I love how every time we get to a Zodiac Beast you say which sign it's based off of and say "If you are X you will... Have a nice day today." without fail

The fact that alolan exeggutor stretches off screen, even when curved in your unique spritework, made me chuckle.

Can't forget the anaerobic ability, which passively allows for atp regeneration

An idea for the ATP: you can only regenerate it if you haven't run out. That way, while you are still doomed you run out if ATP, it's possible to stoo yourself getting in the situation. Anyway, high quality video as always!

this video will premiere when my local pizza shop opens which is perfect

The legendary stema will just be a bunch of beakers filled with glowy liquid that evolves into an actual chemisty set

Great point on the heal stalling. One word of caution about the ATP system you mentioned though. I recently played this gatcha game called Takt Op (and it is end of service so no longer playable), where they had a stamina system that would essentially make you do less damage and take more damage once you ran out. But the system was so limited that you'd run out of stamina in about 5 turns. So the game very quickly became a DPS check that encouraged builds to one shot enemy teams. Pretty sure that hurt the game in the long run since it limited you to just one play style (be as aggressive as possible). In theory I like the idea of an ATP system, in practice I'd be a bit more weary. Best of luck though, sounds like a cool project!

Hey n0rtist, if you haven’t already, could you try making a stema based on HeLa cells? I think their ‘immortality’ allows for a unique design opportunity. Maybe it would be some sort of mythical-esque creature, like Mew or Jirachi, as I think the idea fits their category.

I do actually like the idea of Hydrarius being the most common zodiac beast purely because its parts don't always die when cut off, so it just squirms its way around the stemmaverse after a fight, win or lose.

Here's my suggestion: Have the rest mechanic put some moderate penalty on top. For example, each time you rest, now your moves cost more ATP for the rest of the match. Allows stalling, but not infinitely.

Another possible solution to the idea of games going on for too long is a mechanic I call "instability". Once the turn counter has passed some arbitrary amount, instability begins to rise. More ATP will be consumed, and less will be restored. As turns go on and instability gets higher, these effects grow in severity, and new effects are introduced, such as everything taking more damage, and even losing HP over time. This would require careful balancing to make sure it all feels fair, but I think it's an idea worth looking into

You could create a restless status for your ame to counter the rest button.

Always be weary of free infinite actions. Maybe the rest option could have diminishing returns, it could recover a good amount at first, and reduced each time it's used.

Counter switching (Idea) Pokemon have a dark type move "Pursuit" that deals more damage when a pokemon switches out, and it deals damage before a pokemon can switch out. It's great to counter psychic type with regenarator. Though with the latest mechanic of changing types, (a possible solution should be to create a similar move to Pursuit but with different types). There's also binding moves that prevent switching unless they have switching moves or items that switches them in battle. Trapping abilities like using arena trap, shadow tag, or magnet pull that were showcased to prevent switching out, but rules ban most of them, so yeah... There are some abilities that negate an opponent's ability, like mold breaker, but it is in an attacking format, so it won't negate the regenerator ability. (Maybe create an ability that negates Abilities when they enter the battle or as long as they are in the field, abilities will not work.) (Other options were to nerf regenerator or ban the ability or create a dark terrain field type that prevents any form of healing from occurring. )

13:09 is the funniest thing ever. The emotion in the little dude, the change in tone, perfect

Thank you for the great sign-off/outro. You have given my day some much needed positivity

Stall villain reveal? 😳

I'm surprised that you didn't mention that there is an Endless Battle Clause implemented on Pokémon Showdown, forbidding the use of strategies which purposefully extend battles, like the famous Funbro set. :D Funbro is a Slowbro with Heal Pulse, Slack Off, Block and Recycle holding a Leppa Berry. Block traps the opponent, Heal Pulse counteracts the opponent's Struggle damage and Slowbro keeps itself healthy with Slack Off and by recycling the Leppa Berry, restoring 10 PP of a move as soon as it's running out.

Shell Bell & Enigma Berry, despite not seen often in competitive, are vital tools and widely used in alternate Pokemon games like Emerald Kaizo and PokeRogue

One way of solving the problems of long drawn out battles, is to have a background mechanic that tracks stuff like regenerations and number of turns. And if certain thresholds are surpassed, certain gameplay are added, that shorten the game: Things like exhaustion or environmental conditions could start happening to prevent the battle from continuing to be drawn out.

