Create a site-specific way to learn skills?

So I was reading the discussion about whether or not we should allow users to choose what generation they want their characters to originate from recently and I had a bit of a brainwave about it when I was driving. To start with let me pose a few questions so I can hopefully get you into the mindset I had when I came up with this. First of all, if we allow people to pick and choose what generation they want to base their pokmeon's moveset on, then where's the limit on that? Would they be locked into whatever choice they make, even if a generation released in the future has something more appealing? What if someone wants an even earlier generation and expects to find hm moves like dive/strength/rock climb?

Here's the second, more philosophical set of questions: What are moves in the context of this site? Can we really respect the power stat of moves in a combat system that has no hard numbers? Is there a difference between Psychic and someone who's been using Confusion for a long time and "mastered" that attack to an incredible level in the rp? If a pokemon exclusively has one or the other of these "tiered" moves (Thundershock:Thunderbolt, Gust:Hurricane, Icy Wind:Ice Beam, Vine Whip:Power Whip, Bite:Crunch) is there any way to say the fight could go differently if they had the other move? Is it fair that a Nidoran can learn Crunch just by finding the right tm even though it would otherwise need to wait until level 50 to learn it naturally? Is there even a way to gauge the relative strength of spawned pokemon beyond what evolution tier they're in?

Why are we trying to adhere to hard game logic on a freeform roleplay site?

So here's a thought I had: Replace all TM finds with a new currency (Move tickets?), and allow players to cash in tm's they found before this system gets implemented for head start/earlier progress rewards. This new currency can be used to "buy" their moves within a new system of rules.

Rule 1, the common sense rule: Should a squirtle be able to learn flamethrower, or a pidgey that can dig? This can be both limiting and freeing depending on how creative and involved you are with your character. As an example I'll use a character I'm planning to make in the future, a Machop. As a pokemon who is a pure fighting type, it makes little sense for him to have any of the elemental punches. However, as his skill grows, I envision him being able to punch so fast that the friction of his fist traveling through the air causes it to ignite (fire punch), and, as he gets even faster, a corona of static discharge (thunder punch). Those are the easy ones of the 3, but what would be a plausible explanation for him to learn Ice Punch?

Rule 2, character strength balancing: With so many of the more powerful moves being available as a TM, many people can make an "endgame" moveset build by the time they're level 30-40. After this, what is there really to levels except a number and a way to gauge relative power in a PvP scenario? My suggestion: We spread out all the moves into 5 tiers of difficulty with a 20 level threshold in between each tier, and only allow a pokemon to learn an ability from a new tier once they've reached that level. For an example of what I mean, I already categorized all the electric type moves based on my opinion of the difficulty/power of each move:


Rule 3, cost to unlock: This is where that new currency comes in; after all, what other way would there to stop players from changing their moves around at the slightest whim? I imagine this would be more site-mechanic based instead of something strictly observed in-character, however a couple interesting scenarios could come about depending on how you want to restrict this facet. At the core though, I suggest two levels of pricing: Cost of the move itself, and cost of unlocking the element/tier the move is placed in. Of course a pokemon should be able to unlock their native typing's move pool for free as they level up, but a grass type learning a move from the fire pool? That should cost extra.

... I'm finding it hard to describe the system I've imagined here at face value, so how about I walk you through a simulated pokemon's journey instead? So starting out with a fresh character, the player gets to make the first major decision of who the character's parents are. One is always going to be the same species, but now instead of looking at the list of egg moves from any generation, they instead get to choose from the wider variety of pokemon specific to that pokemon's egg group. Once they've made their selection, they get to pick ONE elite level move from the second pokemon's natural types as an egg move. This also sets the limit of novice level movesets they can choose from, as they'd only have their parent's moveset types. For the sake of thoroughness, this player starts as a rattata with 2 raticate parents. Cool, they get Hyper Fang from the start, but they are limited to normal type moves until they can find some move tokens. Since they only started with one of the potential max of 4 novice movesets, buying additional movesets at the novice level is discounted until they are caught up with the "average." Buying the moves themselves still cost the same, unless for some reason this player started with less than 4 moves (move$ in empty slot < move$ replacing old move < Move$ creating 5th/6th slot).

Now this rattata continues adventuring until they reach the journeyman level. Many pokemon at this level are lucky, if they are dual type they can immediately start purchasing Journeyman level moves of their types. Thankfully though there is still a balancing factor for the single-type rattata, he gets a discount for purchasing his first non-native journeyman movepool. After that first movepool, all the others are priced the same. This trend will continue all the way into the grandmaster tier, with each new tier (and the moves within each tier) costing more and more tokens.


