So yeah, this again. I still stand by much of what I've said about the fourth generation, and I'm not big on having even more new Pokémon to deal with in fifth-gen. But I'm pretty much sold on triple battles (I guess I never said it here, but I've said in the chatroom a few times that they could really just make the game all double battles all the time and I'd like it, and this is the next best thing), and many of the rumors that have been floating around (like the games not following the gym structure) would just solidify that if confirmed to be true.
Anyway, the reason I'm bringing this thread up again isn't to do with that new stuff, but rather is best summed up in an excerpt from a post in another thread:
the regular physical attack in an RPG
Aside from
Mysterious Dungeon,
Pokémon games don't really have these. Fifth-gen could be a good opportunity to change this.
Now, before anyone says anything, this is an idea solely for the single-player aspect of the game. I will never take part in serious competitive play in a turn-based number-based JRPG even with triple battles potentially making things interesting, but I understand that there are people who like invisible numbers (and, bafflingly, some who think competitive
Pokémon is more strategic than chess; thus far I've had no luck shattering their illusion), and I'd rather not deal with any of that here.
Anyway, here's the idea: for the single-player portion of the game, remove Struggle and add a move simply labeled "Attack." It wouldn't be a particularly viable move for fighting stuff of your own level - damage could be calculated as the user's attack (either standard or special, whichever is higher) minus the target's appropriate defense - but the key point of the move would be that it wouldn't have any elemental typing whatsoever, wouldn't count toward the traditional four-move limit, and wouldn't use PP. This would ideally be added in conjunction with (directly copying from MegaTen here) an autoplay mode (set by hitting, say, the X button, and easily stopped by hitting it again; it could even be disabled outright in the option menu if you're a purist or scared you might accidentally hit it) that just uses that basic "Attack" move - and skips combat animations entirely, making it move more quickly than actually fighting out battles (barring obvious things like how you might be able to OHKO something by using Surf versus needing three turns to take it down with "Attack"), but still slowly enough that you can still see how much damage you're dealing and taking, as well as things like status effects.
The main point of this? Well, it'd mostly be for the sake of convenience and faster combat when fighting Pokémon of a lower level, given that battles are probably going to take even longer now with full animation (though running away from wild Pokémon might still be faster). Ultimately, it'd be most convenient in a New Game+-type setting, which I still think would be a pretty sweet feature as well, but it could have uses in standard play.
Interesting idea?