(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

[Xen]

Adding on to how annoying it is to hunt down specific legendaries, the warp ride mini-game itself is aggravating to me. The orb to ring ratio feels extremely unbalanced; you get a whole bunch of rings early on, but then they virtually disappear not too far into the run. This wouldn’t be that big of a deal if it weren’t for the game’s tendency to group up a whole bunch of the electric orbs together in a manner that can make them hard to maneuver past. Combine this with the run speed and your focus being split on finding/avoiding wormholes, and it can become extremely difficult to keep up and avoid the orbs at times. And once you hit one, you often hit more in a chain reaction that brings your momentum to a screeching halt, eventually leading you into being sucked in an undesirable wormhole.

It doesn’t help that the stick controls feel really clunky (don’t even get me started on the gyro controls.)

 

[Kurona]

The minigame itself also appears to be designed to gradually make you lose control until you have absolutely no movement and you are dragged into whatever ring is next. To some extent, that makes sense - to avoid having one perpetually stuck in a neverending nightmare - but at the same time, this happens way too early. This is compounded by what Xen just said -- and it often feels like once you're far enough in, as soon as you hit that first orb you're likely to hit another and then it's all over. It's happened to me more times than I can count because I was looking for a Level 4 wormhole, but they're so unreasonably rare they didn't show up and I was guided into some Level 1 wormhole with a swellow. Thanks.

 

[WalkAway]

This partly relates to the wormholes since I hate soft resetting but why is nature Synchronizing not 100%?! Having to get double digit legendaries by wormhole riding, hoping you get one you brought the right Abras for, and then battling through awful catch rates only to get the wrong nature 1-3 times in a row is so horrible. I would also never shiny hunt legendaries like this because Synchronize failing on the shiny encounter would probably make me quit Pokemon for good lol. I just don't get why it's 50%. An average player could "lock" themselves into single nature capturing if they don't pay attention and play through the games leading with a Synch Mon, but if they don't know the mechanic they probably don't care what natures they are capturing anyway.

 

[Pikachu315111]

This partly relates to the wormholes since I hate soft resetting but why is nature Synchronizing not 100%?! Having to get double digit legendaries by wormhole riding, hoping you get one you brought the right Abras for, and then battling through awful catch rates only to get the wrong nature 1-3 times in a row is so horrible. I would also never shiny hunt legendaries like this because Synchronize failing on the shiny encounter would probably make me quit Pokemon for good lol. I just don't get why it's 50%. An average player could "lock" themselves into single nature capturing if they don't pay attention and play through the games leading with a Synch Mon, but if they don't know the mechanic they probably don't care what natures they are capturing anyway.

Or at the very least maybe just have an alert in battle go off that the Synchronized Pokemon is battling a Pokemon with the same Nature.

*Wild battle starts*
"Go, Ralts!"
*Ability Alert for Synchronize sounds*
"Ralts feels a kinship toward the opposing Pokemon"

They could keep it at 50% (maybe raise it to 75%... or they could make/add to an existing Hold Item an effect which makes Synchronize 100%) while also alerting players the Pokemon has the same Nature as their Synchronizer (players who don't want that would then know after battle to move it from the front of the party while those who do want to know can reset at the start if the alert doesn't show).

 

[Siggu]

Or at the very least maybe just have an alert in battle go off that the Synchronized Pokemon is battling a Pokemon with the same Nature.

*Wild battle starts*
"Go, Ralts!"
*Ability Alert for Synchronize sounds*
"Ralts feels a kinship toward the opposing Pokemon"

They could keep it at 50% (maybe raise it to 75%... or they could make/add to an existing Hold Item an effect which makes Synchronize 100%) while also alerting players the Pokemon has the same Nature as their Synchronizer (players who don't want that would then know after battle to move it from the front of the party while those who do want to know can reset at the start if the alert doesn't show).

For this matter, there's also all the other out-of-battle abilities, not just Synchronize. I don't remember a single place in the whole series in which the effects of any of them are mentioned, whether by a sign or NPC.

 

[Yunos senpai]

You know what annoys me? Dusknior. Here's the run down, In Gen 5, Before I Hated dusknior. A guy who I will not name. Battled me. He lead with a dusknior, I lead with fortress to get some stealth rocks and spikes up. Dusknior used willowisp and I used stealth rocks. Dusknior used shadow ball and it got a critical hit. It just barley killed. I was screwed. I got of 1 spikes the fortress died. Dusknior willowisp shadow balled my whole team. And I'm an otaku and while I was on Google images I wanted to see some bullshit. So I searched dusknoir and I found a Mrrai Nikki dusknoir image. I was pissed. Now I collect vacuums, Luigi would be proud.

