While what you say about boss trainers packing counters to their weakness is true... the thing is that in Volkner and Flint's cases, it was due to a mistake. Their Platinum rosters confirm this.
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(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon
- Thread starter BriarRose
- Start date
Well, it was a Bug type as Skorupi, so it still kind of fits.
Drapion has what I like to call 3-type syndrome, basically meaning it's one of those Pokémon that could get away with having three types at once. In its case, that would be Bug/Poison/Dark. Some other Pokémon like this in my opinion include Dragonite, Lugia, Decidueye, Genesect (when holding a Drive), Incineroar, and Tyranitar.
Fishing For Patience: Yeah, I always felt annoyed with fishing in all the games. I get they want to add some "realism" or "skill", but honestly I'm already having to hope the RNG gives me the Pokemon I'm actually looking for so just save me time and make each time I fish catch a Pokemon (or an item, this would make it less annoying when I fish up an item instead of a Pokemon).
On one hand, yeah, it would certainly make Gym Battles more challenging if the Gym Leader carried Pokemon of Types that were counters to their weaknesses. It would encourage the player to have a varied team as they would now need a counter for the Gym Leader's counter.
But on the other hand, kind of defeats the purpose of the Gym Leader being a Type Specialist. The idea is that the Gym Leader is such a master of their preferred Type is that they have a counter strategy without needing to use a Pokemon outside of their Type. Now, yes, gameplay segregation (or just laziness on GF's part) often results them not doing this and easily blown past with one of their weaknesses. However it could also argued this is a "test" itself: did you raise a Pokemon which had a Type Advantage? If yes you're rewarded by being allowed to blast past the Gym, if not you're going to have a bit more of a battle on your hand.
Bug To Dark: Never understood why Drapion changed Type,or at least changed Type that removed its primary Typing. If they really wanted that Dark-typing than Bug/Dark would have worked fine. All removing the Bug-Typing did was make it strange why it was Aaron's ace. EDIT: Apparently there primary Type is Poison, huh,
"Well it was probably because they have so many Bug/Poison". Do they? At that point there was only 4 fully evolved Bug/Poison: Beedrill, Venomoth, Ariados, & Dustox. There was way more Bug/Flying which is arguably a worser type combination, yet we still got 3 more of those that generation: Mothim, Vespiquen, & Yanmega (joining Butterfree, Scyther*, Ledian, Beautifly, Masquerain, & Ninjask)
"But Dark/Poison is a pretty good combination, only weak to Ground!". In that case they should have made another Dark/Poison with the Levitate Ability if that's why they did it.
* I'm counting Scyther because it has the same BST as Scizor.
Hmm, I'm mixed on this thought.
On one hand, yeah, it would certainly make Gym Battles more challenging if the Gym Leader carried Pokemon of Types that were counters to their weaknesses. It would encourage the player to have a varied team as they would now need a counter for the Gym Leader's counter.
But on the other hand, kind of defeats the purpose of the Gym Leader being a Type Specialist. The idea is that the Gym Leader is such a master of their preferred Type is that they have a counter strategy without needing to use a Pokemon outside of their Type. Now, yes, gameplay segregation (or just laziness on GF's part) often results them not doing this and easily blown past with one of their weaknesses. However it could also argued this is a "test" itself: did you raise a Pokemon which had a Type Advantage? If yes you're rewarded by being allowed to blast past the Gym, if not you're going to have a bit more of a battle on your hand.
Bug To Dark: Never understood why Drapion changed Type,
"Well it was probably because they have so many Bug/Poison". Do they? At that point there was only 4 fully evolved Bug/Poison: Beedrill, Venomoth, Ariados, & Dustox. There was way more Bug/Flying which is arguably a worser type combination, yet we still got 3 more of those that generation: Mothim, Vespiquen, & Yanmega (joining Butterfree, Scyther*, Ledian, Beautifly, Masquerain, & Ninjask)
"But Dark/Poison is a pretty good combination, only weak to Ground!". In that case they should have made another Dark/Poison with the Levitate Ability if that's why they did it.
* I'm counting Scyther because it has the same BST as Scizor.
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Technically Drapion doesn't drop its primary type. Skorupi is Poison/Bug while Drapion is Poison/Dark.
The main reason was probably because they wanted the player to see every Pokemon in the regional dex so they can have Rowan unlock national dex mode in the post-game.
As for fishing, I'm just glad we don't have to sit there and press A at the right time multiple times before you can actually see what you've hooked... That was awful.
