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Thoughts on evolution via trade?

2,910
Posts
13
Years
Hey guys. This time, I want to ask few simple questions about evolution via trading.

Do you like this idea in every Pokemon game?

Do you guys have or had Pokemon that evolve via trading (those with held specific items too)?

If yes, what Pokemon do you use frequently? More than 1 in your team maybe?

I just wonder what Pokemon of that kind is the most common choice by PC users.

Personally I don't like that idea at all, but again having awesome Pokemon in my team just force me to do it.
On LG I had Haunter and I was building nice team for later gameplay in Emerald, so I traded him and evolved into Gengar, turned out not so bad. I like Gengar a lot, it's my favorite Ghost type.
 

.:batto:.

Pokébreeder
266
Posts
15
Years
Gengar is one of the best ghost pokemon out.
i use him all the time. hes movepool is hipnosis, Shadow claw, Shadow ball & dream eater.
Hes more or less unstoppable. haha.

When i used to play yellow it would make me depressed that i couldnt get golem or alakazam. but now days. there old news at the back of Box 3!
haha. i think its a good part of the game. (link trade evo's)
 

Sydian

fake your death.
33,379
Posts
16
Years
Oh, I thought this was gonna be a "why do you think Pokemon evolve through trade?" thing haha. But yeah this is fine. If you, or anyone else for that matter, do want to make a thread about that, Pokemon General is where it'd go. I think that'd be an interesting topic actually.

I digress! There are some great Pokemon you can get from trade evolution, such as Slowking, Gengar, Accelgor, Alakazam, Kingdra...maan. Good stuff. I don't mind the simple trade evolutions much, like the originals from gen I (Machamp, Golem, etc) but when items got incorporated, it got a little more annoying and tedious and it makes me not wanna do it. Plus you gotta get your hands on that item, and some of them are in post-game or something annoying, and that kind of sucks if you can't wifi trade or don't have another game with that item that you can borrow.

As for Pokemon I've used that evolve through trade, I've probably used them all at some point in my Pokemon playing career haha. As far as recent playthroughs go, I just used a Steelix in White 2 and I'm using a Slowking in SoulSilver, which I just evolved last night actually. I've enjoyed all the trade evolution Pokemon I've used as far as I remember. The one I probably liked least was Golem, but I'm not generally a huge fan of Rock types anyway haha. I don't use them very often though. It depends on whether or not I want to bother with it or not. I'm more receptive to it if it's in gen IV or above, but gen III I'm a bit more hesitant because I hate having to get out the GBAs and the link cable. I really wish I could use trade evolutions in gen I and II. I don't have a cable to link my GameBoy and GBC though, so that won't happen. Maybe I'll get one in the future and I can enjoy trade evolution bbys in Crystal. <3

This post came out waaaay longer than I thought it would! Haha.
 
2,910
Posts
13
Years
I'm glad you have very wide opinion about that Sydian. I didn't make this thread to complain about that type of evo or questioning it, as you mentioned.

I must add that all that trouble getting Kingdra which has this magic type combination is really worth. Alakazam has very big Sp.Atk, mixed with Calm Mind makes miracles in battles too!

More opinions like that!
 
117
Posts
10
Years
  • Seen Aug 14, 2013
I just got back into Pokemon as some may know, so not the best person to talk to about strategy at the moment, but I plan on building a team around an Escavalier to which you must trade to obtain one. I don't like the idea of using a Scizor as it sounds abused, so will be training an Escavalier and feel players won't expect it. As well, after looking at prior Pokemon champions, one of them (possibly 2011 senior group) used an Escavalier so that's part of the inspiration.

I personally like the idea of trading to obtain evolutions and certain Pokemon, that's what Pokemon is all about.
 

Skalla

Drama Queen
28
Posts
10
Years
From a marketing standpoint, its pure genius. If you wanna complete the Pokedex and become a Pokemon Master you have to have 2 systems, 2 games to be able to evolve your Pokemon.

For the convenience of the player however, its crap. When my Pokemon fandom was at its peak around GEN 4 I was fortunate enough to have have siblings who also happened to have their own DS systems. Luckily I could trade back and forth to evolve my Pokemon. But with Gen 6 on the 3DS rolling around I won't be so lucky. My siblings have grown out of games since then and I m the only person I know with a 3DS. So Ill either have to get some online friends or use backend means.
 

Sydian

fake your death.
33,379
Posts
16
Years
From a marketing standpoint, its pure genius. If you wanna complete the Pokedex and become a Pokemon Master you have to have 2 systems, 2 games to be able to evolve your Pokemon.

And if you can't have that, you're forced to go into the outside world and make friends.
 
284
Posts
10
Years
I didn't really mind because i always had friends with games so it wasn't a hassle. It was a pretty good way to make money for them too. So many people would have doubled the amount of games they bought just to complete the 'dex.
 

PiemanFiddy

Dark-Type Gym Leader
194
Posts
11
Years
Hey guys. This time, I want to ask few simple questions about evolution via trading.

Do you like this idea in every Pokemon game?

Do you guys have or had Pokemon that evolve via trading (those with held specific items too)?

If yes, what Pokemon do you use frequently? More than 1 in your team maybe?

I just wonder what Pokemon of that kind is the most common choice by PC users.

Personally I don't like that idea at all, but again having awesome Pokemon in my team just force me to do it.
On LG I had Haunter and I was building nice team for later gameplay in Emerald, so I traded him and evolved into Gengar, turned out not so bad. I like Gengar a lot, it's my favorite Ghost type.

1. No, I hate it. It requires you to put your trust into someone that you MAY or may NOT know. I once tried to trade-evolve my shiny Machoke to my friend who I knew for 2 years, and he stole it from me. We don't talk anymore.

