(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

This is bordering on wishlisting, and I would not be posting about it here if Pokemon hadn't already done something with this and completely squandered it.

It's time to talk about amber.

Amber is a pretty neat material. It's fossilized tree resin, and due to its beautiful color, it's often treated as a gemstone despite not technically being a mineral. It played an important role in the history of electricity. It can hold a static charge, which the ancient Greeks discovered when they rubbed amber against stuff and saw them attract each other. In fact, electricity gets its name from amber, specifically from the Greek and Latin words for amber, elektron and electrum, respectively. Finally, it's famous for preserving the bodies of insects and other small organisms.

So if a Pokemon were to be made that had to do with amber, there's a lot that could be done with it. Some combination of Grass, Rock, Electric, and Bug traits. So what did Pokemon do?

:rb/aerodactyl:

Hmmm. Well, that doesn't look much like amber at all. It's got the Rock part, but that's just a general fossil thing. Does it learn any Grass moves? No. Does it learn any Bug moves? No. Does it learn any Electric moves? Only Thunder Fang, the move that so often comes in a base set with Fire and Ice Fang. Pokemon had a material that was interesting and full of potential, and they decided to throw all that potential in the garbage and just make a Jurassic Park reference.
 
DrPumpkinz said:
This is bordering on wishlisting, and I would not be posting about it here if Pokemon hadn't already done something with this and completely squandered it.

It's time to talk about amber.

Amber is a pretty neat material. It's fossilized tree resin, and due to its beautiful color, it's often treated as a gemstone despite not technically being a mineral. It played an important role in the history of electricity. It can hold a static charge, which the ancient Greeks discovered when they rubbed amber against stuff and saw them attract each other. In fact, electricity gets its name from amber, specifically from the Greek and Latin words for amber, elektron and electrum, respectively. Finally, it's famous for preserving the bodies of insects and other small organisms.

So if a Pokemon were to be made that had to do with amber, there's a lot that could be done with it. Some combination of Grass, Rock, Electric, and Bug traits. So what did Pokemon do?

:rb/aerodactyl:

Hmmm. Well, that doesn't look much like amber at all. It's got the Rock part, but that's just a general fossil thing. Does it learn any Grass moves? No. Does it learn any Bug moves? No. Does it learn any Electric moves? Only Thunder Fang, the move that so often comes in a base set with Fire and Ice Fang. Pokemon had a material that was interesting and full of potential, and they decided to throw all that potential in the garbage and just make a Jurassic Park reference.
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I believe the whole idea of Aerodactyl being revived from amber is that amber has this remarkable ability to preserve the physical traits of whatever life form gets entrapped inside of it. Even though the life form inside amber technically decays, much of the physical appearance of the organism that gets trapped inside is still very much identifiable. Countless life forms have been preserved by amber: mosquitos, lizards, plants, and even birds have been encased inside amber and their physical appearances still very much visible inside of it.

So while Aerodactyl might not look much like amber, the whole idea isn't that it's associated with amber itself: the idea is that even though Aerodactyl went extinct, specimens of Aerodactyl had parts, if not wholes, of their body eventually encased in ancient amber and their bodies, right down to their physical traits, were preserved over those many years and the physical body of Aerodactyl is still visible within, which made revival possible since thanks to the way amber preserves the appearance of life forms it encases, scientists could now pull off a remarkably accurate revival of Aerodactyl that looks much like what it looked like back in prehistoric times. Yes, it's a general fossil, but that's the point: Amber is in and of itself a fossil material that fossilizes several ancient life forms in a rather unique way.

I do agree there could've been more, but those ideas you brought up are things they could do again and leaves more ideas open to them with amber: there is no limit to what kinds of life forms have been fossilized by amber in history.
 
It really is a jurassic park reference. I mean the idea of amber trapping insects and getting the DNA from them was probably A Thing for a while before Jurassic Park popularized it, but gen 1 in paticular was full of contemporary stuff (so many kaiju....) so when they have a dinosaur revived from an item called "old amber" anda lso the official artwork of the time is this
100px-RG_Old_Amber.png


its kind of clear they went "dang this movie is cool, this idea is cool, lets just do that".

