(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

[Pikachu315111]

Lycanroc-Dusk's stat difference from Lycanroc-Midday being a -2 to speed and a +2 to attack might just be the stupidest thing since Mega Scizor's +20 special attack.

That's an issue with a lot of Mega Evolution, they got a small buff to the offense stat they don't use:

Venusaur: Attack: 82 > 100 (+18); Special Attack: 100 > 122 (+22)
Charizard Y: Attack: 84 > 100 (+16); Special Attack: 109 > 159 (+50)
Blastoise: Attack: 83 > 103 (+20); Special Attack: 85 >135 (+50)
Kangaskhan: Attack: 95 > 125 (+30); Special Attack: 40 > 60 (+20)
Pinsir: Attack: 125 > 155 (+30); Special Attack: 55 > 65 (+10)
Gyarados: Attack: 125 > 155 (+30); Special Attack: 60 > 70 (+10)
Aerodactyl: Attack: 105 > 135 (+30); Special Attack: 60 > 70 (+10)
Ampharos: Attack: 75 > 95 (+20); Special Attack: 115 > 165 (+50)
Scizor: Attack: 130 > 150 (+20); Special Attack: 55 > 65 (+10)
Gardevoir: Attack: 65 > 85 (+20); Special Attack: 125 > 165 (+40)
Medicham: Attack: 60 > 100 (+40); Special Attack: 60 > 80 (+20)
Banette: Attack: 115 > 165 (+50); Special Attack: 83 > 93 (+10)
Absol: Attack: 130 > 150 (+20); Special Attack: 75 > 115 (+40)
Garchomp: Attack: 130 > 170 (+40); Special Attack: 80 > 120 (+40)
Swampert: Attack: 110 > 150 (+40); Special Attack: 85 > 95 (+10)
Metagross: Attack: 135 > 145 (+10); Special Attack: 95 > 105 (+10)
Latias: Attack: 80 > 100 (+20); Special Attack: 110 > 140 (+30)

Just want to note I did exclude some Pokemon who did have their "lesser" offense stat increases a bit if I felt the could actually make use of it in some sets where it could be a surprise, coverage, or utility (examples are Mewtwo Y, Blaziken, Sceptile, Sherpedo, Camerupt, Salamence, and Latios). On the list itself there are some notables ones:
Absol who's Special Attack got MORE points put into it than its Attack, and it still comes up lacking making you wonder if it maybe wasn't a better choice to buff its defense stats by +20 each instead if they wanted to dump the leftover points.
Garchomp COULD make uses of its Special Attack, but I think everyone would agree that they could have lived with it having less if it meant its Speed was left alone.
Metagross is on the line. I thought about adding Salamence to the list as it too got a small Special Attack increase, but then I thought about it and Salamence has some Special Attacks it could use as coverage. But for Metagross, not really, it's a physical attacker through and through.

What's the point of this? Just another example of I think them needing to redo Mega Evolutions. They're not a bad idea, far from it, but there's evidence they may have gone about it the wrong way (the strict +100 BST I think the culprit, for some Pokemon it wasn't enough while for others maybe too much. Stats probably should have been given a percentage increase (or decrease in some rare instances) instead, making them stronger on average but not too strong (or example if no Mega Evolution's offense (with exceptions, like Medicham and Mawile) went above 1.25% than Life Orb's 1.3% increase would still be an option for those looking for just the extra power)).

 

[jordanthejq12]

To be fair, some Venusaur run EQ or Knock Off, and mixed Absol with Fire Blast was a thing last gen, so there's those. Although those have less to do with those distributions actually making sense and more with players finding a way to make use of them.

 

[Tramuntana]

tapu koko used thunderbolt
it's a critical hit!

gods i would kill for an OM that removed critical hits and secondary effects...

 

[stage7_4]

Critical hits have been weird for the last three genertations or so, as Gamefreak seems to be trying to turn them into a legitimate play strategy instead of a random annoyance/bonus.

First to reiterate what is a critical hit:
1. increases the attack by 1.5 (as of Gen 6)
2. ignores the target's defensive buffs
3. ignores the user's offensive debuffs

So to that effect they've introduced moves and abilities that guarantee critical hits (merciless, frost breath, storm throw, laser focus, focus energy + scope lens) seemingly to be a check to defensive boosters and to pull off weird strategies like Kingdra + Sniper + Draco Meteor Spam.

They even created Mega Slowbro seemingly as a proof on concept as to why critical hits are a necessary game element, which by taking them away with Shell Armor makes one of the sturdiest Calm Mind users that can become a snowballing insta-win in certain situations.

