(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon



Legit though, type balance is already bad, why want more things to go wrong?

And yes, I spent hours on this, even making the flashes frame by frame accurate
View attachment 435396
Oh-oh God. Just saw Scarlet Violet news
They did it. If what Terastal is predicted, it's basically Hidden Power in mon randomness acting as a 3rd type
The madmen did it. My meme's obsolete :psycry:
 
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Pikachu315111

Ranting & Raving!
is a Community Contributoris a Top Smogon Media Contributor
To put this to bed, it's maps like these (apologies for the appalling quality but needs must)
Ah, now I see... yeah, what's being done there is a stretch of what the official maps show.

The maps in PLA don't even remotely line up with actual Sinnoh.
I went through the maps and tried my best to figure out where each Town/City, Route, and Location would fit and you do have to take quite a bit of liberties in order to do so. I think between L:A and DP quite a bit of terraforming went on.

Oh-oh God. Just saw Scarlet Violet news
They did it. If what Terastal is predicted, it's basically Hidden Power in mon randomness acting as a 3rd type
The madmen did it. My meme's obsolete :psycry:
Actually I think the Terastal's Tera Type completely replaces the Pokemon's Type making it a Mono-Type of the Tera Type. So an Eevee with Tera Type Fire changes from Mono Normal To Mono Fire, a Drifblim with Tera Type Flying changes from Ghost/Flying to Mono Flying, and a Gardevoir with Tera Type Water changes from Psychic/Fairy to Mono Water.

So still no 3 Types, if I'm understanding Terastal correctly.
 
So still no 3 Types, if I'm understanding Terastal correctly.
I am honestly not sure why some people have difficulty understanding this very clear passage, to the point i'm finding the lack of reading comprehension annoying.

1659612104803.png


There's 0 signs of a third type anywhere in trailers, infos or any of the pages. All of them (and even the leakers) point to a full type replacement when activated.
 

QuentinQuonce

formerly green_typhlosion
So I posted the other day about how much I appreciate dex orders that aren't straightforward, but I'd like to make one addendum.

Perhaps this is giving it too much undue importance, but I do often think that being the final "regular" species in a listing before the legendary section begins is a position of privilege. It definitely does feel like it should be a high-status position that not just any Pokemon should be in, and that's why it often goes to that generation's pseudo-legendary line, because they're the most powerful non-legendary species in the game*. The end of the listing tends to be where I look first when I look at a full list of all the new Pokemon from a new game, because I find legendaries, mythicals, and the rarer end-game species the most interesting to look at.

Giving the final spot to the pseudo emphasises that it's on par with the legendaries; it illustrates that it's rare and powerful and important. Gen IV, of course, famously plonked Garchomp in the middle of the Sinnoh Dex, leaving Weavile to be the final non-legendary - well, Weavile sort of works. It's quite rare and only used by Cyrus, so fair enough. In National Dex order, it's Rotom that comes before the legendary section, which fits Rotom as a rare, semi-legendary species**. I'm not sure why that was done but what with Garchomp being Cynthia's signature mon, it's not as if you'd miss the fact that it's a very powerful species.

So it irks me when a new generation doesn't put its own pseudo-legendary in that position of prominence. It diminishes them in my view; it's almost like the developers admitting that other Pokemon are more popular. But it should, at the very least, be a Pokemon from the new generation, which is why Weavile is acceptable in place of Garchomp.

Take Unova for instance. In the original Unova listing, Volcarona is the final non-legendary species. There's some debate over whether Volcarona meets the criteria to be a pseudo-legendary but it's certainly special enough, lore-wise and as Alder's signature Pokemon, to qualify for the "top spot". Hydreigon squeaks in behind Larvesta as the penultimate mon in the dex, which seems a reasonable compromise.

