From my perspective, it makes good mons better, but doesn't really add anything to the game as a whole. If it's only used on moves people rany anyways, it doesn't cause there to be more prominence on previously overlooked moves, and it's going to make pokemon with poor movepools (already usually not frequently used) worse by comparison.
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(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon
- Thread starter BriarRose
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I mainly find this annoying because I prefer Archie's character and general politics to Maxie's, but Archie's plan is WAY dumber than Maxie's.
Archie is understandably pissed that humans have polluted the ocean. So instead of, I dunno, supporting legislature to reduce or clean up pollution, he plans to raise ocean levels. That isn't going to do anything to make the pollution go away, Archie. In Sapphire, he mentions that raising sea levels will lead to the emergence of new Pokemon species, even though the ocean only holds 228,450 of the 8.7 million known species on Earth.
Compare this with Maxie, who wants to create new land area for human development. Considering the usual alternative is cutting down huge swathes of forest, I'd say terraforming new islands is a far better solution. There's so much ocean that I doubt it would make much of an environmental impact. At the very least, it would have a much lesser environmental impact than Archie's plan.
That is of course assuming Maxie thought about actual terraforming. It's very possible that he just wants to lower sea levels worldwide, which would still be less dumb than Archie considering it would actually accomplish the goal of making space for human development, but it would need to environmentally catastrophic to reach useful levels of new area.
Archie is understandably pissed that humans have polluted the ocean. So instead of, I dunno, supporting legislature to reduce or clean up pollution, he plans to raise ocean levels. That isn't going to do anything to make the pollution go away, Archie. In Sapphire, he mentions that raising sea levels will lead to the emergence of new Pokemon species, even though the ocean only holds 228,450 of the 8.7 million known species on Earth.
Compare this with Maxie, who wants to create new land area for human development. Considering the usual alternative is cutting down huge swathes of forest, I'd say terraforming new islands is a far better solution. There's so much ocean that I doubt it would make much of an environmental impact. At the very least, it would have a much lesser environmental impact than Archie's plan.
That is of course assuming Maxie thought about actual terraforming. It's very possible that he just wants to lower sea levels worldwide, which would still be less dumb than Archie considering it would actually accomplish the goal of making space for human development, but it would need to environmentally catastrophic to reach useful levels of new area.
As I always took it, Maxie's ideal world probably looks like a soccer ball: the white is the land, black is water sources (though they may be smaller) and between the water sources are huge rivers.
As for Archie, he probably wants to live in the One Piece world where it's like 95% water with islands scattered all over the place (though probably not with that giant red landmass).
Okay, two things about Emmet and Ingo that do actually annoy me, though one is an issue that annoys me about facility fights in general.
First, Emmet and Ingo use the same Pokemon. There are a few differences, but they aren't enough. Emmet has an extra Pokemon because he fights in doubles instead of singles, but his other three are the same as Ingo. There are also a few move and item differences, but they're very minor (why does Emmet's Chandelure not have Heat Wave? Why does Ingo's Chandelure still have Protect?).
The second issue, and the one that plagues facilities across generations: randomized abilities. Sure, in the rare instance where a set can work with any ability (like Yanmega, who appreciates both Speed Boost and Tinted Lens), it can be beneficial to not have an ability set in stone to keep the player guessing. But in 99% of cases, a given set has an obvious best ability, so use it. Even more infuriating is the treatment of hidden abilities, which are only ever considered if the Pokemon has a single normal ability (at least in the Battle Tree). This means Gliscor and Liepard can't make use of their hidden abilities Poison Heal and Prankster, Serperior and Greninja can't make consistent use of their hidden abilities Contrary and Protean, and Ferrothorn and Araquanid can't make consistent use of their regular abilities Iron Barbs and Water Bubble. Other big losers in this random ability "meta" include Togekiss, who is draws a useless Hustle half the time instead of the essential Serene Grace (or the other way around on its physical set) and anything that can draw Illuminate, Run Away, or Honey Gather, because those abilities are useless in EVERY trainer battle.
First, Emmet and Ingo use the same Pokemon. There are a few differences, but they aren't enough. Emmet has an extra Pokemon because he fights in doubles instead of singles, but his other three are the same as Ingo. There are also a few move and item differences, but they're very minor (why does Emmet's Chandelure not have Heat Wave? Why does Ingo's Chandelure still have Protect?).
