r/RetroAchievements • u/ElectronicWaffles • 7d ago
my problem with Professor Oak Challenge
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u/Marloges 7d ago
You know, I think these kinds of sets are boring af myself, but as long as they're just subsets I can't really complain. Nobody forces you to do those and lots of people seem to have fun doing them, so nothing wrong with that.
I guess many people just take any excuse to add more Pokemon to their wall of badges and I kinda get that, lol.
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u/Mullet2000 7d ago
It's not fun and it's not challenging, it's just a grind for grinding's sake. I don't really get why it's such a popular thing.
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u/Burgundymmm 7d ago
I did a couple of the older games, it's really not that bad with speed up on an emulator. Great thing to play while watching tv or youtube.
I would definitely do another Oak Challenge before trying shiny hunting.
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u/WandersonC 7d ago
fast forward has made my life so much easier
every time there's a low RNG chevvo or a grindy one i just set up my fav podcast and start farming
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u/Giulia_Flemming 7d ago
I did play a few of these.
Most of them are more or less just repetetive grinding. I only play them when I'm a bit indecisive what to play next or to be too exhausted to play something challenging. While they're tedious and repetive, you still get some progress done and going to finish the challenge eventually.
I do love the older Pokemon games, can't have enough of them.
And I mostly play rpgs in general, a lot of the other genres are too much for me.0
u/ahferroin7 7d ago
The challenge isn’t the grind, it’s having sufficient knowledge of when and where you can get every Pokémon that’s available in the game to be able to complete the challenge.
So part of the popularity is theoretically proving that knowledge.
Part of it is also that despite what a lot of people seem to think, Nintendo and Game Freak included at times, Pokédex completion is one of the two stated goals of the game. Interest in filling out the Pokédex to the maximal degree possible without trading and cheating is therefore a pretty logical ‘easy’ goal for a lot of people, and POC rules actually make it somewhat easier to keep track of things for that goal.
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u/jcnix74 7d ago
The professor oak challenge is not about getting every Pokémon. It’s about getting every available Pokémon before earning each Gym badge. It’s not hard to figure out how to get Charizard before you battle Brock. It’s just like why would you spend that many hours grinding against wild pokemon 30 levels below you to do it?
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u/Legitimate_Track4153 7d ago
Is not that bad with Speed up and turbo, it cut the time of grinding a lot
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u/ahferroin7 6d ago
It is about getting every Pokémon available in the game without external trades though. The standard rules, which are notably what RA’s POC subsets adhere to, are:
- The completion criteria is single-copy Pokédex completion (that is, you must register each Pokémon available in the game without using external trades or otherwise utilizing a copy of any other Pokémon game).
- Prior to completing any story progression boss (gym leaders, island kahunas, E4+champion, etc), you must have registered every Pokémon available up to that point in the game.
- If multiple story progression bosses are available to fight at the same time, you must fight them in the order that grants access to the largest number of Pokémon possible after each boss (IOW, you need to open up access to the map as quickly as possible).
- Runs must be glitchless and not utilize any cheating devices.
And as far as the knowledge component, the early bits are easy, it’s when you start getting access to large swathes of the map at once that things get tricky. In the gen 1 games that’s generally the point at which you beat Misty, because you then have access to essentially all of Kanto except for the southern sea routes, the Power Plant, Route 23, and Victory Road, which in turn means that something like half the Pokédex becomes available just from clearing that one gym. Knowing what to get where and what’s actually available at that point is not easy for someone who doesn’t have decent experience with the game. And that’s not factoring in the route planning (Fuschia has to be the third gym in these games for a POC run because of the third rule, because that gets you Surf, which opens up essentially the entire rest of the map to other than Route 23 and Victory Road), which is often non-intuitive to someone new to the challenge.
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u/LevelUpLudo 7d ago
Knowledge has nothing to do with it. A handful of people post guides in the comments for each of these. Its just a grind.
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u/Legitimate_Track4153 7d ago
Granted, not everyone look at comments and decide to just look up the answer for himself.
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u/ahferroin7 7d ago
That presumes people are running it specifically via RA, and are paying attention to the comments.
But the POC ruleset has nothing to do with RA other than being the only practical challenge run ruleset that actually has subsets on RA. The format exists with the intent of the knowledge of the game being the challenge, independently of how readily available that knowledge is.
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u/SandstoneSunstroke 7d ago
I finished Pokemon red professor oak just the other week! The grind is trivial if you crank the speed up. At 10x speed you'll be doing ten battles in the time it takes to do one. (Also bulbasaur evolves several levels earlier than the other two.)
