if you don't give a hoot about the test and just want to see results, skip to the last chapter at 11:00 Edit: missed opportunity to say this in the actual video, but some data scientists in the comments have made me aware that this is an experiment that could use more data. So if anyone watching is playing through FRLG & wants to add to the data pool by running the same test, let me know your results in the comments🤝
That's it I'm NEVER buying utlra anymore Dusk and quick are cheaper and better net ball too But if I have really a lot of money extra I still buy ultra though Accessibility and branding are worth that extra 200 sometimes if you are extra rich
Definitely lol. Your sample size is far too small to be considered legitimate evidence. It's like finding a 5 star product on amazon that only has 7 reviews, just because it's 5 star doesn't mean it's a good product due to how little it's actually been reviewed in the first place. I'd much rather trust a 4.7 star product with 10k reviews than a 5 star product with 7 reviews.
Thing is, this is too unreliable really. I was soft resetting for natures (and shinyness if lucky) and some SR would have me catch the birds in 3 balls or less while some others would have me run out of pokeballs/pokemon instead.
You would need several more trials to be consistent with this to call it strong evidence. After all it is rng. The pokeballs could've just been lucky this playthrough. You'd need to do this 10 or 20 times to really tell which is better. That's how experiments work.
@@mistercbodywas about to tell you the same thing. The way you viewed the experiment I could tell you were a finance guy, and I don’t mean it in a bad way.
@@mistercbody I enjoyed the video! It was cool too see how the pokeball could basicly do the job for less money hahah. I always thought the Ultra Ball was way overpriced for what it was. You confirmed that hahah
While we're on the subject of scams, Super Potions. They have the same healing properties as literal bottled water, but at 3.5 times the price. (Until Gen 7 at least)
Super Repels are also better than Max Repels, i think it’s 350£ to 700 for just 50 more steps, at certain point I feel like Super Repels are also MBFYB
Prior to Gen 7, Fresh Water was insane. It was better than Moomoo Milk (400 vs 500 for 100HP). Not even counting the nonzero chance of getting a free one from the machine!
i mean if we look at the math, the results show that you got quite lucky with the pokeballs. according to the catch rate calculator, the 50 % chance of catch for 1 legendary with pokeballs is at around 44 balls. You managed to get all 4 in 48 balls, or 12 balls per average. THis is possible but unlikely. The ultra balls on the other hand have this "break point" at 16 balls per pokemon, so 54 balls is an average of 13.5 balls. Therefore this one was just "slightly lucky". The formula tells you, that in terms of efficiency, the ultra ball beats out the pokeball by a factor of 3, but pricewise, the pokeball beats the ultraball by a factor of 6. Therefore, the pokeball should be economically advangeous by a factor of 2. However, this does not account for hidden costs like healing items (revives, potions), which may be necessary when using pokeballs. This should dampen the economic advantage of the pokeball. The real reason why ultra balls are "kinda scam" is that they are the most expensive available pokeball, while there are dozen of "conditional balls", which are all cheaper, but provide better efficiency when their conditions are met. So basically, the conclusion is imo still correct: "ultra balls are scam", but the data set is too thin and the approach to the problem did not fully consider every variable.
Yeah the amount of healing items you spend reviving because you use a weaker pokeball outweighs the lower cost. A single revive is more expensive then an ultra ball.
A sample size of 1 catch of each of the chosen pokemon for each ball type is not nearly sufficient enough data, considering it's entirely RNG. You had insane luck.
I am a mere man of finance, not data analytics so take my findings with a grain of salt or give it a shot your next play through to add more attempts to the thesis
We serve mindless-timewasting entertainment here, sir. If you want the numbers just do what he said at the beginning of the video: look up the catchrate modifiers and compare the increase in it to the increase in price. Right away, it's pretty obvious that ultra balls are ripoffs
Excuse me but I went through 20 ultra balls trying to catch a sleeping, 1 hp zapdos and ran out before succeeding. I then came back with 120 ultra balls and tried again using paralysis instead of sleep. I failed 75 ultra balls and then you know what happened? It ran out of pp and struggled inself into fainting. I tried a third time with the same 120 ultras and paralysis and threw 8 of them, i finally caught it. Rng is too big of a factor to use 1 example per pokemon/ball type.
