(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

[DreamPrince]

Somewhat related to this, I think it's time to discard the concept of a real-time clock in Pokémon altogether. Do like every other game with a day/night cycle and have each day last, say, 20 minutes or an hour or something, with the weather changing each in-game day instead of each real-world day. I really can't think of other games that follow the real-world clock as slavishly as Pokémon does, but it's easy to come up with a dozen examples that have day/night cycles rolling as you play. Some of them go all the way back to the days of the Nintendo 64.

There is so much potential with timed events in-game, from weather changes and NPC behaviour to changed encounter tables at night and certain roaming Pokémon following a set route every day (think something like the dragons in Breath of the Wild). Add lunar phases for extra goodies. Imagine seeing the Clefairy dance on new moon nights, or Tirtouga hatching on the beaches under the full moon? The aurora on clear, starry nights, or braving the stormy nights to catch legendary Pokémon? A natural environment that reacts to passing time feels a lot more alive than one that remains static. However, the Pokémon devs seem to be under the idea that to witness a time-based event taking place, you have to be playing at that specific time. Want to see the sunset over Kala'e Bay? Play at sunset, because it won't be there otherwise. Want to see the Clefairy dance at Mt. Moon? Play on Monday nights, tough luck if you happen to be busy. Want to see what the world is like at 5AM or on weekdays when you are at work? Better fiddle with the time settings of your console or something, because you're out of luck otherwise. I think I almost never saw the night sky when I played Pokémon Moon, because I only had time to play in the evening.

As a result, time-based events remain very impractical. The designers can't rely on the player being around to see the effects of the passage of time, so those effects remain largely cosmetic except for daily changes. Meanwhile, it is fully possible to cheat that system as well, changing the date on your console so you can experience a certain weather or grab multiple once-per-day bonuses in one sitting. It's a crappy system that can easily be bypassed, making me wonder why they insist on having that system to begin with. Just let time pass a lot faster, and do something with the passage of time, instead of this weird fixation with a day/night cycle that depends entirely on when you are available to play the game.

Something they could do is in a fashion similar to the Xenoblade Chronicles series: There is a clock you can adjust in game to change between day and night at will. Great for solving Quests that require you to be at a certain time of day.

Now that I think about it, a feature like that would have been great for us Ultra Moon players, so we evolve our Rockruff into Lycanroc-Dusk without getting up at 5 AM.

 

[Codraroll]

Something they could do is in a fashion similar to the Xenoblade Chronicles series: There is a clock you can adjust in game to change between day and night at will. Great for solving Quests that require you to be at a certain time of day.

Now that I think about it, a feature like that would have been great for us Ultra Moon players, so we evolve our Rockruff into Lycanroc-Dusk without getting up at 5 AM.

Many other games, such as The Witcher 3 or Breath of the Wild, have features where you skip forward in time for up to a day at the time, by meditating or sitting down at a bonfire, respectively. If you need it to be night, you sit down and rest for half a day. In Pokémon, it could be done via Camping, for instance.

 

[R_N]

Honestly I kind of sort of like IVs for the same reason they probably even exist: for flavor reasons because it introduces extra stat variation at a base level, even between the same pokemon with the same level at the same nature.
The other reason at this point is to power up trainer pokemon

If I was going to remove it at all, honestly I'd keep it casually and remove it competitively. If it doesn't mean anything for the causal player that also means it could stay and lose nothing; you could even include bottle caps & golden bottle caps as rare-but-less-so main game items and treat it like eh...you know...an rpg thing, or something. Like shift the item from "this will help fix my pokemon for the Real Game" to "oh, nice, i can upgrade my pokemon!"

 

[Siggu]

Honestly I kind of sort of like IVs for the same reason they probably even exist: for flavor reasons because it introduces extra stat variation at a base level, even between the same pokemon with the same level at the same nature.
The other reason at this point is to power up trainer pokemon

If I was going to remove it at all, honestly I'd keep it casually and remove it competitively. If it doesn't mean anything for the causal player that also means it could stay and lose nothing; you could even include bottle caps & golden bottle caps as rare-but-less-so main game items and treat it like eh...you know...an rpg thing, or something. Like shift the item from "this will help fix my pokemon for the Real Game" to "oh, nice, i can upgrade my pokemon!"

Or bring back the badge boost system and apply it arbitrarily through the story. They can power up the player and boss trainers just like IVs can.

 

[hypno28]

Disagree honestly.

At this point IVs are nothing but a nuisance, outside of Trick Room (which favours 0 IV in speed) and 2 niche cases (0 atk on spatkers to reduce Foul Play/confusion damage and Stakataka running 15 defense IV to get Atk boost), you're simply always using 31.
There's no customization at all, not even Hidden Power to tailor IVs for.

