Howdy again devs! Hopefully I'm not suggesting too much or anything, but bouncing off of my last post, for future reference I think something should be done about one of Pokemon's biggest weaknesses in the early games: HMs. As much as I appreciate how much better they are in this game, I still find them rather annoying.
To quote a Redditor directly, they clog up your Pokemon's moveslots for the moves needed to navigate the region. Needing to devote a few slots of your team to "HM slaves" to avoid compromising your main battlers' strength sort of deprives the freedom of assembling an in-game team. Instances like needing Cut for Surge, Waterfall for the Johto Region, Strength & Rock Smash for this and that, Flash for a few areas in the game...nothing feels worse than having a full team of six with great movesets only to realize that you need an HM somewhere.
It also hurts certain mons a lot; as an example, Hatate is a Flying-type special attacker. But if she's your Flying-type, you would obviously want to give her Fly. Problem is, Hatate has terrible physical attack and it wouldn't be useful for her moveset at all. Another great example is Attack Nitori, a Water-type physical attacker. Obviously, since she's a Water-type, you would want to give her Surf; problem is, she's a physical attacker and thus Surf would be a terrible move for her. HMs restrict so many Boneka that should be much better than they actually are, and this is the big reason why.
These are some ideas which I feel would make the experience more palletable:
In Battle
* Buff Flash from 65 Base Power w/90% Accuracy to 70 Base Power and 100% Accuracy. Keep in mind that in Mt. Moon, way earlier in the game just after beating Brock, you obtain the Decision TM, which has 60 Base Power and perfect accuracy. Thus, despite Flash being better than it was in Pokemon FireRed/LeafGreen for sure, it's still pretty weak and has little use at that point into the game.
* Here's a hot take on Rock Smash: Nerf the Base Power to 40 and make it hit twice. This would make it an excellent attacking move, though for balancing reasons I'd also lower the chance of a Defense drop from 50% down to 30%.
* Strength should get the tiniest attack buff so it's more worth using than other incredibly strong Dream-type attacks, such as Energy Ball, Hi Jump Kick, Drain Punch, Jump Kick, and Submission; 85 or 90 Base Power would be perfect (up from 80).
* Cut is actually fine; the moves that never fail to hit shouldn't really be changed.
* Soar is pretty much an instant Fly, which makes it better. When using Fly, you can hit hit by things like Thunder or wittled down by Poison/Leech Seed/etc. I'd recommend a marginal attack boost to 95 Base Power (up from 90).
* Considering how Waterfall is one of three Water-type Physical attacks (the others being Aqua Jet and Splashing), as well as how late into the game you get it, I feel Waterfall could use a minor Base Power increase - 85 or 90 Base Power in particular (up from 80) would be really nice.
Out of Battle
* Here's the big one: Make it so that solely by having the HM and corresponding badge that allows you to do so, you can use any HMs outside of battle. The big reason why nobody likes HMs is because they force you to have specific moves on specific Pokemon/Boneka when you don't want them to. Therefore, by allowing players to use HMs freely without needing to teach them to any of your team, all those instances of going back to the Pokemon Center, teaching a throwaway mon an HM, going back to where you need to be, and using the HM where you need to just to move on or get an item are entirely gone. Pokemon Another World Remix was designed with this in mind and it was all the better for it.
Hoping that HMs won't be nearly as obtrusive as they are right now; they've always been my one weak area with FireRed/LeafGreen and I would love to see them tweaked a bit so that they don't break the pace of the game anymore. Keep up the great work devs! I'll try and not overwhelm the thread with suggestions, haha.
EDIT: Found some glitched text once you get into Mt. Silver here:
https://imgur.com/a/H3W8jgu
Also, just finished the game to 100% completion, with Red beaten and everything! Overall, it was quite a positive experience, I thoroughly enjoyed myself with this one. There's quite a lot of things that can still be cleaned up (some odd tile collision, the infamous audio errors from AspreyFM's streams, some Water-types not learning Surf, HMs are still annoying, and Johto lacks significant polish right now, to name just a few things), but otherwise, I see quite a lot of potential that can still be explored. I am very excited for future updates, devs! Really loving the work done so far. ^^
PS: If any of you have a Discord, I'd love to set up a voice chat sometime because there's so much more I'd like to say about the game! However, I don't want to flood these forums with my own comments and observations, so it would be nice if any of you were willing to get in contact with me.
