(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

[Worldie]

At this point I just feel bad for people who still try to engage with transferring. It legit feels like there's some new obstacle almost every game that releases, all while dealing with a shitty content-bereft overpriced app. Champions should make things more bearable, but still

honestly speaking, that is something I still don't understand to this day.

Call it unpopular, but I have never seen any reason to move *back* my pokemon. After a game went out of CG, i usually just moved everything to Bank/Home and either uninstalled that game or only kept around the bare minimum for breeding back when transfer moves were a thing.

Even in the case where I'd want to replay a old game for nostalgia or something, I'd be starting over, so the "transfer back" wouldn't have been relevant anyway. So I don't quite get all this attachment to "being able to move pokemon back" and I honestly do wonder how many people even *used* that function.

(The only reasonable use for it I could see would be if you acquire a old game way after it came out, and wanted to fill the pokedex for some reason, es for getting the paradoxes or bloodmoon in SV I guess, but it's such a specific scenario I still struggle to see it)

 

[AztecCroc]

honestly speaking, that is something I still don't understand to this day.

Call it unpopular, but I have never seen any reason to move *back* my pokemon. After a game went out of CG, i usually just moved everything to Bank/Home and either uninstalled that game or only kept around the bare minimum for breeding back when transfer moves were a thing.

Even in the case where I'd want to replay a old game for nostalgia or something, I'd be starting over, so the "transfer back" wouldn't have been relevant anyway. So I don't quite get all this attachment to "being able to move pokemon back" and I honestly do wonder how many people even *used* that function.

(The only reasonable use for it I could see would be if you acquire a old game way after it came out, and wanted to fill the pokedex for some reason, es for getting the paradoxes or bloodmoon in SV I guess, but it's such a specific scenario I still struggle to see it)

Ursaluna and Wyrdeer.

 

[Bakugames]

i also dont really understand the appeal of trading back to older games, but i also dont understand the appeal of trading to legends games in general either other than ribbon hunting, and ribbon hunters never really go back anyway/already have plent of concessions with ribbons lost to time or of games they cant be in

 

[R_N]

i also dont really understand the appeal of trading back to older games, but i also dont understand the appeal of trading to legends games in general either other than ribbon hunting, and ribbon hunters never really go back anyway/already have plent of concessions with ribbons lost to time or of games they cant be in

For me going backwards was just a nice convenience because I could hot swap Pokemon between titles for things like easier evolutions or easier leveling or whatever. I, uh, I was really into several of these niche use cases due to various brain worms...

But at the same time Z-A probably won't be very useful for me in that regard.

I can still believe that the addition of a new language probably mucked things up for this specific instance, though we'll see what the under the hood stuff actually is in another month or so.

 

[AztecCroc]

I can still believe that the addition of a new language probably mucked things up for this specific instance, though we'll see what the under the hood stuff actually is in another month or so.

I don't think that's the issue, it's just a variation of Spanish there's no missing letters or anything, they could just have Home change them to regular Spanish when transferred into an older game. Both Spanishes use the same species names, and with the exceptions of Type: Null and the Paradoxes are the same as English. It's not like it's Russian or something where there'd be missing characters.

 

[Yung Dramps]

For absolutely no reason whatsoever I have very suddenly found myself much more resentful of how long the mainline anime dragged its feet before finally retiring Ash. Better late than never, of course, but 3 years on it's just beginning to sink in how much storytelling and branding potential was lost.

Imagine what Pokemon is like as an anime franchise in an alternate 2025 where Ash's story had ended with his final battle with Gary at the end of the Johto anime, or even against Paul in DP. By this point we would have a decade-spanning lineage of different protagonists, each with unique designs, backgrounds and planned-out, self-contained story arcs. They would also each be built from the ground up with the scenarios of the current generation in mind. What if Best Wishes had a protagonist directly tied to the Team Plasma plot instead of an awkward regressed OS Ash caricature? How much more beloved would XYZ be if it was able to have a normal climax?

