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(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon
- Thread starter BriarRose
- Start date
PLA also has far less need for TMs and at least has it so the (fairly extensive) tutor just takes cold hard cash.
Who knows where SV is going to land. The TM/TR split made some sense (still stupid to do, but i get the design around it) when they want you on the Grind as some weird quasi-gaas type deal but SV wont necessarily have those.
TR's wouldn't bother me if they didn't feel so arbitrary after Infinite Use TMs became a thing for so long. On paper, the scenario I'd most tolerate them in would have been if they were for moves with a more limited but very important user pool, like, I don't know, Weather Ball (which is primarily used by Pokemon designed for Weather like Venusaur or who might want the coverage going up against it) or Belly Drum.
Or maybe a compromise where some Pokemon learn a move from a TM if it's "strictly" a TM move, whereas some other mons can use TR's as a shortcut to an Egg Move or something (Aqua Jet Azumarill for example), so you could raid/buy the progress on that build instead of going through breeding chains.
The annoying thing about the TM/TR system in Gen 8 to me is that there doesn't even appear to be an intended-but-
Or maybe a compromise where some Pokemon learn a move from a TM if it's "strictly" a TM move, whereas some other mons can use TR's as a shortcut to an Egg Move or something (Aqua Jet Azumarill for example), so you could raid/buy the progress on that build instead of going through breeding chains.
The annoying thing about the TM/TR system in Gen 8 to me is that there doesn't even appear to be an intended-but-
Reminds me of how Temtem has both infinite-use technique courses and single-use egg technique courses, the latter of which are rewards for defeating the equivalent of legendaries and sell for obscene amounts of money on the marketplace.
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
All this talk of single-use TMs has reminded me of something.
While I would never want to return to the days of single-use Move Tutors (in a game with over 500 Pokemon it's not fair or reasonable to have moves you can only teach to one of them), the way Move Tutors have been incorporated in later gens is just so dull. I accept that it's better and more convenient from a gameplay point of view, but it's just phenomenally unsatisfying to go up to a desk and scroll through 25 different moves to find the one you want. Platinum and B2W2 at least make it a little engaging since you have to hunt for shards to get the move you want, but HGSS, ORAS, and USUM turn it into a BP-farming exercise. It's especially dull in USUM because, fun as Mantine surfing is, all the good moves you actually want come later in the game and by this point you'll likely have accumulated a lot of BP relative to how much the moves cost, removing much of the challenge involved; what might have been more interesting is if you had to hit a certain score or rank before the tutors would agree to teach you.
Emerald and FRLG incorporated Move Tutors in a really fun way, making them NPCs with a bit of character and backstory to them, and they're some of the most entertaining NPCs in those games because of how they're written. Not only this, but because FRLG's Move Tutor system is largely based off RBY's move list (many tutors simply directly teach the move they would have given you in the original games) you can get some pretty strong moves early on. This meant that there was always an incentive to go and seek out these NPCs, even if it's just because they're fun to talk to. Some that stand out:
If these tutors had simply been infinite-use, that would have been the best of both worlds. But TMs were still single-use at this point so that was never going to happen. Back when HGSS were on the horizon I was hoping they'd incorporate tutors for all the missing GSC TM moves like FRLG did, but make them infinite-use. Only Headbutt got that treatment, sadly.
While I would never want to return to the days of single-use Move Tutors (in a game with over 500 Pokemon it's not fair or reasonable to have moves you can only teach to one of them), the way Move Tutors have been incorporated in later gens is just so dull. I accept that it's better and more convenient from a gameplay point of view, but it's just phenomenally unsatisfying to go up to a desk and scroll through 25 different moves to find the one you want. Platinum and B2W2 at least make it a little engaging since you have to hunt for shards to get the move you want, but HGSS, ORAS, and USUM turn it into a BP-farming exercise. It's especially dull in USUM because, fun as Mantine surfing is, all the good moves you actually want come later in the game and by this point you'll likely have accumulated a lot of BP relative to how much the moves cost, removing much of the challenge involved; what might have been more interesting is if you had to hit a certain score or rank before the tutors would agree to teach you.