I think Pumpkinz is just lamenting how the closest thing we've gotten to an amber pokemon is just a reference to this movie, rather than a pokemon actually about or based on the literal amber.
 
I'm going to chime in on the Munchlax encounters in Gen 4, because I brute forced that as a teen (I don't think the Honey Tree encounter rates were fully understood at the time), and it took a while. Also, since it's fairly relevant to regional dexes, my Diamond team was a rather odd Torterra/Crobat/Machamp/Golduck/Bronzong. My only real complaint with it was that Gyarados, who I remember being somewhat common from trainers, was a massive pain to match.

Anyway, Ive never understood why Game Freak locks so many new Pokémon behind low encounter rates/obscure locations, or just puts them in postgame. Hoenn was bad about this (Nosepass, Skitty, Surskit, Chimecho, Feebas, Snorunt), but it also had most of its new Pokémon shown as you went along your adventure.
 
CPU said:
Anyway, Ive never understood why Game Freak locks so many new Pokémon behind low encounter rates/obscure locations, or just puts them in postgame. Hoenn was bad about this (Nosepass, Skitty, Surskit, Chimecho, Feebas, Snorunt), but it also had most of its new Pokémon shown as you went along your adventure.
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False sense of specialness.

"Well this Pokemon took a while to find it has to be good!"

Was fine in the early days but it's become mostly a relic concept (or it's not used in the way attended, make the more highly wanted/powerful Pokemon hard to get). Nowadays I think all Pokemon that can be found on a route should just have an equal chance.
 
Pikachu315111 said:
Nowadays I think all Pokemon that can be found on a route should just have an equal chance.
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I think it's good for routes to have varying encounter rates to keep things from becoming samey, but I think that every Pokemon (or more specifically at least one member of a given evolutionary family) should be easy to obtain somewhere. Maybe they're in a hidden garden that you can only get to by noticing a slight parting in the trees you can squeeze through and have the key to unlock the gate. Maybe they're a gift from an NPC after completing some cryptic task for them. As long as you can get them without much RNG once you know where and how to get them, I'm happy.
 
I think there's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it.

I don't think "false sense of specialness" is a good description. Especially for the kids who are supposedly the main target audience, being rare can itself make a Pokemon kind of special. I remember just happening to encounter a Chimecho in Sapphire when I had no idea it could be found there, and being proud that I had a Pokemon none of my friends had. I also remember the one friend who found Feebas, and how happy I was that he traded one to me. It's not the same kind of reward that competitive players look for, but it is still a rewarding experience of sorts. And things like the anime have hyped up "rare Pokemon" since the early days, so it makes sense that they would be a thing.

Low encounter rates are okay with me. Obscure locations are even better. When it's an extra hassle of a mechanic like the honey trees, well, that's what I meant by "a wrong way to do it". Not sure where RSE Feebas fits into this take.

Anyway, back to trying to find a Gold Bottle Cap in Poke Pelago and questioning whether Bulbapedia has even told me the truth about this.
 
I don't mind low encounter rates, per se, it's that Game Freak has deliberately hidden a lot of newer Pokémon, which makes it harder for them to be used in their debut games. SwSh isn't as bad about it as most, though notable exceptions are the aforementioned Stonjourner/Eiscue, Hatenna (odd since its counterpart Impidimp is readily found in the Glimwood Tangle), Duraludon (I wanted to use one in my playthrough but it just comes too late; in retrospect I should have known Game Freak wouldn't let a Dragon/Steel Kaiju be easily accessible), and Dreepy (and it's basically useless until it evolves, to boot!).

Meanwhile, the following Gen 2 Pokémon are either locked behind a 1% encounter rate or swarm, a specific and obscure location, or Kanto (and this is just off-hand):
Natu
Smeargle
Murkrow
Misdreavus
Sneasel
Snubbull
Remoraid
Qwilfish
Marill
Yanma
Dunsparce
Houndour
Slugma
Wobbuffet

That's 1/5 of all new Gen 2 Pokémon if you expand it to include the full evolution lines.

