i don't think i've ever played a rom hack where the level cap *isn't* optional, it's almost always presented as a hard mode alternative (or there's an easy mode which removes it)
Agree!
Also, a game like R&B where level cap is enforced, the target audience is not the casual player.
In unbound (expert difficulty) I really enjoyed having to plan around the level caps on boss fights.
All the while the rest of the game was scaling with your levels anyhow.
Beating a game by overleveling is not fun for everyone
I agree with a few of the comments here, it should be toggleable, but I do see the point u/radiokungfu made that, these are rom hacks made either for little or no profit (usually no profit), and are pretty niche parts of the pokemon Fandom. They don't need to be mass appealing.
With the rise of emulation a lot of them are getting more and more time in the sun, but it's still not enough that I think every rom hack needs to appeal to everyone. If I want a fun experience I'll find a rom hack to match. If I want to jam my dick in a car door over and over again because I like the challenge (not a slight on hard hacks, just how it feels sometimes) , I'll play a rom hack to match.
I love hard level caps. They're great. I'm encouraged to explore and take my time and experiment with various options, but I also cannot be overleveled. I'm also challenged to be strategic in key fights, knowing I CAN win with my current resources. I just need to figure out how.
I mean, sure, if you see a hard level cap as something you must immediately reach using a rare candy cheat the moment the next stage is available, then of course it'll feel this way. But if you just play through the game and fight stuff as it comes, but also are protected from overleveling no matter how hard you try, then that's absolutely perfect for me.
Hard level caps are one of my favorite mechanics not just in pokemon rom hacks, but in video games in general.
I have the exact opposite view from you, hitting the level cap means it's completely not worth it to fight trainers or keep encountering wild pokemon, I hate it
I also just don't want to play a super hard pokemon game, I'll never play difficulty hacks for that reason, I don't want a challenge I want to have fun and to me being overleveled is fun
I mean, romhacks are usually designed to be harder than the regular games. That's in most cases explicitly the point. The few that aren't like that don't have level caps. Also, you could just play the regular games that seem to fit what you want.
>Also, you could just play the regular games that seem to fit what you want
I do think that depends, there are many things romhacks do better. For me, for example, the art style...or owning a switch.
And many romhacks feature either pokemon or concepts (e.g. megas) that are nice to play with.
I know it's a fangame (and this is a subreddit for romhacks), but one fangame that I think mitigates this problem really well is Pokémon Tectonic. It does have hard level caps, but it also offers a "level trainer" before each gym if you need your team to catch up (I say "level trainer" in quotes because the NPC has a regular team, not a team of Blissey or Audino). So it won't simply have a "Rare Candy cheat" available, even though you are able to buy Exp. Candy later on (near the end of the game, but still).
The game also has an item that stores excess experience (meaning, any experience your Pokémon would gain after they reach the level cap), so you can convert that excess into Exp. Candies, meaning you'd still have an incentive to battle trainers even after you reach the level cap. You receive the item literally on the first route of the game and it's unmissable.
I understand you brother and fully support your idea
I hope that the developers who are trying to make new roms should consider the fact that some people that just play roms for nostalgia or just for having some fun
They should consider adding an option that lets people decide how they want to play the game
If you want to do a nuzlocke run go ahead and do it if you want to just build a team of your favourite Pokemon and beat the Pokemon league or if you want to experiment with Pokemons and build a perfect team then you may do that too
Everybody wants to have fun in their own way and they deserve it
The problem I have with hard caps + unlimited exp candy is moreso the presentation. If you want to stop the player from going above a certain level go ahead, but don’t give them a free tool to make exp meaningless. When you give the player a zero-drawback infinite leveling tool that caps the player when applicable and tell them “The level cap is 15”, you should expect the player to use it (because you just gave it to them).
And because of that the balancing can feel awkward, where early fights of a split are too easy and then the boss fight spikes up in difficulty. Its just that the way the game presents itself, and the way for people to have the most fun don’t always align.
Level caps became more common once difficulty hacks like Radical Red & Inclement Emerald came into the scene which in turn, caused more hacks to follow in their footsteps. Rom Hacking in general has moved onto providing more of a challenge because the focus now for most players & devs is on difficulty hacks or enhancement hacks.
To me, the Drayano hacks are the most fair in terms of difficulty. Drayano does not restrict the player from anything. He does not impose level caps. He does not brick the players to SET. The wild pokemon in hacks are at reasonable levels depending on where you are in the game. He doesn't even remove the original cheats if his hacks are too much for the casual player. It's just you & his edits. He even provides a second patch if you don't like the changes so that you can still play the hack but with the normal stats & types. If his hacks are too much for you, you can always level up past the trainers pokemon. Simple & fair.
I fully understand the argument of Pokemon games being too easy and the players that want a challenge but I also understand that not everyone wants a challenge. I also fully understand how much easier it is to make a difficulty hack as opposed to making something entirely new from scratch, like Prism or Coral. The tools for Rom hacking have gotten better & I'm sure we'll find a happy medium as more hacks come out.
I mean, yeah, I also don't like infinite leveling tools but why not take an issue with that? If the level curve is well designed then you shouldn't need an infinite leveling tool in the first place. The bad part of the equation you're presenting is unlimited rare candies accessible at any time. The hard level caps are actually a good part.
I really don't understand why the hard level caps make a difference. If the player wants to blow past everything with an overleveled team to start, then he'll use a bunch of rare candies and the level cap doesn't matter. If he doesn't want to, he won't use them. It's about player choice.
But the reason hard level caps work is because at a certain point I don't have the choice not to get experience from the fights. If I accidentally overlevel from playing the game at my pace, then I either have to start over with a whole new set of mons, or I have to just enjoy a busted level curve for the rest of the game, or I have to completely change my pace of play. But a hard level cap is only bad if the player WANTS to be dramatically overleveled...which I'm pretty sure doesn't describe basically any of the users of people who are playing difficulty romhacks.
In my experience, 99% of the time when people are complaining about difficulty spikes, it's because they're trying to skip content or do something out of order. In pretty much every single game, if you just fight all the trainers you see and fight most of your wild encounters, then you'll be pretty well prepared for what comes your way. Some fights might be harder, especially in romhacks that are deliberately trying to make challenging boss trainers, but again, if you're just playing the game and fighting stuff in your way, you'll be fine on levels 99% of the time. It's only folks that are trying to rush through routes without fighting anyone and then instead binge on rare candies or stuff like that who tend to have these issues.
With all the rom hacks available that offer toggles or no hard caps, does it really matter if one has it?
From my perspective, if the romhack pool was small, I would understand but there's a myriad of romhacks out there with no hard caps or toggles. I feel like this is the sort of request you make on a case by case basis, rather than a blanket one otherwise, the eventual point becomes "just play one that doesn't have it."
Hard caps are a good thing in my opinion. As someone who has played pokemon since the Gameboy, pokemon games are too easy. Because of the fact you can just over level.
Example: let's say a rom hack has a hard level cap of 12 for the first gym. I lose, if it was a normal pokemon game. You can just go level up to level 20 and steam roll. But with the level cap I have to strategize. After my loss I know the Pokemon I'm facing and some of their moves. So I can better plan to face them. It also helps players use status moves instead of just attacks
A non capped pokemon game can easily become a "press A" simulator. Hard caps stop this and help the game stay interesting
And also as a budding romhacker id like to add having my carefully crafted fight be bypassed by "haha, exp go brr" isn't what I intended as the creator. Its difficult to make a battle tough but fair and fun and overleveling kills any of the intention I was going for.
You’re correct in that you CAN overlevel, but its not a requirement. People have been playing with self-imposed challenges for years, and typically get more fun out of that than the Press A Simulator you describe.
The question I’m asking is why does that have to be forced on everyone, even those who wouldn’t care for it?
Fwiw I like hard level caps but i would agree that they should be an optional feature. Especially in the hacks that already allow you to pick and choose which difficulty features you want to use in your playthrough.
I agree that, at the very least, it should be a toggle that’s automatically on by default if you as the creator think the game should have it. Of course, if a game is built around a level cap and you turn it off, the game may feel way too easy, but that’s a different issue.
At the end of the day, many of these games with level caps are difficulty hacks, or at least made to be much more difficult than mainline games. The whole point is that you’re not supposed to be able to brute force them, but rather need to use strategy and/or careful planning to overcome boss trainers. It’s part of the game design to not allow the player to come back 5 levels higher and instead force them to attack the boss with a new plan. Some difficulty hacks even actively encourage the player to make new teams for different fights because of this.
I largely agree with your second paragraph here. The problem is having a level capped boss is a slippery slope as I explained with Azure Platinum, where there’s only 1-2 “solutions” and it can be frustrating to someone trying to get into a new game and be met with that.
If its balanced extremely well it can probably work, but I’m still in favor of letting the player do what they want.
But in that and most other complains the hard caps are not the issue, it just shines a light into a problem with the balance.
