XY Casual Vs. Competitive Battles - Preferences and Experiences
- Thread starter Drohn
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I actually really enjoy both kinds of play, and yes, have experience in both. 
Casual:
Usually a fun and carefree environment, where you can use fun or test teams. These battles are where you can really get better. I enjoy these personally for using pokémon I've never used before/would not normally use in competitive battles.
Competitive:
Definitely a nice change of pace. A real test to those who believe they have a real battle-worthy team. I enjoy the knowledge that my opponent isn't playing casual. That they are working just as hard as I am to win. If you manage to win, there's more satisfaction to it. If you lost, then you can usually know what you missed on your team or what you can try to change to do better next time.
They both have merits, and people can learn from both experiences.
I've taught myself from Day 1 about competitive battling, and have become a fairly decent player if I do say so myself.
Casual:
Usually a fun and carefree environment, where you can use fun or test teams. These battles are where you can really get better. I enjoy these personally for using pokémon I've never used before/would not normally use in competitive battles.
Competitive:
Definitely a nice change of pace. A real test to those who believe they have a real battle-worthy team. I enjoy the knowledge that my opponent isn't playing casual. That they are working just as hard as I am to win. If you manage to win, there's more satisfaction to it. If you lost, then you can usually know what you missed on your team or what you can try to change to do better next time.
They both have merits, and people can learn from both experiences.
I've taught myself from Day 1 about competitive battling, and have become a fairly decent player if I do say so myself.
I'm a casual player and always have been, though that isn't to say that I'm not interested in competitive play at all. I think competitive Pokémon is really cool, and I've been learning a lot more about it with the 6th generation; I even know what all those goofy tier abbreviations mean thanks to MtheW!
The biggest barrier to playing competitively, for me, is time. There's a decent amount of work and time involved in making a competitive Pokémon team, catching and breeding Pokémon to get the right natures, high IVs, any bred moves, etc., then training them up. On top of that, there's also the planning the moves and Pokémon for your team, getting any held items you need. It's a lot! Every generation since 4th gen I've told myself, "alright, this time, I'm finally going to make myself a good Pokémon team after I beat the game," but it's never happened. When it comes down to it, I would rather write, or do work, or actually play a video game in my free time instead of breeding Pokémon and all of that other boring, fiddly stuff.
Maybe someday I'll get there. In the meantime, I'm having fun learning more about the competitive side of Pokémon as a spectator.
The biggest barrier to playing competitively, for me, is time. There's a decent amount of work and time involved in making a competitive Pokémon team, catching and breeding Pokémon to get the right natures, high IVs, any bred moves, etc., then training them up. On top of that, there's also the planning the moves and Pokémon for your team, getting any held items you need. It's a lot! Every generation since 4th gen I've told myself, "alright, this time, I'm finally going to make myself a good Pokémon team after I beat the game," but it's never happened. When it comes down to it, I would rather write, or do work, or actually play a video game in my free time instead of breeding Pokémon and all of that other boring, fiddly stuff.
Maybe someday I'll get there. In the meantime, I'm having fun learning more about the competitive side of Pokémon as a spectator.
I'm a competitive player through and through, I started playing competitively around four years ago. Before starting to play competitively I would just play over local connection with my friends, that was fun and all but it gets boring quite quickly (for me at least). That's what really made me look for something more in the way of battling.
Competitive battling is so much fun for me, you're facing like minded people that enjoy the same game as you do. I'll admit that I had to lots of research to get into it initially and the biggest problem I found was how splintered the information was across the internet. There was nowhere to go to learn everything I needed to and there was no help available which would have been a godsend. Preparing your Pokemon for competitive is a lot less time consuming now than it used to be with the new mechanics this Generation and there is much better connectivity with the games and forums like this to gain Pokemon you don't have time to breed yourself.
Athena, do you think you'd feel more encouraged with help available to you? I know I would have appreciated it when I was teaching myself
Competitive battling is so much fun for me, you're facing like minded people that enjoy the same game as you do. I'll admit that I had to lots of research to get into it initially and the biggest problem I found was how splintered the information was across the internet. There was nowhere to go to learn everything I needed to and there was no help available which would have been a godsend. Preparing your Pokemon for competitive is a lot less time consuming now than it used to be with the new mechanics this Generation and there is much better connectivity with the games and forums like this to gain Pokemon you don't have time to breed yourself.
Athena, do you think you'd feel more encouraged with help available to you? I know I would have appreciated it when I was teaching myself
Freedomeon said:Athena, do you think you'd feel more encouraged with help available to you? I know I would have appreciated it when I was teaching myself
Yes, though I'd still need a way to overcome the time barrier.
