1st Gen Ideal Battle Mechanic Changes for Gen 1 Balance

[banty]

First post : ) (This site/community looks awesome and I am excited to be a part of it.)

I am planning a Gen 1 ROM Hack and have a rough design already. But am hesitant on what changes (if any) I should make to the battle mechanics. I don't want to make changes just for the sake of change. RBY is a holy grail for me and has its own simple charm (relative to later Generations). Therefore I want to keep the battle mechanic changes as minimal as possible to achieve the goal.

From a gameplay perspective the goal is to create decent balance improvements so the number of useful Pokemon during end game is a bit larger.

With that said here are the first thoughts for battle mechanic patching.

1. Fix Obvious Programming Bugs:

I'd consider addressing most of these. E.g. the Focus Energy bug, some integer overflow issues, Divide by Zero, etc.

Others I am a little more conflicted about. For example the ATK/DEF/SPECIAL boosts being ignored on Crits. I'm worried if I "fix" that I may break/unbalance the game even further....

2. Psychic Nerf

It seems pretty established Psychic is too OP this gen. The question is the most effective way to nerf and rebalance. Some ideas:

A. Introduce a few more powerful bug type moves. This would allow Pinsir/Scyther to become a more effective counter to Psychic I think?

B. Buff ghost. Dream Eater could be changed to ghost type and maybe add one more good ghost move? Also debating making Marowhak ghost/ground. It would fit with this story and also allows a non-poison ghost type to counter Alakazham and others. However I don't want ghost to become to OP instead....

C. Introduce Normal resistance to Psychic. I got this idea from the Pokemon cards (where normal resists Psychic). I am less confident in this change. Maybe this is too extreme a nerf?

D. Any other ideas appreciated. However I don't plant to add Dark type to this Gen

3. Make dragon more fun

Add a STAB move for Dragons. (Either change Dragon Rage or add another move). I am not sure if Dragonite needs the help but it "feels" right for every type to have STAB moves...

4. Partial Wrapping Patches

Based on smogon "rby_trapping" with wrap/bind/clamp/etc is a huge part of the meta in gen 1. It kind of sounds like Gen 1 players eventually made peace with it and it leads to a lot of swapping out of Pokemon. Would the game be more "fun" and have more depth if trapping behaved more like later gens. My understanding is later gens changed this by having traps prevent pokemon swap they can still use moves when trapped. I really don't know what's best here...

Thanks for reading! Any feedback is appreciated!

-banty

 

[Squirtkipfan01]

Im by no means an expert on the intricacies of pokemon balance, but i truely believe making the ghastly line just pure ghosts instead of ghost/poison, wouldnt break balance and also help in the fight against OP physic pokemon. Alot of moves also are in need of balance. One that comes to mind is blizzard which i think has a accuracy of like 80 in gen 1. Dont know if this is helpful feedback but i tried my best

 

[Corveone]

Well, if you want to fix Gen 1, this list includes many (but not all) of its balance problems:

Spoiler:

Some Gen 1 rom hacks already fixed some of these things so you could potentially get a fix for those if the source code or instructions on how to make it are available.

That said, good luck balancing Gen 1 with how the Special Stat and some other mechanics worked. I doubt it's actually possible, especially if you don't want to change things much.

Psychic would be still OP without the Dark types. Giving Gengar, Scyther, and Pinsir a decent STAB won't fix things much since they'd be just three decent Psychic counters, which don't even resist Psychic.

Ice is OP offensively, could be improved easily by making Fire resist it, and lowering Blizzard's accuracy.

Fighting was almost useless in Gen 1 because of their awful Sp. Attack translating into awful Sp. Defense. Also the best STAB any Fighting type could get (except Hitmonlee) was Submission: an 80 BP recoil move that wasn't even 100% accurate. If you can't or don't want to add more Fighting moves, you could at least buff the few existing ones, change Mega Kick and Mega Punch to Fighting, or something like that.

 

[banty]

Thanks, this is really helpful. The Ice and Fighting changes sound relatively simple and good.

I'll need to think about Psychic a bit more.

 

[jojobear13]

I have spent ~4 years working out the kinks in Gen-1's battle engine (and recently found and fixed another one involving Disable). Let me emphasize that this path is a dark and difficult one. That said, let me grant you some insights I have gained about Gen-1's design philosophy.