But that's exactly the point he's making. RNG is so rampant that using the better ball doesn't necessarily make it better. If you can luck out like he did with Mewtwo, you can save 10s of thousands of poke dollars in a playthrough, for a not much worse alternative.
I'll be honest, the fact that one single Mewtwo didn't take 57 Ultraballs, 32 Great Balls and 102 Pokéballs to catch a single time really makes me upset at the luck I used to have as a kid. But in all seriousness, I think if you did each catch like 5-10 times per Ball type, then took both the total and average, you'd get a much more definitive number
Hahaha I feel you because I actually remember these encounters being wayyyyy harder (probably cause I was a kid at the time, or didn’t have fast forward enabled and had to wait real time between throws, etc)
My first shiny was as a kid playing silver, a shiny unown "i". Took it's hp down as low as I could without ko, then emptied my entire bag of pokeballs. So many pokeballs, greatballs and ultraballs. It refused to stay in (and honestly, it hasn't changed at all over the years to where I legitimately though shinies had a worse catch rate. Every shiny I happen to encounter took nearly the entire bag to catch or even failed to catch after every ball thrown, over many different games. That's my luck!)
@@apple-cv2xj yeah, that is scarcity for you. Combine it with milo murphy's law, the fact we remember negatives more easily than positives, and the event factor of finding a shiny in the first place and that "bad luck" starts to seem increasingly likely. Yet another reason to stick with pokeballs as the generic of choice: if you stick exclusively to them, you can easily have 500+ by the end of the campaign, and it matters very little when you make that purchase as long as it happens before the random shiny. XD
I noticed that you were throwing ultra balls when the pokemon weren't asleep (such as moltres) but were throwing pokeballs when they were asleep so you had rigged your own test by not using consistent catching conditions. ...Ignoring the luck component to all this
I don't remember the exact formula and multipliers, but I'm pretty sure that with everything else being equal, a sleeping Pokémon with a regular Pokéball has the same catch odds as a non-statused Pokémon with an Ultraball. 0:46
@@CottidaeSEA Which means he was wasting potential additional value from the ultraballs... which means he stuffed his calcs. But as he said, not a statistics professor. He's just cheap XD
Using this method I have to reload 2.768 more times when trying to catch legendaries which takes much longer than generating the extra income from spamming payday from my lvl. 100 Persian. I'll stick to my ultra balls.
You took a total of _four_ samples which is nowhere near enough to draw any statistical conclusions. The extreme variance we see in your experiment makes this apparent, since all the legendaries had the exact same chance of being caught, but took very different numbers of balls to catch. The catch chance is easy to calculate: For a legendary at 1 HP, asleep and Pokeball it is 6/255, for the Ultraball it is 12/255. Ultraballs give 2x the chance of capture as Pokeballs for 6x the price, I would still argue that Ultraballs are worth it since with the better odds you can avoid the 'Mon killing itself through struggle.
I think the best method would be to make a script that does it a bunch of times and then average it out. Especially important is finding the odds of catching a Pokemon within x attempts because some legendaries don't have much PP like Ho-Oh that has Fire Blast and Sunny Day which is only 10 PP besides its other 2 moves.
Well numbers from a secondary source like a wiki can be wrong. Numbers from the primary source i.e. in game (assuming you accurately understand how those numbers are used) are obviously correct.
@@DadofWarReactions what I mean is: in programming, when you tell a = 2 and b=7 a+b will always result in 9. There is no other way, no open mind, no testing. Its what it is.
