(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

QuentinQuonce

formerly green_typhlosion
I'm not sure if this is something that bugs me or that I like, so bear with me.

In Pokemon Black & White we explore the Unova region as it is in those games. In Pokemon Black 2 & White 2, Unova has changed somewhat, and several new towns and cities exist.

And... we're told nothing about these settlements. Did they always exist, or did they spring into existence in the intervening two years? Lentimas Town is an oddity since, although it has an air terminal like Mistralton City, the only way to access it on foot is via Undella Town. How did it exist beforehand if the route through Reversal Mountain wasn't always there - did it just get food and supplies regularly flown in from Mistralton?

Aspertia City, Floccesy Town, and Virbank City I can buy as having always been there and just being a remote part of Unova that we had no reason to visit, but it's just never mentioned. Alder says in BW that he "knows every corner of Unova" which indicates to me that there's more to the place than we see in-game and all sorts of secret places he's been to. The only indication we get is one NPC in B2W2 saying that Humilau City is "a little-known resort" but that's kind of thrown out of the window with the Marine Tube providing a very public route to the place.

It's not just the towns, though - no one mentions the fact that there's been a landslide on Victory Road or in the Challenger's Cave, or the Entralink drying up. What caused this? Was it supposed to be Team Plasma's actions in the first game? It's curious that this goes completely unremarked upon.

To be honest, I like the idea that they were always there and that the hero of BW didn't visit them because it adds credence to the idea that the regions are much bigger than the parts we see (which explains why there are multiple gyms in the anime and Ash & co visit dozens of small towns and cities that don't exist in the games). But I just wish we'd gotten a little more context for it.
 
Yeah with these games its best to just sasusme that the region probably is bigger than it appears, with more than what 12 towns/settlements around and we just dont see them because gameplay.

It would be nice if there was a bit more description though, I agree. Victory Road I feel you can at least extrapolate its from the lingering N's Castle just, uh, collapsing after the raid, but I guess Challenger's Cave just had a random cave in.
 
Pokémon: We know how important it is for you competitive people to have the right nature, so not only are we introducing nature mints, we're also finally making synchronise have a 100% chance!
Pokémon: But you can't sync this. Or that. No not that one either. No no that one also can't be synced. Oh those ones over there are gifts, don't know why you thought those could be syncable! They make up at least half the legendaries. Oh and that non-gift legendary isn't syncable either.
 
Pokémon: We know how important it is for you competitive people to have the right nature, so not only are we introducing nature mints, we're also finally making synchronise have a 100% chance!
Pokémon: But you can't sync this. Or that. No not that one either. No no that one also can't be synced. Oh those ones over there are gifts, don't know why you thought those could be syncable! They make up at least half the legendaries. Oh and that non-gift legendary isn't syncable either.
I try to see this as half full glass. If this was gen 7, we'd not have had mints either D:
 
Generally, invisible walls in games dont really bother me. Sometimes its a little silly, but most of the time I probably wont even notice them. Like Isle of Armor's sea has nothing really stopping you but it doesnt feel eregious because of how wide open the area is.


Crown Tundra's Frigid Sea, though, is uhhhhh. T-take that to the drawing board again, please? The area looks far larger than it is and there's no real deliniation between what the area sseems to go on for vs what the area actually allows. The easy thing would have been to make the icebergs floating around the natural barrier but only some of them are? You can see the string of icebergs out on the horizon that seem like a natural stopping point but you're just biking into this very large invisible wall.

On the...northern end, I think, of the area you can even see something like a culdesac form right? Just this circle of open water surrounded by icebergs. And it totally looks like youd' just go over there, maybe find a strong evolved pokemon ocne the pop in catches up or some glowy item. But no you can't go there and there's nothing stopping you but an invisible wall
 

QuentinQuonce

formerly green_typhlosion
Generally, invisible walls in games dont really bother me. Sometimes its a little silly, but most of the time I probably wont even notice them. Like Isle of Armor's sea has nothing really stopping you but it doesnt feel eregious because of how wide open the area is.


Crown Tundra's Frigid Sea, though, is uhhhhh. T-take that to the drawing board again, please? The area looks far larger than it is and there's no real deliniation between what the area sseems to go on for vs what the area actually allows. The easy thing would have been to make the icebergs floating around the natural barrier but only some of them are? You can see the string of icebergs out on the horizon that seem like a natural stopping point but you're just biking into this very large invisible wall.

