We have enough power creep problems without GF actually doing good gimmick mons by accident.
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(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon
- Thread starter BriarRose
- Start date
Accidental good gimmick pokemon are the less of the worries with powercreep. I don't believe a single of the min maxed gimmicks would reach anything higher than NU if gamefreak atempted it. I mean, look at pinchurchin, four pretty good stats and 2 min stats and it's in the depths of untiered.
Also it would be really funny which is more important than the consequences on competitive imo lol
Hang on, since when were gimmick mons affecting power creep to go vault high?
Let me look across gens
Gen 1: Amnesia Golduck isn't that good. Though Eeveelutions were good (except Flareon). Ditto sucked
Gen 2: Unown is garbage. Smeargle also was poor, and Wobuffet didn't have Shadow tag yet
Gen 3: Many duo pairs are weak. Luvdisc is weak
Gen 4: Although Rotom formes were oppressive Gen 5, they aren't so much here due to same typings. Stealth Rock was way more of a factor as well as hyper distribution of Grass Knott
Gen 5: closest to gimmick is the Monkey trio, and they suck
Gen 6: I don't recall much of any, bar megas. Which did have a negative impact
Gen 7: Mimikyu was Ou tier, though Wishiwashi was too frail. Piyukumuku was hit miss
Gen 8: Closest besides the penguin are the fossil mons. Though one was indeed cancerous
The penguin was screwed by Hail still being a garbage weather
Honestly a good gimmick would bring flavor to comp. And min maxing isn't bad if done correctly
I think the point is we have enough power creep without GF purposely min maxing.
Mega Beedrill strikes me as a min maxed mon. No, it's not overpowered. But if GF were to make a concerted effort to min max it would render older Pokémon obsolete at an alarming rate.
this is why we need legit rebalancing
abilities and a+10 stat buff isn't enough 90% of the time
and the fact later gens are STILL getting higher BSTs overall is concerning
Concerning? Not really.
Necessary? In fact, probably.
Ultimately GF wants people to use their new toys not just in-game (where choices are mainly dictated by availability and personal taste anyway) but rather competitively, and outside of keeping fueling new super mechanics, the only way to get people to use the new toys is to make them stronger.
"Cool" designs won't get people to use a Pokemon on the VGC streams over others. VGCers don't use Incineroar because he's cool, they use him because he powercrept the shit out of Arcanine and large majority of other Intimidaters. Greninja may have been the top tier fan favourite yet it barely ever saw any competitive usage because it was trash there.
It's just the way of competitive games that keep going for this long: new toys have to always be better than the old ones, or noone will use them.
We can wishlist and fantasize about a utopic perfect balancing that makes every pokemon mathematically equal, but that's not only not happening and impossible but also bad for marketing.
Mobas, RPGs, card games, MMOs, everything goes through the powercreep issue when they've been going for several expansions or comparable situations: new toys will always be better, and old toys will always become worse and worse.
Plus let's be frank, you guys do realize that "buffing old pokemon" will only end up making something else disappear right?
Remember when they buffed Pelipper and Politoed went from "face of Rain archetype" to "perish song gimmick at best"?
That's what happens when you buff something, something else gets replaced, because ultimately a pokemon team can only have 6 pokes and if you want to play to win, you only bring the 6 you think work the best.
I swear a "come back down to the real world" call is needed a bit too often. Power creep is an inevitable consequence of a franchise that features close to 1000 different options. In the same way there has to always be a Lich King, there has also always have to be the army of harmless skeletons that follow him.
It's nothing short of a daunting task to rebalance all these mons.
I tried rebalancing GSC when I hacked Stadium 2. It was damn near impossible to even give each mon an unique niche, let alone balance them in three tiers.
Actually, let me rephrase that.
It is straight up impossible to balance this game.
Blame the checklist and its ridiculous overlap, I guess. Seriously, why do we even need so many early-game rodents?
Dunno if this has been mentioned yet, but I don't get why ghost dynamax moves lower physical def and dark lowers sp.def.
There are way more good special ghost types and way more good physical dark types.
The only really good exception in VGC right now is Mimikyu, Dragapult and maybe mixed Yveltal. But Mimikyu is rarely the one you want to dynamax Yveltal and Dragapult are often special.
Also, there should be at least one more decent physical fairy move.