There are some other debatable ones, too, like Heracross, Aipom, Forretress, Tyrogue, Girafarig, Gligar/Delibird, and Mantine/Skarmory.
 
DrPumpkinz said:
I really don't see how this is inherently a problem. A secret is much more exciting if it's new.
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It's a problem when people want to use predominantly new Pokémon on their teams (a personal preference, but still), but said new Pokémon are unlikely to be found without a guide/exploration. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but Johto way overdid it IMO and it's one reason why it sits in Kanto's shadow. Hoenn also had some real stinkers to find, but it largely sprinkled new Pokémon organically as you progressed along the routes.
 
That's fair. I like having hidden secrets to find, but I also almost exclusively use the new Pokemon on a first playthrough. I guess I didn't feel this way about Johto because Silver was my first game.
 
CPU said:
It's a problem when people want to use predominantly new Pokémon on their teams (a personal preference, but still), but said new Pokémon are unlikely to be found without a guide/exploration. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but Johto way overdid it IMO and it's one reason why it sits in Kanto's shadow. Hoenn also had some real stinkers to find, but it largely sprinkled new Pokémon organically as you progressed along the routes.
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That sounds like it would only be problem if you already know what exists and have tried to plan everything out in advance. So either you're playing an old game, in which case what's "new" doesn't really matter because nothing is new anymore, or you got spoiled for a new game, where the problem lies more with excessive prerelease info and datamining.
 
DrPumpkinz said:
That sounds like it would only be problem if you already know what exists and have tried to plan everything out in advance. So either you're playing an old game, in which case what's "new" doesn't really matter because nothing is new anymore, or you got spoiled for a new game, where the problem lies more with excessive prerelease info and datamining.
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Eh, good point. I think the only time I used a team of purely new Pokémon was in Sapphire, and that was mostly planned out with a poster I got (luckily none of my chosen Pokémon were overly difficult to get).

As far as Gen 2 goes, I will, however, specifically point out Marill, who was a promotional Pokémon used by Tracey in the anime. Want one in the games? Good luck, you either have to grind out a 1% encounter rate in a cave, or wait until after you get to the last city in Johto to hope an NPC will call you so its encounter rate will temporarily go up. Said cave, while semi-obligatory, is mostly just there to provide a Surfless path to Mahogany Town. Oh, and despite Marill being a Water-type, it's only encountered on the land portions of the map, which may be seen as counter-intuitive. At least Pikachu had a 5% encounter rate, was found very early on in the games, and could also be found at a later location.

Oh, and Marill and Azumarill just kind of suck in GSC, too.
 
CPU said:
I'm going to chime in on the Munchlax encounters in Gen 4, because I brute forced that as a teen (I don't think the Honey Tree encounter rates were fully understood at the time), and it took a while. Also, since it's fairly relevant to regional dexes, my Diamond team was a rather odd Torterra/Crobat/Machamp/Golduck/Bronzong. My only real complaint with it was that Gyarados, who I remember being somewhat common from trainers, was a massive pain to match.

Anyway, Ive never understood why Game Freak locks so many new Pokémon behind low encounter rates/obscure locations, or just puts them in postgame. Hoenn was bad about this (Nosepass, Skitty, Surskit, Chimecho, Feebas, Snorunt), but it also had most of its new Pokémon shown as you went along your adventure.
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2 Words: Player Guides.
 
DreamPrince said:
2 Words: Player Guides.
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To iterate for people not familiar: back before the internet was a thing and I wasnt an old grumpy boomer, it was common to release handbooks or player guides detailing the secrets and how to find rare stuff. Pokemon was no exception.
Hiding stuff in particularly obscure places and locations (like extremely rare encounters, or stuff like Regis puzzles) was a good way to then be able to sell guides detailing how to get them.

...and no before you go again with your silly smogonian tantrum of "REEE GF GREEDY COMPANY WE MUST SABOTAGE", that was common practice, only reason companies stopped was because nowadays the internets and datamines are a thing, so while they still do those guides, they sell waaaay less as most info is readily available via google, sometimes before the game even launches.