Emerald and FRLG incorporated Move Tutors in a really fun way, making them NPCs with a bit of character and backstory to them, and they're some of the most entertaining NPCs in those games because of how they're written. Not only this, but because FRLG's Move Tutor system is largely based off RBY's move list (many tutors simply directly teach the move they would have given you in the original games) you can get some pretty strong moves early on. This meant that there was always an incentive to go and seek out these NPCs, even if it's just because they're fun to talk to. Some that stand out:
- The Explosion tutor in FRLG is a cowardly Hiker afraid of Mt Ember erupting. In Emerald, the Explosion tutor is instead an impatient young guitarist bored with small-town life in Pacifidlog who is desperate to go out and wow the world with his talent.
- The Rollout tutor in Emerald serves a dual purpose in that he draws attention to the horizontal Egg-hatching path through Mauville by talking about how you can travel in many directions from the middle of town.
- The Body Slam tutor in FRLG is a fat man engaged in a bout of belly-bashing with another friend, who tells the player that they're too small to participate but that their Pokemon can learn how to do it.
- The Dynamicpunch tutor in Emerald is a Blackbelt fruitlessly trying to defeat Tate & Liza who angrily starts punching the ground and sheepishly offers to teach the player Dynamicpunch (side note: the Engrish Emerald translation calls this move by the badass-sounding "Crule Clamp" which is by far and away one of the best translations in it).
- The Double-Edge tutor in Emerald is a girl hopelessly pining for Juan who eventually decides not to live for love anymore and to become strong in her own right.
- The Mega Punch and Mega Kick tutors in FRLG are two Blackbelts bitterly opposed to each other's style of play, calling each other "a misguided fool" and a "deluded nitwit" respectively.
- The Swagger tutor in Emerald is a braggart in the Slateport Fan Club who thinks that his Azumarill is the best Pokemon ever but got rightfully cut down to size by the Chairman.
- The Mimic tutor in Emerald is a little girl who talks like an old person because she likes to mimic fun patterns of speech.
- The Sleep Talk tutor in Emerald is the husband of the woman who gives out the Hidden Power TM, who grumpily complains that his wife is too obsessed with Hidden Power and ignores him.
- The Substitute tutor in FRLG is a dreamy boy in the Safari Zone zoo who wishes that he could curl up inside a Kangaskhan's belly pouch (that's, uh... not a good idea).
If these tutors had simply been infinite-use, that would have been the best of both worlds. But TMs were still single-use at this point so that was never going to happen. Back when HGSS were on the horizon I was hoping they'd incorporate tutors for all the missing GSC TM moves like FRLG did, but make them infinite-use. Only Headbutt got that treatment, sadly.
I like the feeling of scarcity and indecision that comes with single-use TMs and pay-every-time Move Tutor moves when I'm playing through the main game, but it's super frustrating after you've gone through the story. It'd be great to be able to earn or buy the ability to teach those moves infinitely. The easiest options would be a single up-front cost, like how they handle buying TMs now, or a progress-gated system (e.g. entering the Hall of Fame unlocks all the Tutor moves you previously had to pay for, a postgame NPC can 'reinforce' your single-use TMs so they can be used repeatedly, etc.), but the best Content(TM) would be to have tutors reward you with infinite access to their moves for completing small, unique sidequests.
They've sorta done something similar to this already with people like the Draco Meteor tutor in DPPt, who's essentially a reward for re-exploring the fog route after you've enabled Rock Climb and scaling a cliff at a spot that's easy to miss unless you've used Defog.
EDIT: to clarify why I don't think everything being infinite-use from the beginning is necessarily the best option: I'm not a huge fan of being in a position where every mon on my in-game team knows some combination of the three generically good TMs I most recently picked up. I also distinctly remember beating Lenora in my first playthrough of Pokemon White and realising that teaching Retaliate to virtually everything on my team was logically the right thing to do, purely because it was a moderately powerful Normal move. Route-clearing then became a bit of a nightmare as I was now leaning heavily on a 5 PP move while almost never utilising its unique effect.