I think I covered all the points my brain mad-scientist'ed together. What're your thoughts on this system? If it is met with relative approval, I am willing to go through and sort each type into a 5-tier movepool that could then be discussed.

So, I'm going to be honest. I can't support this idea due to several problems I noticed with it.

Rule 1: What is going to be considered "reasonable" is... up to massive debate, to say the least. This is Pokémon, a world of fantasy creatures with magical powers that would be impossible in real life. I agree that even in this case, things can fit with this world's rules or they can't, so they can be judged reasonable in that sense, but often, the rules are pretty vague and everyone has different headcanons. I have my own theories on why it actually makes sense for many Pokémon to learn seemingly "nonsensical" moves, for instance, and while I'm certainly not going to force it on others, I'm just making a point that not everyone is going to agree. We have a lot of freedom with using the moves we have already, giving work for staff, and this will just add more judgement calls and controversy. Despite its flaws, I think trying to stick by the games' standards is the best call in this case.

Rule 2: Leveling on-site isn't that easy. 5 pages (or 15 spare posts) per level is a lot, and even 3 pages (or 9 posts) with a Joy Ribbon is still quite a bit, not to mention how rare Joy Ribbons are. The Cursed Blessing is even rarer and prevents rolls almost all of the time. Joy Seeds are almost event-exclusive (I believe) and Happy Meals and the like require many more rare ingredients. My point is that very, very few people have characters beyond Level 30-40 (also, each level gives 1 more energy for dungeons). That's why evolution levels are reduced here. I would, however, prefer that people have opportunities to use the moves they like, and there are already enough restrictions, I feel.

Rule 3: Related to what I said right now, there are already costs for learning new moves. I don't think adding a new system that is more complex, as it is less based on anything from the games, is worth the trouble, especially given the other points I made.

Sorry it took me a day to respond, Monday wasn't a particularly good day for me so I spent the whole day eating popcorn and watching Naruto Shippuden. Anyways, I would have been disappointed if my idea was met with universal acceptance and praise. Often when I have these intense "big idea that could make everything amazing" moments, I fail to realize some fatal flaw in the idea and need other people to point it out to me.

I think I explained rule 1 poorly. Reading it again, I made it sound like I expected people to come up with completely realistic/scientific reasons why their pokemon should be able to use a move. Actually it should be more understood as a soft limiter of "has your character done anything to earn the right to use this move" kind of consideration. I'm imagining a sort of a move approval thread where, alongside requesting the currency for the move to be removed from your account, you also have to either write an explanation as to why your character should have the move (even something as simple as "my character saw a greninja use substitue and thought it was cool enough to learn it himself") or link a thread of your character actually training/discovering/unlocking/etc. the move. The more powerful a move is, the more this rule needs to be observed. If this more freeform system were to be implemented, there should be something in place that prevents people from metagaming and grabbing all the most powerful moves beyond just the resource cost.

I agree with you that it takes a long time to level up with the way this site is paced, and I could argue that having to wait longer for the more useful moves makes it more rewarding when you're actually able to have them. However I also forgot that it is very rare for pokemon in the games to have a move that they learn through leveling past even level 75. More importantly though is that my example doesn't have to be the final system to be implemented. The level gaps could be 15, 10, even 7 levels apart, and there could even be just 3 or 4 tiers instead of the 5 I came up with. I'm not so good at setting hard numbers to things and make it balanced, which is why I haven't even attempted to name how much tickets each tier/move would cost.

To be honest, the current system to learn moves is very complex, and I imagined this method completely replacing it. Right now you have to keep track of what each individual pokemon can learn naturally, hundreds of tm/tr's and where to find/place them, whether or not your pokemon can use said tm's, then there's move tutoring at the dojo, and the dreamcatcher's services for learning different egg moves... There's a lot of different systems in place, and a lot of it needs to be moderated in some fashion. If we flipped all of that out for this one overall method (not saying you can't use the dojo/dreamcatchers for rp purposes) then I think that would actually put less work on the staff overall.