But then in B2W2, both mons get displaced. Volcarona gets put in the middle of the dex - which feels reasonable, given its much earlier accessibility in B2W2, and Alder's diminished importance from the story - but Hydreigon misses out on being the final non-legendary in the Unova Dex by a succession of other Pokemon, including the Slakoth line, Croagunk and Toxicroak, Carnivine, and (ignominiously) the Jigglypuff line. The final regular slot in the dex goes to the Tyranitar line. Why exactly does Tyranitar get to be the final non-legendary in the Unova dex? Fellow pseudo-legendary Metagross is here too, but further back at #264. To add insult to injury, Tyranitar and its pre-evolutions aren't even found in Unova during the story of B2W2 - it and Pupitar are only found on Route 15, which is blocked off until after obtaining the National Dex. Nor can Yanma, Lickitung, Corphish, Carnivine, or the Slakoth line, come to that (Jigglypuff too, but Igglybuff can be obtained from the Dream Radar). Why are these species in the Unova Dex at all?!

In Alola, Kommo-o gets similarly shafted. It's way back in the Alola Dex, missing out on the top spot to... Dragonite? No, Aerodactyl, in fact. Which is even more bizarre because Aerodactyl isn't that special in Alola - you just get given one for no cost by some random NPC as soon as you arrive on Poni Island. Funnily enough, much like Tyranitar in Unova, in USUM Dragonite can't even be caught before the Elite Four! (It can in SM, but USUM removes it for some reason.) Tyranitar, Metagross, Garchomp, and Goodra are all here too, but they're all earlier on in the listing - apparently Dragonite was just too important to push down the list.

For Goodra it's absolutely tragic. The way the Kalos Dex is split into three means that there's less overall cohesion and so Pokemon are largely ordered based on where they're encountered, which for Goomy is quite early on; so it's number 19 in the Mountain Dex. Out of 151. Hardly fitting for Kalos's pseudo-legendary! This example annoys me because despite the split dex there's still what feels like an attempt at artistry - the Central Dex closes with Axew, Fraxure, and Haxorus; the Coastal Dex concludes with Lapras; and the Mountain Dex finishes with a string of dragons - Altaria, Druddigon, Hydreigon, and Dragonite. All Pokemon that feel worthy of concluding a dex before the legendaries appear - except why couldn't Goodra have concluded the Mountain Dex? Even in the National Dex Goodra misses out on the top spot in a similar manner to Garchomp, though - as with Weavile - Noivern feels like a justifiable substitute given that it comes later in the game and takes longer to evolve.

I guess my point is that each generation's pseudo deserves to be the final non-legendary in their listing (at least in their debut game), simply by virtue of existing. If it's the most powerful Pokemon, this should be reflected in the numbering. It can be fun to mix it up as Kalos and Sinnoh did, but I feel pretty strongly that they shouldn't be displaced in favour of older pseudo-legendaries that have had their time in the spotlight. And ultimately I know that Pokedex numbering isn't as important as being properly showcased. Tyranitar is #248 out of 251, but that didn't stop it from infamously being grossly overlooked in its own generation in favour of Dragonite. But these things all work together. Tyranitar feels special because of its elevated Pokedex position, and I remember working very hard to finally obtain one.

So yeah, does anyone agree or am I just utterly nuts for putting this much thought into it?




*I only remembered while writing this that Kanto and Johto mix it up, having the legendary trio come before the pseudo-legendary line. So I guess in those examples, it's Snorlax and Blissey which fit the bill. But still.

**It's testament to Rotom's uniqueness that, even in 2022, people STILL think it's a legendary. A bloke in my local Pokemon Go Whatsapp chat was stubbornly insisting that it was a legendary the other week, even with multiple people contradicting him.
 

Coronis

Impressively round
is a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
So I posted the other day about how much I appreciate dex orders that aren't straightforward, but I'd like to make one addendum.

Perhaps this is giving it too much undue importance, but I do often think that being the final "regular" species in a listing before the legendary section begins is a position of privilege. It definitely does feel like it should be a high-status position that not just any Pokemon should be in, and that's why it often goes to that generation's pseudo-legendary line, because they're the most powerful non-legendary species in the game*. The end of the listing tends to be where I look first when I look at a full list of all the new Pokemon from a new game, because I find legendaries, mythicals, and the rarer end-game species the most interesting to look at.