But despite all this, all they've really done is turn a random element into a minor gimmick (maybe a niche if you feel generous). Can't really tell why as of yet, as either someone on staff either loves critical hits or wants to make darn sure that stall and def-boosts never become the most dominant playstyle ever again. Guess someone lost to curse-talk Snorlax in Gen 2 and they've carried that grudge for 18+ years.

 

[PsychicAcademic]

Well, now U-SM should be fair game since it has been around for 2 months, no?

One minor annoyance here, now that we got Battle Agency victories for Global Mission. You can change the battle music in Battle Tree. You can't in Battle Agency. The simple fact that you can't and you're stuck with normal battle music there is pretty annoying. At least there's a certain someone who plays their own music there, although that's only once in each 10 grades.

 

[Pikachu315111]

Anyone else having a problem getting invested in the new Global Missions? Or, heck, just improving your Festival Plaza in USUM? Like, I already did all that in the normal SM and this USUM offers nothing new accept the Battle Agency which is pretty much its own separate thing (it might as well not even be part of the Festival Plaza, just like the guy who trades Shards with Bottle Caps; they feel tossed in just to give players a reason to visit the Festival Plaza).

 

[Detective Barricade]

Anyone else having a problem getting invested in the new Global Missions? Or, heck, just improving your Festival Plaza in USUM? Like, I already did all that in the normal SM and this USUM offers nothing new accept the Battle Agency which is pretty much its own separate thing (it might as well not even be part of the Festival Plaza, just like the guy who trades Shards with Bottle Caps; they feel tossed in just to give players a reason to visit the Festival Plaza).

Kind of. Then again, I'm still annoyed that one can't purchase more Apricorn Balls in USUM, which the ball shops could have provided as a means to actually wanting to have one in your plaza. I do miss the free Rare Candies for actually contributing to the goal, though.

 

[jordanthejq12]

Why does this gen's defensive Poison-type have an offensive ability, and its offensive Poison-type have a defensive ability?

Seriously! Toxapex would benefit from the increased utility of Toxic, and Salazzle with T-Spikes support would have a field day.

 

[Siggu]

More of a personal gripe, but the inability to get a Reckless Starly in anyone of ORAS, SM or USUM. I wanted to go and train one yesterday until I realized I have no means to get it.

Why can't Island Scan Pokemon call for help? :(

 

[Detective Barricade]

More of a personal gripe, but the inability to get a Reckless Starly in anyone of ORAS, SM or USUM. I wanted to go and train one yesterday until I realized I have no means to get it.

Why can't Island Scan Pokemon call for help? :(

Because they're extremely rare and not normally native to Alola. And yes, I'm still annoyed at the lack of a National Pokedex. All I'd really ask is new entries for the non-Alola native Mega Evolutions. I'd settle for the same old entries for everything else. I'm also annoyed that the old Ultra Beasts except Nihilego only get one actual entry between US and UM while the other gets the same generic entry about how they're apparently very common in the world they come from. Even Guzzlord, whose numbers in its "world" are noted to be dwindling.

 

[Kanburi]

Anyone else having a problem getting invested in the new Global Missions? Or, heck, just improving your Festival Plaza in USUM? Like, I already did all that in the normal SM and this USUM offers nothing new accept the Battle Agency which is pretty much its own separate thing (it might as well not even be part of the Festival Plaza, just like the guy who trades Shards with Bottle Caps; they feel tossed in just to give players a reason to visit the Festival Plaza).

I'm kind of just tagging along for the ride. To be honest, I'm having a problem getting invested in Ultra Sun (that I got almost a month ago) after having just finished Ultra Moon.

 

[Worldie]

I'm not really "putting effort" in leveling up Plaza again. I'm just picking up the FC as they come, and stole a couple RK5 from others, but that's as far as it went.

Nor in the Global Mission this time, due to how stupid the Agency system is. (which is a shame, I like the idea, but the whole "Better hope your high level VIPs connected at same time of you lately" system is bad)

 

[Karxrida]

Haven't been motivated to actually buy USUM myself, but apparently cutscene skipping still isn't an option.

Just why?

 

[pe5e]

Haven't been motivated to actually buy USUM myself, but apparently cutscene skipping still isn't an option.

Just why?

You can skip them by not buying this excuse of a game.

 

[Siggu]

Why do physical event distributions still exist? You'd think The Pokémon Company would wise up at the worldwide spread of the games and just use online codes like some of their events but nah, let's limit the event to like 20 countries at best!

 

[Worldie]

For money pretty much.
Ultimately Nintendo/GF do events for money/visibility/keep playerbase and they definitely have a contract with, say, GameStop, which in change gets extra potential customers to visit their stores.

