• Ever thought it'd be cool to have your art, writing, or challenge runs featured on PokéCommunity? Click here for info - we'd love to spotlight your work!
  • Welcome to PokéCommunity! Register now and join one of the best fan communities on the 'net to talk Pokémon and more! We are not affiliated with The Pokémon Company or Nintendo.
    Register

"Original sins" of the franchise?

Orespore

    • 17
    Posts
    6
    Years
    • Seen Nov 20, 2023
    What are design choices present in every game that could, in your opinion, be improved upon?

    For example:
    In my experience trying to get other people into Pokémon, newcomers have a hard time remembering type matchups.
    I think 15-18 types is just too much; I think having 6 or 7 types, with some degree of symmetry in their matchups, would've been more appealing.
     
    - gen3 fishing
    - the water in RSE having only Tentacool and that seagull thing when there are so many water mons available and enough water routes to spread them out.
    - gen3 villians need better schemes for their plans because they would immediately fail in real life.

    ...sorry guys. I wanted this post to be brief and I sat here long for what I wanted to do and saw the thread title 'Gen 3 had the best music' and wanted to remind everyone that everyone's favourite generation wasn't perfect
     
    Two words: LAZY. WRITING.

    Every game from Generation III has had the exact same plot as Generation III. It's just a different mascot Legendary and a different evil team, every time. There is no creativity, no character development, the bare minimum of lore - which is in no way built into the narrative to be of significance - and, if "nobody plays Pokemon for story" why are we having the same diabolical narrative forced upon us with every single game? It wasn't particularly good to begin with! Five generations of games later it's STILL not particularly good, and if anything it's getting WORSE because they're padding it out with unskippable cutscenes and still not adding anything even remotely resembling progression to it.
     
    When I wrote "original sins", I meant bad design choices that exist SINCE GEN I and were never fixed, not the bad design choices of a particular generation or from one point onwards.
    (even though I must say, I agree with every single point)
     
    Imo, not allowing the Trainer to just be able to run away from wild Pokemon 100% of the time by default.

    It's so unnecessary and annoying to have to lead off with a strong/fast Pokemon whenever you traverse a dungeon. Instead of fixing this, they went with a band aid solution of introducing items and abilities to counteract it. I don't wanna have to hold a Smoke Ball or catch something with Run Away to make my life easier in the games!
     
    They NEED to improve on online features. Festival Plaza was outright garbage, and I hear Y-Comm isn't very good, either. We need stable, consistent online play in Pokemon. Make things easy to navigate, so you can just jump straight in. In the older games (Gens IV and V), you needed to put someone into your Pal Pad to be able to trade/battle with them outside the GTS. I've always found this kinda annoying. The only Pokemon games with GOOD online play were Generation Six. They immediately reverted after they did away with the Player Search System. This, to me, is the biggest bad design choice in Pokemon. Fix it, tbh.

    Oh... you said "design choices that existed since gen I" uh...

    Re-learning moves being exclusive to a one location only move tutor, and needing to go to a Name Rater to change a Pokemon's nickname. Sword/Shield fixed this by putting a Move Tutor in every single Pokemon center. We should be able change the nicknames of our Pokemon through our Pokemon menu ourselves. It's really not that hard to implement. I know LGPE had this feature, but it was removed literally one entire game later.
     
    Last edited:
    Palamon said:
    They NEED to improve on online features. Festival Plaza was outright garbage, and I hear Y-Comm isn't very good, either. We need stable, consistent online play in Pokemon. Make things easy to navigate, so you can just jump straight in. In the older games (Gens IV and V), you needed to put someone into your Pal Pad to be able to trade/battle with them outside the GTS. I've always found this kinda annoying. The only Pokemon games with GOOD online play were Generation Six. They immediately reverted after they did away with the Player Search System. This, to me, is the biggest bad design choice in Pokemon. Fix it, tbh.

    Oh... you said "design choices that existed since gen I" uh...

    Re-learning moves being exclusive to a one location only move tutor, and needing to go to a Name Rater to change a Pokemon's nickname. Sword/Shield fixed this by putting a Move Tutor in every single Pokemon center. We should be able change the nicknames of our Pokemon through our Pokemon menu ourselves. It's really not that hard to implement. I know LGPE had this feature, but it was removed literally one entire game later.
    Click to expand...

    Now that you mention it...yeah nicknames. I don't wanna have to be stuck with a (purely made up example btw...) "S**ass" the Goodra or some crap similar because it was convenient to GTS a Goomy ready to use lol.
     
    Well they fixed it, but only in Gen V...making TMs a non-reusable item.
    I kinda get it, in that it means you can't just get all the strongest moves really easily. But it just means you have to be really, really sure you want to use them, which to me is antithetical to the generally low stakes of Pokémon. It also meant that even in versions with more of a post-game, you might be disincentivized to train up a new Pokémon as they won't be able to get the moves you want.
     
    Dawn said:
    Two words: LAZY. WRITING.