Giving the final spot to the pseudo emphasises that it's on par with the legendaries; it illustrates that it's rare and powerful and important. Gen IV, of course, famously plonked Garchomp in the middle of the Sinnoh Dex, leaving Weavile to be the final non-legendary - well, Weavile sort of works. It's quite rare and only used by Cyrus, so fair enough. In National Dex order, it's Rotom that comes before the legendary section, which fits Rotom as a rare, semi-legendary species**. I'm not sure why that was done but what with Garchomp being Cynthia's signature mon, it's not as if you'd miss the fact that it's a very powerful species.

So it irks me when a new generation doesn't put its own pseudo-legendary in that position of prominence. It diminishes them in my view; it's almost like the developers admitting that other Pokemon are more popular. But it should, at the very least, be a Pokemon from the new generation, which is why Weavile is acceptable in place of Garchomp.

Take Unova for instance. In the original Unova listing, Volcarona is the final non-legendary species. There's some debate over whether Volcarona meets the criteria to be a pseudo-legendary but it's certainly special enough, lore-wise and as Alder's signature Pokemon, to qualify for the "top spot". Hydreigon squeaks in behind Larvesta as the penultimate mon in the dex, which seems a reasonable compromise.

But then in B2W2, both mons get displaced. Volcarona gets put in the middle of the dex - which feels reasonable, given its much earlier accessibility in B2W2, and Alder's diminished importance from the story - but Hydreigon misses out on being the final non-legendary in the Unova Dex by a succession of other Pokemon, including the Slakoth line, Croagunk and Toxicroak, Carnivine, and (ignominiously) the Jigglypuff line. The final regular slot in the dex goes to the Tyranitar line. Why exactly does Tyranitar get to be the final non-legendary in the Unova dex? Fellow pseudo-legendary Metagross is here too, but further back at #264. To add insult to injury, Tyranitar and its pre-evolutions aren't even found in Unova during the story of B2W2 - it and Pupitar are only found on Route 15, which is blocked off until after obtaining the National Dex. Nor can Yanma, Lickitung, Corphish, Carnivine, or the Slakoth line, come to that (Jigglypuff too, but Igglybuff can be obtained from the Dream Radar). Why are these species in the Unova Dex at all?!

In Alola, Kommo-o gets similarly shafted. It's way back in the Alola Dex, missing out on the top spot to... Dragonite? No, Aerodactyl, in fact. Which is even more bizarre because Aerodactyl isn't that special in Alola - you just get given one for no cost by some random NPC as soon as you arrive on Poni Island. Funnily enough, much like Tyranitar in Unova, in USUM Dragonite can't even be caught before the Elite Four! (It can in SM, but USUM removes it for some reason.) Tyranitar, Metagross, Garchomp, and Goodra are all here too, but they're all earlier on in the listing - apparently Dragonite was just too important to push down the list.

For Goodra it's absolutely tragic. The way the Kalos Dex is split into three means that there's less overall cohesion and so Pokemon are largely ordered based on where they're encountered, which for Goomy is quite early on; so it's number 19 in the Mountain Dex. Out of 151. Hardly fitting for Kalos's pseudo-legendary! This example annoys me because despite the split dex there's still what feels like an attempt at artistry - the Central Dex closes with Axew, Fraxure, and Haxorus; the Coastal Dex concludes with Lapras; and the Mountain Dex finishes with a string of dragons - Altaria, Druddigon, Hydreigon, and Dragonite. All Pokemon that feel worthy of concluding a dex before the legendaries appear - except why couldn't Goodra have concluded the Mountain Dex? Even in the National Dex Goodra misses out on the top spot in a similar manner to Garchomp, though - as with Weavile - Noivern feels like a justifiable substitute given that it comes later in the game and takes longer to evolve.

