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(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

Growlithe also breathe fire and barely looks like a dog. People are allowed to have tastes.
and doublade is an pair of swords that communicate via telepathy. if you look into it, every mon can be seen both uncreative and creative. its not just an sword, its an ghost sword, and growlithe is not just an dog, its an dog that spits fire.
yes, having tastes is fine, but you cant say a mon is uncreative just because you dislike their design.
 
I feel corsola would be a bigger punch to the gut if it was actaully happening in the modern Galar (multiple operating coal mines!) instead of taking the cowards way out and saying because it happened millions of years ago. But I suppose worsening on-going climate change would kind of be a bummer for the pokemon world???

Ah you know speaking of....
It's weird to me that Galarian Weezing is based on the industrial revolution iconography and in-universe became very populous around that time but mysteriously became a fairy type that produces clean air at approximately the same time.
Alolan Muk became a relatively placid but still incredibly dangerous dark type because it ate so much garbage and poisons of various types that it contains all the foulness inside itself but if you touch it or god-forbid the crystals fall apart it will fuck things up and its appetite needs to constantly be satiated or it'll rampage (which combined with its crystals: bad!). So a precarious, but over all helpful balance gets reached

But weezing....doesn't have any of that? There's nothing about mixtures in the air eventually looping around to expelling clean air and the modern galar doesnt have nearly as much factories to feed it & unlike Muk, it isnt encorporated into its conservation efforts. It just sort of...became a filter for the world for no reason at all, in-universe, at approximately the same time weezing would otherwise just flourish in the region. And the design it self (an industrial baron) feels a bit at odds too, though I guess that's at least got bit of irony for it.

Just feels like a step in the equation is missing here. Even just going "things got so bad that weezing became so good at absorbing toxins that it slowly changed into expelling clean air" would be fun, but weirdly nothing like that.
 
I definitely agree, yet I foud a way to have my pokemon at even levels
just run around with only 1 or 2 pokemon at a time (which means yes I did run around for most of the game with just 2 pokemon in my party even though I trained 30 total)

it definietly makes the constant PC access useful without trivializing the game that way
Somewhat late reply (this thread got surprisingly active in the past few days!), but I think this is a good point. This was the only solution I could find as well. When I was training all my teams in Sword to even levels (including my Armor team, so it became 21 Pokémon in total), I did not do quite the same thing as you but something similar. Once one of my Pokémon had reached the desired level, I just rotated it out for another one which had yet to reach said level. And once I had less than 6 Pokémon left, I just used all of them. So that's something that worked. Still, I find it annoying that the only way to train all your team members to an even level is to actually deposit some of them in the PC, especially compared to the much simpler alternative in Gen 6/7 where you could just turn off the Exp. Share. But yeah, having access to the PC at all times helped with this a lot, so that’s good.

Moving on to something else, I want to say a bit more on the topic of difficulty in the games (even if this discussion more or less ended a few pages ago). First of all, I wonder one thing. Do we have any evidence that the children and younger players of today are finding the new Pokémon games too easy? Also, do we know that if they do, does this lead to them stopping playing the games? Because I’m personally not convinced about either of this. Just because we older players and veterans of the series find the newer games to be too easy for our tastes, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the new and/or younger players feel the same way. It is easy for us older players to say that the games are way too easy when we have played many games in the series before and have years of experience with Pokémon, but this does not necessarily mean that new players who have never played a game in the series before and have no prior experience with the series are feeling the same.

I wanted to show an example, based on the only younger player I know. I know this isn’t really going to be concrete evidence or anything like that, but I just wanted to show how it can be in reality. There’s this guy I know (or used to know) who got Sun as his first main series game when he was 12, he had not played any other main series games before as far as I know. According to the general consensus of the fandom, Sun and Moon are among the easier games in the series. They are so easy that even a kid with no prior experience should have no issues at all completing the game because of all the hand-holding and low difficulty level in the games. After all, the games have become excessively easy after Gen 4, to the point that any idiot can faceroll them without even thinking. Plus, the balance is terrible, the enemy AI is too stupid, and there's absolutely zero challenge for anyone outside of self-imposed ones. Right? (Thanks Worldie, the way you phrased everything with your Persona example was so perfect).