 

[Detective Barricade]

You know what annoys me? Dusknior. Here's the run down, In Gen 5, Before I Hated dusknior. A guy who I will not name. Battled me. He lead with a dusknior, I lead with fortress to get some stealth rocks and spikes up. Dusknior used willowisp and I used stealth rocks. Dusknior used shadow ball and it got a critical hit. It just barley killed. I was screwed. I got of 1 spikes the fortress died. Dusknior willowisp shadow balled my whole team. And I'm an otaku and while I was on Google images I wanted to see some bullshit. So I searched dusknoir and I found a Mrrai Nikki dusknoir image. I was pissed. Now I collect vacuums, Luigi would be proud.

So... you hate Dusknoir because someone managed to outplay you with it one time?

 

[Yunos senpai]

So... you hate Dusknoir because someone managed to outplay you with it one time?

Look at the bottom of my post and add it to the rest of my post

 

[cityscapes]

ok now for some things about usum itself.

first off, the national dex. this still isn't a thing. now if there was no national dex in say oras, i'd still be mildly annoyed (it's still kinda nice to have all the entries, even if the dex data is just recycled from previous games) but there are two important things they added to the dex that all the other mons don't get: the cool dex sprite and all the entries for mega evolutions/altered forms. there are still a good number of megas that are completely missing, like beedrill, pidgeot, and all the starters. and those sprites look really cool! why don't all the mons get them?

next up: i honestly don't think they fixed the postgame from sun/moon at all.

platinum and hgss had the battle frontier, platinum had the battle zone and gym leader rematches, hgss had kanto and red, bw2 had treehollow/tower and the pwt, oras at least had a beach where you could change music while breeding and contests.

but in usum as i catch the last of the wormhole legends i find myself wondering what there really is to do after this. all there really seems to be left is breeding and the battle tree, and yeah the tree can be fun at times but i don't think it's going to keep this game entertaining for me after i can't get the next game because i don't have whatever new console it'll be on. stuff like totem sticker collecting is a joke. mantine surf was pretty fun initially but it's getting really old now.

the method of getting perfect mons is really tedious too. yeah hyper training is cool and stuff but do you think i like sitting there for half an hour killing blisseys instead of rematching some important person? breeding is terrible. imagine someone looked over your shoulder and saw you riding a tauros in a circle in some enclosed area with carnival music playing in the background. you can't even multitask with it either because you have to keep pressing two buttons at once. ev training is dumb because there aren't any hordes. remember that time when you could train any mon in like 10 minutes? well not anymore! poke pelago is pretty cool yeah but my main issue with it is that it's insanely hard to remember what stats you've already trained since you can't train the whole mon at once, not to mention you can't see evs anymore like you could in gen 6 (??????????) (edit: this is not true you can press y on the summary screen apparently)

they added important trainers and megas to the tree which is definitely a step forward, but with decently long streaks (like 80) being easily attainable compared to other gens, it just shatters all your motivation to play after you lose and five hours' worth of effort goes down the drain. i also really hate having to look up sets but that's not really exclusive to tree to be fair

that's all

 

[Kalu-chan]

A genuinely small thing that bothers me, since it's rather rarely encountered: Shinies looking barely different from the normal version.

Now, there are a bunch of shinies I just don't like. I don't care much for shiny Kyogre, or shiny Solgaleo, or shiny Mudkip-line. But at least those are notably different. Sure, I'm not going to use them, but they're still kinda interesting.

But then there are the shinies barely a shade lighter or darker than the normal color, and just... Why? It's so easy to mistake them for the normal version. Marshadow or Magearna are especially bad, but the chances for one are so slim anyway, you'll rarely see one (Idk about competitive play - I want my shinies just to look at them and think "Hey, those are cool!", and even the coolest legends aren't worth that for me). But Leafeon and Glaceon? Or Gengar (Mega-Gengar is much better, but you only see it in battle)? Tynamo or Happiny are even worse, though Tynamo at least has better evolutions. I'd take sunburnt Solgaleo or Heliolisk over "Wait, are you shiny or not?"-style 'mons any time.

 

[Detective Barricade]

A genuinely small thing that bothers me, since it's rather rarely encountered: Shinies looking barely different from the normal version.