The second issue, and the one that plagues facilities across generations: randomized abilities. Sure, in the rare instance where a set can work with any ability (like Yanmega, who appreciates both Speed Boost and Tinted Lens), it can be beneficial to not have an ability set in stone to keep the player guessing. But in 99% of cases, a given set has an obvious best ability, so use it. Even more infuriating is the treatment of hidden abilities, which are only ever considered if the Pokemon has a single normal ability (at least in the Battle Tree). This means Gliscor and Liepard can't make use of their hidden abilities Poison Heal and Prankster, Serperior and Greninja can't make consistent use of their hidden abilities Contrary and Protean, and Ferrothorn and Araquanid can't make consistent use of their regular abilities Iron Barbs and Water Bubble. Other big losers in this random ability "meta" include Togekiss, who is draws a useless Hustle half the time instead of the essential Serene Grace (or the other way around on its physical set) and anything that can draw Illuminate, Run Away, or Honey Gather, because those abilities are useless in EVERY trainer battle.
Because they use the standard sets from the list of regular Subway Pokémon, they both use Chandelure-3 as far as I can see.
And I guess that's a minor annoyance of my own, I wish Battle Facility bosses would use their own original sets instead of just the regular sets that can be used by other trainers in the facility. The only time they actually used original sets was in the Emerald Frontier. But from the D/P Tower and on, all bosses have used standard sets. It has been that way ever since Gen 4 and that's a bit annoying, but I guess that it is basically the standard at this point, and it won't be changed in future games either.
Minor nitpick, but this is not true. In both the Tree and the Maison, any opposing Pokémon can have either their Hidden Ability or their regular Ability, no matter how many regular Abilities they have.
Personally, I don't really mind this. As a Battle Facility player, I think it would be more boring and predictable if all opposing Pokémon sets had a specific Ability tied to the set in question. If that was the case, then I'd always know what Ability they have as long as I know the set. While that could be beneficial in some cases, I feel that it would be less fun on the whole. Some sets could also be even more terrifying than they currently are, such as Glalie-3 in the Tree which would be extremely terrifying if it always had Moody, now there's "only" a 1 in 3 chance of that so that makes it slightly less problematic to deal with.
Or maybe Gamefreak should just scrap Moody, the gen 8 nerfs don't make it any less of "useless main game, stupid competitive" ability.
Or maybe having each set always having the same ability, but keeping the "number of wins instead of streak length" mechanic from Sword and Shield (but also letting rewards loop instead of rewards capping incredibly early).
It would be more difficult, yes, but it would not be unfair because you could simply keep trying.
This talk reminds me of something I might have complained about before, but I'll bring it up again anyway.
The round 1 Battle Maison bosses are some real "hwaaaaat???" nonsense
https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Battle_Maison
Like just...take a look at these. I am all for eclectic pokemon selection, really; it gives a certain flair and memorability to the trainer (Lt Surge's pachirisu hello) but there's a lot of things here that's just kind of crazy. I guess it makes them all cracking their necks and going "lets get serious" in their round 2 matches more hilarious but I dont know if that was the intent here.
The round 1 Battle Maison bosses are some real "hwaaaaat???" nonsense
https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Battle_Maison
Like just...take a look at these. I am all for eclectic pokemon selection, really; it gives a certain flair and memorability to the trainer (Lt Surge's pachirisu hello) but there's a lot of things here that's just kind of crazy. I guess it makes them all cracking their necks and going "lets get serious" in their round 2 matches more hilarious but I dont know if that was the intent here.
That's actually a good point. I guess Moody belongs to one of the most useless Abilities for both casual and competitive play. It does have its uses in semi-competitive (Battle Facilities) though. Moody Glalie is a great Pokémon with the right support, GG Unit has won over 4000 battles in a row with it at the Tree and he has won over 1000 battles in a row with Moody Glalie in the Maison and Subway as well. So that's one reason Moody can stay if you ask me. Another reason I think Moody should stay is that it is one of my personal favorite Abilities, it was my #1 favorite before it got nerfed in Gen 8, I still like it but it is no longer my top favorite.
I disagree, the nerfs to the Gen 8 Battle Tower is something I and many other Facility players are disappointed in. If anything, I could see them do it like this: have two modes for Battle Facilities, one standard mode which is the usual, and one "casual" mode where your streak isn't reset. I have had a similar idea to this for a while but I guess getting into more details about it would be wishlisting so I'll end it here.
So Pawniard evolves into Bisharp. That's a neat chess reference. It's like how you can promote pawns and — wait, why is it getting promoted to a bishop? The bishop may be my favorite chess piece, but it's weird that of all the chess pieces to reference, the localizers chose one of the weaker ones. Pawniard seems to have originally been named after the pieces in shogi (apparently it's like chess but with more piece variety) and Bisharp doesn't seem to have any Shogi reference in its name, which raises the question of why you'd reference a game involving promotion in a base form and then do nothing with that idea in the promoted form.
