(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

[Hugin]

Just make them raid battles. We have the technology now

Except that raid battles are either hard enough that you depend on the NPCs being useful to win, or they're so easy that you can win even with Fisherman Steve and his Magikarp occupying 3 slots.

I particularly disliked the Eternatus fight. Why was I the player even present for that? The wolves did all the work.

 

[R_N]

Except that raid battles are either hard enough that you depend on the NPCs being useful to win, or they're so easy that you can win even with Fisherman Steve and his Magikarp occupying 3 slots.

I particularly disliked the Eternatus fight. Why was I the player even present for that? The wolves did all the work.

Honestly only the SWSH regular raids were that bad.

Having done a lot of Tera Raids of varying difficulty, the SV CPU are broadly useful enough that you don't need to reroll unless it's a very specific kind of raid. Even at their worst it taps out at "I wish you would realize you cant use status here".

Meanwhile Dynamax adventures were just better across the board because they had actual Pokemon at their disposal. Definitely sometimes there would be duds but often they would come in clutch. The big benefit of Adventures is the lack of shields.

 

[yourDeadGrandad]

One thing that bothers me about the ‘hard’ Pokémon types (other than Ice not resisting Normal - it’s weak to Fighting, it should resist Normal), is that stacking them together makes them easier for Fighting to break.

I mean we all understand the Mohn’s Hardness Scale:

Ice < Rock < Steel

Where each level is Super Effective against the levels below it.

And you could argue that mixing Rock or Ice with Steel would make the Steel weaker and so easier for Fighting to damage.

But why is Rock reinforced with Steel (eg. Bastiodon) now twice as easy for Fighting to break? Compared to a pure Rock typing?

It just doesn’t make sense.

 

[Ironmage]

i mean, are they? even back in the day you had shinies that had very minor changes (clefairy line, scyther). the point of them is to be a rare thing to collect, the only time their designs and color choices have had some sort of system are when the devs artificially make some popular pokemon have black shinies to have cooler material or stuff like the future paradoxes all being chrome

If I remember right, shiny forms were only capable of being an artistic choice in gen 3. Gen 2 shinies were just the next colour palette in sequence.

 

[AztecCroc]

If I remember right, shiny forms were only capable of being an artistic choice in gen 3. Gen 2 shinies were just the next colour palette in sequence.

Nope. That's a disproven rumor, shiny color pallettes are completely manually defined. There is no algorithm for them.

I swear the people who started that rumor have never played a gen 2 romhack.

They literally left the debug color test in the game. It takes one GameShark code to access and lets you arbitrarily change any color in a sprite's pallette to any other color the GBC can display, fully individually.

 

[Samtendo09]

One thing that bothers me about the ‘hard’ Pokémon types (other than Ice not resisting Normal - it’s weak to Fighting, it should resist Normal), is that stacking them together makes them easier for Fighting to break.

I mean we all understand the Mohn’s Hardness Scale:

Ice < Rock < Steel

Where each level is Super Effective against the levels below it.

And you could argue that mixing Rock or Ice with Steel would make the Steel weaker and so easier for Fighting to damage.

But why is Rock reinforced with Steel (eg. Bastiodon) now twice as easy for Fighting to break? Compared to a pure Rock typing?

It just doesn’t make sense.

Such is the nature of the type calculation. Trying to program each individual weakness for each individual species would be a nightmare to do in terms of how time-consuming it is even back in the first two generations.

With all that said, any Rock / Steel Pokémon should have an Ability that either reduce damage from Fighting and Ground akin to Thick Fat, or that grant immunity to one of those two double weaknesses. Or, really, anything to mitigate this big problem.

 

[pika pal]

Personally I just always found the Steel Weakness to Fighting a bit absurd. Steel is made for weaponry/armor specifically meant to be more effective than flesh, to the point that a fighter breaking through such (as opposed to avoiding a weapon or getting a hit through a gap in armor) is supposed to be a giant "Oh god!" moment. Ice I sort of get if you consider it like a sheet instead of a block, but Steel in practice as much as by its nature is specifically supposed to be resilient against things like being hit by Physical peoples' blows.

