I think my issue was that they only used it once during the entire game. It does not even play against you in the Battle Maison rematches. You can even select it online. What a waste.
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
That point is no longer as important, since as of Gen VIII an evolved Pokemon can learn all of it's pre-evolution exclusive moves via the move relearner, making incense babies have no purpose outside of pokedex filler.
The animations themselves are fine, the speed can be tweaked without new assets.
Not that I'm disagreeing with you, the speed really is too slow.
The combat flow could be like Fire Emblem Three Houses speed-wise. Speaking of which, a dodging animation for missed attacks is something I've been wanting since the N64 era.
The speed already is negatively tweaked for faint anims to be faster since XD, and many are cut off before they finish
Really the anims aren't lagging the flow when you realize, Gen 5 is equally as slow combat wise, especially for multihit moves, and Base Gen 4 for HP was MUCH worse, cuz the text prompts interrupting EVERY TIME is silly
I don't like how Genius Sonority got mistreated as "doing all good anims" when that was HAL. The only anims they did were Humans in Colo (which sucked), and Gen 4s and walking (which notably looked terrible compared to 1-3 anims)
And then they ended up merging with Creatures Inc anyway, so bad Gen 6 anims? On them
Really the anims aren't lagging the flow when you realize, Gen 5 is equally as slow combat wise, especially for multihit moves, and Base Gen 4 for HP was MUCH worse, cuz the text prompts interrupting EVERY TIME is silly
I don't like how Genius Sonority got mistreated as "doing all good anims" when that was HAL. The only anims they did were Humans in Colo (which sucked), and Gen 4s and walking (which notably looked terrible compared to 1-3 anims)
And then they ended up merging with Creatures Inc anyway, so bad Gen 6 anims? On them
what do you mean you dont like the opposing pokemon standing without any animation playing, mocking your choice of using focus miss /s
honestly before wanting new animations, i want the optimization of the battle animations and speed first. getting rid of useless box text, maybe using words in battle (like how you get a "miss!" or "super effective!" pop up in other jrpgs) instead of text boxes.
Besides the idle animations, there ain't any really bad mon animations.
They're just badly used. Like the infamous Double Kick.
Well, DistantKingdom addresses your criticism of PBR's animations being too slow in the opening seconds, so I'd suggest watching this video. He provides very strong reasoning on how slowness and high animations are correlated to each other. You can have fast animations and still be high quality.
When Pokemon actually does a punching move in PBR, they actually go up to the opponent and punch them. Unlike in Pokemon, where they just perform a basic animation and then a special effect just plays, like Dizzy Punch. It looks really bad. In most other games, the characters at the very least go up to the target before punching them. It just looks really outdated on a 3D console, especially since its a home console. Even for moves like Meteor Mash and Power Whip the Pokemon stays in place and performs a generic animation , the camera just quickly moves to the opposing Pokemon as they take the hit with Special Effects taking place
As someones who studies Animation at College level, I know how difficult it is to animate a series of kicks and punches. So that's probably why Creatures chose to address physical moves in such manner ( and the fact that the games have a strict deadline ). As for Special moves, they are significantly easier to animate than a physical move. For a move like Hyper Beam, all they have to do is use a generic animation and create a focal point in which the beam is shot out. Creating frames for an attack that does not require physical contact is significantly easier. Even the anime prefers to perform special attacks over physical attacks because its easier to do the frames for a beam than it is for punching. Look at Lucario in the anime: Which looks easier to draw frames for: A Blue Ball that travels in a continuous line with no altercations that eventually hits the opponent? Or a series a kicks, punches, and high stands that would require a much greater understanding of how people perform these motions in real life? Its not all perfect on Special animations however. Moves Max Flare performed by Dynamax Charizard and Magmortar do not come out of their mouth or cannon, rather the focal point is created at a certain angle and then the generic animation plays for the attack.
The people are calling out GF not because their animations or Pokemon Models are low quality, but rather they are keeping it in a style that is very reminiscent of 2D Pokemon games despite being in 3D. And not like GF doesn't have the resources to make these models, all existing Pokemon have walking snd running animations in SwSh, so a PBR style is definitely possible. But feels that the real reason why 3D Pokemon games don't look like Stadium is because GF wants everything to look like the 2D era- things like Pokemon facing their backs always can work on 2D, but does not translate well to 3D, where the Pokemon are modeled to scale probably due to the fact that if they were scaled, that camera angle would not work. Or how Pokemon are throwing "bites" and "kicks" at each other despite being in 3D and looking very strange to "throw" those marks. The main problem with how battles are animated in SwSh is the fact that looks identical to Red and Blue, games released more than 20 years ago, are completely inferior hardware.
