DL Playership/Ranking Drive 2009

[superaielman]

Chansey, Onix, Alakazam, Golem, Gengar, Butterfree, Magikarp, Snorlax, maybe Starmie/Raichu/Haunter?


Is the list I'm seeing based on comments. No GSC/RSE, but no great loss there. I have no serious objections to any of these (We'll see if interest is there), and the list having several popular lights also works.  It is better than SMRPG bosses, worse than a workable new game.

[Meeplelard]

I see no reason to have Haunter if we're ranking Gengar, especially if we're not ranking Kadabra and Graveler alongside Alakazam and Golem (exact same thing applies to them as it does to Haunter/Gengar)

[Dhyerwolf]

Similarly, Raichu stands out for uh...being the evolution of Pikachu? Maybe for something else, but he doesn't feel necessary at all.

[Meeplelard]

Elfboy gave a good reason; he puts Pikachu's skillset to use on actual end game stats, and he's got one of the more interesting sets of ranked Pokemon. 

This is more the idea of Not Ranking Pikachu is practically unheard of,  so we're ranking Raichu at a later point.  Its somewhat more valid than "Rank Gengar! Lets also rank UNEVOLVED GENGAR ALONGSIDE HIM!"

[superaielman]

Blame OK there Meeple.

Raichu.. I donno, I really can see the case either way there.  Starmie is a definite abstain as well.

[Yoshiken]

...Machamp too? Seems logical, what with Alakazam/Golem/Gengar being there. >.>
I'd still argue that GSC/RSE ones should be included, although... that's more for just interesting ones, and there aren't many -at all-. Essentially, the only one I can really think of off the top of my head is Heracross, and even then, that'll be a bit of a split. Still, option's there if people want it.
I still see no point in ranking Chansey/Onix and not Blissey/Steelix. Well, okay, Onix is the fail Light with the in-joke, but Chansey isn't even fail, and Blissey does the same but better. Seems to make much more sense.

Also, rank Unown, rite?

[hinode]

Machamp differs wildly in effectiveness depending on each generation, unlike the other three trade evos. In particular, it's terrible in gen 1 which a lot of people are going to vote on due to either not having experience with later gens or just sticking with gen 1 forms for all gen 1 Pokemon. On top of all this, it's a pretty dull dueller until you get to gen 4's No Guard Dynamicpunch hijinks, and you are simply not going to get a consensus to vote on that. It's a pretty bad package for a ranking idea, all in all.

Heracross I'd oppose because it's a bad in-game Pokemon in its home generation, GSC, where it gets no STAB until Megahorn at level 57 or so. It gets better moves in later gens, but I'd still not consider it a worthwhile in-game choice until HGSS... which uh haven't even been released yet.

Snorlax is okay, though I tend to kneejerk against it due to people historically underestimately just how bad its speed is; it's closer to Light than Heavy, really. Starmie I like, but... it's pretty redundant with Alakazam in terms of what it does, and Zam is more popular/iconic, especially with more casual players. Raichu I don't care for, but then I've always found the "Pikachu skillset" wildly overhyped for DL worth, nor have I found it particularly noteworthy in-game for an Electric type or, well... in any sense at all.

Golem is the only normal resist I'd consider supporting for ranking; the whole bunch feel like they have their DL worth inflated to me... except maybe not the RBY ones, as enemy RBY Pokemon had by far the worst movesets and thus were more likely to be walled then later gens. Geodude line is the first normal resist you get and scales better to endgame than, say, Onix because they have actual damage, so it really are the most useful. Gengar doesn't really do anything in-game that Alakazam or Golem can't do better until later generations (much later, arguably). Onix is waaaay better than it has any right to be as a Light due to normal resist in a division full of pure fighters.

[Cmdr_King]

While I know there are people that enforce pokemon being restricted to their native gens, for DL purposes, would the same apply to the lot up for ranking?  For the most part, one of the strongest reasons a lot of these guys are being tapped is because they're available regardless of what pokemon game you've played, meaning that any game in the series is a valid place to draw their form from.  And while certainly Machamp varies enough that this is probably a negative, on the whole it gives them a nudge, I'd think.