Now, there are a bunch of shinies I just don't like. I don't care much for shiny Kyogre, or shiny Solgaleo, or shiny Mudkip-line. But at least those are notably different. Sure, I'm not going to use them, but they're still kinda interesting.

But then there are the shinies barely a shade lighter or darker than the normal color, and just... Why? It's so easy to mistake them for the normal version. Marshadow or Magearna are especially bad, but the chances for one are so slim anyway, you'll rarely see one (Idk about competitive play - I want my shinies just to look at them and think "Hey, those are cool!", and even the coolest legends aren't worth that for me). But Leafeon and Glaceon? Or Gengar (Mega-Gengar is much better, but you only see it in battle)? Tynamo or Happiny are even worse, though Tynamo at least has better evolutions. I'd take sunburnt Solgaleo or Heliolisk over "Wait, are you shiny or not?"-style 'mons any time.

To be fair, Shiny Marshadow's differences become clear when it attacks. (and any Shiny Marshadow offered currently are blatant hacks) Magearna has basically no differences in its normal and shiny colors, but its Original Forme (the red and gold one not yet available) has a very notable Shiny forme. (which is also unavailable)

 

[Kurona]

It's still early in the morning so this isn't exactly a full deconstruction or anything, but it's just hit me that a lot of USUM feels like a work in progress ROM hack. The lack of large changes from SM, the underdeveloped nature of the Ultra Recon Squad; the new areas being extremely small despite some of them implying a much larger landscape to explore. The latter part especially with Ultra Megalopolis; it just feels unfinished with how little there is to both it and the new characters.

 

[Sondero]

Just some small nitpicks about Pokemon Black/White here:
- C-Gear: Now that the servers for DS is down, there's far less point to the C-Gear, as it can only be used for local communication. This means you're forced to go through a tutorial for a really outdated feature you most likely don't care about each time you play the game after the first gym. The fact that it asks you whether you want to turn on the C-Gear or not every time you play is annoying as well. I think it'd be better if we could turn off the game asking about whether we want to turn it on every time we boot up the game.

- Poorly designed story sequences: Right after beating the Rival battle on Route 3 with Cheren, Team Plasma runs through with a stolen Pokemon. You're probably a bit damaged from the battle with Cheren, so you'll want to heal up before going after them. This means you can run back to the Pokemon center (or the healing lady in the day-care) to heal up. The devs would expect you to run right after Cheren, but I rather just run back to heal, which completely breaks the tension. I think it'd flow a lot better here if Bianca (or Cheren) healed you up after the rival battle in this scenario.

These are just nit-picks of course, I only notice these flaws because I love the game and have beaten it more times than I can count.

 

[Kurona]

I wonder how many of these BW likes, dislikes and movepool oddities are coming out because of Chuggaa's playthrough, ehehe.

Talking of which, he reminded me of something in last night's part of his LP: what is the point in Moor of Icirrus? There's no significant item there to pick up, no new Pokémon, no lore relevance - well, they TRY to say it's part of the Muskedeer and Keldeo story, but it's never developed in any meaningful capacity and it doesn't add anything to that backstory - no characters, you're not even required to go there as part of the story (like how there's not a lot of reason to Pinwheel Forest's large left portion aside from forcing you to go there for the Team Plasma story), it's just... An Area. It could very easily have just been part of Route 8 rather than something tucked away; it makes it feel like you're expecting to find something there to be rewarded for your exploration. It's not even something BW2 tried to expand on; the most they did was put a Dawn Stone and the Poison Jab TM here.

VERY similar to this is the Challenger's Cave in the aftergame, but at least there you get some exclusive wild Pokémon; including the popular Riolu. I still feel it's a pointless area - and apparently Game Freak agreed since they didn't keep it in BW2 - but it's still more than the Moor of friggin' Icirrus. Hell, this one's apparently part of the Muskedeer/Keldeo lore too! What's with them having so many pointless areas???

 

[Sondero]

I wonder how many of these BW likes, dislikes and movepool oddities are coming out because of Chuggaa's playthrough, ehehe.

I was reminded of the flaws because I started replaying it recently, but Chuggaa's LP did influence my decision to do that.