It just feels like there's a lot of untapped potential for a Pokemon family based on chess/shogi. Like the pawn Pokemon could evolve into either a rook or a bishop. Maybe they could have some interesting doubles abilities so that the rook is strong against the opponent across from it, and the bishop is strong against the opponent diagonal from it. Maybe if they want to make triple battles a thing again, they could also have a knight that takes pot shots at distant opponents (the knight could also work if they just don't bother with the positional abilities). They could have a super strong queen that either evolves from rare female pawns or break the rules of chess and Pokemon a bit and have a convergent evolution from rooks, bishops, and knights. They could also do stuff with shogi's unique pieces and promotion mechanics (silver generals and gold generals move one space in certain directions, lances moves any number of spaces but only forward, pawns/lances/knights/silvers promote into gold generals, rooks and bishops promote to dragon versions that can move one space in the directions they couldn't, knights are nerfed because they can only move into the two spaces furthest forward, there is no queen).
It just feels like there's a lot of untapped potential for a Pokemon family based on chess/shogi. Like the pawn Pokemon could evolve into either a rook or a bishop. Maybe they could have some interesting doubles abilities so that the rook is strong against the opponent across from it, and the bishop is strong against the opponent diagonal from it. Maybe if they want to make triple battles a thing again, they could also have a knight that takes pot shots at distant opponents (the knight could also work if they just don't bother with the positional abilities). They could have a super strong queen that either evolves from rare female pawns or break the rules of chess and Pokemon a bit and have a convergent evolution from rooks, bishops, and knights. They could also do stuff with shogi's unique pieces and promotion mechanics (silver generals and gold generals move one space in certain directions, lances moves any number of spaces but only forward, pawns/lances/knights/silvers promote into gold generals, rooks and bishops promote to dragon versions that can move one space in the directions they couldn't, knights are nerfed because they can only move into the two spaces furthest forward, there is no queen).
Disagree. Moody was pretty threatening ability in Gen 7 and 6 Battle Spot Singles since it turned Glalie into a pretty terrifying Stallbreaker if it achieved the right boosts thanks to Sheer Cold and Moody. In VGC, and accuracy/speed/evasion boost for Smeargle could spell disaster if It happens too at the wrong time. While Smogon might frown on it, I wouldn’t say that it is uncompetitive and useless.
I never said it was a bad ability; it's just useless in campaigns, as it is extremely unlikely you will have a Moody Pokemon, and it is a naturally "uncompetitive competitive" ability if that makes sense.
With a slight modification to your quote, there are unfortunately quite a lot of things in Pokémon that this applies to. Fill in the blank with any type of Doubles strategy, a decent chunk of the Pokédex in any given game, many held items or TMs, evolution methods, or certain configurations for Pokémon that are otherwise trash (whether it be held items, abilities, or moves the Pokémon sorely needs to function).
One of the most fun things about the Pokémon games is that there are so many ways to play them. Yet there's also a bunch of stuff you effectively can't play with, because you only get them when the game is completely depleted of casual things to do. Take some of the Megas in Gen VII, for instance, where you have to have gotten pretty good at the Battle Tree to unlock them, and by that point, the only thing to do with them is more Battle Tree I guess. Unless you're very into that, tough luck. For instance, do you think Mega Beedrill is awesome, but only play Pokémon for the main story? Too bad. You can use it for the very final leg of ORAS, I suppose, if you go out of your way for it. Otherwise, no sell.
I suppose this is kind of inevitable given the core design of Pokémon. Still a bit of a bummer, though, if you're not ready for it, and the games rarely try to soften the blow either. I'm still kind of pissed about trying to use Solosis in Sword and Shield, where you can see its location fairly early (Bede has it in his first fight, so you can check its location right after that), but the game completely neglects to tell you that the weather required for it to appear only appears in the postgame.
"Wow Mawile, Ican't wait to use its mega"
XY: post game
SM: password only, and it was released months later. Though on the flip side, yo ucan pop the password if you were to start it up now I think?
USUM: battle tree
SWSH: mega evolutions are retired
ORAS has its own issues with mega placement, as you bring up, but it at least made sure to put abunch of them scattered around the world before the Kyogre/Groudon surge.
