Un-Needed Aspects of Pokémon

[Its_A_Random]

I kinda think Altering Cave in FRLG and Emerald fits the bill there. It was just a cave that was there for no reason. All you could do is find Zubat and you could have just found one earlier in the game (Even though this was a guaranteed Zubat). Obviously there were plans to do Mystery Gift and shit there but they never surmounted iirc. Even if they did, not everyone could access them since Wi-Fi for the GBA was basically non-existant. Furthermore in Emerald the Pokémon you could catch if the feature took place could just be caught with a trip to the Safari Zone/Battle Frontier/whatever in the post-game. Not even Scorched Slab was this redundant as you could find the TM for Sunny Day there, giving it some purpose (And that place is virtually un-needed outside of that imo). Altering Cave on the other hand seems like nothing but wasted potential and a mere waste of memory.

Makes me wonder if they are going to try Altering Cave again for ORAS though I honestly doubt it will happen.

 

[KingHeracrossTheBug]

I kinda think Altering Cave in FRLG and Emerald fits the bill there. It was just a cave that was there for no reason. All you could do is find Zubat and you could have just found one earlier in the game (Even though this was a guaranteed Zubat). Obviously there were plans to do Mystery Gift and shit there but they never surmounted iirc. Even if they did not everyone could access them since Wi-Fi for the GBA was basically non-existant. Furthermore in Emerald the Pokémon you could catch if the feature took place could just be caught with a trip to the Safari Zone/Battle Frontier/whatever in the post-game. Not even Scorched Slab was this redundant as you could find the TM for Sunny Day there, giving it some purpose (And that place is virtually un-needed outside of that imo). Altering Cave on the other hand seems like nothing but wasted potential and a mere waste of memory.

Makes me wonder if they are going to try Altering Cave again for ORAS though I honestly doubt it will happen.

They could place the Friend Safari on its place

 

[Absolclaw]

Shinies. Most of them just look hideous and not worth the trouble. Does Garchomp even have a shiny? Why does Espeon look like someone puked on it?

 

[Celever]

I kinda think Altering Cave in FRLG and Emerald fits the bill there. It was just a cave that was there for no reason. All you could do is find Zubat and you could have just found one earlier in the game (Even though this was a guaranteed Zubat). Obviously there were plans to do Mystery Gift and shit there but they never surmounted iirc. Even if they did, not everyone could access them since Wi-Fi for the GBA was basically non-existant. Furthermore in Emerald the Pokémon you could catch if the feature took place could just be caught with a trip to the Safari Zone/Battle Frontier/whatever in the post-game. Not even Scorched Slab was this redundant as you could find the TM for Sunny Day there, giving it some purpose (And that place is virtually un-needed outside of that imo). Altering Cave on the other hand seems like nothing but wasted potential and a mere waste of memory.

Makes me wonder if they are going to try Altering Cave again for ORAS though I honestly doubt it will happen.

Eh I liked the Scorched Slab as it was really very small and it was just there for some personality and some character, which it does very well. I agree with you about Altering Cave though, it doesn't surprise me that they never utilised it. Especially because people from countries outside of Japan and possibly the US would have never got the events most likely.

 

[noobcubed]

Ugh, really you think team preview is a bad thing? Before team preview so much revolved around dedicated leads it wasn't funny. If your lead was beaten by your opponent's (eg from Gen IV: you have Machamp and your opponent has Aerodactyl) you had a really serious match-up disadvantage which you had nothing you could do about - you would just have to put up with being 5 v 5 but with your opponent having set up rocks. Come team preview, those dedicated leads disappeared and you would now have a chance to predict your opponent's lead and lead something that beats it.

 

[Stef0w]

cut, and rock smash, they are bad, and GF should not force us to use them.

 

[Detective Barricade]

cut, and rock smash, they are bad, and GF should not force us to use them.

You barely need them anymore aside from getting at some goodies. Strength falls into the same boat, more or less.

