Weird game design choices that bother me

[Jiggykoopbob]

So Generation 9's core games launched to highly critical acclaim(?) reviews. Even though the games suffer from preformance issues at times as well as graphical glitches. (I haven't come across a lot yet.), I'm not here to bring up anything related to that.

This game makes some weird design choices that i'd like to bring up.

1: Checking a Pokémon's friendship.
I don't know if there is an NPC in the game that tells you how much your pokémon loves you. But without that NPC, i have to go ahead and start a picnic and then "talk" to my pokémon, to which it
will display 1 to 5 hearts. However this better be a bug they haven't fixed yet, but apparently those hearts only show up the first time you talk to the Pokémon and won't appear again until you pack up and start
another picnic. Like what's the deal with that?

2: You can't see the inside of restaurants or shops in general.
Not sure why only barber shops have an interior you can walk around in. Sword and Shield had interiors for clothing shops, so why can't that carry over here?

3: Pokémon in battle not closing their eyes when sleeping.
I'm fairly certain this one was resolved in the latest patch. But awkwardly Pokémon don't close their eyes when they have the sleep status effect.

4: Clothing shops not selling shirts, pants or jackets.
Is this because im enrolled in an academy and have to wear one of four mediocre looking outfits at all times? Come on, i wanna be fancy and dress up like the Mario bros or Wario "Bros".
Maybe they'll sell them in later towns in the game, i dunno.

5: Slow walking pokémon.
When you take out your leading pokémon to walk with you, most species of pokémon run too slow and can't keep up with you running at full speed. (Not riding Koraidon or Miraidon that is.)
Almost no one really walks slowly in these games, they wanna get to places faster you know?

I'm not saying that these nitpicks ruin the exprience. I just noticed them and wanted to point them out here.

 

[moon]

kingambit sitting on its hair is a bit of a weird design choice

 

[Nah]

4: Clothing shops not selling shirts, pants or jackets.
Is this because im enrolled in an academy and have to wear one of four mediocre looking outfits at all times? Come on, i wanna be fancy and dress up like the Mario bros or Wario "Bros".
Maybe they'll sell them in later towns in the game, i dunno.

Unfortunately you have to wear one of the four uniforms for the entire game. You can buy and wear various glasses, gloves, headwear, shoes, etc, but the core of your outfit is always gonna be the school uniforms.

 

[Devalue]

Agrees on the above about being stuck with the academy uniform. Limits your options severely. Hates the inescapable orange.

 

[Squirtkipfan01]

1. Thats dumb
2. Thats not reeeeaaaally a big deal
3. Yea i think that was recently patched but yea weird
4. The shirt and pants are academy attire so you cant change those(aside from the 4 seasonal wears)

Im pretty thick skin with things like this on the whole. Something has to been CATASTROPHICALLY stupid for me to complain ultimately

 

[tokyodrift]

Yeah I was pretty disappointed that the shops didn't have an interior. I figured it wouldn't be that hard since it was done in Sw/Sh. As for the sleeping, it seems that some do, I used Spore on a wild Slowbro and it's eyes closed. I was pretty shocked since that was the only time that has happened.

 

[NoobMaster_6ix9]

Agrees on the above about being stuck with the academy uniform. Limits your options severely. Hates the inescapable orange.

Well, for me I hate the inescapable Violet... lol

I eventually settled on an outfit that works for me.

 

[Sandslash Fan]

If the shops weren't going to have interiors, then they should have just made it pop-up menu and an NPC standing there next to a clothes rack (similar to the Pokémon Center in S/V).

I hate having to wear the uniform, but moreso since you can clearly see the clothing item slots greyed out for those things you can't change at the stores! Like the design space was there, but it will never be available so what's the point in it.

Still hoping we can get the Eevee backpack at least.

 

[Corveone]

Why is the map so big?
I get that they wanted to create a more believable and open world, but why making such a huge map if they didn't really have enough content to fill it? A lot of the areas feel like big empty landscapes wich just extends travelling distance for no good reason. Map should have been either a bit smaller, or have more variety and content to justify its length.