Switching gears to cynical marketer mode for a second, imagine all of the merchandising and fanservice opportunities they would've had: Earth 2 Masters Eight would've been an insane battle royale between all the protagonists and their supporting casts, Tournament of Power levels of online buzz concerning who would win and why.

Presumably we'll now have all this given another 15 years or so, but it's a lot of lost time to make up for with a lot of regions missed out on that would've been fascinating given this set-up.

^in short, this is what they took from you (I could not find an official yugioh poster that illustrated the point better)

 

[Worldie]

Ursaluna and Wyrdeer.

I dont see it here, you can catch and evolve those in LA then move them forward

 

[Lontra Assassina]

Transfering between gens is mostly a formality nowadays, yeah. It's there for the sake of having *some* connectivity between games since that obviously matters to people, even if it would be more convenient (and it would save a lot of money) if it was just dropped outright

 

[RocketSurgery]

I dont see it here, you can catch and evolve those in LA then move them forward

You cannot, however, breed them in LA to get 0 ivs in attack or speed. Much easier to breed those in SV and transfer into LA to evolve.

Transfering between gens is mostly a formality nowadays, yeah. It's there for the sake of having *some* connectivity between games since that obviously matters to people, even if it would be more convenient (and it would save a lot of money) if it was just dropped outright

It's sad enough that mythicals are not safe from dexit, but imagine having them coded in but unable to be used because GameFreak decided to not distribute them that gen.

While I haven't used the backward (sideward?) compatibility much this gen, I am disappointed it's going away already. Hopefully it at least holds within each generation (so that PZA can move freely between Gen 10 and whatever else comes out). While I usually move most things up, I don't move my in-game teams for whenever I feel like mucking about in an old game, and the compatibility allowed for the occasional use of them on the new games while being able to go back to their home games.

 

[Castersvarog]

i also dont really understand the appeal of trading back to older games, but i also dont understand the appeal of trading to legends games in general either other than ribbon hunting, and ribbon hunters never really go back anyway/already have plent of concessions with ribbons lost to time or of games they cant be in

It's more so just because it was something you could do freely if you wanted to without a care, only to be told that we can't do it anymore because of both unspecified reasons and because No. Especially when the entire purpose of Pokemon Home was to connect all switch onward games together. Not helping is that the believed reason why, a new language being added, is somehow enough to completely break the system

 

[R_N]

On one hand thanks to backwards I was able to evolve my Shiny Stantler i found in SV, which was impossible otherwise

On the other hand, maybe if they hadn't had backwards swapping, they would have done the smart thing and let you evolve the damn thing to begin with. So perhaps it's Good actually that you can't go backwards and they should continue implementing that forever.

 

[Karxrida]

ngl I slept like garbage last night because I caught a cold or something, so when I saw the "new language" comment at like 4 in the morning I interpreted it as programming language lol.

However, there is a nonzero chance that the one-way transfer is due to some part of the games' backend being changed. People have already speculated that IVs have been removed from Champions, I can imagine that change would make transfers out of PLZA back to Gen 8/9 problematic.

 

[AztecCroc]

ngl I slept like garbage last night because I caught a cold or something, so when I saw the "new language" comment at like 4 in the morning I interpreted it as programming language lol.

However, there is a nonzero chance that the one-way transfer is due to some part of the games' backend being changed. People have already speculated that IVs have been removed from Champions, I can imagine that change would make transfers out of PLZA back to Gen 8/9 problematic.

I mean, not really? Just set all the IVs for a Pokemon coming from ZA to be 31, if it's an issue. But I'm pretty sure ZA hasn't gotten rid of IVs given that it has characteristics, which are dependent on IVs.

 

[Worldie]

You cannot, however, breed them in LA to get 0 ivs in attack or speed. Much easier to breed those in SV and transfer into LA to evolve.