They've sorta done something similar to this already with people like the Draco Meteor tutor in DPPt, who's essentially a reward for re-exploring the fog route after you've enabled Rock Climb and scaling a cliff at a spot that's easy to miss unless you've used Defog.
EDIT: to clarify why I don't think everything being infinite-use from the beginning is necessarily the best option: I'm not a huge fan of being in a position where every mon on my in-game team knows some combination of the three generically good TMs I most recently picked up. I also distinctly remember beating Lenora in my first playthrough of Pokemon White and realising that teaching Retaliate to virtually everything on my team was logically the right thing to do, purely because it was a moderately powerful Normal move. Route-clearing then became a bit of a nightmare as I was now leaning heavily on a 5 PP move while almost never utilising its unique effect.
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Oh, I totally don't have the specific combination of Return/Dig/Rock Tomb on every member of my current White team. No, not at all. (For context, I've just cleared Cold Storage and am currently training for Clay, so the team's about lvl. 28-29.)
The homogenization of coverage is not a downside I had envisioned (although that's in part due to BW1 leaning so heavily physical).
First thing I did was checked to see what the Japanese version's description said. It too translated to the move being a "clump of special mud" so this oddity is consistent between languages.
So with that done, this to me screams "changed last moment & forgot to change an easily overlooked thing". Sounds like it was a Ground-type move at first, maybe the original idea was the Pokemon was tossing exfoliating mud hence the stat change removal.
Not sure why they decided to make it a Poison-Type though. Gen V only introduce 2 Ground-type moves (Earth Power & Drill Run) while Poison got 5 (Acid Spray, Coil, Sludge Wave, Venoshock, and of course Clear Smog). Adding Clear Smog doesn't really attribute much in terms of filling any gaps, infact if that was the purpose staying Ground-type would have been the better choice. So I'm thinking it maybe has to do with the aesthetic of what Clear Smog became.
First, let's address the seemingly oxymoron name: Clear Smog. It's the same in Japanese too, using "kuria" for "clear". If "kuria" has the same set of definitions as "clear" does, which from what I can find it seems to, then I think when they say "clear" isn't that you can see through the smoke but that the smoke is being used to "clear away" the stat changes. So in that regard it sounds like they're treating Clear Smog as an attacking version of Haze (in Japanese called "Black Mist"). However, while Haze is an Ice-type Move so a bit odd to see on Fire and Poison-type movesets, Clear Smog being Poison-type makes more sense as fire & some violent chemical reactions create smoke that is dangerous to breath in. In addition smoke from fires are used as a method of "smoking someone out" of a hiding place.
I'm curious if the change was also done for wanting to make the Trubbish and Foongus families have more defensive options.
She just REALLY wants to make sure he attacks never miss.
Joking aside, two questions: what point of the game is this at & what Pokemon did you have out? Was it resistant to Psychic-type moves? Throughout most of the game her Meowstic only has Disarming Voice, Psychic-move, Fake Out, and Light Screen. If your Pokemon resisted Psychic it's only other option would be Disarming Voice.
I don't think the system is necessarily bad as it does put the "good" moves back into items. TRs being one use again is annoying and brings back my suggestion of you not losing the TR upon using it but instead you need to recharge it again. Has the same effect of a "one-use" but instead of struggling to find another TR you just either go someplace or get an item that can recharge it so it can be used again. Or, heck, maybe make it need a certain amount of Watts to recharge thus keeping a use for that currency.
Or have an easy way to grind BP someplace else. Gotta give USUM credit for making it easy to get those "Beach Points" *winkwinknudgenudge* through a relatively fun mini-game.
Personally I say bring the Game Corner back BUT make it into an arcade (which is what they did in Let's Go) and have us earn "Bonus Points" *winkwinknudgenudge* through playing a batch of mini-games. As long as you decorate the place to look like a Chuck-E-Cheese/Dave & Buster the ESRB isn't going to notice that it's still the same concept as a (Japanese) gambling parlor.
