(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

Necrozma & Arceus get to be the only exception to this I guess since they get to """permanently""" be dragons while those 4 only become dragon during battle through another mechanic.
Silvally, but yes. Even then, they have to be holding the Plate/Memory before the Tutor lets them learn it.
 

Pikachu315111

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But I've got one big gripe with Sceptile. Many of its Pokedex entries emphasize how the leaves on its arms can slice down thick trees, or how it's unmatched in jungle combat, with Y's explicitly saying how it uses its sharp leaves to strike down prey. In other words, that it's very adept at physical combat. Furthermore, if we look at its movepool, it gets Swords Dance and a ton of Physical moves such as Leaf Blade, Earthquake, Thunder Punch, Brick Break, Acrobatics, and Throat Chop. So with that said...

Why in Arceus' name does it have base 85 Attack and 105 Special Attack?
Cause it was a pure Grass-type back before the Physical/Special Split. Blaziken and Swampert were able to get away with being Attack focused cause they were part Fighting and Ground, but Sceptile would have suffered severely if they gave it a high Attack stat. Heck, I say Blaziken is Attack focused but it has 110 in Special Attack (120 in Attack). Swampert also has an okay 85 Special Attack (enough so that Water-type moves don't feel useless to have; BTW it's Attack is 110).

And same in Unova. It's just one thing goes to the next goes to the next. It's been quite bad since Unova, tbh.
I would give Unova a pass as, while it was linear, it used that linearity to tell a story and usually each Route, City/Town, & location had some unique element to it or major event happen to give it some distinction.
 
Draco Meteor is the exclusive domain of "natural" Dragon-types. Charizard, Ampharos, and Necrozma don't get it either, despite Mega Evolving/Ultra Bursting into Dragons.
Yeah, it's more noticeable on Mega Sceptile (and to a lesser extent Mega Ampharos) though imo. Offensively, Grass moves are resisted by 7 types, so it would appreciate having a strong Dragon STAB move to cover what Grass can't hit alone. Draco Meteor would also complement nicely with Leaf Storm with both having the same BP/Accuracy/-2 SPA drop. Part of the problem is that outside of Draco Meteor and some signature moves, the strongest special dragon move is Dragon Pulse. Usually it is not a problem, because all natural dragons learn Draco Meteor, but otherwise there is no variation in special dragon moves like the physical dragon moves which has Dragon Rush / Dual Chop / Scale Shot as physical alternatives to Dragon Claw / Outrage. There's less options for varied special dragon coverage, while moves like Dual Chop can be spread widely as flavor.
 
I liked several of Kalos' as well, though mostly I rememebr the caves and cities. Absolutely do not remember their numbers or names but:
-the route with the battle chateu. Its long has a distinct camera angle to show the lake and a bunch of flower patches with artists drawing stuff.
I liked that route(It helped that it was extremely long and straight and just happened to be where the Daycare is), but it was very picturesque, and having the Daycare and the Battle Chateau at the same place made it easy to grind both at once.

Which reminds me, the camera limitations are very apparent in SWSH. It feels like there's a lot more stuff just off-screen that I'd want to see and can't than in previous gens.
 
Cause it was a pure Grass-type back before the Physical/Special Split. Blaziken and Swampert were able to get away with being Attack focused cause they were part Fighting and Ground, but Sceptile would have suffered severely if they gave it a high Attack stat. Heck, I say Blaziken is Attack focused but it has 110 in Special Attack (120 in Attack). Swampert also has an okay 85 Special Attack (enough so that Water-type moves don't feel useless to have; BTW it's Attack is 110).
I know that this is the reason, and it was more or less unavoidable. It's still a shame, though, that a Pokemon with such a cool design is so hampered by the mechanics of its time.
 