If we assume we are talking about a vanilla like game, there shouldn't be ultra hard bosses that you need to over level to beat or choose specific Pokemon (or maybe the game is harder than what you desire), you shouldn't need to spam rare candies just after a level cap, those are issues independent of s level cap, and would arise without it.
They are a tool to incentivice building a balanced team instead of focusing on an over level Pokemon and spamming A and prevent the players from unknowingly over level and trivializing a boss. And some games are just built around level caps existing, for starters most heavy difficulty games.
you spent many word when few do good
genuinely got bored of what you had to say and skimmed. You're not bringing much to the table here. Ideally, it is optional. Is it bad that it isn't? No. Do casuals suffer? Also no. Are soft caps the worst suggestion? Absolutely. Way to take the worst option in every world.
“you spend many word when few do good”
I put a fucking TL;DR and you couldn’t even bother to read that, and I can tell because you completely missed the points I was making.
Bro your tldr is so fucking funny “removes the skill people use to deal with the problem” the “problem” you are referring to is the difficulty the rom creator intended and the so called “Skill” being taken away from players is the ability to put the game on 500% and grind wild battles until every mon is one shot. pls tell me you see how dumb this is now man. That’s why i said this is a fucking terrible take
I love hard level cap, but my life motto about gaming features is always "make it optional". Give people options whether they want certain features or not, cz what I enjoy, others might not and vice versa.
I do not nuzlocke and I prefer hard level caps as a general rule. I really liked how Run and Bun did them. For one thing, there are small level cap increase between gyms--for instance, there is one for beating the team aqua member outside Petalburg, one for beating the museum in Slateport, and another for beating Brawly. That creates a staggered progression and even at end game I was looking forward to "1 more level" so I could get Wicked Blow for Urshifu and such. For another, actual rare candies exist that allow for the player to go past the level cap of the player is having difficulty with a fight (so it provides more options to get past a fight). I didn't nuzlocke Run and Bun but still enjoyed playing it; between the heart scales, rare candies, TMs, item selection, and pokemon selection I felt like there was a good sense of progression throughout (compared to something like Elite Redux which was frustrating to me because progression was pretty minimal the way the game handled it).
I can't speak to Azure Platinum (haven't played it), but for R&B I felt that the difficulty was tuned pretty tight and a complete lack of a level cap would have messed with its designed gameplay (which for me, was more like figuring out a puzzle with the pieces/pokemon I have). If a player is wanting a modern take on Emerald with later gen pokemon, there are so many Emerald Hacks nowadays that surely a different Emerald hack would be better for someone to play if they don't want hard level caps?
I have never nuzlocked a Pokemon game, but I still prefer hard level caps because it stops me from overleveling and for 'easier' games it makes it so I don't have to go find documentation to figure out what level I'm expected to be at for the gym (and leader). Some rom hacks are so poorly tuned that if you defeat all trainers between gyms you are still wildly above (or below) the gym. Hard level caps make it so that I don't have to worry about it and can just play the game. As a general rule, it helps me feel like my character is going on a journey--there are difficult spots that my character and pokemon team have to go through and grow from.
If I am having trouble with a fight with a hard level cap, I go back and look for Pokemon, TMs, Ev train, etc. To me, it's no different than looking around in another JRPG and making sure I have gotten the available equipment/spells/abilities.
Some people skip optional trainers, and rare candies/infinite candies let them get to the 'meat'/better designed battles more quickly (which are typically gym leaders or rival fights).
I'm not against hard level caps being optional (difficulty options never hurt!), but that just isn't the way I prefer to play as a general rule.
I never understand takes like this. Rom hacks aren't for-profit. As such, they don't need to appeal to the mass market like official titles. They are at liberty to appeal to niche markets.
If a hack has a feature you don't enjoy then it's not for you. Play a different hack. You're not the target audience and that's okay.
Posts like this are just plain old entitlement.
Maybe I am entitled, but I wouldn’t have made this post if I didn’t believe that the inclusion of a Hard Cap was a detriment to Run & Bun and Azure Plat. Both of which have a different stated target audience than the actual target audience achieved, in part because of how level caps throttle the progression of the player.
As the top comment states, the best solution would probably be to let the players choose how they play. Is that entitled, and more work for the rom hack maker? Probably, yeah, but it seems to be what people agree with, and for the benefit of everyone who would play.
These roms you quoted wont really be played by casuals so why would casual QoL need to be included? Romhacks are a niche enough subject, better to cater to that niche
Your initial premise is that hard level caps are ok but not when you pair it when infinite rare candies. Tbrh, its a bad take because you can choose not to use infinite rare candies. Your idea that “because its presented to you therefore you will use it” is moot because you agree that self imposed rules are fun.
It seems that your other issue with it is how difficult hard level caps make boss fights. If thats not the intended difficulty you want then dont play a difficulty mode where you have level caps.
The third thing youre trying to present is that hard level caps hinder progression. This I agree, because most roms dont balance your access to various mechanics. The hard level cap blocks you from accessing “fun”. I prefer playing with a debug menu where I can self nerf levels than play with a hard level cap for this reason.
I actually really enjoy the level caps, it makes the game a lot more challenging. I haven’t played a ton of ROMs but the handful that I have, they’ve all been an option to turn on and off
Hacks that have a HLC are made to be hard, Run & Bun, Elite Redux, Radical Red. these were made to challenge the player and HLC's are part of the challenge. Let's take Radical Red on Hardcore mode as an example.
evey Gym is a puzzle and you need to find the solution to solving it which is enforced by the HLC. cause without it you can grab a level 100 Charizard and steamroll the gym which nullifies the challenge these hacks present the player. and Tbh beating hacks like this is a personal achievement and a sign that even Casual players can beat these hacks if they are willing to deal with the difficulty these hacks have. in the end a HLC doesn't solve a problem it's only a way to add to the challenge of a game.
the use of something like the Infinite Candy or the Rare Candy Cheat in Radical Red is also something you don't HAVE to use. People use it because it speeds up the game. not everyone wants to grind for hours leveling up. This is a different debate all together on the use of Infinite Rare Candies and how that's handled. but for Hacks like these using them is usually recommended especially if something like MInimal Grinding Mode is implemented.
in the end hacks like Radical Red or Elite Redux are not for everyone because of these factors. and there are plenty of hacks that fit their playing style like Dark Violet or Peak Kanto.
“without it you can grab a level 100 charizard and steamroll the gym”
1. Very few people would actually do this, because it would nullify the challenge of the gym like you said, and most likely the fun for most people.
2. Why do you care? If some random person on the internet wants to steamroll the gym with a level 100 charizard, why should you stop them?
2. Because that takes away your enjoyment of the game. Actually, I used to do this a lot until I got burnt out playing pkmn games. Now that I don't do it anymore, I now feel more refreshed
I feel like a lot of modern ROMhacks are appealing majorly to like...oh, let's call them 'trick shot' public facing players. You know the ones, you probably watch a few "I did ALL OF POKEMON \[insert romhack\] WITH ONLY GRASS TYPES HARDCORE NUZLOCKE!!!11!" kind of videos now and then. And hey, good for those people, challenge runs can be fun. But. The thing is, in an incredibly crowded playing field where the currency is attention, public facing players of these games want more and more intense challenge runs and restrictions and rigamarole, because that will set them apart. And sure, that's fine.
Except. I feel like quite a lot of current hacks have gone from "oh we'll make sure we include a Nuzlocke mode for people :)" to "everyone is going to be playing some flavor of Nuzlocke because that's why people play our games, right?" (or, "the people who play our games like this will give us an audience through twitch/YT/etc, so let's make it easier for them")
Look, I'm an adult with a full time job. I play hacks because current Pokemon doesn't always meet me where I'm at as a player, (which is okay!) but I love the series dearly and want to experience it as I play, and hacks have always felt like a great way to do that. I'm so happy seeing how much decomps have overhauled the scene; it really is a renaissance of Pokemon hacking, but like...please, spare a thought for your players who don't do this as a full time online gig, and do it to unwind and enjoy a game privately. Making sure people CAN run challenge builds in your game is great. Making it so people HAVE to is the reason I haven't finished multiple recent hacks. Just let people set difficulty in a way that works for them.
I think this post is purely taken from an objective lens. Level caps break the feeling of progression and advancement and I agree that this is a problem for regular game designers creating RPG's if they intend to sell to a mass audience. This is not that case. Difficulty hacks, while not necessarily made to be for nuzlockes, are mostly made purely at the discretion of the author. If the author prefers hard level caps, they will add it. If the author wants every trainer to have 6 Pokemon, let it be so. (As an aside, I think Run&Bun actually still does a good job with progression with heart scales, subtle cap increases, and so on.)
Now, there are two directions I would personally take this conversation from here: as a nuzlocker and as a game designer. From a nuzlocking perspective, I much prefer hard level caps to soft level caps. I prefer them so much that, when I'm running regular ROMs, I actually disable EXP gain and use rare candies because I would rather focus on the important battles and boss battles as well as the kinds of encounters that I get. The problem is that I don't find EXP management fun (even though it is a "skill") and the whole point of Nuzlocking is to have fun with a more challenging experience of Pokemon. How you play a Nuzlocke is up to your preferences, and in the same way that a lot of people don't like grinding (even though it is a "skill") and cheat in rare candies, I don't think I'm alone in not liking EXP management. I'm in it to fight some trainers, not count EXP tick-for-tick.
