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[Logos]

Gen 4 Pokémon League Interest Thread

Introduction

After a bit of talk, and mulling the idea over for quite a bit, asking myself and a few others whether or not it would be worthwhile to at least put up an interest thread for this, I decided to just say “Why not?” and ask. Basically, I wanted to gauge interest for a league-style setup played out in Generation 4 Pokémon games. I’ll list the details for the league in more detail below.

Why Gen 4?

I know that one of the first questions likely coming to mind is “Why not the newest Generation of games with Black and White?” The answer is fairly simple: Dream World. Dream World has done some fairly odd things for the world of Pokémon from the angle of team building, primarily in that the Dream World’s Pokémon are unreliably random, and in that some of the Dream World Pokémon, such as Speed Boost Blaziken, are vastly overpowered in regards to their abilities. Gen 4 both allows people to have more control in being able to actually do everything in-game, and Gen 5 is still a mess when it comes to what is and isn’t overpowered.

Why not just say “No Dream World Abilities” and still use Gen 5?

We are not Nintendo. We can’t police that. Other things are easier to detect, however, and while we will operate on the honor system for a few things here, we cannot accurately police “No Dream World Abilities,” in the case of, say, Alakazam who got Magic Guard, because without having a Pokémon with Trace as an ability explicitly copy the ability, it comes down to one combatant saying “He had a Magic Guard Alakazam with Life Orb!” and the other saying “No, it was an Inner Focus Alakazam with Wise Glasses!” It becomes a “He said, she said” story, and that just makes things no fun for anyone involved, especially those who have to resolve it.

You mentioned needing the honor system. What rules are you using?

The rules we are adopting are fairly simple, and are as follows:

Evasion Clause – No moves or items used to increase Evasion are allowed (Moves: Double Team, Minimize, Acupressure; Items: Brightpowder)

Species Clause – Only one Pokémon of any given species can be included on a single team.

Name Clause – No Pokémon can have the name of a different Pokémon (i.e. a Gyarados named Starmie).

No “Hax” Items – Items which activate solely on luck are prohibited (Items: King’s Rock, Quick Claw, Focus Band, Razor Claw, Razor Fang).

Pokémon Ban List – In order to ensure competitive fairness, the following Pokémon will be restricted from use:
Arceus (all plates)
Darkrai
Deoxys (all forms)
Dialga
Garchomp
Giratina (all forms)
Groudon
Ho-Oh
Kyogre
Latias
Latios
Lugia
Manaphy
Mew
Mewtwo
Palkia
Rayquaza
Salamence
Shaymin (Sky Forme)
Wobbuffet
Wynaut
ANY AND ALL HACKED POKéMON!

How does the league work?

The league operates on a fairly casual points-based system, and would run for up to 8 weeks (as participation dictates; if interest holds beyond that, a second iteration could be put into effect). Participation is not mandatory, but based on participant desire.

Points
Points are gained in weekly stretches, or “rounds,” in which each trainer may have a casual match with each other available trainer within the league once (or more than once, but only one match will count toward the week’s points). All matches will be automatically scaled to Level 50, and will be best 2 out of 3.

- 1 Point for match participation
- 3 Points for match win
- 1 Point for match draw
- 5 Points for Leader defeat
- 8 Points for Leader defense

Leaders
At 15 Points gained, a trainer may elect to become a gym leader, claiming a type of Pokémon and building a gym of that type. Other trainers of the league may, rather than challenge a Leader as a casual trainer for the week, challenge the Leader’s gym team for a larger risk and reward for the week. Leader battles must have one Leader and one challenger (no Leader vs. Leader battles). Leader types are available on a “First come, first serve” basis.

Reporting Wins and Losses
Initial reporting the results of a match is the responsibility of the winner of the match, and the loser of the match is responsible to confirm the result. Unreported matches will not be counted toward Points for the week. If a match is reported, yet unconfirmed, the victor will receive his or her Points for participation and victory, but the loser will not receive his Point for participating.

What do the Points lead to?
At the end of the League’s duration, the trainer with the most amount of Points is crowned the League Champion, and there will be an in-game prize to be negotiated upon completion (mainly because the Champion will have some direct say as to his or her prize).

