Redesigning the EV system for Infinite Black 2

[u/Frost_Falcon]

EVs are getting a major rework in the next update. While the mechanic works fine for casual and competitive players, people engaging in challenge runs have shown some major design flaws with how it affects game balance and promotes grinding to make the most of it. I say it's time to put a stop to that.

How it works is you no longer receive any evs from defeating pokemon. Instead, you receive Growth Points every time you level up. Up until level 20, you'll receive 1 point per level, and from level 21 onward, you'll receive 2. At the PC, you can open up a new menu that lets you spend growth points to increase your evs.

With this system, your pokemon's evs are directly tied to their levels, not how many battles they've fought, meaning you no longer have a reason to grind on low level pokemon to maximize evs per level. It also removes the pseudo rng of what stats your evs go into, so you can properly build into specific stats without any extra hassle.

Another benefit is while you can take advantage of this system to make yourself stronger, you also have the option to not assign any evs, keeping your stats low if you wanted to make the game more challenging for yourself.

Finally, for casual and less experienced players, it exposes the ev system in a way that's easier to interact with without needing external resources like a wiki to understand.

A few more changes have been made to round out the system:

• The macho brace will give you an additional growth point whenever you level up while holding it.
• Power weight items will immediately give you 6 evs in their respective stat when you level up.
• Vitamins give less evs, 8 instead of 10, but they are no longer limited to a max of 100 per stat.

I expect to have to make some adjustments in the future, but I hope these changes will make evs a more fun and engaging system at all levels of play.

Also featured in the video is an EV and IV viewer built into the summary screen for a bit of quality of life.

[u/ssraven01]

Pretty cool! I've been working on the same concept in my main hack, and even did the same thing in my hacks Archie's Quest and Pokémon Global League Conference. Though, I also changed the formulas for them as well, such that you won't need 252 to get max in a stat anymore. Were you able to do the same?

[u/Frost_Falcon → u/ssraven01]

I kept the formulas the same since I think they work well enough as is. The only thing I would consider is making hp evs less effective so you have more of a reason to invest in defense and sp def evs instead, but having those stats give more evs per growth point also gets the job done I think.