Man what a crazy first video to see from you, but the one that shows off my own star sign: Aquarius

I think fossil fighters found a really interesting way to do it in where at the beginning of every turn you got a certain number of energy points dependent upon your Fighter (character) level, and each of the maximum of three dinosaurs that you have on your team only gets to attack once per turn, you can redistribute that energy that you're given in any way between the variety of moves that those three dinosaurs will have so you can do something like a big AOE attack that takes a hundred energy, a singular Target attack that takes another 50 energy, and maybe a final attack that Force balances the energy that you have and the energy your enemy has so that way you can recover some of that lost energy and move into the next turn while not only handicapping the opponent but giving yourself extra energy for next turn for a stronger attack combination, but that's just one of the combos you can do with a specific setup of dinosaurs, the roster is like 170 something deep and each of them feel unique to a degree so I think the way they did their battle system lends itself well to the fairly self-contained roster and relatively small move pool per creature

You could make a Telomeres base game mechanic where you can only regen so much HP, either by losing a portion of your max heal or having access to only 1.5 or 2 time you max hp to regen so you can only go back to 100% a limited amount of time

3:55 lol, nice save

I like the way you edit your videos, very well done!

Man, I've been following you and stema since the first vid you made about it, it got randomly recommended to me by KZfaq and I've hooked and invented on stema ever since, we were only like 1000 people subscribed and your mic was bad lol, and it's crazy how good you have gotten at editing in such a short time, i often rewatch your vids/have them as background while i do other things and i noticed the jump in quality, I'm so happy for you n0Rtist! Also, I'm really happy that stema is getting made into a game and that we got to the point of having demo footage! I know it's gonna be a while until it's finished, but I'm still glad i got to see you go from "this is stema, my creature collector i want to make into a game someday" to "this is stema, my creature collector I'm making into a game", can't wait to hear you say "this is stema, my creature collector game"

There could be a rotom clone that is based on the simple machines

9:53 lmao Rotund excadrill

On the rest button being an unlimited action, look up Pokemon Wonder Battle. I suggested in the last video to contemplate the other forms of biological energy storage compounds and energy acquisition methods (though not in those exact words.) But having looked back at pokemon's past alternative battle systems I have found something both beautiful and distressing, the *[Wonder Battle]* from Gen5.

8:38 There was that gimmicky level one aron that uses it. Here's the strategy Step 1 have hippowdon or tyranitar set up sand storm Step 2 Safely get aron on the field. Very important that Aron must be at full health. Step 3 use endeavor. This move makes your opponents health equal to yours. Since you are moving second you will take damage and since your defenses are very low you will get knocked down to one health but don't die due to sturdy. Step 4 win. Aron lives on one health with sturdy assuming that pokemon with moldbreaker, teravolt, or turbo blaze isn't on the enemy team and the pokemon doesn't know a move that specifically ignores abilities like photon geyser or sunsteel strike (as if shedinja doesn't have enough problems) The shell bell will always heal aron back to full health since level 100 pokemon have way more health than a level 1 ever could. As for that last hit point of damage that's what the sandstorm is for. Obviously this strategy has some issues such as ghost types being immune to endeavor, certain types are immune to sandstorm (steel, rock, and ground types), entry hazard removal may not always be possible, opponent can change the weather etc.

I just wanted to say that i really appreciate your work its really interesting

"But this move is balanced by having a very small distribution aaand a small P... POWER POINT" ~ This had me ROLLING on the floor XD

I like the rest to recharge mechanic, but you could also have a basic attack that does not require atp, all stema have it and it is incredibly weak, heck it would be nice to be able to defeat a stema with a final no aro move to conserve atp until you are in a place to recover it

Seeing Chansey in the thumbnail honestly made me think this was gonna be about the Metal Slime archetype and I was like "Wait, how can that break Pokémon?"