Lack of building interiors and NPC interactions.
This has already been explained. It's strange for a game that does a good job at encouraging exploration in other aspects. As someone used to the "speak to everyone" philosophy from previous Pokémon games and many other RPGs, it feels weird how most of the NPCs don't say anything useful or say anything at all.

Real time battle environments.
I don't know if they did this trying to achieve more realism or something, but random NPCs or other wild Pokémon walking around (or worse, glitching around) in the background while you're battling is distracting and kinda breaks immersion. Honestly, I'd prefer all NPCs and wild Pokémon temporarily disappearing when you're engaged in battle, as it happens in Legends Arceus. If ain't broken...

Removing the Battle Style Set option. It has been an option since Gen 1, there was no reason to remove this.

Other than that, I really enjoyed the game, much more than SwSh for sure. In fact I think SV are probably the best Pokémon main games I've played in a long while.

 

[PageEmp]

You said design choices so… the duck's final evolution. I don't dislike it (but I am starting to) but I think everything about it is disappointing. It had a great concept, this thing could have been amazing of done correctly, but no. Unrealistic proportions, looks more like a person in an outfit than a bird, brings nothing new to the table compared to the other waterbirds of the series, it just feels like every wrong decision was done in it's design.

I know I'll eventually grow on it, but every time I look up gen9 designs for reference for my comic, I see that embarrassing thing and just feel greatly irritated at how things could have gone better. Just.. why aren't there more people who don't like this thing? I think this this is bar none the most overrated mon from this generation, perhaps even of all time.

 

[FeraligatrMaster]

No level scaling. In a linear Pokemon game like BW or SwSh, this would be acceptable, but since SV are open world, shouldn't the opponents' levels scale to yours?

 

[Squirtkipfan01]

No level scaling. In a linear Pokemon game like BW or SwSh, this would be acceptable, but since SV are open world, shouldn't the opponents' levels scale to yours?

If you go north from the flying titan, your gonna have a bad time.(because immediately north of the second easiest titan is the second hardest in terms of level and i dont know why)

 

[FeraligatrMaster]

If you go north from the flying titan, your gonna have a bad time.(because immediately north of the second easiest titan is the second hardest in terms of level and i dont know why)

I made that mistake the first time. That's how I learned that levels don't scale.

 

[Corveone]

Level scaling should be an easy script. I guess they didn't because adjusting team compositions and movesets of multiple opponents for different points in the game is too much work, for a game that was rushing to come out.

Still, if they had no choice but to limit options, at least they should have been more honest about the actual freedom of choice players have, and put a "Recommended level" or some kind of warning to know the strength of each task/opponent beforehand, instead of forcing players to Google search the recommended order for a coherent game progression.

 

[Harmonie]

Still, if they had no choice but to limit options, at least they should have been more honest about the actual freedom of choice players have, and put a "Recommended level" or some kind of warning to know the strength of each task/opponent beforehand, instead of forcing players to Google search the recommended order for a coherent game progression.

The funny thing is that they may have attempted to do this. When you heal at Pokemon Centers you'll see another option that says something like "Where should I go next?". If you ask that she will say what is recommended. However, the problem is that it's not a good recommendation. I got recommended to go to the final titan when I had maybe only done one of them beforehand.

I don't see the point in them adding that when they didn't get it right. Lol. I'm sure it has caused lots of frustration.

 

[Adam Levine]

It really bothers me that in a game with a villainous team called Team Star, almost none (if any) of the actual Pokémon based on stars are in this game. No Staryu, no Clefairy, and most importantly, no Minior. I was really looking forward to using Minior because it's such a unique Pokémon, and it's a shame they didn't bring it back when it seems like it would fit best here. For that matter, it bothers me that there isn't a single Pokémon in the game with Magic Guard, and it almost feels like this was a deliberate design decision for whatever reason.