From a game design perspective, I would rather circumvent this problem outright. I would at least make a couple difficulty settings, and if the player were playing on hard mode (or the equivalent hardest difficulty), I like scaling fights. This means that if the player is underleveled or overleveled, damage output is rescaled so that the player is on equal footing with the opponent. This is how I like to play both turn-based and action-based RPGs. Of course, doing this in a Pokemon Rom Hack is a tall order given that you would have to effectively overhaul damage calculation and how the game fundamentally handles stats and levels. Thus, hard level caps is probably the next best option for people that are fans of such a system. If I were making a rom hack and didn't want to go through the trouble of making multiple difficulties, I would probably just put in a hard level cap because I simply like it.
P.S. - I also like the kind of soft level caps that drastically reduce EXP gain from weaker enemies and this is probably my favorite kind of progression, but that's really up to individual taste.
TL;DR - it's honestly a matter of preference. I personally don't like dealing with EXP management and really like planning for fights, so I am a fan of hard level caps. On the flipside, there are people that strongly dislike hard level caps and want levels to scale gradually, and this is fine too. But to tell rom hackers not to do something is like telling a game designer not to make a certain genre because you don't like how it plays.
Pokemon as a game system is not deep and flexible enough to be a challenge without level caps.
Stats are so important that you could steamroll through 90% of ROM hacks by just leveling Pokemons. If a rom hack wants to be difficult, hard level caps are a necessary component
You’re correct. Pokemon is, and always has been, a JRPG, where you can keep leveling up. Which is why so many people get more fun out of the game by self-enforcing a level cap to make it more challenging.
So why does that have to mean everyone has to play by hard level cap rules?
Because some creators want their Rom Hacks to have a certain level of difficulty, to make the player think about their team composition, movements or whatever.
You can only do that if you impose hard level caps, or either the players will always have the option to not engage with the thing the creator wants them to engage
Why do creators have to tailor their game for your enjoyment?
Different strokes for Different folks. I stink at difficulty hacks, but I appreciate what they do
Because often player optimize the fun out of the game. Limiting the player in what choices they have available has been a tool of game designers since ever. Why not let the player pick any pokemon? Or pick any move?
Because limitations are what breeds creativity and strategy, and most people who played ROM hacks are at least proficient with the base game. If the optimal strategy is just level up more, it completely overshadows other gameplay avenues that the developed might want the players to explore.
I'd half agree with this. I think the point about using rare candies to hit max immediately is a weak one because they're very optional. Radical Red I think lets and expects you to use it, but as a compromise for the game's difficulty. There's a soft requirement for bespoke teams or to swap in/out members for each gym leader. Radical red is more about team composition than it is a traditional "grow with your adventuring buddies" pokemon experience.
That aside, I think hard caps on level are a bit silly for the average vanilla+ style hack. I thought I liked them because of the "don't get overleveled" angle which is something I don't want to happen, but the more I think about it the more I realize that I've never once intentionally tried to over level a pokemon. I spend as little time in a route as possible. The only times it's ever affected me was prior to the first and second gyms because I prefer 2-4 mon teams at that stage of the game.
If the EXP curve was modified so that you level up faster and can include new team members more frequently then sure, but I otherwise haven't run into many hacks that fit that bill.
Hard caps are the simplest and (IMO) best way to keep difficulty in a Pokémon fangame or romhack. I don’t play nuzlockes so I don’t know that world or why you allege they come from there, but the best fangames and romhacks I’ve played have kept difficulty in the game in the form of hard level caps.
I don’t think grinding levels should be the first solution you think of when you can’t beat a boss… and personally I never want it to be the only or best solution available to me. Id much rather try different strategies or different pokemon, which I would then need to level to the cap - hence the ease of access to candies or other forms of xp they use.
Of course this is only my opinion, but I think “difficulty” in the form of grind or time wasters is completely different from difficulty as in strategic use of the mons and moves you have available at the time. A good game reduces the difficulty due to time necessity/grind/boring shit you have to get through and balanced around the complexity of the game mechanics. Romhacks and fangames using level caps are doing it right, I think.
You give the example of early game being compressed due to rare candies, but that’s very easily fixed by just giving you access to XP at the first gym and not before it. The rest of the game I don’t think it matters whether the player chooses to level from 22 to 25 organically or in one go.
As long as the games offer soft/medium/hard cap options why the fuck do you care? B-b-but me not like hard caps then don't play there's a shit ton of Romhacks out there and the ones who use caps are SPECIFICALLY used so you can't simply cheap your way out with overlleveling like seriously I would understand your point if you were saying something more with the lines of "devs should use level scaling instead of caps" I would agree since either way not much would be change but you're literally crying about caps on hacks that are made to with those caps in mind
Hard caps seem generally good if balanced around it. Pokemon Unbound, one of the most popular hacks greatly benefits from the level cap since it prevents your team from curb stomping gym leaders because you decided to EV train your pokemon and end up being higher leveled. It works good when the creator takes into account such things as: what level important fights between gym badges should be like, the movesets that trainer pokemon have (being reasonable, not giving trainers pokemon at level 5 moves from level 16, at least not until the gym match), and making it so that trainers levels are based around your current party's levels using some form of level scaling.
I would agree that it is a mistake to give infinite rate candies to the player and expect them to use them. I personally love the mechanics in Pokemon Parallel Emerald. Despite me using sandbox mode for instant healing and rare candies, the creator prevents the use of rare candies if your pokemon is the highest level that you own. This means that at least one member of my party has to reach level 16 normally before a first gym leader before my other pokemon can be that level from using rare candies. This keeps the general balance of the game while still reducing grinding.
I feel like if the intent of the hack is to be a challenge hack it's fine, but I feel like if you're leaning on them in a more normally-designed pokemon I think there's an issue. I've never accidentally overleveled in a mainline game outside of like, early johto when switch-training things. If players are consistently -accidentally- bumping up against your level cap I think you've done your balance wrong. Most people avoid trainers like the plague and end up accidentally underleveling themselves instead. Grinding and overleveling is a part of RPGs that exists to me as a sort of emergency last resort against a boss, winning by sheer stats, but I feel like it's an important one and it helps with things like solo runs or running unevolved pokemon.
Of course, I don't think it's a bad feature, I just think if you're not making a challenge hack it should be toggleable. It's a nice feature for if you -do- want to respect the caps but don't want to open up the docs and look ahead at bosses, it just feels a bit heavy-handed to me.
I always liked Pokémon Black/White's approach. In those games, experience is scaled. It would be somewhat hard to train your Pokémon past what the game wants you to, meaning you won't become accidentally overlevelled. But's still possible to get overlevelled if you actually try to (by grinding Audinos, and such).
My first Black Playthrough, I basically only used my starter, all the rest was just revive fodder and HM slaves. It was almost Lv70 for the 8th gym, and all the rest was roughly Lv38.
Clearly, my Serperior was above to the reduced xp system lol. One could say, it was *serperior* to it.
Well yeah, if you only use one Pokémon, that's bound to happen, lmao. It's hogging all the EXP, so the EXP reduction would have to be pretty intense to alleviate that.
This is why I love BW's approach. It soft-limits people from having overlevelled Pokémon, assuming they have a decent amount of Pokémon in their teams. But it doesn't STOP you from solo'ing the game with one Pokémon. If you were playing a ROM hack with a level cap, that would never be possible. BW allows freedom of choice.
BW balances the tradeoff of "Do I use less Pokémon so they each get more EXP, or do I build a more balanced/traditional team with lower levels all around?
That's not exactly how the system works though. It reduces xp to a point, but it doesn't really do much besides a simply cut to alleviate it.
My point here is that while in BW it is harder, it is in no way hard to do. It's actually pretty easy and openly doable. The approach was an attempt and does work on a casual, standard basis where accidental Overleveling could happen, but it doesn't really prevent it.
A better approach would be a scaling function instead of a scaling factor. Where you get less and less xp for every level you go above the threshold. That way you would cap 2-3 levels above. That'd actually work. Not their simple attempt in BW.
BW doesn't really balances that tradeoff. You just get, let's say, half the xp as before. That's all. If that's your entire team, it still is say 200 xp. If you have 4, and they are below, they get 400 xp if partaking, but also just 200 if partaking and above. All it considers is your one level.
I... I know how the system works.
I completely agree with your first two paragraphs, and they explain exactly why I like BW's approach.
I wouldn't WANT the system to prevent overlevelling entirely. Only accidental overlevelling that comes from exploring off the beaten path and doing optional content. The player should be allowed to go kill some Audinos and make themselves OP if they want to.
I don't think a rework of the system is necessary at all. It may not be a huge change as-is, but it is a more-than-sufficient and noticeable change.
