Personally, I hate the recycled: Kid gets first POKéMON, beats GYMS, stops Team X's plan to use a Legendary POKéMON for their own gain, and beats the Elite Four.
It works for the official games, because they're cool like that. XP.
But, in hacks, just no. Seriously, let's think logically. In the series, the CHAMPION is the strongest person in the region, and yet a kid who's had their POKéMON a few days beats them? Maybe a shockingly skilled trainer, but when EVERY new trainer is ultra-skilled and can take down the Elite Four, isn't that going to far? Take the anime. Ash has been training for years, but he's still several levels below the Elite Four.
As for the legendary POKéMON. Just how many evil teams in the world have access to ways to summon legendaries, and have the power to control them?
Then, there is also grammar. I hate seeing "lol, look its d pikachu. it use thundershok on muh! ouch." or any thing with similar grammar in a hack. It's degrading. Not only to yourself, but to the POKéMON community as a whole. I've actually seen Anti-POKéMON people cite hacks with horrendous grammar as one of the 'sympoms' of POKéMON - idiocy. Is that a good idea? No.
Let's see... Inside jokes, DP Tiles, DP POKéMON... Yes, let's go with that. People originally used DP POKéMON because it was cool. Why was it cool? Because it was unique and uncommon. Now... It's uncommon to
not see them. If the reason they were cool was because they were unique, if everyone uses them, doesn't that make it uncool and overused? In my book it does.
CSS Threads. Too common, and overused. Same way as DP POKéMON.
People who use 'I'm new to hacking,' as an excuse to make simple scripts with obvious errors, like:
Code:
#org $My fish
lock
faceplayer
message $A
boxset 6
release
end
#org $A
$A 1 =Hi.\nI lost my fish.\nCan you help me?
Those that missed it, there are two errors. Repeated use of \n and space within the pointer. I havn't seen this particular script, obviously. Also, it's getting better since the introduction of XSE, but still...
Oh, and who doesn't love title screens that have been editted - but not the title screen pallets? Venusaur-green, and Charizard-red, are not universal colors...
...Or worse yet, using different colors, and causing the pink to show up - without fixing it.
Linearity. I hate linearity. Give us some choice.
Re-used scripts. Obviously, you need to reuse POKéCENTER, and HM scripts, but random trainers? Just no.
Abandonment. I hate seeing a promise hack discontinued because of disinterest. If you aren't truly interested in
finishing it, don't start it.
Professors. I've seen several Prof. Pine's. Overused. How about a female professor name Prof. Kauri? I've never seen that.
Pallet edits for the sake of pallet edits. In Naranja, it makes sense to have alternate colors as the main color - that's cannon. But... randomly making a Beedrill black with yellow stripes just for the sake of having a Black Beedrill with yellow stripes is bad. If the Beedrill had been genetically altered... Then it would make sense. But, when done for no reason, pallet edits are bad.
I'll add more, eventually.