporter now is impossible since the eshop closed. That is another barrier of entry for a new player

[@tamertamertamer4874]

Oh yeah lmao you literally have to buy a 3DS that already has poke transporter and poke bank

[@flbreglass]

Pokemon: Gotta buy em all! (Or youre screwed)

[@quonoa]

You can still get Transporter/Bank on any 3DS if you hack your 3DS and install the apps with the tools available on a hacked 3DS. It definitely shouldn't be necessary to do so, but at least it's possible (and relatively easy).

[@munchrai6396]

Oh yeah, this is a big problem here. I can't believe how Pokemon connectivity keeps on getting worse. I wish all these transfer services were both built into the games and fully functioning for every Pokemon and move, otherwise it loses a lot of the convenience and magic that is so important for the Pokemon series. The connectivity has always been my favorite part of the series, especially in gen 8 where the quality of life features allowed you to mix and match old movesets with newer Hidden abilities or Egg Moves. Heal Bell, Multiscale Dragonite is a really sick example of this

[@kartiksaraf4676]

@@quonoa hacking/genning led to the bans. Not sure if the answer to that is more hacking

[@ctm3922]

The RNG manipulation in this is fascinating, I have never known how it worked before

[@10tailedbijuu]

i couldn't stand his old vids for gen 5 and 4 rng manipulation, so this is better.

[@PapaJefeYT]

Imagine if you'd gone for 0 Attack Heatran\Cress without RNG manip...

[@imablisy]

I thought about using BDSP and doing that for real

[@JohnHunterPlayerr]

Imagine.

[@UncalibratedAimbot]

@@imablisythat would have been masochistic. For your own sanity I’m glad you didn’t

[@DraculHemming]

Probably would've been easier if he just didn't go for Shiny.

[@ramaroy2408]

​@@DraculHemminguhm no, doing that in BDSP will still take hours. Shiny and perfect IV with RNG manip in gen 5 will take the same amount of times without the shiny give or take few minutes.

[@Luke08700]

Don’t forget that to get both iron hands and flutter mane you need both scarlet and violet

[@inv_hana]

Union circle possible, but i doubt your friends want to not touch their switch for 6h

[@W.T.F599]

If you use union circle, you can encounter and catch pokemon from the opposite version.

[@MikeMike077]

​@@W.T.F599unless they patched it isn't union circle really awful in area zero because you can't see the other person?

[@Mernom]

The parallel game exclusivity thing is the Scam Game Freak run ever since day 1.

[@W.T.F599]

@michaelbond220 now that you mentioned it, as far as I know they haven't patched that yet.

[@shangerdanger]

it should really be like playing on a sim... if you wanna play in the tournament you just get to write your own team. like you said they could even sell a game that is made for competitive play and that's it. they would capitalize on all the people playing competitive on sim.

[@Zindril]

Oooh no :(((( but that would cost 60 euros and that's P2W according to the person who made this video :(((( Lmao

[@andrewcullen2527]

@@Zindril No, that's literally the opposite, if there was ONE game that handled ALL competitive, that didn't require separate versions, DLC, or paying for an external transfer system it would be perfect for competitive. Also Man that message makes me want a new Battle Revolution or Stadium game where the main focus is battle towers and unique battle machanics

[@yesno1085]

@Zindril He didn’t count the cost of violet and scarlet with the reason of duh

[@failurefiend]

Stadium had rental pokemon, they know they could develop a system like that for actual pokemon tournaments

[@theevo_7218]

@@Zindril The point of the video flew so far over your head it went into orbit holy fuck

[@sweeterific]

Ok, but for real, having a separate game for the competitive circuit and letting them pump out stories in other games would be amazing.

[@lamb6549]

It's important to mention that many people don't know about these RNG manipulations and someone could argue that this isn't the way TPCI wants you to get you Pokémon as much as genning

[@SlimeBlueMS]

Playing pokemon online is not fun because raising a good team is impossible for normal players

[@Badgerpaw]

@@SlimeBlueMS So what you're saying is, genning/hacking is the solution to a problem genning/hacking caused.

[@TheFrozenMoogle]

​@@BadgerpawNo. They are saying genning is a solution to the problem of requiring insane amounts of grinds.

[@SamGBSR]

You should build the team on showdown at the end of these vids to really drive the point home imo

[@vanesslifeygo]

that would be a brilliant ending lol

[@baddaybaking]

@@vanesslifeygo no he went through enough pain. his point was proven.

[@awesometoadultimate8562]

I tried it and it took less than six minutes lmao.

[@baddaybaking]

@@awesometoadultimate8562 genning? lol

[@awesometoadultimate8562]

@@baddaybakingI didn't gen I just recreated the team on Showdown.

[@GeorgeCowsert]

All of this could easily be mitigated if Gamefreak made an official "Pokemon Labs" or something, where the whole point is you are creating the most ideal team theoretically possible. That way, the mainline games can focus more on the experience of catching and training Pokemon, and can even feature a low-stakes competitive mode purely meant for people to flex how much time they're willing to spend. Or, better yet, just give us a way to customize our pokemon if we complete a game's Pokedex.

[@djdragondrawer9339]

That idea does not give them the optimal amount of money therefore they won't do it. TPC's only thought is making money, remember. You have to buy SW/SH and the dlc to get urshifu. Thats...what 90 bucks? You'd have to transfer him as well. Pokemon home costs money. A month subscription is about 3 bucks. More dollars in their pocket. A pokemon lab would not be free. It'd probably cost the amount of a main game like 60 or 70 dollars. Or it would be a subscription service...maybe 30 bucks a year? That's a loss in coins for them. Therefore it's an irrelevant choice.

[@WardofSquid]

The problem is if they do this, *They will absolutely get rid of pokemon showdown & other "copyright infringers* . It's a miracle they didn't dmca them already

[@Highstar25]

I mean, have we even considered how ABSURD it is that you're even allowed to bring your own potentially dubious switch and save file to worlds? League finalists aren't even allowed to bring non-regulation keyboards and so on. Competitors should be re-creating their teams (or maybe duplicating them with a QR code) in an officially made closed tournament environment. Like EVERY OTHER GAME WITH A COMPETITIVE SCENE.

[@mr.boymandood]

@@Highstar25 Honestly yeah. I wanna make a team on showdown and just show up and be like yo, scan my team in.

[@dsproductions19]

Or, just let you pick any team comp you want for multiplayer modes, like a built-in Pokemon Showdown. It's not that complex.

[@sergioalonso9273]

Also as an honorable mention, if u need any of these mons from a game u skipped, u still have to count the hours of playthrough to beat the game before u can actually dedicate urself to soft-reset for shiny legendaries

[@supercereal1]

That tm thing was the killer for me. Making you farm stuff like that is so stupid. What they really should have done is made them craftable once and then infinite use. They could have even purposely slowed it down by forcing you to find static encounters that drop 1 time items used to craft the tms. That way you’re encouraged to explore even more and travel the whole area looking for these static encounters.

[@Royal_MilkTea]

But you can get each tm in fix locations in the over world tho, am I missing something here

[@Character_Name75312]

@@Royal_MilkTeaif you already used them before, like for previous teams that are now useless because if the ever changing meta game, you have to craft them.

[@leSmokySmoke]

thats easily one of the coolest features added in this. it feels great to go out there and hunt specific pokemons for a TM instead of just number chrunching. and it really isn't time consuming at all. you get there, you kill like 50 of those guys and are set to craft hundreds of these TM's. you do this ONCE and you are set. And you typically do this while still just playing and enjoying the game, before tournaments even come up in your mind. I maybe had to farm Items again like 2 or 3 times ever, which then again only takes like 15 minutes.

[@ruily276]

@@Royal_MilkTea Yeah, you are missing that Gamefreak took out something that was already loved as in permanent tms and replaced it with an arbitrary crafting system. Doesn't matter if there are fix locations or not. The whole tm system was already fixed.

[@randomprotag9329]

it would be simple to do as well with just making infinite tera shards + tms a thing thats unlocked after completing the main story(s)

[@DomovoiCookie]

One point that I don't see a lot in the debate around this year's world championships is that the Regulation D format that it was played in, the format that introduced all of the transfer-only meta staples like Urshifu, Tornadus, Cresselia, Heatran, Ursaluna etc., has only been around for perhaps a month - until about three or four weeks before Worlds, the assumption was that the format would be Regulation C, as was the case for every other tournament for the last few months. TPCI dropped this new format as a surprise after every other tournament in the 2023 circuit had finished, and every worlds competitor was given a MONTH to not only learn and adapt to a brand new metagame, but to track down all of these new and highly relevant Pokémon that were unavailable in the base game, transfer them across, and build their teams as blisy did in this video, and then test them out and make changes as needed ... or else cut out the middleman and gen those teams in. I can almost guarantee that over half of the teams at this year's Worlds were hacked, at least in part, because with that kind of time constraint the whole process just wasn't really feasible. The hack checks and DQs and Worlds really only catch Pokémon that weren't genned meticulously to be identical to their legit equivalents, but even so, TPCI really set players up to fail with this one

[@MrDev1718]

If you guys actually played the games.. getting these pokemon does not take that long. This proves most players do not invest time into the game therefore they complain about accessibility. I got all the legends arceus pokemon trained and with proper movesets in less than a day. Why? I actually played my game regularly and accumulated resources. You know.. the way the game was intended to be played

[@Firewatch___]

@@MrDev1718 We do play the game, stop being a troll.