On the...northern end, I think, of the area you can even see something like a culdesac form right? Just this circle of open water surrounded by icebergs. And it totally looks like youd' just go over there, maybe find a strong evolved pokemon ocne the pop in catches up or some glowy item. But no you can't go there and there's nothing stopping you but an invisible wall
*splutters*

You mean there isn't a long chain of rocks blocking your way?! That's been a Pokemon tradition since 1996! POKEMON SWORD AND SHIELD ARE THE WORST GAMES EVER.




/s
 
I´m personally much more annoyed by the horrible type puns some of the gym leaders have as names. Most of them are subtle and actually kind of clever, like Candice, Whitney or Roxanne, but then there are Gym leaders like Bugsy, Brawly, Roark or Gardenia... Who calls their kid Gardenia? Borderline child abuse if you ask me.
Doesn't it seem likely that ones like Bugsy and Brawly are nicknames or some sort of stage trainer names they go by? Not that that's probably how they were intended, but in-world it seems very likely and I think redeems them.

To be honest, I like the idea that they were always there and that the hero of BW didn't visit them because it adds credence to the idea that the regions are much bigger than the parts we see (which explains why there are multiple gyms in the anime and Ash & co visit dozens of small towns and cities that don't exist in the games). But I just wish we'd gotten a little more context for it.
Absolutely this. If anything, I hate when there is some forced, totally implausible explanation. For example, in B2W2 Bianca comments around when she gives you the Pokedex that species distributions have changed so much in just two years or something like that. Maybe an argument could be made that that's plausible, but all it really does is just hit you over the head with how unlikely that seems. Just say nothing. What is totally plausible is that there always were Marill on "Route 6"; the protagonist in BW just never ran into any.

It's a given that what we're able to see in the games is a very limited portion of what's really there. Unless they're going to come up with a legitimately good explanation for changes between games, just don't say anything.

--

The idea of species distribution being subject to such dramatic and swift change as in B2W2 actually raises another topic that the crazy weather changes in the Wild Area have brought up. That you can bike from one spot in the Wild Area to another just a hundred feet away and go from a thunderstorm to sunny weather and then do the same thing again and go from sun to a blizzard initially seems absurd and obliterates any immersion the whole thing might have. The only way to fight that is to explain it as the species in the various areas being so able to influence their environments that they're causing the various weather conditions, as we know at least some species can do.

And that actually is plausible (although it's still a pretty big strain to really buy into it when you're playing, I think), except for the fact that it's contradicted by how stable things are otherwise. And that's the "topic" I'm referring to: There's plenty of evidence that various species have pretty insane capabilities and might be prone to causing a great deal of volatility in their environments, and yet most of those environments seem to be pretty stable and consistent otherwise.

I guess what I'm saying is they could do a better job showing -- in coherent, realistic ways -- how those potentially dramatic impacts do and don't happen. A very small example might be how in many of the games, battles don't seem to wreak any havoc on the areas where they're held. I think the nods to that havoc in BW are really good -- a couple of battles between very weak starters in the player's starting room cause a huge mess, and there's another reference to not "battling inside" in a gate I think.
 

QuentinQuonce

formerly green_typhlosion
Absolutely this. If anything, I hate when there is some forced, totally implausible explanation. For example, in B2W2 Bianca comments around when she gives you the Pokedex that species distributions have changed so much in just two years or something like that. Maybe an argument could be made that that's plausible, but all it really does is just hit you over the head with how unlikely that seems. Just say nothing. What is totally plausible is that there always were Marill on "Route 6"; the protagonist in BW just never ran into any.

It's a given that what we're able to see in the games is a very limited portion of what's really there. Unless they're going to come up with a legitimately good explanation for changes between games, just don't say anything.