At least it's much better in 6th gen than it has been is previous gens, but it's still a large hurdle to cross.
Competitive battling involves more than just type matchups. It's about moves, Pokemon, playstyle, everything. In competitive, you wouldn't use Mewtwo and, say, Noctowl, in the same team, because Noctowl is way too weak or because the restrictions of the format prevent you from doing so. In competitive, you wouldn't use Hyper Beam, because it might have a cool animation, but that won't prevent the other guy from setting up on your recharge.
Personally, I am competitive and play competitively. I understand that this is a game, but I can't help trying to win. I might be too bored to breed teams in-game, but I use simulators and whenever I try to decide whether a Pokemon is good or not, its stats, ability and movepool come in mind first. I understand why some people might prefer to battle with favorites, but the way I see the game now, few of the Pokemon I really like aren't viable competitively. One might say that I'm losing all the fun, but allow me to disagree. It's a children's game, sure, but that doesn't mean we can't take it to the next level. Competitive doesn't kill the spirit of the game, as long as you don't go insane over it. As long as you can still enjoy a run through the story with your starter, the region's bird and a Haxorus with a Modest Nature and 0 IVs across the board, you're cool. But that doesn't mean you wouldn't like an Adamant Haxorus with 31 IVs across the board.
Personally, I am competitive and play competitively. I understand that this is a game, but I can't help trying to win. I might be too bored to breed teams in-game, but I use simulators and whenever I try to decide whether a Pokemon is good or not, its stats, ability and movepool come in mind first. I understand why some people might prefer to battle with favorites, but the way I see the game now, few of the Pokemon I really like aren't viable competitively. One might say that I'm losing all the fun, but allow me to disagree. It's a children's game, sure, but that doesn't mean we can't take it to the next level. Competitive doesn't kill the spirit of the game, as long as you don't go insane over it. As long as you can still enjoy a run through the story with your starter, the region's bird and a Haxorus with a Modest Nature and 0 IVs across the board, you're cool. But that doesn't mean you wouldn't like an Adamant Haxorus with 31 IVs across the board
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PMJ said:
Nothing on the line, friendly match, nobody really cares about the outcome...
Just for funsies, as you put it.
PMJ
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Keeper of Night said:
But that doesn't mean you're still not going to play to win, try to capitalize on mistakes, find openings to sweep, etc. Even if I bring Noctowl to an ubers match, it doesn't mean that I'm not going to play to his strengths - after all, there must be some reason he's on my team.
PMJ said:
There's "casual" and then there's "competitively casual" with things like Roulette etc. "Casual" in this instance means with no competitive knowledge and ineffective sets.
As an example, a casual set could be:
Espeon @ Quick Claw
Synchronise
Adamant
~ Psyshock
~ Quick Attack
~ Psychic
~ Future Sight
PMJ said:
My understanding of casual battles are that teams exist of Pokémon you like, rather than Pokémon that work together well. They don't need to have the best fitting nature, good IV, good coverage in move sets, or even be EV trained.
I get your point. Battles are generally to some extent competitive. It's really the tier system and the aforementioned points I'm talking about when I speak about competitive battles and the lack of care for those points when I talk about casual battles.
PMJ said:
That's the thing-you won't be having an Ubers team, just a bunch of Pokemon you like. You like Gen I and Gen II, so your team has Mewtwo and Gyarados, two good/great Pokemon, as well as Beedrill and Noctowl, two Pokemon that are relatively weak. You'll play to win, of course, but that doesn't make it competitive; otherwise, the meaning of casual wouldn't exist in anything in everyday life. Imagine playing Monopoly with a bunch of friends. Do you try to win? Probably yes. Would you call it competitive? I don't think so.
Keeper of Night said:
Try to say that when facing your ambipom, I dare you. (just kidding)
Every battle is competitive to a point, PMJ is not wrong with that, but freedomeon, keeper, drohn and jackal already pointed out the distinction.
The difference is not the desire to win, but about what are you willing to do to win. Going well over the line to get the victory.
Look at it this way: in one, you give pizza to your pokemon, win or lose. in the other, you feed them steroids before the fight, and if they lose, you put them on the PC and get a replacement.
That's why I don't like competitive, it just seems heartless.
I'd love to play casual battles (not that I would have a better chance of winning those) but everyone focuses on competitive, and, honestly, most people would use competitive-grade tactics in their play (and I woulnd't be innocent of that, either), so casual would become some sort of failed competitive.
That's why I stopped playing Y, for now. What's good about breeding the pokemon I'm missing if I'll never be able to play with them?
EDIT: At the same time, PMJ has a point in that when you know the rules of competitive play, you can't get away from them. Every battle will be competitive; evey pokemon that doesn't have perfect IV's will lose, any pokemon without the greater possible coverage is a failure. I hate that. And the worst thing is that that's my fault.