 

[Nokocchi]

Personally I just always found the Steel Weakness to Fighting a bit absurd. Steel is made for weaponry/armor specifically meant to be more effective than flesh, to the point that a fighter breaking through such (as opposed to avoiding a weapon or getting a hit through a gap in armor) is supposed to be a giant "Oh god!" moment. Ice I sort of get if you consider it like a sheet instead of a block, but Steel in practice as much as by its nature is specifically supposed to be resilient against things like being hit by Physical peoples' blows.

It's quite simple, Steel and Dark were created not only to nerf Psychic, but also lift up Fighting Type which was near useless in Gen I. Hence why both were weak to Fighting.

Much like Fairy years later, Steel and Dark were intended to be balance patches to the type chart.

I know people would prefer some sort of in-universe reason but I feel the meta reason is as much if not more important.

 

[pika pal]

It's quite simple, Steel and Dark were created not only to nerf Psychic, but also lift up Fighting Type which was near useless in Gen I. Hence why both were weak to Fighting.

Much like Fairy years later, Steel and Dark were intended to be balance patches to the type chart.

I am aware of the gameplay motivation behind the weakness, but the flavor is much weaker for Steel than for Dark.

 

[ScraftyIsTheBest]

I think it's a matter of Fighting being, at least at the time, a "superhumanly strong" physical attacking type, with it contrasting the Normal-type as a "physical skill" type. Normal was the basic universal "physical attack" type at the time, with moves that were basic physical attacks like Body Slam, Take Down, Thrash, Slash, Double-Edge, etc. and Steel resisted that, while Fighting was the "unusually strong" physical attack type, the idea being that Fighting-types and their attacks are so strong that they can deal significant damage even to the most durable of physical material, with strength that far surpasses "Normal" physical strength (which is depicted in the Normal type, which is not very effective against Steel).

This shows in how the epitome Pokémon that embodies the Fighting-type's essence is none other than Machamp, whose gimmick is that it is inhumanly powerful with extremely strong muscles across its entire body, and it has so much physical strength that it can deliver extremely strong physical blows: a single punch from Machamp is so strong it can send the victim flying over the horizon, and it also has the ability to rapidfire deliver powerful punches and chops within seconds as a massive flurry: this combined makes it a physical force beyond normal (heh) physical strength. Its massive physical strength is so immense that it can effortlessly lift even a dump truck, and it can not only deliver a megaton strength punch to send an opponent flying, it can even effortlessly throw things across the horizon. Machamp is sort of the embodiment of the essence of the Fighting-type, and many Pokemon of that type are at least similar in build, such as Hariyama, Heracross, Conkeldurr (a direct expy of Machamp), Bewear, and so on and so forth.

But yeah I think that's what they're getting at: Fighting as the superhuman level physical type that has strength that can bypass most means of physical defense. It contrasts Normal in that regard, which is the basic physical type in the first three generations, and that type gets resisted by both Rock and Steel, and Fighting exists in relation to it as the superpowered version of physical skill type.

 

[Bakugames]

yeah fighting type isnt normal human fighting, its martial arts and their masters, which are more akin to demigods in their strength and journey than the real human martial arts adept. if anything, the flying type is the interaction thats more silly for them tbh

 

[DrPumpkinz]

yeah fighting type isnt normal human fighting, its martial arts and their masters, which are more akin to demigods in their strength and journey than the real human martial arts adept. if anything, the flying type is the interaction thats more silly for them tbh

Trying to break metal by slamming a bird against it is generally ineffective.