Also, the Academy Ace Tournament theme playing for every single round. It's a good battle theme, don't get me wrong, but I would've loved to hear the rivals' battle themes in the postgame, and maybe even the gym battle theme for Ryme and Geeta's theme that you otherwise only hear once in the entire game.

Let's not forget that Toedscool is in a game without Tentacool. Like, why make it resemble a Pokémon that basically doesn't exist?

 

[Master Of Disaster]

It seems like all of the issues can be boiled down to one thing: the developers didn't have enough time. It's a bummer that they weren't able to fully realize their vision, but hopefully they'll be able to address these problems in the future.

 

[Sweet Serenity]

So Generation 9's core games launched to highly critical acclaim(?) reviews. Even though the games suffer from preformance issues at times as well as graphical glitches. (I haven't come across a lot yet.), I'm not here to bring up anything related to that.

This game makes some weird design choices that i'd like to bring up.

1: Checking a Pokémon's friendship.
I don't know if there is an NPC in the game that tells you how much your pokémon loves you. But without that NPC, i have to go ahead and start a picnic and then "talk" to my pokémon, to which it
will display 1 to 5 hearts. However this better be a bug they haven't fixed yet, but apparently those hearts only show up the first time you talk to the Pokémon and won't appear again until you pack up and start
another picnic. Like what's the deal with that?

The ability to check friendship is in the game. To check friendship, you can talk to a female NPC that stands in the middle of Cascarrafa, accompanied by her Marill. She would also give your Pokémon a ribbon if their friendship is maxed.

2: You can't see the inside of restaurants or shops in general.
Not sure why only barber shops have an interior you can walk around in. Sword and Shield had interiors for clothing shops, so why can't that carry over here?

Some restaurants exist where you can enter, but they are not numerous compared to the other restaurants. As for the rest of the shops and restaurants, my guess is they avoided designing interiors for most shops to save space, as the game more so emphasizes exploring the big open world rather than city life in general. However, my complaint about the shops is that so many different shops exist that could potentially sell the same thing. For instance, one store sells fruit specifically while another might sell the condiments, different restaurants might sell different types of sandwiches when they could sell all types, and separate clothing shops sell shoes, socks, bags, and glasses when one store could sell everything without issue. My assumption is that they did this to make the cities seem more lively maybe.

3: Pokémon in battle not closing their eyes when sleeping.
I'm fairly certain this one was resolved in the latest patch. But awkwardly Pokémon don't close their eyes when they have the sleep status effect.

I have actually never noticed this. I have to pay more attention when playing again.

4: Clothing shops not selling shirts, pants or jackets.
Is this because im enrolled in an academy and have to wear one of four mediocre looking outfits at all times? Come on, i wanna be fancy and dress up like the Mario bros or Wario "Bros".
Maybe they'll sell them in later towns in the game, i dunno.

I hate having to wear these ugly, non-feminine outfits as well.

I'm not saying that these nitpicks ruin the exprience. I just noticed them and wanted to point them out here.

More to add, I find it weird that the cities and towns in this game, if they're lacking a gym, only really serve the purpose of selling food to boost the rate of spawning eggs and certain Pokémon types in the wild, or make them easier to catch. While I definitely don't mind this feature, I wish the cities and towns had more variety and more to do within them. You can't go inside many of the buildings as you mentioned, which often had NPCs that gave you small "quests" or whatnot, or at least something unique to that specific city or town. I find it strange that many NPCs are unable to be interacted with. Instead, many of them just have popup dialog above them, similar to NPCs in Kalos walking about Lumiose City. I am not the biggest fan of making sandwiches. As we've talked about before, you know that I miss cooking. It was so much more fun. I also find the map to be really difficult to navigate and find the stuff you want or person when you're playing multiplayer. The fact that it rotates don't help things either. Another thing that I didn't like was the skin tone selection as well when customizing my character. As you know, I started my adventure with you, so we talked about this, but it seems like they don't have dark skin colors anymore. I like making my character resemble me and the darkest skin tone they have in this game is a lot lighter than I am. They had dark skin in every other game, but not this one? It's disappointing.