(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

R_N said:
DP's slowness is probably several factors and not necessarily poor optimiziation?
The overworld being 30 FPS was probably either a concession made for their engine (the DS wasn't THAT powerful, they had just entered the 3D space for Pokemon, it was early days with the DS in general, etc) or some other purposeful design decision. The fact platinum had the same speed on the overworld except for Surfing specifically, just feels like a purposeful thing at least.

The saving thing I think is because they were overly cautious on save checks. IO definitely remember someone finding the code related to it in the decompiler and they go through this very intense check.

The slowness of the battles......well who knows, really.

e: Well honestly it might be better to say it is not necessarily just poor optimization
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Nah, slowness for saves since Gen 3 is just poor optimizing if the RSE and FRLG save systems code are to be trusted. It's intensive for checks probably to prevent Gen 1/2 oddities, but then given it's GF.....

Technically with how the DS works for hardware, all functions are 30fps/hz despite most games having 60fps output for visuals (provided 3D is done only on 1 screen, due to fillrate limits). Then again Gen 4 shouldn't have 3D in the bottom screen at all, so....it being 30 even visually is odd

battle slowness is just stupidly stating.
every.
single.
prompt.
like.
gen.
3
Till now because for whatever reason, RPG stat symbols can never be used. And then added slowness due to never fixing HP drain's oversight that has been since Gen 2. Not sure how they went worse for early gen 4, though it's still slow even for RSE/PLat

OW movement speed being slow is just choice. Though I notice that the running anim and bike anim frames are stupidly slow, probably to hide how the mid frame is stupid with how the arms are spread out. They fixed that for the bike anim in Plat though
 
This topic has almost certainly been mentioned before but I was thinking about Durant and Heatmor earlier...

As we know, Heatmor is a Fire-type anteater that preys on Durant, an ant Pokemon which, being Bug/Steel-type, is naturally incredibly weak to Heatmor. But the Pokedex explains that the Steel-typing is a deliberate choice taken by the species to protect itself:

Black Pokedex entry: They attack in groups, covering themselves in steel armor to protect themselves from Heatmor.

So this doesn't work at all - the game mechanics don't match what the Pokedex tells us. If the intention was to make Durant on par with Heatmor, why on earth wasn't it made Rock/Bug instead? Or Ground/Bug. Or Water/Bug. That would keep the ant/anteater flavour intact but make their rivalry make more sense. The whole "prey fighting back" idea is a cool one with a lot of conceptual room (anyone here read the Edge Chronicles?) but it's kind of wasted with these two.

Maybe someone just liked the design too much - fair enough. Both Pokemon are really well-designed imo.

It gets weirder, though. In Pokemon Go, Durant and Heatmor are regionals, with each species occupying roughly one half of the planet and occasionally switching places. But this doesn't work at all logically given that Heatmor preys on Durant and has a huge advantage over it - it should be swarming those areas. The other half/half regionals make a bit more sense: with Zangoose and Seviper, you could argue that them being mortal enemies means that they each have a claimed territory, and all the Seviper in Zangoose-controlled areas are dead (and vice versa). Basculin is well-established to school only with its own kind.

So yeah. Boss designs as they are, nothing about Heatmor and Durant makes sense.
 
green_typhlosion said:
This topic has almost certainly been mentioned before but I was thinking about Durant and Heatmor earlier...

As we know, Heatmor is a Fire-type anteater that preys on Durant, an ant Pokemon which, being Bug/Steel-type, is naturally incredibly weak to Heatmor. But the Pokedex explains that the Steel-typing is a deliberate choice taken by the species to protect itself:

Black Pokedex entry: They attack in groups, covering themselves in steel armor to protect themselves from Heatmor.

So this doesn't work at all - the game mechanics don't match what the Pokedex tells us. If the intention was to make Durant on par with Heatmor, why on earth wasn't it made Rock/Bug instead? Or Ground/Bug. Or Water/Bug. That would keep the ant/anteater flavour intact but make their rivalry make more sense. The whole "prey fighting back" idea is a cool one with a lot of conceptual room (anyone here read the Edge Chronicles?) but it's kind of wasted with these two.

Maybe someone just liked the design too much - fair enough. Both Pokemon are really well-designed imo.

It gets weirder, though. In Pokemon Go, Durant and Heatmor are regionals, with each species occupying roughly one half of the planet and occasionally switching places. But this doesn't work at all logically given that Heatmor preys on Durant and has a huge advantage over it - it should be swarming those areas. The other half/half regionals make a bit more sense: with Zangoose and Seviper, you could argue that them being mortal enemies means that they each have a claimed territory, and all the Seviper in Zangoose-controlled areas are dead (and vice versa). Basculin is well-established to school only with its own kind.

