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(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon
- Thread starter BriarRose
- Start date
For me I think it can work it just depends on the rest of the aesthetic. I actually really like the SWSH & L:A aesthetics they went with for their texturing; the black outlines I think would work with SWSH too but probably would need to be lessened and L:A I think would need the waterstroke aesthetic added on imo (which might be a bit much).
But Go, Let's Go, BDSP and especially Home feel very lacking without something to "pop"; Let's Go might look better if the "lighting" wasn't so dang harsh though.
SV kind of depends on the Pokemon & lighting, sometimes the lean towards realism kind of feels distracting but sometimes it really hits the mark and other times it's hardly noticeable.
Oh, also if you do go for emulating the 3DS games without the lines make sure you don't use the Solosis line. Whatever method they use to remove the lines doesn't work on their inner parts so they look really ugly.
I'm a huge fan of the black outlines. I think Showdown did that to me.
I think for L:A it could work in an Okami sort of way. I will admit I'm also biased because I have not liked the art choices that work best with lineless models tbh. I found all of LA, SV and what we've seen of ZA to be ugly compared to what we had with SUMO and USUM. I also don't like that pokémon is pivoting to this weird semi realistic rendering that doesn't match with half of the models on the fact of them being cartoony animals
When you're following Koraidon in Inlet Grotto at the start of the game it moves faster than your walking speed but slower than your running speed
tbh this is a super common problem for video games in general. They want to make sure you can follow an NPC without falling behind, so the NPC can't match your fastest speed.
It's really annoying. Give us a follow prompt or something.
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Or just have the NPC wait after a certain distance. Ain't that complicated, in fact, the Raidons do it.
The ending to this battle:
I won't spoil it, but it's probably the worst play ever made in the history of competitive pokemon
It's crazy how SV has this really interesting mechanic in Terastallization and you effectively can't even use during the campaign because changing a Pokémon's Tera type requires grinding a shitton of raids. (While you can catch special Tera Pokémon in the wild, that's rare-ish and still random!) The mechanic functionally boils down to Adaptability at home for PvE.
Which is weird, because I thought GF had learned their lesson about that. One of the big complaints about Megas in XY was that so many were postgame-locked. Z-Crystals and DMax then were available pretty freely throughout their respective storylines. And then Tera was sharply limited once again, keeping the player(and the bosses) from doing anything creative with it during the story.
I just realized something. I've been saying for a while that the starter trio should begin as pure types and then evolve into F/W, W/G, G/F. This keeps the auto-win first fight with your rival, while making the Starter vs Starter fights in the endgame actually interesting. In a world with Tera, that would be even better. It might even involve actual thought, since becoming pure-typed is a power boost, but opens you up to coverage from the other starters.
I'd guess the intent was that they wanted type-swapping to be a "high level play" type thing, with gym battles just teasing the concept, and that if you wanted to experience it you'd go into raids or the occasional wild tera: not to grind it out, but to try out things like oh this toedscool is fire type! Tera raids are way more accessible, color coded and easy enough to do that especially in the early game you can pick and choose what quirky tera you might want on your team if so.
Otherwise you have the free-est reign to use the mechanic using the standard type boosting, while potentially experimenting with taking away a secondary type. Every pokemon can still do it, unlike Megas. You can do it at any time, unlike Dynamax. And the only offset, the charge on the orb, encouraged you to reach out a little either by tapping the tera crystal spawns (and maybe do one of your own hm!) or finding a pokemon center. And then if you did wind up doing bunch of raids, around the late game is probably when you'd get to experiment with it yourself. Probably around the time you can Hyper Train in this game.
Otherwise you have the free-est reign to use the mechanic using the standard type boosting, while potentially experimenting with taking away a secondary type. Every pokemon can still do it, unlike Megas. You can do it at any time, unlike Dynamax. And the only offset, the charge on the orb, encouraged you to reach out a little either by tapping the tera crystal spawns (and maybe do one of your own hm!) or finding a pokemon center. And then if you did wind up doing bunch of raids, around the late game is probably when you'd get to experiment with it yourself. Probably around the time you can Hyper Train in this game.
Raids in SV are pretty awful, but you can get a bunch of non-standard Tera mons (With moves to match) in them as soon as you get your Raidon.
50 shards to change a Tera-type is RIDICULOUS though.