Nobody likes missing play rough, and some fairy types don't even get it. Maybe bring back dizzy punch as a fairy type elemental punch, while giving it the extra 5 move power and keeping the 10% chance of confusion. Koko and Bulu wouldn't be that OP with a reliable physical stab move.
There are way more good special ghost types and way more good physical dark types.
The only really good exception in VGC right now is Mimikyu, Dragapult and maybe mixed Yveltal. But Mimikyu is rarely the one you want to dynamax Yveltal and Dragapult are often special.
Also, there should be at least one more decent physical fairy move.
Nobody likes missing play rough, and some fairy types don't even get it. Maybe bring back dizzy punch as a fairy type elemental punch, while giving it the extra 5 move power and keeping the 10% chance of confusion. Koko and Bulu wouldn't be that OP with a reliable physical stab move.
If I wanted to bet on a reason, it's because Ghost used to be physical, Dark used to be special, and since there's no field effect for either type... that's what they got.
Fighting and Poison moves were capped to 90 because of them having arguably the 2nd best effect of all Max moves (one can argue the speed boost of flying one would be better in 90% of the cases).
Unfortunately that doesn't pan well for the few phisical poison and special fighting pokemon (or pokes using them as coverage), but large majority of the pokes that use them appreciate the free +1s more than some extra power.
Some recent posts in the likes thread reminded me of yet another thing I find really annoying in HG/SS.
During the Radio Tower part of the story in HG/SS, you get to dress up as a Rocket Grunt. This is really cool! You don’t just get to fight the evil team, you also get to infiltrate them. They really set up something great here…
…and then you are forced to remove the disguise almost immediately after receiving it. This situation had a lot of potential to turn into something really great, but they decided to blow it as hard as they possibly could. I remember being extremely disappointed by this the first time I played HG/SS. They could have handled it a lot better. I guess they wanted to add something new without changing the story too much from the originals, but since they didn't handle it very well, it was just a big failure in every possible way. I already thought HG/SS has the worst story of all Pokémon games, but being reminded of this just made it even worse.
One other notable thing about this situation is that if you talk to the NPCs in Goldenrod while wearing the Rocket Suit, their dialogue will be different. They would speak to you as if you were an actual Rocket Grunt. While this was cool in theory, it was terrible in practice. I think most of the stuff the NPCs said in that situation was very badly written, it was as if they didn't even try to make it interesting. They could have made something cool with it, but it just felt very black and white. It was childish and immature, just like the rest of HG/SS.
Onto something else. I am not a big fan of HG/SS when it comes to their graphics, I find them bland and overrated. Some areas and sprites are great, but I think the majority are just plain boring and not as great as many other players make them out to be. One very notable thing that I think HG/SS totally fails at are the graphics when you take photos.
It just looks so pixilated and terrible. I am not a fan of it at all. My impression here is that they were trying to do something really cool, but the technology of the time just couldn't handle it right. The 3DS games did the photography feature much better.
Lastly, something different. I really like Event Pokémon. However, I don’t like Event Pokémon which you obtain at level 100. The reason for this is that I like training Pokémon, and I can’t train them if they have already reached level 100. While they can still be EV-trained/Hyper Trained/Minted and have their moveset changed, it feels like their actual growth has already been completed. Because of that, I prefer Event Pokémon that are obtained at any level below 100. Those can actually be trained, which is great. That said, I still like a lot of my Event Pokémon that were obtained at level 100, such as my shiny Zeraora.
During the Radio Tower part of the story in HG/SS, you get to dress up as a Rocket Grunt. This is really cool! You don’t just get to fight the evil team, you also get to infiltrate them. They really set up something great here…
…and then you are forced to remove the disguise almost immediately after receiving it. This situation had a lot of potential to turn into something really great, but they decided to blow it as hard as they possibly could. I remember being extremely disappointed by this the first time I played HG/SS. They could have handled it a lot better. I guess they wanted to add something new without changing the story too much from the originals, but since they didn't handle it very well, it was just a big failure in every possible way. I already thought HG/SS has the worst story of all Pokémon games, but being reminded of this just made it even worse.
One other notable thing about this situation is that if you talk to the NPCs in Goldenrod while wearing the Rocket Suit, their dialogue will be different. They would speak to you as if you were an actual Rocket Grunt. While this was cool in theory, it was terrible in practice. I think most of the stuff the NPCs said in that situation was very badly written, it was as if they didn't even try to make it interesting. They could have made something cool with it, but it just felt very black and white. It was childish and immature, just like the rest of HG/SS.