@@cheetahrunout well yes that is true but the programmers also program if/then to simulate “chance.” With statistical anomalies occurring all the time even though code is binary. At least that’s just being specific in terms of pokemon games lol
for those curious about the theoretics for a more precise number pokeballs cost 200 and have a 1x catch rate multiplier greatballs cost 600 and have a 1.5x catch rate multiplier, u have to divide which gives u 400 at an equivalent price to pokeballs making them half as efficient ultraballs cost 1200 and have a 2x catch rate multiplier, u have to divide which gives u 600 making them a third as efficient however thats not the full story and theres a full video on youtube that ends up concluding greatballs are the best in terms of efficiency once u consider the way it interacts with status and low hp. also who really wants to spend the time throwing 2x as many pokeballs when money is easy to come buy, so even ignoring that its still reasonable to spend on at least greatballs
The ultimate cheapskate solution, yes...if you can stay sane trying to do it that way. XD But seriously, it's valid. I just hate having to reset a lot, so my strategy is somewhere in the middle. I will buy the ultra balls, try to get them down to red health bar levels of HP and sleep or para them, then toss an arbitrary maximum number of balls, based on how much money I am willing to waste at that point in the game before resetting for different luck.
What I learned throughout all my years of playing pokemon is that pokeballs in quantity are INFINITELY more important than pokeballs in quality. Having the highest catch rate (outside of the 100% of a master ball) means absolutely nothing compared to being able to throw another pokeball.
@@eric9095 That is accurate. But it's implied they're faster by the game's dialogue and the supposed increase in catch success. Never said it wasn't lying about how much better they were. Apologies for the confusion. Edit 1: their → they're
4:20 Technically, if you buy the pokeballs in bundles of 10, it would be 26 balls are equal to 4 ultra balls since you would get two premier balls as a bonus
Most blatant pokemon cost to effect ratio is Repels. Super Repels cost 350 and Max Repels cost 700. Super Repels last for 200 steps, and Max Repels last for 250. Double cost for a 25% effect increase is not worth it at all
@@mistercbody since these are your comfort games Mind check my theory on these games In the Casino above rocket hideout Those slot machines aren't for gambling It's actually a skill based game and with enough reflex you can pretty consistently lend 777 and easily make profit I'm good so 50 coin is enough for me to guarantee I will hit 777 before running out so that's always profit because it rewards you 300 coins But I truly believe EVERYONE with average reflex can comfortably use 100 coins which are on the floor or gifted to you by talking with NPC And before you run out of those initial 100 coins most people should have the reflex to pull 777 You need quick double tap to do 77 that is pretty easy And pay very close attention and get the last 7 Often you will miss it slightly but 50 coin each game cost 3 so within 16 attempts I can easily get 777
The catch % is so low that the overall results were kinda expected for me, every time you throw a ball you get a low chance of getting it, regardless if the Ultra Ball is 2x or 4x better, we're talking about low odds anyways.
Ultra Balls have got less useful through time with the better balls available, Quick Ball saves time and then the battle can get long enough to use Timer Balls
At 6 times the cost and only twice the effectiveness, ultra balls will on average cost you 3 times more per catch. But saving time is worth the extra cost, especially for Pokemon that might run away or struggle. Plus they look cooler.
In newer games its evidently easier to catch pokemon with regular pokeballs but greats and ultras have always had a higher catch rate with rng. Now rng is still rng and you would have to play multiple runs with different scenarios to make a credible point. It IS a good starting theory though.
