Pokémon games are less and less weird

It was a data miner who discovered that the Pokérus is not present in Scarlet Pokemon Y Violet. By itself, it’s a small detail. But it’s part of a trend in Pokemon games in general – as time goes on they just get less weird.

The strange virus requires some explanation. Introduced in Generation II, Pokérus had less than a one in 20,000 chance of infecting a Pokémon. (For comparison, shiny Pokémon, which are specifically famous for being rare, have a base chance of 4000 to appear.) And despite presenting itself as an infection, Pokérus was actually beneficial.

However, to understand how, you also need to understand Effort or EV values. Defeating an opponent in battle rewards between one and three EVs in a specific stat. But EVs are never properly explained in-game and rarely mentioned. That’s because they don’t really have an impact on the casual gamer. Battle a variety of Pokémon and yours will grow in a balanced, if slightly arcane way.

However, when things get competitive, electric vehicles become a useful tool. For example, all Pokémon have a physical and special attack stat. But its moves can only fall into one of those categories, and individual Pokémon often have a natural affinity for one or the other. A Pokemon can’t max out its EVs in every stat, so competitive trainers will focus on getting EVs in a single form of attack to avoid splitting them up unnecessarily.

A Pokémon infected with Pokérus used to gain double EV, speeding up the process significantly. Players who wanted to legitimately get the strongest pokémon possible would deliberately infect their battle partners with the Pokérus before training them. Far from being an extremely rare event, exchanging, sharing and spreading Pokérus among players became part of the routine.

His removal doesn’t really have much of a material impact on the game. Pokérus was a niche mechanic that affected a niche group of players. The casual player will likely never run into it, and even if they hit that one in 20,000 chance, they probably wouldn’t notice any benefit. But for competitive gamers, games have steadily introduced more and more ways to get powerful gear, including easier EV training. And players who want top-tier battles don’t even need to spend the time and effort raising and training powerful monsters in the first place: many use tools like pokemon showdown to just simulate things.

But the now-concluded story of the Pokérus reflects a change in the Pokemon games in general. When it first came out, Pokemon it was something strange and mysterious. There are rumors about Red Y Blue, from claims that Mew could be found hiding under a truck to the idea that anyone who heard Lavender Town’s music would die. And behind the rumors were real moments of strangeness. You can cast your fishing rod on statues as if they were floating on water, certain characters can disappear allowing you to break the sequence, and glitchy Pokemon like MissingNo haunt cartridges.

When Prayed Y Silver came along and Pokérus was introduced, it fell into this very category: something weird, almost unplayable, potentially scary that could happen without warning or any real explanation. But over time, the Internet and data mining eventually became mainstream. The exact percentages of its occurrence were revealed, as well as its mechanics and uses. It became a technique honed for those who wanted it and a bit of trivia for everyone else.

The same can be said of many of PokemonThe long-standing rarities. The aforementioned glows, for example, were once a weird and mysterious color change that, again, most gamers wouldn’t see during casual gameplay. If they did, they might not understand what’s going on, or it might become a symbol of extraordinary luck to show off to friends. Today, there are a handful of methods, tricks, and growing techniques to get glows. You still need luck, but much less. It has mostly been replaced with perseverance and brute force.

The existence of these routines and the people dedicated to them, in turn, has led to changes in the quality of life to reduce them. Eggs used to be a strange surprise that you could occasionally find if you left Pokémon in the nursery. But as eggs became the center of various high-level mechanics, including breeding competitive Pokémon and obtaining shiners, they became easier and easier to obtain. In Scarlet Y Violetraising and hatching eggs takes minutes if you have the right sandwich powers and you can do it right from your picnic.

The same goes for friendship, a mechanic that causes certain pokémon to evolve. There’s no luck involved, but it’s only vaguely alluded to in most games, with a single NPC somewhere in the world giving broad answers as a clue. Without a clear understanding of how it works, a Pokémon that suddenly evolves after you’ve had it for a while and used it a lot is a brilliant surprise. But now that it’s easy to find exactly online What to raise that level of friendship, it seems that PokemonThe creators of have responded in turn, making it much easier overall. In Scarlet Y Violet, just a couple of sandwiches might be enough. It may come as a surprise, but only because of how quickly it happened. There is no need to wait anymore, travel, fight and really get close to your pokémon.

enjoy it Scarlet Y Violet a lot, but the loss of pure rarity and joyful surprises in the games is a shame, and I think the Pokémon Company can’t easily avoid it. After all, it was a data miner who discovered that the Pokérus is not present in Scarlet Pokemon Y Violet. All the secrets of the games will be revealed within a few days of release, and people will start optimizing for anything that has a small chance of appearing, from eggs to glitters.

But that is no longer true for the Pokérus. It’s unclear exactly why he was removed, but he had already been completely changed since his first iteration, not mechanically but socially. Where once was strange, unexpected and inexplicable, that and much more of Pokemonit has become understandable, common and easily exploitable.