(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

[R_N]

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?

Because why would I do that when I can just....rotate the actual team without going to a PC?

Instead of going to a pokemon center, going to the PC, swaping a pokemon in & out every single time they reach a level milestone. It just makes way more sense to keep your squad on you at all times and just, like, swap them around as needed. This way you still have them on hand if you need them for whatever reason.

Its simple & intuitive and keeps everyone nice and adequately leveled.

SWSH at least incorporates the switching outside the center but its still additional steps for no real reason provided you are not training more than 6 Pokemon. I shouldn't need to do it when I have literally never had to do it outside of my gimmicky "use 12 pokemon!" run of Ultra Sun (which was still just kind of annoying tbh)

 

[Siggu]

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?

Because until Let's Go, it was a noticeable waste of time. You had to backtrack to a Pokémon Center every time you wanted to swap a Pokémon in the party, spending lots of time on just going there and making changes on the party, and THEN you had to return to wherever you were in.

... which is pretty much why I absolutely adore the "PC Anywhere" mechanic of Let's Go and Sword/Shield. It makes rotating much more fluid and comfortable, and it's why I've used rotating parties of over 15 Pokémon in both games. I went from "so... which six Pokémon do I pick for this playthrough?" to "LET'S USE EVERYONE I LIKE!".

 

[Pikachu315111]

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

And adding my take on top of R_N's and Siggu's:

Because I made a this ideal team of 6 Pokemon I plan on beating the game with so why would I want to constantly be switching Pokemon that I don't plan on using for the long run, especially if I save completing the Pokedex till post game cause there's no reason for you to do so during main game.

 

[Suspicious Derivative]

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 think the boss battles were the ones he mostly had trouble with, but I also recall him sometimes having trouble with just advancing in the game as well (in Sun at least). Despite the game supposedly being very easy due to the linearity and hand-holding, he wasn't always sure what to do or where to go next.

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?

Can't speak for anyone else, but the reason I found it annoying in Sword was because the game more or less forced me to rotate my party in order to not get overleveled, so that I could have a reasonably balanced experience. Being forced to constantly swap Pokémon during the main game just slowed down the flow of the game for me, it was especially annoying if one Pokémon gained a level after every battle, forcing me to swap more often than not.

In past generations, I rarely ever had to rotate Pokémon in and out of the PC during the main game. The only times it happened was when I had to withdraw a HM slave or change party fodder before I had caught all the members of my team, otherwise I just always used my team (apart from when I had to use HM slaves).

That said, I don't really find it all that annoying during the post-game (both in Sword and previous games). If I am training more than 6 Pokémon to the same level during the post-game, I know that I will have to rotate them a lot and that's okay. The most notable example of this is when I trained my mid-game teams in US/UM (30 Pokémon on each game), I had to rotate a lot there.

Apart from this, I also agree with the reasons Drumstick, R_N, Siggu and Pika posted.

 

[Kurona]

I certainly recall feeling a bit lost on where to go in S/M as well... though really that’s a negative of the game design rather than a compliment on difficulty.

 

[R_N]

I'll be honest I dont know how you get lost in either SM or USUM. Rotom dex literally marks on your map where to go at all times

 

[Pikachu315111]

I certainly recall feeling a bit lost on where to go in S/M as well... though really that’s a negative of the game design rather than a compliment on difficulty.

Was it on Akala Island around the time you're supposed to get to Royal Avenue? I somewhat recall a similar experience where I wasn't given direction where to go next and so just assumed to go back to Heahea City and try to go up the previously blocked off Route 6.

 

[khlaylav]

Screwing over certain new Pokemon because they come late in the game always stinks.

Like, I made the effort to use Dhelmise in my latest runthrough of Ultra Moon, and it's actually pretty good! It can take some hits, deal them back and has been good for me. But it comes so freakin late in the game.

It happens in every game, and it always stinks for that mon that got created and put so late in the game that it's tough for it to contribute.

