Actually, speaking of expendable moves… a little thing that annoys me is that the TM list in SV doesn’t max out at a number that’s divisible by three, so when looking through the TM Machine list, TM229 Upper Hand is just… sitting by itself, overflowing the list by one. Coulda’ dropped Sand Tomb or Uproar or something and had a nice, even list, but no…
-
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
Going back to Terapagos, I find it mildly annoying that the source of the type-changing mechanic whose ability's flavor text says its shell contains the power of every type cannot actually learn a move of every type: it has no flying or ghost moves at all, including status moves. For Poison it only gets Toxic.
At minimum it really should have gotten Fly, Shadow Ball & Sludge Bomb, to make no mention of other moves it could definitely pull off (Hurricane comes to mind)
Shadow Ball & Sludge Bomb in particular just feels like a glaring oversight, it gets all the other "major" 80-90 BP special moves
It gets Bug Buzz!
Hmm, I wonder what the Pokedex categories for the elemental monkeys are?
Grass Monkey Pokemon
Thorn Monkey Pokemon
okay so the base form is just "[type] monkey" and the evolved form is "[cooler word related to type] monkey" seems pretty straightforward
High Temp Pokemon
Ember Pokemon
Spray Pokemon
Geyser Pokemon
why
Grass Monkey PokemonThorn Monkey Pokemonokay so the base form is just "[type] monkey" and the evolved form is "[cooler word related to type] monkey" seems pretty straightforward
High Temp PokemonEmber PokemonSpray PokemonGeyser Pokemonwhy
Person at GF designing the categories obviously knew how awful the mons were and snuck in this easter egg for us.Hmm, I wonder what the Pokedex categories for the elemental monkeys are?
okay so the base form is just "[type] monkey" and the evolved form is "[cooler word related to type] monkey" seems pretty straightforward
why
So for the Paradox Beast and Sword trios, there's the known disconnect where Walking Wake and Iron Leaves are Raid exclusives even after the DLC, but something else that annoys me is that they also have different catch rates (5) from their trio mates (10), which makes me think it's intentional and they might be kept separate in some form in future appearances.
Speaking of the Paradox trios, does it irk anyone else that the new Paradoxes are standing in the base Area Zero instead of the new cavern? With how they made this brand new section of Area Zero for Terapagos, you’d assume they’d carve out post-turtle sub areas and have you explore them for these new Pokémon; it would naturally explain why you didn’t see them before. Instead, they’re just- randomly standing around and weren’t available before because idk. Compared to the obvious route of making you scour the brand new, mysterious Depths, this honestly makes them feel less special.
It’s an especially odd decision since, as is, there’s not really much reason to go back to that area after you’ve caught Terapagos. It’s nice having a place where Carbink spawns regularly for shiny hunting, but that’s it in terms of notable attractions as far as I’ve aware.You’d expect they’d actually want to use this new area if they were going to the effort of adding it. It certainly doesn’t help the issue of how Terapagos largely feels like an afterthought to the story.
It’s an especially odd decision since, as is, there’s not really much reason to go back to that area after you’ve caught Terapagos. It’s nice having a place where Carbink spawns regularly for shiny hunting, but that’s it in terms of notable attractions as far as I’ve aware.You’d expect they’d actually want to use this new area if they were going to the effort of adding it. It certainly doesn’t help the issue of how Terapagos largely feels like an afterthought to the story.
yeah it's really bizarre, and its not like those areas dont have good spots. Gives you an excuse to do the platforming, uh, challenges again. Give a little more meaning to the big crystal tree too
Also kind of weird beyond the "boss" encounters I think there's only Carbink and Glimmora down there? I can't recall seeing another Garganacl, Garchomp(/gible/gabite) down there and there's no paradoxes either.
Honestly that whole sidequest is bizarre anyway. After how involved Perrin's quest in Teal Mask was, the fact this one is so perfunctory stands out a lot.