IVs are just a reminder that "need to fix bad IVs before using in competitive", and are and always have been pretty much irrelevant for casual play.

They could easily remove them and noone would notice it. Realistically not even Trick Room users as they already run speed reducing natures to begin with.

Your interest, my interest, and everyone else's in playing the games is contingent on being able to buy into the reality they present at least one some basic level. Anything they do to make that harder that is therefore bad, and that takes precedence over how it affects gameplay. The idea that every member of a species needs to be unique (obviously combinations of IVs, Natures, etc. can happen more than once, but it's extremely rare in natural situations -- in other words, besides when they're forced via breeding) is legitimate and actually very important.

It would be absurd if every single Jolly Rattata you caught had the exact same stats, and IVs are one of the few things that make for variation within species. Ideally every species would have something akin to the Spinda mechanic to make its appearance vary, many different (and often more subtle) "shiny" versions, and so on.

It's foundational that anything that makes the in-game world more realistic is good and anything that makes it less is bad. No one would be playing this, casually or on Showdown, if it were just a bunch of mathematical variables being run through formulas.

Obviously, at the end of the day, the world you see in the games is still a representation of the real in-game world that theoretically exists, and some things are abridged or simplified. I'm totally for them making it as easy as possible to modify stats as you need, the Nature mints, everything else -- I think hatching an egg should take like two in-game steps once you're in post-game -- but it's still important to keep those things in place even while providing shortcuts for gameplay purposes.

 

[Kurona]

Your interest, my interest, and everyone else's in playing the games is contingent on being able to buy into the reality they present at least one some basic level. Anything they do to make that harder that is therefore bad, and that takes precedence over how it affects gameplay. The idea that every member of a species needs to be unique (obviously combinations of IVs, Natures, etc. can happen more than once, but it's extremely rare in natural situations -- in other words, besides when they're forced via breeding) is legitimate and actually very important.

It would be absurd if every single Jolly Rattata you caught had the exact same stats, and IVs are one of the few things that make for variation within species. Ideally every species would have something akin to the Spinda mechanic to make its appearance vary, many different (and often more subtle) "shiny" versions, and so on.

It's foundational that anything that makes the in-game world more realistic is good and anything that makes it less is bad. No one would be playing this, casually or on Showdown, if it were just a bunch of mathematical variables being run through formulas.

Obviously, at the end of the day, the world you see in the games is still a representation of the real in-game world that theoretically exists, and some things are abridged or simplified. I'm totally for them making it as easy as possible to modify stats as you need, the Nature mints, everything else -- I think hatching an egg should take like two in-game steps once you're in post-game -- but it's still important to keep those things in place even while providing shortcuts for gameplay purposes.

I think you're really overestimating the importance of an archaic mechanic that the vast majority of players don't know exist, and those that do know it exists are just annoyed by and gets in the way of both their enjoyment and playing the game to any serious degree.

I agree that creating a more complex and immersive world is a good thing, but IVs don't actually do anything to achieve that. The defence of "it makes every Pokémon different" that is always touted around is something that is never actually noticeable and never actually makes your Pokémon feel different. Frankly, the purely aesthetic Height and Weight aspects of GO and LGPE made each Pokémon feel more different than IVs ever truly did. The concept is fine but in execution it's just been a mess that Game Freak has been struggling to work around and competitive players have been frustrated by for almost 2 decades. If your time limits are too constraining or your imagination so limited that you truly can't think of anything more interesting than this mess of a system to make each Pokémon unique, at least go with R_N 's suggestion of only having them exist during the story.

 

[Siggu]

Your interest, my interest, and everyone else's in playing the games is contingent on being able to buy into the reality they present at least one some basic level. Anything they do to make that harder that is therefore bad, and that takes precedence over how it affects gameplay. The idea that every member of a species needs to be unique (obviously combinations of IVs, Natures, etc. can happen more than once, but it's extremely rare in natural situations -- in other words, besides when they're forced via breeding) is legitimate and actually very important.

Not really. Gameplay should always take precedence before immersion, which is merely a bonus.

 

[CoolMan6001]

I have a number of disagreements here.

Your interest, my interest, and everyone else's in playing the games is contingent on being able to buy into the reality they present at least one some basic level. Anything they do to make that harder that is therefore bad, and that takes precedence over how it affects gameplay.

Yeah, but what about actually being able to play the game?

The idea that every member of a species needs to be unique (obviously combinations of IVs, Natures, etc. can happen more than once, but it's extremely rare in natural situations -- in other words, besides when they're forced via breeding) is legitimate and actually very important.