2. I used to. Now I rely on evolutions that don't require anything but held items or stones.

3. Poliwrath.


In X and Y, nintendo needs to completely remove the trade evolution system, or at least swap it out with something far more trustworthy. No, I'm not talking about the GTS, because that's just full of dumb hacked pokemon, stupid nicknames, and level 100s.
 
13
Posts
10
Years
I hate it!!!! Nothing makes me more mad then when I find out a pokemon can only be evolved by trading!! What is the point of it? It and the Unova Pokemon designs are the two dumbest things that nintendo has ever done!
 

PlatinumDude

Nyeh?
12,964
Posts
13
Years
While I believe that GameFreak put in trade evolutions to promote the trade function of both games, it's downright frustrating for some people who don't have anyone else to trade with.
 
8,571
Posts
14
Years
I completely understand the reasoning behind why they included trade-only evolutions in the first place, because it either A) promoted interacting with others to complete the game (whether that be friends, siblings, etc.), or B) require you to buy both versions in order to complete your Pokedex.

So with that being said, I've both loved and hated the idea of this. The reason that I hated it was I never managed to find anyone with a trade cable or get one myself until a lot of people I knew had stopped playing, and when I finally did have someone to trade with, he had the same versions that I did (Gold and FireRed). Now that we've got features like the GTS and Wi-Fi trading, though, it makes completing your Pokedex that much easier, plus it allows you to talk to new people along the way, that you may have never interacted with otherwise.

As for the Pokemon that I've used that evolve via trade, Steelix, Gengar, Alakazam and Scizor have all been main members of my teams at one point or another. Outside of Gengar, though, I haven't really used any of them all that much, although I would like to try my hand at using Slowking in the near future.
 
5,281
Posts
14
Years
  • Age 29
  • Seen yesterday
Yeah, it's a nice feature and it makes sense. But at the same time its really annoying - I couldn't do trade evolutions at all until Diamond came out (thanks to GTS), and then it involved giving away my own pokémon until my DSLite went kinda iffy and I bought a DSi.

I don't tend to use the pokémon that evolve via evolution much, if I do it's Rhyperior etc, all the new ones. Gengar etc. I don't really use because I get picky about only using Gen III in Emerald, Gen IV in DP, Gen II in HeartGold etc.
 

Spade

I am the deity you call "God".
14
Posts
10
Years
Mmm, I don't really like it myself. Thankfully, I don't like most traded Pokemon (only a few exceptions), but there's nothing really stopping me. It really upset me when I was little though, because I had both games and not a cable xD
 

Spade

I am the deity you call "God".
14
Posts
10
Years
Mmm, I don't really like it myself. Thankfully, I don't like most traded Pokemon (only a few exceptions), but there's nothing really stopping me. It really upset me when I was little though, because I had both games and not a cable xD
 
6,318
Posts
17
Years
It has been largely annoying in Gen IV since my connection wasn't allowed to be used on those games without the security being changed, so this has prevented me from being able to trade to evolve online at various times. Even now I have a Machoke on my HG/SS that I can't evolve without it. But I suppose that's less to do with trading and more to do with the backwards tech of the DS, so yeah.

I approved of the concept before that because I could trade with friends in the neighbourhood fairly easily to do it, but unfortunately they have either stopped playing or decided to play on counterfeit versions of Gen IV games. I never liked having to trade them with items though, it was enough of an annoyance before items were introduced.

Overall, I guess if we'd never seen trading as an evolution problem I wouldn't have even though of it as a possibility. It was probably good for encouraging trading in R/B/Y and therefore promoting them games by encouraging friends to play, but since then it has been a largely unnecessary idea and it would be nice if they introduced alternate ways to evolve the pokemon that currently evolve via this method.
 

T!M

Four Category MoTY (VG) Winner
1,422
Posts
15
Years
Do you like this idea in every Pokemon game?

It can be a pain in the butt to do if you don't have Wi-Fi or another DS, but if you have either or both it's useful.

Do you guys have or had Pokemon that evolve via trading (those with held specific items too)?

I have and there are too many species I've done this too. My most frequent however are Golem, Machamp and Gengar as they were my first. However, I've done it with Steelix, Scizor and the most recent; Conkledor, Gigalith, Escavalier and Accelgor.

If yes, what Pokemon do you use frequently? More than 1 in your team maybe?

Golem more than anyone else. I used him for post-game stuff in SoulSilver before trading him to Black and then later, Black 2. He was pushing level 80 by the time I transferred him.
 

Brizz

TM87
55
Posts
11
Years
I don't mind the idea of Pokemon evolving via trade nowadays, although before DS wireless connections it was more of a hassle than it was worth especially if you had no irl friends with a Pokemon game.

The only Pokemon I've used in a playthrough that required trading to evolve were Conkeldurr and Gigalith.
 

Berzerk!

Hey, c'mon! Get serious!
22
Posts
12
Years
As it has been said plenty of times before, It was a marketing gimmick, but nowadays, it's just a pure annoyance, especially from a competitive battling point of view, it just slows things down. I think it's about time Nintendo removed trade evolution for good, It has just become too much of a hassle.
 
50,218
Posts
13
Years
Trade evolutions are basically a gimmick to get more people to interact with each other and complete the Pokedex, which is the main reason that encourages trading to start with. I did manage to do a few trade evolutions but it's hard for me since my brother never lets me hoard his DS.

Some of the trade evolutions are really complex, like the ones that need a held item or even worse, trading Karrablast and Shelmet with each other. It took me ages to evolve them and then get both of them on my game as well. They're okay, but the Karrablast/Shelmet trade is one of the most weird evolution methods ever.
 
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