I feel there's a middle ground here. Elesa's gym in Black & White is a good example of how to do it right: Both of her Emolgas cover the Ground weakness, and the Zebstrika has Flame Charge to help against Grass types. Having a Ground type is still an advantage since they are immune to Electric, but it's a more even playing field. Another good example is Viola's gym in XY, which has a Surskit to counter Fire types.
If more gyms did this, I wouldn't have as much of a problem with the type specialist gimmick.
Yet Viola has no answer for Flying types. Perhaps Valerie is a better example, as her Mawile is immune to Poison and isn't weak to Steel, while Mr. Mime's Psychic discourages Poison types further.
There's also the fact that Chespin, which normally would struggle against a Bug gym, can sweep Viola with Rollout. But in general, it seems the later gens have much more flexibility with regards to Gym team construction. Such is the benefit of a wide, or at least well-constructed, Regional Dex (one of Kalos' strengths imo).
Yeah, good point.
Regarding the gym leaders, I would personally prefer them to use a certain ´tactic´ or ´gimmick´ or whatever you want to call it. This tactic can be combined with the gyms type specialty, so gym puzzles still have a theme to work with. The tactic that the gym leader uses would mostly serve to support the ace pokemon. The most obvious example of a tactic they can use is a weather team. So let´s take the water type as an example.
The gym leader´s specialty is water. The tactic he uses is rain. An good ace pokemon to give this gym leader is a water type swift swim sweeper. Then he obviously needs a pokemon or two who can actually set rain up, so let´s say say a drizzle user like pelipper and a new support prankster user that covers electric types. The final slot can be filled by an electric type pokemon that abuses thunder to cover other water types, like dry skin heliolisk.
A team like this can still be easily excused as a team a water type specialist would use, but it´s much more interesting than a team consisting of just water types. A grass type has to look out for hurricane which pelipper should obviously have, and maybe an ice beam from the ace just thrown in there. An electric type has to look out for the new prankster rain dance support, which would ideally be ground type. A water type can't tank the entire team of the gym leader with a water resistance either because of the thunder abuser. Basically, you need an actual TEAM of your own to bring this gym leader down. Not just one pokemon that happens to have a good matchup against the entire gym.
Other type/tactic combinations could be a psychic focused trick room team, a grass focused stall team, an electric focused electric terrain team, and the other weather teams of course.
These tactics can even extent to more general 'themes', like color schemes or certain animal groups or whatever. Just imagine an old cat lady gym leader who uses a persian, liepard, glameow, meowstic or an eeveelution. That would be hilarious, and much more interesting than just a type specialty. I think color scheme is another cool theme gym leaders could use. A simple color scheme of black and white with red accents has like 10 species of various types to work with. A lot of these pokemon share the same flavor as well, which gives the gym leader a lot of credibility as a trainer imo. Imagine a cool-cat dark type trainer with a team of weavile and krookodile, with staraptor there to cover fighting and bug. The regular trainers in the gym can use houndoom, honchkrow, throh, scolipede,darkrai, bisharp, incineroar, you name it. Theming isn't so hard.
I do want to point out that the pokemon that are deliberately NOT of the type that the gym leader specializes in, should be chosen carefully. They need to still fit the respective tactic or theme of the gym, despite not having the respective typing. A good example is Flints team in diamond and pearl. His drifblim feels fine in his team because it's a 'hot-air' balloon. Steelix and lopunny feel completely out of place though. They don't do a good job of at least covering some of Flints main pokemon's weaknesses. Steelix is weak to water and ground just like fire, and lopunny is normal type so it doesn't cover shit. Now, if Flint combined his fire type specialty with a tactic like sun, he could have used a grass type like cherrim or tangrowth to cover water and ground for him. Actually, now that I think about it, he does use sunny day, but he doesn't take much advantage of it. Btw, why he didn't just have a magmortar I will never know.
Sadly all this will never happen because it would be intuitive and challenging, and Gamefreak won't have that it seems.
The gym leader´s specialty is water. The tactic he uses is rain. An good ace pokemon to give this gym leader is a water type swift swim sweeper. Then he obviously needs a pokemon or two who can actually set rain up, so let´s say say a drizzle user like pelipper and a new support prankster user that covers electric types. The final slot can be filled by an electric type pokemon that abuses thunder to cover other water types, like dry skin heliolisk.
A team like this can still be easily excused as a team a water type specialist would use, but it´s much more interesting than a team consisting of just water types. A grass type has to look out for hurricane which pelipper should obviously have, and maybe an ice beam from the ace just thrown in there. An electric type has to look out for the new prankster rain dance support, which would ideally be ground type. A water type can't tank the entire team of the gym leader with a water resistance either because of the thunder abuser. Basically, you need an actual TEAM of your own to bring this gym leader down. Not just one pokemon that happens to have a good matchup against the entire gym.