 

[Hugin]

yeah fighting type isnt normal human fighting, its martial arts and their masters, which are more akin to demigods in their strength and journey than the real human martial arts adept. if anything, the flying type is the interaction thats more silly for them tbh

(source)

 

[DrrT]

Assuming this is actually true and not just people making assumptions, great news for Tomohiro Kitakaze there is a lot of parts about the line that are not the armor that you could have changed instead of the solely tiniest part that is the bare minimum for a shiny differential

Pretty much this. The armor is not even the thing that comes to my mind when thinking about Ceruledge to begin with, an even then Armarouge can change a lot if you just make the flames itself different.

Like, it's very good and interesting that they respect the designers' thoughts about their creations when it comes to their creations and as an artist I can appreciate that, but not when it goes against the entire point of being shiny. Paldea has also many more instances about this (hi shiny Tauros I literally got just trying to get a special Breed to spawn and that I only ever noticed because Tinkaton didn't want to kill you which could have been a bug) but I think there is too much room between "I don't want to change the designs much" to "literally the only difference is that their very small eyes have a different shade". Ceruledge is genuinely harder to tell apart than Garchomp or Gengar. It wouldn't surprise me if memes aside Kitakaze (it's also not something that happens in their other designs which I love btw, but I guess maybe he maybe didn't have as much control on them) was literally told you do need some minimum change in the Shinies and he did that, the most absolute minimum, my question is how did that get into the final game without anyone asking for more.

I don't even like raids as they've been implemented in most cases, but using raid mechanics for legendaries really is the way to go with them imo; it makes their battles appropriately distinct, fitting in scale, and engaging, and spares the tedium of throwing Ultra Balls until one works. I'm not a fan of legendary fetch quests in general but there's a huge difference in how enjoyable it is in, say, ORAS versus in SWSH where it's tied to Dynamax Adventures.

This. It's just better in pretty much every aspect rathee than throwing one of the objectively better balls hoping it will land this time. The only time it was changed at all was probably unintended, with Repeat Balls working on the second Raidon, and even then it was more of a "oh that's cute"

Ogeepon's battle (and even Terapagos even if its more scripted) is a lot more engaging than the all powerful Calyrex refusing to get into your Ultra Ball for the 100th time while it's testing your...strength.

I am at least grateful SV went back to legendaries being actually in the overworld because there is at least some fun trying to locate them, but the actual capture part is still pretty annoying and outdated. It would be a lot more impressive for a Legendary to be tough to defeat or have some kind of threatening mechanic rather than how much they can drag the capture-specially when they have something like Rest.

But I do feel like this has been talked about a lot of times here, and I have been surprised and how many people actually agree.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Except that raid battles are either hard enough that you depend on the NPCs being useful to win, or they're so easy that you can win even with Fisherman Steve and his Magikarp occupying 3 slots.

I particularly disliked the Eternatus fight. Why was I the player even present for that? The wolves did all the work.

It doesn't need to be a team raid.

A properly balanced 1v1 raid-style battle where the legendary has inflated HP and some other kind of buff would work.

Totem mons were raid-like battles, and they were 1v... Well, 1v2 because they're weird with the jumping, but I think you get my point

 

[Karxrida]

View attachment 720471
(source)

I was actually going to make this joke verbatim as I was catching up but forgot it was from Awkward Zombie lmao.

It doesn't need to be a team raid.

A properly balanced 1v1 raid-style battle where the legendary has inflated HP and some other kind of buff would work.

Totem mons were raid-like battles, and they were 1v... Well, 1v2 because they're weird with the jumping, but I think you get my point

tbh I think this would be ideal, especially since the removal of Hidden Power and addition of Nature/IV editing mean you don't have to soft reset for stats outside of Attack (for Special Attackers) and Speed (for Trick Room). Just walk up to Ho-Oh or whatever, beat it up, and you're done. And if you do have to soft reset for stats it'll probably still be faster than waiting for the RNG to arbitrarily decide you've caught the Legendary.

 

[Hugin]

Honestly only the SWSH regular raids were that bad.

Having done a lot of Tera Raids of varying difficulty, the SV CPU are broadly useful enough that you don't need to reroll unless it's a very specific kind of raid. Even at their worst it taps out at "I wish you would realize you cant use status here".