Pokemon Gen-1 was not made to be a Pokemon game. Later generations were made to be Pokemon games, but Gen-1 was the great "definer" of what the games should be. But Gen-1 did not coagulate out of Gamefreak's mind-ether in some kind of time loop where induces its own creation. Gen-1 is made to be a 90s-era turn-based jrpg in the same vein as the 1989 gameboy game Final Fantasy Legend (actually the first game in the SaGa series), but with a monster-collection theme as the method of party recruitment. Human party members with job classes are replaced by fantasy monsters with elemental types. Mechanically speaking, there is very little difference between Gen-1 Pokemon and an old Dragon Quest game. This informs how the game was balanced in development to a degree that is not apparent to most people.

Let's look at some stats for a moment:

• Attack - This is the stat that determines the damage of physical attacks. Things like swords and maces are now claws and fangs. Your basic and common attacks are going to be physical and run off of this stat.
• Defense - Opposes the Attack stat to reduce physical damage. Suits of armor are now things like scales and hides.
• Speed - Determines who goes first in each round and affects the critical hit rate.
• Special - This is effectively the "magic" stat. As such, it opposes itself for determining and reducing "special" damage. Spells are replaced with things like fire breath.

Note that these stats and their functions are very similar to stats of Final Fantasy Legend: strength, defense, agility, and mana.

Of all the physical types (normal, fighting, flying, ground, rock, bug, poison, ghost), only a mere 25 are non-normal moves that do normal damage calculation. The other 43 moves that do damage calculation are all normal-type moves. That's almost 2/3rds of all physical attacks being normal type. This lines-up with the philosophy that most physical attacks are "normal" moves as if selecting the "Fight" option in a Final Fantasy game. The other 1/3rd of the physical moves represent "advanced" maneuvers like the martial arts of a monk (possibly the reason for the fighting type). Remember the move Counter? This is why it only works on normal and fighting moves in Gen-1; it "counters" some 75% of the game's physical moves. Normal moves are also going to make up the most commonly-used moves for a good chunk of the game, and this will be important for when we talk about the ghost type.

Now the special types (fire, water, electric, grass, psychic, ice, dragon) account for only 31 damage-calculating moves. That's just under 1/3rd of all damage-calculating moves in the game. But they tend to be more powerful overall and with less PP to use them. This fits with their idea of being the game's magic spells. Fire, water, and electric damaging attacks, which make up the core trinity of offensive magic spells in old JRPGs, account for 17 moves and are among the most powerful. That's over half of the "magical attacks", and will be important when we talk about the dragon type.

The most prominent example of special-as-magic is psychic pokemon. They are meant to be powerful because they serve as the game's version of a mage-class enemy. As mages, their main weakness is that they will be lacking in one or more areas of either defense, HP, and/or speed. So they do have some sense of "balance" to them. Unless your name is Mewtwo or Mew which were intended to be overpowered exceptions to the design philosophy.

Now let's talk about the two weird types: ghost and dragon. They aren't really proper types. They are more like what would eventually become abilities in Gen-3. If ghost and dragon pokemon were not introduced until gen 3, then I speculate their immunities and resistances would have probably been done via an ability like Levitate. I'll explain.

Ghost's whole deal is that it's immune to normal and fighting moves. Why? Because ghosts are incorporeal, and your karate chop will pass right through them. The Gastly line fulfills a type of enemy common in fantasy JRPGs that throw the player a curve ball by being immune or highly resistant to regular attacks. Thus the player is forced to use magic or other special powers to defeat them. Normal type pokemon have an immunity via the idea that they are anchored enough in material existence that ghosts cannot interact with them. Ghost-type's only damage-calculating move, Lick, was directed to be a physical attack, but the devs wanted to preserve normal-type's immunity. The answer was to just make ghost a physical type out of simplicity. The whole gimmick of the Gastly line is for it being an enemy, but the devs needed to support it being a party member. The answer there was to give it the poison type so that it would have other interesting interactions from the player's side of combat. The result is that the Gastly line has very distinct setbacks while making up for it by being immune to the vast majority of the game's physical attacks. This is an incredibly powerful thing to have around the mid-game where enemies are still using a lot of normal-type attacks.

