World Championship Thread.

[Glitchipedia]

Well, call me biased, but I think the level cap nerfs a good number of characters who could have—and should have—been much stronger. Red is the most egregious example—he has the distinction of being the series' highest-leveled trainer opponent during his appearance in HGSS, but this most recent appearance fails to do that distinction justice.

[The Outrage]

Well, call me biased, but I think the level cap nerfs a good number of characters who could have—and should have—been much stronger. Red is the most egregious example—he has the distinction of being the series' highest-leveled trainer opponent during his appearance in HGSS, but this most recent appearance fails to do that distinction justice.

High levels is a very superficial way to show battle ability, it should be done through superior AI and their strategies. N, according to Serebii, had been given AI higher than any character we've seen so far, even outside of Challenge Mode.

That is how true battling ability should be measured, and I'm glad Game Freak is getting that now, especially since there's only so many times you can increase a post-game trainer's levels and pretend its "challenging". Sorry, but if you want to call a trainer powerful, then it should take more than simply level-grinding to beat them. High levels should be indicative of nothing else but the sheer strength of the opponent, not their battle ability.

You're saying Red's been nerf'd, but from a functional standpoint, he's as good as any other elite trainer. From a story-perspective, yeah, his supposed talent fails to translate into the game mechanics, but that's because no matter how much Game Freak talks about the human-Pokemon bond forged through battling, its not a game mechanic. According to Oak, that was the crucial difference between Blue, the powerful and skilled trainer, and Red, the underdog. But again, that mechanic never existed, so Red was never that powerful trainer he was supposed to be in-game, and you'd be fooling yourself to think he was ever represented as good as he should be.

[Glitchipedia]

When Oak said that Red cared about his Pokémon and Blue didn't, what he meant was "Red is capable of caring because he's a human player; Blue is incapable because he's a computer." Since Red is no longer a human player, it stands to reason that he wouldn't be "as good as he should be". But is it unreasonable to ask that he still be better than any other computer opponent? High levels and strategy are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they complement each other quite nicely.

[The Outrage]

@Glitchipedia;
I'm pretty sure that whole "caring" bit is actually supposed to be the moral of the story, and not just a simple jab at the fact that Blue is an NPC. Oak specifically tells Blue "You have forgotten to treat your Pokémon with love and trust" not that he is incapable of it, as you would be implying. Many NPC's in the game are shown forming this trust bond between themselves and their Pokemon, the prime example is N. He forms a bond so strong with Pokemon that despite not catching any of them in a Pokeball, and releasing them back to the wild, the Pokemon only recognize N has their Original Trainer--and yet he's the most challenging in-game battle in BW2, despite not being the highest in terms of levels. You've got to be reaching to say that quote there is to call out on the fact that Blue is an NPC when many NPC's have shown that capacity of forming a bond with their Pokemon.

Finally, Red is better than "any other computer opponent" as I'm sure he has the high AI NPC's get in the world tournament. You're still missing the fact that its still not much of a tournament if the player can level grind themselves beyond what the NPC's use, so they either make all the NPC's at level 100 without auto-level up, or they standardize the levels to make this a challenge rather than a mere obstacle like the Black Skyscraper. Besides, there's not much Red can do in terms of strategy if they're using his iconic team, so he can only work with the AI he's given.

You can complain all you want, but Game Freak's made the right choice here with level-capping. Yes, high levels and strategy compliment each other, but at the end of the day, your level 100 Pokemon that you've level grinded will only need the most powerful move in their arsenal, and not any strategic thinking to beat anyone at level 85 and lower (Red's highest). They shouldn't turn this entire feature into something you can simply level-grind to beat just because of one character, who, in-story, was only ever able to beat trainers more skilled for the same reason the main character in Yu-Gi-Oh does, so the simplest solution is to level cap.

[Glitchipedia]

Well, if I'm going to be honest, I don't think Red should have come back in the first place. I don't understand what would bring him back to the tournament circuit, especially after Ethan/Kris/Lyra randomly broke the winning streak he'd had since becoming a trainer. (Prior defeats are ambiguously canon at best, I should think.) Do you believe Game Freak made the best call there?