I guess what I'm saying is they could do a better job showing -- in coherent, realistic ways -- how those potentially dramatic impacts do and don't happen. A very small example might be how in many of the games, battles don't seem to wreak any havoc on the areas where they're held. I think the nods to that havoc in BW are really good -- a couple of battles between very weak starters in the player's starting room cause a huge mess, and there's another reference to not "battling inside" in a gate I think.
This actually ties into another idea I've had about the Pokedex and the ever-shifting availability of various Pokemon. The Pokedex isn't a fixed list; rather, it's simply a listing of whichever Pokemon are most common and abundant in the region at any one time. It's almost akin to a "top 100" music chart and different listings are periodically revised and updated, perhaps yearly or every other year.

Of course we only ever see one listing per game because of gameplay and story segregation but the revised listings we see between games (DP>Plat, BW>B2W2, SM>USUM) are reflective of how Pokedex listings aren't fixed. No one ever decreed that the 151 Pokemon in the original Sinnoh Dex were the only Pokemon that would ever be findable in Sinnoh; hell, you can find all sorts of other Pokemon with swarms and the Pokeradar. The Pokemon included in a given listing aren't there because they're originally native to that region; they're just the ones which happen to have been observed wild in that region most recently and/or in the greatest numbers. This can be observed through examples like Jynx being allegedly Kanto-native yet not existing in the wild in Kanto at all (apart from the Japanese Blue which made Farfetch'd and Jynx catchable in the wild for whatever reason). So if Marill isn't particularly common in Unova one year, it's not in the Unova Dex. The following year, populations of wild Marill have increased and Marill is a common sight on various routes, resulting in it being included in the next Unova Pokedex listing.

This also explains away how legendaries like Suicune are nominally Johto-native yet have made appearances in Hoenn, Sinnoh, Orre, Alola, and Galar. It's permanently native to Johto, but it's been sighted in various other regions. I was surprised by
there being a Cosmog just hanging out in the Crown Tundra
but with this justification in mind there's no reason why it shouldn't be.

I think of TM lists in a similar way; they're just a collection of "fashionable" moves akin to real-life music charts, and different lists are probably published fairly regularly, explaining why different regions have wildly different listings, and how Surf is a TM in Alola but an HM everywhere else.
 
So, base calyrex is Not Good in terms of stats movepool. That's sort of anticlimatic for the big DLC legend, but w/e it's plenty strong when riding a horse.

What feels like a weirder issue is that it's only ability is Unnerve. Not only is this not good, why does a sort of Harvest God pokemon have an ability that makes you unable to eat? They could have even leaned fully into Calyrex being worse Exeggutor and let it have Harvest as its ability. Like Harvest already exists and it seems perfectly suited for this little sub-mythic. It feels so weird that Harvest isn't even it's HA.

Also, the invisible sea boundaries in the DLC area do feel especially weird. The Iceberg Sea area is particularly offensive, because they could have just had icebergs block the boundary off. Or use the longstanding tradition of nonsensical, yet visible stones to mark where the surfable area ends. I don't ever remember people complaining about the weird rocks in water routes (which tend to have far more notable problems, such as slow movement, and encountering far too many pelipper/tentacool).
 
While base Calyrex's stats are....almost comically pitiful after doing the DLC I can see what they were going for. He's canonically lost most of his power, can barely produce a carrot or even a flower pedal without exhausting himself, his steed's abandoned him, no one believes in him (leading to the loss of power), it's just a real bad scene for him all around.
I kind of like it tbh

Likewise I think because of that it makes sense for him to not have Harvest at this point even if, as a harvest god, he probably should. And to be fair he is unnerving. I think a nice counterbalance would have been either a HA, as you say, or have "As One" use Harvest & the Neigh. But I suppose that would go against the shtick of the Rider form being literally 2 pokemon basically as they are (2 separate abilities, their move pools are the same individually but merged, the stats are basically Calyrex's HP, the horses's main statline but with a broad boost to each stat represetning calyrex) but working together.


Alternatively, could have been fun if there was also "Kingly" Calyrex form that was just the form he takes while with the horse (longer legs, a grander cape, glowing head, i think his "crown" is spikier) but had like 600 BST or something. Then give him Harvest there.
 