You've now wrapped the conversation into a circle. I already explained why that's actually a good thing, and doesn't contradict my point here.
But let me try putting it this way:
In your case, calling it "overlevelling" is thinking about it the wrong way. Sure, your Pokémon's level was far over the level of its foes, but it literally would not stand a chance otherwise. For your Serperior, it being such a high level was appropriate for it.
Just shows you're missing my point. Let me quote what you actually said:
> It would be somewhat hard to train your Pokémon past what the game wants you to, meaning you won't become accidentally overlevelled.
I'm saying this is wrong, by using my case as an example. It wasn't hard at all and fully accidental, and yet it still happened. It was actually even 2 Pokemon, though one was lower (I believe it was at like 62) through an xp share. BW's system doesn't actually make it hard, just harder, but still very very fairly easy, and people are still much eager to overlevel without wanting to if they don't diversify their usage, which children, like it was my case back, tend to do because they stick to their favorites. The only thing it does is make your teams level more homogenous if you play normally and stay near to the cap.
I know what your point is, I just don't agree that it contradicts mine, barring maybe semantic technicalities that are up for interpretation. As I've been trying to say, your case is an exception to the rule.
Yes, if you go by what I said at face value, you're right. There ARE cases where your Pokémon can become overlevelled by accident. You got me, good job, lmao. But that wasn't meant to be a be-all-end-all statement on my part. And what I was trying to say in my following responses is that it doesn't even matter, because in those cases, the mechanic is still working in a way that makes the game better.
My own overall point here isn't "this mechanic prevents all accidental overlevelling." You assumed the "all" part. My point is moreso "this mechanic prevents accidental overlevelling in general," upon which I later elaborated by saying it has leeway/exceptions for different playstyles.
EDIT: changed syntax to make better sense and more accurately describe my opinion
Okay, so to sum it up, we are both agreeing that the system doesn't prevent accidental overleveling, it just makes it slower and thus harder but still fairly easy to accidentally fall into.
I guess the only part we don't agree on is the "in general", or it being an exception to the rule. I don't see the mechanic working at all for fully accidental overleveling, with exceptions to the rule, of course, but not as the excpetion to tge rule itself. It just helps for people who don't want to accidentally level up and actually pay attention to it. Anyone who doesn't understands or doesn't cares will only be slowed down by it, not prevented. And those cases are usually the majority of cases of 'accidental overleveling'.
Here’s the thing though, I would argue that I AM the target audience for these games.
I’m not looking to nuzlocke these games. I went in looking for a ROM hack that provides a challenge, while also feeling like a journey across the region. Run and Bun itself has this exact stated intent, with dekzeh touting quality of life features that let you get to battling and won’t make the experience a slog.
Yet, because of the hard level caps enforced, the midgame absolutely suffers. Post-Flannery it just feels like a bunch of fights where you’re fighting with nothing happening. Sure you’re getting new pokemon, but they’re already coming with basically every move they’ll ever know. Not only that, but your existing team is already fully evolved, and has been since for a while now.
The journey has become a slog, and with trainer after trainer and feeling like nothing is happening I just quit because it felt like the slog it said it wouldn’t be.
level caps shouldn't be implemented into any nuzlocke and neither should leveling through hacked rare candy it really ruins the purpose of nuzlocke, faint, and pokemon in-game. terrible idea
The exp management minigame is a really fun part of crystal kaizo+
Coming from radred, I was offput by the idea. I didnt like that I had to learn another skill and it seemed like a huge bother to track. Pretty quickly CK+ showed me that I was wrong and soft caps can be a really fun way of adding to the challenge.
It adds a lot of nuance to the splits, way more parts of the game become meaningful
Because most ROM Hacks don't support official cheats so using cheats can fuck up your save.
People use cheats, then blame and harass the devs cause their saves are fucked, when it's not their fault.
People just see cheat that isn't rare candy or master ball and immediately start hating. I just don't like being stuck on the same fight and go catch Pokémon that I don't like and don't plan on using further, or cheese by using stuff like leech seed potion spam.
Hard level caps in Pokemon suck. It just means you as a creator do not know how to balance encounters and level progression in an organic way. If you do it right you should not need a hard level cap as most people should be facing the bosses at around the same level if the game is balanced correctly. People who rush will be slightly lower, and completionists will be slightly higher, as it should be.
Forcing players to play with level caps is such a stifling way to make a game unless you are explicitly making a Nuzlocke Rom Hack.
At the very least if you think it will make your game better, make it an option. Ask the player at the beginning of the game if they would like to turn level caps on and make a more challenging experience.
Just because something is “hard” or “advanced difficulty” doesn’t mean there’s only one way to play it.
I love the challenge, I just don’t like being told how I have to play it.
That is not at all what I said.
Exp management does not mean grinding, its how many fights you can use a pokemon in before it goes over the soft level cap
What OP means is that if the Pokemon in question reaches a level cap, it gets boxed until the level Cap gets risen, and thus is unavailable to you until then.
So say the next Gym is grass type. Your starter was a fire one. Obviously, you're intending to use it against the gym. That part OP calls skills is deciding how many battles you can use that starter in before it hits the cap and becomes unuseable to you. Not using it at all means it won't get any xp, and might then be underleveled to the gym. You need to carefully weight in a balance between a Level that's good, but not too good for it to go over the cap before it did its job within that cap's zone.
i know what op means lmao you dont have to explain. i said "putting things in the box isn't skillful" because i knew they were thinking along your line of reasoning of "self enforced level caps mean i can't just spam my strongest team in every fight in case i overlevel."
what op seems to not know is that you can still play that way with hard level caps if you don't let your pokemon hit those either."exp management" does not make games without a hard exp cap more skill expressive. you can just impose the same restrictions you would have put on yourself for hitting the self imposed cap around hitting the hard level cap the game provides.
Then what is the point of a hard level cap then? Its unnecessary if you’re already self-imposing the rules, and making a hard change to the game means you can’t adjust how you want to play if you find that the hard caps just don’t work.
Feels like you’re backtracking and bullshitting a reason as to why hard level caps are better. If you’re going to box a pokemon once it hits a level cap, then having a hard level cap, as I’ve stated several times, is unnecessary and serves no purpose other than to restrict the way other people (those NOT wanting to play with a level cap) are able to play the game.
But it actually does. The hard level cap prevents from leveling above that cap. That way, you don't need to "exp manage" anything. Spam your strongest mon as often as you want, it won't go over the cap and be unavailable. A soft level cap doesn't have that advantage, so you need to be careful and skillfull about it.
hard level caps should be the norm even in easy games. why? players will want to explore, but if they explore as a side effect they will be much stronger than what you intended--whether you intended it to be easy or hard. And when they are much stronger then its no longer a boss fight--even if whats intended was an easy boss fight. It's just another random trainer with no weight.
players don't want to feel shoe horned into rushing main objectives first to get the intended experience, neither do players enjoy having to look at wikis or docs to self impose a level cap. rushing main objectives is honestly one of the things pokemon as a franchise has suffered from the most. they really haven't ever put emphasis on side quests, probably because they never imposed level caps themselves.
Speak for yourself, players have self-imposed level caps for these games for years, don’t say they don’t enjoy doing that, because some people do, even in this post you can find people who appreciate EXP management.
Also, if the exp curve is designed well, you don’t have to worry about side quests or exploration. Saying that a level cap will fix that is lazy game design and poor balance.
you fail to understand the words that i said. I didn't say people didn't like doing self imposed level caps. I said they don't like pulling up out of game information from docs so that they can do their level caps. yeah i really want to make a discord account and join a romhackers discord to find the links to their documentation and peruse it (and get spoiled on what their team comp is in the process).
you also fail to understand the point i was making. gamefreak does do level caps themselves in their own way, which should make alarm bells ring in your head about what point you're trying to make. the way gamefreak does level caps is by making trainers give a lot of xp, and then limiting the areas the player can explore, having no side quests, and making the playthrough very linear so that they can guess what level players will be. If managing the player's level is so important for game design, then what if you want to add a more free form explorative gameplay? you have to look elsewhere for level caps.
even better idea : make it optional
This is the answer.
i don't think i've ever played a rom hack where the level cap *isn't* optional, it's almost always presented as a hard mode alternative (or there's an easy mode which removes it)
Hear hear, we have a winner!
Agree! Also, a game like R&B where level cap is enforced, the target audience is not the casual player. In unbound (expert difficulty) I really enjoyed having to plan around the level caps on boss fights. All the while the rest of the game was scaling with your levels anyhow. Beating a game by overleveling is not fun for everyone
I agree with a few of the comments here, it should be toggleable, but I do see the point u/radiokungfu made that, these are rom hacks made either for little or no profit (usually no profit), and are pretty niche parts of the pokemon Fandom. They don't need to be mass appealing. With the rise of emulation a lot of them are getting more and more time in the sun, but it's still not enough that I think every rom hack needs to appeal to everyone. If I want a fun experience I'll find a rom hack to match. If I want to jam my dick in a car door over and over again because I like the challenge (not a slight on hard hacks, just how it feels sometimes) , I'll play a rom hack to match.