50 shards to change a Tera-type is RIDICULOUS though.
i am a SV raid defender, but also yeah 50 is -as someone who has literally cleared out the region of raids multiple times for fun and thus has hundreds of these things in every type- just...like even for GameFreak's insistence of wanting you to work for stuff like this, you could have done it at 25. Maybe 30.
Even the DLC "solution" to this is the odd decision to just have it be a flat +X based on the tier of raid instead of like, a discount charm or something. I guess the other solution is the item printer (which I also really like, incidentally) but that's not really focused on the tera shards, its just a pleasant byproduct that adds up over time.
The locations aren't random, there are a selection of specific points where the crystals spawn, there's just nothing to indicate where they are when there isn't currently a crystal there.
Here’s a personal nitpick that’s been bothering me about Pokémon for a while now, and now it can bother you too! Have you ever noticed how unbalanced the selection of items is in these games? But, wait, here’s the catch. I’m not talking about held items in multiplayer or anything like that. I’m talking your basic, run of the mill Poké Balls, Potions, stuff like that. You would think, right, that a Great Ball is better than a Poké Ball, and an Ultra Ball is better than a Great Ball, but are they really?
In basically every Pokémon game, especially the older ones, when you go to buy Poké Balls at the Poké Mart, you’re actually better off only buying standard vanilla Poké Balls, since the catching odds multiplier of those items isn’t enough to compensate for the cost of each individual ball. I am aware this is far, far from the only game where stuff like this happens, and at least in the defense of the Poké Balls, stronger wild Pokémon that show up later in the games tend to have stronger moves with less PP so at least in that context you’d rather have 30 Ultra Balls ready for that Mewtwo or whatever else as opposed to 60 Poké Balls or 45 Great Balls. Potions, though? Completely different story. Tell me why prior to Gen 7, a Hyper Potion heals 200 HP per Potion and how there’s almost never any reason to by Max Potions or Full Restores unless you’re using, like, a Wailord or something. Tell me why the cost per HP point of regular vanilla Potions will almost always be better than Super Potions and Hyper Potions in the more recent games.
Assuming you even use items in single player, which a lot of veteran players try their hardest not to outside of TMs and HMs, the idea that items are best used for things other than what they’re specifically meant for shows up all over the place in this series. I very frequently find myself selling Revives for some easy money more than I actually use them. Same goes for Evolution stones if I’m not using a Pokémon that needs that specific stone item.
And then you look at one-time use items, and how the balance of the entire campaign seems warped around what Pokémon are best to use these on. Not just TMs, either, there’s the Time Flute in Pokémon Colosseum that also comes to mind as well as stuff like the Master Ball.
Look, I get that all of these items exist to make life easier on newer players, but Pokémon’s always had an issue with the player character being disproportionately powerful compared to 90 plus percent of NPCs you’re going to battle on your playthrough. Bringing in new players is one thing, but helping to create challenges to persuade older players to come back is one of the most important as parts of any popular, aging video game I.P., and I’m not saying that every mainline Pokémon game needs to be freaking Elden Ring, but when newer games have routinely done away with things like postgame battle facilities and other things people might associate with “challenge”, the very least these developers could do is start by trying and do is rebalance the items in single player a little bit depending on the game.
In basically every Pokémon game, especially the older ones, when you go to buy Poké Balls at the Poké Mart, you’re actually better off only buying standard vanilla Poké Balls, since the catching odds multiplier of those items isn’t enough to compensate for the cost of each individual ball. I am aware this is far, far from the only game where stuff like this happens, and at least in the defense of the Poké Balls, stronger wild Pokémon that show up later in the games tend to have stronger moves with less PP so at least in that context you’d rather have 30 Ultra Balls ready for that Mewtwo or whatever else as opposed to 60 Poké Balls or 45 Great Balls. Potions, though? Completely different story. Tell me why prior to Gen 7, a Hyper Potion heals 200 HP per Potion and how there’s almost never any reason to by Max Potions or Full Restores unless you’re using, like, a Wailord or something. Tell me why the cost per HP point of regular vanilla Potions will almost always be better than Super Potions and Hyper Potions in the more recent games.
Assuming you even use items in single player, which a lot of veteran players try their hardest not to outside of TMs and HMs, the idea that items are best used for things other than what they’re specifically meant for shows up all over the place in this series. I very frequently find myself selling Revives for some easy money more than I actually use them. Same goes for Evolution stones if I’m not using a Pokémon that needs that specific stone item.