It's an interesting thesis and certainly an intriguing experiment that I would love to see white-roomed. - S1: Controlled testing environment (set seed + set encounter frame) - S2: Partially controlled environment (either a set seed OR a set encounter frame) - S3: Uncontrolled environment (which is what you did, basically - but multiple times). All the above can be achieved by writing a simple TAS. S1 sets the seed and presses A on a set frame, while S2 has only one of the parameters set, whilst the other is randomized and S3 has a dynamic offset for each input from the moment the game starts to vary all values. Running all of those szenarios several times over (which can be parallelized as the GBA hardly eats into a PC's resources due to it's tiny footprint in memory and graphics rendering) each of those can be properly averaged - or rather, benchmarked. You would end up with S1 Pokeball and S1 Ultraball and alike with a very good average of the throws needed. The only issue is just getting the birds to stand still long enough. xD But at that point, it would be no problem to just temporarily lock their pokemon data moveset structure to just contain splash and start throwing immediately. x)
By the time you get to catch legendaries, you have enough money to just spam ultraballs, and i normally don't go the false swipe sleep strat, so yeah... you also didn't include the premier ball into the cost, i think
I haven't used anything but regular pokeballs and premier balls for the last 2 or 3 generations -- premier for legendaries and shinies, pokeballs for everything else. Especially in Violet, I was able to build up enough cash that I had _at least_ 500 of the dang things at any given time (usually 800-900) and was pretty much guaranteed to catch any regular mon that didn't run away or get KO'd before I won the war of attrition. It balanced out more with the rare mons, though, since I had just 1/10 of that stash to work with. The main downside of this approach is that version-exclusive mons are so much more of a pain if you want to build an all-pokeball living dex.
I accept that in this case and for this specific scenario that the evidence from 1 trial supported your hypothesis. Plenty of other scenarios where if it's pokeball vs ultra ball that I'd want the ultra, e.g. trying to catch a pokemon that can explode, roar or flee (especially if it's a shiny or low encounter odds)
I only buy the regular monster balls for this reason. It's such a low percentage to catch the legendaries that you're generally gonna save money buying 99 monster balls instead of 16 ultra balls.
This reminds me of the very first time I caught Mewtwo. It was Pokemon Yellow, and I didn't know it was coming, so I'd already used my Master Ball. I got Mewtwo down to red, and threw all of my Ultra Balls at him. None of them worked. I threw all of my Great Balls. None of them worked. Finally, I throw a single Pokeball, and I caught him
I still think there is a use case for ultras. On my recent playthrough of Alpha Sappire, I had to use ultra balls in order to capture Cobalion, etc. As far as I know, there are no specialty balls that would have worked on that island instead. Unless you have a very durable and fast Pokémon with hypnosis to keep it under, it'll quickly max out its attack stat with swords dance, and you'll spend a fortune in hyper potions keeping your tankiest guy alive while you pelt him with balls. Ended up having to sacrifice a weak voltorb with static ability to paralyze it, and then mega evolve my Swampert and buff him with an x-defence to tank hits. Even then, I would easily be two-shotted by sacred sword, so I had to get the best catch chance out of every turn. I'm sure there are more scenarios like this that could make an ultra ball the best choice, not to mention roaming legendaries. TLDR Ultras are still best when you need to make a catch in as few turns as possible (assuming no specialty balls apply). They may even make economic sense if your team requires a lot of healing items to stay alive.
As someone who has done Pokeballs only challenge for gen 3-5 and even the gamecube games... DON'T DO IT! You either become insane, unless you're already insane... then you became sane... which is a convoluted way of saying "You CAN do it, but I don't recommend it..."
nice vid! i know that the results arent 100% accurate as you didnt do enough trials but im fairly certain that the pokeballs are higher value. although i will say that pokemons TRUE greatest scam are the regular and max repel. it just never makes sense to buy them whatsoever.
A 1,000 for a premier ball is not worth it. But ultra balls have better catch rate and nicer looking pokeball. There is a hidden nest ball and net ball in Giovanni office in team rocket base in Caledon city.
You know, there was one time where chuggaconroy really influenced me into catching every legendary with only pokeballs and it was from this exact game. He got frustrated with ultra balls and ended up catching his zapdos with a _single_ pokeball. This also got me thinking that what _if_ ultra ball's modifiers also have inverse values? Aka the rng spread being actually wider than advertised. Likewise with great balls. Let's say, what if there's a chance that my catch rate modifier is actually 0.25x at worst? It's unlikely to be true, but it's definitely a considerable consipacy theory.