[@sillybeanthing]

​​@@MrDev1718it takes far too long to get the meta mons using very clunky mechanics. That and you need like 4 games to get these in a non-cheating way exactly how it fits in the meta.

[@MrDev1718]

@@sillybeanthing it really does take long. Cut it out. Like i said earlier, if you played the game (even casually) the resources would accumulate and you can make whatever mon you want

[@metamaxis]

But at the same time, if people had been playing the games, they'd already have urshifu, enamorus, etc, or at least extremely quick access to them I actively enjoy VGC, but I also actually play the main games. It's worth prepping and getting pokemon that may eventually be relevant, especially when things Like Urshifu were already relevant back in sword and shield. That really isn't an excuse, especially when these games don't take that long to beat, easily doable in 2 or 3 days, and get access to those pokemon. With the only possible exception of Enamorus, because legends is a massive grind, but even then, there's ways of easily bypassing that by just trading with other people to register the pokemon.

[@SmugLookingBarrel]

When I watched your last video about making a competitive team in Scarlet and Violet, I was like "huh, that seems like a lot, but there's probably not much else to talk about until the DLC, gonna miss this video series", and then Game Freak hit me with the "Are you sure about that" Also, thank god you didn't need Enamourus on your team, getting a 0 Attack 0 Speed Trick Room Enamourus-Therian will probably go down as the most tedious grind for a Pokémon in history, with a full playthrough of PLA required for each reset.

[@0Scar9728]

Dude, for real, I'm so glad that Flutter Mane outclasses Enamorus for this reason 😂

[@unbound195]

It's like the Manaphy shiny hunt in gen 4 where you needed 1 pokemon Ranger copy per reset

[@davigamermello5592]

When you think about this its even worse if you are from an country where its harder to get money or inflation is high, thus basically blocking the more poor from entering competitive without cheating

[@jtdavis2393]

I think for competitive, all players should be given genned pokemon created by the tournament officials based on a list given by the competitor. All competitors already have to submit a list which completely details the team they are using, so why not also eliminate the "cheating" aspect and have a neutral playing field.

[@randomprotag9329]

plus as well that's a good way to minimise any cheating impacting actual games since all Pokémon that get into a battle have been green lit by an official. any illegal sets are caught before the first game even starts

[@commonpepe2270]

hah, yeah imagine TPC removing a paywall that makes them free money

[@EeveeFlipnoteStudios]

That’s not a bad solution. I think it will still make genning necessary because people need to practice teams and tweak IVs (assuming you aren’t using external sites like Showdown), but at least for tournaments that eliminates the possibility of breaking the no-genned Pokemon rule entirely.

[@Marcos.ribeiro94]

​@@commonpepe2270but this would lower the barrier to enter, which would make more players eager to enter competitive pokemon, which would elevate tournaments players and make them more money overall. And it would make it easier for players to find cooler strategies, which would make for cooler games and it would make it easier to be shared with people that don't care about VGC. I agree that in the short-term they would probably lose some money, but I believe that in the long-term it would elevate pokemon to a real e-sport event like LOL.

[@TheChoujinVirus]

@@Marcos.ribeiro94 the truth is...Pokemon was never made to be an Esport to begin with. Only a vocal minority wanted it to be like LoL

[@johntaylor1189]

I think it may be worth it to make a video showing how much easier it would be to make this team on showdown. If someone doesn’t know it might be mind-blowing to realize the other option takes about 5-10 minutes.

[@CaptainSherbertTheQuestionable]

99.9% of vgc players test on showdown. None of them would be suprised.

[@johntaylor1189]

@@CaptainSherbertTheQuestionable I am not talking about them. I am talking about a fan that doesn't actually play or make competitive teams at all.

[@raulbrenes778]

@@johntaylor1189thing is, you cant play on showdown for real tournaments. Showdown is for playtesting or for very casual people

[@qwerty11111122]

Since Freezai made the team, putting it into showdown would take 3 seconds: 1 second pressing ctrl-C, 1 second switching tabs, 1 second pressing ctrl-v and clicking "import"

[@ildathet]

it would be a short x)

[@WombatFights]

I was excited to enter my first VGC tournament this year because it was super accessible to make a team! And by "super accessible" I mean it took like 8 hours for me to get everything because I was not picky about 0IV in attack for special attackers and I didn't run trick room. With this new regulation, competing seems to be a nightmare. Also in terms of cost, you also did not consider the necessary cost of Pokémon Home in order to even have the ability to transfer your old Pokémon from older games into Scarlet or Violet.

[@Jake38nine]

It costs more to travel to these events in the first place. If you can't afford the games and pokemon home in the first place, then you have bigger problems in life in general. Saving $600 within the span of 3-5 years is not that hard. You just have to be responsible with your expenses. Use some logic and math and you'll figure out that the costs is very minimal compared to the travel and everything else that is involved with VGC.

[@WombatFights]

@@Jake38nine if I buy literally any other competitive video game, I don't have to buy several other video games to be at a fair level of competition as my opponent. You also need to consider that this is a children's game. A kid will have a very hard time convincing their parents that they need to buy two more $60 games and $30 DLC for one of them in order to have a fair shake in tournament. I don't know why you're defending the multi billion dollar corporation here

[@Jake38nine]

@@WombatFights We're not talking about kids. We're talking about vgc adults. Plus, it's even harder to convince mom and dad to TAKE YOU TO THE EVENTS IN THE FIRST PLACE because travel costs a hell of a lot more than a video game. Every parent will tell you that travel costs more. But we're talking about adults who make their own money, and if they can't afford $200 per year for a couple games, then they can't afford the traveling expenses it takes to go to MULTIPLE events. Because you need to compete in multiple vgc events to even qualify for worlds. I'll bet you vgc players spend more than $1,000 on travel expenses, such as travel, food, and hotels, and miscellaneous stuff they buy from going to the events than the cost of the games. None of you are even complaining about how vgc is inaccessible to majority of people who play pokemon because they can't afford to travel to multiple events every year. None of you are even mentioning how vgc events should be done online for every player to have a chance to compete. And that shows exactly why vgc players are spoiled, entitled little brats who only complain when things don't go their way. They don't care how much it costs for someone who is NOT local to get to the events. They don't care how much it costs for someone who can't afford all the technology involved in getting hacked mons. So all of these arguments are invalid because it doesn't take into account all of these other things. It only ever takes into account the entitlement of the players who can already afford everything involved with competing. I don't see Wolfe doing $10,000 giveaways to his audience to give them a chance to compete I'm vgc tournaments. I don't see any vgc players pitching in to help other players compete by paying for their travel expenses. So until the majority of the vgc event actually cares about all of these things, then the arguments are null and void.

[@WombatFights]

@@Jake38nine Allow me to give you a different perspective. I run Super Smash Bros tournaments. You don't actually need a copy of the game to compete. Sure, owning the game will help you practice, and maybe the character I want to play might be $6 DLC, but I don't need to spend hundreds of dollars and dozens of hours of my time to in order for my character to be usable in a competition. As blisy explained in the video: the "skill" of building your team; and the skills of actually learning matchups, making good choices, predictions, etc. are two entirely unrelated skill sets. I can see from your novel that you're not going to change your mind about this, but as someone who has over a decade of experience in competitive video games, Pokémon is one of, if not the most heavily gatekept competitive game around. This amount of time and money required to compete is not normal.

[@Jake38nine]

@@WombatFights You ignored my argument about the costs and how not every player who wants to get involved can. You need to learn how to actually argue and debate because when you ignore half a person's argument, you lose the argument. Also, people in sports spend much money on coaching and equipment than any vgc player. Heck, professional chess players spend more on coaching. And I'll bet there are vgc coaches put there making you spend money on them, so that adds to the cost of competing. You aren't arguing against any other costs of competing besides the games themselves, and that's where your argument fails. If you can't take into account all the other costs of competing and try to advocate for everything to be cheaper, then you're making a bad faith argument.

[@kaleidoscope6043]

I don't really get the argument made here a lot that "sports also cost a lot". Yeah, by necessity. You need the equipment. Most of this cost barrier is artificial, designed by gamefreak. They could remove it with minimal effort: They just don't want to.

[@unbound195]

It's like sports but... without salary, team sponsors, personal sponsors and being in the police to get to "make a living with the sport". That's such a bad comparison.