No. Despite what the fandom says, I don’t think that’s the case. Going back to my buddy and his experiences with Sun, I don’t remember all the issues he had with completing the game, but they were many. He got into a lot of difficulties and often asked me for help or advice. He lost in several important battles many times, and he even got stuck at one point so that he had to restart the game (don’t know if he encountered some strange glitch or if he just didn’t know how to proceed). Then on his second playthrough, it took him a long while before he completed the main game. And despite all this experience he got, he still had trouble when he played through Ultra Moon during the following year. But as a disclaimer, I should say that English is not our first language and my buddy has dyslexia as well, so he probably had a harder time understanding several things in the games compared to a general first-time player. And once again, this is not any concrete evidence for anything since it is just the experience of one person, but I thought I’d mention it since it is what I have actually seen and experienced regarding new/younger players and their experience of difficulty in their first Pokémon game.

While we're at it, I want to talk about some of my own experiences as well. My first game was Blue, which is among the ”hard” Pokémon games and it is very difficult to beat compared to the newer games in the series (according to the fandom, not me). I first played it when I was 10. Did I find it hard or easy? The answer is: a little bit of both. It depends on which aspects we look at. The game was easy in one way since I was able to solo it with just my starter Blastoise and one or two HM slaves. But it was also hard since I got stuck several times in the game, I also lost against opposing trainers on multiple occasions. Being stuck was something I found very frustrating. In retrospect, I wish the Kanto games had been more linear so that I could possibly have had an easier time playing through the game. But my limited English knowledge was also a factor, I won't deny that.

I also think this whole thing about “smoke and mirrors” might be true. I remember that when I played Blue for the first time, I did not care much for the difficulty of the game, I just wanted to use cool and strong Pokémon such as Blastoise, Pidgeot, Nidoqueen, Flareon and Abra (some of my childhood favorites) and cool moves like Hydro Pump, Rock Slide and Hyper Beam. I think the same thing went for my buddy, he did probably not care much for the difficulty but he wanted to use cool and strong Pokémon like Incineroar, Mewtwo, Lucario, Goodra, Charizard and others. And he liked to just randomly use Z-moves and Megas in battles whenever he felt like it and could. So I think that for young players, “smoke and mirrors” might be more important than difficulty in the games.

I should also say that I really liked Blue back in the day. Despite getting a bit frustrated by getting stuck in the game, I still had tons of fun with it. In fact, I think that might have been a good thing when I look back at it now. As Celever said earlier, kids need a bit of difficulty in a game in order to enjoy it. But that difficulty needs to be well-balanced, I really don't think games for children should be too hard to beat. And that’s what I want to get back to. Based on the experiences of my buddy, modern Pokémon games can probably be difficult for the children of today who are first-time players, just like how I found some aspects of Blue difficult back in the day (despite it not being a very hard game). The games are easier for us older players now, but I believe that is because we have more experience with the series compared to when we first started. And the games have never been hard to start with. You could argue that they have been getting easier in recent generations, but I do personally not think it matters much or makes that much of a difference when they have always been easy.

To summarize: just because we older players find the newer games to be too easy and not offer any challenge, that does not necessarily mean that the kids and first-time players of today feel the same way.
 
I don’t know which battles your friend had trouble with, but definitely one of the areas Sun/Moon excelled in was the boss battles— almost all the Totem Pokemon can really gang up on you unless you have a plan to take them out fast, and I’m amazed Lusamine isn’t considered one of the hardest bosses in the series given her above-competent team and stat buffs. Gen 7 is easy in many areas but boss battles is certainly not one of them, and Pokemon would do well to learn from that great example.
 
I don’t know which battles your friend had trouble with, but definitely one of the areas Sun/Moon excelled in was the boss battles— almost all the Totem Pokemon can really gang up on you unless you have a plan to take them out fast, and I’m amazed Lusamine isn’t considered one of the hardest bosses in the series given her above-competent team and stat buffs. Gen 7 is easy in many areas but boss battles is certainly not one of them, and Pokemon would do well to learn from that great example.
Also every boss pokemon had EVs applied which is fascinating. I believe a few "subboss" trainers also had EVs applied.