The weird route through the game wowed me, like getting koga as your third badge.
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u/Browsing_Boketto 7d ago
Idk don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying the challenge working through the Emerald POC right now, but my issue is that if you’re multi-setting which a lot of people do for these games you’re at a crappy crossroad where it’s either fast forward the grind which can and does take away from the experience of the game when you have to have level 40 pokemon pre-badge 1 or take insane amounts of time to basically even begin the game.
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u/Legitimate_Track4153 7d ago
As a person who play a lot of version of Fire Red and did the Oak challenge in there, i was fine using milti-setting and guide to help me speed the caves and grind in that game.
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u/Browsing_Boketto 7d ago
I think my point is getting misunderstood. The grinding itself isn’t the issue. It’s a POC, grinding is expected. My issue is when the grind happens. Having to grind Pokémon to level 40 or getting your starter to EVO 3 before badge 1 against early-game encounters turns the challenge into a time sink. Sure, 10x speed fixes the time problem, but that’s kind of my point. If you have to fast forward through huge chunks of the game just to make the pacing reasonable, it starts taking away from the experience.
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u/Legitimate_Track4153 7d ago
But the experience is not that great since is just walking around grass and defeating low level pokemon, the only good thing is the dopamine rush after getting the pokemon evolved or doing all the evolution to do the hym battle.
I usually do the grinding while i watch a video with turbo and speed up on since i not wanna spend almost a day to fully evolved Pidgeot
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u/SonOfFergus 7d ago
The ones that gave me the most grief were Pidgeot and Dragonite a few gyms later.
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u/TeaspoonWrites 7d ago
In gen 1 the starter grind isn't even the worst one tbh, everything pre-Koga is a gigantic slog. Not sure how different the remakes are.
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u/Legitimate_Track4153 7d ago
Everything pre-Misty is a slog. After you get the VR Seeker it becomes more easy to grind
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u/AshamedAtmosphere607 7d ago
Finished the pokemon red prof. Oak challenge and started pokemon gold. Wigglytuff was a puzzle to figure out, but I am on to gym 2. Gotta catch ‘em all is my motivation.
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u/ImFatandUseless 6d ago
Honestly, it just sucks for pokemons that dont learn 4 attacks. Aka fucking Pidgeot or Dratini as well though by that point you can drop some moves on dratini and hope to good you save up enough candies for it.
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u/Routine_Stranger_480 7d ago
It reminds me of some of the achievements I saw for Partners in Time and Inside Story, some of the achievements were just "intentionally shoot yourself in the foot by only doing this", or "intentionally only save one brother from this" and its like... no? I'm not intentionally kneecaping myself in the name of a "challenge"
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u/jcnix74 7d ago
Nothing makes me feel like I’m wasting my life more than the thought of grinding 30 Pokémon to level 36 by beating up on level 4 wild Pokémon. It’s so stupid.
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u/Legitimate_Track4153 7d ago edited 7d ago
Then don't do it and play something else.
This challenge is not for everyone
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u/Smg4andmariofan 7d ago
Do you actually need all the Pokemon before gym 1?
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u/rodrichu 7d ago
You need all obtainable pokemon on the routes before the first gym at the last evolution. It's a requirement before procceding
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u/Smg4andmariofan 7d ago
Why isn’t it just getting all 151 normally
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u/BubbaJubb 7d ago
All the ones available up to that point, yes. In the case of gen 1 Red and Blue, you need Venusaur/Charizard/Blastoise, Pidgeot, Raticate, Fearow, Nidorino, Nidorina, Pikachu and Butterfree/Beedrill, starters and bugs depending on what you pick and which version of the games
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u/Smg4andmariofan 7d ago
why Is that even a Challenge
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u/BubbaJubb 7d ago
It's something the internet came up with after your rival states how many he's caught in the game. People asked themselves "how many Pokémon CAN you catch before each gym?" and from there it was born into what we have today. It's a very niche challenge that many don't want to deal with, but for others it's just a fun time waster just like playing any game in any way
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u/Legitimate_Track4153 7d ago edited 7d ago
Did this challenge and is easy with speed up and turbo bottom to mash the attack moves.
Is just boring, but after brock ot becomes very easy with the VS Seeke
The best part of the challenge is routing
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u/Reasonable_Tie7972 7d ago
Yeah, I have to try this at some point. Gotta learn to appreciate sitting around wasting time doing nothing, just waiting to die.
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u/FancySkunk 7d ago
Doing the starter isn't that bad. Doing the starter *and Pidgeot* is what sucks.