And then you look at one-time use items, and how the balance of the entire campaign seems warped around what Pokémon are best to use these on. Not just TMs, either, there’s the Time Flute in Pokémon Colosseum that also comes to mind as well as stuff like the Master Ball.
Look, I get that all of these items exist to make life easier on newer players, but Pokémon’s always had an issue with the player character being disproportionately powerful compared to 90 plus percent of NPCs you’re going to battle on your playthrough. Bringing in new players is one thing, but helping to create challenges to persuade older players to come back is one of the most important as parts of any popular, aging video game I.P., and I’m not saying that every mainline Pokémon game needs to be freaking Elden Ring, but when newer games have routinely done away with things like postgame battle facilities and other things people might associate with “challenge”, the very least these developers could do is start by trying and do is rebalance the items in single player a little bit depending on the game.
I don't think there's any rebalancing you could do to items that would (squints) create challenges to persuade older players to return.
Something they don't...really...have an issue with.
Items even in "harder" RPGs often follow similar lines anyway. Always feels like SMT or Persona or DQ has "exuberant in comparison cost to heal/use" ratio high tier stuff you only use if you're rolling in dough vs "the bread and butter one tier lower option"
Something they don't...really...have an issue with.
Items even in "harder" RPGs often follow similar lines anyway. Always feels like SMT or Persona or DQ has "exuberant in comparison cost to heal/use" ratio high tier stuff you only use if you're rolling in dough vs "the bread and butter one tier lower option"
I think this is missing the forest for the trees on the Potion example, for a similar reason to the Pokeballs which you do acknowledge: Action Economy. I'll also make the disclaimer that everything I say to follow is about design concepts, as I find most Pokemon MSG's are not difficult enough that this level of difficulty or resource management comes into play with much frequency as your final paragraph does acknowledge.
If you're only doing healing on the map between battles (which honestly is the most common scenario outside of challenge runs or half-a-dozen specific hard battles), then normal potions are indeed the most efficient way to heal for your money. IN-BATTLE is a different story. I'm going to mostly talk about the old games in part because I swear the new ones hand out wild items enough that I've never needed to buy basic heals.
Example: If Maylene's Lucario is chunking me for 20 HP or more every turn, then normal Potions will never actually allow me to make progress unless I literally have enough to PP stall her damaging moves. A Super Potion heals 14 HP per Dollar vs 15 HP per on the Super Potion, so I get less bang for my buck, but the raw extra HP might let my mon cycle between heal -> move and chip away at the opponent. In a way, I think this is actually pretty sensible main-game design: if your Pokemon aren't strong enough/played well enough to win without in-battle healing, your "punishment" is having to use less efficient-for-your-money items to keep up, which comes at the cost of money you could use for TMs to try stuff out or Balls to catch Pokemon, creating a choice between brute-forcing with item heals, or playing better/leveling more to keep up with the opponents.
Max Potions remain a major blind spot there in any game with Hyper Potions, but Full Restores at least have the caveat of also healing status conditions, which in some situations can be crippling enough to want dealt with and goes back to my action economy point of taking 2 turns instead of 1.
The whole thing with Poké Balls and Potions is less about creating a new challenge and more about eliminating something that makes the games feel easier than they’re already supposed to be. The availability of these items is honestly more the culprit here- other, harder RPGs like the ones you mentioned don’t always provide things like Exp. Points and money to the player at the same level of frequency as Pokémon, and I certainly can’t remember any times on the mainline games when I really thought “Oh, I’m running low on money!”. It’s kind of like what people have said about 1-Ups in the newer Mario games. Strictly speaking, making these items harder to come by and purchase, specifically later in the games, doesn’t make the game itself any harder, but in the back of your mind you have to think more about what you’re using and when you’re using it, as opposed to “Here’s $3,000 to start the game with, items are all over the place, and there’s so many Trainers to grind levels against that you actively have to try to run out of money!”.
Now, if Pokémon doesn’t want to provide extra challenge incentive for the sake of newer players possibly being scared away, that’s fine. That makes sense. That, however, only provides even more incentive for the developers to bring back optional postgame challenges. The keyword here is “optional”. Pokémon’s not fun to grind if and when games have a bad level curve and low availability of resources, I’ll admit that, but by making the more tedious and “completionist content” optional, you’re giving newer and older players alike a choice on how they’d like to approach the game while still making it so there’s just enough challenge for newer players to not fall asleep during the main story.