Castersvarog
formerly Maronmario
There was a brief discussion on the availability of Mons in Gen 4 in the unpopular opinions thread, and I want to bring up an old comment I made on this like a year ago that would fit better here. And that’s just how insanely front loaded the most common choices of Mons were and how all of the alternative options are either available so much later it’s not worth using in a lot of cases or are just not that good
So yeah it’s no surprise Sinnoh teams get memes into being so similar between people’s playthrough, it’s rare to find a Pokémon that can compare to what came before and that’s even if you can get them. Which is a shame because so many of these Mons are great.
Turtwig, Cherubi, Leafeon, Tropius, Tangela, Carnivine, Snover.
Turtwig is a starter so I can't really count it, Cherubi isn't all that good, and Snover is available super late and faints to everything because of its typing, and Carnivine just doesn't have anything going for it.
Meanwhile Leafeon, Tropius and Tangela are all Platinum exclusive, and the latter two are great marsh only. Leafeon is good, but it doesn't get Leaf blade until almost level 80, Tangrowth meanwhile is an excellent physical wall that can go for either physical or special attacks and do great in either end. Tropius just isn't good unfortunately, an actual shame.
Turtwig is a starter so I can't really count it, Cherubi isn't all that good, and Snover is available super late and faints to everything because of its typing, and Carnivine just doesn't have anything going for it.
Meanwhile Leafeon, Tropius and Tangela are all Platinum exclusive, and the latter two are great marsh only. Leafeon is good, but it doesn't get Leaf blade until almost level 80, Tangrowth meanwhile is an excellent physical wall that can go for either physical or special attacks and do great in either end. Tropius just isn't good unfortunately, an actual shame.
Zubat, Drifloon, Murkrow, Togepi, Chatot, Tropius, Hoothoot, Swablu, Wingull, Mantyke
Zubat is probably the best alternate choice due to its availability, but it struggles until it gets wing attack, Drifloon has a good type but struggles when it comes to moves and availability, heck when BDSP was released it wasn't available until almost a week later. Murkrow is great, but is Diamond exclusive and needs a rare dusk stone, but outside of that it's got a great physical movepool and type. Togepi is great when it's fully evolved, but it's really bad until then and Serene Grace is way better then Hustle, but is only usable in Platinum. Tropius is still bad, Hoothoot is just bad, Swablu is alright but it's more of a wall and Garchomp is better as a dragon type, Wingull doesn't have Drizzle until BDSP and Mantyke is available when you can get to Sunnyshore giving it awful availability.
Zubat is probably the best alternate choice due to its availability, but it struggles until it gets wing attack, Drifloon has a good type but struggles when it comes to moves and availability, heck when BDSP was released it wasn't available until almost a week later. Murkrow is great, but is Diamond exclusive and needs a rare dusk stone, but outside of that it's got a great physical movepool and type. Togepi is great when it's fully evolved, but it's really bad until then and Serene Grace is way better then Hustle, but is only usable in Platinum. Tropius is still bad, Hoothoot is just bad, Swablu is alright but it's more of a wall and Garchomp is better as a dragon type, Wingull doesn't have Drizzle until BDSP and Mantyke is available when you can get to Sunnyshore giving it awful availability.
Elekid, Rotom, Jolteon, Pichu, Magnemite, Electibuzz
Rotom is available easily in the Old Chateau but has only ok stats unless you can get it's other forms somehow in Platinum, Jolteon is again Platinum exclusive, but has good stats, Pichu line is what it always has been, pretty good no matter what, Magnemite is only available after getting Surf in Platinum, but has great stats, and can be fully evolved within two levels of getting it, but gets no moves other then electric/steel and signal beam.Elekid/Electabuzz is odd, you can get Elekid in DP via having a FR cartridge in the gba slot giving it great availability if you have it, Electabuzz is only available after defeating Cyrus in Platinum and Electavire is only available via trading.
Rotom is available easily in the Old Chateau but has only ok stats unless you can get it's other forms somehow in Platinum, Jolteon is again Platinum exclusive, but has good stats, Pichu line is what it always has been, pretty good no matter what, Magnemite is only available after getting Surf in Platinum, but has great stats, and can be fully evolved within two levels of getting it, but gets no moves other then electric/steel and signal beam.