Nortis is back with a new video! I LOVE YOUR ARTSYYLE ❤️

7:52 even with 100% health gained from drain punch each hit has a chance to be a critical hit. Out of 16 turns odds are at least one drain punch is going to be a critical hit. Critical hits are 50% stronger than normal hits and bypass most stat increases(eviolite and assault vest being the exception) however negative stat modifiers still apply This scenario requires both players to be completely out of other iron bundle answers (because otherwise why rely on getting a lucky critical if when you have more reliable answers) and decided that banking on a critical hit is the only way to win.

here is how I would do it: you could do like egg groups for atp regeneration, some will not regen others might regen 4 (but never 5) and balance mons around that. like a strong legendary might regen 0 or 1 but a fast glass canon will regen 4. resting instead could regen atp according to the natural atp - so 4 atp group will regen 6 (1.5 times) and 0 atp regen group will regen 1 or 2 (you can put a minimum amount of regen) the accumulation of those mechanics will make mons with low atp regen stronger for short bursts but vulnerable at long game and fast regen will be better at long setups (which you could counter with the low atp group)

thank you for these videos, you teach me a lot even though this is going to be a monster -taming game, and so if we can see a full pokedex of everything so far, I can recall a few topics because i need science revision for my exams (end-of-years)

That stall vs stall matchup reminded me of Rhystic Studies video on Lantern Control and the concept of the Zugzwang Machine.

8:42 ITS MY BOY FERROTHORN!

Not me recognizing Psychic Noise before he even mentioned psychic noise

I just want to add that on showdown, when the OM of the month was shared power, the best team was harvest spam and was absolute HELL

Gotta add here that leech seed only creates a stalemate if the opponents have the same HP. If you use leech seed on a Pokémon with 200 health, you'd get 25 hp each turn. But if you have 400 health and that Pokémon uses leech seed on you, they will be healed 50 hp each turn. Meaning that if no one does anything, after 9-10 turns, you are dead while your opponent is at full HP.

Thorns is another sleeper mechanic. Reflect or do dmg back to the attacker, usually just to close range/melee. Combine it with healing or combat regen and u've got a recipe for disaster. In a group/team game u can potentially just deal with the ither targets and team up on the thorns (tank) at the end. But really nasty for 1v1* scenarios. One trick ponies can be cool with it, but again risk becomjng OP. Many a MOBA player has flashbacks to Singed(LoL) or Bristleback and Axe (DotA) walking into a crowd yelling "why u hitting urself?"

This better be designing waifu bait. I want a video about gardevior.

Breloom has a ton of ways to recover health. In doubles, it's partner can poison it. It has the poison heal ability. It also gets leech seed, it can hold leftovers. It learns draining moves (drain punch is the best as it's a physical attacker). It learns rest, though that would unpoison it. If it didn't have tons of weaknesses and it was bulkier, it would be annoying.

The way you described your ATP regen system is kinda similar to Loomian Legacy’s Energy system where you can choose to Wait out the turn to restore a little energy, or choose to Rest that turn, restoring a lot of energy, but also lowering your defenses for that turn. You can always choose to do neither, and Flail instead, doing okay damage, and losing 12.5% HP, at the cost of not restoring any energy to use for attacks. One weird quirk of Flailing I wanted to mention is that it has the same priority of whatever move it failed to use and is possibly affected by Guru (this game’s version of Technician).

The Shell Bell is incredible for Raids in Sword and Shield and Scarlet and Violet, similar to the Stellar Type added in the DLC, very useful when your raid target has many times the usual HP, especially if you buff your attacking stats.

leppa block heal pulse recycle slack off

I know they are pretty much never used, but considering how in depth this video went, I can't help but notice how Aqua Ring and Ingrain weren't mentioned.

Stall cores nowadays usually run boots tho Also I love the continued usage of the tubby vs ABR match to show healing, especially considering the staller (who wanted the game to be called a draw because 1000 turns was too much, even for him) lost

9:00 Corviknight with Mirror Armour can't deal with it because their attack will never go down, meaning Strength Sap can be used for a set HP boost

a way to balance healing could be having healed hp acting as a sort of blood clot, where it is more vulnerable to damage than normal hp, but can properly heal into regular health with time. something similar could apply to atp

Minor mistake correction; Heal Order was removed in Generation 8, and thus was not subject to the recovery nerf. Its PP should still be 32.