So yeah. Boss designs as they are, nothing about Heatmor and Durant makes sense.
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I imagine someone who wasn't in charge of the game mechanics/didn't know much about them thought it would work because you need a large amount of heat to melt steel.
 
Isn't it possible that heatmor simply evolved the fire type soon after durants started to become steel type? Sure, it's a short period. But I feel like pokemon evolution in the darwinist sense could easily be achieved because of types and magic being so intrisic to a pokemon and the fact that pokémon are seen to show intelligence and deductive logic. Heatmor was another type but had some fire moves, so they started to pull more from that. The arms races is tipping their favour, but soon durant might change itself the same way.
 
Lemingue said:
Isn't it possible that heatmor simply evolved the fire type soon after durants started to become steel type? Sure, it's a short period. But I feel like pokemon evolution in the darwinist sense could easily be achieved because of types and magic being so intrisic to a pokemon and the fact that pokémon are seen to show intelligence and deductive logic. Heatmor was another type but had some fire moves, so they started to pull more from that. The arms races is tipping their favour, but soon durant might change itself the same way.
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This is exactly what I was thinking.

I personally am of the assumption and headcanon that at one point in time, Heatmor wasn't a Fire type and Durant wasn't a Steel-type. At one point, to protect itself from Heatmor, Durant evolved steel armor to make itself resistant to Heatmor, who may have been a Normal or Poison-type at one point. Needing to find a way to eat its favorite food, Heatmor had to adapt and many Heatmor adapted by learning how to harness fire to melt through Durant's steel armor, and this became an integral part of their physique as time went on, just as Durant's steel armor became integral to it.

It's an idea of co-evolution where they are both trying to adapt to survive since Durant is trying to protect itself from Heatmor, but Heatmor in turn needs to find a way to survive and continue to prey on Durant, its favored prey.
 
ScraftyIsTheBest said:
This is exactly what I was thinking.

I personally am of the assumption and headcanon that at one point in time, Heatmor wasn't a Fire type and Durant wasn't a Steel-type. At one point, to protect itself from Heatmor, Durant evolved steel armor to make itself resistant to Heatmor, who may have been a Normal or Poison-type at one point. Needing to find a way to eat its favorite food, Heatmor had to adapt and many Heatmor adapted by learning how to harness fire to melt through Durant's steel armor, and this became an integral part of their physique as time went on, just as Durant's steel armor became integral to it.

It's an idea of co-evolution where they are both trying to adapt to survive since Durant is trying to protect itself from Heatmor, but Heatmor in turn needs to find a way to survive and continue to prey on Durant, its favored prey.
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Hmm, interesting. I hadn't considered this but I like this theory!
 
Dire Dire Docks said:
I imagine someone who wasn't in charge of the game mechanics/didn't know much about them thought it would work because you need a large amount of heat to melt steel.
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I don't imagine that was it. Sugimori himself designed both Durant & Heatmor as counterparts. His vision of them was essentially the same as it is with their real life basis: he saw Durants digging tunnels & caves and then Heatmor comes in and eats them. If anything, it maybe sounds more like the dex writers thought they needed a way to explain why the Durant was part Steel... with an explanation that made no sense. If they wanted to hint Durant became Steel-type because of Heatmor, maybe they could have said "to ignore predation by Heatmor, they became part Steel so they could dig through dirt and rock better, but only made themselves more vulnerable to Heatmor's flaming tongue".

Lemingue said:
Isn't it possible that heatmor simply evolved the fire type soon after durants started to become steel type?
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That is also how I took it initially.

So now we need Durant to adapt having a Fire-type weakening/absorbing Ability, and then Heatmor adapting Mold Breaker, and Durant adapting to learn Gastro Acid, etc., etc.. Keep playing a game one one-upping the other until they run out of ideas, lol.
 
Pikachu315111 said:
I don't imagine that was it. Sugimori himself designed both Durant & Heatmor as counterparts. His vision of them was essentially the same as it is with their real life basis: he saw Durants digging tunnels & caves and then Heatmor comes in and eats them. If anything, it maybe sounds more like the dex writers thought they needed a way to explain why the Durant was part Steel... with an explanation that made no sense. If they wanted to hint Durant became Steel-type because of Heatmor, maybe they could have said "to ignore predation by Heatmor, they became part Steel so they could dig through dirt and rock better, but only made themselves more vulnerable to Heatmor's flaming tongue".



That is also how I took it initially.

So now we need Durant to adapt having a Fire-type weakening/absorbing Ability, and then Heatmor adapting Mold Breaker, and Durant adapting to learn Gastro Acid, etc., etc.. Keep playing a game one one-upping the other until they run out of ideas, lol.
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And thus, one became Normal. The other became Ghost
now neither can hurt each other for stab
 
Pikachu315111 said:
So now we need Durant to adapt having a Fire-type weakening/absorbing Ability, and then Heatmor adapting Mold Breaker, and Durant adapting to learn Gastro Acid, etc., etc.. Keep playing a game one one-upping the other until they run out of ideas, lol.
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Still waiting on Poison/Fighting Seviper to counter Zangoose's Immunity and Toxic Boost...
 