Well, true. The things to be realized is that these IVs don't even affect in-game runs that much in the long run. (Source: check the in-game tier lists we have here) Not to mention the inability for IVs to directly be visible.

It would be absurd if every single Jolly Rattata you caught had the exact same stats

I mean it's already absurd enough to get two Jolly Rattata back to back in the first place so...

and IVs are one of the few things that make for variation within species. Ideally every species would have something akin to the Spinda mechanic to make its appearance vary, many different (and often more subtle) "shiny" versions, and so on.

Natures do just fine here. You can see the stat change you see and there's no good nature in a vacuum because there's always a benefit and a drawback. Each species simply benefits more from certain ones

It's foundational that anything that makes the in-game world more realistic is good and anything that makes it less is bad.

So are you suggesting here that Pokemon needs to have hyper-realistic 4D HD appearances for not only every mon, but the world itself? Not everyone plays games to feel like they're just playing in the real world but with a small number of changes.

No one would be playing this, casually or on Showdown, if it were just a bunch of mathematical variables being run through formulas.

The Mon appearances don't do this enough already?

 

[hypno28]

Frankly, the purely aesthetic Height and Weight aspects of GO and LGPE made each Pokémon feel more different than IVs ever truly did. The concept is fine but in execution it's just been a mess that Game Freak has been struggling to work around and competitive players have been frustrated by for almost 2 decades. If your time limits are too constraining or your imagination so limited that you truly can't think of anything more interesting than this mess of a system to make each Pokémon unique, at least go with R_N 's suggestion of only having them exist during the story.

Sure, I guess. I would love the height and weight differences. That's another thing it's kind of absurd not to have. If they want to cut IVs but add a bunch of things like that, I think I'd be fine with that. There just has to be enough legitimate differentiation.

Not really. Gameplay should always take precedence before immersion, which is merely a bonus.

That's just a false statement. You may not actively think of it as your priority, but I promise you would lose interest in playing the games if you weren't immersed on a basic level. There's a difference obviously between, like, Mario Kart and other things whose only existence is as a pure game and games that have actual in-game worlds.

Yeah, but what about actually being able to play the game?

As I said, I am all for providing gameplay shortcuts to accommodate that. But the depth has to exist in the first place.

I mean it's already absurd enough to get two Jolly Rattata back to back in the first place so...

While that's a disingenuous and irrelevant reply either way, I never said they were back to back.

So are you suggesting here that Pokemon needs to have hyper-realistic 4D HD appearances for not only every mon, but the world itself? Not everyone plays games to feel like they're just playing in the real world but with a small number of changes.

No. I'm simply saying that the priority should be and by definition must be adding more depth and making the in-game world more believable, rather than simplifying things at the expense of that.

Admittedly, I overstated the case a little in saying getting rid of IVs would be "outrageous," haha.

 

[Codraroll]

It would be absurd if every single Jolly Rattata you caught had the exact same stats

I mean ... would it?

Few casual players would bother to catch two Rattata (or for that matter, two Pokémon of any given species) to begin with, never mind two of the same nature at the same level. And even if they did, would they really be that frustrated by them having the same stats, if they even noticed that in the first place?

 

[Bakugames]

The best implementation of an individual mechanic like ivs for me was potential in coromon

In coromon, not only you have your basic exp bar, where a coromon can grow slower or faster depending on species (like pokemon egg groups), and leveling up increases your base stats like pkmn does etc etc, you also have a potential bar

Every time you level up the potential bar, you get to chose to distribute 3 points in any stat you want. Its basically IVs and EVs combined.
A coromons potential ranges from 1 to 21, and the higher it is, the faster the potential bar levels up, and the more points you get overall.
This gives the player free customization on how to increase the coromons stats without needing to grind specific coromon for the specific stat drop, and also simplifies the iv system to one variable (1 = bad 21 = pog) while keeping each coromon unique

The potential bar is also linked to how you get shinies (theres two kinds in game), but for pokemon, you can keep those mechanics separated imo

 

[Ironmage]

That's just a false statement. You may not actively think of it as your priority, but I promise you would lose interest in playing the games if you weren't immersed on a basic level. There's a difference obviously between, like, Mario Kart and other things whose only existence is as a pure game and games that have actual in-game worlds.

Well, you've convinced me I don't want IVs anymore. As a method to gain stats, I don't care much but appreciate the cool tech with it in the very few situations that arises. As a tool for immersion? That raises some serious red flags for me. I'm tired of my favourite games being made less enjoyable for me to serve story and immersion, and removing something that inconveniences gameplay for those reasons would be a step towards pokemon redeeming itself.