Once you have all the zodiac beasts released it would be pretty cool for a compilation video for them

I would probably do something like limit recoverable HP, as example. Now, this could take a few forms, one of which is that only X percent of damage taken can be recovered in the middle of battle, and either that is a universally fixed amount, or moves and/or creatures can have a stat that determines how much HP is long-term knocked out. Another is that only the last X number of hits taken can be recovered from in a fight, allowing for multi-hit attacks to quickly come up against that limit. That said, moves that are more effective when your partner/team is badly hurt might add a layer of strategy: Do you exploit that effect, risking KO from the upcoming opposing attack if it doesn't stop it, or try to keep your health up? (The 'right' answer might vary with the team.) An example for such a move is Minus Strike, which deals damage based on the difference between maximum and current HP. (It also tends to be used by those who also have an HP-consuming or recoil-damage attack, to prepare it.) Depending on how high HP goes, however, you might want to cap it to some amount. (E.G. for Megaman Battle Network's recurring Muramasa chip, which is a sword that performs, effectively, a Minus Strike, later installments limit the maximum damage it can do to 500 where the final boss would have somewhere around 2000 to 3000, as it becomes easier to increase Max HP compared to earlier installments, as the first game that has a 'customizer' mechanic that allows for increased stats, including Max HP, was also the last one with the higher damage cap of 999.)

An idea for ATP could be to go for an analogy of aerobic vs. anaerobic respiration - hard for me to imagine the exact mechanic without a full understanding of the rest of battle mechanics, but perhaps hp can be "oxygen" in this case - introduce an action in battle that if you're low on hp, produces a little bit of atp at the cost of 1 turn; but if you're high on hp, it produces a bunch and takes 2 turns

One thing you could do to recover atp is every stema that isn’t active recovers a set amount of atp a turn, but switching costs atp and the cost permanently increases for that stema, the drawbacks would be discouraging back-to-back switching, and eventually switching at all, witch wouldn’t allow you to play around type advantages and attacks, but it allows you to recover atp in a reliable way, while also keeping it restricted, if an average move costs 5 atp, you would want the recovery to be 5 atp, so you can use 1 move per turn recovering, of course some moves will cost more/less depending on power. I’m assuming you want the matches to reliably end in 30-ish turns at the latest, and that you will have a party of 5 stemas to use (just a round number idk how many your using) this will allow you to recover a total of 300 atp at the most in a match, if you don’t switch, witch you want some amount of switching to prevent damage, and if you don’t switch you eventually die anyway, forcing out a stema and lowering the amount you could possibly recover, the trick would be that you would have to make any healing options cost more atp than the health healed, such as having a move heal you to full, but cost twice the amount healed in atp (this type of move would interact with the atp system you described by losing 2 health for every health healed if you were short on atp, ex healing 10 hp, losing 16 atp, then losing 4 health for the atp overdraw), this way you could never outheal damage while still gaining net atp, obviously these numbers aren’t balanced, but the concept still applies.

The method to fix regenerator is to make the ability to shut off the opponent’s ability more competitively viable Of course this has to be balanced because otherwise whole teams based around certain abilities (mainly weather and terrain focused teams) would become less competitive (but some might say that it’s a sacrifice they are willing to make if it means denying Incineroar’s intimidate)

Since you're planning to put the Zodiac Beasts in another chapter, may I suggest a Zodiac Beast. One that's based on Ophiuchus, the secret 13th Zodiac that's based off of snakes. This Beast would be the de facto "leader" of the beasts.

Omg it took me until 7:19 to realise you’re one of the 4 artists challenge guys 😁

concept for the atp: you lose hp, but gain atp every time this happens, make hp giving moves require more atp

Here’s an idea for how I’d buff Slaking: Whenever it misses a turn due to Truant, it recovers an eighth of its max HP. This gives it a lot of staying power, and makes Truant more balanced than an overtuned drawback ability that’s literally the only thing keeping an absolute monster of a Pokémon from being viable.

Your recent viral tweet is awesome. I’ve rechecked the #abilityforms every day since!

I feel like you could probably talk about Pokédollars. They ALMOST create a fair system where you need to wager your items in order to limit how many healing and X items you buy, but also Pokéballs cost as much as a potion so if you don’t catch anything, the balance is completely destroyed. Plus, Meowth. Enough said.

Do you have a Sprite sheet of all the Pokemon you use in these videos? I love the simple art style

Got it, building heal teams.