Gengar doesn't really do anything in-game that Alakazam or Golem can't do better until later generations (much later, arguably)

*raises eyebrow* Even in-game uh... Confuse Ray.  It's not a winning status to the same degree it is on some other RPGs, but it's still a definite advantage.  Also learns the Hypnosis/Dream Eater combo by default, which isn't awesome in-game but is certainly something to sit up and notice in the DL.  Beyond that, even its damage hasn't changed much (well, maybe in Gen 4?  But even there, supercharged average) since a level 50 Night Shade is pretty similar to a shadowball for DL purposes.  So uh yeah I think you're way off >.>
Admittedly, Gengar is my favorite part of this package.

[dude789]

Gengar gets a rather significant damage boost in 4th gen as Shadow Ball now works off of its very good special attack stat. It shouldn't be too much worse than Alakazam's psychic. It's probably enough to turn his damage from average or below average to a decent bit above.

[Cmdr_King]

Oh, it surely got boosted... but so did a lot of other Pokes.  It may well occupy the same relative space on the damage average, although more likely it's damage is higher relatively but not enough higher to go from 3HKO to 2HKO.

[superaielman]

Oh. For those more hip to portable games, what are potential rankable PSP/DS releases down the line? I know say TWEWY won't ever make it on site, but what about the EO games for example?

[dude789]

I know that the DS has a couple more DQ games coming along including 9 which depending on its popularity and how the skill system works could be a very solid rank.  It also has VP DS and Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon which if they get a surge in popularity could become decent ranks. The Etrian Odyssey games are there and the Wizard of Oz game has been rather well liked among those who played it and has interesting duelers. Finally, Pokemon D/P is still there and it really only needs a couple more players for it to be a solid rank.

The PSP has less options unfortunately.  Atlus seems to be rereleasing the Persona games onto it so we might get a FW or two from one of the older Persona games, but no one has really played the remake of the first one. The Lunar remake is supposed to have a section where you can play as the 4 heros, but I don't think that's coming out for a while. Really, I think the only good game that's come out for the PSP is WA XF, and it doesn't look like there will be too many others for a pretty long time.

[Taishyr]

EO...?

Well, first, they'd need a massive playership boost. Second, the PCs are FF1-style - one class, can't change without pretty much restarting the character with some small stat boosts. Definitely rankable, as no skills can transfer over or anything to make them mucky, but... Also, EO/EO2 variants would have votesplit (Medic goes from Godlike to Low Middle as the most notable one, IIRC), but.

Bosses do exist and are rankable, EO2 in specific has some pretty big plot!bosses (Artelind/Wilhelm, Scylla, Chimera kinda, Colossus/Overlord maybe) but I'd have to replay it in order to get stats for them (this will actually end up happening at some point, most likely). EO1 might, not too far into it.

As for what else is rankable from the DS... TWEWY has issues but technically I could make a full stat topic for it that conformed to usual DL interps, it's SoM level for combat (i.e., input speed/attack time is the only factor I can really think of in a string). Regardless, yeah, not likely to happen, main character is pretty much assuredly Bluelike and he gets the most draw by far I'd imagine.

SMT:DS has the stigma of being mainstream SMT game (i.e., not Persona) and also having a completely generic PC side with how they'd translate to the DL, so really only bosses are notable there. This being said the bosses are kinda important so I could see pulling a FF5 there -if- it somehow got traction.

I'd have to think on the rest.


To dude: I think there's been some playership of P1PSP - Tal has played it, I am playing it, etc. etc. Granted, not sure how much actual new playership that gives - I'd already run through it once before, for example.

[Nitori]

I totally played P1 PSP, we must rank MARK

[Cmdr_King]

*pulls up backloggery for listage*

Nintendo DS

Atelier Annie- RPG side of the game is not... really the focus, so a hard sell to the DL (it's very sim-ish).  Otherwise, rankable enough, moreso than I expected.

CTDS- Nothing new worth mentioning, moving on.