This would be a fun idea to bring back, especially if they can have the NPC teach a group of related moves based on the quirky personality they give them.
Though going back to a bit of a boring method, I also ways thought that the Gyms should have someone that offers to tutor moves of its Type specialty. Neat if it was the Gym Leader though that may limit what they could do with them, but maybe they could combine it with the above idea and having it be a (quirky) NPC that appears in the Gym after defeating it.
Final old posts going back to:
Very odd, though maybe just has to do with how their numbering system worked? Like they got up to 5 or 6 marks and then decided "it's going to get pretty complex if we make a single mark for each count, let's add a symbol that stands for a multiple". Now what this could be we don't know, we only have those 5 numbers to go off of. If I had to guess, maybe the "x" represent 2 individually but when there's two "x"s they count as 5. So two "x" (5) plus two marks (2) equals 7.
(Not even gonna touch upon re-doing evolution methods/levels and re-balancing stats discussion, post is already pretty long. If it's brought up again I'll add my two cents...)
Yeah, to be clear, the reason I don't like infinite use TMs is that early on you either buy Rock Tomb and Bulldoze for a pile of money and then teach them to literally everything on your team, or you buy something like Rain Dance for an even bigger pile of money, teach it to one thing it's broken on, and sweep everything whilst being broke. Neither of those feels like how TMs should work.
Serena/Calem's Meowstic is pretty infamous for spamming Disarming Voice throughout the game even when it has a stronger alternative.
get :clap: on :clap: that :clap: grind! :clap: :clap: :clap:
Yeah, my post was inspired by watching a YouTube video. The Pokemon the video creator sent out was Zangoose. It's a Normal type. STAB Psybeam should be the play because it'd be stronger than Disarming Voice and neither hit supereffectively.
The Meowstic used Disarming Voice.
I can see the issue there. In addition to my "TMs need to be recharged" idea, your point also makes me wonder if maybe they shouldn't also have a system to limit the number of TM moves a Pokemon knows. Though this goes into the deeper issue of how the Move system really needs an update.
Huh, maybe I knocked it out too quickly to ever know that, lol.
TBF Zangoose does look like it could be a Dark-type so I can understand the AI's confusion. /joking
From what it sounds like, maybe the Rivals are running on the same level of AI as normal trainers? I think normal trainers tend to pick random attacking moves, normally Rival AI is supposed to be smart enough to go with super effective or the move that does the most damage (and employ some simple strategy now again, like Meowstic should first be Fake Out, followed by Light Screen, then focus on attacking).
Hmm I don't think that's it. I may have oversold how much it happens tbh. It feels like it's happening all the time because it's such a notably weak move, but I think it's closer to being a case of the XY rival using bad AI for these fights, as Pikachu posited. Like it doesn't even always go for the Fake Out flinch on the first turn.
From memory, speedrunners try to set up on it in the Shalour fight with Hawlucha, using X Speed -> Encore -> Swords Dance, which works very well if you lock it into Fake Out or Light Screen and fine if you lock it into Disarming Voice. However, it seems like it can use any move at any time unless it would fail or be completely ineffective, which iirc is how the bottom-rung trainer AI works.
Honestly what's worse is when you pair up with Calem/Serena during the climax of the Team Flare plot and their lead Meowstic still knows Disarming Voice and does pitiful damage even though it's using it 'correctly' within each battle lol.
From memory, speedrunners try to set up on it in the Shalour fight with Hawlucha, using X Speed -> Encore -> Swords Dance, which works very well if you lock it into Fake Out or Light Screen and fine if you lock it into Disarming Voice. However, it seems like it can use any move at any time unless it would fail or be completely ineffective, which iirc is how the bottom-rung trainer AI works.
Honestly what's worse is when you pair up with Calem/Serena during the climax of the Team Flare plot and their lead Meowstic still knows Disarming Voice and does pitiful damage even though it's using it 'correctly' within each battle lol.
In this one case, could it be possible that the AI is prioritizing moves that can hit both opponents in double battles?
