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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
Pikachu315111:
Yeah, being that top 1% trainer in the games is what fooled me into believing that I would be a top trainer if Pokemon training was a real job, but now I know that unlike in the games, I won't have plot armour in real life, so my chance of being in the top 1% decreases all the way down to near zero.
Honestly, I think it's why I sort of start losing interest in the battling side of things once I get to the mid-late stage of Pokemon games. I already know that due to my plot armour I'm going to wipe the floor with the villain team, wipe the floor with everyone in the Victory Road, beat the Elite 4 and become Champion, so I start focusing on other aspects of the game, like Pokemon Contests and PokeStar. In BW2, I spent near double the amount of time being an actor than being a trainer, and I completely understand why Diantha considers herself as an Actress first and Champion of the Kalos region second, she gets far more recognition that way.
It's actually amazing, both in the anime and the games, you become a Top Coordinator or an Actor, and you always pop up on TV and everyone knows who you are, but then you save the world from villains and become the Champion and no one cares lol, it's hilarious, it feels like a huge waste of time to put in so much effort for so little recognition. No wonder all the Gym Leaders, Frontier Brains, Elite Four and Champion have other jobs, Pokemon battling is clearly a side thing.
Yeah, being that top 1% trainer in the games is what fooled me into believing that I would be a top trainer if Pokemon training was a real job, but now I know that unlike in the games, I won't have plot armour in real life, so my chance of being in the top 1% decreases all the way down to near zero.
Honestly, I think it's why I sort of start losing interest in the battling side of things once I get to the mid-late stage of Pokemon games. I already know that due to my plot armour I'm going to wipe the floor with the villain team, wipe the floor with everyone in the Victory Road, beat the Elite 4 and become Champion, so I start focusing on other aspects of the game, like Pokemon Contests and PokeStar. In BW2, I spent near double the amount of time being an actor than being a trainer, and I completely understand why Diantha considers herself as an Actress first and Champion of the Kalos region second, she gets far more recognition that way.
It's actually amazing, both in the anime and the games, you become a Top Coordinator or an Actor, and you always pop up on TV and everyone knows who you are, but then you save the world from villains and become the Champion and no one cares lol, it's hilarious, it feels like a huge waste of time to put in so much effort for so little recognition. No wonder all the Gym Leaders, Frontier Brains, Elite Four and Champion have other jobs, Pokemon battling is clearly a side thing.
FRLG had an optiom to turn them off in the Settings menu
That would have required me to pay attention to the Settings aside from increasing the speed of the text like I do at the very start of the game. I guess what I'm saying is that if there WAS a way to turn it off, I didn't pay attention to it
Marlon is literally my favorite gym leader ever because of this nonchalant attitude he portrays. It's kind of really cool to have him floating around like nothing's wrong with the world. Definitely contrasted with Hugh's over the top personality. I mean he helps you anyway, just doesn't wanna make a big commotion. I think he's definitely the chillest and coolest gym leader in the series and I love his character. Just look at him. he's such a bro.
I get what people are saying about fairy's brokenness, although I don't think it goes that far. I think it has the potential to be broken, as Karxrida was saying with GFs need to be careful with stat distribution. I was responding to the arguments that were essentially "fairy is broken 'cause xyz,' when xyz was the point of them. It made the argument redundant and the people espousing it seem like they didn't get it, when their reasons were exactly it.
stage7_4 On tutorials - insufficiently teaching the player how to play a game is not "difficulty", it is just poor game design. A good game sets out the rules that the game plays by very clearly, and teaches the player how to follow those rules and eventually how to get the most out of them. If you do that, then you can make the game as hard as you like and most gamers will concede that, at worst, the game is merely very hard but isn't in any way unfair.
A game can do this in several ways: antipieces (yay technical term), in which a challenge is first presented in a simpler, safer way and then those elements are gradually expanded on to become more difficult, more complex challenges. Then there are optional tutorials, which can be littered round the game world in, say, NPC dialogue, and aren't really tutorials at all. Then there are skippable tutorials, which could be either a skippable cutscene or a less intrusive "press X to find out more" message. And then, unskippable cutscene tutorials, which I feel are a last resort but are sometimes necessary, and you can at least make them cool and/or tie them into the story.