Piplup, Magikarp, Shellos, Vaporeon, Barboach, Wooper, Finneon, Tentacool, Psyduck, Azurill, Feebas, Remoraid, Mantyke
Piplup is a starter, but a great choice for one, Magikarp is Magikarp, but Gyarados is amazing in every way possible except being a flying type. Shellos is excellent with its stats, moves and types easily the best alternate choice for a water type.
Vaporeon is Platinum exclusive, but it’s good at being a tank. But Barboach, Wooper, Psyduck and Finneon aren't worth going for for alot of people, they just don't have good stats and are only available via surfing or the great marsh. Finneon especially is awful. Tentacool is pretty good, Poison would still suck as an offensive type at this time but Black sludge is now available. Azurill is only available in the great marsh in DP and doesn't have the fairy type until BDSP. Feebas is a pain to find, needs the super rod only in DP/BDSP which is postgame, available late as well, and a pain to evolve, but it's great if you can get one.
Remoraid and Mantyke are only available after defeating Cyrus.
Piplup is a starter, but a great choice for one, Magikarp is Magikarp, but Gyarados is amazing in every way possible except being a flying type. Shellos is excellent with its stats, moves and types easily the best alternate choice for a water type.
Vaporeon is Platinum exclusive, but it’s good at being a tank. But Barboach, Wooper, Psyduck and Finneon aren't worth going for for alot of people, they just don't have good stats and are only available via surfing or the great marsh. Finneon especially is awful. Tentacool is pretty good, Poison would still suck as an offensive type at this time but Black sludge is now available. Azurill is only available in the great marsh in DP and doesn't have the fairy type until BDSP. Feebas is a pain to find, needs the super rod only in DP/BDSP which is postgame, available late as well, and a pain to evolve, but it's great if you can get one.
Remoraid and Mantyke are only available after defeating Cyrus.
Chimchar, Flareon, Houndour, Magmar
Chimchar is the best fire type in DP, with Ponyta being the next best option in DP but it's stuck with Flame wheel until it gets Flare Blitz, and nothing else in gen 4.
Flareon is Platinum exclusive and not that good of a mon to begin with, with no Flare Blitz until BDSP, Houndour is great with it's stats and moves and available around Veilstone, but is Platinum exclusive. Magmar can evolve into the excellent Magmorter who can learn so many different types and has great stats, but only available after getting surf and needs to trade.And the Leafgreen slot won’t help you either because it’ll only appear in stark mountain and the route outside.
Chimchar is the best fire type in DP, with Ponyta being the next best option in DP but it's stuck with Flame wheel until it gets Flare Blitz, and nothing else in gen 4.
Flareon is Platinum exclusive and not that good of a mon to begin with, with no Flare Blitz until BDSP, Houndour is great with it's stats and moves and available around Veilstone, but is Platinum exclusive. Magmar can evolve into the excellent Magmorter who can learn so many different types and has great stats, but only available after getting surf and needs to trade.
Bro it's Garchomp. The next best ground types are Geodude, Onix, Gligar, Rhyhorn, Hippopatos, and Swinub and that's not counting the previously mentioned part ground type mons.
Geodude, Onix and Rhyhorn are dead to Water, Grass and special attacks and have to trade to fully evolve, but Steelix can be found in the wild. Gligar is a Platinum exclusive, or needs Emerald in the GBA slot, but can't evolve until postgame in DP/BDSP anyway, Hippopatos brings constant sandstorms which is annoying, but it does have great defensive stats. Swinub is probably the best alternate choice, with great stats, abilities and moves, but is only available in Platinum and only available before the 7th gym unlike Gible which is available right after the 2nd gym in Pt or 6th gym in DP.