[@ricardofernandes9207]

With Scarlet and Violet they have added good features for players to build good Pokémon, I think that they add at least a way to farm (effectively and not just spam 400 raids for X amount of shards ) the Tera Raid Shards, make a way to reduce IV's (precisely), a faster way to train EV's, it would "end" the need for hacking, genning, RNG manip, etc... (Some people would still do it but it's better than nothing.) Plus something that a lot of people tend to forget is that there are many ramifications to VCG, including Juniors, and from the comments I have read online from certain KZbinrs they expect a 11y old kid at the age of 6 own a Switch, Sword and DLC, and spend his time farming a Urshifu so 1 day MAYBE it would be good for Tournaments...

[@Hostiley]

Hearing you built Freezai’s team for worlds to display both of your talents and prove a point is some legendary shit.

[@michag4337]

The only point he proved was how much people in this community bitch about pointless shit. How many worlds teams won't have a single mon outside of sv? Saying you need to spend 200$ so you can get 2 mons who have no good evs in speed is the most cucked crybaby shit ever, and I hardliners COD in the mod days. I'm willing to bet you if you polled everyone at worlds 90%+ would say they buy every pokemon game at launch just in case they want something from them, and to stream them. This is like cry about tcg being pay to win because you need to buy boosters. Kids gonna cry I suppose.

[@Remsster]

​@@michag4337Stop crying

[@michag4337]

@@Remsster bruh the irony. this is a 50 minute video on why you should be aloud to hack because actually playing a game built for 10 year olds is to hard. Heres an idea: do a video on how much time you have to take off from work to qual for worlds. how much time you'd have to take off for worlds. How much the plane ticket and hotel cost...bet it's over the cost of 2 games and live service... This is just a cry baby "I got banned for breaking the rules, but the rules are stupid, SEE!" video. I seriously don't understand how people can get on with this guy crying about such stupid things.

[@andrewscott5059]

@@michag4337 Let me see if I understand your point here: You're claiming that the total cost of competing is way higher than is implied here, and so it's totally fine that the Pokémon collection process is this costly, and everyone who's at worlds just buys all the games anyways so who cares that it's not an accessible format. Why do you want it to be prohibitively expensive to play this game at a high level? Even if it is the case that many players won't need all the particulars here, if this gives you an advantage (i.e. having the old games on hand to get 0 attack/0 speed IV Pokémon for specific team comps) then I see it as a problem. What about players that only started in the last 4 or 5 years? Even if they do buy every game as it comes out, they certainly don't have those older games on hand. Pokémon showdown has lowered the bar to becoming good at competitive Pokémon, and has created tens of thousands of competitive Pokémon fans (as well as some amazing players) in the process. Can you imagine if the actual competitive scene was as accessible as Showdown was? Maybe the best people would still be the same, and it wouldn't change much at the top, but I can guarantee you it'd grow the player population by an order of magnitude. Maybe try gatekeeping a children's game a bit less, and start thinking about the bigger picture.

[@michag4337]

@andrewscott5059 could you imagine if the nba just made the rim 8 inches wider, and lowered it 2 feet, hiw much more accessible the game would be? My complaint with this is no one going to worlds is hurting for money to buy old games. That's my issue. Everything else is moot because if you can't afford old games to roll Uber meta mon, you can't afford to go to worlds. So if you have a solution to the cost prohibition of taking roughly 2 weeks off of work, flying halfway around the world, and staying in a hotel or air bnb, then we can address the much smaller issue of allowing mons from other games in the competitive scene. This is literally like someone complaining about the cost prohibition of e85 regs for stock drag. Yea nevermind the fact that the cost of a car to just Qual is 200k+ lets focus on the 10k engine mod to run e85 efficantly....

[@koifish835]

Like was said at the end I really like the idea of just making a game specifically for competitive battles like Pokemon Stadium 3. They could let you use any Pokemon from across the series so the dex cuts in the main games wouldn't be an issue anymore and of course the game would be updated for free whenever a new generation came out. If they still wanted to limit Pokemon for balance/variety reasons then maybe they could have different formats that only let you use a certain pool of Pokemon that changes every season or whatever. Meanwhile the main series games could focus more on being good single player RPGs that still kept trading and unranked online battles so you could still play with your friends.

[@YoungDolan]

I would love battle revolution style it had great animations and killer battle arenas

[@10tailedbijuu]

@@YoungDolan very true, if only they still made those, really makes me wonder why they stopped.

[@charcoalcharizd]

i love how you didnt even consider doing this without rng manipulation

[@AJ2DAGAMES]

ah yes, I'd love to jack up the time required to do this by like 20 times. and this is just blisy, y'know. it isn't them if there isn't rng manip

[@dannygj]

literally the entire purpose of the rng manipulation is to give them the benefit of doubt, and assume that you get a perfect mon within your first roll without rng manipulation the time would be WAAAAY longer and would be different for everyone. either way it sucks

[@EKKO_godz]

If he didn’t rng manip, this team prob wouldn’t have been finished by the end of the week. Literally not enough time while also juggling life duties and sleeping

[@A-ii5dp]

I mean, the alternative is doing this as a full time job.

[@krumplin8992]

Here's some additional thoughts: -VGC players could either spend 16 hours in the A button simulator or 16 hours practicing and theory crafting their teams -The meta is constantly evolving with pokemon going in and out of favor. You might have to completely change your team to respond to meta shifts which would set you back an additional 16 hours -It is very easy to evade the legitimacy checks they use at VGC events and so it's quite low risk if you're careful about where you gen mons from. Therefore every top player will be at a disadvantage by doing it legitimately -Competitive singles has completely abandoned the physical games in favor of pokemon showdown. VGC also could go that way. With tPC becoming more anti player for the purposes of greed we might see more top cut players decide to put the money spent on flights, accom and entry fees into community run tournaments with similar prize money

[@waitingfortheequinnox]

If the VGC community left for _Showdown!_, we could see TPC actually clamp down on PS! as a service. We could lose all competitive Pokémon outlets that aren’t “official”.

[@TheAweDude1]

I think the second point is the biggest thing. The meta is constantly evolving, and it just got injected with like 400 new Pokemon. People will want to try new and wacky teams, but the sheer tedium of training up some random Monferno or Avalugg is inevitably going to stifle any desire to try new things. Why would I want to spend literal hours on a meme that might not even work, when I could spend a few minutes genning the Pokemon I need and spend those hours actually testing the team?

[@newp0rt]

im just wondering how these people got caught genning. i remember the last time i used the program, there were ways to "legitimize" the genned pokemon, giving them legit caught area/time/date/movepools/etc so in theory all the metadata behind the pokemon would be 100% possible and thereby "legit". were these people just not careful enough?

[@JTruong3rd]

​@newp0rt Because they're either reckless, stupid or new to it. The specially stupid one I remembered was the idiot who took a full shiny team into vgc and none of them had a home id nor visited the game they evolve in

[@ellewong137]

@@newp0rtiirc they used a trading bot to make their genned mons. Unbeknownst to them, that bot accidentally deleted metadata, which allowed the anti-cheat measures to catch them. People that manually genned their mons probably slipped under the radar, as per usual.

[@maxblack2347]

Thank god showdown exists so people can at least be sure their teams are good before putting in all the time to actually realise them

[@huh4484]

Nah I'll just play on showdown where there's rules. Not gonna make a competitive team just to be evasion spammed in the main game.

[@CommanderFlyboy]

@@huh4484Evasion Spam is banned in VGC…?

[@ivanbluecool]

While I don't play Pokemon anymore I love these competitive Pokemon videos It really shows how much effort the tournament players go through to make a stacked team for player vs player fights. Cheats shouldn't exist as the moves should be easier to obtain. Same with old pokemon letting you pick your hidden power type too. So many things that would save on time

[@theparagonal]

Any time longer than 5 minutes is too long, as genning would still be faster.

[@JJCOLFAX]

Tournament players don't go through any of this. That's why they were getting pokemon removed from their teams lol

[@melonrats]

They don't do this and this video is supposed to show the reasons why they don't, which shows it well other than like the ribbon stuff.

[@leaffinite2001]

Right its like piracy. If you were providing a better service, you wouldnt have to worry about piracy, and if tpc had an accessible game they wouldnt have to worry about genning.

[@JJCOLFAX]

@leaffinite3828 False. People would still pirate movies, games etc

[@NaudVanDalen]

Before bottle caps, mints and ability patches and without RNG manipulation, all this training would take significantly longer for regular Pokemon and be basically impossible for legendaries. So it's cool how those things exist. What would be nice is a way to lower IVs too for trick room users and to reduce confusion damage.

[@Mimiyan_or_Pikapikafan]

Time for us to see how much Pokemon back stepped within a "single generation "

[@AndrewH1994]

A lot. possibly more than a lot. it basically puts up a paywall for anyone who recently got into pokemon with gen 9, or skipped playing PLA and also strongly suggested to have the SWSH DLC to be able to get Urshifu, and at some later point probably to also get Calyrex and the ponies

[@Mimiyan_or_Pikapikafan]

​@@AndrewH1994and even if you were someone who played all those game at launch and decided retro actively you're gonna have to playthrough the DLC again if you wanted RegiEleki instead of RegiDraco or something. Literally could've been me, but I decided to not play comp because of how SV released, which really sucked for me as I would've had fun with SV regional dex format tbh. Although now we know that isn't the format...