Gamefreak needs to learn that changing pokemon stuff is Ok, Actually. We had entire pokemon retyped to types that would make previous interactions nonsensical (clefairy going from weak to fighting to resisting it) and no one cared other than making light hearted jokes about it. No one is going to throw a fit if you swap sceptiles stats or something
 

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So, after a chain of video hopping, I got to rewatching the climax of the Delta Episode.

Upon catching Rayquaza & defeating Zinnia, being given the title Lorekeeper and entrusted to save the world, you put on the hazard suit you acquired during the main story from the antagonistic team and ride on the back of Rayquaza into space. The camera pans from deep space to the horizen of the planet as a little green speck rises up from the planet. The green speck brightly glows and is now a green triangle which leaves a greenish-yellow streak behind it. Just then the meteor heading toward the planet finally appears and begins entering the atmosphere. Before it could even start heating up, Mega Rayquaza speeds up and flies right through the meteor, bursting it into pieces! And all this while heroic music plays and changes along with the actions on the screen, a final trumpet solo upon the meteor's destruction. All falls silent, when from the meteor you see a black triangle float in the middle of the screen. It then starts darting around in a strange pattern, before returning to the middle of the screen where it turns red and vibrates. Four tentacles then appear from the triangle, go from black to red & blue while twisting together, and then the triangle bursts apart to reveal Deoxys all while its battle theme is playing. And with Deoxys charging at the screen, followed by a cool intro of the broken meteor shards floating by, we enter a battle with Deoxys where for the first time ever we get to catch a Mythical Pokemon in-game in a main series game!
Not only was it an awesome ending to a post game episode but it also emphasized the epicness of encountering a Mythical Pokemon without needing to attend an event or download it (where most of the time you just given the Pokemon with little story attached to it). Sadly Gen VII skipped out making a Mythical Pokemon available through normal gameplay, but Gen VIII surprised everyone by making Keldeo available! So, after the epicness they made getting Deoxys, what did they do for Keldeo?

After finding enough footprints to have the Swords of Justice spawn in the Wild Area, where they just wondered around and when you battle them it doesn't even play the Gen V battle music, you take all three to this random little island near the Dyana Tree where you make curry and then Keldeo appears, also just wondering around and doesn't play any unique theme when you battle it.
... like, really GF? This is the best you could come up with?
 
Using the standard battle music was an L but otherwise this fit them well I think. Keldeo is definitely the sort of Pokémon that fits a more casual thing like this; being a wandering student rather than some invading horror from outer space. Not everything needs to be a massive setpiece - Crown Tundra had plenty of those for one thing - and this was still a thousand times better than how most returning legendaries have been treated recently.
 

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Using the standard battle music was an L but otherwise this fit them well I think. Keldeo is definitely the sort of Pokémon that fits a more casual thing like this; being a wandering student rather than some invading horror from outer space. Not everything needs to be a massive setpiece - Crown Tundra had plenty of those for one thing - and this was still a thousand times better than how most returning legendaries have been treated recently.
Were they treated better? Honestly they still just got it bad as the other returning Legendaries, but instead of being in the Dynamax Adventures they were cut off into this afterthought side quest. Like, okay, the idea of finding their footprints and tracking them down is a good start, but they don't stick the landing when it comes time to encounter them. Like, take what they did with the Galarian Birds where each one gave you a challenge before letting you battle them, why didn't they have the Swords of Justice be the same? After finding their footprints, Sonia puts it together where it's likely stomping grounds are. You go there, and upon entering the area you hear that Sword of Justice's roar. They appear in front of you, but as you approach it you're met with a challenge of sorts. Virizion may want you to chase it but it throws vines and thorns in the way, Terrakion stays where it is but creates quakes and rolling rocks you got to keep from knocking you down & pushing you back, and Cobalion could create a magnetic maze between your and it and you gotta figure your way through it while Cobalion walks around you keeping a watchful eye.