Onto something else. I am not a big fan of HG/SS when it comes to their graphics, I find them bland and overrated. Some areas and sprites are great, but I think the majority are just plain boring and not as great as many other players make them out to be. One very notable thing that I think HG/SS totally fails at are the graphics when you take photos.
It just looks so pixilated and terrible. I am not a fan of it at all. My impression here is that they were trying to do something really cool, but the technology of the time just couldn't handle it right. The 3DS games did the photography feature much better.
Lastly, something different. I really like Event Pokémon. However, I don’t like Event Pokémon which you obtain at level 100. The reason for this is that I like training Pokémon, and I can’t train them if they have already reached level 100. While they can still be EV-trained/Hyper Trained/Minted and have their moveset changed, it feels like their actual growth has already been completed. Because of that, I prefer Event Pokémon that are obtained at any level below 100. Those can actually be trained, which is great. That said, I still like a lot of my Event Pokémon that were obtained at level 100, such as my shiny Zeraora.
Pokémon Colosseum gives you Espeon and Umbreon as a starter duo.
Naturally, Espeon is going to be the big damage dealer of the duo while Umbreon plays more of a supportive role.
Guess which one got Helping Hand?
No relearners either. I just started the game and Umbreon already looks like prime deadweight material.
Naturally, Espeon is going to be the big damage dealer of the duo while Umbreon plays more of a supportive role.
Guess which one got Helping Hand?
No relearners either. I just started the game and Umbreon already looks like prime deadweight material.
As someone that managed to get the worst natures as well, it isPokémon Colosseum gives you Espeon and Umbreon as a starter duo.
Naturally, Espeon is going to be the big damage dealer of the duo while Umbreon plays more of a supportive role.
Guess which one got Helping Hand?
No relearners either. I just started the game and Umbreon already looks like prime deadweight material.
It's effectively a sponge, but can't dish out anything, or be useful for support
Sadly in casual play and speedruns later, Espeon and Typhlosion are the only 2 good none legendary mons. And legendary mons suffer for purifying since apparently natures affect those
Hell, the lvl 15 Plusle you can get can be much better for offense and support if you bother grinding it to catch up
Colo isn't "hard", it's just disgustingly tedious and locked
I can imagine they didn't want it to make Espeon too powerful early on by giving you an Umbreon with Helping Hand. Like why would you even bother to catch other Pokemon and add them to your team? Except for the fact you REAAAAAAAAAAAAALY like Furret. I like Furret. It's looks wholesome. And so should you.
Btw, for some reason the Gym Rematches in Platinum don't always happen. I had 3 days in a row where the Gym Leaders didn't change and non battled me. I hate grinding to lv100 in Gen 4 since there is no really good spot that gives good EXP for little effort. I keep grinding on trainers with a Luxray and 2 Gyarados, and to get good EXP, I had to teach my Defensive Giratina Thunderbolt... perfectly good TM just wasted right there. And I don't have enough Rare Candy to level up everything to 100 since I don't have HGSS and doing the stupid trick to keep transfering Pokemon is a pain.
At least I can transfer Items I guess unlike post-Gen 4 games.
Btw, for some reason the Gym Rematches in Platinum don't always happen. I had 3 days in a row where the Gym Leaders didn't change and non battled me. I hate grinding to lv100 in Gen 4 since there is no really good spot that gives good EXP for little effort. I keep grinding on trainers with a Luxray and 2 Gyarados, and to get good EXP, I had to teach my Defensive Giratina Thunderbolt... perfectly good TM just wasted right there. And I don't have enough Rare Candy to level up everything to 100 since I don't have HGSS and doing the stupid trick to keep transfering Pokemon is a pain.
At least I can transfer Items I guess unlike post-Gen 4 games.
You're supposed to set your DS clock back to 11:59 PM and let time pass to the next day within game. After that, you can even save before entering the Battleground cafe and soft reset to get the combination of Gym Leaders/trainers you want to see.
That works every time. There shouldn't be an issue unless there's something wrong with your system.