 

[Coronis]

Competitive players are still a massive minority, why would they bother removing IV’s when it doesn’t effect the vast majority of players?

 

[DrPumpkinz]

Competitive players are still a massive minority, why would they bother removing IV’s when it doesn’t effect the vast majority of players?

If a mechanic negatively affects a minority of players and has pretty much zero impact on the majority, then it should be removed because it's useless at best.

Regarding "every Pokemon is different" immersion, I think a way to go about IVs that would serve that while also dodging eugenics implications would be for every Pokemon to be generated with exactly 93 IVs, distributed randomly. You would be able to use bottle caps to raise or lower IVs to your liking, but no Pokemon is born a wimp nor a prodigy.

 

[Kurona]

If a mechanic negatively affects a minority of players and has pretty much zero impact on the majority, then it should be removed because it's useless at best.

Regarding "every Pokemon is different" immersion, I think a way to go about IVs that would serve that while also dodging eugenics implications would be for every Pokemon to be generated with exactly 93 IVs, distributed randomly. You would be able to use bottle caps to raise or lower IVs to your liking, but no Pokemon is born a wimp nor a prodigy.

So EVs?

 

[DrPumpkinz]

So EVs?

They're already just worse EVs. I'm just saying that if Game Freak wants to keep them (which they shouldn't) they should standardize the number of IVs every Pokemon starts with. Retains the sense of "every Pokemon is unique" while reducing the chance of "wow this pokemon has garbage IVs time to catch another one".

 

[Codraroll]

I had almost forgotten how spectacularly un-fun and sloggish Raids in SwSh were before I decided to finally beat the game and then try out some 5 Star Raids today. Man, whatever lackwit came up with that feature really ought to go jump on a pile of rusty nails, preferably from a very large height, and then take a long bath in lemon juice. What kind of moron would consider it fun for players to engage in battles where 7 major actions happen every turn, of which the player only can influence one, with outright insane loss conditions the player has next to zero control over (prevent the twice-attacking opponent that can OHKO every team mate you have from defeating your team mates four times), while the opponent can also continuously boost itself and negate most of your damage? And then decide to throw in the most insultingly incompetent AI partners ever seen in gaming? To top it off, for every second you spend taking any action (selecting moves), a solid minute or so is spent waiting, for things such as sandstorm activating and hurting the Pokémon one by one in separate animations with separate text boxes.

The implementation of Raids in general is one of the chief reasons why I consider SwSh by far the worst main series Pokémon games ever made. And that's saying something, considering Sun and Moon were a thing. I refuse to believe this was playested for more than five minutes, or that if it was, the developers ever listened to anything the playtesters had to say. "You just don't know how to play the game. Executive-san designed this feature, and he says it is perfect, so it is perfect. There will be no changes, except the termination of your contracts. You are fired in disgrace!" or something like that.

Man, what an awful, awful feature.

 

[Siggu]

I had almost forgotten how spectacularly un-fun and sloggish Raids in SwSh were before I decided to finally beat the game and then try out some 5 Star Raids today. Man, whatever lackwit came up with that feature really ought to go jump on a pile of rusty nails, preferably from a very large height, and then take a long bath in lemon juice. What kind of moron would consider it fun for players to engage in battles where 7 major actions happen every turn, of which the player only can influence one, with outright insane loss conditions the player has next to zero control over (prevent the twice-attacking opponent that can OHKO every team mate you have from defeating your team mates four times), while the opponent can also continuously boost itself and negate most of your damage? And then decide to throw in the most insultingly incompetent AI partners ever seen in gaming? To top it off, for every second you spend taking any action (selecting moves), a solid minute or so is spent waiting, for things such as sandstorm activating and hurting the Pokémon one by one in separate animations with separate text boxes.

The implementation of Raids in general is one of the chief reasons why I consider SwSh by far the worst main series Pokémon games ever made. And that's saying something, considering Sun and Moon were a thing. I refuse to believe this was playested for more than five minutes, or that if it was, the developers ever listened to anything the playtesters had to say. "You just don't know how to play the game. Executive-san designed this feature, and he says it is perfect, so it is perfect. There will be no changes, except the termination of your contracts. You are fired in disgrace!" or something like that.

Man, what an awful, awful feature.

Not to mention that, even if you win, you might end up not getting what you were looking for.

It's ironic that the deliberately-harder Adventures are much more fair than Raids.

 

[R_N]

I don't think the Adventurers are made to be deliberately harder but wind up easier, they just have totally different game design sense going on.