True, but how convenient that the next competitive game seems to have been finally removing IVs completely.
(And even if they're not being removed from the actual games, the fact they're not used for the competitive games makes them not much more than a in-game shenenigan not relevant for competitive anymore)

Problem solved itself I'd guess.

 

[pika pal]

That's honestly funny, but a more grounded idea is that they figured it'd be too much of a hassle to keep the backporting going FOREVER.
Imagine that they kept that up for every pokemon game released, eventually every Pokemon stored in Home would have needed to keep storing dozens of titles worth of data, which probably isn't a lot on a single pokemon, but does add up on both transfer and server capacity.

Who would have guessed, it's dexit all over again lol, keeping porting all data all time becomes unsustainable, and once more they realized it after adding a feature that causes it, ending up having to take that feature away.

They never learn that game compatibilty is and was a mistake and should never have been added, there is a reason other collector series don't do it.

Here's my reaction to this legitimately plausible scenario: Stop inventing new mechanics constantly that require remembering to create these compatibility issues. Off-hand as a layman I can conceive of the following as things individual instances of a Pokemon might have to retain

- IVs
- EVs
- Effort Levels in PLA (handled differently than EVs of course)
- Nature
- Date of Capture
- Original Region
- Trainer info (OT, ID, Secret ID)
- Personality values relating to Shiny, Characteristic, and Mon-specific things like Spinda Spot patterns
- Ability
- Gigantamax Factor
- Tera Type

Everything here bar the last 2 has existed as a point of tracking since Gen 3 to 5 by every indication I can note. Friendship was game specific as is Affection, and Movepools get effectively reset on transfer from one game set to another. This would also, god forbid, require designing games with mechanical hooks and progression instead of a shiny gimmick they can ditch for 10+ years as soon as they make bank in the short term.

Instead of stapling on new things to remember (you have to retain the G-Max flag if the mon is a Gen 8 species, Tera Type if it can ever enter Gen 9), just make the mechanics stay within their game and reset to a default when imported (i.e. my Dragon Tera Charizard becomes a Default Fire if I send it to Home and bring it back). It's less convenient but it at least means the friggin app does what it's supposed to by keeping the games interconnected. Stop adding Columns to the Pokemon table entries and do some basic futureproofing like the Strange Ball ("Pokeball value not found for this entry, default to this") for things like Region of Origin.

This is the part that most screams incompetence to me: Gamefreak and the franchise introduce Home to placate people who want transfers available between games, and then continue to not simply code but DESIGN games in a way that's short-sighted and undermines the basic idea of future proofing. Then when their own technical debt catches up, they just cut the rope anyway because the game aspect of this IP is simultaneously the most successful and most horribly managed thing on its respective console generations if not in the game industry in general.

I'll fully admit, the backwards compatibility is something I used sparingly in the relevant generations, but that doesn't mean I'm going to let it slide as another piece of evidence that Pokemon is not run as a series of games, just a group of singular ones with no forward thinking despite wanting to push them out repeatedly.

 

[Worldie]

Pokemon is not run as a series of games, just a group of singular ones with no forward thinking despite wanting to push them out repeatedly.

Ngl I wouldn't have said it better.

I do agree this is likely the problem, aka that they never really see them as a series and just develop their game in isolation.

Which would be *fine* if they didn't also try to keep the compatibility between each other. I rather them just stop trying (keep the option to move pokemon forward at this point, that's fine, but i'm fine with a stat reset every time)

Stop inventing new mechanics constantly that require remembering to create these compatibility issues

Sadly though as much as I agree I don't see this happening. At least, not the stopping making new special mechanic anyway.
It is their way to "differentiate" the games at this point (excessive honestly, as the region and new pokemon would be enough) and I don't see them stopping it.

Though on that subject, at this point I do wonder what they will come up with for next gen, there's only so much you can do with super mechanics... if they just started re-using them with new options (like they're doing with megas) would at least solve both problems for a while.

