Hmm...well, I've hardly
ever used L=A in
Sapphire,
FireRed, or
Emerald, to be honest. I remember using it
once just to see what it did. XD The only time I pretty much use shoulder buttons for
anything is in
Super Smash Brothers (I use it sparingly in
Pokemon Stadium 2, and it's essential when I play my friend's copy of
Marvel vs. Capcom 3)...
However, I did press the shoulder buttons
much more often in
FireRed, due to the Help System (the type matchup list was
very helpful when I faced obscure type matchups). The ability of the Help System acting as a "pseudo-pause button" during battles also helped.
So yeah...I hardly ever used the L=A option, as I'm an A-button masher, but it sucks for the people who
did use it. It doesn't seem like it would be that much trouble to have included it in BW. :\
I never used it.
I was more annoyed by the fact that I had to hold B to run. Unlike HGSS.
This. We go from having-to-hold-B to-run, to the awesome auto-run of HGSS, and
right back to having-to-hold-B-to-run. -_-
I never used it myself, but now I think about it I realise it could be quite useful for one-handed multitask-playing.
The more important question is, though: WHY ON EARTH HAVE WE ONLY GOT ONE HOTKEY?! There's 4 face buttons, two shoulders and the Select/Start buttons. Clearly A and B are in use, but why do we need X to open the menu? It was far better in HG/SS as a purely touch-screen menu. And why can we not use Y, L, R AND Select to register 4 items instead of one? It's annoyed me since I can remember that you can only register one item. Imagine if we could have the Bicycle, the Map, the Super Rod AND the Vs-Seeker all just a single button press away...
Not that this is the only UI inadequacy in Pokemon games. For example, why can't we choose to Fly to a city straight from the Map screen? Instead we have to press B, go to our Pokemon list, select our Flyer, then click Fly, then find the city all over again... Urghh.
Sorry for getting off-topic. I did answer the question at the top though...
You know, I was only thinking about converting X to a hotkey button as well, but you've got a
very good point. I mean, aside from the L=A people, other users basically never use the shoulder buttons, so why not give them some use. Same thing with the Select button (previously a hotkey in Generation 3). I mean, we could
conceivably have
5 hotkeys by using X, Y, L-trigger, R-trigger, and Select and designate them to bring up 5 different items in the overworld!
I never used L as A, but I don't like that they removed Start as X.
This. That dampened HGSS a bit for me, especially since it was present in DP and HGSS's immediate predecessor,
Platinum. Now what - you only use it to advance past the title screen, or what? (and IIRC, even that function is redundant as the A button does the
exact same thing)
The Start button has been the menu button since Generation 1, and Start=X alleviated things by permitting two different methods of accessing the Menu in the newer games that changed the Menu access button...
Personally, I think Start should continue being the menu (for those of us that prefer buttons as opposed to touchscreens), with
Select, X and
Y (and
L and R, when the player
isn't using L=A mode) all becoming hotkeys. When you've got three to four buttons going unused, and you have to
hold two buttons just for a certain action (running) when another button could easily toggle it, it's a problem...
Exactly my feelings on the matter. I never really paid much attention to the option of setting L as A, but I've used Start as X ever since it became an option. I've used Start to activate the menu for years now, and I have no desire to change that.
This. I don't see the harm in keeping L=A and Start=X in the games, and I wish they would return in the future, along with HGSS's interface for touchscreen users... I guess L=A was thought to be going unused, but according to this thread, the majority opinions seem like either people used the feature like heck or people weren't even aware that it existed. XD