I started to just use just pokeballs to catch every pokemon starting with sword and shield because I liked the thought of using the main type of pokeball only. Every time I do a play through I keep thinking how underrated pokeballs are for the price. Always surprises me how easy it is to catch with pokeballs.
I stock up on premier poke balls for legendaries and reset when I run out. Been doing this since premier balls were a thing, as is tradition. Same catch rate as a regular poke ball iirc. I got lucky and caught Zacian on the first try, which was kinda nice. We have to keep in mind that RNG is a very serious factor with catching pokemon in general, though.
The fact that you stayed under 20 pokeballs for even just 1 of the birds makes me wonder what i was doing as a kid. Throwing ALL my ultra balls, ALL my great balls, and then ALL my poke balls and then starting over
i don’t remember the specifics of catching, even less for each gen, but there were circumstances when you can’t catch with a pokeball but can with an ultraball, or circumstances in which both are basically the same, your false swipe plus asleep problably doesn’t show the difference in catching power
There are a few math mistakes.. 11:08 for instance. But pretty cool video. My conclusion is Ultra Balls are worth it if you can afford them. First of all, I value my time. Cutting the time in half on average is pretty significant. Secondly, a prolonged fight can incur additional costs of healing, etc.
I think you missed a really key element of cost efficiency here. You can buy 10+ pokeballs and get an extra premier ball for free. By buying pokeballs in increments of ten, you also maximize your free premier ball income. Where this gets problematic is that going and selling the balls back only gives you half as much back, making each ball actually cost 1000 each (though you can’t buy it without an initial 2000 buy-in), for no gain in catch rate over a pokeball. Unfortunately, if you have any style, there’s no other choice.
I like how I found this video while replaying Pokemon White Time to catch Kyurem in Pokeball! That being said however, with all the comments asking for multiple runs why not add more types of pokeballs in other games as well? I am a Quick-Timer runner so it would be fun to see how they hold up with the rest of the balls
Many moons ago on my red gba Firered I caught mewtwo on my first pokeball after exhausting all ultra and great balls. Fell asleep and erased the game file from the load screen in my hands. I have cried about that as an adult
This was such a fun watch! :D Also nicknaming your Venusaur Subscribe, huh? I see what you did there. I’d love to see you try this out in later generations with other kinds of Pokéballs. Because gen four introduced some pretty interesting ones like the Quick ball and Dusk ball.
Different balls get more mileage if you don't optimize your catch chance (1hp, sleep). If you do, it's probably better to use normal balls, since the chances are usually high enough to catch everything. Also, premium balls are cool, and buying more normal balls means you get more premium balls.
Short answer: basic statistics. While an Ultra ball gives a 2/255 catch rate, you only have one, whereas with Pokéballs, you get six 1/255 chances totalling to 6/255 Edit: correction. In reality, the chances of *not* catching the pokémon would apply multiplicatively, which would make that of 6 regular pokéballs (254/255)^6 or about 249/255, still better than the Ultra Ball's 253/255 chance of failure and surprisingly (to me) the same chance we got through addition, though gotten the correct way this time
There is also value in time. I’d pay for ultra balls just to save time. A play through with only ultra balls vs only pokeballs will be a much faster play through.
I feel this suggests that Ultra Balls aren’t *as* worth it for legendaries, being an edge case and so hard to catch regardless. I think it’d be interesting to consider the consistency and cost effectiveness for other Pokémon you find throughout the region with more reasonable catch rates, potentially factoring in that extra turns trying to catch on a casual playthrough means more trips to a Pokécenter, more potions, etc.