 

[CPU]

Imperial Magala's post in the "Little things you like about Pokémon" thread about how Pokemon Stadium 2 having in-game dialogue for trainers long before it was added in the main games made me realize that it feels a lot better implemented there than when Game Freak does it. I'm fairly certain it's because, in PS2, it doesn't actually interrupt the gameplay. The text stating what move was used happens, the move animation plays--and then the dialogue is run during the Pokémon taking damage animation (in the case of crits/trainer-specific strategies) or during the Pokémon's fainting animation (granted, the trainers say something when any of their Pokémon are felled, but there is special dialogue if they're one-shot). It's especially egregious during the battles with Hop and Leon taking several seconds to play an animation when you use a super-effective attack, but even in Gens 4 and 5 it was pretty tiring to see the game slide in the sprite of the opposing trainer for a quick blurb, have them slide off, then have the battle resume.

Obviously the format of PS2 was better suited for non-intrusive commentary with how the dialogue box functioned, but the mainline games are at a point they could do that too, if they so chose. There's not really a screen space issue anymore.

This is all just a symptom of Game Freak refusing to streamline the relay of information in their games. I still haven't watched it, but DaWoblefet's video demonstrating that it's possible to eat the entirety of an P2P game's timer in one turn is a really potent example of how bad it's gotten. I'm sure they want to make everything as clear as possible, but battles can drag on a ridiculously long amount of time because they don't consolidate instances like Sandstorm damage into one moment, and instead spread it out across all Pokémon affected with individual animations and a second-long delay before starting the next one. I almost always play with battle animations on, but trying to grind Max Raid battles with them on eventually just became too much of a time sink and I decided to turn them off.

Tl;dr: I agree with the sentiment that the recent games can drag on, and it's not just because of the incessant cutscenes.

Side note: I enjoy how the PS2 dialogue for when a crit occurs replaces the usual "critical hit!" text while still telling you what happened.

 

[Bull Of Heaven]

Screwing over certain new Pokemon because they come late in the game always stinks.

Like, I made the effort to use Dhelmise in my latest runthrough of Ultra Moon, and it's actually pretty good! It can take some hits, deal them back and has been good for me. But it comes so freakin late in the game.

It happens in every game, and it always stinks for that mon that got created and put so late in the game that it's tough for it to contribute.

I don't disagree, but I prefer this to the alternative. It would be disappointing to get partway through the game and suddenly not find new Pokemon anymore. Would be a real "what, that's it?" kind of feeling.

 

[Zowayix]

One way to get around the above issue would be to put several fully-evolved Pokemon in the lategame areas, or make certain Pokemon very rare (but still accessible) in the earlygame and more common in the lategame.

 

[Kurona]

It’s also yet another good case for a solid and engaging postgame where late-game ‘mon can be used to their best potential.

 

[Samtendo09]

It’s also yet another good case for a solid and engaging postgame where late-game ‘mon can be used to their best potential.

That's if the post-game isn't so barren, like was the case for several mainline Pokémon games. In things like the Battle Frontier, this isn't a massive issue, but still...

But there's also the fact that some Pokémon often placed in very low ranks in in-game tier lists that ends up being found late game, making them feels like a bigger waste of time than those who are at least decently powerful at worst.

 

[Kurona]

That's if the post-game isn't so barren, like was the case for several mainline Pokémon games. In things like the Battle Frontier, this isn't a massive issue, but still...

But there's also the fact that some Pokémon often placed in very low ranks in in-game tier lists that ends up being found late game, making them feels like a bigger waste of time than those who are at least decently powerful at worst.

That’s why I said solid and engaging post-games. I don’t want barren postgames — heck, I don’t even want what we’ve previously gotten; I’d like them to really work on making it better.