Yeh, companies make games and events for income not for you to have fun, I thought that was known :P

 

[Worldie]

Actually, at least for the facilities in SM and USUM, that's actually coded in (unsure about ingame boss fights).

After a KO / voltturn swap the AI always priorizes sending in the Pokemon with the strongest damage output toward the current active Pokemon of the player

 

[Kurona]

So I'm a staunch defender of Gen 1 in general - contrary to what a lot of people say about glitches I think it's an ingeniously designed game - but I'm going through the notes I have for FRLG again and I came across what I think is one of the worst designed stat layouts ever -- Onix.

As Onix was originally conceived as something that did not evolve, this is one of the most absurd things I have ever seen for a Pokémon you can catch and use, especially when I imagine a lot of kids might be hyped to finally find this rare encounter that the first gym leader used and was difficult to get past. There are similar examples of Pokémon who have a lot of their BST dumped into one stat but then the relative low points of the rest of the stats make it unusable - Trapinch's very high Attack stat and Magikarp's high Speed stat, for instance - but in those cases there are better evolutions you get to compensate, and arguably the very point of those weird stat layouts is to deal with something that awful before getting an incredible payoff. There is no payoff to Onix in Gen 1 and FRLG. It is just bad.

 

[Worldie]

Onix was also one of the few Rock Types of gen 1, and Rock Type pokemon were indeed intended to be strong defensive pokemon.

Except Rock type sucks defensively, and Rock/ground even more, but we were 20 year older at the time, steel did not exist, and we did not know.

 

[Kurona]

Onix was also one of the few Rock Types of gen 1, and Rock Type pokemon were indeed intended to be strong defensive pokemon.

Except Rock type sucks defensively, and Rock/ground even more, but we were 20 year older at the time, steel did not exist, and we did not know.

For me it's not even that Rock is a bad defensive type; it's that so much is poured into Defence and then bizarrely you make the only other competent stat... Speed. The only conceivable thing you could do with this is abuse Wrap in its broken Gen 1 state, but at that point why bother with defence?
So it doesn't have enough HP to back up its Defence, and it doesn't have enough Attack or Special Attack to hit back for any real damage.
And finally, a problem that actually reared its head again for this line in Mega Steelix. When we found out the stats for that Pokémon, a lot of us were annoyed that it got a +30 in Defence since there's not really a lot of physical attacks you can take with 230 Defence you can't take with 200 anyway. It's a bit redundant. This is even more prominent in Gen 1 where a power creep didn't exist yet -- in RBGY, what are you realistically taking with 160 Defence that you're not with, say, 120? Why make it that ridiculously high?

 

[Siggu]

Onix has what is probably the worst-thought stat distribution in the entire series. Let's see each problem individually...
1) For an 8.8m-long rock snake, its Attack stat is ATROCIOUS. Just as a reference, among Pokemon that are at least 2 metres in Height, only Mantine has a lower Attack stat than Onix... and it's four times smaller. Even if we go and compare it with another snake, Onix has the same Attack stat as Snivy. You know, the Grass Snake that is almost 15 times smaller than the Rock Snake.
2) Overall horrible base stat total for a Pokemon that was alone in its evolutionary line at first. How horrible? Well, it's on par with the likes of Butterfree and Beedrill, if that says enough. Mudbray has the same base stat total, and it was designed with an evolution from the get-go. That being said, Onix was not alone in this regard, as Lickitung had the same base stat and had to wait much more time to evolve.
3) Base 160 Defense sounds fine and dandy... until you pair it with Base 35 HP. It's roughly equal to Mega Pinsir's physical defenses, which obviously tone that amazing Defense down to only good overall (for that time). Now, it's got a resistance to Normal (which is fantastic) but then you see that it is 5% more specially bulky than Kartana (lol) and the lack of any specially based resistances (hello Psychic and Blizzard; heck, even Bubblebeam) and THEN you see Golem (15% more physically bulky and almost 47% more specially bulky) and Rhydon (22% more physically bulky and almost 40% more specially bulky)... well, Onix was nothing short of horrible back then.

Steelix does fix most of Onix's problems (I wonder if this was why it got an evolution so quickly, seeing it was drastically worse than Golem and Rhydon) although I'd have removed some of the Defense boost for a little more Attack as 90 base Attack was nothing special even back then.

 

[Detective Barricade]

So I'm a staunch defender of Gen 1 in general - contrary to what a lot of people say about glitches I think it's an ingeniously designed game - but I'm going through the notes I have for FRLG again and I came across what I think is one of the worst designed stat layouts ever -- Onix.