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Siggu said:
The Chikorita line has a very similar problem in that, compared to the Bulbasaur line, the Defense and Special Attack base stats are swapped.

The Totodile line has it a little better as Speed and Defense are the only stats that were NOT swapped compared to the Squirtle line.
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God, Johto is such a bizarre region in terms of stats. G/S/C's rough development really shows there. I mean, what the hell is up with Ledian? There's a theory that its Attack and Special Defense were accidentally swapped during development.
 
The Johto starters in general have the issue of being statistical rehashes of the Kanto ones. Cyndaquil's line is the most blatant, and as Siggu mentioned above the Chikorita line's stats are the Bulbasaur line's stats with the Defense and Special Attack swapped, but the Totodile line also has the issue to a lesser degree where their stats are the Squirtle line's exact stat values just arranged differently.

This isn't just the Johto starters either though. Lugia and Ho-oh's stats are Mewtwo's stats with the exact values just rearranged as well. Tyranitar's stats are not totally rearranged from Dragonite's, but you can tell they still used Dragonite's stats as a basis.
 
Early in development I think they used the knato starters as placeholder stats for the johto starters. With all the resets I imagine they had intent to swap around Cyndaquil's stats but just...didn't.

Likewise it wouldn't surprise me if they did just want the starters (& other "similar" important pokemon like the 680s and the 600s) to be "equivalent", and there for use the same stats but moved around.

Then by gen 3 they decided there should be more unique flavor among them.
 
Sonikku A said:
I can confirm that this is true
Man, DS and Story were wasted potential...
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It took me like a decade to 100% DS, though I lost the cartridge at least once. That’s a hard game, thought I think it’s roughly average in terms of enjoyability.

The original is just so amazing, but at least Wooly World exists, right?

(Crafted World sucks.)
 
R_N said:
Early in development I think they used the Kanto starters as placeholder stats for the Johto starters. With all the resets I imagine they had intent to swap around Cyndaquil's stats but just...didn't.
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Actually, the bigger issue is Cyndaquil was rushed in
With scrapping the flame seal and Dynabear line just becoming Teddiursa, an unrelated spike mon (Cyndaquil) was suddenly made into a fire starter. That would explain why they didn't even swap its stats
 
DrumstickGaming said:
It took me like a decade to 100% DS, though I lost the cartridge at least once. That’s a hard game, thought I think it’s roughly average in terms of enjoyability.

The original is just so amazing, but at least Wooly World exists, right?

(Crafted World sucks.)
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I'm honestly mad how Nintendo effectively went "screw Yoshi, send him to 3rd party devs" and "make most games craft based for aesthetics"
With Arzest being incredibly shoddy, and Good Feel despite doing good for Wooly World just rehash horribly for Crafted World
Story could have been a great mission based game like Mario 64. They didn't
DS replicated OG's mechanics and the babies could've lead to great things. But art clash, poor/cheap level design, and the swapping system hurt
And then they just rehash OG in references later games
honestly it's somehow a sadder situation than NSMB, but for an entire sub franchise
 
Sonikku A said:
Actually, the bigger issue is Cyndaquil was rushed in
With scrapping the flame seal and Dynabear line just becoming Teddiursa, an unrelated spike mon (Cyndaquil) was suddenly made into a fire starter. That would explain why they didn't even swap its stats
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There's the "bear" connection between Teddiursa and Dynabear, but IIRC it was actually the Kotora line that got replaced with/turned into Teddiursa.
 
UninspiredLunch said:
I've never understood what the big deal was supposed to be with the stats, it's not like any of the starter lines are conceptually similar. Is every Electric type design a rehash because 90% of them use the same "high speed and spa" template? Also Typhlosion was arguably at its strongest in GSC with Thunderpunch.
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See, there's giving a lot of Pokémon a certain stat archetype, and then there's literally copy-pasting every single stat for an entire evolution line from an older evolution line. Yes, the two lines end up being sufficiently different for reasons unrelated to stats, but this still reeks of rushing.
 
R_N said:
While Teddiursa & Ursaring replaced Kotora & Raitora's spots, teddiursa's scartchpad, where they were working through design changes, shows they were using the fire bear as a basis
PM2F_216.CBB.w128.png
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inb5 there’s a Fire-type regional Teddiursa line down the road, perhaps as a Sun bear.

On a more serious note, now that we’re gonna have access to fossil revival from actual professionals in BDSP, I *really* hope we get access to the base forms of the Galar fossils. The joke was funny the first time but if it continues for much longer...
 
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