Sorry if this ends up as a double post just by random chance- I couldn’t type fast enough to quote this in the previous post- but I will admit you make an excellent point. Older players might not use items in battle that much, but I suppose it is beneficial for newer players to still have the option to use higher-tier healing items in battle. Giving players that choice and simultaneously rewarding newer players for being able to utilize the higher-tier items at all is a good game design choice, like you said.
Edit: I fixed the double post issue.
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I assure you money problems are rarely an issue for very long in other RPGs either. Feels like there is always a point where suddenly I am flush with more cash than I know what to do with and get even more after I do find something to use it on. Availability issues vary wildly game to game and often on very specific item types...that may not even be that useful. Dragon Quest, as example, tends to have HP & status healing out the wazoo and you'll oftne ffind random other stat ups or equips just laying around that you just use or immediately sell, but magic items are rarer. But also sometimes magic just kind of sucks and the balance of the game trends towards physical anyway. & other times magic is fine and the items are plentiful enough.
There's a reason resources don't enter difficulty discussion that often unless its a genre or subgenre where it really matters. The dungeon crawling RPG has resource management baked in, for example, and often contributes to difficulty (unless, of course, you know how to get all the good items in which case actually it becomes easy mode...). But otherwise if nothing else you can just...not use them. It's rarely if ever something you have to bend around in many games, much less Pokemon.
And of course is a completely separate issue from the other thing you are tacking onto this, which is you want the post game battle facility stuff back. No amount of item rebalance is going to move the needle enough on this, because as I've said a few times now, regardless of feast or famine you can just not use items because they're easy to ignore if you don't need or want them.
I guess that’s also true, yeah. For some reason the two issues in my head felt like they were a part of the same problem that may or may not actually need fixing. Sometimes things make a lot more sense in my head than they do in a post. I think how my brain was trying to rationalize this was “if the postgame doesn’t have anything hard, the main games need to be harder instead”.
This whole sequences of posts may also be my lack of “true RPG” experience showing its ugly head. Another bad habit I tend to have is thinking I know more about stuff I haven’t played yet than I actually know. This may just be a situation where I need to study and play more- more than just Pokémon in this case- before I try and talk about something that’s just an issue in my head and not really that big of a problem as I make it out to be. No point in being embarrassed, that won’t solve anything. I guess I just don’t want to admit that self-imposed challenges can suffice, in part because of shyness, sure, but also because I’d rather not have to rely on handicapping myself personally. That’s all just opinions, though. In any case I apologize for the misunderstandings.
Dragon Quest player here to throw my experience on the pile. Generally in DQ games, money is a limited resource on the front of maintaining your equipment moreso than consumables. MP restoration items and Revives are actually rarely something you can buy, being limited to loot finds or very out of the way minigame rewards or treasure locations, so you're expected to get through by managing your party's Health and MP such that you don't need those consumables unless it's an emergency or a tipping point for a significant fight. Pokemon's main progression is on leveling the mons themselves, rather than being able to find weapons to hit harder or Fire-Resist Armor to help against a boss in a Volcano or such. The closest equivalent is buying TMs to teach them otherwise difficult to acquire moves, which similarly prices them VERY high compared to consumables such that you have to pick and choose what, if any, you want from them.
Pokemon doesn't make prominent use of the traditional dungeon structure, in that you can avoid 100% of battles that aren't one-off trainers, such that you could go through, clear out a trainer or two, then leave to heal and return to fight a boss at the end or continue further at "full health" for your team. In a DQ game you will have to redo random encounters if you do not complete a run in progress, so you get a bit stronger off the EXP but will more or less have to refight everything that wasn't the boss unless you hit a specific progress marker like a key item.
All this to say Pokemon is much more generous with items for healing and keeps them relevant for so long because it's basically all the system has in place of multiple active party members to do healing and sustain with
Pokemon doesn't make prominent use of the traditional dungeon structure, in that you can avoid 100% of battles that aren't one-off trainers, such that you could go through, clear out a trainer or two, then leave to heal and return to fight a boss at the end or continue further at "full health" for your team. In a DQ game you will have to redo random encounters if you do not complete a run in progress, so you get a bit stronger off the EXP but will more or less have to refight everything that wasn't the boss unless you hit a specific progress marker like a key item.
All this to say Pokemon is much more generous with items for healing and keeps them relevant for so long because it's basically all the system has in place of multiple active party members to do healing and sustain with
Because in battle the cost per HP is irrelevant when you can only use 1 item per turn and they didn't care about HP per Poke outside of battle.