I think having a proc would make abilities similar to those seem more important, as it is they often feel negligible
Battle Armor having a proc would be really useful so you can actually take notice when it saves you from a critical hit.
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
-
Congrats to the winners of the 2023 Smog Awards!
(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon
- Thread starter BriarRose
- Start date
Battle Armor having a proc would be really useful so you can actually take notice when it saves you from a critical hit.
Yeah, but that's not necessarily a bad thing from the dev perspective. The devs may not think the average player should be carrying about abilities. A lot of people play Pokemon games like its JRPG Kirby.
Legends Arceus is probably more in line with how the average player might see the battle system, for instance.
That being said, I don't really agree with this philosophy, and they still do try to explain things in-game sometimes that shouldn't really matter more than abilities lol.
Idk, this is just my theory, I don't think it's good but I am trying to get into the head of a dev. Another thing could be that they don't want the proc message to show up over and over, but that is something that could be fixed (for instance only showing it when the Pokemon goes in and out of range, but that actually may be more annoying if you're healing maybe? I unno)
This would actually be easy to address if they did something like adjust the color of the HP bar for increments? Like how 50% is Yellow and 20% is Red. Maybe if at 33% it turn a distinct Orange or something, so instead of the game notifying they could just learn "Orange Health = Pinch Mode" if they just want to take it simply, without an in-battle announcement.
The abilities are referenced in quite a few pieces of spin-off media so I don't think it's that they want to keep them a half-secret in use or anything.
This one I sort of understand as well as the Pinch abilities I mentioned earlier, because saying the ability procced can give info to the opponent, which can matter for VGC or Online PvP (Ex: Hisuian Goodra discourages stuff like Spore with Sap Sipper, but gives away a potential bluff if BA announces it blocked a crit). There's a meme about Unaware Clefable "faking" Magic Guard with HDB to block hazards, but while that one is a joke it is a good example of how giving away that info can change counterplay, which in a game as fast-paced as Pokemon can change a match outcome hard.
The only reason I can see why the power up abilities don't say they activated is because if they did, they'd also have to say when they deactivated (on heal) so you don't think it's a permabuff until you switch out.
Which is something other "threshold" abilities do, but they're usually tied to a form change. So it'd just be a little awkward if you ever had any healing involved. Less of a thing in competitive (also they'd probably announce it any time you send them back out)
I think making red health be 33% would honestly be a good compromise. I remember for years I thought it had to be red health low, and not 33% low so I basically never trusted it to be active if i was still in Yellow.
Which is something other "threshold" abilities do, but they're usually tied to a form change. So it'd just be a little awkward if you ever had any healing involved. Less of a thing in competitive (also they'd probably announce it any time you send them back out)
I think making red health be 33% would honestly be a good compromise. I remember for years I thought it had to be red health low, and not 33% low so I basically never trusted it to be active if i was still in Yellow.
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
A mix of her being so new I forgot she existed and the fact that she, too, goes from pure Grass to various other typings
It's always bothered me that Ghost is a physical attack type in gens 1-3, and I assume that it was only made that way because Lick was basically* the only Ghost type attack in RBY.
*Confuse Ray and Night Shade exist, but the former is a non-damaging move and the latter doesn't follow typical immunity/damage rules anyway.
*Confuse Ray and Night Shade exist, but the former is a non-damaging move and the latter doesn't follow typical immunity/damage rules anyway.
Yet with full conciousness, they added Dark-type in gen 2 with the debut of Crunch and changed a physical--Normal-type Bite to Dark type and then call this type a special attack type.
Did they had to because Steel is physical to balance it out?
I know Japan also uses "hip" to sometimes specifically mean "butt" so I'll guess "arms" in this case is not as literal in Japanese as it reads in English
Ironically, had they swapped the properties of those in Gen 2 to have Dark as a Physical type and Ghost as Special, both would've benefitted immensely.
All Dark moves up to Gen 3 were changed to physical moves after the modern PSS split in Gen 4.
Just a really odd decision.
Did you just acronymize Physical Special split and then add split after?
Physical/Special/Status maybe, since part of that change was assigning the explicit categories?
No, the other s is for Status.
Johto has several locations where you have to traverse the same area multiple times in order to fully clear them, not for a fun reason (e.g. secret side areas you can't access the first time round; they gain story significance later on in the game; etc.) but just because of ledges and holes.
Route 45 has three paths, each with at least one trainer or item that necessitates its own trip to access. I'm usually pretty desperate for exp at this point in the game, so skipping the trainers isn't an option. If you reach Route 46 for the first time via Route 45 then its forked path won't add any trips beyond the three you're already doing, but I want to point out that if you go there via the Route 31 Dark Cave entrance as soon as you have Strength you'll have to do two loops. The game punishes you for exploring early! The most egregious example is the Ruins of Alph, where completing every puzzle and seeing every message requires you to go through the same part of Union Cave four times.