 

[Oriolous]

The NPCs who walk from in front of the Pokemon center to the circle with the Pink Nectar in the Royal Avenue. They mess up my rhythm when I'm hatching my eggs and they take too long to automatically turn around and go reverse their path. UGH

 

[Suspicious Derivative]

There is one thing in Gen 7 I really don't like. It just took me a while to realize how much I dislike it. This is something that existed in S/M but it wasn't until I played Ultra Moon that I realized how bad it was. Chances are it has been talked about before in this thread. Or rather, I am quite sure it was talked about back when S/M were new. But I wanted to say something about it as well.

I'm talking about the SOS mechanics. I don't like them at all. I'm just so annoyed by them that I find it hard to tolerate their existence. I'd say they are one of my four biggest annoyances in Gen 7, the others being the lack of training spots (S/M), the Rotom Dex's endless babbling (US/UM) and the lack of a National Dex within the games.

What makes the SOS mechanics so annoying? Many things. To start with, they are highly based on luck and unreliable. For instance, the wild Pokemon can call for an ally when you don't want it to. This is annoying if you are trying to catch a wild Pokemon as this means you need to defeat one of them first since you can't throw balls when there are two opponents on the field. I remember once in S/M when I was trying to catch a Magby. Before I could catch it, I had to defeat around 15 ally Magby that it called up before it finally failed to call one which allowed me to catch it. It is also annoying when you want the wild Pokemon to call for an ally... and it doesn't. Or it does, but it fails. Or, if you are looking for a Pokemon that is exclusive to SOS calls and it takes forever for it to appear. Getting the SOS exclusive Pokemon is something I find extremely annoying and I am really not looking forward to having to do it one more time. SOS chaining also requires a high level of concentration on what you are currently doing so that you don't accidentally do something stupid you aren't supposed to. I don't like having to think all too much while just looking for a specific wild Pokemon so this annoys me a bit.

I don't know what it is like to try to obtain shinies, HAs or Pokemon with multiple flawless IVs through SOS chains and I surely don't want to know. Thankfully I don't need to do any of this either since I'm not interested in shinies, HAs can be traded for or sent over from previous generations (depending on the Pokemon), and flawless IVs can be obtained through breeding. Previous generations had things like Friend Safari, Hordes, DexNav, Hidden Grottoes and Dream World which gave you access to one or multiple of these things, and I definitely prefer these things over the SOS mechanics.

In Gen 6 and 7, I found it annoying how they removed several good and useful features from the previous generation, or changed some for the worse. But I would definitely not mind if Gen 8 removes the SOS mechanics permanently and replaces them with something better.
I know that they changed the SOS mechanics a bit in US/UM so that any regular Pokemon can only ever call for one ally unless you use an Adrenaline Orb, but one is still one too many for me. It has annoyed me too many times throughout the game. It should have been so that they can't call for SOS allies at all without an Adrenaline Orb. Maybe that would have been a bit less realistic from a game world perspective, but a lot better from a gameplay perspective.

Is there anything positive to say about the SOS mechanics? Yes. I don't mind the Totem Pokemon calling for allies, they are meant to be challenging and giving them allies in battle helps with that. Also, SOS chaining Chansey at Poni Plains is a good training spot, I'll give them that. In fact, combining that with the Rotom Exp. Power and the existence of the Gym has made it quite a bit easier to train in US/UM compared to S/M, which I really appreciate. They are still quite far below the epic levels of Gen 5/6 though.

I need to rant about one other thing as well. I think the annoyances with the Rotom Dex in US/UM has been talked about enough in this thread, but I thought about one thing that I wanted to say about it too. When Rotom is talking, it's mouth is constantly moving and the text is also scrolling at the lower screen. I find this annoying as it seems to draw my attention from the upper 3DS screen. When something is constantly moving and I am focusing on something else, it seems like my eyes tries to get focused on what is moving and I lose focus on whatever I am currently trying to focus on. Don't know if anyone feels the same way, but I think that's how it is for me at least.

I guess I have a similar annoyance with the following Pokemon in HG/SS and how they are always constantly moving instead of standing still even when the trainer is standing still. Guess that's another of the many things I dislike about the following Pokemon in HG/SS, it steals my attention from whatever else I am trying to focus on. In comparison, I didn't have a problem with Pikachu in Yellow or following Pokemon in Amity Square in D/P/P because they at least stood still when the trainer did.

