Do you dislike the HM system?

[Oblox]

Is it just me that dislikes the whole HM system? I hate having to give certain pokemon HM's during the main story and then not being able to get rid of them until I reach the move deleter, I also dislike having to keep HM's on pokemon or create an HM slave just to explore the world. Id much prefer it if once you reached whatever point in the story you were given a TM replacement for each ability so that you can add/remove at will or better still that once you'd earned the badge/TM version at the right point in the story you could just use the ability without even needing to learn it on any pokemon similar to how the eon flute works (since the animation for things such as fly doesnt even match whatever pokemon you have it on). It gives you no benefit to competitive battles, if you want the move learn it otherwise just use the ability outside of battle when playing the game.

 

[spike6958]

I've never understood them. We have TM's that have overworld effects, what does HM's accomplish other than been a pain to remove from your Pokemon, or requiring you to ditch having another real teammate in favor of an HM slave? I really hope GameFreak decided to ditch them in 7th Gen.

 

[Oblox]

At least they are heading in the right direction with separating the move/game ability and letting you transfer pokemon with HM's now they just need that final nice step.

 

[blue]

They're alright, but the fact that for me there is only two useful field moves is sort of a let down. They should be forgettable at least, nothing worse than when a better move comes along and you're stuck with something like Rock Smash.

 

[Sebastian_Sommer]

I hate all of the HM except surf and waterfall since they take up a move slot in your pokemon and cannot be removed unless you waste a heart scale. This is why I like the flight mechanic of latio/latias since it is way better than the standard fly and I don't need to teach that worthless move onto my flying pokemon. My opinion of the HM might improve if they get enhanced in terms of power and effects.

 

[Oblox]

I hate all of the HM except surf and waterfall since they take up a move slot in your pokemon and cannot be removed unless you waste a heart scale. This is why I like the flight mechanic of latio/latias since it is way better than the standard fly and I don't need to teach that worthless move onto my flying pokemon. My opinion of the HM might improve if they get enhanced in terms of power and effects.

You dont need a heart scale to forget just to re-learn moves.

 

[Sebastian_Sommer]

You dont need a heart scale to forget just to re-learn moves.

Oh right, lol. I forgot about this cause every time I have my pokemon forget a move, I immediately have them relearn another one. Thanks for reminding me of this.

 

[Hikamaru]

I have to admit the HMs are still annoying after six generations because to fully explore you still need an HM slave, but I do like how Fly isn't needed as much thanks to the new soar mechanic with Latios/Latias.

7th Gen needs to change these mechanics to make them into an optional field move that doesn't take up a moveslot.

 

[Megan]

My thoughts on HMs are:

In gen 1 they were usefull. With Pokemon having a lackluster movepool and TMs being single use you are more then willing to sacrifice a move slot with an HM move for more power (especially Surf and Strength). They basically added some more variety into movesets.
From gen 2 onward the whole HM mechanic went downhill, though. We get more Pokemon, we can use better moves like Return, that deal more damage, but we also get more HMs, with a lot of duplicates (like, do we really need three Water type HMs?). Sure we also get the move deleter, but we still had to carry them around for that one Waterfall in our way. Then again, TMs were still single use and movesets were still not as good as they could have been, so we were still inclined to teach our Pokemon an HM move for more power.

The real problem emerged when the amount of TMs got insanely high and TMs became reusable. While in the past you had to choose which Pokemon on your team got Return and which Strength, you are now able to give Return to all of them, rendering Strength basically useless outside of "Oh, I need to move those rocks"-moments. Also with over 700 Pokemon to choose from, having to have certain Pokemon on your team for certain HM moves feels more like a restriction, unlike gen 1 were there were only 150 with about 50% of them being Pokemon nobody really cares about anyway.

Or in a nutshell: HMs were a good thing in the past, but now powercreep and the likes made them more of a nuisance and GF definitely has to change that system in the future, or else it'll become even more annoying as the next gens pass.

 

[Zehn]

I full on hate the hm system

 

[ChikoritaCheezits]

The HM system is pretty annoying. They take up move space, most of them are weak, and they're required to get through the game, meaning you have to deal with them a lot.

 

[Pendraflare]

The real problem emerged when the amount of TMs got insanely high and TMs became reusable. While in the past you had to choose which Pokemon on your team got Return and which Strength, you are now able to give Return to all of them, rendering Strength basically useless outside of "Oh, I need to move those rocks"-moments. Also with over 700 Pokemon to choose from, having to have certain Pokemon on your team for certain HM moves feels more like a restriction, unlike gen 1 were there were only 150 with about 50% of them being Pokemon nobody really cares about anyway.

But to add on to this, for whatever it may be worth, in ORAS you don't get Return until a long way through the game, whereas in B2W2 and XY you got it pretty early (but both of those games didn't explicitly require Strength until Victory Road). Although if i'm not mistaken, the first point in ORAS that explicitly requires Strength is the Seafloor Cavern, which Pacifidlog Town is accessible not far off from.

Not that I like the HM system either, and it wasn't helped by Rock Smash becoming an HM again in ORAS.

 

[Gardevoir the Dragon Slayer]

Yes Its just a waste of space that could be used for a descent TM.

