Jim Sterling (The Jimquisition)

That was hilarious.

Wow he actually got the real D.C. Douglas for the end bit.

Fun fact: it is possible to prematurely reach the Throat of the World in Skyrim by doing this (complete without the Clear Skies shout). It doesn't accomplish anything other than netting you the Notched Pickaxe early, but I've done it.

I hate having to post twice in a row, but this is a thing that has happened.

As soon as he made that video, my order of the Toriel figurine arrived a few hours later. Thank god for Jim (?)

What's the song playing in the background of the Ubisoft segment?

It's the theme tune of the Eighties British comedy show, 'Allo, 'Allo.

Less topical because it came out awhile back, but Jim's porn reviews are filling a market in the weird bubble that is the internet, and they're the best.

Jim's straight and serious delivery/breakdown of the plot and sex scenes is almost rib-shattering.

Is the porn audio in the background from the actual vids? Because if it is that's hilarious.

Chains of Wub.

I V what Jim did there.

Holy crap, IV-training is a thing now?! Sweet! That takes away some of the contentious grinding that makes Pokemon's competitive scene less accessible to new players.

I'd say now they just need to get rid of IVs entirely but unfortunately certain things like Hidden Power are dependent on them.

Hooray for IV training, except that it only works for level 100 mons. Going by previous versions, I much prefer the old "breed millions of eggs" methods.

That's fair. All Pokemon are level-adjusted to level 50 during competitions which means you only need to get to L50 to have a competitive Pokemon unless your build requires a move learned at a higher level. Since there's no reason to get a Pokemon to L100 anymore, the way they did IV Training leaves you having to pick between obnoxious IV grinding or obnoxious XP grinding.

Although XP grinding is a lot easier than it used to be back in the day due to Lucky Eggs and the revamped EXP Share, it's still a toss-up as to whether you would rather do it that way or through IV breeding.

Still, it's a step in the right direction towards mitigating the toxic effect IVs have on the game. IIRC, they were introduced for the purpose of differentiating individual Pokemon to make even different members of the same species seem distinctively different from each other. It was meant to make the Pokemon seem more lifelike. Instead, all it did was introduce spreadsheets, calculations, and eugenics programs to the competitive scene.

IVs are pretty much the antithesis of Pokemon's core philosophy. They make it so the whole "Love your Pokemon" thing is infeasible. Your Pikachu is a garbage Pikachu. It will always be a garbage Pikachu. It can't ever be anything but a garbage Pikachu no matter how much time and devotion you put into it. You will never prevail until you dump its worthless ass and breed up a good Pikachu.

They wanted to humanize Pokemon by making them more distinctively individual and what they've achieved is a system in which certain members of a species are objectively superior to others.

edited 19th Nov '16 1:51:19 PM by TobiasDrake

Just like with people!#lolobjectivism

Yeah, I like what they tried to do, but the applications in competitive games really does go against the spirit. I can't really think of a way to have it both ways, though.

It doesn't bother me. Breeding and training only make sense if you're playing with others. Otherwise they're just a few more points in your statsheet, in the story.

Even then, in competitive, it really isn't about raw "strength". It's a game of counterpicking, built around a different set of rules. You're breeding monsters specced specifically for competition, and more often than not, they'll be running sets that mean jack shit when fighting NPC trainers; they'll just be so damn specialized. Defensive walls, Pursuit and Stealth rock aren't as much of a "prerequisite" as they are in comp, for example.

edited 19th Nov '16 5:20:55 PM by mrsunshinesprinkles

Yeaaaaah, people who complain about existence of IV and EV probably don't realize that they probably don't want their pokemons to be clones of each other either and competitive types wouldn't ever stop minx maxing so its impossibly to find system that has pokemons to be inviduals without there being "better" versions of same pokemon At least without radically changing stats in the game

The point is that having them be individuals through differentiating their stats is ultimately a broken and counterproductive system that does more harm than good to the spirit of the game. It's not that there's a better way to do it. It's that it shouldn't be a thing at all, because it doesn't do what it's supposed to do for the core game and adds nothing but needless, obnoxious tedium to the metagame.

It's not a flawed system that could be done better. It's a bad system that should never have been implemented and is now too intrinsically tied to certain game elements to be cut out entirely. That we are seeing elements like Super Training and Hyper Training being introduced to reduce the amount of harm it causes to the game is nothing short of a tacit confirmation that Game Freak knows exactly how toxic this mechanic is and is taking steps to correct it where possible.

The big issue is that casual players don't even notice IVs and EVs, which means they do not actually do what they're meant to do: make your Pokemon feel distinctive and individual. They don't feel that way because nobody notices that they're a thing at all.

So ultimately their only impact is on the metagame, and that impact is to make training Pokemon for competition incredibly tedious and irritating to the point that it's ultimately very inaccessible to new players.

edited 20th Nov '16 9:11:39 AM by TobiasDrake

People play Pokemon competitively?

Officially, Gamefreak and Nintendo hold yearly tournaments in addition to all their online tourneys.

Unofficially, see Smogon.

From what I've read, the problem goes beyond IVs and extends to the fact that the stats themselves are the issue, since in many cases they limit a specific Pokemon to a specific role. When all a Pikachu can be effective as is a Glass Cannon, it becomes a matter of how objectively good or bad any given Pikachu is at being a Glass Cannon.

If Nintendo wants to actually fix the problem, they need to overhaul their system to be more focused on move selection or passive traits (with greater variety possible in both).

Either way, at this point if they removed individualized stats, people who actually like that EV and IV training for some insane reason will get mad instead