Other type/tactic combinations could be a psychic focused trick room team, a grass focused stall team, an electric focused electric terrain team, and the other weather teams of course.
These tactics can even extent to more general 'themes', like color schemes or certain animal groups or whatever. Just imagine an old cat lady gym leader who uses a persian, liepard, glameow, meowstic or an eeveelution. That would be hilarious, and much more interesting than just a type specialty. I think color scheme is another cool theme gym leaders could use. A simple color scheme of black and white with red accents has like 10 species of various types to work with. A lot of these pokemon share the same flavor as well, which gives the gym leader a lot of credibility as a trainer imo. Imagine a cool-cat dark type trainer with a team of weavile and krookodile, with staraptor there to cover fighting and bug. The regular trainers in the gym can use houndoom, honchkrow, throh, scolipede,
I do want to point out that the pokemon that are deliberately NOT of the type that the gym leader specializes in, should be chosen carefully. They need to still fit the respective tactic or theme of the gym, despite not having the respective typing. A good example is Flints team in diamond and pearl. His drifblim feels fine in his team because it's a 'hot-air' balloon. Steelix and lopunny feel completely out of place though. They don't do a good job of at least covering some of Flints main pokemon's weaknesses. Steelix is weak to water and ground just like fire, and lopunny is normal type so it doesn't cover shit. Now, if Flint combined his fire type specialty with a tactic like sun, he could have used a grass type like cherrim or tangrowth to cover water and ground for him. Actually, now that I think about it, he does use sunny day, but he doesn't take much advantage of it. Btw, why he didn't just have a magmortar I will never know.
Sadly all this will never happen because it would be intuitive and challenging, and Gamefreak won't have that it seems.
Fun fact: Olivia in USUM has a sand setter in her Rock type team composition. Which is actually particularly annoying if you're running special attackers.
Sadly, she doesn't actually have Sand Rush or Sand Force users, but heh. At least that.
Eh, it´s not much better than Flint having sunny day on his team just for the sake of it in my opinion. Flint and Olivia don´t take much advantage of the weather. A big reason for that is because the game doesn´t allow them to have a pokemon that isn´t their specialty that COULD take advantage of the weather. Hell, even pokemon that do fit the gym leader's specialty don't get abilities that allow them to really take advantage of their weather. Now that you mention it, it´s quite baffling that Olivia doesn´t use lycanrock day form with sand rush instead of the dusk form. Missed opportunity.
I do think sun and moon at least TRIED to make some of the battles tricky and interesting. The sunny day castform + lurantis combo or the poison gas + venoshock salazzle are decent examples. This all falls short because it's a straight up unfair 2vs1 fight for you as the trainer, making the battle artificially hard. The totem battles would have been so much better if it was a fair 2vs2, balanced accordingly to that format. I think the gimmicks would come into their own better in a fair 2vs2.
He didn't have Magmortar because Magmar wasn't part of the regional dex. The only Fire types were Infernape and Rapidash. This was fixed in Platinum, and had pretty good coverage IIRC.
I don't mind if the Gym Leader has a gap in their coverage strategy (after all they aren't using a full party). I give a Gym Leader points if they at least took some of their weaknesses into account and planned around it.
My problem comes with Gym Leaders like Korrina who I can completely wall with a Ghost-type as only her Machoke knows a non-Fighting and Normal-type move, it's Rock Tomb and if you're using a Honedge it resists that...
I also don't mind them throwing a Starter a bone going up against an early Gym Leader that has a Type advantage over them, or a nearby trainer offering a trade for a Pokemon who can help in the Gym. You don't want a player to feel like they made the "wrong" choice, and while the player could just force their way through with neutral attacks, it doesn't hurt to reward either extra grinding or exploration for a more convenient solution.
Ah, but you're not describing a Water-type specialist, what you're describing in a Rain Weather specialist. Which isn't a bad idea, we've had Type specialists for so long a neat shake-up would be having trainers who focus on themes as you suggested. Weathers, Trick Room, setting up Hazards, afflicting certain Status ailments, species relations/groupings, aesthetics matching the trainer's character, etc., etc..
But let's not forget that Gym Leaders are essentially providing a test for the trainer. Maybe if you can rematch a Gym Leader later they could have a Pokemon not of their Type but there for coverage. But for their initial battle they're meant to see if the trainer has properly prepared for a Type they specialize in and any tricks that Type can pull.
If anything its the Elite Four and some Champion you got to question why don't they have coverage Pokemon. DP Flint should be the model not the exception, or the Elite Four/Champion shouldn't be strict Type Specialists.