If you would like to express interest in joining such a League, or have further questions as to its structure, please comment below. I would like to have around ten to twelve individuals interested before beginning the League, though the League will accept late comers, should more be interested once we get rolling. The more, the merrier.

Interested Trainers
Logos

[kackawacky]

It's not a bad idea, and I agree with a Pokemon ban list, but there are a few little niggles for me.

No heightening accuracy - why not? Surely sand attack and the like will run rampant if you can't boost your own hit chance

No luck held items - surely the idea of overpowered items is the proc chance. If the item doesn't go off at all then you're wasting an item slot.

If you're playing on the ds, opponent Pokemon don't have nicknames. It will always say 'trainer is about to use gyarados' in your situation.

I assume we could use gen 3 and 2. I have copies of fire red and heart gold (yes, I've owned every Pokemon game since 3rd gen and played every one since 1st) and I only really like one or two fourth gen Pokemon. I know I know, going for Pokemon that look good over Pokemon the play well is mad but it's how I play. No worrying about weaknesses, low stat allocation, EVs or anything like

[Lyre Harper]

I assume we could use gen 3 and 2. I have copies of fire red and heart gold (yes, I've owned every Pokemon game since 3rd gen and played every one since 1st) and I only really like one or two fourth gen Pokemon. I know I know, going for Pokemon that look good over Pokemon the play well is mad but it's how I play. No worrying about weaknesses, low stat allocation, EVs or anything like

In the same boat myself to be honest (got every game out to my name ) though when L mentions Gen 4 I think he's including preceding gens as well, since D/P/Pt/HG/SS have all four gen-mons available.

If I can wrangle a way to get my ds netted (and this team reworked...) I am so in.

[kackawacky]

I just thought of a rule to add. No rattata otk. It's cheap and not in the spirit of a fair game

[Maddie Mondale]

I'd be up for it if I could figure out how the heck I get my DS wireless-capable.

[Archanon]

Way too lazy to go through the hassle of digging out my games and EV training. Because without EV training I might as well not join up.

Also, Gen IV was the worst generation to me, so there's that.



Edit: Now if this was done via a simulator or something so I didn't have to go micromanage my training for hours on end and could just hop straight to having a properly trained team (and didn't have to put up with Sinnoh in the process) then I might be interested.

[Logos]

No heightening accuracy - why not? Surely sand attack and the like will run rampant if you can't boost your own hit chance

No luck held items - surely the idea of overpowered items is the proc chance. If the item doesn't go off at all then you're wasting an item slot.

If you're playing on the ds, opponent Pokemon don't have nicknames. It will always say 'trainer is about to use gyarados' in your situation.

Heightening accuracy and Evasion clause are two different matters. Evasion is the stat to be increased that alters incoming hit rate: If you have boosted Evasion by using Double Team or the like, moves with 100 accuracy now only have a 75% chance to hit, and further uses of Evasion lower that rate significantly, to where 100 accuracy moves only have a 33% chance of hitting. There are moves to circumvent this, but effectively forcing someone to carry such a move by leaving the chance open to an Evasion Hax sweep is not fun for anyone but the person abusing such tactics.

Accuracy-altering moves, such as Sand-Attack, are still permitted because they are easily solved by switching out the accuracy-reduced, whereas self-raising Evasion comes down to getting the lucky shot and killing the Evasion abuser.

As for Luck-based Held Items (or "Hax" Items, as they're referred above), the big thing is that there is a chance that the item's effect can go off every turn. Focus Band can go off consecutively, and keep your Pokémon alive with 1HP turn after turn, even when that Pokémon should otherwise be dead to rights. Razor Fang and King's Rock both give all moves that deal combat damage a flinch chance, and with the amount of moves out there that also induce status effects or stat drops, giving them a flinch chance as well as the pre-existing status effects are too much. Razor Claw doubles critical hit chances, and Quick Claw contains the nearly 20% chance every turn of violating speed-based priority and going first, making certain slow but powerhouse Pokémon almost impossible to counter before falling to at least a partial sweep.

Name clause was taken straight from Nintendo's tournament policies. It doesn't do much under the SET battle style, which online battles utilize, but it was worth using nonetheless.

And as for your question regarding the generations, Kackawacky, Gen 4 does not simply mean the Sinnoh Pokémon from Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum. It just means everything prior to Black and White is available for use.