 

[R_N]

Imperial Magala's post in the "Little things you like about Pokémon" thread about how Pokemon Stadium 2 having in-game dialogue for trainers long before it was added in the main games made me realize that it feels a lot better implemented there than when Game Freak does it. I'm fairly certain it's because, in PS2, it doesn't actually interrupt the gameplay. The text stating what move was used happens, the move animation plays--and then the dialogue is run during the Pokémon taking damage animation (in the case of crits/trainer-specific strategies) or during the Pokémon's fainting animation (granted, the trainers say something when any of their Pokémon are felled, but there is special dialogue if they're one-shot). It's especially egregious during the battles with Hop and Leon taking several seconds to play an animation when you use a super-effective attack, but even in Gens 4 and 5 it was pretty tiring to see the game slide in the sprite of the opposing trainer for a quick blurb, have them slide off, then have the battle resume.

Obviously the format of PS2 was better suited for non-intrusive commentary with how the dialogue box functioned, but the mainline games are at a point they could do that too, if they so chose. There's not really a screen space issue anymore.

This is all just a symptom of Game Freak refusing to streamline the relay of information in their games. I still haven't watched it, but DaWoblefet's video demonstrating that it's possible to eat the entirety of an P2P game's timer in one turn is a really potent example of how bad it's gotten. I'm sure they want to make everything as clear as possible, but battles can drag on a ridiculously long amount of time because they don't consolidate instances like Sandstorm damage into one moment, and instead spread it out across all Pokémon affected with individual animations and a second-long delay before starting the next one. I almost always play with battle animations on, but trying to grind Max Raid battles with them on eventually just became too much of a time sink and I decided to turn them off.

Tl;dr: I agree with the sentiment that the recent games can drag on, and it's not just because of the incessant cutscenes.

Side note: I enjoy how the PS2 dialogue for when a crit occurs replaces the usual "critical hit!" text while still telling you what happened.

I mean I think the reason they dont do it like Stadium 2 is because they want it to be more "cinematic" and involved.

They probably could tweak their textbox system so that Hop or whoever just had a little icon show up with their face and then mentio na quip as the animation plays out but they wanted to mess with camera angles and animations. There's little zooms, animations play, the camera will sometimes swivle around.

The animations and camera work can always be improved of course, and they should probably just avoid "super effective" as a trigger state in the future, but I'm not going to fault them for wanting the boss battles to have more cinematic flair to them here and there.

Zooming in on Hop as he does that fist pump animation or seeing Opal's tea kick in or some of the misc zooms they do for g-max moves is nice! I like it better than if they had just had some text come on screen with a : ( or >: ) portrait

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instead the thing i want is to take some design cues from Pokemon Battle Revolution's health bars & just pacing of multiple things occuring at once. They're interesting to look at, dynamic, fast... It was especially noticable in the DP era since those had, by far & away, the slowest battles. But seeing the health bar pop up and zoom down with a sound effect while the damage animation plays is fun, even if PBR as a whole is....still pretty slow.
Here's just an example

It's ac ritical hit (with a nice little pop in!), the HP bar soars down really fast

Here's an example of Blizzard hitting 2 pokemon at once

Again by this point the actual speed of things is eithe rabout the same or faster but, I like the presentation of this. If they want to keep making things dynamic moving forward, I'd like them to take some inspiration from this in particular and expand upon it.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

I think what annoys me even more though is Raihan tbqh. Part of his gimmick is weather, and in his double battle he utilizes Sandstorm, but he doesn't have a single Pokemon to take advantage of it

It gets worse. That battle is a mess really.

Raihan wants to run a Sandstorm team. Ok.
It's a Doubles team. A'ight, get some EQ spam going.

He's the Dragon leader. Now things start to get weird because he doesn't use the Dragon Fossils and the other dragons that could actually benefit from sand like Tyrantrum and Garchomp aren't available.

Then he picks *Duraludon* as his ace. Now he can't even EQ spam because his ace is weak to it.

I almost had an aneurysm last night trying to redesign his team.

 

[Worldie]

Raihan wants to run a Sandstorm team. Ok.
It's a Doubles team. A'ight, get some EQ spam going.

Well, there's the good news, last gen introduced this handy new ground move specifically designed for doubles that doesn't nuke your own partner, which in this gen happens to be a widely distributed TR...