Sorry for double-posting, though it's been more than two weeks since my last post.
So, a recent thing I realized that doesn't make sense: Gen VII having the player going on the Island Challenge when everyone knows it's not possible to complete!
Poni Island's Kahuna is dead and in vanilla SM the sole Captain has been missing for a while. Yet, you don't find any of this out until you arrive to Poni Island. So, what gives? Say the plot didn't happen, you and Hau finally arrive to Poni Island... and then what? No Kahuna, no Captain. Did the other Kahuna and Kukui not prepare for this?
Actually, where was Kukui during the whole Po Town raid, Aether Paradise raid, and venture to Poni Island? He's been following us everywhere else, but then after beating Guzma in Malie Garden he vanishes from the plot until the Pokemon League. Sure, he probably went to check on the progress of the Pokemon League after Malie Garden... but he (and the other Kahuna) still had to know the player and Hau can't complete the Island Challenge. Yet he made no attempts to try and meet up with us or tell us what we should do.
And considering Kukui invited all previous Island Challenge champions back, surely he and the other Kahuna could have set up one of them to be the final challenge on Poni Island. They could have introduced Kahili this way. You get to Poni Island and you're met by Kahili who explains the situation to you, but seeing you have other immediate plans says she'll wait for you to complete them, even suggesting for you to see Hapu. Hapu then becomes the new Kahuna and Kahili, seeing she's no longer needed, returns to the Pokemon League to tell Kakui and the other Kahuna there that Hapu has become the new Kahuna of Poni Island and she'll test the player and Hau as their final Island Challenge opponents.
So, a recent thing I realized that doesn't make sense: Gen VII having the player going on the Island Challenge when everyone knows it's not possible to complete!
Poni Island's Kahuna is dead and in vanilla SM the sole Captain has been missing for a while. Yet, you don't find any of this out until you arrive to Poni Island. So, what gives? Say the plot didn't happen, you and Hau finally arrive to Poni Island... and then what? No Kahuna, no Captain. Did the other Kahuna and Kukui not prepare for this?
Actually, where was Kukui during the whole Po Town raid, Aether Paradise raid, and venture to Poni Island? He's been following us everywhere else, but then after beating Guzma in Malie Garden he vanishes from the plot until the Pokemon League. Sure, he probably went to check on the progress of the Pokemon League after Malie Garden... but he (and the other Kahuna) still had to know the player and Hau can't complete the Island Challenge. Yet he made no attempts to try and meet up with us or tell us what we should do.
And considering Kukui invited all previous Island Challenge champions back, surely he and the other Kahuna could have set up one of them to be the final challenge on Poni Island. They could have introduced Kahili this way. You get to Poni Island and you're met by Kahili who explains the situation to you, but seeing you have other immediate plans says she'll wait for you to complete them, even suggesting for you to see Hapu. Hapu then becomes the new Kahuna and Kahili, seeing she's no longer needed, returns to the Pokemon League to tell Kakui and the other Kahuna there that Hapu has become the new Kahuna of Poni Island and she'll test the player and Hau as their final Island Challenge opponents.
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Could you be more specific? There’s a lot of things in Gen 7 to despise.
Removal of gyms (even if Gen 6 made them way too easy), overrated evil team (Team Skull just seems uninspired and without a purpose to me), lack of replay value, lackluster online features, etc.
That was sort of the point, they're social rejects that banded together, and their down-to-earth nature is counter-balanced by the Aether Foundation's goals of trans-dimensional wormholing.
Island Challenge Instead Of Gyms: While I don't mind going away from the Gym system once in a while, I don't think Gen VII's Island Challenge was a proper replacement. The idea is sound, instead of battling through a Gym you complete a Trial task, defeat the Totem Pokemon, and once you completed all Trials you have a Grand Trial which is a battle against island Kahuna; repeat once per island. However the problem was with the Trials, they felt off.
First, each island had it's own amount of Trials (Melemele has one, Akala has three, Ula'ula has two, and Poni has one/two). I get they want to make each island feel unique though Melemele only having one makes it feel kind of short (even though you still have to explore the rest of the island anyway). I felt Melemele should at least had one more, I'm alright with Poni only having one (officially) due to it being scarcely populated but Melemele is a major island.
Second, the Trials themselves are hit and miss. Now I'm not talking about the Totem battles, those are fine and actually require strategy. The "puzzle" portion of the Trials sometimes felt they didn't have much thought put into them. Ones I thought were fine were Ilima, Mallow, & Acerola as they involved exploring the area which was something different. But Lana's & Dragon Trial was pretty straight forward, Kiawe's was a joke, and Sophocles' was just a gauntlet battle. Also, all the battles were against easy to beat wild Pokemon, except the one time you battled the Hiker in Kiawe's challenge. And while the Hiker was easy to beat also, there's just something about facing a Trainer which feels more satisfying then a plain wild Pokemon. Also, the Trials are supposed to be different from Gyms but if I'm doing a puzzle and having battles while doing it, what is the difference aside the aesthetic?