I read some recent posts here about the annoyances with traveling through Ultra Space and entering the wormholes to find legendaries there. After trying it myself for a bit as I am currently trying to catch the Ultra Beasts, I completely agree with these posts. I don't have much more to add to what others have already said. Just some small things. I dislike how the corridor you are riding through has transparent walls which makes it hard to see where it ends and where it continues. I guess you get better at this mini-game the more you play it but it still feels very luck-based since the placement of the obstacles, speed boosters and wormholes (as well as their level to an extent) are decided randomly every time you enter. I like catching legendaries in the games but this whole thing makes me not look forward to doing it in US/UM quite as much as I would have liked to.

With all of this said... I like US/UM and I like S/M too but it feels like they suffer from quite a few poor design and gameplay choices that drag down the overall experience a bit. Which is a shame since these games could have been so much better if it weren't for these things.

On another topic that was discussed recently, I like the Moor of Icirrus and the Challenger's Cave in Gen 5. They might not have any real purpose but at least they have wild Pokemon, items and even trainers, which is something I never say no to. That alone makes them fun to explore for me. I think Pokemon needs more optional areas like these and others, not every place in the games needs to have some sort of specific purpose in order to exist.

 

[Worldie]

Just as a note, in USUM they at least alleviated the SoS problem a bit, as the wild pokes will not call more than 1 help without usage of Adrenaline Orbs.

It still sucks if you are trying to go for HAs, SOS only mons or shinys, but at least for normal captures that's gone.

 

[Detective Barricade]

Just as a note, in USUM they at least alleviated the SoS problem a bit, as the wild pokes will not call more than 1 help without usage of Adrenaline Orbs.

It still sucks if you are trying to go for HAs, SOS only mons or shinys, but at least for normal captures that's gone.

Or HA SOS Pokemon. Especially if a specific weather is required.

 

[Techkid040]

The Fairy type. In general. I hate it. That's why I love Vileplume. (Breloom is still my favorite though)

 

[Tenebricite]

There are always these overconfident "trainers" blocking public cave paths and roads. For example, those "dancers" from bw2 if anyone remembers them. That was slightly creepy.

How many pokemon's cries were changed, in my opinion, to be worse when gen 6 was released.

How attacking a fainted pokemon was changed to say "...but it failed" rather than "...but there was no target"


MOD EDIT: Triple posts merged.

 

[Pikachu315111]

How attacking a fainted pokemon was changed to say "...but it failed" rather than "...but there was no target"

Actually what's annoying is your Pokemon doesn't check with you if you want to change target.

"Hey, master, my target fainted, should I attack the other opponent instead?"
"Yeah, go right ahead"
OR
"Hold on, use this move instead"

 

[Tenebricite]

Actually what's annoying is your Pokemon doesn't check with you if you want to change target.

"Hey, master, my target fainted, should I attack the other opponent instead?"
"Yeah, go right ahead"
OR
"Hold on, use this move instead"

this and hurting themselves in confusion, although I suppose that's a bit more understandable

 

[Pikachu315111]

this and hurting themselves in confusion, all though I suppose that's a bit more understandable

Well the Pokemon being confused (or asleep) is more on the trainer and not the Pokemon. The Pokemon is the one afflicted, it doesn't know what's going on. The trainer is the one who should be shouting out to their Pokemon to knock them out of it (something they have in the Colosseum games).

Actually, the Pokemon battling system is missing a lot of "possible" actions:

• Redirecting a Pokemon's attack if its target fainted.
• Calling out to be Confused/Sleeping Pokemon to snap them out of it/wake them up.
• Ordering your Pokemon not to do anything (maybe combine it with the general "Call" command like they did in Colosseum)
• Have a Pokemon drop their held item or give it to an ally.
• In a Double or Triple Battle have Pokemon able to switch positions.

 

[Tenebricite]

Well the Pokemon being confused (or asleep) is more on the trainer and not the Pokemon. The Pokemon is the one afflicted, it doesn't know what's going on. The trainer is the one who should be shouting out to their Pokemon to knock them out of it (something they have in the Colosseum games).

Actually, the Pokemon battling system is missing a lot of "possible" actions:

• Redirecting a Pokemon's attack if its target fainted.
• Calling out to be Confused/Sleeping Pokemon to snap them out of it/wake them up.
• Ordering your Pokemon not to do anything (maybe combine it with the general "Call" command like they did in Colosseum)
• Have a Pokemon drop their held item or give it to an ally.
• In a Double or Triple Battle have Pokemon able to switch positions.

Yeah, the only reason I said confusion was a bit more reasonable is that since there's no "snap out of it, my pokemon" command it would be somewhat understandable for a pokemon to hurt itself on the surrounding terrain or whatever when trying to attack.