[@ritogamo9830]

The new norm nowadays is be happy with whatever amount of pkmons are in a game. Sadly they found out, people are gonna buy their games anyways even with cut content. Long lost are those days when you could skip a gen coz they'll be adding the current & previous gen mons to the upcoming gen. Nowadays every games are unique in their own ways so you don't get to skip. I'm happy I stopped right in gen 7. Gen 8 is when they started cutting content. I do play rom hacks from previous gens here and there, pokegening the heck of it. I'm not spending my lifetime breeding eggs and resetting so you get the right IVs, abilities and whatnot. I'm currently not supporting this cashgrab culture and not interested in online features, competitive and whatnot. I might try gen 8 when i get my hands to a hacked switch. Offline features that is.

[@Mimiyan_or_Pikapikafan]

@@ritogamo9830 👍

[@royalgelly8948]

Boycott this shit. The best thing you can do if you need to scratch the Pokemon itch? Play Showdown VGC. Learn OU or any of the lower tiers. Play older gens or hackmons.

[@excalibur493]

7:44 I had no idea this was a thing. I was shiny hunting the same thing, and I thought my game shat itself from all the spawning I was making it do. Glad this was an intended mechanic!

[@discordmodder8846]

I think a "showdown editor" should be rewarded to the player after they complete the game's full regional dex. It would incentive players to still catch them all. It would be a real treat that should be granted rather than force us to slowly farm or gen for our teams I'd happily switch to console for all my games if they each had a showdown editor. Let's pray gen X gives us that

[@dullah1434]

I would love that, but I doubt game freak would implement that in their newer games

[@10tailedbijuu]

@@dullah1434 this guy is living a pipe dream, no other game will ever make competitive game like pokemon will have such a thing given the average player doesn't even have the time to be competitive. The minority is whining and it is funny.

[@Serryy]

@@10tailedbijuu Buddy, you do realize that only very few play competitive BECAUSE its so tedious to even try, right? Oh, and only the minority is whining? Cool, only a small part of the playerbase is getting fucked over for no reason, so theres no point in changing anything. Great logic.

[@ich3730]

@@10tailedbijuu oh its just a matter of time until someone makes a better creature catch game

[@duckymomo7935]

They should get rid of regional exclusives

[@sethc2241]

having to get perfect nature and iv's is a chore, and then needing to buy separate games just to get game locked pokemon is a scam

[@guilhermeantonucci9403]

Now do that without RNG manipulation, like gamefreak intended! lol I remember how tedious it was to breed for perfect IVs/egg moves/ability/nature on the older games.

[@beagay963]

It should also be stated I’m sure Nintendo doesn’t intent for rng manipulation either. If that were removed…I can’t imagine how long it’d take.

[@henriquesa3580]

Concordo plenamente com você. E digo mais, "rng manipulation" é trapaça com alguns passos extras. ps.: Não sou contra trapaça.

[@twustermydude]

@@henriquesa3580 i guess anything that's exploitative to an extent is cheating, but i can't tell if it's a good sign or not that you need external programs to get it done

[@marcobelli6856]

@@henriquesa3580I mean once you know you will mathematically find the Pokémon at a certain hour and it’s impossible to find it at any other hour than if you don’t like cheating just wait a day until it’s the right time at that point it’s just knowledge of the code not cheating. What should you do randomly open the game and hope you got the right time?

[@Highstar25]

This is a great way to break down the issue that game freak have created and show why genned Pokémon are so prevalent. My opinion is that they should simply bring back the concept of rental Pokémon from WAAAY back on the N64 and allow players to generate competitive teams within an official rental facility entirely divorced from progress in the single player game. That way there's no need for genning, the massive barrier to entry is completely removed allowing new players to actually try competitive without being immediately stonewalled, and they don't even need to check everyone's Pokémon in tournaments.

[@LRM12o8]

Or they could just remove the random elements from your Pokémon build for competitions. Make every Pokémon have the same mid IVs in online battles, so that only lvl, EV training and moveset matters for the strength of your Pokémon. That way you could get the exact Pokémon that you caught during your Playthrough to be competitively viable, which sounds a kot cooler to me than building up some random, perfect IV mon from scratch.

[@kristenroberts4502]

There are rental teams in S/V

[@Highstar25]

@@kristenroberts4502 there are. The problem is you can only rent a team, you cannot rent individual pokemon, alter the team in any way or generate your own and use them later, all you can do is borrow a complete team that somebody else has registered. But the fact that the feature exists means that a full suite of options is possible, if game freak could be arsed.

[@notme8232]

​@@LRM12o8Yeah, that sounds awesome! Seriously, they already set levels to 50, why not set all IVs to 31? That wouldn't even screw with Hidden Power anymore, since that got Dexited.

[@ScLuigi]

@@LRM12o8natures?

[@witchBoi_Connor]

I don't think you mentioned that the transfer minigame from gen 4 to 5 also required you to have two DS's to do.

[@jacquelineking5783]

This is why I laugh at the transferring was free people. No it really wasn't outside of gen 3 to 4. At best it was cheaper in previous gens.

[@quantummelody2959]

Sobs in despite having a ds lite and both platinum and heartgold I still couldn't transfer stuff from Pokémon Sapphire RIP my shiny shuppet

[@alexjackyperson101]

also you cant use the older pokemon anymore

[@santosic]

Oh wow I had forgotten about that. How awful

[@elliezamora8434]

Holy shit, this is what has become of my little yellow carriage game. I understood none of the terms in this video, but watched all the way through. Thanks for the enterainment.

[@icebrorottenmushroom1817]

I don't like the current meta at all and this here is one of the reasons. That i need to get an decade old game for easy to get competitive pokemon is stupid. I really liked the video and lets hope we get Showdown on the switch.

[@Flygonnerrs]

Can't you play on the browser?

[@Glizzyman]

@@Flygonnerrs well I think its because he wants it to be portable since showdown on phone just sucks and ppl dont like to carry laptops everywhere

[@icebrorottenmushroom1817]

@@Glizzyman also i meant an official version of showdown from gamefreak so that we don't have to spent hundreds of dollars on older games just to get 1 singular pokemon and to use in turnaments

[@Glizzyman]

@@icebrorottenmushroom1817 that makes more sense but gamefreak would put a price on it atleas, but it would be nice to have though I dont see it happening at all its suprising we even have showdown as it is right now

[@yagernot6998]

Si tú juegas competitivo se supone que tengas esos juegos no hay escusa

[@Jghost11]

This is why I never played competitive as much as I love the game, it's crazy how long it is to build a single team. Even though Gamefreak has made it more easy to change stats and natures it is still ridiculously long to get those resources.

[@Jansk1h]

players optimizing the fun out of the game

[@cnnr_]

​@@Jansk1hcompetitive optimisation is the only way to make the fun tbh. Theres no difficulty in base game. I just wish it were legitimately easier to make a good team

[@what.5693]

@@Jansk1hit is literally competitive. That’s 70% of the point.

[@TheDeathlyG]

Honestly, anyone who complained about genned Pokemon, in a *competitive* format where you want to be able to try different strategies, and adapt to your opponents... Those people are straight delusional. Why would you want to sit for 17+ hours *per team* to literally just try an idea. For a tournament that you probably wont even be making any serious money in anyways. You'd have to juggle your life, (other) job, and other responsibilities all while trying to grind out multiple teams? Its pedantic and stupid. Competitive teams should at a bare minumum be generated by Pokemon based on the competitors submitted teams and stats. Period.

[@unbound195]

They don't play man. It's the only way they could have such an opinion. They didn't try that for themselves.

[@jomiki98]

They have to implement some sort of stadium-like mode where you have a showdown-like editor for teams that are only usable in online play and live competitions and where the mons just vanish after you're done playing, that would solve every single problem and would make the game more accessible, I think the competitive scene would develop and spread really quickly that way

[@mopanda81]

otoh this would make all of their architecture based around training your pokemon totally worthless. the only reason to do it would be to beat the story mode and any dlc the release maybe? I agree they need to reexamine what they want the game to feel like and be about though. Really simply they could just reduce everything to a single resource like money and then actually put in diverse and fun ways to earn money by playing and battling with other people or alone.

[@shuaitailai]

but then they cant shill dlc with meta pokemon

[@peacefusion]

I prefer a smash bros style match, but in a boxing ring, and its just pokemon. those are what test user skills.

[@miguelzurita3216]

@@peacefusion teambuilding is a skill, the issue in Pokémon is that its ridiculously time consuming

[@ivani7227]

@@mopanda81 That doesn't make any sense unless we agree that the journey of the base game, gyms, catching etc is miserable. Many people enjoy that part, other people are much more interested the battling aspect. Let people that enjoy the journey keep enjoying the journey, psot game, breeding, etc. Let people who enjoy competitive and don't care for the story and exploration aspect have an accessible competitive option. It's such a straight forward solution.

