(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

[R_N]

DrrT 's post about the return of mega cards and the mess that was the original mega card designs reminds me of the most baffling secret rare situation in the series

The first 5 or so sets with Mega cards had secret rare versions, which you would expect, but instead of the traditional "full arts" (full body cg model doing some pose on a funky background) it was....

Like okay here's regular Mega Lucario EX

here's the secret rare Mega Lucario EX

Literally just...a golden border you'd be forgiven for missing over all the other clutter on the card. I already have issues with a lot of ex & secret ex arts due to the 3D models but there's no getting around this (a later promotional card released once they shifted to full art mega secret rares around Primal Clash)

Is SIGNIFICANTLY better looking as a "hype pull".

 

[Basedwell]

SV only cares about met level for your own Pokémon, not current level. Unless you're deliberately ignoring the gyms for some reason, you should never actually run into it in SV.

I SWORE my starter had stopped obeying me. I guess I’m going crazy lol

 

[Omastar68]

In explorers of sky when you go to sky peak, and they think on the 6th clearing the ice type sneasel collapsed from cold LOL. Also that evil shaymin ally, wastes reviver seed.

 

[pika pal]

In light of the Legends Z-A starter reveal, people have speculated about the starters getting Megas, Regional variants, or both, and it dawns on me that regardless of what option they go with, some Starter trio is just going to have a single odd-duck out unless they throw them in for the extra members (which isn't a guarantee either since the LA starters were their only respective members obtainable in the game, much less with forms).

- Megas will leave Typhlosion without one for Johto, and Tepig as the sole Mega Starter for Unova
- Regionals will leave Serperior as the only Unova Starter without a Variant, and Decidueye as the only Alola starter with one.

Even the double ups will still leave the "only one has" cases for the various trios. The cleanest way at that point is to just exempt them from either gimmick, which seems like a massive marketing mistake especially after XY original had the issue of your Starter with no Mega being easily eclipsed by the Kanto Starter WITH a Mega.

Just another reason the Z-A starters bother me on the Johto double-up. Even if this was a rebalance thing, Feraligatr was in an acceptable enough spot to use another Water starter (Empoleon and Inteleon were right there).

 

[Esserise]

In light of the Legends Z-A starter reveal, people have speculated about the starters getting Megas, Regional variants, or both, and it dawns on me that regardless of what option they go with, some Starter trio is just going to have a single odd-duck out unless they throw them in for the extra members (which isn't a guarantee either since the LA starters were their only respective members obtainable in the game, much less with forms).

I think with these Legends Starter trios, Game Freak probably regard them as being detached from the context of their “original” trio, and thus don’t really see a reason to retroactively equalize things.

I mean, I guess they could secretly be playing the long game and already be planning for Legends: Jirachi to feature Snivy, Litten, and Popplio as the choices, but I think it’s more likely that they view “Chikorita, Cyndaquil, and Totodile” as one group associated with Johto, and then “Chikorita, Tepig, and Totodile (that culminate in either a regional form or a Mega)” as another group associated with Lumiose City.

Ultimately, they still don’t seem willing to introduce all-new Starters mid-generation, so reworking old Starters to have new final forms is just a way to mix up the second game of a generation, instead of recycling the trio from the primary game, as was the practice with third versions. (Though I suppose there was nothing stopping them from curveballing and having Z-A’s Starters just be Sprigatito, Fuecoco, and Quaxly with either regional forms or Megas. Maybe that’s an idea for the future.)

 

[Hugin]

- Megas will leave Typhlosion without one for Johto, and Tepig as the sole Mega Starter for Unova
- Regionals will leave Serperior as the only Unova Starter without a Variant, and Decidueye as the only Alola starter with one.

The obvious solution is Regionals for ZA's starters(and Megas for the Kalos starters), and then again regionals for the next Legends with Serperior/Primarina/Inceneroar. Or, more likely, some combo of Serp/Prim/Incin and the Sinnoh starters, which haven't gotten any love ever.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

In light of the Legends Z-A starter reveal, people have speculated about the starters getting Megas, Regional variants, or both, and it dawns on me that regardless of what option they go with, some Starter trio is just going to have a single odd-duck out unless they throw them in for the extra members (which isn't a guarantee either since the LA starters were their only respective members obtainable in the game, much less with forms).

- Megas will leave Typhlosion without one for Johto, and Tepig as the sole Mega Starter for Unova
- Regionals will leave Serperior as the only Unova Starter without a Variant, and Decidueye as the only Alola starter with one.