I like competitive because there's more of an incentive to perform at your best at a competitive level than a more casual level. If I want to play at my best, I need to use the best. Otherwise I'm needlessly gimping myself from being the best I can be.
I've been playing competitively for four years now, and it's really shifted my perspective from when I was a more casual battler. You really start to take note of your mistakes and become a very reflective person after every battle. You look at where you screwed up and how you can patch that mistake for next time, which then helps you perform at an even higher level.
I will also say that being creative while still staying competitive is one of the greatest things you can accomplish as a competitive battler because you're helping to expand everyone's knowledge of the metagame.
I've been playing competitively for four years now, and it's really shifted my perspective from when I was a more casual battler. You really start to take note of your mistakes and become a very reflective person after every battle. You look at where you screwed up and how you can patch that mistake for next time, which then helps you perform at an even higher level.
I will also say that being creative while still staying competitive is one of the greatest things you can accomplish as a competitive battler because you're helping to expand everyone's knowledge of the metagame.
To be honest, until Kalos League started, I was pretty much a casual player. After I got in, I decided that I'd improve, and as I did, I started to like competitive Pokémon more and more. I tend to be one of the players that while enjoying the glory of the win (Which, admittedly, doesn't happen extremely frequently), would want to do it with at least one of my favourites. I do take note of weaknesses, and try my best to address them, but my teams usually stay the same ;w;. I do now prefer competitive, but if you'd have asked me last year, I would have said casual.
I like a mixture of both. I EV train, I teach the team good moves, make sure at least ONE IV is perfect, but confound it I'll use my favorites and you're gonna' like it. Walrein, Armaldo, Flygon, Exploud, Aggron; I've used them all before simply because I like them. And they're just the tip of the iceberg.
The way I see it, competitive battling involves much more strategy than a casual one. In competitive you'd see people using stat boosters, entry hazards, and status conditions to bring the opponent down. In casual you're really just going to see people spamming high base power attacks with a Pokemon they love. The line between both is fairly thin, but it is solid. A good visual for this would be hitting targets. With competitive it'd be like if you use a bow and arrow to hit your target. On the other hand, casual would be like you throwing a brick or rock at your target.
I've experienced both types of play, but with competitive being easier to get into this generation, I obviously made the transition. Now that I play more competitively, I enjoy it more than casual as I now naturally think more strategic than before. I've had a few matches online against some casual players and my competitive team just swept through. But every once in awhile I like to bust out my Timid Slurpuff and team of shinies and enjoy a good, fun, casual battle.
I've experienced both types of play, but with competitive being easier to get into this generation, I obviously made the transition. Now that I play more competitively, I enjoy it more than casual as I now naturally think more strategic than before. I've had a few matches online against some casual players and my competitive team just swept through. But every once in awhile I like to bust out my Timid Slurpuff and team of shinies and enjoy a good, fun, casual battle.
I like to use my competitive Pokemon against casual players at my school and win utterly.
I think there are three distinctions instead of the two that OP implied. Casual, Competitively Casual, and Competitive. I am very competitive so yes, I will use at least competitively casual Pokemon against clueless casual players just so I can win. Since X/Y were released I started training Pokemon and playing competitive with people on the chat room and since I entered it I cannot play casual. I am mostly competitively casual bordering on competitive, but I never try to make teams with odd EVs or make stall teams or whatever because I know I cannot handle it. All my Pokemon are sweepers like Greninja or Talonflame with Adamant/Modest/Jolly/Timid nature and 252 Attack/Special and Speed/HP and 6 HP/Speed. I may use the occasional Aegislash which is slow or Gliscor which stalls, but really I just like to set up and attack while my Pokemon happen to have perfect IVs and 252 EV spreads. All my "teams" are Pokemon that are independent of each other with little to no synergy between them. I won't make teams with 3 Pokemon having a weakness, though.
I think there are three distinctions instead of the two that OP implied. Casual, Competitively Casual, and Competitive. I am very competitive so yes, I will use at least competitively casual Pokemon against clueless casual players just so I can win. Since X/Y were released I started training Pokemon and playing competitive with people on the chat room and since I entered it I cannot play casual. I am mostly competitively casual bordering on competitive, but I never try to make teams with odd EVs or make stall teams or whatever because I know I cannot handle it. All my Pokemon are sweepers like Greninja or Talonflame with Adamant/Modest/Jolly/Timid nature and 252 Attack/Special and Speed/HP and 6 HP/Speed. I may use the occasional Aegislash which is slow or Gliscor which stalls, but really I just like to set up and attack while my Pokemon happen to have perfect IVs and 252 EV spreads. All my "teams" are Pokemon that are independent of each other with little to no synergy between them. I won't make teams with 3 Pokemon having a weakness, though.