And while I’m talking about Gible, your next Dragon type choices are either the mascot legendaries or Altaria in Platinum, literally nothing else until postgame
Geodude, Onix and Rhyhorn are dead to Water, Grass and special attacks and have to trade to fully evolve, but Steelix can be found in the wild. Gligar is a Platinum exclusive,
And while I’m talking about Gible, your next Dragon type choices are either the mascot legendaries or Altaria in Platinum, literally nothing else until postgame
So yeah it’s no surprise Sinnoh teams get memes into being so similar between people’s playthrough, it’s rare to find a Pokémon that can compare to what came before and that’s even if you can get them. Which is a shame because so many of these Mons are great.
Last edited:
The part I find especially weird is how despite only previewing one member of each trio (which for the sake of names I'll use the Scarlet ones since that was my version) in trailers, both are treated with relatively similar amounts of pizazz or lack thereof for the Area Zero encounter, that being barely-visible in Perrin's photos and then just sort of hanging around on the Overworld. Putting aside that we knew there'd be a full trio, I was expecting that choice to mean there'd be a sequence, like you'd find Raging Bolt and showing it to Perrin would prompt her to give you a clue on where to find Gouging Fire, to get a "wait there's another one?" feeling out of the hunt. Could have had one on the Overworld and one actually in Area Zero (how did Perrin or whoever get those pictures since the Area's off-limits?) to even give a trifecta of encounters, and Snacksworth already gives an incentive to look around Paldea. Imagine going in search of Ho-Oh or Entei and running into Gouging Fire.
The Area Zero depths are especially weird because there's that one optional Crystal room from the Stellar Garchomp, which feels like where they'd hide one of them. It's not even like the room's a good red herring considering I completely missed any sign of the Mon "guarding" it my first time through. As cool as I think the Depths and new Paradoxes are themselves, their integration and use by the DLC is probably its most slap-dash element.
Additional note to your musings, the dongle Pokémon aren't available until the post-game, a GBA cart doesn't do anything before beating the league.
Castersvarog
formerly Maronmario
Til that was a thing, man that really changes a lot of possible options.
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
You should check out my recent Pearl run! Was intensely liberating to break open DP Sinnoh's confining Pokedex and use some out-of-the-box options.
I have some mixed feelings with Scarlet and Violet's Battle Stadium's music selection only being available to customize when its matchmaking. It would be nice if I had a little more than five seconds to quickly zero in on the track I might be interested in (or just thinking over what I might wanna play) before I immediately get yeeted into the bring 3/4 selection screen, assuming if I even get a chance to change songs period.
Why can gasly a creature with no are learn punch moves but Pokemon with huge arms can’t this can also be said for whooper and can we talk about that one box in the Gen 2 games who trades you a haunted with a fucking everstone
SV actually took Ice Punch away from Wooper. Gastly learned them via egg so Gengar would have a way to access them in the various games where they aren't teachable. Mindy is from gen 4 not gen 2.
I think all the games with music customization work the same way and it's really bizarre decision, it should be something you're able to set on the Battle Stadium screen if not just something in the actual options menu.
Especially when there's so many songs now. SV has 53 if you have the DLC, 54 if you play the epilogue!
By adventuring through it to get to Terapagos on the first pass, you are by definition using the space.
Could they have done more with it? Sure, but Pokémon games have never been especially concerned with giving the player a reason to go back to a setpiece area, so I don’t think it’s odd that they designed this sub-layer of Area Zero just for the purpose of the DLC’s story climax.
N’s Castle becomes completely inaccessible after the main story of Black & White. You don’t really have a reason to return to the Cave of Origin a second time in any of the Hoenn games. 90% of the Distortion World in Platinum can’t be revisited, and the part that can is just there for you to pick up the Griseous Orb.
Sometimes they do make more efficient use of spaces like these, but it’s really kind of a toss-up as to whether they will or not.
I've discovered a glitch in Pokemon Emerald and boy is it annoying.
The guy just forgets to walk forward to indicate there's an egg for me to pick up.
The guy just forgets to walk forward to indicate there's an egg for me to pick up.
That happens if the egg generates while he's onscreen. If you move him offscreen he'll move to the correct position. He's not coded to be able to actually move while on screen.