Oh yeah, this reminds me of another extremely dumb thing XY did that is yet another indictment against its handling of the Mega Evolution mechanic, even moreso than not giving it to Gym Leaders: Why the fuck did they lock off a shitton of the Mega Stones until the postgame???? The handful you can get in the main story are pretty much just the gifts like the Lucarionite and the Mega Stone for your Kanto starter, and other than that there's like... Ampharosite and Aerodactylite, and that's basically it. It's not as catastrophically damaging to the game design as Diamond and Pearl arbitrarily omitting many of the cross-gen evolutions was, but it's honestly somehow even more boneheaded. The locations were already freaking programmed in, why did they not just have them active the moment you get your Mega Ring? Why the extremely arbitrary cherrypicking of the few non-freebie Mega Stones you can obtain? Y'know shit's fucked when ORAS, remakes of Game Boy Advance titles handled the central mechanic of the then-newest region better than the then-newest region by having all the Mega Stones for applicable regional Pokedex mons scattered all over from the moment you get your Mega Ring, AKA WHAT X AND Y SHOULD HAVE DONE TO BEGIN WITH!!!!
For me the thing that annoys me most is the changes to the breeding pools. Three or four moves usually and at least one is terrible. I know some Pokemon had huge pools but at least you could go hmm what moves to breed to my pokemon. Now it's just oh I caught the final form, better breed base form for pokedex entry.
Yeah there was a definite shift in egg moves to being just...barely existent. It started in gen 5 I think but it's been full force singe gen 6.
Up to gen 4 there was at least a thing where the egg move pool would be small, but grow with each gen. Now they just wait for move tutors and shove them there, i guess.
Actually in Chess you can promote a Pawn that reached the other end of the board to either a Knight, Rook, Bishop, or Queen. So it's not strange at all. In addition there's another other word that could have inspired its name or them choosing to go with Bishop: Bisect, which is when you cut things into two pieces (and the "bi" part may be reference it has two metal blades on its chest). Oddly, while Pawniard's Japanese name does reference the "pawn" piece in Shogi, Bisharp's Japanese does not and it's simply two words that means cutting (which is maybe why the translators wanted to use a word that means "two" for its English name).
And your idea is way more interesting then my Chess-based Pokemon. Not going into detail as that would be getting into wishlisting, but my just had a form changing gimmick. Base form was a Pawn and had 5 other forms was the other pieces, it's Type, Ability, and stats taking cues from not only the piece's role but what real life thing that piece is named after. A notable gimmick is that their BST is divisible by 64 (the number of spaces on a chess board) and their individual stats divisible by 8 (the number of spaces in a chess board row/column; a chess board is 8x8).
Could also say something similar for when they placed an item-/location-based evolution method late into the game. They should either place these items in the general location where you find the Pokemon that'll eventually use them in the wild OR in a place where them evolving/Mega Evolving would be appropriate for the story's level progression.
It's still weird. Whenever a pawn gets promoted in actual chess, it's almost always to a queen. Maybe a rook in a few niche scenarios to avoid a stalemate (if the king isn't in check, but every move his side can make puts him in check, the game is a draw and no one wins). But aside from young me (again, favorite piece), almost no one promotes to a bishop. It's not a very strong piece. There isn't a single agreed upon "chess piece tier list", but the bishop is pretty consistently ranked at or slightly above knight level, below the rook and queen, and above only the pawn.
I think the reason for going with Bisharp began & ended at "it made a good pun" & they thought keeping the pun abandoned by the japanese side going was a good idea. I'm sure you could have made something otu of Queen but they probably wanted to avoid gendering a 50/50 pokemon like that. And likewise I'm sure Rook or Knight has their own bladepuns tucked away but Bisharp's pretty good.
It also kind of vaguely looks like a Bishop, I guess? It's a curvy piece and Bisharp went with a curvy blade aesthetic.
It also kind of vaguely looks like a Bishop, I guess? It's a curvy piece and Bisharp went with a curvy blade aesthetic.
It's also worth noting that the bishop piece looks noticeably more like a taller, more impressive pawn than the other pieces, which have their own design foci. Considering the localizers have to deal with the design they're handed, it might have been considered awkward to have the name refer to a major design element that happens to not be there.
My annoyance is less "Bisharp should have been named after a strong chess piece" and more "if you're going to design a chess/shogi Pokemon, you should lean into that way more instead of just slapping chess/shogi names on evil samurai". Like I said, Bisharp doesn't even have a shogi reference in its original name.
Now that I can agree on. Shogi has a ton of pieces, moves and probably titles for top tier players they could have gone with
galaxy brained theory: pawniard was originally considered as a more blatantly shogi themed pokemon and bisharp was unrelated, then they transformed into a single line later in development but their names remained mostly unchanged
As of Sun & Moon, like...oké, it's great you can customise your Avatar, really! Ditto Pokémon Go, at least until I stopped playing - when they were releasing Gen 4 Pokémon. But why do I have to have compression shorts that go down past my knees if I want to wear shorts? Is there a single exception to that? Like Younger Joey, I like shorts and find them comfy and easy to wear...which is undermined by needing to wear a wetsuit under them! XD