Dragon type is basically just the dragon armor sets that recur in Final Fantasy games. Like those armors, it resists the game's trinity of offensive spells (fire, water, and electricity in Gen-1's case). It also resists grass. That's well over half of the special damaging moves in Gen-1 and also covers 4/5th's of the most powerful special moves. If ghost type is "screw your regular attacks" then dragon type is "screw your offensive magic". The Dratini line fulfills the typical JRPG dragon enemy that shows up as strong random encounters or as a boss. Considering the Dratini line also has good defense and good special, I feel like this type has an ice weakness just to give it something to be weak against and not just be a no-downsides juggernaut (which was reserved for Mewtwo and Mew).


In conclusion, don't try to balance Gen-1 like a later-gen Pokemon game. It's not designed that way, and you will find that it fights you every step of the way. It is built off of design tropes from 90s JRPGs, so you will have an easier time if you try to work within that context.

 

[banty]

I have spent ~4 years working out the kinks in Gen-1's battle engine (and recently found and fixed another one involving Disable). Let me emphasize that this path is a dark and difficult one. That said, let me grant you some insights I have gained about Gen-1's design philosophy.

Pokemon Gen-1 was not made to be a Pokemon game. Later generations were made to be Pokemon games, but Gen-1 was the great "definer" of what the games should be. But Gen-1 did not coagulate out of Gamefreak's mind-ether in some kind of time loop where induces its own creation. Gen-1 is made to be a 90s-era turn-based jrpg in the same vein as the 1989 gameboy game Final Fantasy Legend (actually the first game in the SaGa series), but with a monster-collection theme as the method of party recruitment. Human party members with job classes are replaced by fantasy monsters with elemental types. Mechanically speaking, there is very little difference between Gen-1 Pokemon and an old Dragon Quest game. This informs how the game was balanced in development to a degree that is not apparent to most people.

Let's look at some stats for a moment:

• Attack - This is the stat that determines the damage of physical attacks. Things like swords and maces are now claws and fangs. Your basic and common attacks are going to be physical and run off of this stat.
• Defense - Opposes the Attack stat to reduce physical damage. Suits of armor are now things like scales and hides.
• Speed - Determines who goes first in each round and affects the critical hit rate.
• Special - This is effectively the "magic" stat. As such, it opposes itself for determining and reducing "special" damage. Spells are replaced with things like fire breath.

Note that these stats and their functions are very similar to stats of Final Fantasy Legend: strength, defense, agility, and mana.

Of all the physical types (normal, fighting, flying, ground, rock, bug, poison, ghost), only a mere 25 are non-normal moves that do normal damage calculation. The other 43 moves that do damage calculation are all normal-type moves. That's almost 2/3rds of all physical attacks being normal type. This lines-up with the philosophy that most physical attacks are "normal" moves as if selecting the "Fight" option in a Final Fantasy game. The other 1/3rd of the physical moves represent "advanced" maneuvers like the martial arts of a monk (possibly the reason for the fighting type). Remember the move Counter? This is why it only works on normal and fighting moves in Gen-1; it "counters" some 75% of the game's physical moves. Normal moves are also going to make up the most commonly-used moves for a good chunk of the game, and this will be important for when we talk about the ghost type.

Now the special types (fire, water, electric, grass, psychic, ice, dragon) account for only 31 damage-calculating moves. That's just under 1/3rd of all damage-calculating moves in the game. But they tend to be more powerful overall and with less PP to use them. This fits with their idea of being the game's magic spells. Fire, water, and electric damaging attacks, which make up the core trinity of offensive magic spells in old JRPGs, account for 17 moves and are among the most powerful. That's over half of the "magical attacks", and will be important when we talk about the dragon type.

The most prominent example of special-as-magic is psychic pokemon. They are meant to be powerful because they serve as the game's version of a mage-class enemy. As mages, their main weakness is that they will be lacking in one or more areas of either defense, HP, and/or speed. So they do have some sense of "balance" to them. Unless your name is Mewtwo or Mew which were intended to be overpowered exceptions to the design philosophy.

Now let's talk about the two weird types: ghost and dragon. They aren't really proper types. They are more like what would eventually become abilities in Gen-3. If ghost and dragon pokemon were not introduced until gen 3, then I speculate their immunities and resistances would have probably been done via an ability like Levitate. I'll explain.