DQIVDS- Nothing new worth mentioning.  It's another form for Psaro I guess, but he's already Godlike so no reason to rerank.

Dragon Quest V- rankable.  The player base for this is a bit lower than I expected (10/29, the lowest playership of the 13 games listed) so a long ways off at the least.  On the upshot, emulatable in SNES form for people worried about moneys/not having DSes.

FFIII- Already ranked, unless we get into generics.

Final Fantasy Tatics A2- plausibly rankable (aside from Luso, all the story characters even have unique classes!).  Um... based on Futurama though, we're looking at a starting base of like 2 1/2 players, so this would involve more whipping than has ever been whipped before.

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon- it's Fire Emblem but... well, Meeple really didn't like it.  I've written this one off as ever getting a viable number of players as such.

KH Days- ummmmmm yeah.  This manages to be more problematic than the regular KH games.

Nostalgia- rankable... just, well, you did see Pyro's reaction right?  Will never have an acceptable number of players.

Gen 4- hashed over a bit in this topic.  Numbers are better than I expected, but I'm not sure where you'd get more players, and it's one of those WA5 cases where nobody objects to ranking it per se but will put almost any other game above it as more intersting.

Rhapsody DS- Well, it's rankable.  Good luck getting more players for the obscure early N1 RPG.

SMT Devil Survivor- Not really rankable.  The way the game handles skills, it manages to be like FFVIII but even less interesting, cast-wise.

Sonic Chronicles- rankable enough.  I dunno though, I don't feel like this has any growth potential.

Suikoden Tierkreis- Rankable, and probably a more interesting cast than some other Suikodens.  That said... the game has a (somewhat unfair) bad rep and I'm not confident I could really sell it.  Dunno what to make of it in the long term.

SRWOG Endless Frontier- You can hammer it into rankability.  I'd rather rank OG2.  headache.

Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume- I'd like to get some more data on this in future incarnations of the topic.  From the players I know, I think it could work, but hashing out how large a rank to make it will take some doing and depend a lot on how many players are there.

Wizard of Oz- Rankable.  Way too early to make a good assessment of it's growth potential and at this stage pointing out how many players there are is fairly meaningless.  Worth thinking about more in like a year or so.

TWEWY- aljalkmal;sdkm

Conjecture:  Etrian Odyssey/2- By all counts, these are purely generic-based dungeon crawlers.  If we wanted to start ranking generics, I can't imagine we'd start with EO >.>

Playstation Portable

Crisis Core FFVII- um.  So pretend that Parasite Eve had Materia, and that you could give that Materia massive stat bonuses through item fusion.  That's about how rankable this game is.

Dissidia- *head asplodes*

FFT: War of the Lions- Uh... well, it's got more new stuff than the DS remakes.  I can't see people giving a fuck about Beowulf optional bosses though, and ranking cameo forms, even ones from games not likely to get ranked (FFXII and FFTA2) is probably never going to be kosher.

Jeanne D'Arc-  I... can't see this ever getting significant player counts.

SMT: Persona- Hey, Persona 1!  Um, I have no idea how many new players you coudl realistically expect from the game, but in theory it could take off and lead to a full ranking of Persona 1?  I'm certainly a lot more likely to play this version.  At this point, someone in the audience shoots me dead.

Star Ocean: First Departure- listed here.  It's got a long ways to go, and if it did make it I'm not sure how much you'd want to rank.

Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology- my impression is that the game has the main character of many classes that you get to pick once at the start of the game, then cameos.  Not a winning recipe.

Wild ARMs XF- Rank!

[Taishyr]

FFTA2 is... you'd probably be looking at the fight before the final, and the named PC cast (also, objection: Frimelda/Luso/Cid all lack unique classes. Frimelda starts with Dual Wield legally and thus doesn't care, but it's notable for Luso/Cid).

It's rankable and fuck, I've got the numbers up! But. >_>

[Cmdr_King]

Cid... has a generic class, but one his race can't normally access?  That's like being unique!