Then, after a battle (WHICH PLAYS THE GEN V GENERAL LEGENDARY THEME) where you catch them, when you one of them leading your party you begin finding a fourth set of footprints. It confuses Sonia, but she suggests having the Swords of Justice help you track down 50 sets of the footprints (depending on which Sword of Justice you have leading will have different group of footprints become visible: Virizion in grassy areas, Terrakion in rocky areas, and Cobalion in snowy areas). Then when once you find all 50, Sonia concludes that there's a place around the Dyana Tree which the Swords of Justice gather and that may be where you find the 4th member but may need to draw it out. Using that clue, you find the island and see the cooking equipment, giving you the clue to make curry. You do that and Keldeo appears in front of you, standing in the water. You then are challenged by Keldoe going through a mini-version of each of the other Swords of Justice's challenge: racing Keldeo around the Dyana Tree as it creates water spouts & whirlpools to slow you down, jumping to the center of the small island and creating waves of water to push you back, and finally a maze of getting around water spouts to finally battle Keldeo. And as an added bonus, if you make curry one more time on the island with all four of them, it'll unlock a cutscene where Virizion, Terrakion, and Cobalion teaches Keldeo the Secret Sword move and transforming it into Resolute Form.

There! An eventful side quest which may not be epic as the climax of the Delta Episode but gives the Swords of Justice the respect they deserve and providing a memorable encounter with Keldeo.
 
Were they treated better? Honestly they still just got it bad as the other returning Legendaries, but instead of being in the Dynamax Adventures they were cut off into this afterthought side quest. Like, okay, the idea of finding their footprints and tracking them down is a good start, but they don't stick the landing when it comes time to encounter them. Like, take what they did with the Galarian Birds where each one gave you a challenge before letting you battle them, why didn't they have the Swords of Justice be the same? After finding their footprints, Sonia puts it together where it's likely stomping grounds are. You go there, and upon entering the area you hear that Sword of Justice's roar. They appear in front of you, but as you approach it you're met with a challenge of sorts. Virizion may want you to chase it but it throws vines and thorns in the way, Terrakion stays where it is but creates quakes and rolling rocks you got to keep from knocking you down & pushing you back, and Cobalion could create a magnetic maze between your and it and you gotta figure your way through it while Cobalion walks around you keeping a watchful eye.

Then, after a battle (WHICH PLAYS THE GEN V GENERAL LEGENDARY THEME) where you catch them, when you one of them leading your party you begin finding a fourth set of footprints. It confuses Sonia, but she suggests having the Swords of Justice help you track down 50 sets of the footprints (depending on which Sword of Justice you have leading will have different group of footprints become visible: Virizion in grassy areas, Terrakion in rocky areas, and Cobalion in snowy areas). Then when once you find all 50, Sonia concludes that there's a place around the Dyana Tree which the Swords of Justice gather and that may be where you find the 4th member but may need to draw it out. Using that clue, you find the island and see the cooking equipment, giving you the clue to make curry. You do that and Keldeo appears in front of you, standing in the water. You then are challenged by Keldoe going through a mini-version of each of the other Swords of Justice's challenge: racing Keldeo around the Dyana Tree as it creates water spouts & whirlpools to slow you down, jumping to the center of the small island and creating waves of water to push you back, and finally a maze of getting around water spouts to finally battle Keldeo. And as an added bonus, if you make curry one more time on the island with all four of them, it'll unlock a cutscene where Virizion, Terrakion, and Cobalion teaches Keldeo the Secret Sword move and transforming it into Resolute Form.

There! An eventful side quest which may not be epic as the climax of the Delta Episode but gives the Swords of Justice the respect they deserve and providing a memorable encounter with Keldeo.
That would be fine, but again aside from the music I don't have a problem with the quest as-is being lowkey. Again, Crown Tundra already has a lot of eventful quests, one that's more laidback like this (which the Muskedeers do fit tonally) is fine.
 
Pokemon Sword and Shield has a huge problem. No, I'm not talking about BNND or the reused animations. I'm talking about the Battle Timer.