In contrast Pier's Obstagoon (to make up for not being able to dynamax), the 2 item trainer battles (eviolite dottler and...something else) and the unused Ball Guy stunfisk battle are the only pokemon in the entire game of SWSH that had EVs applied anywhere.
 
No. Despite what the fandom says, I don’t think that’s the case. Going back to my buddy and his experiences with Sun, I don’t remember all the issues he had with completing the game, but they were many. He got into a lot of difficulties and often asked me for help or advice. He lost in several important battles many times, and he even got stuck at one point so that he had to restart the game (don’t know if he encountered some strange glitch or if he just didn’t know how to proceed). Then on his second playthrough, it took him a long while before he completed the main game. And despite all this experience he got, he still had trouble when he played through Ultra Moon during the following year
Fun fact, before I decided to ragequit the OI discord (cough cough I may be a tad easy to trigger sometimes), I used to often throw the anecdotal evidence of my pro-cousin (or w/e you'd call the brother of my brother's fiancee).
He also had a ton of issues playing Sun, he came often asking to me for help, despite me passing him the occasional legendary from my cartridge I found he wasn't even reading the moves sometimes, he just wanted to use flashy cool pokemon (interestingly, would match your experience more or less).

A fun fact is that he *also* got stuck on Let's Go. Yeh. He was stuck in middle of Dark Cave, in front of a trainer with level 25 Kadabra. I checked his team, he had still level <20 pokemon, he barely ever "fought" a wild poke outside for catching the ones he wanted, so his team was brutally underleveled as Let's Go assumes you do catch pokemon often, and he wasnt proficent in the type matchups to actually be able to win while underleveled.

I mentioned the resemblance with Persona because being in the speedrun community I mostly hear the same things I read in Pokemon one. Fun fact is, turn based JRPGs tend to be hilariously easy for veterans who are able to, you know, abuse game mechanics to break the game. In the last years they been throwing more and more mechanics at players to use, thus your ability to break the game becomes exponentially bigger.
However, newcomers and new players who start a series due to watching it player or hearing the hype... do not know said mechanics, and often enough can actually find difficult games that for veterans are a joke.

I do think it applies very well to Pokemon. Veterans underestimate that for a newcomers the ridicolous amount of mechanics available might not be as intuitive.
 
The fact that there can be a very large spread in skill levels is one of the main reasons why I think that a strong postgame is so important to an RPG. It allows there to be something that can require more effort and knowledge put into optimization without it getting in the way of players who are just there for the story/characters/exploration. (well-implemented) Difficulty levels can also introduce this, but they can run into issues with having to fully restart a potentially very long game to get to the most interesting fights (doubly so if there's a tight limit on save files), where generally all postgame superbosses are availible at the same point. And, personally, I think raids focus too much on making the players unable to do things and it means they do a poor job of being a venue for a well-made team to experience that strength.
 
events for legends don't have any story its just "here have this mf we giving them away" and there's nothing interesting aside from a movie that came alongside it

There's an interesting conundrum with the concept of Legendaries in itself these days. Well, it has been a case for quite a while now, but it's starting to become too big to ignore.

Counting Mythicals and alternate forms, the number of legendaries is approaching triple digits. Note that I'm counting "legendary" and "mythical" Pokémon together, because come on. They're the same thing and always were, availability notwithstanding. But even if you count mythicals separately, there are already 20 of them (not including Phione), and seeing as Zarude is the only one revealed for Gen VIII yet, there probably are another few in store by the time this generation ends. Legendaries are becoming a rather large sub-class of Pokémon. For instance, there are more legendaries in total than there are Ice-types in total. Will all of them be eligible for special treatment in perpetuity? That is, being unable to breed, requiring an event or special occasion to be found, one per region (Ultra Space notwithstanding), all that jazz?

I mean, some legendaries such as Kyogre or Arceus are said to be unique, primal beings, close to gods incarnate. For lore reasons, it makes sense they should be treated as special. But nowadays, TPC is hardly even bothering with backstories for most of their legendaries. Magearna was said to be created by an ancient civilization. But so what? So were Golett and Claydol. Zarude is functionally identical to Rillaboom as far as lore goes (it's even said to live in packs, goshdarnit!). No lore has ever been presented about Marshadow that would make it any more special than your common Gengar. Zeraora ... exists. Even Lucario is treated as a more special Pokémon than that. Shaymin's Pokédex entries are practically identical to Meganium's. We could go on and on. Beyond being burdened by a few inconvenient mechanics (but blessed with high stats), there isn't much to separate most legendary Pokémon from regular ones.