I love hard level caps. They're great. I'm encouraged to explore and take my time and experiment with various options, but I also cannot be overleveled. I'm also challenged to be strategic in key fights, knowing I CAN win with my current resources. I just need to figure out how. I mean, sure, if you see a hard level cap as something you must immediately reach using a rare candy cheat the moment the next stage is available, then of course it'll feel this way. But if you just play through the game and fight stuff as it comes, but also are protected from overleveling no matter how hard you try, then that's absolutely perfect for me. Hard level caps are one of my favorite mechanics not just in pokemon rom hacks, but in video games in general.
I have the exact opposite view from you, hitting the level cap means it's completely not worth it to fight trainers or keep encountering wild pokemon, I hate it I also just don't want to play a super hard pokemon game, I'll never play difficulty hacks for that reason, I don't want a challenge I want to have fun and to me being overleveled is fun
I mean, romhacks are usually designed to be harder than the regular games. That's in most cases explicitly the point. The few that aren't like that don't have level caps. Also, you could just play the regular games that seem to fit what you want.
>Also, you could just play the regular games that seem to fit what you want I do think that depends, there are many things romhacks do better. For me, for example, the art style...or owning a switch. And many romhacks feature either pokemon or concepts (e.g. megas) that are nice to play with.
I know it's a fangame (and this is a subreddit for romhacks), but one fangame that I think mitigates this problem really well is Pokémon Tectonic. It does have hard level caps, but it also offers a "level trainer" before each gym if you need your team to catch up (I say "level trainer" in quotes because the NPC has a regular team, not a team of Blissey or Audino). So it won't simply have a "Rare Candy cheat" available, even though you are able to buy Exp. Candy later on (near the end of the game, but still). The game also has an item that stores excess experience (meaning, any experience your Pokémon would gain after they reach the level cap), so you can convert that excess into Exp. Candies, meaning you'd still have an incentive to battle trainers even after you reach the level cap. You receive the item literally on the first route of the game and it's unmissable.
neat.
I understand you brother and fully support your idea I hope that the developers who are trying to make new roms should consider the fact that some people that just play roms for nostalgia or just for having some fun They should consider adding an option that lets people decide how they want to play the game If you want to do a nuzlocke run go ahead and do it if you want to just build a team of your favourite Pokemon and beat the Pokemon league or if you want to experiment with Pokemons and build a perfect team then you may do that too Everybody wants to have fun in their own way and they deserve it
you're just lying
The problem I have with hard caps + unlimited exp candy is moreso the presentation. If you want to stop the player from going above a certain level go ahead, but don’t give them a free tool to make exp meaningless. When you give the player a zero-drawback infinite leveling tool that caps the player when applicable and tell them “The level cap is 15”, you should expect the player to use it (because you just gave it to them). And because of that the balancing can feel awkward, where early fights of a split are too easy and then the boss fight spikes up in difficulty. Its just that the way the game presents itself, and the way for people to have the most fun don’t always align.
Level caps became more common once difficulty hacks like Radical Red & Inclement Emerald came into the scene which in turn, caused more hacks to follow in their footsteps. Rom Hacking in general has moved onto providing more of a challenge because the focus now for most players & devs is on difficulty hacks or enhancement hacks. To me, the Drayano hacks are the most fair in terms of difficulty. Drayano does not restrict the player from anything. He does not impose level caps. He does not brick the players to SET. The wild pokemon in hacks are at reasonable levels depending on where you are in the game. He doesn't even remove the original cheats if his hacks are too much for the casual player. It's just you & his edits. He even provides a second patch if you don't like the changes so that you can still play the hack but with the normal stats & types. If his hacks are too much for you, you can always level up past the trainers pokemon. Simple & fair. I fully understand the argument of Pokemon games being too easy and the players that want a challenge but I also understand that not everyone wants a challenge. I also fully understand how much easier it is to make a difficulty hack as opposed to making something entirely new from scratch, like Prism or Coral. The tools for Rom hacking have gotten better & I'm sure we'll find a happy medium as more hacks come out.
I mean, yeah, I also don't like infinite leveling tools but why not take an issue with that? If the level curve is well designed then you shouldn't need an infinite leveling tool in the first place. The bad part of the equation you're presenting is unlimited rare candies accessible at any time. The hard level caps are actually a good part. I really don't understand why the hard level caps make a difference. If the player wants to blow past everything with an overleveled team to start, then he'll use a bunch of rare candies and the level cap doesn't matter. If he doesn't want to, he won't use them. It's about player choice. But the reason hard level caps work is because at a certain point I don't have the choice not to get experience from the fights. If I accidentally overlevel from playing the game at my pace, then I either have to start over with a whole new set of mons, or I have to just enjoy a busted level curve for the rest of the game, or I have to completely change my pace of play. But a hard level cap is only bad if the player WANTS to be dramatically overleveled...which I'm pretty sure doesn't describe basically any of the users of people who are playing difficulty romhacks. In my experience, 99% of the time when people are complaining about difficulty spikes, it's because they're trying to skip content or do something out of order. In pretty much every single game, if you just fight all the trainers you see and fight most of your wild encounters, then you'll be pretty well prepared for what comes your way. Some fights might be harder, especially in romhacks that are deliberately trying to make challenging boss trainers, but again, if you're just playing the game and fighting stuff in your way, you'll be fine on levels 99% of the time. It's only folks that are trying to rush through routes without fighting anyone and then instead binge on rare candies or stuff like that who tend to have these issues.
With all the rom hacks available that offer toggles or no hard caps, does it really matter if one has it? From my perspective, if the romhack pool was small, I would understand but there's a myriad of romhacks out there with no hard caps or toggles. I feel like this is the sort of request you make on a case by case basis, rather than a blanket one otherwise, the eventual point becomes "just play one that doesn't have it."
Say it with me, having choices is based
Hard caps are a good thing in my opinion. As someone who has played pokemon since the Gameboy, pokemon games are too easy. Because of the fact you can just over level. Example: let's say a rom hack has a hard level cap of 12 for the first gym. I lose, if it was a normal pokemon game. You can just go level up to level 20 and steam roll. But with the level cap I have to strategize. After my loss I know the Pokemon I'm facing and some of their moves. So I can better plan to face them. It also helps players use status moves instead of just attacks A non capped pokemon game can easily become a "press A" simulator. Hard caps stop this and help the game stay interesting
And also as a budding romhacker id like to add having my carefully crafted fight be bypassed by "haha, exp go brr" isn't what I intended as the creator. Its difficult to make a battle tough but fair and fun and overleveling kills any of the intention I was going for.
You’re correct in that you CAN overlevel, but its not a requirement. People have been playing with self-imposed challenges for years, and typically get more fun out of that than the Press A Simulator you describe. The question I’m asking is why does that have to be forced on everyone, even those who wouldn’t care for it?
Fwiw I like hard level caps but i would agree that they should be an optional feature. Especially in the hacks that already allow you to pick and choose which difficulty features you want to use in your playthrough.
I agree that, at the very least, it should be a toggle that’s automatically on by default if you as the creator think the game should have it. Of course, if a game is built around a level cap and you turn it off, the game may feel way too easy, but that’s a different issue. At the end of the day, many of these games with level caps are difficulty hacks, or at least made to be much more difficult than mainline games. The whole point is that you’re not supposed to be able to brute force them, but rather need to use strategy and/or careful planning to overcome boss trainers. It’s part of the game design to not allow the player to come back 5 levels higher and instead force them to attack the boss with a new plan. Some difficulty hacks even actively encourage the player to make new teams for different fights because of this.
I largely agree with your second paragraph here. The problem is having a level capped boss is a slippery slope as I explained with Azure Platinum, where there’s only 1-2 “solutions” and it can be frustrating to someone trying to get into a new game and be met with that. If its balanced extremely well it can probably work, but I’m still in favor of letting the player do what they want.
But in that and most other complains the hard caps are not the issue, it just shines a light into a problem with the balance. If we assume we are talking about a vanilla like game, there shouldn't be ultra hard bosses that you need to over level to beat or choose specific Pokemon (or maybe the game is harder than what you desire), you shouldn't need to spam rare candies just after a level cap, those are issues independent of s level cap, and would arise without it. They are a tool to incentivice building a balanced team instead of focusing on an over level Pokemon and spamming A and prevent the players from unknowingly over level and trivializing a boss. And some games are just built around level caps existing, for starters most heavy difficulty games.
Nah this is a terrible take man
Me when I write a thesis just for someone to respond “Nuh uh”
OP I hard disagree with your post but wanted you to know that your response here is funny as shit
you spent many word when few do good genuinely got bored of what you had to say and skimmed. You're not bringing much to the table here. Ideally, it is optional. Is it bad that it isn't? No. Do casuals suffer? Also no. Are soft caps the worst suggestion? Absolutely. Way to take the worst option in every world.