Meanwhile Dynamax adventures were just better across the board because they had actual Pokemon at their disposal. Definitely sometimes there would be duds but often they would come in clutch. The big benefit of Adventures is the lack of shields.

I haven't willingly engaged with the Raid system since SWSH. I gave it a fair shot, but it sucked and was the opposite of fun. And even if they did fix the AI teams, they still didn't fix the fundamental problem with the AI. These are mons, that aren't yours or controlled by you the player, that are vital to winning the fight. That is not something I tend to want in a Pokemon game outside of very specific circumstances.

It doesn't need to be a team raid.

A properly balanced 1v1 raid-style battle where the legendary has inflated HP and some other kind of buff would work.

Totem mons were raid-like battles, and they were 1v... Well, 1v2 because they're weird with the jumping, but I think you get my point

I liked Totem Mons, I would be fine if that was the basis. They used the same basic battle system the rest of the game used, with simple, easily-explained changes, and, crucially, no other humans. Instead GF keeps pushing this cooperative multiplayer except without any ability to communicate or coordinate, which is awful for strategy-based multiplayer. Or you play single-player and you're reliant on NPCs who can't be part of any coherent strategy.

Either I win a raid DESPITE everyone else in the raid being awful, or I win because they carried me. Or we get our butts kicked. Which it is doesn't matter, I'm not going to feel good when I exit out.

 

[R_N]

It doesn't need to be a team raid.

A properly balanced 1v1 raid-style battle where the legendary has inflated HP and some other kind of buff would work.

Totem mons were raid-like battles, and they were 1v... Well, 1v2 because they're weird with the jumping, but I think you get my point

and also we already have a system like this in SV!
All the starmobiles are custom made revavrooms
The Ogerpon & Ursaluna battles that lead directly into captures I mentioned before were also solo affairs.

The final battle against the professor's raidon is another go at the "story victory lap" Eternamax had too.

All the Titans (& the loyal 3) have inflated HP values, and I think their "round two" halves have stat buffs. This is slightly offset by having one allied partner, so it's like the Totems not quire 1v1 but they're mostly just extra bodies for flavor.

I haven't willingly engaged with the Raid system since SWSH. I gave it a fair shot, but it sucked and was the opposite of fun. And even if they did fix the AI teams, they still didn't fix the fundamental problem with the AI. These are mons, that aren't yours or controlled by you the player, that are vital to winning the fight. That is not something I tend to want in a Pokemon game outside of very specific circumstances.

You're going to need to trust me here when I say the fundamental problem with the SWSH raids was not the AI being idiots, it was almost uniformly the AI's Pokemon being horrible combined with being punished harshly for their mistakes (also non-DS SWSH raids other myraid issues, but nevertheless).
The microsecond they get better pokemon- either at a base level like SV or the more random assortment from Dynamax Adventures- it is leagues better. I don't even mean that as damning with faint praise, I'm saying this as someone who probably put in over a dozen hours in Dynamax Adventures & Tera Raids. Then gets even better with SV raids where their losses don't penalize you with time loss.

 

[Hugin]

You're going to need to trust me here when I say the fundamental problem with the SWSH raids was not the AI being idiots, it was almost uniformly the AI's Pokemon being horrible combined with being punished harshly for their mistakes (also non-DS SWSH raids other myraid issues, but nevertheless).
The microsecond they get better pokemon- either at a base level like SV or the more random assortment from Dynamax Adventures- it is leagues better. I don't even mean that as damning with faint praise, I'm saying this as someone who probably put in over a dozen hours in Dynamax Adventures & Tera Raids. Then gets even better with SV raids where their losses don't penalize you with time loss.