PokeAimMD brings up how the reduced Battle Timer really kills 6v6 the meta game, making it impossible to complete most matches. This hurts a lot of streamers since 6 V 6 matches were popular to stream, and make certain tournaments like Draft Leagues impossible. What's worse, your time options are coded into the game, but can only be selected through LAN, not Wifi. Joey gets a list of PokeTubers including: Cybertron, Wolfe, FSG, and Shofu to express their desire for a 60 Minute universal timer. Its baffling why they did not keep the 60 minute timer from the handheld games. I know there was a 20 minute timer in Let's Go, so I wonder if that was a reuse of code from Let's Go; there are some other similarities like a Link Code system for both.

Anyway, my issue with the timer in general is that it does not work like a chess timer, which it is intended to be. When you are done selecting moves at the end of the turn, the timer still counts down, meaning that if you use a move with a super long animation or you Dynamax but your opponent does not, you have less time. The only reason I can ever think of why we have this timer is because GF really wants to ensure stall doesn't dominate VGC, but a 5 minute genuine chess timer is good enough to keep stall at bay. Anyway, its just another " Highly Questionable Design choices that never made a finished product. "

#BringBackTimer!
 
This may or may not have been mentioned in this thread because there are 316 pages and I am unwilling to read them all, but I don't like that Dual Wingbeat and Rock Blast have 90% accuracy. Would it kill you to let them hit all the time? Rock Blast especially is only good on Cloyster and sometimes Tyranitar, there aren't many reasons not to buff it
 
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I think it is hilarious that they kept the super limited timer in the game with dynamax. Mega Evolution is a pretty quick set up. Dynamaxing takes like 20 full seconds to grow that you can't skip and if the pokemon is out long enough than its another 10 or so seconds to shrink back down. Max Moves are also kind of long since they want to emphasize the size & power. And while they aren't as long as z moves, you still get 3 (6 counting the other side's) of them.
Just feels like a mismatch.


Seems like the easiest solution, if they didn't want to do the chess timer route, would just be variable time. 3 solo or 4 doubles matches probably work fine in most instances with a 20 minute timer, keeping things quick. But if people are doing a 6 pokemon match it really should be at least doubled; there's twice as many pokemon!
 
This may or may not have been mentioned in this thread because there are 316 pages and I am unwilling to read them all, but I don't like that Dual Wingbeat and Rock Blast have 90% accuracy. Would it kill you to let them hit all the time?
90/95% accuracy on any move is frustrating and redundant. It's not enough to make it a risk/reward thing; it's only enough to make it frustrating the one time it doesn't connect.
 
Okay, why didn't Following Pokemon return in SW/SH? Like, I get it for previous gens, the only reason they could do it in gen IV was the lack of mons they'd have to model for it, but Gen VIII we already have overworld models for huge swathes of mons. Why not let our lead accompany us through the wild area at the very least?
 

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Okay, why didn't Following Pokemon return in SW/SH? Like, I get it for previous gens, the only reason they could do it in gen IV was the lack of mons they'd have to model for it, but Gen VIII we already have overworld models for huge swathes of mons. Why not let our lead accompany us through the wild area at the very least?
They did! In the DLC and its areas only!

It can look really awkward at times too because movement is more involved than it was back when everything was 2d.
 
Okay, why didn't Following Pokemon return in SW/SH? Like, I get it for previous gens, the only reason they could do it in gen IV was the lack of mons they'd have to model for it, but Gen VIII we already have overworld models for huge swathes of mons. Why not let our lead accompany us through the wild area at the very least?
I'm assuming either engine limitations or time constraints. Or perceived fromer leading to the latter handling it.
But broadly I don't think the game would've been able to handle it in the towns and routes. Might be too much going on in the towns and the game already has draw distance issues. The routes also dont have a lot of wiggle room especially when wandering pokemon were added.

Base game wild area, i dunno, it always feeles like it's going to fall apart as is. It might have been able to handle it but I could see it being held off just in case.