Something similar goes for the legendary trios. We've seen eight of those trios so far, counting the alternate forms of the Kanto birds and Alola's quartet. Many of them aren't justifying their legendary moniker beyond "they are strong and rare, and revered in one region". They might have some story role or other significance in the games of their introduction (and even then, their interaction with the plot of the game is minimal at best), but it's rarely explained why they have to be unique. Many have been shown to be able to reproduce (Entei in the strangest way possible, because Ho-Oh apparently has a twisted sense of humour). In generations after their introduction, they are shoved in quite randomly if they appear at all.

What's the point of legendary Pokémon? They're meant to stand out, to be special, to be important to lore, to be different from other Pokémon. I mean, it's in the name. They are Pokémon of legends. Except, well ... in practice, they kinda aren't. Even if you think they deserve special treatment, they aren't getting it. Just look at how past-generation legendaries have been made available in games of the recent generations. ORAS had you track down Hoopa rings, which acted as a sort of legendary Pokémon roulette. Interact with ring, some legendary Pokémon spawns. In USUM, you go to Ultra Space locations to encounter Pokémon that may be a random legendary. Event legendaries are just handed to you by random people in Poké Centers. The Crown Tundra will have you go into special Dens to maybe encounter a legendary, and I think we can be pretty certain they don't get their own custom-made encounter locations. It'll probably be "which legendary Pokémon is in the innermost cave this time?" or a variation thereof, because there are dozens of legendaries and not enough dev time to do anything unique for each of them.

It seems like the way to feature past-gen legendaries in Pokémon these days is by way of a mechanic that opens a big Bag O'Legendaries. They're meant to be special, but it doesn't really feel like that when you get to their encounter place and the game basically goes "Here, have a selection of forty-or-so legendaries, have fun sorting them out". At one point you may wonder where the "legend" bit comes into it all. Play the Fun New Minigame to meet one legendary from a set of three dozen, do so repeatedly to catch 'em all. Better write a checklist to ensure you've found all of them, because you're not going to remember them all on your own.

And that's the essence of this ramble, I guess. Legendaries stop feeling special after their time in the limelight, to the point that past-generation legendaries are becoming a bit of an encumbrance to the series. There are too many of them now, their lore is rarely brought up in a meaningful way if it even exists in the first place, and the games don't even bother making them stand out among each other. Their mere inclusion in the game is treated as some sort of reward, but beyond their mere availability, there isn't much importance given to them. Yes, they are stronger than regular Pokémon, but that has the side effect of shoving most regular Pokémon out of competitive viability.

I think it's time to de-legendarize a few dozen old legendaries. Make them postgame-exclusive, make them rare, maybe have only one of each spawn at a time until you beat the Elite Four again, but don't pretend they require a special event, their own separate location, their own minigame, their own lore, or any of that jazz - unless they are actually willing to give them that. No more of this "they are special because they are legendary, but there's a bajillion legendaries so they aren't really special" kind of treatment they're getting these days. Being lumped together in a big roulette pot doesn't make legendaries special, it makes them annoying to obtain. I'd rather have Celebi occasionally make an appearance in Glimwood Tangle than having it appear as one of the Pokémon you may be able to get in a Legendary Raid, or be given it in a Poké Ball from a delivery guy whenever Game Freak feels like doing a promotion. Sure, getting it may be more of a hassle, but at least it would show that Celebi is supposed to be special, rather than just being labeled as such through its inclusion in a group of designated reward Pokémon.
 
Note that I'm counting "legendary" and "mythical" Pokémon together, because come on. They're the same thing and always were, availability notwithstanding.