Umbreon can be surprisingly useful mid-game. Since a lot of the time you just need something that won't die easily when you're struggling to catch high level shadow pokemon. Secret power is pretty good at doing small amounts of damage while also paralysing stuff.Pokémon Colosseum gives you Espeon and Umbreon as a starter duo.
Naturally, Espeon is going to be the big damage dealer of the duo while Umbreon plays more of a supportive role.
Guess which one got Helping Hand?
No relearners either. I just started the game and Umbreon already looks like prime deadweight material.
But Colosseum definitely needs a re-make/sequel with modern gameplay mechanics. I definitely like the idea of another official pokemon game where the campaign is all double battles.
It doesn't get screens or Safeguard.
Espeon is straight up the better support option with Reflect and Helping Hand.
To make things worse, they gave it Taunt and Snatch. 0 synergy. Not even Heal Bell.
Secret Power is neat but you get Skiploom and Flaaffy so quickly that it's not even that relevant as a status spreader.
Like, there are some niche uses for it, but yikes, this might be the worst starter in the whole franchise.
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
This. Even with max friendship Espeon's Return isn't great. If it had Bite it'd be pretty fearsome.
Likewise, if Umbreon had better moves it would be broken. Giving it screens would make each battle incredibly easy; as it is, using Reflect means forfeiting attacking with the more powerful member of the duo that turn.
They're not competitively ideal deliberately.
The Mind Electric
Calming if you look at it right.
That works, but you're probably not supposed to do it. Anything that involves changing the clock on your system can pretty safely be called unintended unless the developers are Team Salvato or something.
Eh, Mystery Dungeon Explorers Phanpy is worse
literally no stab, and unlike RT Psyduck, no status moves
I don't like Pokemon Collosseum at all and think it aged like milk compared to XD, which is still very playable today.
Let's start with the positives. Pokemon Colosseum is a Pokemon game.
lol
Now for the negatives:
This is a very difficult game. The bosses are less of a fun challenge and more along the lines of "lol let's spike 5 levels AGAIN from the regular stuff." This is already a tedious enough game since literally all you do is battles. It didn't need forced level grinding.
All of the bosses are also designed to irk the heck out of you. Miror B. may be iconic but nobody likes the actual battle where you have less than a handful of SE options and stall tactics. I mean, yes the music but good music can't save bad design. They can't even kill you fast anyway, making for a very boring battle.
Everyone knows about Dakim's EQ killing Entei, but other than that he generally has some strong Pokemon. His team, despite some Protect prediction, is actually fairly exploitable due to 3 quad weaknesses and at least you can finally level Shadows before him. Mostly a fair, fun fight.
Venus is just...
status cancer.
But Ein is even more annoying
Have fun exploiting those weaknesses when Confuse Ray is on half the team.
And then there are the issue of the final bosses. Nascour isn't that bad but its annoying as heck how if you lose you have to do the four filler fights again. Evice is by far the worst and hardest final boss in the franchise BY A LANDSLIDE, he takes the level spike issue already prevalent to an unreasonable degree (level 60s when you've been fighting high 40s/low 50s), you HAVE to go grind to beat him if you're playing normally. His Pokemon are good when 80% of your options are just pure crap, it's not fair or good game design in the slightest. Seriously, look at this team and tell me it isn't Gen 3 competitively-oriented at least somewhat:
It's not fun at all, makes the game slow to a crawl worse than Sinnoh ever did at the end (which is saying something considering Cynthia's notorious reputation). It makes me actually appreciate Diantha! I mean Diantha may be "literally who?" and easy but it's much better that I can beat the game without wanting to snap my controller in half.
Many of the interesting options fail to reach their full potential mostly because the physical / special split hadn't happened yet or they need absurdly late / hard to get TMs like Sludge Bomb for Qwilfish. Yanma, Dunsparce, Sneasel, Sunflora, Delibird, Aipom, Remoraid at level 20 lol - there are so many borderline useless options, in contrast to XD, where even garbage like Spinarak gets Signal Beam. Even most of the usable Pokemon in Colosseum have virtually ONE move they are good at using - Slugma with Flamethrower, Ariados with Sludge Bomb and that's about it. Diversity? Sorry, that's for other games (yes Octillery, but again, level 20 when you start the game at level 30). Not to mention the overabundance of Water types at the expense of other Pokemon types, which usually get a grand total of like 1-3 options.