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Stop being mean to Mr. Mime
Look at him. He's a nice fella. Wouldn't hurt a fly, he's just vibin
Look at him. He's a nice fella. Wouldn't hurt a fly, he's just vibin
That'd be a good video if i though battle revolutions animations are good, but I think they are slow AND ugly. I want things to be quick, snappy and good, and pbr is nothing like that in my honest opinion
Unpopular opinion: EVs and IVs should play the same role as badge boosts in earlier games: a gradual, in-game way to boost party growth that has no bearing on competitive. I would also love Natures and Abilities to be freely toggleable with no cost; this both lets in-game play be more diverse and makes a more seamless transition from in-game to competitive.
E: yes evs already do that but id prefer they only do that
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I don't think EVs and Natures will ever be trivialized, barring a huge restructuring of the game's stat mechanics. They could be directly edited in a character creator style submenu and they still wouldn't be trivialized, because their strength is that they provide strategic depth. Fast? Strong? Bulky? You can't have it all.
IVs, on the other hand, are definitely becoming trivialized, but they were a stupid mechanic in the first place and should be cut.
I don’t dislike Mr. Mime either. I kinda like how it’s idle animation from the 3D games has it pretend it’s in a wall. It’s so full of personality because it lives up to its name!
Speaking of trashing Pokémon, I never understood why Venusaur was so popular aside from ‘Fully evolved starter so it’s nostalgia’ thinking. I think it looks really ugly, especially in the Stadium games where it’s eyes turn blood red when attacked. I find that Vileplume and Victreebel a lot more interesting as Grass/Posion types, since in the 3D games the former has a hard time standing due to the weight of the petals, and the anime is hilarious due to it always eating James when it comes out. I find Tangela and Leafeon much more cuter, with the former being really a cool play on Medusa, it’s based on the head without directly being based on Medusa’s head. And I like Leafeon because I just find it super cute.
Wow, that IS an unpopular opinion. (Title Drop, woooo
)What do you dislike about the actual animations though? Do you think the current ones are better? Just out of curiosity.
Pretty much.
The scaling is probably related to either the LGPE team being smarter or Dynamax tho, but the whole point about wack camera angles is exactly it.
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I think the current ones are... Passable? Idk theres a lot of moves and some take too long for my taste (mainly ends up being legendary exclusive moves). The special effects are very good overall. but camera and the position of certain moves is weird. Some moves look pretty bad though, like double kick and tail whip.
My main issue with current battle is mainly that theres so many text boxes, the weird angles and stops and the models. Basially. Its more how the animations flow with everything else than the actual animations themselves, if it makes sense? But at the same time I feel like it could be so much better that I can't help but go >:|
Other than the slow pace, i find pbr special effects very ugly. I hate how the special moves look, the fire looks very bad, the same with the "aura" effects (as in moves that show some glowing/effects but arent elemental, like some fighting moves). The water moves do look decent though, i dont have an issue with those.
The physical moves with the whole walk look stupid to me, but I already said that. I think physical moves look wonky because when you have two pokemon and one of them makes contact, some "take damage" animations look really wonky. I also really dont like how stat buffs and debuffs look.
Theres more but honestly it slowly becomes very petty lol. I really dont mind if people like the animations, its just not my taste overall
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He's just thinking of all the ways he can trap you in an invisible box and place in you hazard situations. And when you perish, so does the invisible walls, leaving no evidence pointing back at him.
Don't forget being able to "tutor" a move onto a Pokemon by placing two Pokemon of the same species in the Day Care! And we have Ability Capsules and now the Ability Patch to get the Ability we want!
As for trivializing breeding, think of it this way: I think Breeding is still generally "quicker" as you don't have to hop around so many hoops. However, if you hatch a Pokemon that would be perfect if it wasn't for an IV that was a few points off or a bad Nature, well instead of tossing it now you can correct that small imperfection!
Well EVs are already supposed to be doing that.
As for IVs, I do think in addition to the IVs they naturally have a Pokemon should have an IV for each level they are. You can then spend these bonus IV points any way you like via going to the Pokemon's status screen (maybe also have something that helpfully points at the best stat to apply the IVs to).
I agree with being able to toggle Natures off (making it feel like the Pokemon has a neutral Nature) but I don't agree with toggling off Abilities. Unlike IVs and Natures, Abilities aren't just invisible numbers which are unknowingly affecting your Pokemon, Abilities are front and center and you know what they do. It makes the Pokemon feel more unique compared to another Pokemon of its Type (as long as they have different Abilities).
Quick thing bc its not unpopular but i dont really mind these changes because, while you could do every single one of them to turn any pokemon you catch into a competitive ready battler, its still extremly time consuming to do so.