 

[Mulan15262]

cut, and rock smash, they are bad, and GF should not force us to use them.

They could get buffed, though. Cut could be a steel-type 70 BP high-crit move, and rock smash a rock-type 70 BP 100% accurate move. This way, they have their uses instead of taking up moveslots.

 

[Odd Sponge Out]

Shinies. Most of them just look hideous and not worth the trouble. Does Garchomp even have a shiny? Why does Espeon look like someone puked on it?

I kind of agree. But instead of no shinies. . . Why not BETTER shinies? 1/3 are barely different from regular. 1/3 look like actual shit. 1/3 are just. . . pink. A tiny margin are actually look. Tiny. TINY.

 

[KingHeracrossTheBug]

I kind of agree. But instead of no shinies. . . Why not BETTER shinies? 1/3 are barely different from regular. 1/3 look like actual shit. 1/3 are just. . . pink. A tiny margin are actually look. Tiny. TINY.

They are gold not pink lol. Also I think this is the actual margin imo:
1/5 look like the same
1/5 are fucking Trubbish (PUN INTENDED)
1/5 look nice
The rest are just gold recoloring

 

[Lady Vader]

Protect/Detect/other similar moves - Does nothing except waste a turn pointlessly (in-game. Competitively, obviously, these are quite good moves).

You've never used Protect against Norman's two Slaking, did you?

Gamefreak's bizzare need to make evolution items obnoxious to get.

I swear I could write a whole essay on how stupid and dumb it is that I can't just go to a pokemart and just buy these stupid items. ESPECIALLY the trade evolution items.
You either have to steal them off Pokemon (note: only some of the items are stealabe!), hope that some game-specific aspect gives them to you (Black City/White Forest in BW1, BW2's tower/tree giving items (BUT ONLY CERTAIN ITEMS BECAUSE________), the underground in DPt), grind pokemon up for the purpose of pick up, &/or grind for battle points.

To get the most out of some of these evolutions, you already have to put up with getting all the moves you want on them (for stones) and finding someone to trade with (for the rest) so...

Like,really, what is the logic here. Most of them aren't exceptionally amazing enough to warrant such walling off.
DID YOU KNOW that you can't even get Weavile or Gliscor before beating the e4 in XY? There is not a single razor fang or razor claw to be given or found outside the battle maison.
If you're playing DP, I hope you didn't waste your one, single Dubious Disk on a porygon2 you're not happy with!

I fully agree with you. It was hell getting the Metal Coats I needed for the Scizors I have bred for myself and others and also annoying for Gliscor.

Team Preview. The whole lead game made filtering competitive players from noncompetitive ones way easier, as a good player would think about a good strategy based around a good lead that beats most leads and a main sweeper. TP simply sucks my balls.

While I didn't care for Team Preview last gen (I ran Sand, so I would always send out T-Tar first), but I love it this gen. It actually requires just as much thought as picking a lead did before since you can predict what your opponent will send out to make your decision. This has let me gain an advantage early on. This includes taking out a Breloom with my Sap Sipper Goodra and taking out a Focus Sashed Klefki with Excadrill, using Rapid Spin to both knock it out and eliminating the Spikes it set up.

Most of my major gripes have been resolved over the course of the series. The box system is great thanks to RS (improved interface), HGSS (touch controls), and BW (Battle Box). Breeding as a whole is amazingly easy now. Infinite use TMs make training Pokémon a breeze. While it is annoying to have to pay for Pokémon Bank, I do enjoy being able to transfer 1 to 30 Pokémon at a time instead of a fixed 6 and I don't have to play some dumb, pointless minigame to finish transferring them.

I do have some complaints. The main one is being unable to send items from Gen IV to V and from V to VI. This makes getting extra Leftovers very difficult. Honestly, just put Leftovers in the Battle Frontier/Subway/Maison/whatever the next one will be called for 48 BP in addition to the free one we always get. I sort of understand that the reason we couldn't send items forward in between IV and V was due to the TMs, but they could've programed it so that Pokémon holding TMs couldn't be sent forward.