I still wonder to this day how I managed to get full Pokedex for both Yellow and Silver as kid. Then again, I did actually have people to trade with, so maybe they did give me some of the most obscure ones.
 
I kinda disagree with locking new Pokémon in Kanto as a bad thing in Gen 2. Unlike other postgames, even particularly large ones like Platinum’s; Kanto is such an enormous postgame that it infamously offsets the level curve and is practically half the game. It just makes sense to have new pokémon there.

That said, I of course cannot disagree enough with their low levels; and certain choices like Houndour I would have swapped around. I think Skarmory and Mantine, for instance, would make for much more interesting postgame finds. But the base concept of “some new pokémon are only in the postgame”, when the postgame is just that big, is something that sits fine with me.
 
I really agree about the Johto games doing a terrible job at showcasing their new Pokémon. I have many big issues with the Johto games, this is one of them. And the fact that they decided to restrict several of the new Pokémon to the post-game just builds onto this issue. I guess it could have been fine if the post-game was actually great and large, or if there just existed any sort of good reason to go through the small nuclear wasteland that was once known as Kanto, but no. If the Johto games had a really big and properly executed post-game like say, B2/W2, Platinum or US/UM, where there's tons of new stuff to do and several new challenges to participate in as well as reasons to train new Pokémon, then sure. But as it is now? No way. That said, I think locking one or a few new Pokémon to the post-game is acceptable, but as many as they did it with in the Johto games? Not okay. (Note: I don't know the exact number and I am too busy/lazy to look it up right now, so I could be wrong here). I know that all regions/generations have done this to some extent, but I feel that Johto is definitely the worst when it comes to this. Not to mention they had an excellent opportunity to fix this in the remakes, but they didn't. Such a shame. That's my daily rant about why the Johto games are the worst, lol.
 
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R_N said:
My take on this oncoming joke was: taking a legendary some barely consider a legendary and haphazardly calling it a pseudo as a dunk on Gamefreak's legendary classification
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Moving this discussion here since it's more appropriate. I remember another reason I don't like the term "pseudo-legendary". I think it might even be where my distaste for the term originated. It's post #207 of this old GameFAQs thread. Scroll down a bit more to post #208 and you'll find my response. While what qualifies as legendary has certainly broadened in recent years, most of them still maintain a sense of intrigue and, well, legend. Pseudo-legendary Pokemon don't do that at all. They're just strong Pokemon. And yet people (or at least one person five years ago) view them on the same level as legendaries, just because they're called pseudo-legendaries.
 
DrPumpkinz said:
Moving this discussion here since it's more appropriate. I remember another reason I don't like the term "pseudo-legendary". I think it might even be where my distaste for the term originated. It's post #207 of this old GameFAQs thread. Scroll down a bit more to post #208 and you'll find my response. While what qualifies as legendary has certainly broadened in recent years, most of them still maintain a sense of intrigue and, well, legend. Pseudo-legendary Pokemon don't do that at all. They're just strong Pokemon. And yet people (or at least one person five years ago) view them on the same level as legendaries, just because they're called pseudo-legendaries.
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I'm not going to lie this is the first time i've encountered anyone legitimately think pseudos are on the same level as legends and not just the catch all term for the archetype




You know as an aside things are going to get real funny if gamefreak's marketing ever heavily leans into the internal "sub-legend" vs "legend" categorization (iirc tl;dr sub-legends are the legal ones, legends are the banned ones)
 
You know, this made me think it's very possible that pseudo-legendaries are more awe-inspiring within the core games than minor legendaries are.

A lot of times, my first encounters of legendaries that are not plot-critical is a checklist. Finding them is unsurprising, the fight is as expected, and I move on to the next. They're unique and reserved for special areas, so I always encounter them on my terms.

Meanwhile, pseudo-legendaires are often first encountered as a major part of endgame bosses, before it's worth opening a reference to see where everything is. And, within those instances, they're more optimized than a wild-caught legendary would be. They don't need to be talked about as having power, because their power is shown through gameplay. Think of how many casual players talk about Garchomp's strength compared to Uxie's.
 