Default raids you can baaaasically try as many times as you want and bring whoever you want on a Pokemon you know the entire time about. The shitty Partners are probably a (BAD) feature to encourage you to play with others & the terrible shield mechanic is to prevent you from running ramshackle over them & the general power of 5* raids is to get you to constantly play them alongside the raritiy of G-Max pokemon and event raids.

Adventures are (1) a purposeful marathong (2) using rental Pokemon through a dungeon (3) where each round you select one of several different Pokemon you only vaguely know you're going to reach with (4) the ultimate goal being a legendary pokemon that's by design stronger than your standard fair and (5) they want you to devote time but not TOO much time per run so its easy to get into a gameplay loop. So it's balanced accordingly: the AI goes by the same rules you do, all Pokemon have to have the same levels, there's no shields because you can't guarantee having enough pokemon to reasonably get through them & if they were there adventures would take even longer than they want you to spend and all captures are guaranteed even when playing multiplayer because the primary goal of this whole thing is capturing the nearly 50 legendaries in the dens.

Basically normal raids are a treadmill, adventures are goal-based & better for it

 

[CPU]

Continuing on a conversation initially sparked in the "Pokémon that disappointed you..." thread because it seems more appropriate here:



I think Pokémon is way past due for a technical content overhaul of sorts. The amount of aggregated content from eight generations of a "put more on the pile" philosophy is starting to reach a point beyond the manageable (which in itself is a problem), while some of it really needs management. We're not just talking about some old Pokémon being hopelessly unviable in current gens either, but mechanical issues that are really holding the games back. Gen VIII took some baby steps towards culling some unneeded moves and re-balancing others, but there's so much of Pokémon's old content that could use more attention to be less of a hassle to players in the future. To elaborate:

