[PA Comic] Wednesday, October 16, 2013 - No Country For Old Pokémen

Geth

No Country For Old Pokémen
http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/10/16

Peter Ebel

Can't stop what's coming, Gabe.

Commander Zoom

"Get out of my tall grass!"

miaAusa

I tell you back in my days we had either a choice between pokemon red and blue, and now there's like twenty billion pokemon spinoff games, black white, ruby, pokemon snap, gold, silver,pearl and so so so many others, it's insane, kids really do have it nicer and online connecting, we didn't have that on the 1st gameboy pokemon :c

also loving the new sweater gab has on with merch on it : D

Puddingpie

Heyyy, Gabe and Tycho are in new clothes. Uh, has this been happening a lot and I just haven't noticed?

cB557

I turned off my EXP All. It really isn't the sort of thing they should just be handing to you at the start of the game, at least without leveling the NPCs higher than they did. You end up crazy overleveled and the game becomes way too easy.

Jam Warrior

Puddingpie wrote: »

Heyyy, Gabe and Tycho are in new clothes. Uh, has this been happening a lot and I just haven't noticed?

I thought the same thing.

RonTheDM

cB557 wrote: »

I turned off my EXP All. It really isn't the sort of thing they should just be handing to you at the start of the game, at least without leveling the NPCs higher than they did. You end up crazy overleveled and the game becomes way too easy.

The 'game' of Pokemon starts long after the E4 when you're hatching 40 Tyrogues looking for the right one and then keeping 3 in the box in case someone wants some and then dropping 36 orphans in the adjoining woods to fend for themself.

Manic2k

They also get two starters! two!

Zxerol

Manic2k wrote: »

They also get two starters! two!

woah woah, hold up are you serious

wtf is this nonsense

I can deal with all this IV/EV shit, reusable TMs, mega-evolution-whatever-the-fuck, the five-hundredth evolution for eevee, etc... but two starters?

This is a bridge gone too far.

DVG

Zxerol wrote: »

Manic2k wrote: »

They also get two starters! two!

woah woah, hold up are you serious

wtf is this nonsense

I can deal with all this IV/EV shit, reusable TMs, mega-evolution-whatever-the-fuck, the five-hundredth evolution for eevee, etc... but two starters?

This is a bridge gone too far.

Well one of them is a Gen 1 starter.

Skull2185

Those rollerskates fucking blow... Using the d-pad is not an acceptable solution. I should be able to take those stupid things off. EXP share is awesome though. Also, you don't technically get two starters. You get to pick your initial starter, and then in the next town you get a free Squirtle, Charmander or Bulbasaur.

I guess if you run straight to the next town without catching anything it's like getting two starters.

roflstomp

On The Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 and 4 - the 8-bit ones - also did not require characters to actually be in a battle to gain XP. I found that to be far superior to "Okay put Metapod out...okay quickly switch to Ivysaur..." etc. I dunno if that's the same thing as the new Pokemon mechanic but I thought I'd mention that they did something like he describes in panel 3 in their own games.

omfg how do I remember these Pokemon names... :-/

Albino Bunny

roflstomp wrote: »

On The Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 and 4 - the 8-bit ones - also did not require characters to actually be in a battle to gain XP. I found that to be far superior to "Okay put Metapod out...okay quickly switch to Ivysaur..." etc. I dunno if that's the same thing as the new Pokemon mechanic but I thought I'd mention that they did something like he describes in panel 3 in their own games.

omfg how do I remember these Pokemon names... :-/

Worth noting that AFAIK they don't really have anything to do with their games apart from writing. It's mostly Zeybod or however you spell it.

Fleur de Alys

Tycho's final line is a really nice and poignant insertion into the strip. And I can't Agree it hard enough.

Tube

Leaked XP is the most best and great thing that ever happened to RPGs. I first remember it in KOTOR. Whenever I play a super old school RPG now that doesn't have it I'm all UUUUUGGGGGHHHHH really?

Finnish_Line

The roller skates are too tricky when you have to stop and talk to people, especially people who are walking in a square pattern.

I much prefer the bicycle. Great control on that.

Bobble

Skull2185 wrote: »

Those rollerskates fucking blow... Using the d-pad is not an acceptable solution. I should be able to take those stupid things off. EXP share is awesome though.

I guess I'm some kind of savage in that I use the D-pad anyway, so the roller skates are pretty awesome to me.

But then, back in my day, we only had D-pads. We couldn't run diagonally either.

DVG

I wonder if Tycho got his turtleneck out of his trunk.

Gaslight

DVG wrote: »

I wonder if Tycho got his turtleneck out of his trunk.

Tycho just came from his guest appearance on Sprockets.

Skull2185

Bobble wrote: »

Skull2185 wrote: »

Those rollerskates fucking blow... Using the d-pad is not an acceptable solution. I should be able to take those stupid things off. EXP share is awesome though.

I guess I'm some kind of savage in that I use the D-pad anyway, so the roller skates are pretty awesome to me.

