What would your ideal Pokémon game be like?

Quick Introduction: What is The Metagame? The Pokemon Metagame is a term used to describe the ‘competitive battle scene’ as it exists online. Metagame is a broad term that is used to describe specific strategies or tactics used in a game which go beyond the given ruleset. In Pokemon, many rules and clauses have been created in order to maintain a balanced playfield (ie: no overly cheap tactics that can potentially break the game…you know, like when your friend picked Oddjob when playing Goldeneye for N64. Preventing stuff like that). There are 2 metagames that are played the most. The more traditional is standard single battles: each team has 6 Pokemon, and they fight 1 at a time. Singles is most often played online on programs like Showdown and Shoddy Battle. The metagame used most in IRL tournaments (including Nintendo's VGC) is doubles, where you may bring 6 Pokemon to the match, but must pick only 4 to battle with, making each fight 4 vs 4, with 2 Pokemon fighting on each team at a time. The reason doubles is the preferred metagame for in-person tournaments is that doubles matches go far quicker than singles, often finishing completely in under 10 turns (singles tourneys go for usually 20-30 turns, sometimes more). There are several online communities which dedicate great time and effort to discussing competitive Pokemon, and making it as fun as can be: Smogon a great site for competitive Pokemon knowledge. They have a very friendly (but also serious) community and a very active forum, complete with a ‘Rate My Team’ section, a Battling 101 tutor program, Tournament Discussion section, Individual Pokemon Analsys/Recommended Movesets section, and plenty more. Although their forums have discussions for everything under the sun, they focus mainly on discussing the singles metagame. They also have a nifty battle simulator called Pokemon Showdown, which is probably the most used on the internet. Make your team in minutes and battle other people. Thousands of battles go down on Showdown every day. Very great program to use when you want to get more competitive practice under your belt for ANY metagame format. Bulbapedia: Wikipedia for Pokemon! They have very detailed pages on every Pokemon in the game, which includes base stats, moves learned and at what levels, type weakness, breeding groups, etc. etc. There's also many pages on items, moves, and everything else you can imagine. A very great resource for competitive and main game players alike. Serebii: up-to-date news on Pokemon, databases, ‘Rate My Team’ section, as well as info about all the games, trading card game sets, and the TV show. A very good go-to place for Pokemon news. NuggetBridge News, Forums, well written articles, and a beginners section for those new to the scene. Nuggetbridge focuses mainly on the doubles metagame and is an excellent place to check out if you want to learn more about doubles or Nintendo VGC tournament strategy. Make sure to check them all out! Now, onto the nitty-gritty: BASE STATS: Base stats are the general outline of statistics for a specific Pokemon. Essentially, different Pokemon have different base stats! Ever wonder why Shuckle is so slow? Well the short answer is, he has a very low base stat for Speed. In the competitivce world, Pokemon almost always focus on some stats more than others. Let’s take Scizor for example. Scizor has a very high Base Attack (130) and a very low Base Special Attack (55). Because his stat distribution is this way, almost 100% of all Scizors run attacking sets. Serebii recently posted all Gen 6 Pokemon base stats here. For base stats on all other Pokemon, check here! IV’s: This is one of two things that most people new to the competitive scene are intimidated by (the other being EV's). Fear not! Here's the deal: IV’s, or ‘Individual Values’, are the Pokemon equivalent of genes. Each Pokemon you have is assigned a numeric value for EACH stat upon their birth (or being caught in the wild). That number will range between 0 (lowest possible) or 31 (highest possible). Have you ever heard of people talking about breeding for perfect IV's? This is what they're referring to - trying to breed a Pokemon who has a 31 IV (again, 31 being the highest) for each of their stats. Generation 6 has made it way easier to breed for perfect IV's through the use of the Destiny Knot item. Theoretically, you can play competitive Pokemon without breeding for IV's, but you will only get so far before hitting a wall. Everyone who plays competitive Pokemon seriously only battles with 31 IV'd Pokemon, because any less is doing your team a large disservice. After all, why not battle with the strongest possible Pokemon? Breeding for IV's can sound difficult at first, but it's easy to learn. Here is a video guide which lays out exactly what you will need to do to breed for IV's! If you want to check the IV's of your current Pokemon, you can go talk to the man in the Kiloude Pokemon Center, who will tell you just how good your Pokemon's IVs are based on this response chart NATURES: Natures are very important in competitive Pokemon. There are 25 natures in the game, and each one will raise one stat of your Pokemon while lowering another. Why is this important? Well, let’s go back to Scizor. Because most Scizors are attackers, this means that a ‘Modest’ nature would be terrible for Scizor (+Special Attack, -Attack) because you’re lowering his gargantuan attack! An Adamant nature is ideal, as it raises his Attack to even scarier levels, while lowering his Special Attack that you were never going to use in the first place!

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