The actual problem is that there are barely any sex-based differences within species. That's what makes no sense. It stands to reason that if a species has males and females that are differentiated enough to be listed that way, there must be some visible differences in characteristics that would show up. Instead, we get, like, a couple of differently shaped tails. A Gothitelle line whose males have "feminine" features is completely fine and people objecting to it would be idiots. "Male" and "female" Gothitelle looking exactly the same is moronic.
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(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon
- Thread starter BriarRose
- Start date
Animals with next no noticeable visible differences between gender aren't exactly unknown of in real life...
Maybe not, but are they a huge majority of species?
I would slightly disagree with your proposed items list; but only because I believe Z-Crystals and Mega Stones should each get their own sub-bag. Putting them in with everything else like Plates and Incenses would make things get very messy very fast; and we've seen this demonstrated with Mega Stones in Gen 7.
My personal proposed change to multiple levels would be showing the Exp. Bar go up for each level uninterrupted, and then display a single level up message rather than having to tell you each time. Not only would it be a huge time saver, but it would honestly be such a great feeling of accomplishment and power to see the Exp. Bar complete so many times in such a short space of time; especially if you programmed it so that it sped up at certain 'checkpoints' (maybe, say, it speeds up a lot after it's already gone 3 levels). I would also make a minor change to the message itself -- if you're only levelling up once, leave it as it normally is currently. But if you're levelling up multiple times, it should instead read "[Pokémon] grew from Level (previous level) to Level (current level)!"
To illustrate an example; you're training a Level 57 Charizard in the postgame and it beats the shit out of a high-level Chansey or something and grows 7 levels:-
"Charizard beat the opposing Chansey!"
-The Exp. Bar goes up three times, then another four times but faster-
"Charizard grew from Level 57 to Level 64!"
And naturally, that altered message would be all you see for the levelups of a Pokémon not out in the field that gained exp from share or switching or whatever else.
Alternatively, make the exp bar constantly move across levels without player input, and only stopping if the Pokémon is trying to learn a move.
I admittedly forgot about learning moves. I'd throw all those at the end -- let's change our example a little to account for the current level up moveset. Charizard goes from 55 to 63.
"Charizard beat the opposing Chansey!"
-The Exp. Bar goes up three times, then another five times but faster-
"Charizard grew from Level 55 to Level 63!"
"Charizard is trying to learn Fire Spin! Would you like it to learn Fire Spin?"
"Charizard is trying to learn Inferno! Would you like it to learn Inferno?"
For certain level-ups - especially when raising a newly hatched Pokémon - this could get very tedious very fast, but I still believe it's an improvement over the current system.
I don't have something worked out for moves like I do levels; but maybe you could instead be presented with a screen of your current moves and the moves you want to learn? Like maybe take our example...
"Charizard is trying to learn multiple moves! Would you like to review your moveset?" (this is actually a really bad and mechanical way of putting it, but I'm not a poet)
-You're taken to a screen showing Charizard's current 4 moves on the left, and Fire Spin and Inferno on the right. You can interchange any of these moves in and out of these two lists-
For larger lists like when you've trained up a Level 1 to 21 or so, the list on the right could easily have a scroll bar added. This could also very easily be simplified for the much more common scenario of trying to learn 1 move by showing that one move in the message as normal, and centralising that one move on the right rather than presenting it at the top of the list. If I'm not lazy I might make a mock-up later.
Yeah that's about the worst source you could ever use for forming opinions.
Jerry the great
Banned deucer.
No no, it wasn't them who got my opinions. Only I can decide what I think about things. It's that it really does not make sense for it to have a chance of being male. They did their job right with other mons. Jynx has a 100% chance of being female, Magnezone has no gender, Machop has a large chance of being male (but it's fine for the small chance of it to be female since there is female fighters, just not as much as males), ect, but it makes no sense whatsoever for Gothitelle to have any chance of being male. I swear, it ticks me off...