---

Edit to avoid double-posting: I understand your notion about the EV training and the like, Archanon, and suppose I should mention that EVing or setting things up competitively is not necessary at all for this league. It is just meant to be casual in nature, and the extent in which each person wants to train things is up to them. Hell, I know that if I EV trained everything (and I'm one of those weird people who enjoys EV training), I wouldn't get to try out half of the things I want to play around with.

Also, EVing a team to use as a Leader (if/when people get there) takes away from the time they have to build their Leader team, because they've got to be ready to take on challenges with it by the next week's go, and there's no guarantee that their first type-choice is available.

Aside from that note, you have me honestly curious: why is Gen 4 your least favorite?

[GodsGameFreak]

Doing all the "professional" training of Pokemon takes aaaaall the fun out of it for me, so I'm gonna have to say no.

[Daracaex]

I don't understand why you're saying Gen IV. I don't think many around here would break the rules outright. You can trust most people to follow them on honor.

Anyway, when Black and White came out, I transfered most of my pokémon from my Gen IV games over. I really don't feel like playing them again and retraining a team when I have fully-trained pokémon in my White version.

[Logos]

GGF, I addressed that notion in the post directly above yours. "It is just meant to be casual in nature, and the extent in which each person wants to train things is up to them.

"

[GodsGameFreak]

Eh. There will be those who have done the professional training though, and that puts me at a big disadvantage. Besides, I only have one team of Pokmeon that could do this, and fighting other people has never really been fun in my experience.

[Archanon]

Aside from that note, you have me honestly curious: why is Gen 4 your least favorite?

1. Lack of fire-types. All that you get are the starter line and Heatran.
2. Dumb methods of evolution. "Oh you can evolve if you know this move at this level! And you totally learn the move naturally, but we can't make a flat-out level evolution because that would be a retcon!" "You can only evolve in this one place."
3. Apparent focus on new evolutions rather than new Pokemon, especially since you had to complete D/P before you could actually use those evolutions. Some of them are interesting and I wouldn't have minded a few... but they should have been evolutions for Pokemon you could get in the course of the main storyline, and there didn't need to be nearly so many. (Seriously, do they have something against one- and two-stage Pokemon?)
4. Pokemon designs in general - I wasn't a fan of them, but that's really just me, so it's not that important.
5. It's the generation where I found the gym leader designs to have started to get out of hand. Gen I and II were fairly realistic - sure, there were some weird hair colors, but the styles were mostly things that could reasonably be done in reality. Gen III started to get a little more out there, but it was still not bad. Then you get Gen IV and you have Crasher Wake and Fantina and they just look weird. (Gen V is guilty of this too but it started with Gen IV.) (This is also subjective, but you did ask for my reasons.)

[Hidden Sanity]

Eh, I might be interested, I'll boot up my game once I get most of the work-load down.

[Uber]

1. Lack of fire-types. All that you get are the starter line and Heatran.

Aaaaaw.... Poor Torkoal gets no love.

[Logos]

As a follow-up question, as it seems to be a recurring notion here: how many of you would be interested were we to use Gen 5, and use the honor system to keep from using Dream World abilities? I would have to provide a slight re-write to the ban list to match Nintendo's for Gen 5 rather than Gen 4.

[Archanon]

1. Lack of fire-types. All that you get are the starter line and Heatran.

Aaaaaw.... Poor Torkoal gets no love.

Torkoal is Gen III.

[Archanon]

I will say that I rather like the Gen IV chapter of the Pokemon Special manga, but I've never disliked anything that happens in said manga so...

[Uber]

1. Lack of fire-types. All that you get are the starter line and Heatran.

Aaaaaw.... Poor Torkoal gets no love.

Torkoal is Gen III.

Oh, is he? Shows what I know about the different Generations

[Maddie Mondale]

@Arch: I would have been interested in the Pokemon manga but then I found out that this thing called Burst Mode existed and it was Digimon Frontier all over again.

[Gem-Ini]

@Arch: I would have been interested in the Pokemon manga but then I found out that this thing called Burst Mode existed and it was Digimon Frontier all over again.

FRONTIIIIEEEERRRRR!!!!

/me spasms and dies