Being able to improve IVs

I was watching a video from Trainer Tips (link below) where he talked about the possibility of being able to train Pokemon you have already caught in order to improve the IVs, and honestly I think it’s a brilliant idea. His reasoning behind it was to stop the advantage of using maps and trackers to find perfect IV Pokemon. But I really really like the idea.

Let’s say you catch a 10/10/10 Mewtwo (very unlucky if so). To improve it to a perfect IV Mewtwo, you would need to improve each stat by 5. So what if, every time you battle with your Mewtwo and defeat a Pokemon, you work towards earning a “token” that can then be spent on improving one of those stats by 1. Now your Mewtwo is 11/10/10. Maybe you have to win 15 battles to earn a token (I haven’t thought that far ahead) but I really think it’s a cool idea and would encourage players to engage in regular gym battles instead of just raids.

I also think this would be a good way to introduce a competitive aspect to the game, whether it be PvP or a leader board system.

What are your thoughts on this? Would it ruin catching a 100 IV in the wild?

Trainer Tips video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMSU-YVLvNA

6 Likes

Great idea, I do think it would have to be harder though. Maybe 25 battles won is a token, and 20 tokens is a stat up?

I said maybe 15 above, but they’d probably need closer to 20-30 to make it a viable option.

Of course, I hadn’t put much thought into the amount of battles, just the idea seems really good. Would also have to take into account that you couldn’t just battle Pokemon that have been in a gym for a few days with little to no stamina left.

Sounds good. But maybe a progression system towards a token for CP number defeated.
As you say, a defender drained to its minimum stamina, or a 20 CP pidgey or something, isnt really worth mentioning as a battle.

So if you say you get 1 “token” per 20.000 CP beaten, it wouldnt matter how long they are in.
Would certainly give you more reason to attack that 3k CP blissey. It would also make gym battles more usefull.

My 96% Mewtwo would be very happy if something like this were possible.

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That’s actually a perfect way to go about it. Maybe the amount of CP needed to gain your next token could increase in the same way trainer levels do, so if you have a 0 IV pokemon, the first “token” would be gained after 200 CP defeated, then 400, then 1,000 and so on.

3 Likes

IV what…

What was this in reply to?

Hyper Beam

I really likethe ides, but IV is a HIDDEN system in PG the only hints for the IV is what your team leader thinks about your Pokémon and ist only can say:

  • IV 81+
  • IV 70 - 80
  • IV 51 - 69
  • IV 50-
    and
  • Highest value(s) 15
  • Highest value(s) 13 - 14
  • Highest value(s) 8 - 12
  • Highest value(s) 7-

As you see this is not very accurate and I don’t know about any statement or else by niantic about IVs

EDIT: Also this would just make an 100% IV Pokémon nothing special anymore because you could make every Pokémon up to 100% and the IV would be like the level of an Pokémon: it wouldn’t matter, with enough time you can max it.

3 Likes

Right, right. In case it wasn’t clear I love the idea👍

Having to farm CP would be a good start for such a feature, but still too easily abusable by setting up gyms full of high CP/low IV pokemons that just happen to be weak to the pokemon in training. So, I do feel something else should be required in addition to farming CP. Perhaps walking distance, or at least lots of candy.

I’m leaning towards having to walk 10 km to unlock the option to farm CP for 1 point of stat increase, after which the pokemon would have to be walked 10 km again to unlock the feature again. Getting a stat increase or evolving your pokemon should then also reset the distance counter to 0, so no bingewalking 50 km to then quickly farm CP for 5 upgrades, and also no combining of walking for evolve requirement and CP unlocking at the same time.

Somehow, improving a pokemons’ IV should be connected to the buddy-system I think. It just feels “right” if it did.

I do like the idea of being able to improve the Pokemons IV by training them up.
What ever method/format is used it needs to be a grinding process an not something that is quick and easy.
I do like the idea of Gym Battles and CP being used combined with some other trigger mechanic

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Why not just use more candy and stardust?
Of course, it would raise with each IV
So lets say 1 candy and 500 dust to boost from 0 to 1, but 30 candy and 15000 dust to boost from 14 to 15

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There’s less of a challenge to that. If you have to battle to earn your IV improvements then it makes gym battling more relevant in the game.

Yes, but that also means you can just cope up and massacre Blissey that keeps getting fed

I don’t use IV trackers so this would benefit me.

I had a similar idea which I shared with my local group who really liked it. With the introduction of the new Quest system in PoGo. The idea I had was that the ultimate quest reward, after completing a string of quests, the reward should be an stat improving item such as Hp Up, Iron or Protein. As the only stats that are accounted for in PoGo are HP, Defense and Attack, these are the only three vitamins that would be needed.
And as quests are limited to a certain amount per day/week/month. This would reduce the risk of people abusing it by farming. There is still the possibility of people cheating their way to get them, by spoofing quest goals (collecting certain pokemon, battling gyms, spinning stops etc) they would still only be able to complete it once per cycle of quests just like the legit players. This way, if you have an absolute favorite mon that has an IV that isn’t quite as good as you would want, you can work towards getting it perfect. But it would be nearly impossible for you to gather enough of these to build armies of perfect monsters in a short period of time.

3 Likes

I also like that idea, there’s a lot of new features that could be implemented through the quest system. Adding those three items is definitely the easiest way to go about it. They could even be added as a raid reward, or a seven day streak reward. I think everyone would prefer that over an evolution item at this stage.

Then i can finally get my first 100 iv!!

1 Like