They're a sub-sub category, basically think it's a bag within a bag that's within the whole bag. When you choose the sub-sub category only the items that match it will be in there. So you'll only see Z-Crystals or you'll only see Mega Stones (or you'll only see whatever items belong to that sub-sub category title). A bit confusing written out but I think in practice would make much more sense. Only other way I can show what I mean is via playing around with the hide tags.
Two things with that idea:
1. Why would the bar fills after the first not also be faster? I would think that, after the bar filled up for the first level up (Level 58), the next 5 will be super fast (Level 59-63), and then slowing back down for the final level up plus showing whatever experience is leftover (Level 64). Though even then you're waiting around for a few seconds, maybe instead of having the bar fill up for those middle 5 levels they could do another quicker indication to show levels were gain like the exp bar glows a different color for each level up.
2. And what about if a Pokemon learns a new move? In all that Charizard would learn Inferno (SMUSUM)/Air Slash (LGPE). It would have to stop in order to ask if you want to learn the move or not.
So with that said I'd imagine it working like this, though I'm going to have a Level 50 Charizard level-up to Level 65 in Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee:
- "Charizard beat the opposing Chansey!"
- Bar fills up once to reach Level 51.
- Bar then quickly glows the following colors for each level-up: Red (52), Green (53), & Blue (54).
- "Charizard is trying to learn Flamethrower! Yes or No?"
- Choose whether to let Charizard learn Flamethrower.
- Bar continues quickly glowing the following colors for each level-up: Yellow (55), Red (56), Green (57), Blue (58), Yellow (59), Red (60), Green (61), & Blue (62).
- "Charizard is trying to learn Air Slash! Yes or No?"
- Choose whether to let Charizard learn Air Slash.
- Bar continues quickly glowing the following color for each level-up: Yellow (63) & Red (64).
- Bar fills up once again to reach Level 65 and then fills up to wherever the leftover experience goes.
- "Charizard grew from Level 50 to Level 65!"
While tedious I think it would be best to just present us the newly learned moves one at a time. We have to remember that, while this quickening the animation time up is more to the benefit of veteran players, we have to make sure new players know what's going on and don't get confused. Telling them there's a new move one at a time as they come is more straight forward and easy to understand then telling the player there's a batch of new moves to learn and go over their moveset to pick and choose which moves to keep and forget.
Genderization:
Don't understand why they didn't continue giving Pokemon gender differences after Gen V except when it was an extreme case. Of course even the gender differences they gave were sometimes hard to notice and didn't really change the Pokemon's shape. It made sense for some species, like many Bug-type Pokemon giving females bigger abdomens, but then we have ones like female Alakazam's having a smaller mustaches (and also the Machop family didn't get any gender differences though it can have female members).
So note even if they gave gender differences to the likes of Gothitelle or Primarina they would also be slight and not really change it's shape. Like a male Gothitelle may just have smaller bows and female Primarina may have smaller frillings. However they'll still mostly retain their feminine appearance.
But as has been said before, that's alright. Because their Pokemon. It's just that species biology. To us humans some Pokemon species may have a feminine or masculine build but that's just perspective. In real life there's barely any difference with male and female crocodiles and many bird species (eagles, hawks, doves; obviously not talking about peafowl here) and you could say some species give off a trait we relate more to masculinity/femininity.
I think it's a pretty nice lesson for kids, too; that the gender you are doesn't have to significantly impact your style like that and that it doesn't happen for animals at all. I could see a few kids inspired by a female machamp or a male gardevoir or something; it's pretty nice.
Then again that kinda falls down with the trainer customisation. Why do guys have so little to choose from?? Really hoping Sword/Shield fixes it up so they don't have like, all of 7 t-shirts to choose from :p
Then again that kinda falls down with the trainer customisation. Why do guys have so little to choose from?? Really hoping Sword/Shield fixes it up so they don't have like, all of 7 t-shirts to choose from :p
Implying game freak 'got it wrong' with a creature they made up. :D
Sorry, friend, reality doesn't change just because it makes you uncomfortable.