[Taishyr]

... If you mean Warrior? All Bangaa can access that. True, he's not a Bangaa, but... >_>

[Bardiche]

I intend to play FFTA2 soon-ish... as well as Pokémon Diamond or whatever.

[SnowFire]

FWIW, I've played FFTA2 though not beaten it.  With the exception of Adelle its PCs are much much much more unrankable than, say, FFT.  See, in FFT, you can easily see in one screen what "Time Mage" or "Divine Knight" has access to as far as skills.  If you just plow Orlandu into learning all his base skills it's easy to see what he can do DL-legally.

FFTA2 doesn't work that way.  You don't have access to a full class immediately; the skills unfold as the game proceeds and you get newer and better items.  Leaving Cid in Warrior the entire game would be madness for example as you'd quickly learn the Warrior skills you have access to right away, and then he'd gain no JP.  And remembering which reaction skills you got where for each class?  When it really doesn't matter, and there's not even an easy way to check it in game?  Heck no.  So yeah, aside from probably not being anything like how they work in-game, Luso & Cid aren't even easy to immediately figure out what they can do, even just assuming they stay in their first class.

Re Pokemon, DHE's comment on weird ranking packages, and Piplup hate: I'd actually be in favor of ranking Empoleon, because A) Piplup was my starter and B) MECHA-PENGUIN.  But I'd rather rank nobody than all three DP starters.  Also, having not played RBY, the proposed "commonly used Pokemon" packages sound very meh to me.  I'd be fine with sticking to a very small and memorable group - Magikarp mostly, but if we had to have more than Onix / Chansey / Alakazam sound passable.

Re Kingdom Hearts, for the record, while I haven't played the game, it doesn't really sound rankable for the regular DL so that probably gets a DNR from me.

[dude789]

Where does all the pokemon D/P hate come from? The system translates almost perfectly and they are generally interesting duellers. Also, these three starters are generally considered to be one of the most interesting sets of starters. Granted, the legendaries aren't as interesting as some of the other legendaries, but even with legendaries, starters, and interesting pokemon it's a rather managable rank (about 9-12 or so). I'm just wondering why there's such a general apathy for a game that has interesting duellers and isn't that far from having very solid playership numbers.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

DP is a poor draw, DP isn't as well-liked by the Poképlayers and Pokémon has historically had issues among the DL in some ways. Nice little combo.

[Talaysen]

Tai, I've only played part of P1PSP.  Most of it, I think, though.  I've played the original so it doesn't matter much.

EO/EO2 are perfectly rankable, and as said, they are FF1-style generics without class changing.  To CK: I would rank EO/EO2 generics before most generics because these are games where you cannot switch your class on your fly like FF3/5/T, etc.  You're stuck in a generic's build the entire game (unless you reset them), which makes them so much more rankable than jobs that are just a costume you put over a character that you can change at will (and can change your stat growth even!).

Other DS/PSP games...

DS:
Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker: As rankable as the other DQM games.  I.e. theoretically but no.

Izuna: Solo PC roguelike.  No.

Magical Starsign: Very DL friendly, has a few bosses, only issue is the main who chooses a Light or Dark form at the beginning of the game.  Likely will never get voters (I think only I and Gate have played it).

Mario & Luigi 2: No.

Luminous Arc: Also very DL friendly.  Better on voters on Magical Starsign but still not very good and I don't think people would want to play it anyway.

PSP:
Brave Story: Very DL friendly, decent game, short, cheap on PSN.  Doesn't have many voters now but it's something that I could see pushing people into at some point.

Okay I haven't played many PSP games that weren't already listed.

Magical Starsign, Luminous Arc, and Brave Story are really the only ones I could see getting ranked from these, but I don't really care too much.  Brave Story is fun though!

[Meeplelard]

In credit to Crisis Core, bosses are somewhat rankable!  Of course, this leads to massive subjectivity regarding "How good they are?" based off of how built up your Zack is, and there's really very little limit to how absurd you can make your Zack.  Funnily enough, Minerva's the most rankable in that regard, since I think (nearly) maxing your defensive stats is pretty much a given since going in with anything less is sort of suicidal; she's built around the idea that you did twink to hell, after all.