[@Ravenjim93]

Small note from something you said early on, you dont need to skip a day forward to change the raids/reset day, instead, go backwards a single minute. much simpler, messes way less with the date of the machine

[@johndinner4418]

even if it's not midnight?

[@Ravenjim93]

@@johndinner4418 yes doesn't matter . Just go back one minute, preferably while on a menu and go back in game

[@Slaking_]

It's honestly insane how a multi-billion dollar company that owns the largest single IP on earth cannot create a fair, balanced, or competently ran competitive metagame.

[@diegomedina9637]

Thats because competitive Pokemon Is just a byproduct of the game and not the main focus. Imagine trying to overwhelm the main demographic with all this competitive mechanics only a handful of the total fan base cares about.

[@SorakuFett]

@@diegomedina9637 This. Pokémon's target audience has never even heard of IV's or EV's. They're the people who still believe Mew is under the truck. They don't care about competitive, they just want their plushies, so why should GF care about something that could potentially turn the casuals away from Pokémon. Now, *this* is exactly the reason why we need a return of the Stadium series or some equivalent, a big competitively-appealing game with all 1000+ Pokémon that just connects straight to Home focused solely on the battles, like the old Gen 3-4 days of VGC tournaments running on Colosseum, XD and Battle Revolution.

[@Nightcaat]

It’s pretty simple actually, the execs are in it for the money

[@DJPrimeAmvs]

Because creating a meta with an rpg is an impossible task...especially when said rpg is a video game.

[@Yoda_Gaming1738]

@@diegomedina9637 this is mostly false. competitive Pokémon brings in some of the highest viewership out of all esports, on top of that most players beat the game once, do all the side content then never play again, meaning that after the initial flood of players dies down, all thats really left is the hunting crowd and the competitive crowd. And thats not even bringing up smogon which daily has peaks of 30k players. Competitive pokemon is a huge part of the community, its far beyond its grassroots now

[@The_D_ray]

The thing that buffles me the most is that people even go the long run to do ALL this just to COMPETE in a game where damage rolls and critical hits are a thing.

[@kennydg4979]

League has severe rng over the course of a game and is the worlds most popular esport, rng is inherently more balanced in turn based games because you don't have to respond within a few frames to getting rnged you can make up the difference by adjusting your gameplan, you cannot do that in real time in something like league

[@The_D_ray]

@@kennydg4979 Yeah, but as far as I know, League does not require this amount of grinding.

[@Aaa-vp6ug]

@@kennydg4979still doesn’t justify the massive time and monetary costs

[@imlonelypleasehelp5443]

@@kennydg4979league is also a skill based game, as in you have people who mechanically are far better than others. Pokemon is a turn based strategy game, and most other again TURN BASED STRATEGY GAMES do not have rng if they want to get competitive.

[@ich3730]

@@kennydg4979 League is also free.

[@KunouNoHana]

All of this is still easily resolvable by TPCI just genning mons on a tournament setup instead of making you bring your own switch and doing a full time job for a week to make sure all your mons are set up.

[@Jake38nine]

It doesn't take a full time job for a week to set up a team. That's delusional thinking.

[@KunouNoHana]

@@Jake38nine some of these videos in previous gens literally involved over 40 hours of work, but sure. Modern gens only require 2.5 days of full time labor (+ $200 or more in other games and hardware) to set up a team. That seems perfectly reasonable.

[@Jake38nine]

@@KunouNoHana it is reasonable. Travel to and from multiple vgc events will always cost more than $200. And, you can create a pokemon team within 24 hours or less. Heck, you could do it within 8 hours or less. 0 atk and 0 spd IVs are very niche. Not all of your pokemon will have those 0 ivs or need them. Also, if you can't save up $200 for a couple pokemon games every year, then you can't even afford the cost of going to vgc events because vgc events have other costs related to it, such as travel, food, and hotels. Travel + food + hotel costs will always come out to be more than how much a pokemon game costs no matter how cheap you try to be. And not every vgc event is local where you can walk there and home. Plus, not every vgc player is cheap like that. Most vgc players would rather spend the extra money on comfort, such as travel, quick food, and hotels than trying to be cheap. I can guarantee you that. Plus, were not even taking into account how much MORE it costs for vgc players who DONT live locally. They are paying EVEN MORE TRAVELING EXPENSES. So no, $200 per year for a couple pokemon games is not unreasonable. If you can't afford $200 for pokemon games per year, then you can't afford to even go to vgc events. Use some common sense.

[@breloommaster12]

@@Jake38nine you're right; a week is optimistic. Could take anywhere up to 3 weeks to two months.

[@Jake38nine]

@@breloommaster12 You obviously have no idea how to create a team legitimately. You're such spoiled, entitled brats.

[@chrizzlyx]

I think the overall time might be a lot higher (to assemble a full team of competitive pokemon) since a lot of techniques may or may not be known well enough to the general public. like how to manipulate RNG to "create" the perfect pokemon egg. Any player who strictly abides to a 100% legitimate way without abusing any glitches or hidden techniques might take so much longer its not even worth trying. Doing research does eat up a lot of time aswell

[@waltlock8805]

Or TPC could get more serious about their hack checks and ban cheating players. That would put everyone back on an even footing.

[@dyssealex]

@@waltlock8805 no, because people who have to work jobs (or other life things) basically wouldnt have time to make teams and thus could go to way less events

[@waltlock8805]

@@dyssealex That's life. People with more time have an advantage over people who don't. TPC has nothing to do with that. They just need to enforce the rules of the game so legitimate players aren't always behind the cheaters.

[@dyssealex]

@@waltlock8805 tpc has put in so much work in making the game way more grindy and p2w than it needs to be also whats up with the appeal to authority?

[@waltlock8805]

@@dyssealex I expect the governing body of sports to maintain the integrity of their games. Doesn't matter if it's FIDE, the IOC, or TPC. And Pokemon is FAR less grindy than it used to be. Hasn't seemed to slow down the cheaters, though.

[@scmeeerr1253]

I stopped playing competitive due to how boring it is to get the Pokémon and how the meta is (Urshifu, Lando-T, etc.). After seeing this video and learning about what happened at Worlds, I am DEFINITELY not going into a VGC format ever. It truly is absurd that people defend egg hatching and hunting is seen as "skill"; idk much about RNG manipulation but I can probably guess how many months it would take to get exactly what you need.

[@samanthajackson2144]

it should be hard to get perfect stats the problem is getting perfect stats thru outside programs and manuplation of the game.

[@nahte123456]

@@samanthajackson2144 OK...how is it hard? Like fundamentally I disagree, I would love to see you defend this in other competitive games, "It should be hard to unlock Ryu's standard Tatsumaki", but let's ignore that for now. How is it hard? In what way is it hard, or requires skill, or can be practiced, to get a perfect Pokemon?

[@BeanyBoi06]

As someone that only ever played smogon, it’s nuts how GF seemingly makes things tedious or easier at random. This video is one the big reasons I can’t get into vgc, building teams is a bitch, especially when ur bad like me and need to constantly tweak

[@theshatteredseas]

​@@nahte123456no, it is hard because it will take 1/69420 odds to acquire the pokemon that is competitively viable in a way you aren't inherently at a disadvantage using it. That to them is called skill, and it makes me fucking puke with how deranged their argument is

[@MrDev1718]

Egg hatching and hunting is a skill. You learn better and more efficient ways to get what you want. Secondly, if you dont recognize it as a skill then you have to acknowledge that anyone skipping these steps, illegitimately acquiring resources/ pokemon, and then being able to battle is unfair. You skip the time investment and are able to build skill with experience. Thats fair to the legitimate player who doesnt want to cheat right?

[@Wingsaber]

This kind of needless and absurd grind is exactly why I couldn't care less if pros cheat to get the mons they need (as long as the mon has legal movesets, abilities, etc of course). I care about how well they play in tournament and how smart they are in teambuilding, not how many hours they spent running around and resetting.

[@warlokyx]

Love the way you compile the whole process all together into one cohesive video. Recently found your channel, but already obsessed! Also, the thing about how ppl grew up, so true. Ppl like me from an eastern European country couldn't have afforded these games as kids. I got lucky, but I am the exception. Imagine all the great players and fans that are lost to this....

[@JoannaFalkowska]

I'm 30 and still $200 is a lot of money for me for just a chance to get into a competitive game... (which btw still doesn't count the cost of the actual old consoles besides Switch, not sure why???)

[@SlonkGoblin]

The worst offender of all the transfer only mons is 0 Speed enamorus. Like you said, PLA legends only get one chance per save file for a 0 IV stat legendary. And PLA is the only way to get Enamorus

[@TheCatslock]

While I don't agree with somethings in this video this is a major annoyance I 100% agree with. There isn't a good reason for pokemon not to include an iv checker since they knew they were going to allow hisuen forms well in advance to scarlet violet through home.