I also dislike not being able to buy Ethers, Elixers, PP Ups, and PP Maxes. I really miss how I could grind for those PP Ups last gen. True, I can get PP Ups through other sources, but they take way longer than simply buying them.

The censorship feature needs to be modified badly. I perfectly understand why it is there and I won't ask Game Freak to remove it, but they need to fix it. For one, some unnicknamed Pokémon can't be traded on the GTS since it has a censored word hidden in its name. I know for a fact that on each Pokémon, there is a flag that indicated whether it is nicknamed or not (it is used for when a Pokémon evolves). Boom, there's a simple way to get around it already present in the game's coding. Also, they need to put some exceptions in the filter so that common names are allowed.

The one element I hate more than any other is Baby Pokémon. Makes breeding so much more difficult since those who have required Babies must be evolved first before I can continue breeding. Also, the added Babies are pointless. There might be a move or two that they get that their evos don't, but none of them are even vaguely worth it.

 

[nitrox116]

One modification that might work for the censor system would be to simply automatically change blacklisted nicknames to the Pokémon's species in online battles, trades, etc. It would be unobtrusive and would still help block offensive nicknames.

 

[Wishy]

Team preview is actually great. It meant you have to be prepared to possibly lead with something different, it increases mindgames (who should I lead with/who will my opponent lead with?) while easing your predictions but also at the same time giving you greater room to gamble a surprise switch-in. And really, there are just way too many Pokemon. Without team preview, novel strategies are too much of a liability and require intense scouting whereas with team preview your strategy can be more flexible from the get-go if you sorta know what to expect (it's not like team preview tells you the other Pokemon's movesets).

This complaint might seem a bit strange and is probably impractical to try to change, but I don't like Levitate... Sortof. It's a great ability obviously, but it's really annoying how pretty much everything with Levitate bar Bronzor/Bronzong/Duskull have their ability forever locked into Levitate. I just don't understand the logic in not giving it to Pokemon that are obviously fucking levitating (Beedrill, Magnemite family) and then you have poor Rotom-F who has been given literally a totally useless ability. I think anything that has wings and can fly or is constantly floating should just have an intrinsic Levitate ability. The biggest issue with that of course, is that beyond the floaters like Magnemite and Bronzor which wouldn't logically be /Flying, Flying type becomes partially redundant on a lot of Pokemon (ie, Dragonite). Oh well. I'd rather deal with that lapse in logic than the distribution (or lack thereof) of Levitate, and then Pokemon like Gengar and Flygon would be open to having different abilities.

 

[gars129]

IVS

Unlike some people, i like natures and evs cause they allow you to "customize" your pokemon and allows a single pokemon to fulfill different roles better.

But IVs are too time consuminG and boring, and with GF acknoliging the importance of IVs with things like friend safari and making it slightly easier to get ivs only puts the necessity to iv breed much more important, with more and more trainers breeding perfect pokemon. People with little patience or time (like me) or little kids simply cannot afford to do full pokemon teams quickly, making simulators more convinient, which is BAD for GF. I mean, what about all those doctorates students who play pokemon. Id be mad if they took anything else except IVs.

Also, they should return the option to put all your pokemon to level 50 or 100 in multiplayer like in DPP, even if they are level 1. Training Pokemon until the mid 30s or more to evolve is hard enough, but then, even if they know all the good moves already, its stupid that you have to train to lv 50. Thats why I like the ability to teach moves learned at high levels optionaly via heart scale.

 

[Kurona]

But IVs are too time consuminG and boring, and with GF acknoliging the importance of IVs with things like friend safari and making it slightly easier to get ivs only puts the necessity to iv breed much more important, with more and more trainers breeding perfect pokemon. People with little patience or time (like me) or little kids simply cannot afford to do full pokemon teams quickly, making simulators more convinient, which is BAD for GF. I mean, what about all those doctorates students who play pokemon. Id be mad if they took anything else except IVs.