Pikachu315111

Ranting & Raving!
is a Community Contributoris a Top Smogon Media Contributor
While base Calyrex's stats are....almost comically pitiful after doing the DLC I can see what they were going for. He's canonically lost most of his power, can barely produce a carrot or even a flower pedal without exhausting himself, his steed's abandoned him, no one believes in him (leading to the loss of power), it's just a real bad scene for him all around.
I kind of like it tbh

Likewise I think because of that it makes sense for him to not have Harvest at this point even if, as a harvest god, he probably should. And to be fair he is unnerving. I think a nice counterbalance would have been either a HA, as you say, or have "As One" use Harvest & the Neigh. But I suppose that would go against the shtick of the Rider form being literally 2 pokemon basically as they are (2 separate abilities, their move pools are the same individually but merged, the stats are basically Calyrex's HP, the horses's main statline but with a broad boost to each stat represetning calyrex) but working together.

Alternatively, could have been fun if there was also "Kingly" Calyrex form that was just the form he takes while with the horse (longer legs, a grander cape, glowing head, i think his "crown" is spikier) but had like 600 BST or something. Then give him Harvest there.
Another idea they could have gone with was giving him a "Defeatist" expy Ability (for this example let's call it "Fallen King"). He's strong in a burst (maybe make his stats 70/140/70/140/70/140//630), but when you get its HP down to half it's Attack, Special Attack, and Speed is also halved. That way Calyrex in its base form isn't quite useless, it's still quite potent when fully rested, but still shows it's nowhere near as powerful as it used to be and falters as battle wears it down. Hence when it rides upon one of the Wild Horses it instead uses the horse's Ability.
 
Here's a new one that I wish they had thought through: the inability to properly remove permanent weather in a battle.

Before SWSH, weather that showed up during the overworld wasn't that much of an issue. Usually just rain, sand or even more rarely sun in a couple areas, hail in later titles. And usually a pokemon that showed up in sand or hail was immune to those effects, with a few odds & ends thrown in to make captures annoying.

But with the Wild Area, there would often be pokemon not meant to be in Hail/Sand and that becomes a much more frequent annoyance


In Crown Tundra this suddenly becomes a really bad problem that can strike for days depending on where it happens. Articuno is all but guranteed to be in constant hail. Zapdos, Cobalion & Virizion can all also deal with pretty frequent hail. And yes my Virizion IS stuck in hail today why do you ask.

Anyway the weather problem is that because its permanent passive weather, if you overwrite it with something like Sunn Day, once the timer is up the original weather just comes back. Your only "permanent" methods are hedged in Cloud Nine & Air Lock, which are tied to the pokemon still being on the field.

Which just got me to thinking it is a little odd this isn't a move? Terrains took until gen 8 to get 2 (Defog removes it now, that new move tutor does it as a side effect), but it was more recent and only really came into prominence with the tapu last gen. Weather's been around for a long time now, once the weather wars really took effect it feels like a no brainer to have a move that just straight up removes weather entirely.
 
Here's a new one that I wish they had thought through: the inability to properly remove permanent weather in a battle.

Before SWSH, weather that showed up during the overworld wasn't that much of an issue. Usually just rain, sand or even more rarely sun in a couple areas, hail in later titles. And usually a pokemon that showed up in sand or hail was immune to those effects, with a few odds & ends thrown in to make captures annoying.

But with the Wild Area, there would often be pokemon not meant to be in Hail/Sand and that becomes a much more frequent annoyance


In Crown Tundra this suddenly becomes a really bad problem that can strike for days depending on where it happens. Articuno is all but guranteed to be in constant hail. Zapdos, Cobalion & Virizion can all also deal with pretty frequent hail. And yes my Virizion IS stuck in hail today why do you ask.

Anyway the weather problem is that because its permanent passive weather, if you overwrite it with something like Sunn Day, once the timer is up the original weather just comes back. Your only "permanent" methods are hedged in Cloud Nine & Air Lock, which are tied to the pokemon still being on the field.

Which just got me to thinking it is a little odd this isn't a move? Terrains took until gen 8 to get 2 (Defog removes it now, that new move tutor does it as a side effect), but it was more recent and only really came into prominence with the tapu last gen. Weather's been around for a long time now, once the weather wars really took effect it feels like a no brainer to have a move that just straight up removes weather entirely.
Personally, I used Heal Pulse to keep them alive... but, uh, since my Heal Pulse user's an Audino, it's not gonna be all that useful for the musketeers.