As Onix was originally conceived as something that did not evolve, this is one of the most absurd things I have ever seen for a Pokémon you can catch and use, especially when I imagine a lot of kids might be hyped to finally find this rare encounter that the first gym leader used and was difficult to get past. There are similar examples of Pokémon who have a lot of their BST dumped into one stat but then the relative low points of the rest of the stats make it unusable - Trapinch's very high Attack stat and Magikarp's high Speed stat, for instance - but in those cases there are better evolutions you get to compensate, and arguably the very point of those weird stat layouts is to deal with something that awful before getting an incredible payoff. There is no payoff to Onix in Gen 1 and FRLG. It is just bad.

I think Onix's problems have so much to do with the fact that it's Brock's signature Pokemon. You know, the first gym leader you can challenge. If it wasn't, then perhaps it would have received a better distribution? (and then by extension Steelix) I feel like Mega Steelix's Defense boost was in response to Mega Aggron's.

 

[Pikachu315111]

I think we talked about this before and we came to the conclusion that it's likely Onix's stats were changed from their original intention due to being the first Gym Leader's ace.

Let's think of it through a game developers point of few. Between the Starters and Brock's Gym Battle, most of the Pokemon we've encountered had essentially been normal looking animals. A caterpillar, cocoon, butterfly, wasp, bird, rat, monkey, and etc.. And even the Pokemon that looked unique still looked like plain animals with something additional: Charmander is a lizard with a flame on its tail, Bulbasaur is a frog with a plant bulb on its back, and Pikachu is a mouse with pointy ears and zigzag tail. Though interesting, they weren't awe-striking. You then get to Brock, a character who was built up to be a big deal. First Pokemon is a rock with arms, how threatening. You take care of it thinking that Brock is all bark with no bite...

THEN HE SENDS OUT A GIANT ROCK SNAKE!

From here it depends on the player's choice how things go. You use your other Pokemon that isn't your starter only to find they're barely doing any damage (especially if they're using Physical attacks which many probably only have at this point) and Onix knocking them out with little to no scratch on it. It comes to the Starters. Bulbasaur and Squritle are able to stand their own thanks to their type advantage, but Charmander trainers are struggling as Onix is resistant to Fire.

... So how are Charmander trainers suppose to get past? The design team ponder this. They want Onix to be Brock's ace, an awe-striking Pokemon to give players a glimpse of the powerful monster awaiting them in the future. But Onix is too strong. So they look at Onix stats. At this point Defense is still probably its highest stat, but not as high while Attack and HP are decent. How could they weaken Onix so Charmander trainers can get past it? Add an early Grass-type or Water-type? But that wouldn't be fair to Bulbasaur or Squirtle than, and even if they also added an early Fire-type this would just make the Starters feel less special. So, they have to find a way to weaken Onix.

Well, Onix is already taking bit damage from Physical attacks, so why not take points from its HP and Attack and put it into its Defense. It's Speed is also low so putting points there would also be essentially throwing them away. That way, through sheer force of Embers, Charmander trainers can beat Onix like how Bulbasaur and Squirtle trainers would (who would win just easier now, if they weren't already OHKOing it). You could even argue the point of Onix is finding the weakness of it, its low Special stat, setting it up as just another tutorial boss.

The original Onix probably looked more like a weaker Steelix. High defense, decent HP and Attack, and low Special and Speed. Maybe instead of 35/45/160/30/70//340 was 70/70/140/30/30//340.

NEW ANNOYANCE:
Not really an annoyance, but an oddity. There are certain type combinations that just seems they would be more common than they actually are:

Grass/Ground sounds like a real obvious and common combination, but only ONE Pokemon is that type: Torterra.
Fire/Dragon, dragons breathe fire, but only two Pokemon are that combination with one a Legendary and another a Mega Evolution.
Electric/Steel, metal is the best electric conductor, but only two families are that type: Magnemite family and Togedemaru.

I don't see why these type combinations would be rare either. Like another one on my list would have been Ghost/Dark, but it made sense there wouldn't be that many as, before Fairy-types, that was a special type combination that resulted in no weaknesses.

 

[earl]

You forgot about Turtonator as a fire/dragon (not that i blame you)

 

[Worldie]

I had to credit the fact that they added Nidoran (and I think Mankey too? can't remind) to the early catchable pokes, and iirc they actually added Double kick to its move pool in Yellow, specifically so trainers could get a realistic way to beat Brock even with just Pikachu.
People playing Blue had a sizeable advantage over Red due to Caterpie being present in the forest and learning Confusion shortly after evolving, though.


As for me... I thought a bit out of the box at the time. I caught like 3 pidgeys, spammed Sand Attack to drop Onix's accuracy, and then EVENTUALLY grinded it down with gust/tackle.
Oboi it wasn't fun but hey... it worked I guess.