thoughts about /iv command

[Atum_Ramirez]

The command /iv # is a handy tool to use in PWO. One can see quickly the IVs of the pokemons caught, and quickly release the bad ones, and stay with the good ones. Perfect for hunters.

Despite its pros, I don’t think that being able to know instantly the IVs of a pokemon by using a command is logical. How do I support this thought?

IVs act like genes, determining how good the pokemon will turn to be. Can people in real life quantify exactly the attributes of athletes for example? Can one say “that boxer has 31 IV attack” or “that marathoner has 28 IV stamina”?
Also can we know so precisely how good a pokemon will be? Again, using the analogy of sports, some athletes that had great potential turned out bad, and some athletes were told they should give up, and turned out to be the best (Usain Bolt xD)

So what do I suggest to make the game more realistic about IVs?

Remove the /iv command, and replace it with 2 NPCs.

NPC 1, would be a former pokemon trainer, that had experience evaluating pokemon. It would evaluate the pokemon qualitatively for free. You show him the poke and he will say something like “HP:good, ATK:bad, DEF: very bad, SPATK: very good, SPDEF: average, SPD: uber”.
As IVs go from 1-32 in PWO, we could divide in 8 qualitative groups. A suggestion could be, for example:
IV 1-4- awful;
IV 5-8 bad;
IV 9-12 below average;
IV 13-16 average;
IV 17-20 – above average
IV 21-24- good
IV 25-28- very good
IV 29-32 epic/uber

NPC 2 could be a scientist in cinnabar lab, that used DNA test to know the exact value of the IV. Because genetic tests are expensive, the services of the NPC wouldn’t be for free like NPC 1, but you could use it to know the exact values.

This way people would go to NPC1 to see if the pokemon was anything good, and would only go to NPC2 if they had a pokemon with good qualitative IVs, or if they had captured a shiny. This way hunting would be more realistic, and not like it is today: " get 10 pokemon x, use command on the 10 pokes, release the bad ones, rinse and repeat"

People could still use online calculators, but the value would only be accurate if the pokemon was high leveled, so it would still be difficult to know the values of a brand new dratini for example.

 

[Bluerise]

So how would a player get the IVs of a different users poke?

 

[Gobfather]

Please correct me if I misunderstand and my points here are mislead.

There are many calculators of which you can enter in IVs and they will tell you its final outcome of ivs at X level. This site here lets you enter in your IVs in the rightermost box, directly under that it will automatically show you stats at level 100. Simple, enter in 99 next to level, then click the "Calculate Stats" at the bottom. This is just one of maany calculators where you can see future Stats based on ivs:

http://www.serebii.net/games/iv-calcdp.shtml

This is a very useful calculator (my go to) as well for seeing your pokemons ivs and future stats withheld in battle against its threats or whatever you plan on throwing it against:

http://pokemonshowdown.com/damagecalc/

As for the NPC rating your pokemon, there are many many things that go into understanding the precise numbers of stats and ivs. The numbers are needed to find out if your poke is good or not. Pokemon need above a certain stat (iv or ev just iv here) to overthrow certain pokemon. There are so many things that go into it, damage output, base speed to boosted speed (understanding the calculation and pokes it will be competing with at those speeds and boosts), understanding the balanace of HP + DEF / HP + SDEF and the pokes that are threatening those of which goes in hand of returning the hit even harder after tanking, etc, etc. There are so many things that go in hand here to dictating this poke is good, this poke is unusable (even though you see a 31 spd and 28 atk lol) that it would be more prudent for the player to go ahead and use his recources than for a DEV here to spend an insane amount of time entering thousands of calculations to dictate a good poke or not.

****As for if I misunderstood and you are suggesting the NPS simply say this is a high iv this is a low iv...how can a person not tell that 4 iv is low himself?

All I am saying is that in my opinion there is too much to be worked on to devote an immense amount of time into this, of which I highly doubt will be done right, as it would require an huge knowledge of EVERY pokemon, and every accounted for STAB, every accounted for resistance, possible moveset, etc etc (assuming you want X NPC to tell you if your poke has the best ivs or worst on an accurate scale)
It would just be simpler for the player to find out for himself / herself and he learn the very math if they wish to better understand. The IV command is an extremely useful tool that I would personally be very saddened to see taken away.

 

[Atum_Ramirez]

@bluerise

Good question xD

Perhaps the player could only send IVs with a /IV command if he talked with the NPC1(so the IVs sent would be qualitative[ex:good]), or after talking to NPC2(so the IVs would be quantitative[ex:21]. That way, the IV command could stay in game, but would only show information when the player talked with NPC1 or NPC2. It's like NPC1 and NPC2 "unlock" the IV command for the poke they evaluated.

@gobfather

Thanks for the feedback gobfather.

Yes Gobfather. One can calculate IVs with an online calculator, and the calculator will be precise if the pokemon is max lvl(or close to it). But it will not be accurate for low level pokes (those that are caught in the wild for example).
So let's say, if you catch 10 staryus lvl 5 at pallet town, the online calculator will not be precise, it will give a big range. In these cases (the wild pokes caught), the online calculator will not be accurate.

You may have misunderstood me in the NPC rating. The NPC only rates the IVs of the pokemon. It doesnt rate if he is a good battler or not. So for example, a snorlax with 1 IV HP would be awful in HP, and a magikarp with 31 IV in HP would be uber xD The NPC only rate the IV, not how good a pokemon is compared to other species.