Even the double ups will still leave the "only one has" cases for the various trios. The cleanest way at that point is to just exempt them from either gimmick, which seems like a massive marketing mistake especially after XY original had the issue of your Starter with no Mega being easily eclipsed by the Kanto Starter WITH a Mega.

Just another reason the Z-A starters bother me on the Johto double-up. Even if this was a rebalance thing, Feraligatr was in an acceptable enough spot to use another Water starter (Empoleon and Inteleon were right there).

Now I know why they didn't pick Piplup. They didn't want to give Empoleon a Mega!!!

 

[Faux Focalors Furina]

Now I know why they didn't pick Piplup. They didn't want to give Empoleon a Mega!!!

Inside of me would like to thank arceus for not making snivy as the starter for legends za all because, if it had a mega evo or regional form 51/49 it would have a mediocre to ok at best regional/mega form compared to its original form or, have absolutely broken power in it's hand with some dual typing of some sort like grass/dragon or grass/fairy and have some form of coverage (heatran can easily beat those two dual types but eh).

 

[Omastar68]

I SORTA dislike, but I'm not sure, fixed animations in non competitive. I mean you can't turn them off(or am I blind lol, and not seeing the option eek.)

*SV

 

[R_N]

I SORTA dislike, but I'm not sure, fixed animations in non competitive. I mean you can't turn them off(or am I blind lol, and not seeing the option eek.)

*SV

yeah for some reason SV (& L:A) removed the ability to turn off animations.
not like you can even blame the open aesthetic since they could just replace it with very standard smacking effects as usual.

At least with Z-A it'll make sense why that feature will, presumably, continue to be absent

 

[AztecCroc]

yeah for some reason SV (& L:A) removed the ability to turn off animations.
not like you can even blame the open aesthetic since they could just replace it with very standard smacking effects as usual.

At least with Z-A it'll make sense why that feature will, presumably, continue to be absent

Honestly I never got why it was a thing to begin with? It's not something RPGs typically feature, and it seems like it would have been more effort to add to begin with. Also outside of speedrunning why would you want to make the game less interesting to look at?

 

[R_N]

Honestly I never got why it was a thing to begin with? It's not something RPGs typically feature, and it seems like it would have been more effort to add to begin with. Also outside of speedrunning why would you want to make the game less interesting to look at?

It's probably not that complex a feature to add, but sometimes people just want to blitz through things even if they aren't speedrunning.
Similar to the battle fast forward options various square games have gotten over the years, sometimes you just want to be done with the cruft or repeated actions so you can move on.



Also lord knows it was crucial Dynamax Raids so they only took a month to complete instead of a year.

 

[Bakugames]

Also outside of speedrunning why would you want to make the game less interesting to look at?

Some people play these games repeatedly and don't want to waste time on battle animations. At a certain point they're not making battles prettier because you're just tuning out anything that happens in between picking a move and seeing what move the opponent picked. I also think its a decent accessibility option as if you find the battles to be flashing or uncomfortable you can just turn it off

 

[CynicalGiant]

Some people play these games repeatedly and don't want to waste time on battle animations. At a certain point they're not making battles prettier because you're just tuning out anything that happens in between picking a move and seeing what move the opponent picked. I also think its a decent accessibility option as if you find the battles to be flashing or uncomfortable you can just turn it off

speaking of accessibility, it still bothers me that I couldn't enjoy Let's Go fully because they insisted on it being entirely motion controls you can't turn off, so if I want to play it I have to subject myself to pain.

but yeah, in terms of animations a lot of rpgs let you do it either outright turning it off or just letting you spam a specific button to end an animation early. the latter is a lot more common afaik.

 

[CPU]

I swear I didn't use motion controls when I played Let's Go Pikachu but it's been a hot minute so I could just be misremembering.

 

[Worldie]

You don't need to use the motion controls to catch in Let's Go if you're playing in handheld mode.
It kinda helped back then as I *really* sucked at throwing the ball.

 

[Dusk Mage Necrozma]

Charge Beam is so much less consistent than Power-Up Punch: not only does it have 90% accuracy but the stat increase only has a 70% chance of triggering. I know it's the tradeoff for a whopping 20 more BP, but since the moves feel like counterparts to me, Charge Beam always feels so disappointing.

 

[Basedwell]

Honestly I never got why it was a thing to begin with? It's not something RPGs typically feature, and it seems like it would have been more effort to add to begin with. Also outside of speedrunning why would you want to make the game less interesting to look at?

In older generations, it was intended you play through the games multiple times, and there would be grinding/repetitive battles. Turning off animations helps speed things up.

They also really needed to get a handle on so many lines of messages during battles. I can’t even run a weather mon or leftovers in casual play with animations on because the extra time it causes each turn is annoying.