Its still faster to just breed HA 6iv pokemon. Nature is probably the only one thats better to get a mint than to breed for, but you still need to grind bp for just one, and it really piles up if you rely on them instead of breeding good natures. Bottle capping is really grindy as even with exp candies and rare candies, you still have to grind for those, and ya still need money to all those vitamins. I know because im turning all my 40 shinies into competitive ready mons, and let me tell you its been such a hassle
On paper, it looks like it replaces breeding, but when you realize the requirements for each one, they work way better as complements to breeding than replacing it, giving you leeway for a couple imperfections
Its still faster to just breed HA 6iv pokemon. Nature is probably the only one thats better to get a mint than to breed for, but you still need to grind bp for just one, and it really piles up if you rely on them instead of breeding good natures. Bottle capping is really grindy as even with exp candies and rare candies, you still have to grind for those, and ya still need money to all those vitamins. I know because im turning all my 40 shinies into competitive ready mons, and let me tell you its been such a hassle
On paper, it looks like it replaces breeding, but when you realize the requirements for each one, they work way better as complements to breeding than replacing it, giving you leeway for a couple imperfections
I meant that the existence of the baby mon grants access to these moves to the evolved form as a species. Like, without the baby existing, the original species probably wouldn’t have been given access to Fake Tears or w/e. But yeah, on an individual basis that’s a very good point and another dumb thing about baby Pokémon.
Also, the more I look into incense babies the more I find that they either gave nothing significant to their evolutions or literally gave nothing at all to them (e.g. Mantyke in Gen 4)
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Re: IVs, I’ve always thought that, while it definitely wouldn’t solve all the problems, it’d at least feel less like eugenics if every Pokémon had the same total IVs, but just distributed differently. So like, instead of it being 0-31 for each stat independently, every Pokémon would have a random assignment of enough ‘points’ to maximise, say, three IVs. Under this system, trying to get a better IV in one stat would necessarily sacrifice a point in another. So, one Pokémon might have an IV spread of 7/12/19/4/24/27 and another 31/0/31/0/31/0, but the total would always be (in this example) 93.
Of course, there’d still be good spreads and bad spreads for each Pokémon, especially since most Pokémon have at least one obvious dump stat, but it’d at least create some situations where a less minmaxed set of IVs might be preferable, instead of the same ~4 IV spreads being the indisputable best option 99% of the time. It’d also have the added benefit of retaining the in-game randomness, which was the original point of IVs/DVs without necessarily feeling like your in-game team was going to be completely useless in competitive/battle facilities. Plus, it wouldn’t punish casual players nearly as much for getting unlucky with a mechanic they don’t even know exists (not that that’s ever been much of an issue really).
There are problems with this though, of course, like how it hurts mixed attackers, who are already kinda shafted by the current mechanics. It would also benefit stall a lot unless it came with other rebalancing changes.
Obviously this is way too big a change to ever actually happen lmao. It would affect so many other things that it’d probably require a substantial rebuild of stat and damage calculation. It’d just make me less uncomfortable about breeding for ‘perfection’ if I knew that the rejects had relative strengths and weaknesses instead of being strictly statistically inferior.
EDIT 2: I’ve just gotten to the end of this and realised I’m basically saying ‘make IVs like EVs’ lmao. I guess in some ways I feel like they should swap, with EVs going back to a stat exp kind of model.
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Or... just only have one of them. EVs are sufficent as stat customizations.
IVs as they are now are basically extra EVs that you just want either maxed or 0 in all cases.
(Except the one fringe case that is Stakataka)
I guess I’m overly attached to the idea of Pokémon being unique even when you first obtain them. EVs on their own with customisable natures make each individual Pokémon of a given species completely interchangeable at the point of capture/hatching (barring gender, ability, and shininess I guess). Having said that, it’s weird of me to worry so much about the numerical individuality of randomly generated fictional animals.
I feel like so many of the games' current problems boil down to this. For all intents and purposes, the games are still Red and Green, by design. The battles (on both a visual, UX, and technical level), overworld design, the pacing of the gameplay, the main story elements, almost every single aspect of the gameplay itself, and more of the audio than it's comfortable to think about. Heck, even things like the regional bugs, birds, and rodents are concepts that have been with us since day one.
Now, I'll also readily admit that this consistency is a part of the appeal of the series. You know what you're going to get when you buy a Pokémon game. It's very easy to keep track of what changes from one generation to the next. If you've played one Pokémon game, you can jump right into any other with only minimal mental adjustments.
But it also shouldn't be denied that the amount of innovation seen in the series over the past 25 has been almost negligible compared to how the games industry has evolved in the meantime. To put it in perspective, Red and Green were released in Japan more than half a year before Super Mario 64. I think Abilities is the most significant gameplay change that has happened since then (and that happened 18 years ago, next week). Otherwise, it sort of feels like the "design freeze" for the Pokémon games occurred two and a half decades ago. Game Freak has showed a remarkable unwillingness to revise any of its core concepts since then, even as the capabilities of its hardware have risen exponentially, the games industry has changed dramatically, and players are beginning to have higher expectations too. I really wonder if it will keep going or if a break is coming soon.