For a turn-based RPG, I concede that antipieces are somewhat limited in value since the number of options that quickly become available to the player early in the game mean that you cannot really keep things simple long enough to teach the player through gameplay alone. But I feel the games could do well from going back to having all the information the player needs (for a series of games that admittedly you do not need to plumb the depths of the available complexity in order to complete) in NPC dialogues in the first few towns and the like. It seems that most NPC dialogue is just atmospheric now... well that's all well and good, but couldn't it be atmospheric and useful?
A game can do this in several ways: antipieces (yay technical term), in which a challenge is first presented in a simpler, safer way and then those elements are gradually expanded on to become more difficult, more complex challenges. Then there are optional tutorials, which can be littered round the game world in, say, NPC dialogue, and aren't really tutorials at all. Then there are skippable tutorials, which could be either a skippable cutscene or a less intrusive "press X to find out more" message. And then, unskippable cutscene tutorials, which I feel are a last resort but are sometimes necessary, and you can at least make them cool and/or tie them into the story.
For a turn-based RPG, I concede that antipieces are somewhat limited in value since the number of options that quickly become available to the player early in the game mean that you cannot really keep things simple long enough to teach the player through gameplay alone. But I feel the games could do well from going back to having all the information the player needs (for a series of games that admittedly you do not need to plumb the depths of the available complexity in order to complete) in NPC dialogues in the first few towns and the like. It seems that most NPC dialogue is just atmospheric now... well that's all well and good, but couldn't it be atmospheric and useful?
To expand on that, how many forced tutorials ARE there in the main Pokemon games? For the most part I can only name the catching tutorials and the occasional "Intro to the way towns work" tutorial (that to be fair are needed sometimes due to how things work). I don't usually talk to NPCs so I never really hear their pointless dialog. In fact, remember, the games generally drop you right into battles without saying much. There is no forced tutorial for winning your first battle. There wasn't even an explanation during the Mega Evolution "Tutorial" on how to Mega Evolve. It was just like a "Oh, here, check out your new Mega Ring with this Lucario that can Mega Evolve." That's something that I could actually see happening in the real world.
Well, there was one in FireRed and LeafGreen explaining the basics of battling, but those games are full of tutorials.
How dare you say that? There are only two forced tutorials, the rest are completely optional
I just meant there is a lot to help a starting player, not that they were required or that it was a bad thing. Just an observation.
I think Fire Emblem: Awakening is a good game to draw comparison to as far as tutorials go. The beginning of the game has a tutorial that can be very fast-paced or slow, user willing, because it is step-by-step and is easy to scroll through if you know most of the essentials but appreciate a refresher. I feel like Pokemon should be this way, not only tell us how to click into our bag and throw a ball, or where the Pokemon Center is. That's incredibly lazy and does nothing to build the mechanics for the player. All of the other essentials (I wouldn't even call pointing out a red rooftop as an essential) are left for the player to find out on their own. I guess this makes for more surprises, but I digress, as I couldn't bear to think what could be introduced with enough brevity to not bore us to do death with a flood of dialogue screens, like some of the FRLG tutorials were.
And not only that, it was OPTIONAL. I spent over half the game (up to the Mila Tree) not using Pair Up because I never bothered learning it was a thing.
I think the Everstone's original purpose (stopping evolutions) is useful. True, you can push B, but if you are trying to train something that will use Eviolite, that can be very annoying. Especially for me since I trained a Chansey to Level 100. The Everstone just made my life easier (especially since I don't have to equip the Exp. Share anymore). Also, there are times you might want to trade a Pokémon that evolves by trading over to a different game and you don't want it to evolve (Eviolite or you just don't like the evolution). This is the only way to prevent a trade evolution since it won't let you press B.
Yeah, but nowadays, Everstones are just more valuable because they make getting the correct nature easy. You just need the right Ditto. At least that is the only reason I keep them around!
In other places, people also organize them by Pokeball they're in. That works for small threads, but bigger ones just don't work (which lead me to change my way of listing)
To change gears and prevent this from being a clone of the "things that bug you" thread, I'll list some unpopular positive opinions of mine.