I guess my point is that each generation's pseudo deserves to be the final non-legendary in their listing (at least in their debut game), simply by virtue of existing. If it's the most powerful Pokemon, this should be reflected in the numbering. It can be fun to mix it up as Kalos and Sinnoh did, but I feel pretty strongly that they shouldn't be displaced in favour of older pseudo-legendaries that have had their time in the spotlight. And ultimately I know that Pokedex numbering isn't as important as being properly showcased. Tyranitar is #248 out of 251, but that didn't stop it from infamously being grossly overlooked in its own generation in favour of Dragonite. But these things all work together. Tyranitar feels special because of its elevated Pokedex position, and I remember working very hard to finally obtain one.

So yeah, does anyone agree or am I just utterly nuts for putting this much thought into it?




*I only remembered while writing this that Kanto and Johto mix it up, having the legendary trio come before the pseudo-legendary line. So I guess in those examples, it's Snorlax and Blissey which fit the bill. But still.

**It's testament to Rotom's uniqueness that, even in 2022, people STILL think it's a legendary. A bloke in my local Pokemon Go Whatsapp chat was stubbornly insisting that it was a legendary the other week, even with multiple people contradicting him.
Yeah never really thought about it much tbh, I preferred it the way it was in Gen 1/2 personally but eh didn’t bother me at all when they switched it up.

Pretty much since Gen 4 they’ve been putting more emphasis on either the location the Pokemon’s first available, which probably makes more sense for newer players so yeah. Obviously this can lead to some weird cases (I think Garchomp’s line was a bit earlier in the original D/P cos you needed Strength?) but eh I don’t really care either way. Also yeah thats the reason Yanma etc. are included in the Unova dex in BW2, they can be found in a postgame area but hey its still in Unova, no?

I don’t really remember how the dex order went in L:A but that might be a basic template for how things will end up in the future if we continue progressing with more open world style games.

Yeah might be a bit of an overreaction but hey, we wouldn’t have this thread without those :) Different things are more important to different people
 

QuentinQuonce

formerly green_typhlosion
Yeah never really thought about it much tbh, I preferred it the way it was in Gen 1/2 personally but eh didn’t bother me at all when they switched it up.

Pretty much since Gen 4 they’ve been putting more emphasis on either the location the Pokemon’s first available, which probably makes more sense for newer players so yeah. Obviously this can lead to some weird cases (I think Garchomp’s line was a bit earlier in the original D/P cos you needed Strength?) but eh I don’t really care either way. Also yeah thats the reason Yanma etc. are included in the Unova dex in BW2, they can be found in a postgame area but hey its still in Unova, no?
Garchomp's the same number in DP and Plat, Plat doesn't scramble the numbers at all. Just sticks another 60-odd mons on the end of DP's dex.

WRT Yanma, I just don't get the logic of putting Pokemon you can't get pre-E4 in a regional dex. Wobbuffet can be found in Kanto in FRLG but it's not in the Kanto dex, for instance. But that's a separate topic really.

Yeah might be a bit of an overreaction but hey, we wouldn’t have this thread without those :) Different things are more important to different people
I wouldn't even call it an overreaction; just me thinking about how I'd order things if I were in charge. Who knows, maybe in ten years I'll be directing Pokemon Mauve and Periwinkle and I'll show them all how it's meant to be done.

THAT'S when you'll probably see an overreaction: me sobbing into my cornflakes saying "wow, this really is hard, and I gave Game Freak so much grief..."

Anyway.

But yeah, I enjoy this thread for that reason. It's interesting seeing what people highlight.
 
The movepools in GSC are so bad at times, they verge on disgusting. Natural and TM-based.

Crobat cannot learn Sludge Bomb? Typhlosion does not learn Flamethrower until L50s (or L60)? Magnemite needs Thunder to have an option other than Thundershock until like the L40s? No direct Fighting-type or Bug-type moves for Heracross until later L40s? Chikorita doesn't have Leech Seed (tbf this also applies to future gens for some reason) in spite of it complementing her defensive and serene playstyle or Sleep Powder (same issue)?
 

DrCoeloCephalo

Banned deucer.
So yeah, does anyone agree or am I just utterly nuts for putting this much thought into it?
Can't say I disagree with this.