You want to have a cost efficiency approach ? The ultra ball has a twice higher catch rate but a six times higher price. So it will cost you on average 3 times more money to catch pokemons with them, no need to run a game to understand that. The ultra ball is not there to save you money, it is there to save you time and efforts, and usually this kind of things are expensive
A reminder for the contrary, this is numerical evidence of one experiment. If ran multiple times infinitely you would have catch rate of 100% successes for both sides. Just remember the gambler's fallacy. It occurs when an individual erroneously believes that a certain random event is less likely or more likely to happen based on the outcome of a previous event or series of events. Constructively if he did the experiment 2-5 times and accumulated the average between these runs and derived it possibly could have resulted in the probability of the Ultra balls being superior to catch rate or it could have resulted in the same outcome here where pokeballs seemingly had a higher catch rate/value-per-capture. Though the act of doing 5 runs of each minimum would be time consuming for content creation without save-states on an emulator, which not sure if his did. But if the results proved true after 5 i'd assume it wasnt all lucky captures and that it's a true difference. My theory as to this is Ultra balls have a higher catch rate, though considering returns a 2% vs 1% is abysmal and just as likely in terms of legendary pokemon. If he were to test this on regular pokemon the results true could vary, but would prove higher odds, as a 30% for a normal would become 60% in ultra. However i stand by one ideal. Value-to-capture rate goes to the pokeball. This video proved enough to me that "double the catch rate of a pokeball" is true... but since you can by 6 normal for 1 ultra the odds are in the favor of the pokeball. However since pokeballs are 1.5%, then ultra should be at 15%-20% as a natural catch rate. Makes it a near guarantee, sure, but in theory it makes the cost-to-catch ratio much more reasonable. $1200 = 20% catch rate vs. $200 = 1.5% catch rate Maybe it's just me, but that seems alot more reasonable as making it a late-game item as it is appropriate.
nah bro Premier Ball is more worth it than Pokeball, I mean Premier Ball cost 10 times the price of Pokeball so of course the most worth it Pokeball is Premier Ball right?
I've done this where I only use basic pokeballs sense sun and moon. I've played every pokemon game sense then. The math will check out over the thousands of pokemon I've catch. Plus buy 10 pokeballs and get 1 free with the premier ball.
0:30 thats the great part about it, lil blud is using his hard work and earned knowledge for the things he enjoys! Delivering something made with genuine pasion behind it 🍷🗿
4 x 1200 is 4800, not 3600 (from when you were going over the cost per pokemon at the end), so the value was actually even worse for the ultra balls, lol
@@will24556 I can’t believe I watched over this 2-3x before uploading and I made the simplest math error😭 12 times table is the ultimate challenge here
@@mistercbodyAnd if it was in recent Gens, it would be 4*800=3200. Closer, but not quite. (Still wouldn't really change the conclusion that much, though)
To little data for actual results . Way faster method to do this and extract data would be to Save state/Load state , throw 100 balls , mark how many catched and how many didnt . Very important to remember that you must wait different amount of time between each ball throw as to not fall into the same Frame and basically have bad data as the rng will be the same and you would have counted the same result twice .
I don't know if the odds changed in other generations, but when I played Alpha saphire I caught ALL pokemon using only standard pokeballs, I recall catching one of the Regi's with just 1 pokeball.
It’s the best feeling. This run i actually caught both snorlax and my poliwhirl on my first pokeball so it was an omen that the legendary test would work out in the pokeball’s favor
I don't exactly remember but I am pretty sure Gamefreak increased the catch rates of most legendary Pokémons from Gen 6 onwards but don't quote me on it
Yeah I mean, the Pokeball does give you more catch rate per dollar, but that only matters if you have all the turns in the world. Some legendaries will whipe your team before you catch them in a Pokeball. I think you just got very lucky with how many turns it took you to catch these mons, especially Mewtwo.
I thought you were gonna talk about how buggy pokeballs were in gen 1. Due to a bug, Ultraballs in gen 1 were 1200 pokédollars regular Pokéballs. The best was the great ball