Ghost's whole deal is that it's immune to normal and fighting moves. Why? Because ghosts are incorporeal, and your karate chop will pass right through them. The Gastly line fulfills a type of enemy common in fantasy JRPGs that throw the player a curve ball by being immune or highly resistant to regular attacks. Thus the player is forced to use magic or other special powers to defeat them. Normal type pokemon have an immunity via the idea that they are anchored enough in material existence that ghosts cannot interact with them. Ghost-type's only damage-calculating move, Lick, was directed to be a physical attack, but the devs wanted to preserve normal-type's immunity. The answer was to just make ghost a physical type out of simplicity. The whole gimmick of the Gastly line is for it being an enemy, but the devs needed to support it being a party member. The answer there was to give it the poison type so that it would have other interesting interactions from the player's side of combat. The result is that the Gastly line has very distinct setbacks while making up for it by being immune to the vast majority of the game's physical attacks. This is an incredibly powerful thing to have around the mid-game where enemies are still using a lot of normal-type attacks.

Dragon type is basically just the dragon armor sets that recur in Final Fantasy games. Like those armors, it resists the game's trinity of offensive spells (fire, water, and electricity in Gen-1's case). It also resists grass. That's well over half of the special damaging moves in Gen-1 and also covers 4/5th's of the most powerful special moves. If ghost type is "screw your regular attacks" then dragon type is "screw your offensive magic". The Dratini line fulfills the typical JRPG dragon enemy that shows up as strong random encounters or as a boss. Considering the Dratini line also has good defense and good special, I feel like this type has an ice weakness just to give it something to be weak against and not just be a no-downsides juggernaut (which was reserved for Mewtwo and Mew).


In conclusion, don't try to balance Gen-1 like a later-gen Pokemon game. It's not designed that way, and you will find that it fights you every step of the way. It is built off of design tropes from 90s JRPGs, so you will have an easier time if you try to work within that context.

Wow, thank you jojobear13 for sharing these insights and also sharing your git of all the bugs patches and trainer ai. Many of those functional bugs you've patched are bugs I also want to remove as well. And your general philosophy on the balance/design of the game definitely helps define what I am going for.

I've started making small balance adjustment (changing levels moves are learned, encounter %'s, and other difficulty increase features) and running a lot of playthroughs looking for things that get redundant and thinking of how to make it less tedious ( long periods of grinding or backtracking required). Surprisingly, I actually made it too difficult and need read adjust difficulty patches.

I think for now I will stick to smaller balance changes like the above. But once Psychic type is introduced in the game I'll have to think more about that type. I can't tell if GameFreak had an oversight not making better Bug STAB moves or if it was intended. If it wasn't intended then Psychic does seem to be -unequivocally- the best "magic" type by design. If so why wasn't psychic type the final gym? I also haven't seen the original source that Game Freak originally intended Ghost to be a counter to Psychic. Do we know if it was "bug" in the type weakness code or a design decision? I am leaning towards trying to make Bug and Ghost a larger part of the end game. (I guess ghost still is with Agatha)

Regardless, the replies have all really helped me with a lot of dev decisions. Thanks

 

[jojobear13]

Ghost is inferred to be super effective against psychic from three main hints. The first is a line of in-game text. The second is from the anime, whose scripts were written from design docs. The third is from the tcg, which was developed along side the games. Combine this with the change to the type chart in gen 2 and it's safe to say that the type chart is has an error in gen 1.

 

[banty]

Ghost is inferred to be super effective against psychic from three main hints. The first is a line of in-game text. The second is from the anime, whose scripts were written from design docs. The third is from the tcg, which was developed along side the games. Combine this with the change to the type chart in gen 2 and it's safe to say that the type chart is has an error in gen 1.

Ah I see now.

_SaffronGymAfterBattleText2::
text "Psychic #MON"
line "fear only ghosts"
cont "and bugs!"
done

It is kind of incredible they didn't address that in yellow!

 

[jojobear13]

Ah I see now.

_SaffronGymAfterBattleText2::
text "Psychic #MON"
line "fear only ghosts"
cont "and bugs!"
done

It is kind of incredible they didn't address that in yellow!

I speculate that they really wanted to fix the type chart, but that would mean introducing inconsistencies between red/green, blue, yellow, and stadium.

It wouldn't be until crystal that Gamefreak would implement a workaround. Crystal fixes bugs in the battle engine, but it also keeps a copy of the original bugged code. If it detects that it's in a link battle with gold/silver, it reverts to the original bugged code to maintain compatibility.