For reference, with other monster collectors I've played like Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth and Yo-Kai Watch, they follow a similar trend with Pokemon in how the monster field guide numbers are sorted somewhat based on power and rarity. With Digimon, it's the Baby levels first, followed by the In-Training, Rookie, Champion, Ultimate, Mega and Ultra. With Yo-Kai Watch, they sort the monsters by their monster family first (Tribe, if you will) and then generally follow a trend of the E Ranks first, followed by D, C, B, A and S with the exception of fusions and variants being right next to their lower Rank form and they also follow the trend of the Legendary monsters being at the back of the index.

All things considered, it's arguably more organized and makes it easier to find a monster in your index without as much need for a search function as Pokemon now has. What's more is that since Yo-Kai Watch games have a history of adding new monsters to the game as free DLC, those may end up at the back of the index after the Legendaries, but the very next game, they actually reorganize the order of the monsters so the index doesn't look as cluttered and the rare stuff ends up once again further back as it should.

The monsters continue to feel special because they stick to that ordering. I like it when it's ordered like that, so when you end up with common, low tier monsters like Jigglypuff coming AFTER something like Hydreigon, it doesn't seem right.

I guess it's more of a thing where Pokemon has something set up for how it numbers its monsters, so when they don't stick to that, it feels jarring and off and ends up bugging ya.
 
The movepools in GSC are so bad at times, they verge on disgusting. Natural and TM-based.

Crobat cannot learn Sludge Bomb? Typhlosion does not learn Flamethrower until L50s (or L60)? Magnemite needs Thunder to have an option other than Thundershock until like the L40s? No direct Fighting-type or Bug-type moves for Heracross until later L40s? Chikorita doesn't have Leech Seed (tbf this also applies to future gens for some reason) in spite of it complementing her defensive and serene playstyle or Sleep Powder (same issue)?
Remember Charizard somehow couldn't learn HM02 Fly until Yellow.

GSC movepools are trash yeah, but RBY arguably has it even worse with literally almost everything requiring TMs. You're lucky if you get a decent natural movepool in RBY, which is why Abra was and still is so good in many of the games.

One example being how Rhydon got Leer at level 55...and no natural STAB moves! Granted Rock Slide and EQ TMs mitigate this, but uh, yeah.
Screen Shot 2022-08-13 at 10.37.02 PM.png

I also don't think Leech Seed would significantly improve Chikorita: look at FRLG Bulbasaur where it gets both early Leech Seed and Sleep Powder: it still blows chunks because you take forever to kill things.
 

DrCoeloCephalo

Banned deucer.
Level-5 is a relatively independent company that doesn't make alot of money as other more mainstream game companies.

Despite that, they made a monster collector with 752 monsters on a 3DS and all of them have full voice acted lines, plenty of them having some high talent VO.

The Pokemon Company has no issue finding dub VO talent as evidenced by the anime specials they post to YouTube.

So what do they do with these connections?

They proceed to not bother using them so we get a cutscene that deservedly lives in infamy of Piers singing nothing.
 
I'm thinking that ever since that the game has like a dozen of language option, TPC don't want any language to left behind from having a dubbing.
They don't want to have English and Japanese dub only. It's either all of those language to have voice-acting (very much work) or none at all. They decided for the latter.
 

Celever

i am town
is a Community Contributor
Voice acting is one of those things where if devs give fans an inch the fans will demand a mile. If Piers' thing was voice acted, fans would be saying "well why not this cutscene" "why isn't the professor talking to you at the start of the game voice acted" "Pokémon should all use their anime voices". Leaving Pokémon as a game series with essentially no voice acting is honestly the better option.

A lot of JRPGs aren't voice acted, and those that are are usually action-JRPGs where the voice acting makes more sense (because since the gameplay isn't text-based, voice acting allows the game to give the player information during gameplay). Voice acting has never been something I've desired in my Pokémon games, I've never really understood the demand.

Unless they wanna bring back the Stadium / PBR style announcer in battle because yes please.
 