[@Sillimant_]

you forgot to include the cost of buying a 3ds with Bank and Home, or the whole learning to homebrew to hack it on and whatnot

[@kadirouelmongoli6797]

Great video. Really enjoyed it. As for easily creating a competitive Pokémon, I think all the VGC players should sign a petition asking Game Freak to make as you said, either an integrated a showdown editor or make Stadium 3. And I think that if the players won't speak up about this issue, then Game Freak won't make any changes to improve this mechanic.

[@RiftFishing]

I think that tournaments should be held within their respective games, with only the Pokemon that are available within that game natively. When DLCs come out, sure, add those in, but that would be for the second tournament cycle (read 2nd year after release) typically, and not the first. If you want to use Pokemon from another game in a tournament, just make an entirely different circuit for that game. I think it's more fun to see what the branch of new Pokemon add to the metagame rather than old mons transferred in that were there the last generation (and sometimes the generation before that). We also really need a "rusted bottlecap" item that will set a Pokemon's IVs to zero. That's one of the the last major hurdles to this constant IV cheating problem. They took hidden power out, they allow you to set IV's to max at level 50. We're closer, but still so far. I have played Pokemon a lot of the years, but now I'm a Dad and that means a LOT less free time. I don't feel like I can't engage with the competitive scene like I used to be able to just due to the time restrictions beyond what feels like a reasonable amount of time to spend on team building.

[@soonerthanlater8206]

fax. sorry you are a father tho, that sucks :(

[@RiftFishing]

@@soonerthanlater8206 no need to be sorry, being a father is a huge blessing and I love it. It just means that I have less time for other things :)

[@gabler7992]

@@soonerthanlater8206 tell that to your father if you have one

[@MicrowavedT0ast]

Sakazuki really seems like he could put a hole in any teams Ace

[@MrBreada]

Let it be known that I understood that reference.

[@YoutubeIsRunByANaziOverlord420]

Whitebeard is seething at this comment

[@bjk03_62]

I think no one should be criticised for cheating/Henning Pokémon. Someone who is genning their Pokémon doesnt receive an advantage compared to other Players in Battle. The only thing genning does is Save competitive Players a whole lot of time and money. If building Teams in Game was fun, itd be different, but its mostly button mashing and redoing of procedures over and over again in Not only the newest, but also multiple other games. People Play competitive Pokémon for fun, and if i have to spend 200 Bucks + 2 Full days every month for building new teams (Not even including the time to come up with the Team and Test it Out, maybe make changes etc), i wouldnt really call that fun.

[@darkestgreenmewtwo]

once i was unable to move my whole living dex they lost me, watching things like this just turns me away even more

[@RockmanX47]

This series is really neat at exploring building a team from scratch and at the end I think the emphasis on the gap between building a team and battling should be amplified. Throughout the series the idea is, "Take this team someone has made and just make it happen through the means the developers intended." which is certainly a good experiment but it also unadvertently looks aside at the idea of tinkering the team. Taking a team idea that was already made is one thing but what if you want to change a Pokemon out for another? Perhaps the team doesn't vibe outside its core? You have to get those Pokemon and their theoretical things. What if the Pokemon feels like the right call to have but the stats could be fiddled with? Well there's a limit to how much you can manipulate, IVs are unchangable and EVs can only be reduced by berries by 10 points per berry, which are not purchasable easily. In S/V you're stucking waiting in-game day cycles for the Auction House to give you the berries you want. The money gate is also why I softened on the Dex cut thing but also hardened on what should be included. Having a limited roster leads to a draft format that is really cool but then they go and let you slap in Pokemon for VGC once HOME arrives which loses the charm of the draft format especially once they introduced meta warping threats like Urshifu and the Forces of Nature trio (Landorus, Thunderus, and Tornadus) into the format without providing an alternative format that restricts them from play. Stuck playing casual with friends for that, not even Showdown provides players a way to play older VGC formats for S/V.

[@miguelzurita3216]

I really like Pokémon and think it has great potential to be an interesting game competive, the biggest thing holding it back is for every step they make to make resource gathering and teambuilding easy they take so many steps back, they found a good sweet spot with Gen7 and Gen8 then scrapped all of it in Gen9 to make natures and ivs controllable.

[@purgigantevole]

Blisy building a freezai team = a dream come true

[@KingTinker9]

This just honestly deters me from wanting to try out building a competitive team. I knew a lot went into it. But all this would drive me insane.

[@darthfastball1150]

I really wish at least the first year was Regional Dex only. The format changes killed my hype for team building because now if I want to team build, I can’t just build around the meta, I’ll have to worry about pokemon they’re considering putting in. Team building feels Sisyphean now. We don’t need rapid changes to keep people interested, look at Chess. They don’t need to change the official format to keep people engaged.

[@dorkenspache8353]

I feel like since they usually add a way to make past legendaries available in the DLC or sister versions that they should lock certain transfer exclusive mons from tournaments until they become available for everyone to get. That would 100% solve one of the major issues

[@Yangblaze11]

This is literally one of the only good points that I have seen made so far as they way they craft their meta games is really the issue not the mons themselves as they shouldn't have even allowed legendary mons outside of what is obtainable in the current games to compete until they released them in the game itself. Also, I think if something is a hobby one of the general rules is that you will need to put in some money into it (this applies to 90% of hobbies) and time into it, so if you don't have enough time/money to put into a hobby for what you wanna do, don't do that hobby simple as that. One thing that I can agree with some of these people is that the tera shards hunting are objectively wasting time and the shard requirements should be lower to change ones tera type.

[@Zestytrashcan82]

Its unhinged how the sandwich mechanic will be so janky. You dropped a piece of bread onto the table, and it is now no longer allowed on the sandwich

[@doubleviewer13]

I get that the upper echelon of any competitive game should be hard to achieve, but nothing about training a team for Pokémon sounds remotely fun, accessible, or intuitive for you average player. It really feels a bit unobtainable. The separation between a competitive player really seems to be time and money when it should be skill and whit. Like I thought the TCG was pay to win, but damn...

[@boo453]

I'd be interested in a comp team speedrun video, where you try and get them all as fast as possible and don't worry about the bells and whistles like having them shiny etc. This could have been a lot more efficient in certain areas like taking the entire team to get their types changed at once, rather than going one at a time

[@BaconProtege]

He literally said that he timed the shiny versus non shiny on fluttermane and said he counted the non shiny fluttermane time instead. 9:23

[@limbolegs]

man i love this video series so much! i dont even play the games, just enjoy watching the manip explanations and learning about the game mechanics :)

[@gravitybass]

I’m in be same boat and it’s crazy how many commenters here don’t play the games. Not hard to see why…

[@casual1857]

I really agree with the problem with post game loop. Battle stadium is fun to do, and if it's a multiplayer issue make it so you can do it with a friend in doubles for increased rewards with a greater challenge. Just think of the potential! You could add interesting gimmick teams that the NPCs can use. Bring back rental teams, so you can experiment more or use a theme team. It definitely is a let down that it's not like that

[@munchrai6396]

The fact that Scarlet and Violet's resources are all focused on a single currency is a nice step in the right direction, but I do agree that the resource loop really needs to be tightened up in later gens.

[@MorganMoogle]

Your 45 minute video has convinced me not to waste a lifetime on team building and VGC ❤

[@Aerafuz]

They don't care. Competitive is not the main focus of the franchise.

[@Isabelle-mp8rk]

i still find it wild you have to grind shards FOR EACH POKEMON YOU WANT TO SWITCH TERA ON, why wouldn't they just make it so you unlock each tera type someway, then you can change whichever pokemon you want with the key item associated with that tera type (similar to how you change forms in L:A).

[@cosmicsvids]

pvp sucks in general not just a pokemon problem if someone is able to have more time then you because they get paid to stream games your going to be at a disadvantage if you have to work a normal job and not have as much time to practice as a result. Which is why i prefer single player or just casual multiplayer.

[@VincentV465]

I love putting together teams. For me, catching and training pokemon is part of the experience. However, that doesn't mean I don't think the current state of things is ridiculous. I'm willing to put a lot of time into it right now despite this, but I'm a veteran player. I have a huge backlog of Pokemon games and put in a solid 50-60 hours of playing the game casually while interacting with all the mechanics before I start putting competitive teams together. Combine that with the general knowledge I've built up about the game over the years and it never really feels like I'm starting from scratch. I understand that that is not a universal experience. The game is the least newcomer friendly that it's been in a while. If building a team was more accessible, then we wouldn't need things like a battle simulator because getting the pokemon in game would be easy.

[@yoso378]

I was the same way when I played these games. I hate how they ruined how I liked to play by introducing the mandatory EXP Share for accessibility, while at the same time rendering that change pointless because of the XP candies and still having reasons to need to engage with long grinds.