 

[R_N]

Instead of stapling on new things to remember (you have to retain the G-Max flag if the mon is a Gen 8 species, Tera Type if it can ever enter Gen 9), just make the mechanics stay within their game and reset to a default when imported (i.e. my Dragon Tera Charizard becomes a Default Fire if I send it to Home and bring it back). It's less convenient but it at least means the friggin app does what it's supposed to by keeping the games interconnected. Stop adding Columns to the Pokemon table entries and do some basic futureproofing like the Strange Ball ("Pokeball value not found for this entry, default to this") for things like Region of Origin

Not for nothing but I love getting mad at the app not "doing its job" and then list an example of something it (perhaps inexplicably) successfully does the job of, and that it should have done it worse. And then also get mad at not doing future proofing and handling things like Strange Balls & Region which are...things...the games already do?
If you put a Ball it doesnt know it just defaults to Pokeball. You can see this with SWSH and the Hisuian Balls and much much earlier with how DPPt handled the apriballs. The Strange Ball feels like it exists mostly just for fun with the past concept, not for the purpose of future proofing (otherwise imo they would have started messing with balls more)
Meanwhile if you put a region it doesn't know, it just defaults to like "Faraway Place" or whatever most of the time.


Like I think GameFreak is kind of messy and whatever's going on with Z-A will likely make us roll our eyes but sometimes I think we just look for things to get mad at

 

[pika pal]

Not for nothing but I love getting mad at the app not "doing its job" and then list an example of something it (perhaps inexplicably) successfully does the job of, and that it should have done it worse. And then also get mad at not doing future proofing and handling things like Strange Balls & Region which are...things...the games already do?
If you put a Ball it doesnt know it just defaults to Pokeball. You can see this with SWSH and the Hisuian Balls and much much earlier with how DPPt handled the apriballs. The Strange Ball feels like it exists mostly just for fun with the past concept, not for the purpose of future proofing (otherwise imo they would have started messing with balls more)
Meanwhile if you put a region it doesn't know, it just defaults to like "Faraway Place" or whatever most of the time.

If anything this proves they had workarounds before my assumption for those aspects and makes it MORE likely that the stapled on Super Mechanic data retention is what's causing the bloat I was citing in the first half of that paragraph (in which my point is "do defaults if this info didn't pre-exist on this mon, like the Regions and unknown Balls already do"). The job in question is interconnecting games that utilize NSO, which it fails at if transfers are one-way.

 

[Esserise]

honestly speaking, that is something I still don't understand to this day.

Call it unpopular, but I have never seen any reason to move *back* my pokemon. After a game went out of CG, i usually just moved everything to Bank/Home and either uninstalled that game or only kept around the bare minimum for breeding back when transfer moves were a thing.

I used back-transferring to cheese registering most of the Shiny G-Max forms in the Home Dex (1. abuse Herba Mystica in SV, 2. send the Shinies back to SwSh to eat Max Soup, 3. return to Home), but I’ll admit that’s a pretty niche use.

Especially when the entire purpose of Pokemon Home was to connect all switch onward games together.

To be fair though, the backwards compatibility between SV and the Gen 8 games was more kind of a pleasant surprise rather than something I think was widely expected of Home.

The last time we’d had two-way cross-gen transfers was all the way back on the Game Boy. Gens 4 and 5 being on the same system still didn’t allow for two-way transfers, nor did it for Gens 6 and 7 even though they both connected to Bank. There was plenty of reason to think that Gen 8 > 9 transfers would be business as usual even though both games could link to Home. Unfortunate as it is to lose the convenience of fluid multi-generation transferring, Z-A being a new cutoff point is sorta just a return to the norm.

(On some level, I can’t help but wonder if actually having to deal with the practicalities of fluid transferring made the devs go, “Yeeeeeeah no, this was a nice thought but we’re not maintaining this.” Which on paper would be a fair conclusion, but… that’s something that you probably want to figure out *before* you launch the feature and let people get comfortable with it.)