But then, back in my day, we only had D-pads. We couldn't run diagonally either.

Well, I've been there. Y is my first Pokemon since Yellow. Even on my XL, the d-pad is uncomfortable to use for extended periods of itme. These rollerskates are so annoying... using them makes me feel like I'm playing Red Dead Redemption. Well, I guess any Rockstar Euphoria game. Something as simple as walking through a door makes you have to stop, take a deep breath, put the controller down and step back for a moment.

It's just... OH MY GOD JUST GO INTO THE POKECENTER ALREADY!

JackdawGin

Gaslight wrote: »

DVG wrote: »

I wonder if Tycho got his turtleneck out of his trunk.

Tycho just came from his guest appearance on Sprockets.

Now is the time on Penny Arcade vhen ve dance!

Seriously though, XP share is necessary now in that it avoids the busy work of constantly putting party members out just to bring them back. I remember that from FFX. You'd start every fight with some characters, then tap in the next group so they could "participate" and then put in your ringers to actually win the battle.

Candymancer

Every now and then I get the urge to play ffx. And then I remember that and it goes away. Even back then not having shared exp was outdated. It slipped into ff7, but after that squeenix was really stubborn in not using it for a long time.

Really, shared exp has been a thing since dragon quest 4. On the nes.

SomeWarlock

I wonder if it's intentional irony that Gen 1 had the exact same item as Gen 6(okay, Gen 6's Exp Share gives all pokemon who didn't fight 50% xp from the fight while EXP ALL gave everyone 1/number of pokemon xp to all pokemon, but it's the same mechanic), or they simply not know/remember. I get the joke is old guys complaining about new things, I'm just wondering if there's extra intentional element to it(old guys complaining about new things that aren't actually new).

Psykoma

SomeWarlock wrote: »

I wonder if it's intentional irony that Gen 1 had the exact same item as Gen 6(okay, Gen 6's Exp Share gives all pokemon who didn't fight 50% xp from the fight while EXP ALL gave everyone 1/number of pokemon xp to all pokemon, but it's the same mechanic), or they simply not know/remember. I get the joke is old guys complaining about new things, I'm just wondering if there's extra intentional element to it(old guys complaining about new things that aren't actually new).

But from exp all, the pokemon who didn't participate would get levelling experience, but not stat experience.
Still a pretty big difference

Conn

I like that the thumbnail for this strip on the main page is just "fucking."

jothki

Three starters. Torchic is available as a Mystery Gift right now.

Anyone remember back when Mystery Gifts involved actually needing to find another person, and getting either stuff you didn't care about or awesome furniture, instead of free starters?

Soul Sanctum

I'm glad they put in Exp share and made the game more accessible. I believe the devs saw the insane amount of grinding in the Pokemon games and with each new generation, more mini-games, systems, the amount of grinding to "complete" the game just got higher and higher. After you've leveled up a dozens of Pokemon to 99 in previous games, it starts to wear on you, so to alleviate that and bring the game closer to something FUN, they made the game less demanding.

When you only had 150 pkmn it wasn't an issue, mastering those 150 was a doable challenge, now with the 600+ it's an insane task. X/Y feels like the first real advancement of the Pokemon games when the rest, to me, just felt like rehashes.

Stormwatcher

Things were much better when they were worse!

PS: I get the joke

Neuroskeptic

The title is sublime. No Country for Old Pokemen. And then Tycho's “poke-non” is the cherry on top.

Henroid

On the one hand, shared EXP is the best thing to happen to this freaking game.

On the other hand, the metaphor for how life works is 100% accurate.

Dragkonias

Candymancer wrote: »

Every now and then I get the urge to play ffx. And then I remember that and it goes away. Even back then not having shared exp was outdated. It slipped into ff7, but after that squeenix was really stubborn in not using it for a long time.

Really, shared exp has been a thing since dragon quest 4. On the nes.

Well, it isn't so bad in FFX because of how the battle system works.

Still annoying though and unnecessarily time-consuming.

Tasteticle

Skull2185 wrote: »

Bobble wrote: »

Skull2185 wrote: »

Those rollerskates fucking blow... Using the d-pad is not an acceptable solution. I should be able to take those stupid things off. EXP share is awesome though.

I guess I'm some kind of savage in that I use the D-pad anyway, so the roller skates are pretty awesome to me.

But then, back in my day, we only had D-pads. We couldn't run diagonally either.

Well, I've been there. Y is my first Pokemon since Yellow. Even on my XL, the d-pad is uncomfortable to use for extended periods of itme. These rollerskates are so annoying... using them makes me feel like I'm playing Red Dead Redemption. Well, I guess any Rockstar Euphoria game. Something as simple as walking through a door makes you have to stop, take a deep breath, put the controller down and step back for a moment.

It's just... OH MY GOD JUST GO INTO THE POKECENTER ALREADY!

I don't know what you're on about, but they come off when you use the dpad

likalaruku

Never met anyone in the past 15 years who plays Pokemon AND is under 25 years of age.