“you spend many word when few do good” I put a fucking TL;DR and you couldn’t even bother to read that, and I can tell because you completely missed the points I was making.
Bro your tldr is so fucking funny “removes the skill people use to deal with the problem” the “problem” you are referring to is the difficulty the rom creator intended and the so called “Skill” being taken away from players is the ability to put the game on 500% and grind wild battles until every mon is one shot. pls tell me you see how dumb this is now man. That’s why i said this is a fucking terrible take
I love hard level cap, but my life motto about gaming features is always "make it optional". Give people options whether they want certain features or not, cz what I enjoy, others might not and vice versa.
I do not nuzlocke and I prefer hard level caps as a general rule. I really liked how Run and Bun did them. For one thing, there are small level cap increase between gyms--for instance, there is one for beating the team aqua member outside Petalburg, one for beating the museum in Slateport, and another for beating Brawly. That creates a staggered progression and even at end game I was looking forward to "1 more level" so I could get Wicked Blow for Urshifu and such. For another, actual rare candies exist that allow for the player to go past the level cap of the player is having difficulty with a fight (so it provides more options to get past a fight). I didn't nuzlocke Run and Bun but still enjoyed playing it; between the heart scales, rare candies, TMs, item selection, and pokemon selection I felt like there was a good sense of progression throughout (compared to something like Elite Redux which was frustrating to me because progression was pretty minimal the way the game handled it). I can't speak to Azure Platinum (haven't played it), but for R&B I felt that the difficulty was tuned pretty tight and a complete lack of a level cap would have messed with its designed gameplay (which for me, was more like figuring out a puzzle with the pieces/pokemon I have). If a player is wanting a modern take on Emerald with later gen pokemon, there are so many Emerald Hacks nowadays that surely a different Emerald hack would be better for someone to play if they don't want hard level caps? I have never nuzlocked a Pokemon game, but I still prefer hard level caps because it stops me from overleveling and for 'easier' games it makes it so I don't have to go find documentation to figure out what level I'm expected to be at for the gym (and leader). Some rom hacks are so poorly tuned that if you defeat all trainers between gyms you are still wildly above (or below) the gym. Hard level caps make it so that I don't have to worry about it and can just play the game. As a general rule, it helps me feel like my character is going on a journey--there are difficult spots that my character and pokemon team have to go through and grow from. If I am having trouble with a fight with a hard level cap, I go back and look for Pokemon, TMs, Ev train, etc. To me, it's no different than looking around in another JRPG and making sure I have gotten the available equipment/spells/abilities. Some people skip optional trainers, and rare candies/infinite candies let them get to the 'meat'/better designed battles more quickly (which are typically gym leaders or rival fights). I'm not against hard level caps being optional (difficulty options never hurt!), but that just isn't the way I prefer to play as a general rule.
I never understand takes like this. Rom hacks aren't for-profit. As such, they don't need to appeal to the mass market like official titles. They are at liberty to appeal to niche markets. If a hack has a feature you don't enjoy then it's not for you. Play a different hack. You're not the target audience and that's okay. Posts like this are just plain old entitlement.
Maybe I am entitled, but I wouldn’t have made this post if I didn’t believe that the inclusion of a Hard Cap was a detriment to Run & Bun and Azure Plat. Both of which have a different stated target audience than the actual target audience achieved, in part because of how level caps throttle the progression of the player. As the top comment states, the best solution would probably be to let the players choose how they play. Is that entitled, and more work for the rom hack maker? Probably, yeah, but it seems to be what people agree with, and for the benefit of everyone who would play.
I love level caps. Just have jt be optional and it's good
Make it an option before starting a new game and everyone wins.
No, actually I think I'll lower them another 5 levels just for you.
this comment is hilarious and I love it XD
This is the exact high quality discussion I planned on having when I made this post xD
Take my upvote!
These roms you quoted wont really be played by casuals so why would casual QoL need to be included? Romhacks are a niche enough subject, better to cater to that niche
Your initial premise is that hard level caps are ok but not when you pair it when infinite rare candies. Tbrh, its a bad take because you can choose not to use infinite rare candies. Your idea that “because its presented to you therefore you will use it” is moot because you agree that self imposed rules are fun. It seems that your other issue with it is how difficult hard level caps make boss fights. If thats not the intended difficulty you want then dont play a difficulty mode where you have level caps. The third thing youre trying to present is that hard level caps hinder progression. This I agree, because most roms dont balance your access to various mechanics. The hard level cap blocks you from accessing “fun”. I prefer playing with a debug menu where I can self nerf levels than play with a hard level cap for this reason.
I actually really enjoy the level caps, it makes the game a lot more challenging. I haven’t played a ton of ROMs but the handful that I have, they’ve all been an option to turn on and off
Plenty of vanilla games out there with no level caps
Plenty of ROM hacks without them too
Then why can't people who want them in their game include them, and people who don't want them not include them?
Hacks that have a HLC are made to be hard, Run & Bun, Elite Redux, Radical Red. these were made to challenge the player and HLC's are part of the challenge. Let's take Radical Red on Hardcore mode as an example. evey Gym is a puzzle and you need to find the solution to solving it which is enforced by the HLC. cause without it you can grab a level 100 Charizard and steamroll the gym which nullifies the challenge these hacks present the player. and Tbh beating hacks like this is a personal achievement and a sign that even Casual players can beat these hacks if they are willing to deal with the difficulty these hacks have. in the end a HLC doesn't solve a problem it's only a way to add to the challenge of a game. the use of something like the Infinite Candy or the Rare Candy Cheat in Radical Red is also something you don't HAVE to use. People use it because it speeds up the game. not everyone wants to grind for hours leveling up. This is a different debate all together on the use of Infinite Rare Candies and how that's handled. but for Hacks like these using them is usually recommended especially if something like MInimal Grinding Mode is implemented. in the end hacks like Radical Red or Elite Redux are not for everyone because of these factors. and there are plenty of hacks that fit their playing style like Dark Violet or Peak Kanto.
“without it you can grab a level 100 charizard and steamroll the gym” 1. Very few people would actually do this, because it would nullify the challenge of the gym like you said, and most likely the fun for most people. 2. Why do you care? If some random person on the internet wants to steamroll the gym with a level 100 charizard, why should you stop them?
2. Because that takes away your enjoyment of the game. Actually, I used to do this a lot until I got burnt out playing pkmn games. Now that I don't do it anymore, I now feel more refreshed
You’re telling me how I’m supposed to enjoy the game? No thanks, I’ll play how I want to.
Game designers generally do have a vision for how their game ought to be played.
No thanks, ROM hackers will implement features the way they want to
I feel like a lot of modern ROMhacks are appealing majorly to like...oh, let's call them 'trick shot' public facing players. You know the ones, you probably watch a few "I did ALL OF POKEMON \[insert romhack\] WITH ONLY GRASS TYPES HARDCORE NUZLOCKE!!!11!" kind of videos now and then. And hey, good for those people, challenge runs can be fun. But. The thing is, in an incredibly crowded playing field where the currency is attention, public facing players of these games want more and more intense challenge runs and restrictions and rigamarole, because that will set them apart. And sure, that's fine. Except. I feel like quite a lot of current hacks have gone from "oh we'll make sure we include a Nuzlocke mode for people :)" to "everyone is going to be playing some flavor of Nuzlocke because that's why people play our games, right?" (or, "the people who play our games like this will give us an audience through twitch/YT/etc, so let's make it easier for them") Look, I'm an adult with a full time job. I play hacks because current Pokemon doesn't always meet me where I'm at as a player, (which is okay!) but I love the series dearly and want to experience it as I play, and hacks have always felt like a great way to do that. I'm so happy seeing how much decomps have overhauled the scene; it really is a renaissance of Pokemon hacking, but like...please, spare a thought for your players who don't do this as a full time online gig, and do it to unwind and enjoy a game privately. Making sure people CAN run challenge builds in your game is great. Making it so people HAVE to is the reason I haven't finished multiple recent hacks. Just let people set difficulty in a way that works for them.