The thing with Mythical Pokemon is that in Japan, they were always treated as a different category than Legendaries, even when Mew was the only one. It's just that with the English localization, they didn't make any distinction regularly until Gen V. Outside of availability, which is also not that bad for some of them(Celebi in the Virtual Console Crystal, Deoxys in ORAS, and Magearna in the Gen VII games), they also have been universally banned from all official competitive formats outside of the very last Gen VII online tournament(which was a everything is allowed free-for-all. All species and Pokemon caught in past gens could be used), even when they are available outside of events like the previously mentioned Deoxys. They are never included in the clusters of past Legendary encounters, like the Hoopa Rings in Gen VI and the Ultra Space Holes in Gen VII.

Also, they are not found in any of the raids in Crown Tundra. In fact, while all Legendary Pokemon are returning, not all Mythical Pokemon are. Deoxys, Phione, Manaphy, Darkrai, Shaymin, Arceus, Meloetta, and Hoopa are not coded into the game
 
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Also every boss pokemon had EVs applied which is fascinating. I believe a few "subboss" trainers also had EVs applied.




In contrast Pier's Obstagoon (to make up for not being able to dynamax), the 2 item trainer battles (eviolite dottler and...something else) and the unused Ball Guy stunfisk battle are the only pokemon in the entire game of SWSH that had EVs applied anywhere.
off topic, but piers obstagoon has EVs?! so that's why in my nuzlocke it was able to live my adamant bisharp's brick break(red hp), then retaliated with a counter, killing it.
 
off topic, but piers obstagoon has EVs?! so that's why in my nuzlocke it was able to live my adamant bisharp's brick break(red hp), then retaliated with a counter, killing it.
Yep. iirc its fully EV'd in Defense & Special Defense. To compensate for not being able to double its HP for 3 turns, presumably

It does. Iirc it was pointed it's EVd because it can't Dynamax.
(See datamine thread)
iirc they actually do keep this logic during the entire post game. Piers isn't allowed to Dynamax, but the other leaders you pair with are.
Which is basically impossible to see because Hop will dynamax at first opportunity so you'd need to go out of your way to kill his Dubwool.
 
Yep. iirc its fully EV'd in Defense & Special Defense. To compensate for not being able to double its HP for 3 turns, presumably


iirc they actually do keep this logic during the entire post game. Piers isn't allowed to Dynamax, but the other leaders you pair with are.
Which is basically impossible to see because Hop will dynamax at first opportunity so you'd need to go out of your way to kill his Dubwool.
damn, it wasn't a chinese ev spread
 
- i don't like pokémon that don't have pre-evolution or evolution, honestly they should get it, for example: miltank, skarmory, hawlucha, lapras;
A calf Pokemon to officially make Miltank and Tauros a breeding couple would be neat. As for the others, while I have a neat idea what they could do for a Skarmory prevo, unless you want to provide a way to catch some of these earlier I say their okay with no evolutionary family.

- different abilities with the same function are unnecessary: libero/protean, vital spirit/imsonia, mold breaker/teravolt, it's lack of creativity;

that's all for now! :]

Sometimes there's context reasons, like Vital Spirit would be for Pokemon who are super energetic (like Mankey family, Galarian Mr. Mime, Vigoroth, etc.) while Insomnia are for Pokemon who are irregular sleepers or don't have your typical way of sleeping as they need to stay somewhat aware (Drowzee family, Hoothoot family, Spinarak family, etc.).

But there are a few cases where I agree. Like with Libero & Protean, looking up Protean's definition there's no reason it couldn't be applied to Cinderace. I even checked it's Japanese name, Hengen Jizai, and what came up was an opening theme for a Basketball anime. So from what I can tell GF just wanted to use the word "Libero" but give Cinderace "Protean", so combined both.

And finally there are ones where I feel they should have something in addition to one or both the Abilities. Taking the above example, Mold Breaker leave as if but for Teravolt and Turboblaze I feel they should also give an additional boon to Electric-type moves (and Freeze Shock) & Fire-type moves (& Ice Burn), respectively (like letting them bypass Protect (& variants), Light Screen, Reflect, Safeguard & Aurora Veil).
Alolan Muk became a relatively placid but still incredibly dangerous dark type because it ate so much garbage and poisons of various types that it contains all the foulness inside itself but if you touch it or god-forbid the crystals fall apart it will fuck things up and its appetite needs to constantly be satiated or it'll rampage (which combined with its crystals: bad!). So a precarious, but over all helpful balance gets reached

But weezing....doesn't have any of that? There's nothing about mixtures in the air eventually looping around to expelling clean air and the modern galar doesnt have nearly as much factories to feed it & unlike Muk, it isnt encorporated into its conservation efforts. It just sort of...became a filter for the world for no reason at all, in-universe, at approximately the same time weezing would otherwise just flourish in the region. And the design it self (an industrial baron) feels a bit at odds too, though I guess that's at least got bit of irony for it.