FalseSwipeGaming's recent video made me realize something strange.
Murkrow uses tricks and cunning, while Honchkrow uses brute force. This is the opposite of how the mob is typically depicted. The underlings are usually brute enforcers, while the boss usually plays chessmaster.
Murkrow uses tricks and cunning, while Honchkrow uses brute force. This is the opposite of how the mob is typically depicted. The underlings are usually brute enforcers, while the boss usually plays chessmaster.
Well in those 2 birds case, Murkrow does indeed look frail and not strong so has to resort to use cunning, while Honchkrow does give the vibe of being muscular and imposing, possibly having obtained his "boss status" via violence.
So, while unusual, it does make sense.
You probably need to read up on the science of gender expression and sociology, and that whatever you deem as strange is actually just colored by human and societal lenses.
I hope it's not too much to ask to want to have starter ratios of male to female be a little more even.
Oh, on a similar topic, one thing that really gets on my heejeebees would be how people in general assume male by default. You see this in real life too all the time when it comes to wild animals but people do this to Pokemon too.
The gender ratio for Starters, Fossils and Eevee is another really annoying one. Back in the day I can kind of see the intention -- they're meant to be special 'one-off' Pokémon and so by making it so it's not easy to get a female one, it makes it harder to breed copies.
But these days it's a bit outdated due to the fact that Ditto being able to breed with any gender is not only well-known and in fact encouraged by Game Freak but is also very easy to access; not to mention that even if that wasn't the case, the GTS is full of these Pokémon and certain of these like Eevee have had their 'one-off' status revoked. None of these Pokémon have any significant gendered evolution methods or moves or anything of the sort either, so I don't think it makes sense to keep going with the 1/8 gender ratio rule and they should honestly not be afraid of retconning them.
In fact there's something in general that annoys me: Game Freak being incredibly afraid to retcon a lot of things. Gender ratios, Evolution levels, types... we've seen them retcon significant things in the past like cries and moves, so I don't see why they're so stubborn on these things. It'd certainly make seeing older Pokémon a lot more exciting especially as future games are bound to have them in spades throughout the region.
Evolution levels in particular places a very big restriction on a lot of Pokémon and being creative with their placement: in the case of something like Rufflet, you either have to place them late in the game to make sense progression-wise, or you place them earlier and have them be basically dead weight. If Game Freak weren't afraid of retconning evolution levels, they could allow, say, Pawniard to be a mid-game Pokémon with an evolution level in the mid-30s; or make Magikarp a challenge again by raising its level to 25 or 30.
It also would be nice to see them play with stats a little more. Since Gen 6 they've shown they haven't been afraid of editing stats too much... but only in very small ways. The majority of stat changes have been just +10 to one stat, and if you're lucky (ie you're Pikachu), you have that happen to TWO stats. I'm not saying they should go mad with stat changes, but if they weren't afraid to be a bit more open and free with this with a bit of intelligence they could play around more with the placement of Pokémon throughout the game and mitigate the power gap of a lot of Pokémon.
But these days it's a bit outdated due to the fact that Ditto being able to breed with any gender is not only well-known and in fact encouraged by Game Freak but is also very easy to access; not to mention that even if that wasn't the case, the GTS is full of these Pokémon and certain of these like Eevee have had their 'one-off' status revoked. None of these Pokémon have any significant gendered evolution methods or moves or anything of the sort either, so I don't think it makes sense to keep going with the 1/8 gender ratio rule and they should honestly not be afraid of retconning them.
In fact there's something in general that annoys me: Game Freak being incredibly afraid to retcon a lot of things. Gender ratios, Evolution levels, types... we've seen them retcon significant things in the past like cries and moves, so I don't see why they're so stubborn on these things. It'd certainly make seeing older Pokémon a lot more exciting especially as future games are bound to have them in spades throughout the region.
