The Question of the Day is a way to facilitate community discussion to help members ponder the unanswered questions of the world that are somehow relating to the hobby. Questions are many times open ended and up to interpretation. Feel free to post your thoughts in as much or as little detail as you’d like.
Helpful Considerations may or may not help some people focus their answer, these are blurred to not bother those who have their own ideas.
I’ll be honest the only games I’ve played have been Red online and fangames but in all of them I am the kind of person who likes doing IVs/ EVs in casual runs and I believe in PURE SPEED NOTHING BUT TIMID/JOLLY 31 252 or DEATH
(I will accept hasty if its 31 and I don’t need defense)
I usually go through the story mode as fast as I can in the context of using underleveled, shitty Pokemon that I love. Just enough to the point where I don’t black out or have to reset constantly. The strongest one usually gets more level attention in the last places before I reach the Elite four.
Once or twice I’ll just say fuck it and go as quick as possible by overleveling the starter even though it is really boring.
I try to spread out my typing and have most things covered, but otherwise it’s my favorites or nothing. I’ve gone through the most recent games without evolving my starter, since I think Sobble and Sprigatito get a cuteness downgrade upon evolution.
As far as EVs/IVs/Nature go, I don’t bother with anything good until postgame- it’s better to breed after you have the shiny charm anyways.
I’ve been working on a ribbon master run for Piplup, and I’ve been doing a lot of competitive Pokemon training in Platinum that I never cared to do back then for the battle tower ribbons. I’ll have to do the same thing for the other games up until SM/USUM, where I do actually start to have competitive Pokemon, ha.
I play mostly for fun with less strategy/planning from the onset. I tend to start with a motley crew and switch out pokemon til I have a well-rounded team. I see what cool/cute/interesting pokemon I can catch in the first few areas that might also learn helpful moves for the gyms. I level up my team as I go and if I find one of my favourite pokemon I’ll likely add them to my team and rotate pokemon in/out depending on their level and my mood. When I get closer to the end/elite four, I build a more “serious” team. Although, I haven’t finished any of the recent games, so I probably should go do that one day soon lol.
My go to for the first play through is just playing with the Pokemon I like. But I only play gen 3 games so to avoid repetitiveness, each replay I use a whole new team and see how it goes.
Once I beat the game with said team I trade them all to a different cartridge rinse and repeat. Maybe in 10 years I’ll have the entire gen 3 pokedex completed .
My only requirement is that my team has to be able to learn all of the HM’s. I know…some of them are a waste but I despise going back to the Pokemon center to swap Pokemon only to cut a bush or move a rock
I just play casually. My strategy is keeping my starter as my primary lead Pokemon and just switch it as needed for a particular gym or anything like that.
I then try to stick to new Pokemon from that game’s generation to fill the party out. I enjoy that because it’s something new rather than sticking to my traditional favourite Pokemon.
For those Pokemon, I just pick one’s I like as I come across them and try to have a good spread of typings.
I never really look at IVs or EVs as I don’t play competitively.
Very little strategy. I pick the Pokemon that I like and I try my best to make it through. I would rather have a group of Pokemon that I enjoy battling beside than a technically-maxed team.
I like to blend my favourites with having a variety of typing, and ideally no overlapping types. I find that I have to consciously split battle time when two pokemon share a type. I try to have one each or fire/water/grass types. I also always choose the fire starter.
Some examples: in XY, my starter was Fennekin, and I also chose Charizard in Lumiose City. Delphox and Charizard hit almost all the same types so there was minimal strategy as to whether I used one or the other in any given situation.
Another example is using Lucario and Infernape in Sinnoh; I really like both, but there’s too much overlap.
I don’t really play anymore. When playing I go with my favorites, using little strategy (at first). Eventually my competitive nature kicked in and I want to win on occasion, so then I research a strategy that will work with most of my favorites.
When I am playing a new game for the 1st time, I just try and have fun with it. Pick new pokemon that I like and try things out. Pretty sure I had 4 Ghost types on my team with my initial run on Violet! On replays, I’ll get more into the weeds with making sure that I have good type coverage.
When strategy really comes into things, is when I am doing Nuzlockes. Gotta really work with what you have, so balancing everything is crucial.
Depends on what game you do. Platinum has by far been the most stressful one I’ve ever done. But there are plenty of low stress ones like FRLG and any game with a EXP Share. You can just dick around in those and be fine.
I never tried a Nuzlocke in Pokemon but I did one for an online pet site (like Neopets but for dragons). It was a lot of fun… But also kind of sad. I had to kill off several dragons in the story I was writing alongside the Nuzlocke lol.
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I try and focus on using new Pokémon or specific ones to the game I’m playing rather than going back to old favourites.