• I think we all have rolled our eyes at ridiculous evolution requirements over the years. Most notorious is perhaps the evolution levels of some Unova Pokémon. The prevailing philosophy seems to have been "well, players can only encounter it at level 45 and up, and we want them to use the base stage for a few levels before it evolves, so an evolution level of 52 seems reasonable" while the Pokémon has the same stats as ones that evolves at level 27 (literal example, by the way: compare Pawniard and Stufful). This is a good way to make the Pokémon the millstone of any player's team should it ever be found at earlier points in future games - USUM Noibat comes to mind, with the same BST as Starly yet it doesn't evolve until 10 levels after Starly has evolved twice. Dreepy promises to be a proper pain in the buttocks, learning almost no moves at all before it evolves at level 50. This will effectively make it completely useless in any appearance earlier than level 45 or so. Other examples include "worst use of a Moon Stone ever" Skitty, "I hope all future consoles include a gyroscope" Inkay, "literal coin toss" Wurmple, or ...
• ... the seemingly endless parade of items that have no purpose other than evolving or changing the form of one single Pokémon. Roughly a third of those evolution items were included in Gen VIII alone. We're not talking about evolution stones either, which at least serve the purpose of evolving multiple Pokémon. Stuff like the Dragon Scale, Reaper Cloth, Up-Grade, Whipped Dream, or the seven different Milcery Sweets. Sure, the first time you find those they can be considered cool accessories to a Pokémon that holds center stage that generation, but in subsequent generations they are nothing but a hassle for both the player and the programmers. As if they will ever again make a set of four meadows with different types of Nectar just for the sake of Oricorio. Legendaries have it even worse. One generation sends you on a grand quest to retreive the DNA Splicers from a mad villain, or find the Red Orb on top of a remote mountain, and in the next generation a nameless NPC will just hand you the stuff. Immersion!
• Shiny forms even experts can barely tell from the original, yet whose Pokémon's shiny form is seen as a Big Deal. Take Zapdos, for instance. You have to be really dang good to tell the normal and shiny versions apart, yet Shiny Zapdos is an incredibly rare legendary and sure to be the trophy of any shiny collection. It kind of baffles me that Niantic did nothing to fix this in Pokémon Go, but I suppose TPC didn't let them because of copyright. It then baffled me that TPC didn't let them sort that out anyway, given the relative ease of finding a new colour scheme and how much of a selling point it would be in Pokémon Go. Heck, wouldn't the transition to 3D models in Gen VI have been a perfect occasion to sort out the least noticeable shiny colours? At least for fan favourite designs such as Garchomp or Gengar?
• A whole lot of Pokémon stuck in stiff and strange Sky Battle poses. Pokémon like Skarmory, Salamence, or Xatu have always held distinct poses standing on the ground, while now they are just hovering. All for the sake of being able to appear in a gimmicky battle style that was phased out after one single pair of games. Meanwhile, standing poses for the Pokémon do exist, but they appear only in the generational equivalent of Pokémon Amie.
• Abilities in general: a Pokémon can only have two possible abilities + one Hidden Ability, and most Pokémon have had all three slots filled since Gen V or so. Yet more abilities keep being introduced, but very few of them can be assigned to old Pokémon because all their slots are long since filled. Contrast this with moves, where most Pokémon lack any restrictions on the size of their movepools, so new moves keep being added to the movepools of old Pokémon all the time. With moves, you can pick four out of dozens, but with abilities you can pick one out of only three. I guess regional forms partially address this, however.
• Shenanigans with the Pokédex, such as cross-generation evolution families not being consistently placed next to each other, Nidoran's two genders still taking up two dex slots, alternate forms such as regional forms not getting separate Pokédex slots, stuff like that.
• Old mechanics issues that somehow haven't been fixed. As it stands, Nidorina and Nidoqueen can't breed, for reasons I can't fathom. Deerling and Sawsbuck's form changes were tied to the abandoned Seasons mechanic, meaning that Deerling in games post Gen V are stuck in their form, and Deerling has only been re-introduced in Spring form since then. This means only Deerling transfered from Gen V can take other forms than Spring Form. Hidden Power could never take on the Fairy-type, although it has been removed altogether so I guess that point is moot. Fairy never got a type-boosting item other than the Pixie Plate, though. These are just quick examples off the top of my head, I think there are many more quirky cases out there. At least they fixed the Azurill gender issue.
• IVs. Enough said.
• Battles being clunky as heck, with that whole "First, A happens. Only after A finishes, B can happen. Then it's C's turn afterwards" thing. I'm not talking about the concept of turn-based battles, or how it's determined when each Pokémon gets to move, but the user interface experience: i.e. the popup for an ability first occurs in text, then the effect of the ability is applied (in case of Intimidate, for instance, attack is lowered on each opposite Pokémon in turn, each accompanied by a "Pokémon's Attack fell!" message), then Pokémon will attack, then the HP bar of the target Pokémon will be lowered, then the Pokémon faints, then there's a message saying the Pokémon fainted, then the XP bar goes up, etc. So much of this crud could have happened simultaneously, so many of the popups could have been optional, the battles could have happened so much faster and smoother. I got Camara on the OI Discord to time it for me: starting an encounter with a wild Pokémon, OHKO-ing it, ending the battle and being able to take another step takes a minimum of 16 seconds in Pokémon Shield. SadisticMystic reports times upwards of 20-25 seconds in the 3DS games - with move animations off. Around half a second of this is spent on actual gameplay (selecting a move, mashing A to move text along) and the rest is waiting for the game to chug along. Even turning off move animations doesn't do much, given how it's all the other stuff that takes time. This is needlessly clunky, but it's probably a consequence of ...
• ... the code of the games still being partially based on a code framework written for Ruby and Sapphire. Much like Game Freak's design philosophy, it seems like their whole development strategy is based on the concept of piling new stuff on top of old, without taking time to overhaul anything. Never mind all the old dummied-out Key Items that still float around the code, probably because removing any of them could have unforeseen consequences. Take out the Red Chain, some pointers go haywire, and suddenly you need to trade Dusclops holding a Super Repel in order to evolve it, stuff like that.

In short, the Pokémon games retain a lot of content and mechanics that no longer work as originally intended, that have been left obsolete by new conventions, or that were never meant to be useful beyond that one time it looked really cool and now just hangs around being a hassle. I'm honestly not sure for how much longer they can keep it up like this. Rumours suggest Sword and Shield's development was severely hampered by the challenge of just getting all the old stuff to work. Dexit was apparently caused by the realization that this can't go on forever - yet it was followed up with the devs not changing course one bit, continuing to do the stuff that led to the problems Dexit tried to address in the first place.

And then there's the difficult part: The fact that more new content is being piled on top of old is one of the main draws of the Pokémon games, and why fans stick to it for several generations. As demonstrated by Dexit, fans will be furious if any content is cut. However, other fans will be jaded and quit if nothing changes either, and new players may find it difficult to get a grip on the vast extent of the content of these games. Nostalgia sells, but it doesn't sell by itself. New content has to be added, old content has to be acknowledged, the sum of the content is nearly overwhelming as it is ... there really is no way to please everyone here. Any approach - including doing nothing at all - will be met with vocal opposition from some substantial portion of their fan base. Something has to give, and now I'm curious to see what.

Game Freak is going at it like a restaurant that keeps adding dishes to its menu, despite their cooks being overworked, the guests not knowing what half the stuff on offer is or able to tell the dishes apart, storage space for ingredients being a concern, and half the dishes never being ordered by anybody but a few loud guests that will make a heck of a fuss were they ever taken off the menu. At some point they won't be able to keep all of it up any longer, and I wonder which bit they will compromise on first.