You're putting this forward as if it's a very important part of the game - if it was that'd be awful, but it really isn't. The only people that really know and care about IVs are competitive players. Kids sure as hell don't give a shit, Doctorate Students or whatever would just be casual players, and the way GF made IVs more accessible is subtle enough so that unless you very purposefully tested it or went into the game's programming, you wouldn't know.
In addition, while IVs aren't really my favourite thing ever, taking them out would be a very bad move - it would result in the same sort of scenario as Gen 3, where the system and way Pokémon are made and generated is so different as to be incompatible with past games, hence why you can't transfer 'mon from GSC up to RSE. This would create a similar situation - you wouldn't be able to transfer anything up and with all the Pokémon there are now, making them all available in one new generation PLUS the new Pokémon there would be is way too ridiculous and hard a task. And in the end, needless and pointless.

 

[Lady Vader]

You're putting this forward as if it's a very important part of the game - if it was that'd be awful, but it really isn't. The only people that really know and care about IVs are competitive players. Kids sure as hell don't give a shit, Doctorate Students or whatever would just be casual players, and the way GF made IVs more accessible is subtle enough so that unless you very purposefully tested it or went into the game's programming, you wouldn't know.
In addition, while IVs aren't really my favourite thing ever, taking them out would be a very bad move - it would result in the same sort of scenario as Gen 3, where the system and way Pokémon are made and generated is so different as to be incompatible with past games, hence why you can't transfer 'mon from GSC up to RSE. This would create a similar situation - you wouldn't be able to transfer anything up and with all the Pokémon there are now, making them all available in one new generation PLUS the new Pokémon there would be is way too ridiculous and hard a task. And in the end, needless and pointless.

You pretty much hit that on the head. You get a cookie.

 

[nitrox116]

Now that I think about it, those notifications that pop up on the PSS screen every so often are just horrible. Even worse, they don't even take anything into account. Even if you've filled out all the questions on your profile page, it'll still say "There are questions on your profile page for you to answer!" every so often. Even if your 3DS is charging, it will still periodically say that your battery is low as long as you're in the red zone. I'm sure that it was meant to be informative but subtle, but to tell the truth every time one of those notifications pops up I flinch. If you want to tell people about Wonder Trade or something, have an NPC do it: don't make it a permanent thing that appears every time the PSS is viewed for too long.

 

[Verfallen]

I read somewhere that Pokewalker was pretty good as a pedometer itself.

It is. The pedometer that comes with Wii Fit U is just a re-branded Pokewalker. That said, as excited as I was for the Pokewalker I rarely ended up using it and now the battery is dead. It also makes complete copies of HG/SS a pain to find (I only have HG, and wanted SS, but new copies are over $100 on Amazon! Holy crap!).

I think the overall most useless aspects of Pokemon games are:

1. I'm literally walking into people's unlocked houses, I should be able to get on my bike/roller skates indoors!

2. The following HMs: Flash, Waterfall, Whirlpool. We already had an awesome water HM (Surf) and Flash was always just annoying to have to lug around with you, and useless in battle at that. As a kid I just used my strategy guide to navigate caves without using Flash.

3. I can understand why you can't re-nickname pokemon that have been traded to you that have special nicknames, and think it's kind of nice. Sure, you could end up with LORD POOP or Banana123 but I like ending up with a traded pokemon that someone named something nice. BUT, if they chose not to nickname the pokemon, you should be able to nickname it yourself. Especially event pokemon. It was really disappointing that you couldn't nickname the Torchic in X and Y.

 

[Lady Vader]

2. The following HMs: Flash, Waterfall, Whirlpool. We already had an awesome water HM (Surf)...

I don't mind Waterfall starting in Diamond and Pearl since it is a physical move. And before anyone starts saying "ignoring competitive", I do make sure that a Pokémon gets proper kind of moves when I'm just playing through the game. My Swampert in ORAS will know Waterfall as its STAB, for instance.