My PP concept is to have a fixed amount of PP recovered each turn. Let’s say 6 PP comes back, you use 4 PP for a 40 power move like Vine Whip while you need 8 for an 80 power move like Energy Ball. Essentially this makes PP gaining or draining moves and gives weak attacks a purpose in competitive play. In this way if you are conservative you can unleash multiple strong attacks, but there is no limit to move usage and you can’t just Fire Blast every single turn. Looking at ATP, maybe losing ATP would force a switch out or cause a forfeit condition? In real life you don’t need to obliterate your opponent to win, if they can no longer attack the fight is over.

The way that the Pokemon TCG handled this is interesting in relation to the main games - stronger cards have a "retreat cost" that must be paid in specific Energy cards, themselves a random and limited resource. Energy cards must also be discarded for certain powerful card attacks as well. So I wonder - what if it cost PP to switch? That seems to be what you've ended up with, so I'm definitely looking forward to trying it out someday.

Thanks I will now make a team solely focused on regaining health. Leech seed, left overs, regenerator, drain punch, gigs drain, etc.

22:44 you gave it beast boost. I know that you won’t be using Pokémon abilities, but if you have it a ability like beast boost with a Pokémon with that much HP, it would be the per effect staller.

As a programmer, game developer and game designer, I really think you are wasting alot of potential going to Pokemon's unbalanced systems for notes. Yo-Kai Watch is a monster collector with a ton of healing and tank support. They can even revive allies more consistently than Pokenon does woth Healing Wish or Revival Blessing. They are automatically not that good in meta because of the 3v3 system making it easier for hyper offensive teams to outdamage any healing. What is more is that official competitive in YKW3 has a timer that makes battles only last 5 minutes before going to Sudden Death. Stalling out means nothing if you do not build with that in mind and the opponent has more monsters or something that can snowball. Stall is a respectable off-meta gimmick strategy in YKW3's system as opposed to Pokemon making it an obnoxious slog.

I guess technically you could use a move like Entrainment or an ability like Mummy to stop Regenerator, but those are almost never seen.

I feel like diminishing returns and hard limits are the best way to curb these potential infinite strategies. If I was a competitive-minded member of the Pokemon staff, I would make it so Regenerator only works once or restores less and less HP with each use, and make HP/PP-restoring Berries regained using Recycle/Harvest lose half of their efficiency each time they're remade. As for my pitch how to do it with Stema, I suggest make it so resting restores 1 less ATP each time.

My initial thought was to introduce more moves like Pursuit as a potential counter to excessive switching. I do think the strategic advantage of switching between Pokemon has value and should be preserved, though cases where a player is encouraged to continuously switch rather than engage the opponent should probably have some counterplay. Imagine my surprise to find out that Pursuit has been removed from the recent two generations of Pokemon games. I haven't played competitively in a long time so I don't know if there are other moves that've been introduced to help (those types of moves tend not to help as much in single-player content so I often forget about them), but the fact that the move is no longer usable makes me hope that there's some way to address these situations. I will say that in my brief time playing online battle simulators like Showdown, there were definitely people who, whether or not it was beneficial to them, would intentionally try to stall out a battle for whatever reason (make things uncomfortable for the opponent, frustrate them, etc). It seems that every now and then, two of those types of people match up against each other and it becomes a match of who has the longer patience, hence the 1000+ turn battles where nothing happens. Here's a story that involved recovery moves and light stalling. I was in a random match where I was down to just my Milotic who knew Recover, Scald, Ice Beam, and a fourth move that isn't important. My opponent had two Pokemon, I don't remember which they were but their active Pokemon took neutral damage from my Ice Beam while their reserve Pokemon was weak to it. I think both of their Pokemon resisted my Scald, but if it came down to the wire, my Milotic could out-stall their active Pokemon and could defeat their reserve Pokemon with Ice Beam, but not with Scald and I would likely be defeated if it came in with a clean switch. For this part of the story, it's mildly important to mention that I was playing on Pokemon Online, not Showdown. Showdown shows your opponent's moves after they've been seen once in the battle, as well as how many PP they have left. Pokemon Online doesn't, much like the games themselves. So while I was using Ice Beam against their active Pokemon, I decided to switch to Scald. They must've assumed that I ran out of PP for Ice Beam, and switched into their reserve Pokemon. They successfully tanked a Scald, but I hit them with an Ice Beam for the KO on the next turn, bringing us back to a situation I would eventually win because I could out-stall with Recover. I believe they said "lol good one" and forfeit shortly afterwards. Don't take this story as me bragging about my skills, I lost most of my battles :V