If I'm coming across as hostile, be aware that this is not my intention. I'm just trying to understand.

[The Outrage]

@Glitchipedia;
Game Freak's made a lot of bad calls, but we have to remember, even if this tournament is canon (and you can see my arguments for why I think it can be despite lack of updated sprites), it is first, and foremost pandering to the fans, so given that purpose in mind, I'd say they made the right choice in bringing Red. Besides, I doubt Red's nearly as bad as Giovanni that losing to a child would make him give up. I'd say he left to train in Mt. Silver simply because there was no challenge left, and the HgSs PC rekindled his battling spirit.

[Glitchipedia]

Hm. Never thought of it that way. I suppose that makes sense, sort of.

On the topic of pandering to the fans, there's one big problem with that: still no Leaf!

[UptheHillBackwards]

Sorry if this has already been discussed, I just joined this thread:

So is the World Tournament going to take place as something of a "Battle Frontier"? We will have to complete some aspect of it to upgrade our trainer card won't we? (not that I mind, I'm personally excited for the WT. All your memories coming back!!)

[Ivysaur]

I just noticed Red's Pikachu is female in WT. Interesting.

[The Outrage]

I just noticed Red's Pikachu is female in WT. Interesting.

Obviously World Tournament is non-canon

I wonder if someone slipped that in on purpose without people noticing (they did mess up Skyla's sprite) or.....Pikachu died and this is his daughter.

EDIT: Do you have a video as evidence for this @Ivysaur?

This video I found has Red's Pikachu as male. If he has a female Pikachu, it may suggest that he has two teams.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I just noticed Red's Pikachu is female in WT. Interesting.

Obviously World Tournament is non-canon

I wonder if someone slipped that in on purpose without people noticing (they did mess up Skyla's sprite) or.....Pikachu died and this is his daughter.

EDIT: Do you have a video as evidence for this @Ivysaur?

This video I found has Red's Pikachu as male. If he has a female Pikachu, it may suggest that he has two teams.

Or maybe WT trainers' teams have fixed Pokémon species only and any other data -gender, IVs, etc- is random. Which would be a bit disappointing, I think.

[The Outrage]

I just noticed Red's Pikachu is female in WT. Interesting.

Obviously World Tournament is non-canon

I wonder if someone slipped that in on purpose without people noticing (they did mess up Skyla's sprite) or.....Pikachu died and this is his daughter.

EDIT: Do you have a video as evidence for this @Ivysaur?

This video I found has Red's Pikachu as male. If he has a female Pikachu, it may suggest that he has two teams.

Or maybe WT trainers' teams have fixed Pokémon species only and any other data -gender, IVs, etc- is random. Which would be a bit disappointing, I think.

Why would they make gender random? We know they have two teams, and even for a single trainer using the same species twice, they have multiple movesets.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I just noticed Red's Pikachu is female in WT. Interesting.

Obviously World Tournament is non-canon

I wonder if someone slipped that in on purpose without people noticing (they did mess up Skyla's sprite) or.....Pikachu died and this is his daughter.

EDIT: Do you have a video as evidence for this @Ivysaur?

This video I found has Red's Pikachu as male. If he has a female Pikachu, it may suggest that he has two teams.

Or maybe WT trainers' teams have fixed Pokémon species only and any other data -gender, IVs, etc- is random. Which would be a bit disappointing, I think.

Why would they make gender random? We know they have two teams, and even for a single trainer using the same species twice, they have multiple movesets.

Laziness, maybe? It's easier to save trainers data as Trainer + Pokémon[1-6][moveset,held item], than Trainer + Pokémon[1-6][PID, gender, IV, EV........ moveset, held item]. I don't know, I'm just speculating.

[The Outrage]

They've set all those factors for in-game trainers, why would they not do it here, especially when they have to go through the effort of giving them better AI?

[Ivysaur]

EDIT: Do you have a video as evidence for this @Ivysaur?

This video I found has Red's Pikachu as male. If he has a female Pikachu, it may suggest that he has two teams.

Pokémon Black 2 & White 2 | Pokémon World Tournament ~ Red - YouTube

The strange thing is Serebii only reported a single team for each Champion, but two teams for each Gym Leader. Maybe genders aren't set after all?