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Well, there's the good news, last gen introduced this handy new ground move specifically designed for doubles that doesn't nuke your own partner, which in this gen happens to be a widely distributed TR...

What move is this? High Horsepower?

Meh. Single target.

 

[Pikachu315111]

It gets worse. That battle is a mess really.

Raihan wants to run a Sandstorm team. Ok.
It's a Doubles team. A'ight, get some EQ spam going.

He's the Dragon leader. Now things start to get weird because he doesn't use the Dragon Fossils and the other dragons that could actually benefit from sand like Tyrantrum and Garchomp aren't available.

Then he picks *Duraludon* as his ace. Now he can't even EQ spam because his ace is weak to it.

I almost had an aneurysm last night trying to redesign his team.

And that's not even discussing his Champion Cup team. Here's a hint Raihan, you're supposed to pick ONE weather and build a team around that (which would have been an interesting gimmick thinking about it. For his Gym you battle 3 out of 4 trainers with him then using the Weather you didn't pick, and then for the Champion Cup he uses a random weather).

 

[earl]

Sandstorm doesn’t boost Earthquake at all (or any move outside of Weather Ball or Sand Force mons), so I’m confused on why EQ spam is required of a good sand team. 2/3 Sand Stream mons are weak to EQ anyways. Honestly, the fact that his team is all immune to the weather is more of a weather synergy than Pokémon has seen in the past.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Sandstorm doesn’t boost Earthquake at all (or any move outside of Weather Ball or Sand Force mons), so I’m confused on why EQ spam is required of a good sand team. 2/3 Sand Stream mons are weak to EQ anyways. Honestly, the fact that his team is all immune to the weather is more of a weather synergy than Pokémon has seen in the past.

Nah, EQ is more to abuse the Doubles set-up.

Edit: And to give Hippowdon a STAB since that was the Sand Stream user I picked instead of Gigalith.

 

[earl]

Nah, EQ is more to abuse the Doubles set-up.

Edit: And to give Hippowdon a STAB since that was the Sand Stream user I picked instead of Gigalith.

I mean, Earthquake is weakened by being a spread move and requires low type diversity (3 grounds and a Duraludon?). Spamming something like Rock Slide is a lot more true to the doubles experience tbh

 

[Worldie]

I mean, Earthquake is weakened by being a spread move and requires low type diversity (3 grounds and a Duraludon?). Spamming something like Rock Slide is a lot more true to the doubles experience tbh

I think this is mandatory at this point (friendly reminder this is coming back in couple months too)

But hey, at least you can't flinch in D-max :P

 

[Pikachu315111]

I mean, Earthquake is weakened by being a spread move and requires low type diversity (3 grounds and a Duraludon?). Spamming something like Rock Slide is a lot more true to the doubles experience tbh

Spread moves being weakened is still a thing? I never got why that was, especially for moves like Earthquake and Rock Slide. If the move is naturally wide enough to hit both opponents why does it then get weaken in doubles? Shouldn't it be that if you're using a single target move but want to make it spread then it gets a Power decrease (obviously would require an additional mechanic to decide which single target move can be made spread, or maybe make it into an Ability).

Also, while certainly Duraludon's partner shouldn't use Earthquake, there's nothing stopping it from using Earthquake. Honeslty, looking at Raihan's team, I think it's probably the best it could be (well aside them giving Sandaconda Earth Power instead of Drill Run, if they want Earth Power replace Flygon's Crunch with it).

I think this is mandatory at this point (friendly reminder this is coming back in couple months too)
View attachment 275408

But hey, at least you can't flinch in D-max :P

Well Rock Slide wouldn't be so bad to use if they slapped a Wide/Zoom Lens on his Pokemon that uses it.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Spread moves being weakened is still a thing?

Yeah, pretty sure it is. Kinda awful tbh, especially for moves that aren't really strong to begin with like Rock Slide. And I'm pretty sure I got nothing on his team that would get STAB from it too, so it's not really worth the trouble.