    Every game from Generation III has had the exact same plot as Generation III. It's just a different mascot Legendary and a different evil team, every time. There is no creativity, no character development, the bare minimum of lore - which is in no way built into the narrative to be of significance - and, if "nobody plays Pokemon for story" why are we having the same diabolical narrative forced upon us with every single game? It wasn't particularly good to begin with! Five generations of games later it's STILL not particularly good, and if anything it's getting WORSE because they're padding it out with unskippable cutscenes and still not adding anything even remotely resembling progression to it.
    Click to expand...

    Team plasma's goal and the lore with N was definitely something more than what you described
     
    hirokimura said:
    Team plasma's goal and the lore with N was definitely something more than what you described
    Click to expand...
    The only difference between Gen V and the others that have recycled Gen III's plot is that it attempts to present itself as something different initially and that it changes the order of events around so you have the big confrontation after the Elite Four, rather than mid-adventure. Those tiny changes aren't significant enough to warrant the praise as far as I'm concerned. So yeah, it definitely wasn't. But if you got more out of it than what I described, good for you~
     
    Dawn said:
    The only difference between Gen V and the others that have recycled Gen III's plot is that it attempts to present itself as something different initially and that it changes the order of events around so you have the big confrontation after the Elite Four, rather than mid-adventure. Those tiny changes aren't significant enough to warrant the praise as far as I'm concerned. So yeah, it definitely wasn't. But if you got more out of it than what I described, good for you~
    Click to expand...

    Actually there are much factors, which one being N's entire character. N acts as an antagonist and a rival at the same time, and puts a vilain figure to be betrayed in the end. Also, you're confronting a mindset of him which is changing through the story, unline Maxie, Archie, or any previous vilain. Team plasma appears with a goal that can seems noble, and they're acting for people to release their pokemons and be the most powerful. They don't just randomly aim to resurrect a deity and control the world, but they have a real scheme. And again, most of them were manipulated by Ghetis and his motives, even N.
    Also the lot of backstory of N, the fact that half plasma confronts the other half in NB2, the thing about Nikolai and his researches who makes him morally gray, this is definitely not a copy n paste of Giovanni, Cyrus, Maxie and Archie
     
    "Turn Off Battle Animations" not fully turning off animations.

    In Sword and Shield, you still see weather changes and Dynamaxing. I'd like Turn Off Battle Animations to fully turn off any animation which delays the battle. They can keep stuff which doesn't delay the battle though such as Pokemon's general animating.
     
    The Pokemon games in general could just be faster. I always run into the issue mid game where the pace is just feeling like a slog, especially when your fighting an evil team and they all have the same Pokemon in 20+ different battles. (Silph Co...)

    And I agree with @Sckewi, when I turn off battle animations it sometimes feels like they only go partially off.
     
    Sorta like the above...

    Battles should be both longer and less frequent. I'm tired of slogging through one or two-Pokemon each evil teams where they all basically have the same composition. Go more into double battles or even triple battles which actually have some interesting tactics to them.

    ORAS actually did a decent job of this with a couple of grunts being horde battles where it's your 1 Pokémon vs like 5 Poochyena. Admittedly it's only for Poochyena/Mighteyena, so they kind of kneecapped themselves by using all the same Pokémon, and not even a rare one at that. This should totally be brought back and expanded on.
     
    A weak narrative. Ever since Gen I, beloved though it may be, the story was never truly engaging.
     
    I'm actually surprised coding hasn't been mentioned.

    Ever since Gen 1, the game's code isn't the most optimum; Gen 1 is full of glitches and bugs, Gen 2 almost got cancelled due to not being able to fit it in a cartridge, future gens keep some of the leftover code that's unusable in the game, the multiple Lillie models which caused SM slowdown, and Gen 8 has some framerate issues and constant pop in due to poor optimization. This poor coding also makes the battles feel draining (especially Raid Battles, i.e. 4 Pokémon take their turn being damaged by Sandstorm and spread moves like Snarl have Pokémon lower their stats individually).
     
    The low speed in Gen IV. I believe its all to do with frame rate? Anyway, whilst walking and cycling speeds were fine (if they hadn't dialled Surfing back up in Platinum I probably never would have made it to HgSs), the actual battles just seem really slow compared to Gen III and V.
     
    Fafrir said:
    I'm actually surprised coding hasn't been mentioned.

    Ever since Gen 1, the game's code isn't the most optimum; Gen 1 is full of glitches and bugs, Gen 2 almost got cancelled due to not being able to fit it in a cartridge, future gens keep some of the leftover code that's unusable in the game, the multiple Lillie models which caused SM slowdown, and Gen 8 has some framerate issues and constant pop in due to poor optimization. This poor coding also makes the battles feel draining (especially Raid Battles, i.e. 4 Pokémon take their turn being damaged by Sandstorm and spread moves like Snarl have Pokémon lower their stats individually).
    Click to expand...

    omg, yes. this is the first thing that comes to mind for me. it would be so great if they could optimize this - I don't want to see four mons having their stats lowered individually, or be hit with sandstorm like you said and etc.

    otherwise, I want a better story rather than the cliche gather badges/badge equivalents and defeat bad guys. there are so many more great, immersive ideas they can actually try out, but tcpi never seem to want to try anything new since the current formula has sold so well for so long.
     
    You must log in or register to reply here.
    Back
    Top