[@MrDev1718]

A battle simulator was put together because people are lazy and dont want to interact with the games, even on a casual level. They want teams and pokemon handed to them with no time investment.. and these are the people on the world stage taking the prize money. That is unfair especially since pokemon is more accessible than ever before

[@upbeathades184]

​@@MrDev1718this video literally proves it isn't more accessible..... Also no the issue is people don't want to waste time on a dull activity that takes no skill. No one would mind if this was a skillful time sink but it's just dumb and mind numbing

[@stuckfart]

while watching this i finally caught a shiny pidgey ive been hunting for three days 🔥

[@Tael98]

Was really waiting for a video on this topic. This being a collab with Freezai is just the icing on the cake!

[@imablisy]

Hope you enjoyed it!

[@Jake38nine]

​@imablisy reply to my argument, coward. You have no idea how to do math and use common sense. $600 within 3-5 years is cheaper than the travel and other expenses involved in going to VGC events.

[@dad5draco]

The duping was taken out a while ago & keep in mind: people had to have their mons ready for these competitions just a couple of months of the game being out! The fact that it's so accessible and still difficult just shows how much time you need to pour into this kind of stuff.

[@CaptainSherbertTheQuestionable]

Between exp candies(general raid rewars), mints(buyable), bottle caps(buyable and a 5star raid reward), ability capsules(5 star raid reward), ability patches(6star raid reward), training weights(buyable), vitamins(buyable), and a game that took me less than two days to finish what is difficult about team building? With mochi in the dlc its even easier now. The only time consuming part was raids to gain those resources and/or the money to buy. Even still, the grind beneficial cause the raids helped with obtaining specific tera types which made needing the tera shards less nessecary. In less than a week, I was on the online ladder with a competitive team that got me to ultraball rank(torkoal, leafeon, maushold, gholdengo, talonflame, and garganacl if you were curious). Not wanting to put in the time and difficult are not the same thing and if you are playing at a competitive level like what was outlined in the video then why would you not be willing to put in the time by that point?

[@SlimeBlueMS]

It's not accessible without cheating lmao. That's the point of the video... Nobody is ever going to be lucky enough to find so many perfect pokemon every consecutive year to compete in the championships, yet the same people go every year.

[@Sairiui]

The cheating is just worth it when you weigh out everything and realize this is just 17 hours and over $200 for *one team*..

[@calebcoulter2268]

You're not going to be spending $200 for every team, and these pokemon can mostly be reused so long as you don't need to change speed tiers

[@CaptainSherbertTheQuestionable]

@@calebcoulter2268 you also dont need to spend $200 altogether. If you just do the dlc and games for sword or shield and scarlet or violet then you're good which would run you around $140usd or so. The guy in the video was just being extra about the process.

[@UnsounderGnome]

This is a great breakdown of what a struggle it can be to get the perfect team you want legally. I think TPC/Gamefreak's decision to allow these super strong pokemon from previous generations in VGC with no way to get them in the current generation is either a huge oversight or a gross money grab. VGC still isn't that popular so I doubt it really makes them a lot of extra money, so I lean more towards the oversight explanation. Of course there are many good teams that one can make that are easy to acquire and train in the current game, but it doesn't feel good to not be able to use a pokemon because it is too hard or expensive to acquire. And it feels even worse to go up against one that an opponent has. A lot of the stuff you are showing, digging into how the game works, how the stats are calculated and how the "randomness" is done were things I'm sure Gamefreak never intended players to really know about or figure out. However, those cats are so far out of the bag that they are winning tournaments which means for anyone to have a chance at competing, they have to learn and do this stuff and/or gen and hack. TPC/Gamefreak need to take this fact into account and make changes to allow people to have an easier onramp to play pokemon competively without having to go through all this nonsense.

[@zXDaishiXz]

When people ask why I only play simulators and never buy the damn game.

[@higunner00]

No one has ever asked, no one has ever cared

[@carpfisher46]

@@higunner00you cared enough to comment?

[@Famedawg]

Not really an option for official competitions….which is kinda what this video was about. And you’re probably playing the game through “emulators”. Which is also a great way to experience the game and its many fan games or rom hacks. 🍻

[@EpiclyEpicGamer]

i still think its a bit odd they decided to allow home transfer mons, afaik the only really really annoying part about getting pokemon in SV was getting tera shards (and 0 iv pokemon you cant breed), and while yes allowing home mons made the meta very fun, it really complicated the preparation process, also allowing them right before worlds is also odd, like, the biggest tournament of the year had a meta that almost no one was ready for, again, it made the meta fun with all the broken stuff running around, but also why did they allow a bunch of broken things in a meta no one had experience in,.

[@Zarugoza5969]

Hyper training was a great feature, honestly. But imagine if they expanded it to have more varied options for what IV should a Pokémon have. That would be awesome and it would shed so much time. Also, idk who thought it was a good idea to have VGC this year to allow transfer-only Mons. So weird.

[@brendandaley9355]

I enjoy competitive Pokémon content and love seeing people come up with interesting strategies. I do not have the time or patience to grind and build a team with mechanics that make it tedious and time consuming. I have a life and full time job. If they ever make a way for average people to compete easier I think I’d very much like to try to see how badly I’d likely get beat.

[@EV_Comics]

I've always said that IVs should just be removed from the game entirely. Make all stats their max, so everyone is on the same playing field without dedicating hours and hundreds of dollars to build a team.

[@dsproductions19]

I love these videos, and watching them made me wonder something that could also be a great video idea. "How does team building in Pokemon compare to other similar games like Digimon Cyber Sleuth or Monster Hunter Stories 2?" While neither of those have competitive scenes, they do feature both in-depth team-building mechanics and multiplayer. However, despite having deeper battle systems and team customization (which Pokemon should really learn from), I recall them being much quicker and easier to build the exact teams I wanted. Digimon has almost no RNG involved in training, and some aspects can even be done fully AFK with the farms. It would be great to see how team building is done in other games, to further emphasize how *horrible* it is in Pokemon, and how it could be much better. I think the only issue would be finding actual "competitive" teams to build for those games, since they don't have tournaments to my knowledge, but I'm sure you can find some KZbinrs who make content on those games to help theory-craft (or their subreddits).

[@CaptainSherbertTheQuestionable]

I think the reason that isn't covered is because of a lack of competitive scene. While I don't play monster hunter, I do play and enjoy cyber sleuth. I will say for me teambuilding in digimon takes way longer and I don't gen pokemon(cyber sleuth takes multiple days on afk while a competitive team takes me an afternoon with bottle caps, mints, ability patches/capsules, and exp mints). Either way at the end of the day the lack of a competitive scene makes it harder to compare in that context.

[@nathaniel6546]

I think the worse part is that if they do add an easier way to get tms, 0 ivs, or money it will likely be locked behind the dlc, just adding another paywall for competitive. It's also annoying that even though I own most of the gen 4/5 games I don't have the payed version of pokemon home so I can't transfer any of those mons up without an extra paywall. Another issue is that if you didn't have poketransporter before the eshop got shut down, it is now impossible for you to transfer from gen 5 and below even if a mon is easier to get in those games. So some people would have to reset for cress in bdsp or a 3ds game if they were newer to vgc and wanted to run cress in a tournament. Obtaining the mons through old games means you have to have had bank before march of this year. I just got my first job ever less than a week ago after reaching the age where I would be competing in masters. Having all of these paywalls is even worse for the competitive integrity of junior and senior division. If someone in one of those divisions wants to compete they need to be in a family with money that can be spared or be connected with an older vgc player. The fact that the p2w is so much worse for the "main" demographic of pokemon is crazy.

[@Jake38nine]

If $90-180 is too expensive for you within a year, then you have bigger problems in life. Because if you can't afford the game and DLCs, then you also can't afford to travel to VGC events in the first place. Travel will always cost more within a year compared to a pokemon game per year. Even if you're spending $30-60 on gas alone to travel, and you need to go to say 10 events, you're spending $300-600 on travel alone within a year, which is $1,500 - 3,000 within 5 years for travel compared to $510 within 5 years for pokemon games. The math shows that travel at the cheapest amount STILL costs more than the games. Therefore, if you can't afford the games, you can't afford to go to the events in the first place. Use some common sense and quick math, and you'd figure this out and see that imablisy is bad faith.

[@scp-phenomenon014]

@@Jake38nine its less about being able or not able to afford it and more about the concept of "why tf do i have to pay for something that should just be accessible normally anyways" from what i can gather. also, i dont know if you read the last paragraph, but this guy literally just got his first job ever. of course he doesnt have much money on his own yet. also also, they never said anything directly about wanting to go to tournaments or anything. thats not what his point was.

[@Jake38nine]

@@scp-phenomenon014 Everything is accessible normally in the pokemon games.