1. I'm glad X/Y only had three new legendaries because the last three gens got ridiculous numbers of them.
2. I like Colosseum and wish Gamefreak would try another installment along those lines, something where the level curve starts in the 30's, alternative battles (doubles, triples, rotation?) are focused, and the pokemon list is limited meaning you have to use more strategy with the few you get (Jumpluff off all things was my savior in that game, mostly for high-speed sleep powders, that and Espeon + Helping Hand). They could get rid of the fake difficulty though ("catch this shadow pokemon before it's own trainer takes it out"). And the protagonist could be less 90's anithero than Wes but more mature than XD's.
3. Pokemon Snap is the best console pokemon game (aka not on a handheld).
1. I'm glad X/Y only had three new legendaries because the last three gens got ridiculous numbers of them.
2. I like Colosseum and wish Gamefreak would try another installment along those lines, something where the level curve starts in the 30's, alternative battles (doubles, triples, rotation?) are focused, and the pokemon list is limited meaning you have to use more strategy with the few you get (Jumpluff off all things was my savior in that game, mostly for high-speed sleep powders, that and Espeon + Helping Hand). They could get rid of the fake difficulty though ("catch this shadow pokemon before it's own trainer takes it out"). And the protagonist could be less 90's anithero than Wes but more mature than XD's.
3. Pokemon Snap is the best console pokemon game (aka not on a handheld).
stage7_4 :
Legend Overload: Yeah, I feel like previous gens went a bit overboard with the Legendaries. Still, I'm sad they don't have a 580 trio (now thinking about, they probably could have saved the Swords of Justice for Kalos, or in meta terms, the trio inspired by the MUSKETEERS for the FRENCH region).
Honestly I think they should also scale down the Event Pokemon. I get they want a special Pokemon to give away for the movies, but they could do other things. Like how about making special Mega-like Evolutions for one of the trio (either the Mascot Trio or 580 trio) or release an Event Pokemon but it has 3 different forms and the movies release the item which triggers the way it can change.
Heck, I wouldn't be against for a Mascot Duo as a change of pace, they could use another unrelated Legendary for the third version (OR, maybe a fusion of the Mascot Duo).
So many things they could do with Legendaries to mix things up.
Colosseum 3: I wouldn't be against a new Colosseum game. There's a few ideas they could do with that (they even left room for a sequel in XD by letting one of the big bad's son get away and vowing to rebuild Cipher). Heck, maybe they could even update the first two Colosseum games as a bonus!
Snap To It: And you'd think with the WiiU (or the 3DS) they would maybe think trying a sequel to Pokemon Snap.
Legend Overload: Yeah, I feel like previous gens went a bit overboard with the Legendaries. Still, I'm sad they don't have a 580 trio (now thinking about, they probably could have saved the Swords of Justice for Kalos, or in meta terms, the trio inspired by the MUSKETEERS for the FRENCH region).
Honestly I think they should also scale down the Event Pokemon. I get they want a special Pokemon to give away for the movies, but they could do other things. Like how about making special Mega-like Evolutions for one of the trio (either the Mascot Trio or 580 trio) or release an Event Pokemon but it has 3 different forms and the movies release the item which triggers the way it can change.
Heck, I wouldn't be against for a Mascot Duo as a change of pace, they could use another unrelated Legendary for the third version (OR, maybe a fusion of the Mascot Duo).
So many things they could do with Legendaries to mix things up.
Colosseum 3: I wouldn't be against a new Colosseum game. There's a few ideas they could do with that (they even left room for a sequel in XD by letting one of the big bad's son get away and vowing to rebuild Cipher). Heck, maybe they could even update the first two Colosseum games as a bonus!
Snap To It: And you'd think with the WiiU (or the 3DS) they would maybe think trying a sequel to Pokemon Snap.
I am 100% sure this is not an Unpopular Opinion and more of a nearly undisputed fact.
Probably, but I didn't want to offend the "Hey you Pikachu" fans.
Going off the spinoff talk...
I loved PokePark. It was a nice relaxing Pokemon game that knew when it had to get harder and more frantic. I loved the battling and even most of the chasing. The minigames for the first one was nice and I only wish the second had MORE minigames. Plus, the second game really sold me on Oshawott:
I loved PokePark. It was a nice relaxing Pokemon game that knew when it had to get harder and more frantic. I loved the battling and even most of the chasing. The minigames for the first one was nice and I only wish the second had MORE minigames. Plus, the second game really sold me on Oshawott:
How...how did I live without that?
I loved PokePark as well, I just wish it had a way of sending Pokemon to DPPt or something. Also dat Oshawott...