You know, it gets me how Pokemon didn't capitalize on none battling. The aesthetic design of mons already is enough for merch
Imagine the game letting us be a researcher, breeder, or construction and transport roles as opposed to just battling and MAYBE beauty contests that still are rooted to battling
The anime has literally shown more varied use of mons and how they integrate with human lives
Now one can argue spinoff games like Pokemon Snap technically cover the research aspect, though that's mostly limited on rails
Imagine the game letting us be a researcher, breeder, or construction and transport roles as opposed to just battling and MAYBE beauty contests that still are rooted to battling
The anime has literally shown more varied use of mons and how they integrate with human lives
Now one can argue spinoff games like Pokemon Snap technically cover the research aspect, though that's mostly limited on rails
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
I blow hot and cold on the notion of mythical Pokemon being directly given to the player rather than captured by them - sometimes certain species suit having a different OT and ID number, like Genesect having "Plasma" as its OT or Marshadow having "Mt. Tensei" as its OT as a nod to that one movie and as a way of representing a location that doesn't exist in the games.*
If I am forced to have a certain Pokemon under a fixed OT though, the least I ask is that it be a cool name and not something lame like OCT2014 or MYTHICAL22. Even if it's something relatively simple like "JUNGLE" for Zarude or something a bit more abstract, like "ALAMOS" for that one Darkrai. Even regular names are better than nothing (ex: Diancie being given out with the OT "Hope", Hoopa being given out with the OTs "Manesh", "Harry", and Alexander", and Volcanion being given out with the OT "Helen"**).
It just makes these already low-effort distributions feel even more uninspired when the OT is so blandly descriptive; the only legal way to have a shiny Zygarde in Gen VII was to have one with the extremely crap OT "2018 Legends", as opposed to Xerneas/Yveltal's very-slightly-more-imaginative "XY&Z". I know it ties together a bunch of unrelated Pokemon released under the same banner but come on GF, be a bit more interesting about it. It's not that hard. Some Pokemon distributed to commemorate the 10th anniversary had the OT 10ANNIV (or "10 ANIV") which, while also not terribly inventive, I'm rather fond of because it's a slightly playful way of working with the shorter character limit in earlier gens and matches the ID number 00010 some of them had.
*There's actually a fun extra dimension to this I hadn't really considered until a while ago: because most of the catchable mythicals (Deoxys, Celebi, Mew, Shaymin, Darkrai et al) are so rarely distributed in shiny form, nine times out of ten a shiny one is self-caught. Adds an extra incentive to having the option to catch these species yourself, which is something I appreciate
**are the latter two names references to something? I haven't seen those movies
If I am forced to have a certain Pokemon under a fixed OT though, the least I ask is that it be a cool name and not something lame like OCT2014 or MYTHICAL22. Even if it's something relatively simple like "JUNGLE" for Zarude or something a bit more abstract, like "ALAMOS" for that one Darkrai. Even regular names are better than nothing (ex: Diancie being given out with the OT "Hope", Hoopa being given out with the OTs "Manesh", "Harry", and Alexander", and Volcanion being given out with the OT "Helen"**).
It just makes these already low-effort distributions feel even more uninspired when the OT is so blandly descriptive; the only legal way to have a shiny Zygarde in Gen VII was to have one with the extremely crap OT "2018 Legends", as opposed to Xerneas/Yveltal's very-slightly-more-imaginative "XY&Z". I know it ties together a bunch of unrelated Pokemon released under the same banner but come on GF, be a bit more interesting about it. It's not that hard. Some Pokemon distributed to commemorate the 10th anniversary had the OT 10ANNIV (or "10 ANIV") which, while also not terribly inventive, I'm rather fond of because it's a slightly playful way of working with the shorter character limit in earlier gens and matches the ID number 00010 some of them had.
*There's actually a fun extra dimension to this I hadn't really considered until a while ago: because most of the catchable mythicals (Deoxys, Celebi, Mew, Shaymin, Darkrai et al) are so rarely distributed in shiny form, nine times out of ten a shiny one is self-caught. Adds an extra incentive to having the option to catch these species yourself, which is something I appreciate
**are the latter two names references to something? I haven't seen those movies