Still a really big problem there. I do like how IoA and CT limited the weather possible- made it so that it felt more cohesive, especially CT. But that still doesn't fix the Wild Area! The main offenders are Sandstorm and Snow/Blizzard. Just, why should a lake be covered in a sandstorm? Why should there be this tiny blizzard one second and the next it's sunny as all get-out? I think a better way to do this (lore-wise. Gameplay-wise it does give you variety, but...) is to have the weathers vary slightly- fully overcast days can have rain/thunder or fog in some areas, but not sun or sandstorm. A sunny day can't have rain, but it can have clear skies and sandstorm (for variety). A snowy day can have clear, overcast, snow, or blizzard. Make it so that out of the eight or nine weathers, only three or four can be found per day.
 
The biggest issues to me is that hail and snow are two separate weather conditions in real life, with hailstones falling typically during thunderstorms in summer months, totally different from snow falling in winter. Most of the time when there's hail in the overworld in Pokemon, it's suppose to be gentle snowfall. The only exceptions are the blizzard in Route 217, actual hailstones falling around Mistralon City and Route 7 (even though it only happens in Winter), the blizzards in the main Wild Area, and blizzard around the mountain in the Crown Tundra.
 
The biggest issues to me is that hail and snow are two separate weather conditions in real life, with hailstones falling typically during thunderstorms in summer months, totally different from snow falling in winter. Most of the time when there's hail in the overworld in Pokemon, it's suppose to be gentle snowfall. The only exceptions are the blizzard in Route 217, actual hailstones falling around Mistralon City and Route 7 (even though it only happens in Winter), the blizzards in the main Wild Area, and blizzard around the mountain in the Crown Tundra.
Yeah that's the real annoying parts. If its gentle snow fall it should either not be hilaing (in which case, it's just cold enough to make you go "ah, ice type time") or should have an over-world specific weather condition of "Snowfall" (like fog) that, has the perks (or at least some of them) of Hail but without the damage.
 

Pikachu315111

Ranting & Raving!
is a Community Contributoris a Top Smogon Media Contributor
The biggest issues to me is that hail and snow are two separate weather conditions in real life, with hailstones falling typically during thunderstorms in summer months, totally different from snow falling in winter. Most of the time when there's hail in the overworld in Pokemon, it's suppose to be gentle snowfall. The only exceptions are the blizzard in Route 217, actual hailstones falling around Mistralon City and Route 7 (even though it only happens in Winter), the blizzards in the main Wild Area, and blizzard around the mountain in the Crown Tundra.
I actually had some ideas how they could implement "snow" weather without separating it too much from Hail:
  • There's no Move that summons Snow, it's strictly an overworld effect.
  • Snow can turn to Hail if an Ice-type is sent out (this explains why Snow Warning still summons Hail since only Ice-types have that Ability) or the move Hail is used (Hail summons Hail weather even if there's no Ice-type on the field).
  • If Snow was turned into Hail it'll revert back to Snow when the Hail ends.
  • If it's just Snowing then no Pokemon receives damage at the end of each turn but all other affects still happen. All Abilities (Ice Body, Slush Rush, Snow Cloak, Forecast), Moves (Blizzard, Weather Ball, Solar Beam/Blade, Moonlihgt/Synthesis/Morning Sun, Aurora Veil), & Items (Icy Rock) that are affected or affect Hail also do so with Snow.
 

Plague von Karma

Banned deucer.
So up until very, very recently, I had accidentally softlocked My Pokemon Ranch for what would become years. I believe it was pushing 7-8 years, but I can't remember. How did this happen? Well, there was a hard 8-card limit to who could deposit Pokemon into the game. The only way to remove this was to withdraw every single Pokemon associated with the game card. As a result, if the game card is lost or the save is reset...you can't remove the association, and the Pokemon are trapped.

There are save editing tools to alleviate this in those tight situations, though they require you to deposit a single Pokemon using a game card. As a result, there's no way, even through modding, to remove the Pokemon naturally, and if you don't have a slot for a game card available you're literally just fucked. I happened to be one of those few due to some life-changing events back then. But I'm a stubborn lass, and with my some creative use of the hacking tools, I manually converted all the .pkm files I wanted to keep to just gen them back into my copy of Pokemon Shield using a SysBot. Here's a guide I made for those who somehow got into the same situation as me.