Stuff like this is why I think Dexit didn't go far enough; Game Freak needs to make a generation that isn't backward compatible, to allow for streamlining and revisiting of old concepts that were fun/unique at the time, but have just added up to become a chore.

Side note, evolution methods seem to be a sore point for Game Freak, especially for evolutions added after the base form's generation (or, in breeding, babies added later). I get they want to avoid continuity errors, but we're way past the point of that being a problem when we're expected to believe there are only 151/251/386/493 etc. Pokémon each game and a new batch gets miraculously discovered shortly after (actually they just stopped doing this but I think it's still a valid point). I'm amazed they actually changed Leafeon and Glaceon's evolution method to regular stone use in gen 8 (though the Ice Stone didn't exist until gen 7), and that's great, but Espeon, Umbreon, and Sylveon still lack stone options. The first two could easily use Sun and Moon Stones; Sylveon would probably use a Shiny or, maybe, a Dawn Stone (yeah, it's not a gender-specific evolution, but the Fairy type had its "awakening" rather late into the series). With baby Pokémon, uh, just let them breed and have the base form always breed the baby. They're a cute flavor idea but a massive gameplay detriment, ESPECIALLY since so many evolve from happiness.

I had almost forgotten how spectacularly un-fun and sloggish Raids in SwSh were before I decided to finally beat the game and then try out some 5 Star Raids today. Man, whatever lackwit came up with that feature really ought to go jump on a pile of rusty nails, preferably from a very large height, and then take a long bath in lemon juice. What kind of moron would consider it fun for players to engage in battles where 7 major actions happen every turn, of which the player only can influence one, with outright insane loss conditions the player has next to zero control over (prevent the twice-attacking opponent that can OHKO every team mate you have from defeating your team mates four times), while the opponent can also continuously boost itself and negate most of your damage? And then decide to throw in the most insultingly incompetent AI partners ever seen in gaming? To top it off, for every second you spend taking any action (selecting moves), a solid minute or so is spent waiting, for things such as sandstorm activating and hurting the Pokémon one by one in separate animations with separate text boxes.

The implementation of Raids in general is one of the chief reasons why I consider SwSh by far the worst main series Pokémon games ever made. And that's saying something, considering Sun and Moon were a thing. I refuse to believe this was playested for more than five minutes, or that if it was, the developers ever listened to anything the playtesters had to say. "You just don't know how to play the game. Executive-san designed this feature, and he says it is perfect, so it is perfect. There will be no changes, except the termination of your contracts. You are fired in disgrace!" or something like that.

Man, what an awful, awful feature.

I almost never turn off battle animations but I had to for raids. They're such a horrid time sink if you let them play out, and you still have to deal with shield and weather damage animations.

 

[Codraroll]

Basically normal raids are a treadmill, adventures are goal-based & better for it

From what I've heard, adventures are also a lot more forgiving and actually adhere to the established battle mechanics instead of throwing them out the window.

The problem with Raids, especially in single player, is that you can come in with what is conventionally a strong counter to the raid 'mon (case in point: the raid that made me lose my temper above was my Coalossal vs. Butterfree, a matchup the former would normally win nearly every time) and select the perfect move every turn, yet still lose like a chump because so much stuff happens that you don't have control over and regular rules don't apply.

You Dynamax your counter and smack the Raid boss with a move that would normally reduce it to a smear on the ground (0- Atk Coalossal Max Rockfall vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Butterfree-Gmax: 456-540 (140.7 - 166.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO ), yet the damage the boss takes caps out at one third of its HP. And that's capped damage per turn, so if the first attack of the battle brings it down to that health, the next attacks won't do anything. Then it's time to hammer uselessly against the barriers the Raid boss sets up, with a further two of these pulverizing moves being required to break through (if you're lucky, your raid partners can help you do it in one turn, but that assumes that they 1) aren't knocked out, 2) use a damaging move, and 3) the move actually hits, all of which are fickle assumptions at best. Barriers down, you launch another move, which by rights should have shot the Raid boss into the next county (0- Atk Coalossal Rock Blast (3 hits) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Butterfree-Gmax: 264-324 (81.4 - 100%) -- guaranteed KO from 66 % damage), but which only send it down to half health, at which point another set of barriers come up.