I was okay with finite use TMs mixed with infinite use ones, at least in SwSh. You gave to grind the hell out of those games to get dynamax candies anyway. So I have literally hundreds of each of the finites . Didnt play BDSP so I'm not sure how they are there.
I've been experimenting a little with Home, Legends Arceus and SwSh, and its given me a new gripe.
Effort Levels translate to EVs, so a pokemon with high stats in all its effort levels will have a mess of equal EVs that have to be unleared. Also their IVs are random, so anything you transfer to SwSh will need at least 50 BP for bottle caps, even you give it a nature mint from Legends Arceus.
I'm hoping that BP is easier or more fun to get in Scarlett and Violet than it is in SwSh. But this will probably mean a lot of grinding to allow Hisuian Pokemon, or any of the legendaries from Hisui, to have IVs for competitive. Not to mention most of the shinies we've been hunting in Legends Arceus will have garbage IVs.
These problems wouldn't have existed if they made it so that Effort Levels corresponded to IVs. If Legends Arceus pokemon had 1 IV in each stat, plus 3 more for each effort level, I could send over the genies to the competitive games with pre-prepared perfect IVs.
I've been experimenting a little with Home, Legends Arceus and SwSh, and its given me a new gripe.
Effort Levels translate to EVs, so a pokemon with high stats in all its effort levels will have a mess of equal EVs that have to be unleared. Also their IVs are random, so anything you transfer to SwSh will need at least 50 BP for bottle caps, even you give it a nature mint from Legends Arceus.
I'm hoping that BP is easier or more fun to get in Scarlett and Violet than it is in SwSh. But this will probably mean a lot of grinding to allow Hisuian Pokemon, or any of the legendaries from Hisui, to have IVs for competitive. Not to mention most of the shinies we've been hunting in Legends Arceus will have garbage IVs.
These problems wouldn't have existed if they made it so that Effort Levels corresponded to IVs. If Legends Arceus pokemon had 1 IV in each stat, plus 3 more for each effort level, I could send over the genies to the competitive games with pre-prepared perfect IVs.
iirc The EV spreads you see if you transfer them to other games equate to the EVs they were earning in the background, not Effort Levels
not that that really makes your gripes any better, you're very right that you'll need to swap around IVs and EVs regardless
This sounds like a mark against TRs.
When designing the economy of consumable resources in games, designers should try to avoid an overabundance of the resource. If the resource is so plentiful that you have more than you could ever need, why even bother making it consumable at all?
I think that for the majority of casual players it works in the main campaign. They won't really be needing to give every pokemon dynamax 10 candies, and you might actually have to go out of your way finding a ice-type den to get the TR for ice beam in-game. You won't have a bag full of hundreds of TMs until you have long since become champion. TRs are anothee way they direct players towards max raids, which was hte big gameplay innovation in SwSh.
For competitive players there's more than enough grinding for BP and when breeding. So getting a lot of TRs from max raids while you're looking for pokemon with IVs or a Hidden Ability is much better than a game corner making you play a hundred voltorb flips or slot machines each time you want the TM, or worse make it so you get one Stealth Rocks a play through.
Its just that the grindy elements of pokemon do not feel thought through at all. You wind up with a ridiculous number of treasure and exp. candies ans it doesn't take that long before you have nearly enough dynamax candies to give to every full evolved pokemon enough.
But there is no quick way to get BP, even playing competitively online can be slow to reward you. With many battle competitions offering 50 BP, half of what you need to give one pokemon a nature mint and a pair of bottle caps. Its a huge barrier to entry.
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While they did something right in that you don't get your BP-per-win flow cut by losing in the Battle Tower in Sword and Shield... they made the mistake of capping the BP per win way too quickly.
My point isn't that it's dumb for it to spam Disarming Voice in those battles, just that it's funny that it still knows such a weak move at all. It makes perfect sense for it to use it against a pair of Dark-types when its alternatives are Psychic and Shadow Ball, but it barely dents its targets (even opposing Scrafty).