^I can see the logic behind Hidden Power, at least in the beginning. Having a move whose power and type varies completely from Pokémon to Pokémon was a neat and original idea.
The problem was that the move was exploitable. A decently-powered move of any type on any Pokémon? It could give the player an advantage on the competitive scene, and as such a
Nash equilibrium was quickly established: Everybody else uses Hidden Power, so to play on level terms you need to use it too - and so, everybody was reuired to grind (or cheat!) to get a Hidden Power of the right type and power. The same went for IVs, by the way. A random mechanic that can give players an advantage, is a mechanic that players will have to exploit the randomness out of to obtain a level playing field. This is pretty basic game theory (which is a fun little field of mathematics).
So I understand that they decided to fix the base power of Hidden Power, especially as the competitive scene became global. In that sense, I find it rather strange that they keep insisting on keeping the lottery element of it, or for that matter in Pokémon in general. In a metagame such as this, randomness is just an obstacle to be overcome. A player looking to build a specific team with specific Pokémon for a specific purpose, would not want randomness. This is not a stage of the game where anything goes, or when you take whatever you get. Players want to be specific, because
that is required to play on that level. If you don't, you're at a disadvantage.
Let's use an example, and copy/paste a random Pokémon moveset (in this case, the first I found in the Battle Tree thread):
Tapu Lele @ Psychium Z
Ability: Psychic Surge
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 180 Def / 4 SpA / 4 SpD / 68 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Psychic
- Moonblast
- Substitute
- Protect
Let's say that you want to compete in the Pokémon World Championships, and that you've built a team where this Pokémon figures. Or you want it to conquer the Battle Tree (
Level 51 posted this set for a 196-battle streak, which is quite respectable). Either way, you have decided that this Tapu Lele build is the one you need.
To use a term from game theory (probably mis-use, but hey, that's an insignificant detail for the sake of this explanation), let's call this specific Tapu Lele build a
solution. It is established that this is the Tapu Lele build that would be the optimal one, and give you the greatest probability of winning. Naturally, you would want to obtain this build, since it is assumed that you will be at a relative disadvantage if you don't use this specific set. Ergo, obtaining and tweaking the Tapu Lele is the "game" you're playing, and this specific build is the "solution" you're aiming for. I'm probably botching the terms pretty badly, but let's just roll with it.
In order to arrive at the solution, though, Game Freak has dictated that you need to roll the dice. Several times. First, you have to find a Tapu Lele. Not a big problem, considering that it can be found with 100 % certainty in a fixed location in every copy of Pokémon Sun or Moon. You have to beat a large portion of the game to find it, but that is kind of the prerequisite for high-level cartridge play anyway. You can easily obtain this part of the solution without leaving anything to chance. Or rather, randomness cannot terminate the process. No matter what you do within the confines of the games, you can't arrive in a situation where you can never find a Tapu Lele (of course, you can only find
one in every game, but let's not dwell on that).
But then it gets quirky. In that you'll probably encounter a Quirky nature Tapu Lele before you get a Bold one. You can use an appropriate-natured Synchronize Pokémon to raise the odds to 50 %, which is slightly better. But for the sake of finding our solution, we
will not accept any other outcome than the desired one. If the Tapu Lele doesn't have the right nature, the process has to be terminated, and we have to start again from the beginning. The Nature coin flip therefore only serves to consume time (or rather, increase the amount of iterations of the game). We can lower the required time a lot, but we can't solve the process with certainty within a single iteration of the process.
The same goes for Tapu Lele's IVs. Luckily for us, we only have to care about the Attack IV, thanks to Hyper Training. In previous generations, this was a painful and probably insurmountable obstacle, as obtaining the right IV spread for a Legendary Pokémon was an unsolvable task in practise. If the desired solution was a specific build, the only viable approach was to cheat.
Sidenote: I'm not sure if cheating is considered in game theory, but if I were to guess, I'd say it represents a failure of the game itself. If the only winning move is to cheat, the "game" (not the physical Pokémon game, just the "game" of obtaining the specific build) is broken (well, unwinnable, but since cheating is possible, the task can be completed anyway). Arguably, saving and resetting until the dice rolls your way
is cheating, but it's universally accepted by the community, so let's say it counts as honest play.
Luckily, Game Freak has already addressed this bothersome issue of IVs, and raised the odds of obtaining a 31/0/4x31 Legendary from "zero, for all practical purposes" to a more manageable 1/64. (1/2 chance of Attack being a perfect stat, 1/32 chance of it otherwise being zero - the rest of the IVs can be solved with Hyper Training). Still, as we will not accept any other outcome than the desired one, we have no choice but to reset sixty-four times or so. Or, wait, 128. I forgot the dice roll above. Since Natures and IVs (and also Hidden Power) are all determined in the same process (by RNG when the Pokémon is interacted with), you have to terminate the process if its outcome isn't 100 % desired.
If Hidden Power was a factor (say that we want HP Fire on it, since that is a popular move for Tapu Lele and we have no other way of getting past Ferrothorn), we would have to multiply the above odds by 1/16. Since, again, we don't consider chance as anything other than wasted time, this would just force us through more iterations of the process until the desired outcome occurs.
Contrast this with the elements we can solve without invoking chance, and which therefore can be solved without starting the process anew. Obtaining the desired moves, Ability and hold item for this Tapu Lele build are all simple processes. Psychic, Protect and Substitute are compatible TMs, and it already has Moonblast when you catch it. The Psychicium-Z is presumably already in your possession when you encounter Tapu Lele as well, if not it's trivial to obtain. Since it only has one Ability, this is an element you will safely solve no matter what. The Level is (thankfully) not even an issue. Likewise, the EVs can also be solved in a single iteration of the "game", as long as you don't screw up and have to reset. But since EV training is a completely different and infinitely repeatable process by itself, I don't consider it a problem. Under assumption of optimal play, randomness isn't even an issue in that process, and as such the solution is trivial.
Oh, wow, this became a rather long post. Let's try to wrap it up:
Basically, randomness in high level Pokémon play is
undesired. That is, randomness that influences your odds of completing a defined task (capturing the Pokémon you want). Players seek to obtain very specific Pokémon builds, through known methods and processes, and ideally following the rules of the game. Some of those processes are heavily influenced by randomness, and have a great probability of resulting in an undesired outcome. Therefore, players need to go through many iterations to complete the task. This randomness turns Pokémon training/catching into a game of chance rather than a game of skill (team building is still a game of skill, but Pokémon training is a crucial part of it if you want to go from theory to practise).
Game Freak has addressed the ridiculous amount of dice-rolling required to play their game on the highest level in the past, but for some reason is reluctant to lower it to zero. Control over a Pokémon's Nature, Ability, IVs and often Hidden Power type is
required to achieve optimal play. Yet the only way to control them is to go through hundreds or even thousands of iterations of simple processes, without any means to affect their outcome.
Personally, I can see no reason why there shouldn't be a way to change Natures in-game, change Hidden Power types,
and tweak IVs.
We are all doing it already, but the process is slow and cumbersome, non-reversable once an outcome has been accepted, and only minutely affected by skill and preparation. Don't go tell me that it would be more "honest" to obtain the right IVs through hours of soft-resetting than talking to an NPC and selecting it from a menu. It's effectively the same process for the same end goal, you would still be pressing buttons until the right outcome is achieved, and following the defined rules of the game. By the same logic, it would be more "honest" not to use a Synchronize Pokémon.
My oh my, that was a long one. Perhaps I should just submit it straight to The Flying Press?