 

[starseed galaxy auticorn]

I agree with everything said here. It's always been such a pain in the ass. What's worse is how they FORCE you to use an HM on your pokemon just to pass an obstacle. The least they could do is make it so you could delete the HM after you are done with it. I agree it's annoying because not everyone wants to just have an HM slave do all the work. D:

 

[Lucifer]

I'm with the collective, the system is quite an annoyance.

Early on when they were some of the strongest moves in the games and TMs were single use there was some highlight to HMs but now that they are useless in battle and in the case of most even their out of battle functions have little use they lost their point and have become just a nuisance. Which makes it quite inconvenient that they're not forgettable until your reach one of the last three gym cities where the move deleter always is.

Using a slave doesn't make that any easier because now instead of wasting a move slot you're wasting a party slot, I in particular really dislike and find it difficult having to make room in my party for a slave even for a short distance because if I have to battle trainers while carrying it that's a team member missing training opportunities.

They've taken it one step in the right direction however by removing Flash as an HM, most useless move there is after Splash. I've not required it even for dark caves in literally years. Even in the original RBY when it was an entirely dark screen rather than a circle of light I learned to navigate without it.

Hopefully in future games they will continue to correct the flaws in the system.

 

[Howmander]

I'm actually surprised no one is actually questoning WHY the HM system is in place the way it is. There's a very specific, game breaking reason why they force you to not delete HMs and thats' because there are HM moves that can be learned by some pokemon via level up OR you can transfer pokemon who know certain HM moves:

so say you get to the point where you get the appropriate badge to use a move in the overworld map (let's take cut for example) you have a pokemon from an old game that knows Cut (and since people will fixate on Cut specifically, you can also subsitute ANY Hm for this same scenario) just for the heck of it, you start cutting away to get certain items, you level up, learn a better move and delete Cut and then oh look! You're late for school or work, you save and quit, come back later and start your game up again and oh no! Once you start your game up again all the trees have respawned and since you deleted Cut, you can't get past them because even though you got the badge, yo didn't go to Cutter's House first so now you can't teach anything in your party Cut (or whatever other HM move got you stuck somewhere) and no you need to reset your game and lose the 2, 20 or 200 hours you put into it for a simple mistake that can happen to anyone. THIS is the reason the HM system is in place. in the original Hoenn games if you were on Dewford and had a pokemon with Surf in your PC the game would prevent you from releasing that pokemon from your PC if it was the last one in your PC that knew Surf, even if you had the HM in your items pocket because if you lost all the pokemon that knew Surf in Dewford, you were trapped and could not get off. It's actually an extremely well thought out system.

The same thing happens when you encounter Latias/Latios and you have a full party. If you send the pokemon back to the PC that has Surf, you're now stuck in the other side of Hoenn until you get all the way up to the weather institute and get access to a PC again.

I would MUCH rather be inconvenience by having to find someone to delete the move than not pay attention briefly and lose a move that makes me have to completely restart my game all over from the beginning. For every 1 person complaining about having to delete the move, I can guarantee there would be 1000 complaining if such a game breaking system was allowed to be in the games because LOTS of people (particularly young kids) could quite easily make these various mistakes.

 

[Pendraflare]

What I think is that, since TMs are now infinite use, that's why HMs should be deletable on the get-go. In earlier generations maybe not (because they don't want you to be stuck in an area where you'd need them), but here is where it becomes more loose with their capability.

 

[Howmander]

What I think is that, since TMs are now infinite use, that's why HMs should be deletable on the get-go. In earlier generations maybe not (because they don't want you to be stuck in an area where you'd need them), but here is where it becomes more loose with their capability.

Again though, since almost all the TMS are optional finds, what if you didn't GET the TMorHM because you already had the move on a pokemon, forgot, deleted that TMorHM and now you're stuck somewhere where you can't get back to get that TMorHM

 

[Vinny Vidi Vici]

I wouldn't say I dislike the HM system, but I'm very much ready to move on from it. I appreciated how in X/Y it was very peripheral. Apart from Surf (which most people would use as a legitimate move anyway) and I think Strength, Rock Smash and Waterfall all came into play at the very end, however for the most part, HMs didn't act as roadblocks throughout the game, and the 4 that were needed were all teachable to a single pokemon being Lapras, and you're flat out given a Lapras right after you get Surf, so HM management is very hassle free in that game I appreciated it.

Nearly every JRPG has little roadblocks to keep you on the right path. Some are more subtle or elegant than others, but I'm not going to criticise pokemon for not being super open World like a Skyrim or anything like that. But I do think for the sake of mixing things up a bit Gamefreak could come up with other ways to restrict progression at certain points without the need to stick to the overly rigid HM system.

 

[Colress Machine]

Back when you could only use TMs once, HMs were useful and I didn't mind too much. It was a pain that you had to go to a special place to delete them but I could live with it. Now that we can reuse TMs as many times as we want, I don't see the point for HMs anymore and now it's just a hassle since you have to go to the move deleter to get rid of them.. Especially seeing that some of those moves are soul crushingly useless in battle (-cough- cut -cough-) Just make them all TMs if you ask me.