Just feels like a step in the equation is missing here. Even just going "things got so bad that weezing became so good at absorbing toxins that it slowly changed into expelling clean air" would be fun, but weirdly nothing like that.

Well isn't that last bit implied what happened? Since it started feeding on the toxins it began expelling the air it didn't need?

But yeah, while I love the concept, Galarian Weezing does feel "too clean" especially with it have poisonous green foam around its mouth. I think it does need a "dark side" to it like "Though it cleans polluted air of its chemicals, if it inhales clean air it'll completely absorb what little chemicals are in it and expelling nothing". Now we have something a bit dangerous about Galarian Weezing and why you wouldn't want too many: sure they clean the polluted air, but if there's no polluted air it'll just destroy any air it breathes in.

Moving on to something else, I want to say a bit more on the topic of difficulty in the games (even if this discussion more or less ended a few pages ago). First of all, I wonder one thing. Do we have any evidence that the children and younger players of today are finding the new Pokémon games too easy? Also, do we know that if they do, does this lead to them stopping playing the games?

Well my younger boy cousins have played Pokemon since they were young and they don't have any problems completing the games. Though oddly whether they complete the main story is a coin flip. When I asked why they didn't complete the game they pretty much shrugged and said they forgot or another game came out, no mention of difficulty but it sounded like the games didn't really grab their attention. Now this of course could just be them not being interested in Pokemon aside their cousins are are interested in Pokemon (I have a younger girl cousin who also plays Pokemon and she always completes the games), though they don't seem to have any difficulty or at least didn't care there was a difficult part.

There was a Ball guy battle planned? Do we know anything more about the battle?
It existed
thats it
he had one level 50 stunfisk-g with an ev spread.

Maybe they're waiting until they release Electrode and redo his team with Galarian Stunfisk, Amoonguss, and Electrode (maybe also give him Pokeball Pattern Vivillon and, if they really want to hammer home the theme, Magearna).

damn, it wasn't a chinese ev spread

What?
 
but it still can be considered "lack of creativity" since its just an dog, like doublade is just an sword (its not just a sword, its actually just 2 swords!)
and doublade is an pair of swords that communicate via telepathy. if you look into it, every mon can be seen both uncreative and creative. its not just an sword, its an ghost sword, and growlithe is not just an dog, its an dog that spits fire.
yes, having tastes is fine, but you cant say a mon is uncreative just because you dislike their design.
of course i can say it, since it's my own opinion and you just don't need to agree with me and defend your idea without lowering what i think.
 
A real janky EV spread. To my knowledge, the phrase was popularized by Lord Emvee, who allegedly gets his jank EV spreads from some obscure Chinese forum.

Those just sound like breeding rejects.

yes, having tastes is fine, but you cant say a mon is uncreative just because you dislike their design.
of course i can say it, since it's my own opinion and you just don't need to agree with me and defend your idea without lowering what i think.

Okay, everyone calm down.

While I generally like the idea of object Pokemon, I can also agree some designs are just "meh". An object Pokemon is great if they really play with the design and do something creative you weren't expecting or they make it look like an actual creature. But a "meh" design does indeed come off them just putting a pair of eyes on a normal object and calling it a day. Like many things in Pokemon, it's a mixed bag where the good designs are elevated, the bad designs stand out, and it's the individuals personal taste whether their lean in the former or the latter.

Maybe later I'll go through a whole batch of object Pokemon and mention what I like/dislike about their design.
 
Once one of my Pokémon had reached the desired level, I just rotated it out for another one which had yet to reach said level. And once I had less than 6 Pokémon left, I just used all of them. So that's something that worked. Still, I find it annoying that the only way to train all your team members to an even level is to actually deposit some of them in the PC
This is something I always done since the original Red

why do people find the idea of rotating pokemon in an out of the PC annoying?
 
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