...yeah, when you SUPER BOSS is probably the easiest thing to scale in the game, that's probably a good sign to not rank anything...

DP isn't so much unrankable intrinsically, so much as it lacks Pokemon's general advantages regarding playership, vote draw, call to get the game ranked, etc. 


Also, I stand by that Onix and Chansey are honestly just two relics of older NR Days and shouldn't really be considered for ranking; people rarely used either and they're both pretty boring duelers (Onix just mocks physicals, Chansey mocks magic; that's really the extent of their worth.)  Contrast this to, say, GOlem, where Geodude/Graveler are commonly used Pokemon, one of your first genuinely interesting choices in the game, is available in every single version of the game in every generation...it really feels like no contest who should have priority here.  The fact that Golem translates pretty much perfectly from IN Game to DL is another point in his favor (in game, Golem (and lesser forms) was a text book heavy hitting tank, who had NATURAL access to Ground and Rock moves; the DL, he's exactly that.)

[DjinnAndTonic]

Nintendo DS
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon- it's Fire Emblem but... well, Meeple really didn't like it.  I've written this one off as ever getting a viable number of players as such.

Gen 4- hashed over a bit in this topic.  Numbers are better than I expected, but I'm not sure where you'd get more players, and it's one of those WA5 cases where nobody objects to ranking it per se but will put almost any other game above it as more intersting.

Suikoden Tierkreis- Rankable, and probably a more interesting cast than some other Suikodens.  That said... the game has a (somewhat unfair) bad rep and I'm not confident I could really sell it.  Dunno what to make of it in the long term.

Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume- I'd like to get some more data on this in future incarnations of the topic.  From the players I know, I think it could work, but hashing out how large a rank to make it will take some doing and depend a lot on how many players are there.

Wizard of Oz- Rankable.  Way too early to make a good assessment of it's growth potential and at this stage pointing out how many players there are is fairly meaningless.  Worth thinking about more in like a year or so.


Playstation Portable

Crisis Core FFVII- um.  So pretend that Parasite Eve had Materia, and that you could give that Materia massive stat bonuses through item fusion.  That's about how rankable this game is.

Jeanne D'Arc-  I... can't see this ever getting significant player counts.

SMT: Persona- Hey, Persona 1!  Um, I have no idea how many new players you coudl realistically expect from the game, but in theory it could take off and lead to a full ranking of Persona 1?  I'm certainly a lot more likely to play this version.  At this point, someone in the audience shoots me dead.

Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology- my impression is that the game has the main character of many classes that you get to pick once at the start of the game, then cameos.  Not a winning recipe.

Wild ARMs XF- Rank!

Pretty much agree with all of CK's assessments here.

Chiming in on a few:

FESD: One day we'll probably end up ranking FW Marth, but this game really -doesn't- need a full ranking. Too many bland, storyless duelists. At best, we'd rank Marth, Caeda, Jeigan, and the final boss.

DPP: Agree with the sentiment that this gen has the most interesting duelists. Especially fond of the Legendaries like Arceus, who I'm not sure is even rankable due to the stupidity of how to get him. The game has problems (especially with how they practically doubled the time it takes to fight a random battle), but it certainly isn't because the duelists are uninteresting. Piplup, especially, deserves to be ranked.

SuiTier: Probably the most likely to be ranked of the DS rpgs. Sad.

VPDS: What to rank has been hashed over before. I think -I- was the most vocal for ranking more duelists, but after some discussion, I think we narrowed it down to a few easy choices with some upper-borderline options. Wyl, Cheripha, Lockswell, Ancel, Garm, Teodore, Rosea, Lieselotte were the best options, with Fauxnel, Natalia, Heugoe, Auguste, and the princes as borderliner ideas.  Personally, I'd probably only push for Fauxnel of the borderliners, since he's a fun duelist.

OzRPG: Haven't played it, but I want these guys ranked anyway. That has to be a good sign.

TWEWY: Well... it has a lot of external playership at least... </fanboy>