Then IF Poke Rides are a thing in the gen 8 games, (knowing Game Freak it seems unlikely and we'll be back to HMs) make those work like how HMs in the older games did. Some Tauros rocks here, a bit of Mudsdale terrain there, and only give the player access to the rides that can clear the obstacle once they should be ready to handle what lies beyond it. (clearing a trial, beating a gym, etc.)
THAT'S why I felt annoyed when we got Mudsdale! I've been trying to articulate my thoughts on why I didn't like getting it and you've just covered it.
To me, Mudsdale felt like the most arbitrary thing possible. It just made you go over terrain slower, it didn't offer any new fun gameplay mechanic, and all in all it was rather pointless.
At which point you could say the same thing about a lot of HMs. Rock Smash and Whirlpool don't exactly offer much either, do they? And as annoying as they are themselves, I wanted to work out why I felt annoyed about Mudsdale more than them.
And that's where this post comes in. Prior to getting Mudsdale, you didn't come across anything in the game you needed it for.
Think about it. In Platinum, when you got Surf - and this is one of my favourite things in any repeat playthrough of it - suddenly, so many places in the prior game open up. The bottom floor of Oreburgh gate, the many patches of water along each grassy route, the large expansive routes below Sandgem and to an extent next to Pastoria; and indeed, opened up a previous roadblock in the game - Canalave city. When you get the Surf HM, you don't just use it on a route immediately after it and then maybe a couple times later in the game. Well, you
could choose to do that, but at the same time you could go back and do so much, get so many items, explore new areas and battle more trainers and find new Pokémon. Getting the Surf HM in Sinnoh opened up so much.
Mudsdale? ... you use it on the route you get it, and a couple times after. There's nothing before you get it on the previous islands you can use it for. There's nothing where you think "Oh yeah, on Akala Island there was a rocky road I couldn't get past; I can use Mudsdale now to finally see what was there!", instead, you just get to boringly ride a horse along some rocks which wouldn't have changed your gameplay in any way had they been taken out. Whoopee. Hell, the ride Pokémon always being on you - in most cases obviously a much-needed improvement over HMs - actually
works against Mudsdale in this case. At least in previous games if you needed Rock Smash much later after you got it, you were forced to get a Pokémon with Rock Smash, sacrificing either a moveslot or a teamslot and hence meaning you had to play a little differently or think a little. It was terrible and arguably bad game design, but at least it done
something. At least it made me play differently than if the Rock Smash rock obstacle wasn't there. If Mudsdale was removed from the game, nothing would be different.
Lapras gave you a reason to go backtrack - there were a lot of places you could now surf on you couldn't previously. Machamp gave you a reason to backtrack - there were some places (albeit few in number) that needed you to push a block forward to access. The same goes for Sharpedo, the same goes for Tauros... every other Ride Pokémon had a reason to be in the game and was implemented in a way that gives you access to a new way to play and a reason to backtrack (aside from, of course, Charizard and Stoutland who do something very different for your gameplay). Mudsdale doesn't do any of this or anything else and so it's inclusion absolutely baffles me.
Why is Smeargle always sticking it's tounge out???