I have no fucking idea how the game lacked a failsafe for something like this, as from what I can see this is a very glaring oversight. I wish I didn't have to go to such an extent to remove them, but I quite literally had no other way to do it. Those old cartridges were long gone and a lot of old sentimental value was stuck there as a result. You could say what I ended up with are clones of the old ones, and you may well be right, but it's the best I got, eh? There's no difference, overall.

Anyway, to say I'm glad I got my old Naval Rock Ho-Oh back is an understatement...
 

Pikachu315111

Ranting & Raving!
is a Community Contributoris a Top Smogon Media Contributor
You could say what I ended up with are clones of the old ones, and you may well be right, but it's the best I got, eh? There's no difference, overall.
Hey, I've read/seen enough fiction (books, anime/manga, movies/shows, games) to know that uploading your consciousness to a stable clone body is a perfectly viable option to get out of a sticky situation.
 
Sword and Shield's 1-star raids range from Lv. 15-20 when you'll have a Lv. 10 starter at best.

This not only makes it silly hard to beat them at first, but also makes it very easy to steamroll through the early-game because you got at least 5 levels on pretty much anyone up until Bede 1. Gross oversight.
 
Why does Potbottom Desert exist?

Now, I like Isle of Armour; but especially with Tundra being a lot more interesting and making me reflect, I've been coming to terms with its flaws lately. While a lot of the biomes do feel natural enough, a lot of them feel like they were put there just because they felt all the biomes should be there -- you have to have a Forest, and a Cave, and Cave 2, because This Is Pokémon. And somewhat related to this, because there's so many different biomes; the island feels very cramped and that's not helped by a lot of narrow pathways and small spaces. What should be an expansive flowing island can instead feel claustrophobic at times with just no room to spread your metaphorical wings.

And ironically despite being one of the only open areas on the Isle, Potbottom Desert is the best example of this for me. Like I said: why does it exist? It doesn't feel like it flows naturally with anything else on the island nor does it feel like something that should be on any tropical island; there's no story purpose to it (in fact, the preceding tunnel is more story important), there's nothing special to do there aside from get a few rare items which are scattered about on beaches anyway; and it doesn't even serve the purpose of facilitating newly returning or rare Pokémon -- the only ones of those categories exclusive to it are the newly returning Sandile family and the trade evolution Rhyperior, which both would have been at home in any of the Isle's three caves. At least the forest, a bit abrupt as it is and cramped as it is; does facilitate a lot of newly returning Pokémon, serves a story purpose and feels like something you would find on an island like this, even if it doesn't flow quite as well as it should with the environment. Potbottom Desert has nothing going for it.

If you really wanted to have a radically different biome to offer some variety, you know what would fit on an island like this? A volcano! It would even fit perfectly where the desert is -- it's a wide enough area for one to fit; there's a tunnel leading up to it; and you even have Torkoal in both the desert and said tunnel at the moment. Bring back Numel and Slugma or put Magmar in early and you've got yourself a perfect environment. Don't have the resources for that? Okay then, just don't do a desert at all and expand the other biomes, making them feel as expansive as they should and not feeling like you're bumping into a wall if you don't turn every two seconds. Potbottom Desert is one of the most mystifying design decisions I've encountered in this series.
 
Sword and Shield's Pokédex entries on Nidorina and Nidoqueen are interesting.
Nidorina, Sword: The horn on its head has atrophied. It's thought that this happens so Nidorina's children won't get poked while their mother is feeding them.

Nidoqueen, Sword: Nidoqueen is better at defense than offense. With scales like armor, this Pokémon will shield its children from any kind of attack.

Nidoqueen, Shield: It pacifies offspring by placing them in the gaps between the spines on its back. The spines will never secrete poison while young are present.
Gee, I'm sure Nidorina and Nidoqueen would do a great job protecting their offspring if they could have any. Why were they made unbreedable in the first place?
 
Sword and Shield's Pokédex entries on Nidorina and Nidoqueen are interesting.

Gee, I'm sure Nidorina and Nidoqueen would do a great job protecting their offspring if they could have any. Why were they made unbreedable in the first place?
Well, technically they can evolve after laying the egg. But it does make people wonder why they insist on mentioning their parental side when they cannot breed in those stages.
 

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