...It was really disappointing that you couldn't nickname the Torchic in X and Y.

Yet we could nickname the Celebi from Pokémon Bank (mine's named The Doctor).

 

[Eddie2013]

The showing of how to catch a Pokemon in every single beginning of the game. I understand why it's in place for new people to the Pokemon community but for me having played since Pokemon red it has become something I hate about the games lol

 

[Lady Vader]

The showing of how to catch a Pokemon in every single beginning of the game. I understand why it's in place for new people to the Pokemon community but for me having played since Pokemon red it has become something I hate about the games lol

I have the simplest way to fix that: have the NPC ask if you know how to capture Pokémon. That way, the tutorial is still there for newcomers yet veterans can just skip it.

 

[Eddie2013]

I have the simplest way to fix that: have the NPC ask if you know how to capture Pokémon. That way, the tutorial is still there for newcomers yet veterans can just skip it.

I don't think that worked in x and y but I could be wrong

 

[KingHeracrossTheBug]

I have the simplest way to fix that: have the NPC ask if you know how to capture Pokémon. That way, the tutorial is still there for newcomers yet veterans can just skip it.

That's what they did on GSC, and I don't know why they didn't kept going like that. Actually, a lot of nice things are scrapped by Troll Freak from the games, while they could just be reused perfectly

 

[noobcubed]

Well, it's really difficult to make tutorials flow seamlessly - especially for something like menu-based combat, there is going to be a lot of "this button makes this happen" crap that's pretty unavoidable. I actually think the way it's done - watching a battle and learning how they work - is much better than an NPC directly telling you "Press 'Fight' to attack". Making the tutorial optional would just result in kids who are new to the series (and probably to turn-based combat generally) skipping something they really need to see. And Game Freak does a good job of littering the first few routes with helpful NPCs talking about type effectiveness, status conditions and the like, so the player can have as much tutoring as they want/need.

 

[Shiruba]

You're putting this forward as if it's a very important part of the game - if it was that'd be awful, but it really isn't. The only people that really know and care about IVs are competitive players. Kids sure as hell don't give a shit, Doctorate Students or whatever would just be casual players, and the way GF made IVs more accessible is subtle enough so that unless you very purposefully tested it or went into the game's programming, you wouldn't know.
In addition, while IVs aren't really my favourite thing ever, taking them out would be a very bad move - it would result in the same sort of scenario as Gen 3, where the system and way Pokémon are made and generated is so different as to be incompatible with past games, hence why you can't transfer 'mon from GSC up to RSE. This would create a similar situation - you wouldn't be able to transfer anything up and with all the Pokémon there are now, making them all available in one new generation PLUS the new Pokémon there would be is way too ridiculous and hard a task. And in the end, needless and pointless.

I fail to see how it'd create incompatibility between older gens and such; that's like saying that faerie type does the same thing. They could have all transferred Pokemon have their IVs convert from whatever they were to the equivalent 0, 31, or whatever fixed number they'd pick as the "standard" after removing them - Hidden Power could be changed via NPC, perhaps, or flat-out randomized. Doesn't sound difficult to me, and meanwhile, it makes competitive Pokemon that much more accessible for someone to just hop into on the fly. It also means I get to potentially use the guys that I beat the storyline with in competitive that I may or may not have an emotional connection with, which is a nice bonus considering those guys are often more or less "useless," which is honestly rather sad in my opinion. I get that some people are just better than others and no matter how much some people train and want to get better they will simply never match the talents of others, but in all honesty, I fail to see why that should be implemented in a video game like Pokemon, where it's even specifically stated that you should try to win with your favourites as opposed to simply what's good, and trainers that only base their teams on power are often disparaged or considered bad trainers. It'd also mean I wouldn't have to play Biking Simulator 2013, for which I personally would be very thankful.

I don't understand your last point. Are you saying that there'd be too many Pokemon, so the old gens wouldn't be transferrable upwards? If so, what's the problem of changing the mechanics if transfer will be blocked regardless?