Thanks! So, first, I realized I might have phrased my disagreement too rudely earlier. Apologies for that. As for my reply to your reply:

This might be a difference of opinion, but I find the current system actually easy to use. The big thing is that there are websites that provide the whole movepool of Pokémon and how they learn each move. It seems complex by itself, but I can just look up, say, Pikipek or Honedge, and find everything I need. And admins and moderators can do that too. There's also the familiarity bonus to consider as well. Most probably, someone who RPs here is a fan of Pokémon. Many people play the games a lot, and are therefore familiar with the game-based move learning system. Even if the proposed new system is objectively less complex (which I am not entirely sure it is, as I will explain later), it being less familiar might still make it harder for some people to use. Note that I am saying this as a person who plays very few Pokémon games. I have to look up Pokémon movepools almost every time I mention a move IRP, but I still don't find it too difficult.

Solilo or some other staff member might perhaps weigh in on this, but to me, it seems that moderating all current ways of learning moves isn't actually harder than moderating this proposed system. Admins don't actually have to pay much attention to level-up moves, rolled TMs, or private TM gifts most of the time, as users take care of that. Note that these are often the foundation of movesets. Given that the staff here has a lot of other work on-site and real-life stuff, so even the simplest admin requests and such often take a long time to be fulfilled, needing outright approval for every move learned may be too much of a hassle. Yes, staff theoretically may have to check whether the Pokémon actually can learn the move that way, but... I just feel that pretty much everyone here can be trusted. As I look through records, the biggest problem I see is not updating them enough, and I suppose there's been the occasional move mistake (mostly for new characters being created, though), but I just haven't seen people try to fake moves, or things like levels or TMs that can lead to moves. (If there are any such cases, please inform me). Again, a Pokémon's whole movepool is just a quick search away if a check is needed. The dojo or Dreamcatchers just involves posts/admin requests, similar to the proposed move requests, so I can't truly call the former more complex.

The biggest benefit of the proposed system is flexibility in learning moves (which I believe is the point), including moves that a Pokémon can't learn in-game but perhaps reasonably could use in a more "logical" world. But there's still going to be judgement calls with the requirement of RP reasons for move approval, especially for the more powerful moves. The only thing like this currently is the "become a move tutor" service for the dojo. Note that this is not for merely learning a tutor move (but actually being able to teach it to others as well), has a hefty Poke and ticket cost, and is determined by the objective measure of a word count. Yes, if someone is writing extremely low-effort, completely unrelated, or so on things to meet the word count, I expect it not to be approved, but it's still only in a very specific case, not to learn every move. (This may be somewhat off-topic, but I expect that this is why most of the Pokémon RPs I'm in or seen (not very many, admittedly) use game movepools as baselines. Even very freeform RPs that let Pokémon have pretty much any moveset they want from the start tend to not let them use moves they can't learn in the games, even if it seems reasonable that they could, and I do, in fact, consider this a flaw in and of itself. This site is its own thing and we don't have to copy others - I'm just trying to make the point that the issues might just be more difficult to get around than they might seem at first).

This might also be me personally, but I don't actually feel a strong need to restrict powerful moves too much beyond what's already in the current game-based system, precisely because this is a freeform RP. A Level 5 Pokémon might, for instance, have Hydro Pump or Thunder as an egg move or TM. This just doesn't affect anything mechanically, and IRP, doesn't necessarily mean they're going to constantly win or anything. They're still probably going to be weaker than much higher-leveled Pokémon. If a RPer wants those moves early on, whether for the coolness factor, a detailed character-based reason, or something else, they often can. If they don't want to have them early on, they can generally just choose something else. If we have to be concerned with moves, I'd pay attention to those with mechanical effects like energy-restoring or item-stealing moves, but even then, I don't think those are so big of a deal here as to need out of the ordinary restrictions.

Finally, things I noticed in your original post that I forgot to respond to. For new generations coming out with new moves, this may have to be a separate suggestion sometime. But given how things have gone in the past, I expect that each time one comes out, if your Pokémon is in it, you can permanently choose whether to switch your level-up learnset from now on to that of the new generation or not. (TMs and tutor moves are already from all generations. I'm not actually entirely sure about egg moves, starting or learned through Dreamcatchers, so I'll ask admins later). I'm honestly not sure how HM moves are relevant - they're basically just like any other moves unless you want to use their obstacle-removing functions for RP, and mechanically there isn't anything that can be accessed on-site using them. For judging the strength of spawned Pokémon, it's probably best if individual RPers determine that, as they do now. I believe people generally scale them to their characters' strength (this is explicitly noted for bosses in some of the subdungeons that have them).