When I say the fundamental problem with the AI, I don't mean that Pokemon's AI is dumb. I mean the fundamental problem is that the AI is on my side at all. Or other humans. The options in any given raid are:
My allies suck and we lose. I lost because of other people.
My allies suck and we win. I won despite dragging an anchor around that made things significantly harder than necessary.
My allies are great and we win. I got carried.
My allies are great and we lose. I clearly suck too much even to get carried.
My allies do not affect the outcome in any way.

In any situation except the last one, I close out of the game and feel terrible. In the last case, the other lanes are essentially irrelevant. So why have them? Why add multiplayer, or AI bot fake multiplayer, to a single-player experience? If I wanted Overwatch, I'd be playing that, and at least there, there's tactical interaction with your teammates and the ability to plan. Here, the addition of teammates doesn't add anything except problems.

If Gamefreak wants giant boss battles, as you point out, the Totems and Starmobiles are ways to do that that are PC vs NPC. I'm good with the Totem battles. If GF REALLY wants 4v1 battles, let the player control all 4 pokemon at once, eliminate the time limit, and quit doing so many arbitrary mechanic changes.

Some people really enjoy multiplayer, I get that. But I won't find it fun and will continue to be annoyed when GF tries to force the multiplayer experience on us.

 

[Just A Seaking]

I think it's a matter of Fighting being, at least at the time, a "superhumanly strong" physical attacking type, with it contrasting the Normal-type as a "physical skill" type. Normal was the basic universal "physical attack" type at the time, with moves that were basic physical attacks like Body Slam, Take Down, Thrash, Slash, Double-Edge, etc. and Steel resisted that, while Fighting was the "unusually strong" physical attack type, the idea being that Fighting-types and their attacks are so strong that they can deal significant damage even to the most durable of physical material, with strength that far surpasses "Normal" physical strength (which is depicted in the Normal type, which is not very effective against Steel).

This shows in how the epitome Pokémon that embodies the Fighting-type's essence is none other than Machamp, whose gimmick is that it is inhumanly powerful with extremely strong muscles across its entire body, and it has so much physical strength that it can deliver extremely strong physical blows: a single punch from Machamp is so strong it can send the victim flying over the horizon, and it also has the ability to rapidfire deliver powerful punches and chops within seconds as a massive flurry: this combined makes it a physical force beyond normal (heh) physical strength. Its massive physical strength is so immense that it can effortlessly lift even a dump truck, and it can not only deliver a megaton strength punch to send an opponent flying, it can even effortlessly throw things across the horizon. Machamp is sort of the embodiment of the essence of the Fighting-type, and many Pokemon of that type are at least similar in build, such as Hariyama, Heracross, Conkeldurr (a direct expy of Machamp), Bewear, and so on and so forth.

But yeah I think that's what they're getting at: Fighting as the superhuman level physical type that has strength that can bypass most means of physical defense. It contrasts Normal in that regard, which is the basic physical type in the first three generations, and that type gets resisted by both Rock and Steel, and Fighting exists in relation to it as the superpowered version of physical skill type.

I'd personally argue that the flavor explanation was secondary to the gameplay reason: that being that the Fighting type was, frankly, pathetic. I'd guess that GF overestimated the value of being super-effective against Normal, and as such it was a thoroughly underwhelming type in practice that had practically 0 viability to speak of in Nintendo Cup. I'd argue it was the worst type in RBY, even moreso than Poison. Flavor strikes me as a secondary consideration, and I think your argument here for the rationale makes complete sense, but it came after the first reason of the Fighting type being a complete joke. Giving Fighting a definitive offensive niche by attacking the two new types on the block in Dark and Steel, both of which were/are superb defensively, was a means of readjusting the type chart first and foremost.

This is partially supported by the Spaceworld prototype of GSC from well before Nintendo Cup, where Fighting didn't interact with Dark and was resisted by Steel. We don't have any hard evidence of this, of course, but I suspect that GF reacted dynamically to the results of Nintendo Cup when it comes to Dark and Steel.