DrPumpkinz said:
Moving this discussion here since it's more appropriate. I remember another reason I don't like the term "pseudo-legendary". I think it might even be where my distaste for the term originated. It's post #207 of this old GameFAQs thread. Scroll down a bit more to post #208 and you'll find my response. While what qualifies as legendary has certainly broadened in recent years, most of them still maintain a sense of intrigue and, well, legend. Pseudo-legendary Pokemon don't do that at all. They're just strong Pokemon. And yet people (or at least one person five years ago) view them on the same level as legendaries, just because they're called pseudo-legendaries.
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To be fair, the lore for Dragonite and Tyranitar originally did make them feel like they were equal in "status" to Legendaries, at least of their time.

It's easy to see why in Gen I. In Gen I Dragonite was tied having the second highest BST with Mew, Mewtwo being stronger and the Legendary Birds being weaker. In addition some may say Dragonite was harder to get as you had to first catch Dratini in the Safari Zone (or get it from the Rocket Game Corner) and evolve it two times (whereas the birds & Mewtwo you just need to find their nest/lair and chuck Ultra Balls until they get the idea to stay in it). It was also the only Pokemon with the Dragon-type and in-lore it was said to be the guardian of the seas and had the power to summon and quell storms. Also, the Legendary Bird and Mewtwo were just super powerful Pokemon, they didn't really have super nature controlling power later Legendaries would be given (and it's the anime that really made them look godly powerful).

For Tyranitar, it was one of the few new Dark-types and thus the strongest Dark-type. Being a Rock/Dark, put it up against the only Pokemon stronger than it and it actually would beat them all in a Type match-up (Super Effective & STAB Immune to Mewtwo, Double SE & both STAB Resistant against Ho-Oh, and is SE & STAB Immune/Resistant to Lugia). You only found Larvitar rarely on Mt. Silver, the last place you have access to. In-lore it's able to demolish entire mountains in a day! And while Lugia and Ho-Oh were built up to be big deals, Lugia having the power to create storms and Ho-Oh able to ressurect, the Legendary Dogs were just as powerful if maybe seemingly weaker than Tyranitar.

But when Gen III came I think that's where GF's attitude about the Pseudo-Legends changed. We got two Pseudo's this gen and both have an odd feel to them.
For Salamence, well Bagon is just an uncommon encounter in Meteor Caves (EDIT: Forgot it was a part of Meteor Caves you need Waterfall for which you don't get till end of the game; it's still an uncommon encounter). And it's in-lore is more about how happy it can now fly, no nature-controlling power.
Then we have Metagross. While you can only get one post game, unlike the others which were dragons or dinosaurs, this is a robotic spider monster with intelligence compared to a super computer. It kind of feels artificial, similar to Porygon (infact I wonder if maybe that wasn't the original plan. We'd have the Bagon family as the natural Pseudo, but then it would be revealed that Devon Corporation made it's own Pseudo in the Beldum family (probably to compete with Silph Co's claim of making an artificial Pokemon). Would be why Steven is the only one with a Metagross and spare Beldum).
In addition Gen III would be when they would have BST 600 Legendaries you can normally catch with the Eon Duo and had 2 Mythicals, so that's 6 Pokemon with a BST of 600 in Gen III. Also starting here the Legendaries were essentially made gods who can change the world with their power, especially the mascot Legendaries.
 
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Bagon was exclusively above the waterfall, right? An uncommon encounter in an area a lot of players probably never went to isn't bad, and a non-flying creature willing its way to flight is pretty good lore. I say this as someone who's never even liked Salamence all that much.

But at the same time it really isn't the same as the treatment Dragonite got in gen 1, especially in the anime. The games hyped it up a fair bit with Lance's "Dragon-types are the strongest" stuff, but early-anime Dragonite was:
-so rare that Bill couldn't identify a giant one, and Drake having one was a huge deal.
-so powerful that Drake's Dragonite tore through half of Ash's team while using like 10 moves of a variety of types.

It was kind of weird, as an old former viewer, when I learned that Iris had caught a Dragonite in gen 5. "What happened to Dragonite being this special secret Pokemon almost as rare as the legendaries?" I wondered.
 
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