Evolution levels in particular places a very big restriction on a lot of Pokémon and being creative with their placement: in the case of something like Rufflet, you either have to place them late in the game to make sense progression-wise, or you place them earlier and have them be basically dead weight. If Game Freak weren't afraid of retconning evolution levels, they could allow, say, Pawniard to be a mid-game Pokémon with an evolution level in the mid-30s; or make Magikarp a challenge again by raising its level to 25 or 30.
It also would be nice to see them play with stats a little more. Since Gen 6 they've shown they haven't been afraid of editing stats too much... but only in very small ways. The majority of stat changes have been just +10 to one stat, and if you're lucky (ie you're Pikachu), you have that happen to TWO stats. I'm not saying they should go mad with stat changes, but if they weren't afraid to be a bit more open and free with this with a bit of intelligence they could play around more with the placement of Pokémon throughout the game and mitigate the power gap of a lot of Pokémon.
Yup, but I really just want more control over the starter's gender, as part of trainer customization (hence why I quoted your post). I don't know if egg moves on starters are all that useful but it does get annoying hard to take advantage of egg moves if the ratio is skewed like that. People might say that honestly, that little blue or pink icon doesn't mean all that much in the long run, but eh that's why we have this sort of the thread in the mean time.
I always like to bring the example of birds in that matter. Vivid or flamboyant colors are not *ahem* exactly deemed as masculine by some humans, but for birds, it surely is.
And there's sex-changing clownfish, pregnant seahorses, the secretary bird's and southern ground hornbill's long eyelashes, and in hen-only flocks, you get hens that act like roosters and even develop some cocksculine (for a lack of a better word
) characteristics. And there are some human cultures where some selected women act and dress like men. The name of that culture escapes me. And in Ancient Egypt, I'm sure make-up and perfume were really manly too. Oh, and pink was considered a "manly" color too back in the 80's, right? I mean, that's not going into trans or intersex people either. Just think about it this way, birds of paradise, if they had a culture, would see drab-colored clothes as "feminine" and singing and dancing and wearing bright clothes and makeup would be "masculine".
Gender Ratios: I say get rid of the 1:7 gender ratios and move them around like so:
1f:3m: Combee, Tepig family, Oshawott family, Chespin family, Tyrunt family, Litten family, Salandit
1f:1m: Bulbasaur family, Charmander family, Blastoise family, Eevee family, Omanyte family, Kabuto family, Aerodactyl, Snorlax family, Cyndaquil family, Totodile family, Treecko family, Blaziken family, Swampert family, Lileep family, Anorith family, Relicanth, Turtwig family, Chimchar family, Piplup family, Cranidos family, Shieldon family, Riolu family, Snivy family, Pansage family, Pansear family, Tirtouga family, Archen family, Zorua family, Froakie family, Rowlet family,
3f:1m: Chikorita family, Togepi family, Panpour family, Fennekin family, Amaura family, Popplio family, Litleo family
1f:1m: Bulbasaur family, Charmander family, Blastoise family, Eevee family, Omanyte family, Kabuto family, Aerodactyl, Snorlax family, Cyndaquil family, Totodile family, Treecko family, Blaziken family, Swampert family, Lileep family, Anorith family, Relicanth, Turtwig family, Chimchar family, Piplup family, Cranidos family, Shieldon family, Riolu family, Snivy family, Pansage family, Pansear family, Tirtouga family, Archen family, Zorua family, Froakie family, Rowlet family,
3f:1m: Chikorita family, Togepi family, Panpour family, Fennekin family, Amaura family, Popplio family, Litleo family
I'd keep the 3:1 gender ratios as some Pokemon do lean toward a certain gender appearance so would make sense if they had a more likely chance to be that gender, but not so much it makes getting the gender you want difficult.
Level Adjustments: Honestly each generation they should at the very least adjust the levels for the Pokemon in the regional dex to match the difficulty curve of that game.
I would keep Magikarp evolving at Level 20, it's a nice level where if you catch it early it's a grind to level-up but not too annoying you'd want to give up and go for another Water-type. Thinking about it that's probably also why Wishiwashi's Schooling Ability activates at Level 20.