I'm not a lover of voice acting everything. Honestly, I think going with voiced dialogue is the worst thing to happen to some series(The Elder Scrolls) and I'd be happy if more games gave up on it. But if you don't want voice acting, work around it. A massive opening cutscene focusing on one dude giving a speech with no VA is going to look awkward. Same with the infamous Piers scene. If GF isn't going to do VA, that's fine, but use your limitations. Go with the Banjo Kazooie method, or just don't do big cutscenes focusing on conversation. Making a standard game but then cutting the dialogue audio track is the worst option.
 
Voice acting is one of those things where if devs give fans an inch the fans will demand a mile. If Piers' thing was voice acted, fans would be saying "well why not this cutscene" "why isn't the professor talking to you at the start of the game voice acted" "Pokémon should all use their anime voices". Leaving Pokémon as a game series with essentially no voice acting is honestly the better option.

A lot of JRPGs aren't voice acted, and those that are are usually action-JRPGs where the voice acting makes more sense (because since the gameplay isn't text-based, voice acting allows the game to give the player information during gameplay). Voice acting has never been something I've desired in my Pokémon games, I've never really understood the demand.

Unless they wanna bring back the Stadium / PBR style announcer in battle because yes please.
That's not "demanding a mile" that's just like. Basics of voice acting in games these days. If you don't have full voice acting, but you are voicing cutscenes, it's a reasonable expectation that the big cutscenes do all indeed have voice acting. barring that, at least the important lines.

And certainly hasn't stopped people from wanting the Pokemon themselves to use their anime voices without it so like. Who cares on that front.
Everything in this fandom is like this, anyway...

I'm not a lover of voice acting everything. Honestly, I think going with voiced dialogue is the worst thing to happen to some series(The Elder Scrolls) and I'd be happy if more games gave up on it. But if you don't want voice acting, work around it. A massive opening cutscene focusing on one dude giving a speech with no VA is going to look awkward. Same with the infamous Piers scene. If GF isn't going to do VA, that's fine, but use your limitations. Go with the Banjo Kazooie method, or just don't do big cutscenes focusing on conversation. Making a standard game but then cutting the dialogue audio track is the worst option.
Yeah this is the other thing that gets me. It bugs me a bit that the rest of the game doesnt have VO, but they keep having cutscenes with large focus on the mouth movements that have no sound to go with them.

And we're about to go through it again! SV's latest trailer shows we're going to be sitting through a big fancifcal speech from the principal and hte focus is on him presenting the speech! But the voice acting was literally just for the trailer! It'd wild. Can only hope the speech in the game has a song to go with it and maybe some crowd murmurs so it's deepmhasized

Commit to the bit!
 
I think a perfectly reasonable compromise would be the Fire Emblem Approach: characters get a few stock lines or voice clips that are applied to the majority of cutscenes, then major story cutscenes include a few more unique Lines for the situation (such as exclaiming a character's name), and finally the biggest cutscenes (which in FE's case are often presented as fully animated videos rather than visual novel + in-engine models) are given full voice acting for the couple minutes they tend to last.

Pokemon games since Gen 7 have clearly indicated some cutscenes are meant to be larger scale than others, so I think granting them a bit more production value is a reasonable provision in turn. Between Masters and several anime-based projects, there's no lack of search or need for voices to fit several characters, so they could probably work on some of these recordings while they're in the booth, or double-dip the opposite way depending on the production cycles.

It's not like Gamefreak (should) lack the budget for these additions, or at least the room to request said budget if for some reason they do. TPC still clearly wants the games to be a big part of the brand, whether or not it monetarily compares to other media aspects, but the games seem to only go halfway with supposed growth: Gen 6 had some more dynamic camera angles for 3D, but simplistic narrative (AZ very telegraphed, Lysandre in general, etc); Gen 7 gave more meat to the story, but felt tethered to the Player Protag role when they were mostly an onlooker for Lillie's plot and lacked a lot of QoL like skipping repeat cutscenes (given Gen 7 was one of the harder Pokemon games); Gen 8 tried to add more varied character personalities among your main cast, but they had next to no presence to express those supposed traits, and now the Handheld-style presentation and absence of voice acting has become VERY egregious on the Switch.
 

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