And yes, one player knows that 4 IV in any stat is pretty low. That's not what I was focusing on the suggestion. What I was focusing, is that, if hunting was realistic, players couldnt know the exact IVs of the pokemons they caught. The idea was to talk to an experienced ex trainer (NPC 1) or to a scientist (NPC 2), so they could tell you a rough estimate (NPC1) or the exact values (NPC2) of the pokemon you caught, instead of knowing automatically with /iv command.

The IV command is an extremely useful tool

Quite true. I agree 100% that it is really really useful.

My point is that it is not realistic to know the exact IVs of a poke when you catch it. I understant that this idea will probably not be supported by the community because it makes things harder. Hunting would change a bit. Instead of catching a bunch of pokes and going to the pokecenter to release the bad ones, players would have to think twice if they wanted to know the exact IVs of the pokes they caught, simply because they would have to pay a small fee for the DNA test.

Still, I posted it because it didn't make sense to me to know those hidden values (IVs are the genes of the poke basically) so quickly, easily and effortlessly. In my head, they should be hidden, and players would only have access to them if they talked with specialists. Also IVs are so important in PWO(because of lack of natures and EV training), players could start working to unveil them.

Of course it was just an opinion and a suggestion xD

 

[EcoWOLFrb]

Before the /iv command there was a way to cheat the system with calculating iv's. People would level a pokemon only so much as to see the if one stat was max or uber, then if it wasn't they'd level it another level or two so it looks like it still has the possibility of being max or uber. They would then sell it for more than it's truly worth to the unsuspecting noob. The /iv command has disallowed this so long as the buyer isn't a complete idiot.

I don't think having to pay for an NPC to tell you the real ivs is a good idea, as no seller would be willing to devalue their pokemon on the market, and spend money doing so. The /iv command is such a useful tool for trades that taking it away for a more complicated system like this would be a great mistake in my opinion. Simplicity is key.

 

[HitmonFonty]

It is useful to have the /iv command in combating scammers I think, and that could in itself outweigh any 'reality' issues here. But we can also see the pokemon stats themselves, is that reality? To know how strong/fast etc a pokemon is, how much damage it can take, just by catching it and looking at it? I believe one of Ash's rivals in the anime could read on his pokedex what moves a pokemon had just by catching it- and when it didn't have what he wanted he released it. So I suggest it is just a further function of our pokedex or similar that we can see displayed general statistics of our pokemon, rather than knowing them instinctually.

I guess too going back to my first comment, even if we made a simple quest to unlock this command the only people that could possibly be effected by the restriction would be newbs who without access to it again become more vulnerable to scammers.

 

[Atum_Ramirez]

Didnt really thought about the scam issues Eco and Fonty.

Simplicity is key.

True fact. And that simplicity and scam prevention probably outweight the reality issue. Still, i think that the info you get is to valuable for such simple action. But still, you have a good reasoning there.

@hitmonfonty

In the anime, Team Rocket blasted off gazilions of times and still survived xD So the anime is not a very good example.
But yeah, we also have access to our base stats. I still think that the information we get from /iv is to important, compared with the easiness of getting it.

But I surrender to your arguments of scam prevention and simplicity of the command being a good thing.

PS: on a less serious note, Hitmonfonty, did that pokedex by any chance shown the true odds of finding a pokemon in a certain area? If it could know so much things... =P

 

[Julio~]

The command is just fine as it is now. As Eco told it disallowed the super-valorization of pokémons that has doubtful IVs. I found this command a really great update, one of the best in the last times. There are calculators of IVs apart from PWO, then I believe it was a 'win' for us.

In the real life we can't quantify exactly the attributes of athletes but that's the Pokémon World. xD

 

[HitmonFonty]

As far as I know pokemon locations and rarity in the anime were all gathered from experience and interacting with other people in the pokemon world- never electronically. In the game, the /list and pokedex data is just a tool to show what information we have gathered on our travels.

 

[Shiningamisgirl]

Maybe you werent around before the /iv command was invented Atum.

Before the /iv command there was veekun, there is still veekun, there will always be veekun. It's what we used to use. It was long, tedious, hard, and led to selling being this slow..slow..mean process. It also made it terribly hard to check another players pokemon (Now if you suspect a scammer, you can just say 'show me the iv's) Even then scammers can use copy/paste ivs, so you always got to be careful. It's less likely that you'll get your face scammed off now, or pay top dollar for garbage.

There will also be what Gob so beautifully listed. So nice!

-rolls- Also..since rarity and spawn rate, and catch rate, and luck, are all different inter-playing things in this game..The pokedex doens't quite work that way. Like Fonty said, it shows pokemon info (You can at least get move sets, and evolution lvls)

/list right now is only really good for telling you where you could find certain Pokemon, not so much how long it would take you to find one, or whether there's more of said pokemon in area x than in area y. Even when /list did give rarity, they were all inaccurate (according to Teck)

 

[Atum_Ramirez]

Yes Shining, I already surrendered to the arguments of scam prevention and simplicity of the process =)

But just to clarify my pokedex statement about rarities, I was just being ironic there =P If a pokedex could know how strong a pokemon was upon catching, why not also know how rare it is in an area? xD I was just being silly there, I wasn't actually serious.

I'm fine with the list command actually (Well, I'm not so fine with the command around the Volcano in Cinnabar, and the Cinnabar Island itself xD But it ain't a problem either)