As for some of the notable offenders (all from Gen V) I think the following makes sense:
Vanillite, Kling & Axew: 25; Vanillish, Klang & Fraxure: 45
Deino: 35; Zweilous: 55
Mienfoo & Pawniard: 35
Rufflet, Vullaby & Skrelp: 40
Larvesta: 45
Deino: 35; Zweilous: 55
Mienfoo & Pawniard: 35
Rufflet, Vullaby & Skrelp: 40
Larvesta: 45
Stats Re-Distribution: That's an entire discussion of it's own. Though I would say at the very least some of the Eeveelutions could have stat redoes (won't go into actual details though I'd at least make Flareon, Leafeon, and Glaceon faster and special attacked focused (yes, this gets rid of the two Eeveelutions that are Attack focused, but honestly the Types just don't match the setup. They want Physical Eeveelutions do it with the right Types like Fighting and Ground)). Also do some small changes here and there like making Ledian a physical version of Ribombee that's Bug/Fighting.
One recurring thing that annoys me is bosses like Gym Leaders and Totem Pokémon with only a couple of very shaky counters.
Let’s start out with Kanto, where you don’t exactly have a reliable counter to Sabrina in Gen 1 besides...Jolteon’s Pin Missle? And Psychics were infamously broken back then. Gen 3 got a bit better with random mons with Bite but still no hard counters because Bug type still sucked then aside from mons from regions other than Kanto. Misty has elements of this, but you do have the version exclusive Grass types.
Gen 2/4 had Clair. The only Dragon mons you can get you have to go way out of your way for-Game Corner for Dratini, or Whirl Islands for Horsea which doesn’t matter unless you Thief a 5% Dragon Scale (normally Scale is found in Mt. Mortar with Waterfall...only after Clair). Even if you DO get a Kingdra pre-Clair...have fun with level 57 Dragon Pulse when she has it at level 41! Whitney exists too, but so does trade Machop, Fire Blast Quilava, and (while you still go out of your way) Dragon Rage Dratini. You could also get Alakazam by this point, which will dent the cow but you’ll get hit back hard.
Gen 3 has Winona (DD EQ Altaria and no easy Ice type access aside from lolCastform?) and arguably Emerald Juan for Double Team. Wattson also only has TWO ground types before him, one of which is a starter! I mean, yeah you have Makuhita but paralysis isn’t ideal even if you have Guts. A lot of the other bosses are hard too, but for the sake of conciseness I’ll move on.
Next we come to the one I despise the most: Platinum Fantina with her Mismagius. 105 Special Attack Shadow Ball should not exist a third of the way into the game. Sure, you have mons like Crunch Floatzel, but that’s kinda kill or be killed thanks to Magical Leaf. Other niche options for her include Toxic Vespiquen (lol). Most Bite users (Grotle, Crobat) get reamed by coverage or Will-O-Wisp from Duskull/Confuse Ray from Mismagius.
Then in Gen 5 we have Elesa (BW1) and Cheren (BW2). Anybody who has played the Unova games likely knows how hard Elesa is, and while you do have some counters (Rock Slide Drilbur, Gigalith, Krokorok) it isn’t easy unless you heal a couple times or get lucky-
Rock Tomb also sucks for most other physical attackers. Cheren...um, Thunder Wave Growl Mareep I guess, or a few of the X items you get beforehand...yeah they don’t give you much. Riolu doesn’t really work when you have to get to Level 15 for Force Palm off Unova’s EXP system.
Gen 6 is kinda different due to the general easiness and huge mon variety, and shouldn’t give any trouble as long as you prepare.
Gen 7 USUM has a good chunk of the Totems (in contrast, not so much that they are uncounterable, but rather they cover their weaknesses extremely well) to the point where even as a franchise veteran I’ve only been able to go one playthrough (my mono-Psychic run) without losing at least once a run. I honestly hope this becomes the difficulty standard, it felt challenging but not overly cheap (aside from that one fight late in the game without specific cheese strats or knowledge of the moves you’d be up against).