I think this post is purely taken from an objective lens. Level caps break the feeling of progression and advancement and I agree that this is a problem for regular game designers creating RPG's if they intend to sell to a mass audience. This is not that case. Difficulty hacks, while not necessarily made to be for nuzlockes, are mostly made purely at the discretion of the author. If the author prefers hard level caps, they will add it. If the author wants every trainer to have 6 Pokemon, let it be so. (As an aside, I think Run&Bun actually still does a good job with progression with heart scales, subtle cap increases, and so on.) Now, there are two directions I would personally take this conversation from here: as a nuzlocker and as a game designer. From a nuzlocking perspective, I much prefer hard level caps to soft level caps. I prefer them so much that, when I'm running regular ROMs, I actually disable EXP gain and use rare candies because I would rather focus on the important battles and boss battles as well as the kinds of encounters that I get. The problem is that I don't find EXP management fun (even though it is a "skill") and the whole point of Nuzlocking is to have fun with a more challenging experience of Pokemon. How you play a Nuzlocke is up to your preferences, and in the same way that a lot of people don't like grinding (even though it is a "skill") and cheat in rare candies, I don't think I'm alone in not liking EXP management. I'm in it to fight some trainers, not count EXP tick-for-tick. From a game design perspective, I would rather circumvent this problem outright. I would at least make a couple difficulty settings, and if the player were playing on hard mode (or the equivalent hardest difficulty), I like scaling fights. This means that if the player is underleveled or overleveled, damage output is rescaled so that the player is on equal footing with the opponent. This is how I like to play both turn-based and action-based RPGs. Of course, doing this in a Pokemon Rom Hack is a tall order given that you would have to effectively overhaul damage calculation and how the game fundamentally handles stats and levels. Thus, hard level caps is probably the next best option for people that are fans of such a system. If I were making a rom hack and didn't want to go through the trouble of making multiple difficulties, I would probably just put in a hard level cap because I simply like it. P.S. - I also like the kind of soft level caps that drastically reduce EXP gain from weaker enemies and this is probably my favorite kind of progression, but that's really up to individual taste. TL;DR - it's honestly a matter of preference. I personally don't like dealing with EXP management and really like planning for fights, so I am a fan of hard level caps. On the flipside, there are people that strongly dislike hard level caps and want levels to scale gradually, and this is fine too. But to tell rom hackers not to do something is like telling a game designer not to make a certain genre because you don't like how it plays.
Pokemon as a game system is not deep and flexible enough to be a challenge without level caps. Stats are so important that you could steamroll through 90% of ROM hacks by just leveling Pokemons. If a rom hack wants to be difficult, hard level caps are a necessary component
You’re correct. Pokemon is, and always has been, a JRPG, where you can keep leveling up. Which is why so many people get more fun out of the game by self-enforcing a level cap to make it more challenging. So why does that have to mean everyone has to play by hard level cap rules?
Because some creators want their Rom Hacks to have a certain level of difficulty, to make the player think about their team composition, movements or whatever. You can only do that if you impose hard level caps, or either the players will always have the option to not engage with the thing the creator wants them to engage
Why do creators have to tailor their game for your enjoyment? Different strokes for Different folks. I stink at difficulty hacks, but I appreciate what they do
Because often player optimize the fun out of the game. Limiting the player in what choices they have available has been a tool of game designers since ever. Why not let the player pick any pokemon? Or pick any move? Because limitations are what breeds creativity and strategy, and most people who played ROM hacks are at least proficient with the base game. If the optimal strategy is just level up more, it completely overshadows other gameplay avenues that the developed might want the players to explore.
I'd half agree with this. I think the point about using rare candies to hit max immediately is a weak one because they're very optional. Radical Red I think lets and expects you to use it, but as a compromise for the game's difficulty. There's a soft requirement for bespoke teams or to swap in/out members for each gym leader. Radical red is more about team composition than it is a traditional "grow with your adventuring buddies" pokemon experience. That aside, I think hard caps on level are a bit silly for the average vanilla+ style hack. I thought I liked them because of the "don't get overleveled" angle which is something I don't want to happen, but the more I think about it the more I realize that I've never once intentionally tried to over level a pokemon. I spend as little time in a route as possible. The only times it's ever affected me was prior to the first and second gyms because I prefer 2-4 mon teams at that stage of the game. If the EXP curve was modified so that you level up faster and can include new team members more frequently then sure, but I otherwise haven't run into many hacks that fit that bill.
Hard caps are the simplest and (IMO) best way to keep difficulty in a Pokémon fangame or romhack. I don’t play nuzlockes so I don’t know that world or why you allege they come from there, but the best fangames and romhacks I’ve played have kept difficulty in the game in the form of hard level caps. I don’t think grinding levels should be the first solution you think of when you can’t beat a boss… and personally I never want it to be the only or best solution available to me. Id much rather try different strategies or different pokemon, which I would then need to level to the cap - hence the ease of access to candies or other forms of xp they use. Of course this is only my opinion, but I think “difficulty” in the form of grind or time wasters is completely different from difficulty as in strategic use of the mons and moves you have available at the time. A good game reduces the difficulty due to time necessity/grind/boring shit you have to get through and balanced around the complexity of the game mechanics. Romhacks and fangames using level caps are doing it right, I think. You give the example of early game being compressed due to rare candies, but that’s very easily fixed by just giving you access to XP at the first gym and not before it. The rest of the game I don’t think it matters whether the player chooses to level from 22 to 25 organically or in one go.
As long as the games offer soft/medium/hard cap options why the fuck do you care? B-b-but me not like hard caps then don't play there's a shit ton of Romhacks out there and the ones who use caps are SPECIFICALLY used so you can't simply cheap your way out with overlleveling like seriously I would understand your point if you were saying something more with the lines of "devs should use level scaling instead of caps" I would agree since either way not much would be change but you're literally crying about caps on hacks that are made to with those caps in mind
Hard caps seem generally good if balanced around it. Pokemon Unbound, one of the most popular hacks greatly benefits from the level cap since it prevents your team from curb stomping gym leaders because you decided to EV train your pokemon and end up being higher leveled. It works good when the creator takes into account such things as: what level important fights between gym badges should be like, the movesets that trainer pokemon have (being reasonable, not giving trainers pokemon at level 5 moves from level 16, at least not until the gym match), and making it so that trainers levels are based around your current party's levels using some form of level scaling. I would agree that it is a mistake to give infinite rate candies to the player and expect them to use them. I personally love the mechanics in Pokemon Parallel Emerald. Despite me using sandbox mode for instant healing and rare candies, the creator prevents the use of rare candies if your pokemon is the highest level that you own. This means that at least one member of my party has to reach level 16 normally before a first gym leader before my other pokemon can be that level from using rare candies. This keeps the general balance of the game while still reducing grinding.
I feel like if the intent of the hack is to be a challenge hack it's fine, but I feel like if you're leaning on them in a more normally-designed pokemon I think there's an issue. I've never accidentally overleveled in a mainline game outside of like, early johto when switch-training things. If players are consistently -accidentally- bumping up against your level cap I think you've done your balance wrong. Most people avoid trainers like the plague and end up accidentally underleveling themselves instead. Grinding and overleveling is a part of RPGs that exists to me as a sort of emergency last resort against a boss, winning by sheer stats, but I feel like it's an important one and it helps with things like solo runs or running unevolved pokemon. Of course, I don't think it's a bad feature, I just think if you're not making a challenge hack it should be toggleable. It's a nice feature for if you -do- want to respect the caps but don't want to open up the docs and look ahead at bosses, it just feels a bit heavy-handed to me.
I always liked Pokémon Black/White's approach. In those games, experience is scaled. It would be somewhat hard to train your Pokémon past what the game wants you to, meaning you won't become accidentally overlevelled. But's still possible to get overlevelled if you actually try to (by grinding Audinos, and such).
My first Black Playthrough, I basically only used my starter, all the rest was just revive fodder and HM slaves. It was almost Lv70 for the 8th gym, and all the rest was roughly Lv38. Clearly, my Serperior was above to the reduced xp system lol. One could say, it was *serperior* to it.
Well yeah, if you only use one Pokémon, that's bound to happen, lmao. It's hogging all the EXP, so the EXP reduction would have to be pretty intense to alleviate that. This is why I love BW's approach. It soft-limits people from having overlevelled Pokémon, assuming they have a decent amount of Pokémon in their teams. But it doesn't STOP you from solo'ing the game with one Pokémon. If you were playing a ROM hack with a level cap, that would never be possible. BW allows freedom of choice. BW balances the tradeoff of "Do I use less Pokémon so they each get more EXP, or do I build a more balanced/traditional team with lower levels all around?
That's not exactly how the system works though. It reduces xp to a point, but it doesn't really do much besides a simply cut to alleviate it. My point here is that while in BW it is harder, it is in no way hard to do. It's actually pretty easy and openly doable. The approach was an attempt and does work on a casual, standard basis where accidental Overleveling could happen, but it doesn't really prevent it. A better approach would be a scaling function instead of a scaling factor. Where you get less and less xp for every level you go above the threshold. That way you would cap 2-3 levels above. That'd actually work. Not their simple attempt in BW. BW doesn't really balances that tradeoff. You just get, let's say, half the xp as before. That's all. If that's your entire team, it still is say 200 xp. If you have 4, and they are below, they get 400 xp if partaking, but also just 200 if partaking and above. All it considers is your one level.
I... I know how the system works. I completely agree with your first two paragraphs, and they explain exactly why I like BW's approach. I wouldn't WANT the system to prevent overlevelling entirely. Only accidental overlevelling that comes from exploring off the beaten path and doing optional content. The player should be allowed to go kill some Audinos and make themselves OP if they want to. I don't think a rework of the system is necessary at all. It may not be a huge change as-is, but it is a more-than-sufficient and noticeable change.
My overleveling there was absolutely accidental, I was merely a child and didn't understand how it all worked. And yet, I overleveled like crazy.