All the while, the Raid Boss keeps firing off moves that can 2HKO your AI partners at best, and frequently OHKO them. It keeps accumulating boosts through Max moves while nullifying your boosts. Your AI partners keep being useless (Martin can cram that Solrock up where the sun doesn't shine). Time and time again you launch moves against it that should have bifurcated it in a normal battle ( 0- Atk Coalossal Flare Blitz vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Butterfree-Gmax: 210-248 (64.8 - 76.5%) -- guaranteed KO from 50% damage) but only serve to bring down one measly piece of the barrier. You'd have to be extremely lucky for your AI partners to survive this far into the battle. And yes, luck is the only factor in play here. There's squat all you can do to improve your chances, because the opponent plays dirty, your allies play stupid, your moves don't count, and your own survival is irrelevant to the outcome of the battle.

It's just ... they had to know how infuriating this feature would be for anybody stuck playing single player out there. Game Freak's offices presumably have doors, and anybody smart enough to operate a door handle would see what spectacularly appalling UX design these raids represent. Yet somehow, the "eh, it's fine" attitude prevailed. I wonder how thoroughly rotten a corporate culture will have to be to allow excrement like that to pass through a design process.

 

[Pikachu315111]

Honestly I kind of sort of like IVs for the same reason they probably even exist: for flavor reasons because it introduces extra stat variation at a base level, even between the same pokemon with the same level at the same nature.
The other reason at this point is to power up trainer pokemon

If I was going to remove it at all, honestly I'd keep it casually and remove it competitively. If it doesn't mean anything for the causal player that also means it could stay and lose nothing; you could even include bottle caps & golden bottle caps as rare-but-less-so main game items and treat it like eh...you know...an rpg thing, or something. Like shift the item from "this will help fix my pokemon for the Real Game" to "oh, nice, i can upgrade my pokemon!"

If they're not going to remove IVs they should at least let IVs raise naturally. Hyper Training is fine and all, but that's something you don't usually do until the very end (if you do at all). Otherwise IVs are sometimes an invisible annoyance if you get a Pokemon with low IVs.

I think that Levels should effect IVs. When you get a Pokemon the higher the Level the less likely it'll have low IVs, maybe even raise the "min cap" so the IVs can't go below a certain number. And as you level up a Pokemon while training them you can go to their stat screen and assign bonus IVs you get per level up to the stats you want (you'll be taught about this mechanic of course).

What kind of moron would consider it fun for players to engage in battles where 7 major actions happen every turn, of which the player only can influence one, with outright insane loss conditions the player has next to zero control over (prevent the twice-attacking opponent that can OHKO every team mate you have from defeating your team mates four times), while the opponent can also continuously boost itself and negate most of your damage?

It's the loss conditions which annoy me the most. They really should have given you more turns & knockouts as the star level increases:

1 Star: 10 turns, 3 KOs
2 Stars: 10 turns, 4 KOs
3 Stars: 12 turns, 4 KOs
4 Stars: 13 turns, 5 KOs
5 Stats: 15 turns, 6 KOs

Also it's SUPER annoying how damage just stops upon reaching a Pokemon's shield cap, like at least have it do some splash damage (or remove a shield bar or two). Oh, and speaking of shield bars, kind of BS that no matter what attack you use it only removes one bar unless it's a Z-Move which in that case all remove 2 bars. You're telling me user a super effective move doesn't let me at least remove one more bar (or do a bit more splash damage)?

 

[Ironmage]

My big complaint with raids is how hard any alternate strategies are shut down. I don't want to hit things hard and take hits via having big numbers. I want to debuff the opponent and control the battlefield. Raids just straight up say that my desired playstyle doesn't work and there's nothing I can do about that.

 

[Kurona]

My big complaint with raids is how hard any alternate strategies are shut down. I don't want to hit things hard and take hits via having big numbers. I want to debuff the opponent and control the battlefield. Raids just straight up say that my desired playstyle doesn't work and there's nothing I can do about that.

Interesting thing is that Raid Adventures actually provide for that. Many times I've found the best thing to do is to Will-O-Wisp or Screech; and sometimes with Rental Pokémon that's all you've got. It actually forces you to strategise and it's so much more interesting.

 

[Worldie]

Interesting thing is that Raid Adventures actually provide for that. Many times I've found the best thing to do is to Will-O-Wisp or Screech; and sometimes with Rental Pokémon that's all you've got. It actually forces you to strategise and it's so much more interesting.

It was a good step forward that the regular raids in the Adventures don't really use their "clear status/debuffs" ability, and by not having shields, you actually get to use the side effects of the Max Moves which are near irrelevant in the standard raids as Shields negate them.

Sadly... the final boss does still use the clearing ability.
Even if they don't have shields anymore, they still will occasionally, and that shuts down everything that isn't "Wide guard and pray". Which is very annoying and my only real remark about the Max Adventures design.