The boss that did the “hard to counter” aspect right imo was Johto Blue, diverse, good mons which is a nice change of pace boss-wise, but you can still win through type matchups.
Let’s start out with Kanto, where you don’t exactly have a reliable counter to Sabrina in Gen 1 besides...Jolteon’s Pin Missle? And Psychics were infamously broken back then. Gen 3 got a bit better with random mons with Bite but still no hard counters because Bug type still sucked then aside from mons from regions other than Kanto. Misty has elements of this, but you do have the version exclusive Grass types.
Gen 2/4 had Clair. The only Dragon mons you can get you have to go way out of your way for-Game Corner for Dratini, or Whirl Islands for Horsea which doesn’t matter unless you Thief a 5% Dragon Scale (normally Scale is found in Mt. Mortar with Waterfall...only after Clair). Even if you DO get a Kingdra pre-Clair...have fun with level 57 Dragon Pulse when she has it at level 41! Whitney exists too, but so does trade Machop, Fire Blast Quilava, and (while you still go out of your way) Dragon Rage Dratini. You could also get Alakazam by this point, which will dent the cow but you’ll get hit back hard.
Gen 3 has Winona (DD EQ Altaria and no easy Ice type access aside from lolCastform?) and arguably Emerald Juan for Double Team. Wattson also only has TWO ground types before him, one of which is a starter! I mean, yeah you have Makuhita but paralysis isn’t ideal even if you have Guts. A lot of the other bosses are hard too, but for the sake of conciseness I’ll move on.
Next we come to the one I despise the most: Platinum Fantina with her Mismagius. 105 Special Attack Shadow Ball should not exist a third of the way into the game. Sure, you have mons like Crunch Floatzel, but that’s kinda kill or be killed thanks to Magical Leaf. Other niche options for her include Toxic Vespiquen (lol). Most Bite users (Grotle, Crobat) get reamed by coverage or Will-O-Wisp from Duskull/Confuse Ray from Mismagius.
Then in Gen 5 we have Elesa (BW1) and Cheren (BW2). Anybody who has played the Unova games likely knows how hard Elesa is, and while you do have some counters (Rock Slide Drilbur, Gigalith, Krokorok) it isn’t easy unless you heal a couple times or get lucky-
Rock Tomb also sucks for most other physical attackers. Cheren...um, Thunder Wave Growl Mareep I guess, or a few of the X items you get beforehand...yeah they don’t give you much. Riolu doesn’t really work when you have to get to Level 15 for Force Palm off Unova’s EXP system.
Gen 6 is kinda different due to the general easiness and huge mon variety, and shouldn’t give any trouble as long as you prepare.
Gen 7 USUM has a good chunk of the Totems (in contrast, not so much that they are uncounterable, but rather they cover their weaknesses extremely well) to the point where even as a franchise veteran I’ve only been able to go one playthrough (my mono-Psychic run) without losing at least once a run. I honestly hope this becomes the difficulty standard, it felt challenging but not overly cheap (aside from that one fight late in the game without specific cheese strats or knowledge of the moves you’d be up against).
The boss that did the “hard to counter” aspect right imo was Johto Blue, diverse, good mons which is a nice change of pace boss-wise, but you can still win through type matchups.
My “favorite” was the whole Azurill sex situation. Due to what was undoubtedly an error, Azurill has a sex ratio of 3f:1m. Marill has 1:1. In gens IV and V, 1 out of every 3 Azurills would spontaneously change sex upon evolving. Fun glitch, and not unheard of in real animals, so whatever.
In Gen VI, GF “fixed” the glitch, but refused to change the sex ratio to do it. Instead, they just guaranteed that Azurill will retain its sex after evolution. The things GF considers untouchable are just weird.
The moment you mentioned this I immediately thought of Chuggaaconroy’s comment on that weird discrepancy from his Emerald LP:
(Also off topic but go to the start of the video too, he explains exactly why Wurmple’s evolution is random which I didn’t know until seeing the video IIRC).