Sounds like just the standard GF's "Winner's curse" or "If it ain't broke don't fix it" case that they've been suffering from in last decade.
Until one of the games actually fails to sell properly, doubt it. They've always been extremely adverse to innovation (hell it's a miracle gen 8 got free camera in the wild area lol).
Even then, the merchandise would have to falter for it to be a considerable loss. Which probably means no drastic changes for a very long time.
Aside from possible hardware restrictions:
Arbok: On the meta level, it could be a case of the dex writers having a different idea from the design team. Remember, the designers do not come up with a Pokedex description nor stats/Abilities (they can suggest some ideas but ultimately it's up to the teams that are in charge of those aspects of a Pokemon). Now the sprites have slightly altered the hood pattern every so often as a nod to this, however I would not be surprised if this practice has now ended with them making a definite 3D model that'll last them years.
For an in-lore reason, well it's not wrong. There are variations, it's just not as many or extreme one may have thought.
Shellos & Gastrodon: Meta level, it was originally just one Pokemon and meant for Ruby & Sapphire. But then it got shelved, brought back for Diamond & Pearl, and I guess one designer heard about allopatric speciation and thought would be neat to give this Gen 3 reject a little makeover via that concept. They were just satisfied with an east and west version. Thinking about it, they might have been a test to see if the concept could work and thus paved the way for more Pokemon with different forms (and eventually getting us regional variants). Now, there are plenty more they could do with them, just look at all the other wild looking seaslugs there are, but that's probably no where near GF's mind at the moment. Maybe for potential DP remakes...
In-lore, well the idea of allopatric speciation is that a group from a species if forced to adapt differently after having been separated from the whole. It's not the case of want but need, a species doesn't want to split into a different evolution chain if it can prevent it. In Sinnoh it just so happens that a group of Shellos & Gatrodon got separated between Mt. Coronet, were unable to rejoin, and so went on to live & reproduce and evolve differently. Other region's Shellos & Gastrodon are from one of these two origin groups and have not ever faced their own major separation from others of its species, thus only the two variations. If there are any more it's likely going to be a species that in an extreme environment like maybe deep in the ocean or alternate dimension (hey, this is Pokemon, that's more of a common occurrence than you think).
Vivillon: Meta level, XY was going to be the first they did a same-date global release on a system which recorded where you were in the world and so thought it would be neat if there was a Pokemon which looked different depending on where you live in the world. Butterflies are a wide spread species with many different wing patterns so they were by far the easiest to do this concept with. In addition the Global Link was, at the time, an ambitious idea of creating a central "interaction hub" and so had some place they could show all the trading going on, even making a special counter just for Vivillon to encourage the trade of it and its different wing patterns.
In-lore, it's just explained the pattern of their wings is based on climate and habitat. They're just a sensitive species with how their wings develop. Minerals, how much sun they get, temperature, humidity, plenty of factors you can come up with and go "well that's the reason why the wing pattern looks different from that other region". As for why their wing patterns change the way they do who knows, that's just a "genetics" handwave most likely.
Honestly I think what LGPE did would be a better way of making Pokemon feel more unique from one another: different sizes & weights. Sadly I don't think we'd ever go deep into making Pokemon unique from one another (especially with the concept of Shiny sort of limiting the idea of giving Pokemon different shades of color like they did in the first Stadium game, unless they redid all the Shinys which looked only a slight different from their normal counterparts to allow this).
As for IVs making a Pokemon feel unique, only in a sense where you either don't notice it because the IVs are good or wondering why your Pokemon isn't hitting as hard/taking a hit that well/isn't fast enough because their IVs in those stats are bad. And if you only notice something when it's having a negative effect on gameplay, is it really something you'd want to keep? At least with EVs you can change them.
The cynic in me also wants to point out something: we all say we want changes, but do we really?
I once suggested ways they could update the battle UI to make it at least a bit more flexible in actions you'd expect to be able to command your Pokemon plus some other features while keeping it a turn-based battle system. Everyone bit my head off about it and did not want to discuss it any further. And I can't help but think this is maybe WHY we haven't seen a major change to the UI and battle mechanics: we may ask for it but when we get it there's major backlash from the changes. Some people say they want the battles to be just like the anime, well they sort of tried having battles like this in the PokePark games which GF gave two whacks at. No one cared. Meanwhile they introduce a new "gimmick" like Mega Evolution, Z-Moves, and Dynamax and they see much more positive reception though they touched little else about the battle mechanics aside some new ideas that work within it.
While I would like to see changes (and went out of my way to think of ways which would add depth but not be too intrusive), I also don't blame GF for not having done it cause of the potential blowback.
On the flip side, this should also mean that no matter what they do with the games, the income from merchandise should be secure. The Pokémon Company could afford to take some chances. Question is if Game Freak wants to.