You should totally do a design based on solar sails

I think you should take full advantage of atp being a mechanic. Perhaps a move that heals equal to your remaining atp could be cool. It would get weaker over time! Could do the same thing with a damaging move, or even make a damaging move that does MORE damage when atp is low.

limited switches is something ive seen bandied about

For the ATB restoring ability, maybe have it cost HP if they have no ATB left, or make it so that the creature gets reduced defences after restoring their ATB

maybe the number of rests can be limited, and you can use items based on the Stema’s type (ie kindling for fire or a banana/brain food for psychic) to increase the amount of rests/waits? because you can’t produce atp from nothing, you need some kind of fuel to produce energy

Idea for atp regen, you can only use the regen atp move if you have 0 atp, that way it’s not op but still not doomed if you run out of atp.

shore up is a half health healing move too

Interesting how you didn't even mention the biggest sin, which is Leppa Berry, an item so broken that there are entire teams built around using it to create battles that can never end.

4:01 leppa berry is a thing so 2 revivals is possible.

Shell bell is used *a lot* in competitive

What if instead of a button to regen 5 ATP, every Stema regens 1 ATP at the end of each round, unless they have 0

A fix would be that to switch out a pokemon, it needs to attack at least once And we aren't gonna talk about how the story games tell you which pokemon the opponent changes to and if you want to switch it out too

My literal 1 wish for a balance change in gen 9 was for Regenerator to be nerfed in some way. They ended up nerfing stall in a lot of ways, but they left Regenerator untouched 😢. My proposal: Regenerator now only works once per game, but it heals the pokemon to full the first time they switch out while under 50% health. I think that way it would still be good, but it wouldn’t have so much potential to make games infinite. Also while I’m complaining about stall, Poison Heal should only heal the same as leftovers. Poisoning yourself would still be better than just running leftovers, because you are immune to other status, you don’t lose the healing if the Toxic Orb is knocked off/tricked away, and it let’s you run Facade, if you are into that sort of thing. As is, it’s annoying how Gliscor can endlessly loop Substitute and protect without losing any HP

Keep in mind that, though balance is still important in a single player game, is nowhere as important as in a multiplayer competitive game. You shouldn't worry too much about avoiding the existance of any kind of twisted, complicated way of overextending the length of battles unless there's the risk that some opponents in the game may unintendly trigger them (think a Wobbufet situation).

Moving a knight back and forth will repeat the position three times (threefold repetition) and a player can claim a draw, so not technically infinite.

This reminds me of (according to smthn I heard and my shoddy memory) how, apparently, in one of the very first games you could technically win against one of the elite fours dragonites with a mf zubat bc the opposing dragonite would continually try to use its most affective move on the zubat but it was an effect move (like it lowered defense or smthn I forget what specifically) so, I guess because the AI never ran out of PP, and it would keep trying to use the most affective move, this meant that even if your zubat could only use leech life and only dealt 1 damage, so long as you had enough PP restoring items, you could whittle that dragonite down until it fainted at the hand of your Level Five Zubat. Which, gotta say, absolute baller move on anyone who actually dedicated the time and effort into figuring out if that really worked in game. (Again I could be entirely incorrect and remembering wrong, feel free to correct me, I do like learning new stuff abt this franchise all the time)

Yes, i am an Aquarius! Yes, thank you for wishing a happy day for me!

It'd probably make sense to have the ATP Regen be 3 instead of 5, if it scares you too much.

atp is such a sick idea actually, do you plan on having doubles or hp/atp to other pokemon?

I like how you alternate between science and game design analysis for your videos. Maybe there's a way to combine them?

You could have ATP Regen slowly when the mon is in the party and not on the field.

I love your line less art style! Not really relevant to the video but still wanted to say this!

I love hydrarius with all my heart

Shell Bell seems really cool in a casual Playthrough Solo 7 Star Tera Raids: Am I a joke to you?

I think limiting switches like this is a bit too much and makes outplays less possible. Especially since the only problem is regenerator.