The dark tone isn't much to write home about either. They wasted the most interesting protagonist we ever could have had by making Wes mute, like, what was even the point of the opening cutscene if you're going to skimp on characterization??? I mean, yes Michael from XD is a kid and also a mute, but that also ties in with the rest of the series better. Sure, Wes may be cooler, but they did nothing with him. The villains are neat admittedly but the actual fights sour my opinion on them. Not to mention the whole "dark" aspect isn't even unique anymore thanks to Gens 5 and 7.
Not a negative, but Pokemon Colosseum does have some pretty good music, same with XD. Tsukasa Tawada deserves more games to work on, amazing composer!
So yeah. Pokemon Colosseum aged terribly and I think it's one of the worst games out there, like I even like HGSS more. XD is so much better balanced to the point I'd tell you to skip Pokemon Colosseum entirely and just play XD. Sure the last couple areas drag in XD but at least I can finish the game.
Let's start with the positives. Pokemon Colosseum is a Pokemon game.
lol
Now for the negatives:
This is a very difficult game. The bosses are less of a fun challenge and more along the lines of "lol let's spike 5 levels AGAIN from the regular stuff." This is already a tedious enough game since literally all you do is battles. It didn't need forced level grinding.
All of the bosses are also designed to irk the heck out of you. Miror B. may be iconic but nobody likes the actual battle where you have less than a handful of SE options and stall tactics. I mean, yes the music but good music can't save bad design. They can't even kill you fast anyway, making for a very boring battle.
Everyone knows about Dakim's EQ killing Entei, but other than that he generally has some strong Pokemon. His team, despite some Protect prediction, is actually fairly exploitable due to 3 quad weaknesses and at least you can finally level Shadows before him. Mostly a fair, fun fight.
Venus is just...
status cancer.
But Ein is even more annoying
Have fun exploiting those weaknesses when Confuse Ray is on half the team.
And then there are the issue of the final bosses. Nascour isn't that bad but its annoying as heck how if you lose you have to do the four filler fights again. Evice is by far the worst and hardest final boss in the franchise BY A LANDSLIDE, he takes the level spike issue already prevalent to an unreasonable degree (level 60s when you've been fighting high 40s/low 50s), you HAVE to go grind to beat him if you're playing normally. His Pokemon are good when 80% of your options are just pure crap, it's not fair or good game design in the slightest. Seriously, look at this team and tell me it isn't Gen 3 competitively-oriented at least somewhat:
It's not fun at all, makes the game slow to a crawl worse than Sinnoh ever did at the end (which is saying something considering Cynthia's notorious reputation). It makes me actually appreciate Diantha! I mean Diantha may be "literally who?" and easy but it's much better that I can beat the game without wanting to snap my controller in half.
Many of the interesting options fail to reach their full potential mostly because the physical / special split hadn't happened yet or they need absurdly late / hard to get TMs like Sludge Bomb for Qwilfish. Yanma, Dunsparce, Sneasel, Sunflora, Delibird, Aipom, Remoraid at level 20 lol - there are so many borderline useless options, in contrast to XD, where even garbage like Spinarak gets Signal Beam. Even most of the usable Pokemon in Colosseum have virtually ONE move they are good at using - Slugma with Flamethrower, Ariados with Sludge Bomb and that's about it. Diversity? Sorry, that's for other games (yes Octillery, but again, level 20 when you start the game at level 30). Not to mention the overabundance of Water types at the expense of other Pokemon types, which usually get a grand total of like 1-3 options.
The dark tone isn't much to write home about either. They wasted the most interesting protagonist we ever could have had by making Wes mute, like, what was even the point of the opening cutscene if you're going to skimp on characterization??? I mean, yes Michael from XD is a kid and also a mute, but that also ties in with the rest of the series better. Sure, Wes may be cooler, but they did nothing with him. The villains are neat admittedly but the actual fights sour my opinion on them. Not to mention the whole "dark" aspect isn't even unique anymore thanks to Gens 5 and 7.
Not a negative, but Pokemon Colosseum does have some pretty good music, same with XD. Tsukasa Tawada deserves more games to work on, amazing composer!
So yeah. Pokemon Colosseum aged terribly and I think it's one of the worst games out there, like I even like HGSS more. XD is so much better balanced to the point I'd tell you to skip Pokemon Colosseum entirely and just play XD. Sure the last couple areas drag in XD but at least I can finish the game.