 

[Worldie]

When I say the fundamental problem with the AI, I don't mean that Pokemon's AI is dumb. I mean the fundamental problem is that the AI is on my side at all. Or other humans. The options in any given raid are:
My allies suck and we lose. I lost because of other people.
My allies suck and we win. I won despite dragging an anchor around that made things significantly harder than necessary.
My allies are great and we win. I got carried.
My allies are great and we lose. I clearly suck too much even to get carried.
My allies do not affect the outcome in any way.

In any situation except the last one, I close out of the game and feel terrible. In the last case, the other lanes are essentially irrelevant. So why have them? Why add multiplayer, or AI bot fake multiplayer, to a single-player experience? If I wanted Overwatch, I'd be playing that, and at least there, there's tactical interaction with your teammates and the ability to plan. Here, the addition of teammates doesn't add anything except problems.

Is this where I chime in and remind you that you're missing the key point, the fact that GameFreaks is obsessed with making their games a social game and *force* you to play multiplayer in one or more ways?
On top of their attempt to keep the games as pseudo-liveservice by keeping the raid events happening every so often to have people come back to play the game instead of completely dropping them after finishing the pokedex.

The only reason we have AI is that the entire system requires the presence of 4 people, and they already struggle to make the system functional without needing to code it twice, both for SP and MP.

Also I don't understand why you say the AI is useless, they're very good for fueling my Magearna's ability

 

[Coronis]

Seems like they have been moving more and more towards these special encounter types of legendaries recently. I just hope for a mix tbh, I don’t mind the forced capture boss legendaries, but I also really do like the classic ones personally. I think the boss ones as story relevant legends/special mons and normal fights for the others seems appropriate to me.

 

[Karxrida]

Is this where I chime in and remind you that you're missing the key point, the fact that GameFreaks is obsessed with making their games a social game and *force* you to play multiplayer in one or more ways?
On top of their attempt to keep the games as pseudo-liveservice by keeping the raid events happening every so often to have people come back to play the game instead of completely dropping them after finishing the pokedex.

The only reason we have AI is that the entire system requires the presence of 4 people, and they already struggle to make the system functional without needing to code it twice, both for SP and MP.

Also I don't understand why you say the AI is useless, they're very good for fueling my Magearna's ability

That doesn't change the fact that it's still dumb.

I've raged at Party Finder in Final Fantasy XIV enough to know that there are way too many stupid people in the world.

 

[Omastar68]

One thing that bothers me about the ‘hard’ Pokémon types (other than Ice not resisting Normal - it’s weak to Fighting, it should resist Normal), is that stacking them together makes them easier for Fighting to break.

I mean we all understand the Mohn’s Hardness Scale:

Ice < Rock < Steel

Where each level is Super Effective against the levels below it.

And you could argue that mixing Rock or Ice with Steel would make the Steel weaker and so easier for Fighting to damage.

But why is Rock reinforced with Steel (eg. Bastiodon) now twice as easy for Fighting to break? Compared to a pure Rock typing?

It just doesn’t make sense.

I love your mind went Bast, not Aggron or idk probopass. I like all those rock/steel ofc...but use bast presently. ANYWAY, agreed! I can sorta see steel's ground weakness, idk. Fire for sure, rocks melt at higher temp so hey why not. But fight? idk at all. Ice should be at least a little better/ok.

 

[Kurona]

It's pretty odd they never came up with another use for the Dawn Stone. Immediately in Gen 5 they found new uses for the Shiny and Dusk stones and later gens would continue to do so as well; and even Gen 7's Ice Stone would get new uses. To say nothing of course of Gen 1's stones and the Sun Stone. But out of all the evolutionary stones, the Dawn Stone has uniquely only ever had a use for Pokémon introduced in its generation; and only two at that.

It's not even like they strayed away from gender-specific evolutions in later gens either, with Pokémon like Meowstic and Salazzle. I wonder if they just want to keep it to its very specific use (new cross-gen split evolution specific to one gender) and have never come up with anything like that since Gallade and Froslass that they really want to do.