[@scp-phenomenon014]

@@Jake38nine dlc pokemon that are broken or at least fairly decent in competitive play are indeed behind a paywall, unless you can somehow convince someone to trade the pokemon they paid money for as well as spent normal time getting hell maybe you just think a pokemon is cool but you cant have it because its behind that paywall, no competitive play in mind or anything like why just why

[@scp-phenomenon014]

not to mention just generally needing not one, but several games to get certain pokemon on your own, is already dubious at best if you had an old game already then its forgivable but needing to buy an older game to get something for your newer one is bleh imo edit; i forgot to mention grabbing both copies of a game, like scarlet AND violet, just for the version exclusives if you dont feel like doing a trading hassle with strangers which is always kinda unreliable

[@pokefabri]

You should be able to send a list of your team to the tournament beforehand and gamefreak give you a switch with your team on it. Or let you "download" your team into your switch as a rental team. I don't know how other competitives games deal with this but surely having to take your console to a tournament isn't common

[@dudono1744]

Having to build a team isn't common either for competitive games I think. Taking your console is probably a thing for community tournaments, but anything official should have the equipment..

[@fifthQuark]

Or maybe create a vgc game or addon that allows you to do so like showdown while being all in ram or with some form of live monitoring to prevent cheating.

[@schenkus4530]

It's just insane to see how unaccessible certain teams are if you don't know the strategies shown in this video. I totally agree that there should just be a game for competitive players that gets updated as new titles are being released. My only experience in somewhat competitive team building was with bd and sp, where it's kinda necessary to grind for a perfect IV ditto in order to breed the mons you want. And ngl it's the most tedious thing I've done in my entire life. Sure, the procedure is easy to grasp but so luck dependent that it makes me sick.

[@TFSthegreat]

New players can't transfer Pokemon from the 3DS anymore as of the e-shop shutdown. And new players aren't some minority demographic, either - this has been VGC's biggest year ever. If you're a new player and you want 0 Speed Cresselia - the best Pokemon in the format - your best option is to buy BDSP and keep resetting the roamer. Freezai's team may not have had Urshifu - the second best mon in the format - but there's no way to get it outside of purchasing Sword/Shield AND its DLC - $90 for a single Pokemon!

[@imablisy]

New to sv

[@Jake38nine]

$90 is not comparable to the amount if expenses used to travel for VGC events. If you can't afford a $90 game, you can't afford to travel to vgc events. That's just common sense. $100 is very easy to save up every year. To have all 5 pokemon games, you're spending about $200 or less every year within 3-5 years. $510-600 within 3-5 years is totally accessible to buy. If you can't save $600 within 3-5 years, then you can't even afford to go to vgc events in the first. Vgc events are not free. Travel is not free. You have to calculate all of that in with the cost of the games, and travel will always cost more. And you know vgc players aren't getting free lodging and free food either. They're paying for hotels and foods. Everything combined will cost more than $200 every year for a couple games. Use common sense and math and you'll know this easily.

[@Flygoniaks]

One thing that's become very clear to me is that there needs to be a way to artificially set an IV to whatever you want, just like how Hyper Training lets you set an IV to the max. Obviously that won't solve all the accessibility problems competitive Pokémon has right now, but it probably should be the first thing they do (and should be pretty easy).

[@nickolasperazzo8254]

Don't forget that would help on hidden power type too

[@Flygoniaks]

@@nickolasperazzo8254 I highly doubt Hidden Power will be returning after its removal in Gen 8.

[@nickolasperazzo8254]

@@Flygoniaks wait, it was removed!? I only played up to gen 7 and saw playtroughs of gen 8 forward

[@Flygoniaks]

@@nickolasperazzo8254 A number of different moves were removed in Gen 8, Hidden Power being one of them.

[@Irishlozcat]

I really appreciate that it is easier than ever to train pokemon in Scarlet and Violet. It is still a bit unreasonable for a casual player to get into the competitive scene, but as someone who took a vague interest in it, I was able to make pretty good teams with community help. There are special trade codes used to get exclusives from either game if you don't have a friend, and with the teal mask you can bascially get as many ev boosting items as you want from Ogre Oustin'. Its not perfect, but its good enough for me to build several teams. I think it would be smart of the developers to introduce some of the more competitive pokemon in the form of Tera raid events, but knowing them they probably wont. Either way i'm hopeful that it keeps getting better from here

[@CaptainSherbertTheQuestionable]

I agree with the tera raid idea. I find it weird that they are allowing home transfers be used at all. Back in the XY era they started a rule where the pokemon needed to be obtaines in that generation of games. That rule has persisted until now(about 10 years). As far as building teams go, its simple for me but in your defense I will admit that having done this for 10 years between ladder, starting to do live events this last year, and picking up smogon that I've since dropped so of course it would come easier to me. Either way, I hope you enjoy it there are very good parts of this community that are unlike this comment section of non vgc players arguing about about a problem that has no relevence to them anyways. Maybe I'll see you at an event someday and not know who you are.

[@finalGambitShedinja]

it’s not really about how tedious it is, it’s about how gamefreak insists on making things more difficult than it needs to be. Arbitrary dice rolling and hidden mechanics vital to the competitive game that are never explained

[@marcorodriguez8792]

While you basically explained and showed why most people don't like or can't even get into VGC, I and the other hand, loved doing it. There is just something about getting pokemon from older games and seeing them in the modern games/console that motivates me. Catching, raising, and training a pokemon to then use them on online battles and then eventually to competitive matches is so satisfying. I really love the grind and I can definitely understand why many just want to focus on the battling and skip the grind. The reason why I don't like playing showdown is because I rather use pokemon that I caught myself or obtained through an event. Not to mention things have gotten so much easier in recent pokemon games. In my eyes genning is cheating and I will never go through with it but at the same time, I don't mind if others do since, again, most people don't have the time or money to get older pokemon games to create their dream team.

[@baddidea4863]

honestly, that last sentence is the truest thing ever. not everyone has the time or money. i really do think that people should be allowed to gen pokemon for tournaments, because... like... you can't even GET pokemon transport anymore, you know? if someone new wanted to hop in, they'd be behind the curve and could never regain it.

[@KeyboardKlutz_0]

You are a paragon for this community... if only people like Verlisify had your outlook.

[@francocordero32]

@@baddidea4863 if you don’t have time or money to do something… do something else, i would love to compete in the F1 but I cannot afford it, the world is what it is, I sorry for you.

[@GrayscaleCanvas]

Would it kill TPC to make an item akin to a reverse bottle cap?

[@FloodclawKupo]

Absolutely amazing summary of how much of a time differential it is to get a single team ready for a single event - though I do have to admit that personally I don't really mind there being a few hours of effort to make the pinnacle of a competitive team, considering most people will only ever need far less than that. Though the points raised about TMs being consumable again and Tera typing taking ages to farm for are absolutely right, alongside the fact that getting Pokemon between gens is going to get much tougher with Bank and Transporter on the way out.

[@Cass-zb9nr]

Issue is that you might have to do this several times, specially as metas evolve and what your perceived optimal team composition changes; this isn't something you do once at the start of a ruleset and forget about if you actually want to stay on top of everything.

[@Moe_Posting_Chad]

Why should so many human beings spend their precious time, their lives. Grinding senselessly just to be able to "play" the game? That's the part none of you are justifying. This isn't "I'm playing through the gyms to get to the E4" no. This is. Busy work. For the sake of busy work. Its wasteful and honestly insulting. This isn't 1996! There is no technical limitation that would justify this behavior!

[@FloodclawKupo]

@@Moe_Posting_Chad It's an RPG. Spending time to increase your stats has always been part of RPGs, hasn't it? You don't need to do any of this to complete the game itself, this is purely high-end optimisation. And if you want the best of the best, you put in some work with the game itself to get it. You could just generate the Pokemon you want, sure, but that's operating outside the game. Do you propose that Pokemon games themselves have ways to instantly make max-level Pokemon with perfect stats and sub-stats and movepools?

[@Moe_Posting_Chad]

@@FloodclawKupo "It's an RPG. Spending time to increase your stats has always been part of RPGs, hasn't it?" Its not an RPG or a JRPG though. Its a monster team building game. I'm not reading anything else. Why are you playing DEFENSE FOR THE COMPANY? Nobody but the company benefits from your thinking. And you're doing it for free. Reasonable people are objecting to the modern state of the franchise and you scream no think of muh sunk cost. Get real!

[@Moe_Posting_Chad]

@@FloodclawKupo "Do you propose that Pokemon games themselves have ways to instantly make max-level Pokemon with perfect stats and sub-stats and movepools?" Yes. Its called an encounter in the tall grass with a shiny Pokemon that has the perfect IV spread with a favored nature. This argument is stupid. Its an RNG slot machine. And this isn't a tournament based on who can find the first shiny in the tall grass. That's what you're arguing it is. Its disgustingly dishonest, or stupid, or both.

[@dittmar104]

Imagine being a kid with school, sport, other hobbies and a part time job and only having half an hour to play a day. Then having to shill out $210 and spend a month building a team just to get beaten because your opponent spent more time playing competitively because they gened

[@steegen101]

Really opened my eyes. I love playing Pokemon but now I'm certain I'll never try VGC outside of Showdown