Battle Factory Question: Return/Frustration

[mr_pikachu]

Hey, I've just got a quick question about the use of Frustration and Return in the Battle Factory (in Battle Frontier). Obviously, the two moves depend on how much the Pokemon likes its trainer. I'm well aware that you can't be certain of either move's effectiveness when you're choosing your initial team. However, I'm curious about what happens if you swap for a Return/Frustration user. Can the "happiness" value change due to the swap, as it would during a trade (if I'm not mistaken), or does it remain constant throughout the challenge?

Just thought I'd ask. Thanks in advance if anyone knows the answer.


P.S. I just battled against a Chansey that tried to use Frustration. I haven't laughed that hard in quite awhile. ^_^

[Zallarion]

if it faints it's happyness lowers bij 1 out of max 250 but when you swap it it won't so don't worrie, good luck at the battle factory

[Knight of Time]

Well, I know that the happiness value doesn't change when you switch Pokemon in battle, but when you do trade a Pokemon, it's happiness resets to the default value (70 I think, I could be wrong) that Pokemon have when caught, unless by a Luxury Ball.

Hope that helps, mr_pikachu.

[mr_pikachu]

Well, I'm not sure what to think...

need2know: I'm not really sure about this, since it seems to contradict my own in-game experience. See, I have a Gyarados that knows Return. No matter how many times it faints in any of the facilities, its Return attack never seems to be remotely affected. (And believe me, it's been KOed an insane number of times at areas like the Pyramid, so that attack strength should have been noticably altered.) This is because what happens in a Frontier challenge is not supposed to affect the Pokemon. The problem is that the Factory may be a unique exception, since the trainer is the one changing rather than the Pokemon. That, incidentally, is what I'm working to investigate.

Kyle: I see your point here, but the problem is that I'm not sure whether Factory swaps work in the same manner as trades as far as the mechanics go. They don't seem to, since your opponent doesn't get anything out of it. (I haven't looked at the programming code, so maybe they do. But I kinda doubt it.) By the way, the happiness value that a traded Pokemon reverts to depends entirely on what species of Pokemon is traded. Some Pokemon move to a happiness level that is quite high - those that evolve by happiness are usually the highest, I believe. Others revert to 0 (especially the ever-angsty legendaries like Mewtwo).

Okay, I think I'm just going to have to investigate this myself on a case-by-case basis. And I'll make sure I do it when I don't have a major streak on the line. ^_^ Thanks for your help, both of you. You've given me some things to consider in my investigation.

[MegaMewtwo]

As far as I've seen, all the Factory Pokémon have minimum happiness, and any Pokémon that know Return (because there's like a large database of all the Frontier Pokémon) have Frustration instead.

[mr_pikachu]

Well, that was my initial suspicion, as well. However, as I mentioned before, I recently battled a Chansey that knew Return. The attack did next to nothing.

Now, you're all probably saying, "Chansey has a worthless Attack anyway! Of course it wouldn't do anything!"

True. However, the animation itself was different. You know how most Pokemon in the Factory that use Return have that little stress mark that appears, then they glow red and slam into you repeatedly? Well, when Chansey did it, the stress mark appeared... and fell off the screen. Then Chansey lightly touched my Pokemon as the "attack" (hah). So its Happiness was likely maxed out, which led me to my question.

Anyway, I've been out of town, so I haven't been able to get to my Emerald cart for awhile. But once I can get my experimentation started, I'll let you all know how it goes.