I started to play competitive last year and I am loving it so far.
I like to play against others that uses competitive teams and as wierd as it sounds I am not targeting myself to win but just to get myself better with stratagy and the Pokemon Im using so even if I loose I still made myself better but that can be only against competitive teams.
I also used to have only sweepers in my team but then I learned that:
A) In competitive battles you need more then just offensive. You need hazards bulky pokemon special condition and to do some stratagy thinking before and during the battle
B) It is much more fun to do the stratagy thinking thing instead of spamming the A button and hope you wont have a good Pokemon against you.
I like to play against others that uses competitive teams and as wierd as it sounds I am not targeting myself to win but just to get myself better with stratagy and the Pokemon Im using so even if I loose I still made myself better but that can be only against competitive teams.
I also used to have only sweepers in my team but then I learned that:
A) In competitive battles you need more then just offensive. You need hazards bulky pokemon special condition and to do some stratagy thinking before and during the battle
B) It is much more fun to do the stratagy thinking thing instead of spamming the A button and hope you wont have a good Pokemon against you.
Whilst I admire people whom do play competitively, I'd have to say that my style is more competitively casual. I've recently started getting into IVs on black and also white 2, and it's become far easier on X, so now it has just become a natural part of my play style.
However, as for breeding the perfect Pokemon...I'm not sure I could ever bring myself to do it. As stupid as it sounds, the idea of not using a Pokemon because it isn't deemed as 'perfect' just seems so cold and heartless. I obviously understand that is has become somewhat of a necessity in competitive battling as you would immediately be putting yourself at a disadvantage against those who have. But for me, the bond I grow with my Pokemon is far too important, and outweighs the need or want for them. Obviously, if I happened to stumble across one at some point, it would be difficult to turn down, if I didn't already have that Pokemon.
It's why it's also difficult for me to bring together a team that plays off of each other rather than a team of Pokemon whom I've bonded with over the years. For example, I have a Pikachu on my team at the moment. It's not the strongest electric type, but given that Pikachu was my very first Pokemon in Yellow, it means that it'll always have a place with me. Same goes for:
Charizard - Who wouldn't love one to be honest!
Totodile - Another starter that guided to victory in Gold.
Zangoose - A Pokemon which took me to a very unlikely victory during a nuzlocke challenge in Ruby when it looked very bleak.
Lucario - In White 2, it just took lead of my team in such a way that made it my favourite Pokemon.
Crobat - Was in need of a flying type, and decided to take a chance on Zubat, and I'm so glad I did. The first one I had ever properly trained, and it was fantastic.
Cinccino - You'd never expect it to be so tough compared to so many other normal types, but in Black, when I was doing my normal-type run, it was so much stronger than I ever thought...same goes for Audino too.
These aren't the best Pokemon in the world, but they helped me through in times when I needed them, and that's why I think I'll find it hard to be fully competitive.
However, as for breeding the perfect Pokemon...I'm not sure I could ever bring myself to do it. As stupid as it sounds, the idea of not using a Pokemon because it isn't deemed as 'perfect' just seems so cold and heartless. I obviously understand that is has become somewhat of a necessity in competitive battling as you would immediately be putting yourself at a disadvantage against those who have. But for me, the bond I grow with my Pokemon is far too important, and outweighs the need or want for them. Obviously, if I happened to stumble across one at some point, it would be difficult to turn down, if I didn't already have that Pokemon.
It's why it's also difficult for me to bring together a team that plays off of each other rather than a team of Pokemon whom I've bonded with over the years. For example, I have a Pikachu on my team at the moment. It's not the strongest electric type, but given that Pikachu was my very first Pokemon in Yellow, it means that it'll always have a place with me. Same goes for:
Charizard - Who wouldn't love one to be honest!
Totodile - Another starter that guided to victory in Gold.
Zangoose - A Pokemon which took me to a very unlikely victory during a nuzlocke challenge in Ruby when it looked very bleak.
Lucario - In White 2, it just took lead of my team in such a way that made it my favourite Pokemon.
Crobat - Was in need of a flying type, and decided to take a chance on Zubat, and I'm so glad I did. The first one I had ever properly trained, and it was fantastic.
Cinccino - You'd never expect it to be so tough compared to so many other normal types, but in Black, when I was doing my normal-type run, it was so much stronger than I ever thought...same goes for Audino too.
These aren't the best Pokemon in the world, but they helped me through in times when I needed them, and that's why I think I'll find it hard to be fully competitive.