Third, the Captains sometimes felt pointless. It's implied the Captains take care of the Trial area, but the only ones that felt "necessary" for their Trial was Mallow and Sophocles. All the others had a passive role in which case why are you here? If I were to redo the Trails a bit I would get rid of all the incidental battles during the Trial and instead had you needing to defeat the Captain to prove you can do the Trial and take on the Totem Pokemon. That would have been different, a beginning and ending boss with an uninterrupted puzzle segment between them.
Also, it all ends with the Pokemon League, Elite Four, and Champion battle anyway. If you're going to toss out the Gyms then toss out the Pokemon League entirely. The Island Challenge feels like they did something different for the sake of doing something different instead of having a fully thought out new challenge system.
Eitherway, I'm ready for Gyms again and collecting Badges again (which is another small nitpick. Yes, Badges do nothing, Z-Crystals actually help you in battle, and upon completing a Grand Trial we did get a Stamp. But I just like to see the Badge designs and how they reflect the Gym Leader we fought, curious what the "Badge" for the Captains would have looked like (and maybe for the Kahuna though they give out the Stamps)).
Overrated Team: The thing about Team Skull is that they had their spotlight taken from them. I'm a bit bias as I like Team Skull and really got into seeing the "true side" of them upon getting to Po Town, the tonal shift was surprising and exciting. Sadly, that is where any resemblance of Team Skull being a threat stops as the Aether Foundation plot takes complete control. Now it felt like a smooth transition and made sense (at least in vanilla SM), but the final villains of the plot weren't the thugs you been battling along the way but rather suddenly the animal & environmental help group because their leader is currently insane. And after all that Team Skull disbands.
Lack Of Replay: That's a complain I think for all Pokemon games, you're not really mean to replay the story once your done with it. Not that this isn't a problem, GF had lately been bad with post game content and would it really be that difficult to add a difficulty setting and an additional save file that let's us replay the game without losing all we did and our Pokemon in the "main" save file? One of the many places GF is archaic is with the save system, saved data cannot be that much they can't put in a few more save slots or have special save slots become available to provide a way to play the game again or provide a different experience.
They finally let us remove the hat after 20 something years. also I hate them programming in events and not releasing them I want gosh damn legits of those unreleased events cause I don't deal with hacks even off of smogon.
EDIT also how sometimes a Pokemon won't seem to let you catch it no matter what unless you use your master ball. I don't want to use my master ball on a Pokemon I want to catch in a pokeball that looks super cool with it, save the master ball for Mewtwo no other ball does it justice after it stole everyone's Pokemon with master ball reproductions in Pokemon the first movie.
EDIT also how sometimes a Pokemon won't seem to let you catch it no matter what unless you use your master ball. I don't want to use my master ball on a Pokemon I want to catch in a pokeball that looks super cool with it, save the master ball for Mewtwo no other ball does it justice after it stole everyone's Pokemon with master ball reproductions in Pokemon the first movie.
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I’m cool with going back to the gyms as long as GF learns what was good with the island challenges and carries that forward into the future gyms. That’s really my main complaint for Pokémon, so often GF learns nothing and repeats the same mistakes every time, or starts over completely. Steady incremental improvements would seem to be a basic way of developing a series, but they just don’t.
While there's stuff from the Island Challenge I'll like to see carried over to Gyms, what is it specifically you're referring to?
1. Gym Leaders are actual characters. While I found some of the Captains superficial to the Trials, I do like that they exist outside of the Trail as a character on their own and you had some characterization moments with them. You even got to visit their homes and see how their homelife and family are like.
2. Totem-like Battle. For the Gym challenge itself I would like to see the Gym Leader employ more strategy. While they probably won't have SOS Battles they can still attempt to set-up a strategy, use more items than just potions, and have team synergy. Also wouldn't mind if the Gym Leader could find a way to power-up their Pokemon like a Totem Pokemon (or Fused Lusamine did with her Pokemon).
2. Totem-like Battle. For the Gym challenge itself I would like to see the Gym Leader employ more strategy. While they probably won't have SOS Battles they can still attempt to set-up a strategy, use more items than just potions, and have team synergy. Also wouldn't mind if the Gym Leader could find a way to power-up their Pokemon like a Totem Pokemon (or Fused Lusamine did with her Pokemon).