Obviously they were able to work through these issues for the DLC, but I'm guessing it being a full ground-up build for them made it easier to test out too. And then didn't have the time or didnt feel it worth going back to the base game wild area to retest it to implement the feature?
 
Obviously they were able to work through these issues for the DLC, but I'm guessing it being a full ground-up build for them made it easier to test out too. And then didn't have the time or didnt feel it worth going back to the base game wild area to retest it to implement the feature?
Probably didn't go back to put it in the main game because, well, money.

Not to say that their having issues wasn't the reason base game didn't have it -- I think all of what you've said seems likely. But I also think it's likely that they figured out following pokémon for Isle and Tundra, then the higher-ups looked over their shoulder and said "hey. That's a popular highly-requested feature. You really gonna put it in the free areas too?"
 
Probably didn't go back to put it in the main game because, well, money.

Not to say that their having issues wasn't the reason base game didn't have it -- I think all of what you've said seems likely. But I also think it's likely that they figured out following pokémon for Isle and Tundra, then the higher-ups looked over their shoulder and said "hey. That's a popular highly-requested feature. You really gonna put it in the free areas too?"
I somehow doubt that it was "push to buy the DLC". While it's a nice addition to them, "buy the expansion to see your pokemon follow you!" isn't exactly a good selling point.

It's most likely what R_N said, without trying once more to throw smogonian reees at arbitrary nonexistant corporate greed.
The main Wild Area barely performs as it is (possibly a consequence of having had to rush the game out while still unstable), *expecially* with wifi turned on, adding more calculations for the following pokemon animations & route could have just not been worth the effort and they opted to stabylize it for the smaller "wild areas" of the two islands.

As for the routes, I'm confident that's just intentional, and the reasoning isn't hard to guess. Even without factoring the rendering distance issues, routes are both irregular, generally small, with plenty of stairs and jumps, which would have either required more complex animations or a constant appear/disappear so they opted to just not have them show. They don't show in any of the non wild-area sections of the two DLCs either.
The constant appear/disappear effect is something you can easily notice on Let's Go (where you can have the following Pokemon everywhere) and honestly it's really obnoxious in some parts, I can definitely see a good reason to not include it.
 
I somehow doubt that it was "push to buy the DLC". While it's a nice addition to them, "buy the expansion to see your pokemon follow you!" isn't exactly a good selling point.
Also its...not even a feature they really advertised at all. It was just something people found out after playing. I'm not sure either DLC's marketing ever acknolwedged it? Maybe a few clips in Tundra's pre-release?
 
I somehow doubt that it was "push to buy the DLC". While it's a nice addition to them, "buy the expansion to see your pokemon follow you!" isn't exactly a good selling point.

It's most likely what R_N said, without trying once more to throw smogonian reees at arbitrary nonexistant corporate greed.
The main Wild Area barely performs as it is (possibly a consequence of having had to rush the game out while still unstable), *expecially* with wifi turned on, adding more calculations for the following pokemon animations & route could have just not been worth the effort and they opted to stabylize it for the smaller "wild areas" of the two islands.

As for the routes, I'm confident that's just intentional, and the reasoning isn't hard to guess. Even without factoring the rendering distance issues, routes are both irregular, generally small, with plenty of stairs and jumps, which would have either required more complex animations or a constant appear/disappear so they opted to just not have them show. They don't show in any of the non wild-area sections of the two DLCs either.
The constant appear/disappear effect is something you can easily notice on Let's Go (where you can have the following Pokemon everywhere) and honestly it's really obnoxious in some parts, I can definitely see a good reason to not include it.
I don't think you understood what I said. I didn't say it was the reason it wasn't put in base game, I'm saying it was a possible extra reason it wasn't added back into the base game areas post-DLC.
 
Might be misremembering things, but the "following Pokémon" feature gives me the feeling that is more of an afterthought for Game Freak, rather than something they deem important.

Let's Go being the only exception as it replaces the Bike.
 

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