Actually, within the community of serious players, 16 is quite young. Most of the younger ones are 18-25 years old (an age group I belong too), and were people who picked up the game before the commercialization happened. Others picked it up for their little brother/nephew/children, and checked it out for themselves, and found that it was pretty good - much more indepth that for example the anime is.
I know of a number of people among them who are around the age of 40 who also enjoy it, and who have contributed to the enormous amount of research that has been done - and believe me, it is a lot. Check out places like Hexagonal Research and the afore-mentioned Azure Heights for examples of that. I know most of you will now say Get a life, but then again, what's the difference between this and say, checking whether there's a new post on a newsgroup, or Slashdot, or whatever, every fifteen minutes, and making unfounded flaming insults to whoever you don't agree with.
I won't disagree that most of the fad is indeed lame - I'm not a fan of the anime series myself, and never bought any of the merchandise myself, but the games are certainly not only meant for kids - I doubt most of them would even get the fullest out of it.
Stat EXP has never been restricted in that not all stats will get the full possible stat experience, but instead only get a limited number for each stat, that is usually reached before fully training (it's one of the obtainable ribbons). In the new system, there is a 255 cap per stat, and 511 points (or something near that) to spread around over the six stats. In the older game, you could max out all of them, now you can't.
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Actually, within the community of serious players, 16 is quite young. Most of the younger ones are 18-25 years old (an age group I belong too), and were people who picked up the game before the commercialization happened. Others picked it up for their little brother/nephew/children, and checked it out for themselves, and found that it was pretty good - much more indepth that for example the anime is.
I know of a number of people among them who are around the age of 40 who also enjoy it, and who have contributed to the enormous amount of research that has been done - and believe me, it is a lot. Check out places like Hexagonal Research and the afore-mentioned Azure Heights for examples of that. I know most of you will now say Get a life, but then again, what's the difference between this and say, checking whether there's a new post on a newsgroup, or Slashdot, or whatever, every fifteen minutes, and making unfounded flaming insults to whoever you don't agree with.
I won't disagree that most of the fad is indeed lame - I'm not a fan of the anime series myself, and never bought any of the merchandise myself, but the games are certainly not only meant for kids - I doubt most of them would even get the fullest out of it.
Stat EXP has never been restricted in that not all stats will get the full possible stat experience, but instead only get a limited number for each stat, that is usually reached before fully training (it's one of the obtainable ribbons). In the new system, there is a 255 cap per stat, and 511 points (or something near that) to spread around over the six stats. In the older game, you could max out all of them, now you can't.