Yes, this is all optional, but it's still annoying. Unlike a lot of my small Pokemon grievances, it's not even something that only becomes tedious on repeat playthroughs. I think a split path can be really cool if the choice truly feels significant and irreversible, at least until later in the game, but when you can immediately come back and take the alternative route the logical expectation is that the player will just loop around and feel like their time was wasted.
Route 45 has three paths, each with at least one trainer or item that necessitates its own trip to access. I'm usually pretty desperate for exp at this point in the game, so skipping the trainers isn't an option. If you reach Route 46 for the first time via Route 45 then its forked path won't add any trips beyond the three you're already doing, but I want to point out that if you go there via the Route 31 Dark Cave entrance as soon as you have Strength you'll have to do two loops. The game punishes you for exploring early! The most egregious example is the Ruins of Alph, where completing every puzzle and seeing every message requires you to go through the same part of Union Cave four times.
Yes, this is all optional, but it's still annoying. Unlike a lot of my small Pokemon grievances, it's not even something that only becomes tedious on repeat playthroughs. I think a split path can be really cool if the choice truly feels significant and irreversible, at least until later in the game, but when you can immediately come back and take the alternative route the logical expectation is that the player will just loop around and feel like their time was wasted.
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
I'm usually fairly forgiving of this kind of thing (Hoenn did it better) but Route 45 is particularly maddening because it looks so similar everywhere that I'm never certain I've cleared it out properly. It doesn't help that the GBC screen is tiny and it's hard to get a good view of the paths you didn't take so you can see for certain where you've already been. One Hiker standing above a ledge looks quite like another.
This. It's less of an issue when you have more visual clarity.
That Hoenn route with the fast currents is the worst about this.
The fast currents one is funny because I think its worse because it feels way more intentional. Like it's pachinko by design to make getting to the regi chamber harder (since they clearly wanted that whole questline start to finish to be extremely involved), so all the little offshoots are meant to either be minor prizes for failing, to help take the edge off, or meant to get you to experiment with different path ways as you try and make your way to the big prize. "Ah hey there's something over there...but oh going here takes me around it" or "if I follow this one it takes me to That Area, so I should try This One"
But in practice you just made a route that just annoys everyone
People who just want the Regi - and not referencing a map - are going to get frustrated because of all the ways you can mess up
People who want everything have to keep doing the entire thing over and over and over again
People who want the Regi and referencing a map are going to get double frustrated when they misread a part or do a wrong input (me)
People playing casually enough to want to figure it out still have to deal with flying back and going through the whole 3 routes again and again anyway.
I love that route for precisely these reasons.
Sometimes I want to feel like I'm actually exploring and not just being railroaded to the next plot point. The Regi chamber being obscured this much plus the fact that they're not emphasized in the story at all makes it more rewarding to actually uncover them.
I'm pretty sure that route specifically is why my "Rebalance all HMs to be interesting in-and-out-of-battle" fix would be to turn Rock Climb into "Go up ledges" instead of "climb specific walls".
Jagged Pass (Hoenn, below Mt Chimney) is an example of how this works in practice, where it's technically one-way with branching paths, but if you have the Acro Bike, you can reclimb it quickly and take a different route.
Speaking of.
Why is Mach/Acro Bike even a choice in RSE? Like, what is gained from forcing the player to return to the store to exchange them rather than always having access to two different modes (as in gen 4's gear shift)?
Did they alter this at all for ORAS?
You can, after talking to i think 3 different NPCs, get both at once in ORAS
Iirc this is even necessary for traversing parts of the Safari Zone
no idea why the original idea was a thing but i always thought of it as kinda charming
I'm sure, like a lot of things, it was just the designers trying things to see what works.
Specifically, though, what it let them do gameplay-wise is give the player a choice that opens certain areas and closes others, each with unique rewards. Given how much Hoenn leaned into backtracking, I'm sure the idea was that players would pick whichever bike they prefer riding and pick up all the items they can. Then at some point late-game they'd swap and go item-hunting, where they'd be rewarded for remembering all the different places they passed while using the other bike. And on future playthroughs, players could try the other bike from the beginning, getting access to different shortcuts early. Sort of like how you're expected to go exploring old areas once you get a new HM, except this is letting you choose when that happens.
I like it as a concept, especially since each bike plays different even ignoring shortcuts, meaning players will have a preference that the different rewards can then influence further. It's a cool dynamic, ruined because the Mach Bike is so clearly better and the different rewards/paths are so minor.
Bellossom and Vileplume do have the same BST, though. Poliwrath and Politoed don't; they did, but then GF gave Wrath a 10 BST buff to Attack because Politoed got a boon of its own in Drizzle.