 

[Yung Dramps]

Wasn't there some excitement about a potential SWSH Tradebacks metagame? Did anyone bother experimenting with that or were the movepool gains too minor to lead to notable shakeups

 

[Worldie]

Wasn't there some excitement about a potential SWSH Tradebacks metagame? Did anyone bother experimenting with that or were the movepool gains too minor to lead to notable shakeups

I vaguely remind someone making a list of the actual tradeback gains and it was incredibly minor moves with no real competitive benefit.

 

[Nokocchi]

Wasn't there some excitement about a potential SWSH Tradebacks metagame? Did anyone bother experimenting with that or were the movepool gains too minor to lead to notable shakeups

Only one of note IIRC was Curse + Technician Scizor being possible thanks to the changes to Ability Patch in SV, which wasn't even the case initially since at first Ability Patch changes in SV didn't register in older titles but it was later patched to work properly.

After the DLC came out that combo also became available in SV as well thanks to the return of Curse as a TM(at launch it was not possible in SV due to movepool resets).

 

[R_N]

(On some level, I can’t help but wonder if actually having to deal with the practicalities of fluid transferring made the devs go, “Yeeeeeeah no, this was a nice thought but we’re not maintaining this.” Which on paper would be a fair conclusion, but… that’s something that you probably want to figure out *before* you launch the feature and let people get comfortable with it.)

I kind of feel the thing that birthed this was primarily the moveset nonsense. You wanted to commit to dexit and your big other game is like Let's Go where it overhauled everything for everyone . You couldn't have a series of one-way transfers into BDSP & L:A just because of the wildly different movesets and even if you have the "forget this move you cant use" thing it's just...obnoxious to make you do that every time you swap around.
And once you do that for those games, you may as well do the same with the in-development game being built off the same forked scaffolding.

The more we talk about this the more I am really curious what the Z-A stuff is doing under the hood. Whatcha got going on in there.

 

[Sulfurian]

Do I understand correctly that your primary complaint is that the game does not play itself...?

I think in other games where there are cooldowns to your main attacks, there was also just an “attack” button that while you don’t do as much damage it keeps the flow of combat going if you used your other cooldowns. But I guess in ZA they want you to run around with your Pokémon and keep dodging until the cooldown stops.

 

[pika pal]

I used back-transferring to cheese registering most of the Shiny G-Max forms in the Home Dex (1. abuse Herba Mystica in SV, 2. send the Shinies back to SwSh to eat Max Soup, 3. return to Home), but I’ll admit that’s a pretty niche use.



To be fair though, the backwards compatibility between SV and the Gen 8 games was more kind of a pleasant surprise rather than something I think was widely expected of Home.

The last time we’d had two-way cross-gen transfers was all the way back on the Game Boy. Gens 4 and 5 being on the same system still didn’t allow for two-way transfers, nor did it for Gens 6 and 7 even though they both connected to Bank. There was plenty of reason to think that Gen 8 > 9 transfers would be business as usual even though both games could link to Home. Unfortunate as it is to lose the convenience of fluid multi-generation transferring, Z-A being a new cutoff point is sorta just a return to the norm.

(On some level, I can’t help but wonder if actually having to deal with the practicalities of fluid transferring made the devs go, “Yeeeeeeah no, this was a nice thought but we’re not maintaining this.” Which on paper would be a fair conclusion, but… that’s something that you probably want to figure out *before* you launch the feature and let people get comfortable with it.)

Ultimately I think this is a major part they had to consider for marketing/brand image: you can't put that genie back in the bottle without severe backlash once you allow a set of games to be back-and-forth on a shared app, especially if the new cut off is still USING that same app and its whole purpose was to consolidate Pokemon storage (what with the GTS built in and receiving things from Go).