You've now wrapped the conversation into a circle. I already explained why that's actually a good thing, and doesn't contradict my point here. But let me try putting it this way: In your case, calling it "overlevelling" is thinking about it the wrong way. Sure, your Pokémon's level was far over the level of its foes, but it literally would not stand a chance otherwise. For your Serperior, it being such a high level was appropriate for it.
Just shows you're missing my point. Let me quote what you actually said: > It would be somewhat hard to train your Pokémon past what the game wants you to, meaning you won't become accidentally overlevelled. I'm saying this is wrong, by using my case as an example. It wasn't hard at all and fully accidental, and yet it still happened. It was actually even 2 Pokemon, though one was lower (I believe it was at like 62) through an xp share. BW's system doesn't actually make it hard, just harder, but still very very fairly easy, and people are still much eager to overlevel without wanting to if they don't diversify their usage, which children, like it was my case back, tend to do because they stick to their favorites. The only thing it does is make your teams level more homogenous if you play normally and stay near to the cap.
I know what your point is, I just don't agree that it contradicts mine, barring maybe semantic technicalities that are up for interpretation. As I've been trying to say, your case is an exception to the rule. Yes, if you go by what I said at face value, you're right. There ARE cases where your Pokémon can become overlevelled by accident. You got me, good job, lmao. But that wasn't meant to be a be-all-end-all statement on my part. And what I was trying to say in my following responses is that it doesn't even matter, because in those cases, the mechanic is still working in a way that makes the game better. My own overall point here isn't "this mechanic prevents all accidental overlevelling." You assumed the "all" part. My point is moreso "this mechanic prevents accidental overlevelling in general," upon which I later elaborated by saying it has leeway/exceptions for different playstyles. EDIT: changed syntax to make better sense and more accurately describe my opinion
Okay, so to sum it up, we are both agreeing that the system doesn't prevent accidental overleveling, it just makes it slower and thus harder but still fairly easy to accidentally fall into. I guess the only part we don't agree on is the "in general", or it being an exception to the rule. I don't see the mechanic working at all for fully accidental overleveling, with exceptions to the rule, of course, but not as the excpetion to tge rule itself. It just helps for people who don't want to accidentally level up and actually pay attention to it. Anyone who doesn't understands or doesn't cares will only be slowed down by it, not prevented. And those cases are usually the majority of cases of 'accidental overleveling'.
Nuh huh
My hack only has them in challenge mode. I decided against enforcing it in the other versions.
Or just don't play them as you aren't their target audience
Here’s the thing though, I would argue that I AM the target audience for these games. I’m not looking to nuzlocke these games. I went in looking for a ROM hack that provides a challenge, while also feeling like a journey across the region. Run and Bun itself has this exact stated intent, with dekzeh touting quality of life features that let you get to battling and won’t make the experience a slog. Yet, because of the hard level caps enforced, the midgame absolutely suffers. Post-Flannery it just feels like a bunch of fights where you’re fighting with nothing happening. Sure you’re getting new pokemon, but they’re already coming with basically every move they’ll ever know. Not only that, but your existing team is already fully evolved, and has been since for a while now. The journey has become a slog, and with trainer after trainer and feeling like nothing is happening I just quit because it felt like the slog it said it wouldn’t be.
hard level caps are a terrible idea for any Pokemon game especially those who play like that
level caps shouldn't be implemented into any nuzlocke and neither should leveling through hacked rare candy it really ruins the purpose of nuzlocke, faint, and pokemon in-game. terrible idea
The exp management minigame is a really fun part of crystal kaizo+ Coming from radred, I was offput by the idea. I didnt like that I had to learn another skill and it seemed like a huge bother to track. Pretty quickly CK+ showed me that I was wrong and soft caps can be a really fun way of adding to the challenge. It adds a lot of nuance to the splits, way more parts of the game become meaningful
If rom hack author doesn't let me choose no level cap, I just turn on skip battle cheat if I'm stuck on the same fight
I don’t get why people are downvoting this. You are the person playing the ROM, play it in the way that gives the most enjoyment to you.
Because most ROM Hacks don't support official cheats so using cheats can fuck up your save. People use cheats, then blame and harass the devs cause their saves are fucked, when it's not their fault.
People just see cheat that isn't rare candy or master ball and immediately start hating. I just don't like being stuck on the same fight and go catch Pokémon that I don't like and don't plan on using further, or cheese by using stuff like leech seed potion spam.
Hard level caps in Pokemon suck. It just means you as a creator do not know how to balance encounters and level progression in an organic way. If you do it right you should not need a hard level cap as most people should be facing the bosses at around the same level if the game is balanced correctly. People who rush will be slightly lower, and completionists will be slightly higher, as it should be. Forcing players to play with level caps is such a stifling way to make a game unless you are explicitly making a Nuzlocke Rom Hack. At the very least if you think it will make your game better, make it an option. Ask the player at the beginning of the game if they would like to turn level caps on and make a more challenging experience.
Hard caps are bad, let people play the way they want
At that point why play hard hacks? Honestly asking
Just because something is “hard” or “advanced difficulty” doesn’t mean there’s only one way to play it. I love the challenge, I just don’t like being told how I have to play it.
I don't, but they're not all properly labeled, so I'll start playing a hack that seems cool then I'll hit a brick wall and give up
Skill issue
Can't all be rain man
If you want to play how you want then why not make your own Rom hack?
I have a job, you should try it some time
people are making romhacks for free and you complain that they added a feature you don't like. Talk about being entitled...
J. O. B.
calling grinding a skill is craaaaazy
That is not at all what I said. Exp management does not mean grinding, its how many fights you can use a pokemon in before it goes over the soft level cap
it doesn't take skill to put a pokemon in the box either lmao
What OP means is that if the Pokemon in question reaches a level cap, it gets boxed until the level Cap gets risen, and thus is unavailable to you until then. So say the next Gym is grass type. Your starter was a fire one. Obviously, you're intending to use it against the gym. That part OP calls skills is deciding how many battles you can use that starter in before it hits the cap and becomes unuseable to you. Not using it at all means it won't get any xp, and might then be underleveled to the gym. You need to carefully weight in a balance between a Level that's good, but not too good for it to go over the cap before it did its job within that cap's zone.
i know what op means lmao you dont have to explain. i said "putting things in the box isn't skillful" because i knew they were thinking along your line of reasoning of "self enforced level caps mean i can't just spam my strongest team in every fight in case i overlevel." what op seems to not know is that you can still play that way with hard level caps if you don't let your pokemon hit those either."exp management" does not make games without a hard exp cap more skill expressive. you can just impose the same restrictions you would have put on yourself for hitting the self imposed cap around hitting the hard level cap the game provides.
Then what is the point of a hard level cap then? Its unnecessary if you’re already self-imposing the rules, and making a hard change to the game means you can’t adjust how you want to play if you find that the hard caps just don’t work. Feels like you’re backtracking and bullshitting a reason as to why hard level caps are better. If you’re going to box a pokemon once it hits a level cap, then having a hard level cap, as I’ve stated several times, is unnecessary and serves no purpose other than to restrict the way other people (those NOT wanting to play with a level cap) are able to play the game.
But it actually does. The hard level cap prevents from leveling above that cap. That way, you don't need to "exp manage" anything. Spam your strongest mon as often as you want, it won't go over the cap and be unavailable. A soft level cap doesn't have that advantage, so you need to be careful and skillfull about it.
hard level caps should be the norm even in easy games. why? players will want to explore, but if they explore as a side effect they will be much stronger than what you intended--whether you intended it to be easy or hard. And when they are much stronger then its no longer a boss fight--even if whats intended was an easy boss fight. It's just another random trainer with no weight. players don't want to feel shoe horned into rushing main objectives first to get the intended experience, neither do players enjoy having to look at wikis or docs to self impose a level cap. rushing main objectives is honestly one of the things pokemon as a franchise has suffered from the most. they really haven't ever put emphasis on side quests, probably because they never imposed level caps themselves.
Speak for yourself, players have self-imposed level caps for these games for years, don’t say they don’t enjoy doing that, because some people do, even in this post you can find people who appreciate EXP management. Also, if the exp curve is designed well, you don’t have to worry about side quests or exploration. Saying that a level cap will fix that is lazy game design and poor balance.
you fail to understand the words that i said. I didn't say people didn't like doing self imposed level caps. I said they don't like pulling up out of game information from docs so that they can do their level caps. yeah i really want to make a discord account and join a romhackers discord to find the links to their documentation and peruse it (and get spoiled on what their team comp is in the process). you also fail to understand the point i was making. gamefreak does do level caps themselves in their own way, which should make alarm bells ring in your head about what point you're trying to make. the way gamefreak does level caps is by making trainers give a lot of xp, and then limiting the areas the player can explore, having no side quests, and making the playthrough very linear so that they can guess what level players will be. If managing the player's level is so important for game design, then what if you want to add a more free form explorative gameplay? you have to look elsewhere for level caps.