By this point you’re clearly intended to play the games once, and grinding is discouraged. Watching VGC might be better without animations honestly. I’m not sure because I’ve only played on Showdown and haven’t watched THAT much footage.

Also the 2-3 second animations before each battle are annoying and repetitive especially when your Pokemon look like shit lol

 

[R_N]

In older generations, it was intended you play through the games multiple times, and there would be grinding/repetitive battles. Turning off animations helps speed things up.

They also really needed to get a handle on so many lines of messages during battles. I can’t even run a weather mon or leftovers in casual play with animations on because the extra time it causes each turn is annoying.

By this point you’re clearly intended to play the games once, and grinding is discouraged. Watching VGC might be better without animations honestly. I’m not sure because I’ve only played on Showdown and haven’t watched THAT much footage.

Also the 2-3 second animations before each battle are annoying and repetitive especially when your Pokemon look like shit lol

I really don't think it was intended for you to play through the game multiple times, it just incidentally supported it because the games were simpler & had less dialog make it easier to just mash and get where you want.
Even back then they wanted you to trade for one offs and use your copy as your "base" for building competitive teams and so on. I think them doubling down on this over the years is less a change in philosophy and more just making it more explicit

There's never going to be a point where VGC turns it off. It's a public event & meant to be somewhat of a specatcle. Now we can tut-tut on how ugly and crashprone the game is but conceptually just seeing mostly motionless sprites bonk at each other isn't that enticing to most people, especially any casual audience, I guarantee. There's likely a reason that the moment they had stuff like Stadium, that became the go-to way of presenting competitive battles until gen 5 where now there was a "camera" and cosntantly moving sprites to go with their attack animations.


but also oh my god yes they need to overhaul the text system massively. They've done a bit to try & speed things up while still having the spectacle, like the ability overlays, trying to increase the speed at which things fall, SV attack animations are generally* much faster (to the point that a lot of moves that used to have very intricate animations now...dont...) but text fields are still one of those things where there's a lot of them and very slow. Snappy ability cut-ins don't mean anything if its accompanied by what feels like endless text. Anything that raises multiple stats in particular just makes everything crawl. Maybe have equally snappy text appear elsewhere than the message box could help, I dunno, but something's gotta give. If not Gen 10, then maybe Champions will take the opportunity to try & change things for the better, sort of like what PBR attempted.


*and then there's SV shadow ball, which takes so long to complete that I avoid using it in tera raids. Absolutely no clue what they were thinking on this one, especially since it's such a bread & butter move. At least the extra tera effects have purpose of spectacle for your once-a-game transformation and don't feel as egregious as Dynamaxing & Max Moves

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Y'all soft and wouldn't last a full 6v6 OU battle in Stadium 2.

But to be fair, neither would most GSC OU players


Honestly, I don't mind the animation trigger getting cut, but whoever mentioned the ability to press a button to play them in 2x speed was right. That sounds a bit better, especially when grinding.

 

[Basedwell]

I really don't think it was intended for you to play through the game multiple times, it just incidentally supported it because the games were simpler & had less dialog make it easier to just mash and get where you want.
Even back then they wanted you to trade for one offs and use your copy as your "base" for building competitive teams and so on. I think them doubling down on this over the years is less a change in philosophy and more just making it more explicit

So games where, for the first three generations, starting a new game was as easy as choosing “new game,” from one of three options on the main menu, games where you were forced to make team choices, with some decisions being final such as your starter pick, and there wasn’t enough xp or opportunity to use more than 6-8 Pokemon per game, didn’t intend to have replay ability as a core game option.

There’s a reason people used to talk about doing “runs” in older generations with certain rules regarding team building or battling. Not everyone had multiple save files but plenty did and it was clearly an option intended to increase your time spent playing.

Tms and items were relatively easy to trade between games. Tons of people had collections of said items for this reason, and for competitive you need multiple copies of some tms that were one-offs in some games.

There's never going to be a point where VGC turns it off. It's a public event & meant to be somewhat of a specatcle. Now we can tut-tut on how ugly and crashprone the game is but conceptually just seeing mostly motionless sprites bonk at each other isn't that enticing to most people, especially any casual audience, I guarantee. There's likely a reason that the moment they had stuff like Stadium, that became the go-to way of presenting competitive battles until gen 5 where now there was a "camera" and cosntantly moving sprites to go with their attack animations.

Yes I agree there. The spectacle is certainly part of it in Game Freak’s eyes. I personally disagree and feel like something should change in presentation to make it more interesting to watch, and I do think Champions will work on that since they will likely do everything to make VGC more appealing. Not in the way I want, but I think tournaments and online presentation as a whole will improve.

but also oh my god yes they need to overhaul the text system massively. They've done a bit to try & speed things up while still having the spectacle, like the ability overlays, trying to increase the speed at which things fall, SV attack animations are generally* much faster (to the point that a lot of moves that used to have very intricate animations now...dont...) but text fields are still one of those things where there's a lot of them and very slow. Snappy ability cut-ins don't mean anything if its accompanied by what feels like endless text. Anything that raises multiple stats in particular just makes everything crawl. Maybe have equally snappy text appear elsewhere than the message box could help, I dunno, but something's gotta give. If not Gen 10, then maybe Champions will take the opportunity to try & change things for the better, sort of like what PBR attempted.

this could be a way to improve VGC presentation like I was talking about above. I’m sure it will come sooner or later as it’s mindnumbingly obvious. Leaving it in-game isn’t the worst IG as it comes up less then and new players have a big learning curve.

*and then there's SV shadow ball, which takes so long to complete that I avoid using it in tera raids. Absolutely no clue what they were thinking on this one, especially since it's such a bread & butter move. At least the extra tera effects have purpose of spectacle for your once-a-game transformation and don't feel as egregious as Dynamaxing & Max Moves

Maybe in Z:A you can blow on the screen!! Lol now that you mention it that animation stuck out when playing S/V.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Yes I agree there. The spectacle is certainly part of it in Game Freak’s eyes. I personally disagree and feel like something should change in presentation to make it more interesting to watch, and I do think Champions will work on that since they will likely do everything to make VGC more appealing. Not in the way I want, but I think tournaments and online presentation as a whole will improve.

To be frank, I don't expect much out of Champions presentation-wise, besides having arenas that aren't as hideous as Gen 9's.

The real kicker was they the showed they're using the exact same animations as Gen 9 for attacks, so realistically, there's not a lot of room for change. They DESPERATELY need a dynamic camera and more animations like PBR had, but...

 

[Basedwell]

To be frank, I don't expect much out of Champions presentation-wise, besides having arenas that aren't as hideous as Gen 9's.

The real kicker was they the showed they're using the exact same animations as Gen 9 for attacks, so realistically, there's not a lot of room for change. They DESPERATELY need a dynamic camera and more animations like PBR had, but...

I can’t envision a mobile game running as badly as Gen 9 has looked pacing wise. But that certainly isn’t promising lol

 

[R_N]

So games where, for the first three generations, starting a new game was as easy as choosing “new game,” from one of three options on the main menu, games where you were forced to make team choices, with some decisions being final such as your starter pick, and there wasn’t enough xp or opportunity to use more than 6-8 Pokemon per game, didn’t intend to have replay ability as a core game option.

There’s a reason people used to talk about doing “runs” in older generations with certain rules regarding team building or battling. Not everyone had multiple save files but plenty did and it was clearly an option intended to increase your time spent playing.

Tms and items were relatively easy to trade between games. Tons of people had collections of said items for this reason, and for competitive you need multiple copies of some tms that were one-offs in some games.

Correct, I believe this whole-heartedly. I mean sure they weren't going to stop people from wanting to replay if they wanted to, getting rid of New Game would be a bizarre omission*, but yes I do believe they did not intend for you to keep restarting again and again and again to try all these millions kinds of runs. They wanted you to grind endless stat exp and fight each other forever, while trading for stuff you needed.
GS development, judging from various emails and such, was even guided towards trying to lean into the growing competitive aspect, which would definitely want you to remain in your single file if possible. Heck breeding meant you didn't have to trade as much (& most trades you did do were now much less restrictive) and TMs could be passed around easier.

The code needed to restart new games from Gen 4 onward honestly should have been there from the start because there's only a single save fiel and feels like they finally implemented it less to make sure you stay in your lane and more for the years of "my cousin deleted my game save and I lost everything I built up" [definitely not speaking as someone who had this happen 3 times somehow....]. Granted RB probably couldn't have had that anyway, it was so packed and desperate for space as it was which is why they had to choose between multiple save slots or nicknames, but Gen 3 probably should've had it.



*OK well having said that, Switch's games kind of did exactly this but also wound up being the system where you can have multiple save slots and both of this is due to the profile system so it's kind of funny how this all panned out in the end. Even funnier since one "copy" of Home can move between profiles so it's even easier to restart runs without losing as much, actually.

 

[CynicalGiant]

I would doubt they ever intended people to replay their games multiple times given just how rare it is for most players to even complete a game the first time.