What are some things that irk you about Pokémon gameplay?

[Sweet Serenity]

During my experience playing Pokémon recently after transferring some of my old Pokémon to Pokémon Violet using Pokémon HOME, I have noticed some little aspects of Pokémon gameplay that irk me. One thing I noticed that happens during battles is the difference between the damage output caused by a direct attack and chip damage. For example, let's say I have a Pokémon with a double resistance to Rock-type moves and my Pokémon gets hit with Salt Cure. Salt Cure could only deal a single hit point of damage, but for some reason, the chip damage from Salt Cure removes much more of my Pokémon's health each turn. This makes no sense to me. It bothers me so much to the point where I believe that Game Freak should address and fix this issue. What about you? Are there any aspects of Pokémon gameplay that simply racks your nerves?

 

[Alex_Among_Foxes]

The fact that 'Auto Heal' in S/V doesn't also heal status conditions. What's the point of giving the player a way to save time, when it only saves a couple of button presses? Or how about the fact that you can't set up a picnic while riding your Pokemon? Why couldn't they just have the player auto-dismount? Or the fact that the the 'Skip Cutscenes' option doesn't really skip all that much at all! What a pointless 'feature' that was.

 

[Sweet Serenity]

The fact that 'Auto Heal' in S/V doesn't also heal status conditions. What's the point of giving the player a way to save time, when it only saves a couple of button presses? Or how about the fact that you can't set up a picnic while riding your Pokemon? Why couldn't they just have the player auto-dismount? Or the fact that the the 'Skip Cutscenes' option doesn't really skip all that much at all! What a pointless 'feature' that was.

The "Auto Heal" feature uses Potions in your bag. Potions don't heal more than health. It would be cool if it used more than just your Potions though. As for the picnic thing, I agree; that can be very annoying.

 

[Alex_Among_Foxes]

The "Auto Heal" feature uses Potions in your bag. Potions don't heal more than health. It would be cool if it used more than just your Potions though. As for the picnic thing, I agree; that can be very annoying.

I'm aware that it uses Potions, what I don't get is why they made a 'feature' that's meant to save the player the time of opening the Bag, only to have them have to open it anyway just to use status items. It feels pointless.

 

[Devalue]

• Catching legendaries. Dropped it to low health. Gave it a status. Still takes dozens of good balls (in earlier generations). Feels boring to have to roll the dice so many times.
• Arena Trap / Shadow Tag, specifically in wild battles. Does not want to fight this random Dugtrio. Go away.
• Gender-locked evolutions. Dislikes churning through the wrong ones to find a good one.
• Dragging along HM users (earlier generations). Feels the worst in Victory Road. Usually drops one party Pokemon to fit in the HM user. Results in it being lower level than the others (or just accepting being one Pokemon down).

 

[Corveone]

Present:
Breeding
IVs
Catching legendaries
Rivals
Clunkiness of the battle text pop-ups

Past:
HMs
Repel system

 

[Jiggykoopbob]

This is a small nitpick, but i always wanted to know how much damage exactly my pokémon moves do to the opponent pokémon, basically a small number that pops up which shows how much damage an attack did which ALMOST EVERY OTHER RPG GAME SERIES HAS.

I hope i'm not the only one.

 

[Palamon]

The low catch rate if some Pokemon is just infuriating. Some Pokemon that aren't legendary shouldn't be so difficult to catch.

 

[Explorer of Time]

I know it's not used that much, but gender-locked evolutions. Burmy->Mothim/Wormadam is kinda OK since both genders get an exclusive evolution, but there's no reason to ever use a male Combee or Salandit, and female Ralts/Kirlia and male Snorunt are straight up worse than their counterparts outside of gen 3 because they're missing their dawn stone evolution choices.

 

[Lysander]

Whenever a Pokémon raises all of its stats with a move like Ancient Power and rather than just saying "all stats increased" it makes you sit and wait while the text mentions every specific stat being raised. Especially annoying in Tera Raid battles when it eats up the timer while slowly going through each raised stat.

 

[Megan]

^In general the sequential order of turns. Moves like Double Slap that hit 5 times have you wait through what's basically 5 different attacks, animation and all. Or additional damage through e.g. burn that also takes its sweet time every turn.
Another SV-related one: why is it that the battle system waits for the other Pokemon to do their cry animation before finally allowing your Pokemon to be switched?

 

[ReKoil]

In the older games: the sheer amount of grinding you'd have to do to get all your mons' levels up.
Hasn't been a problem for quite some time now though. Especially with the Exp candies we have nowadays.

The RNG involved with whether or not a move that can miss will miss or not, or a move/ability that can lower a stat/inflict a status will or will not.
Any moves that can miss when used by me will almost always miss and only rarely hit. When the AI uses it though, they get the opposite and pretty much always hit, if they ever even miss at all.

 

[Sheep]

The RNG. It's so frustrating to have a 95% accuracy move miss solely because of poor luck, especially after playing other monster-taming games that don't have luck-based battling (like Temtem).

I know it's not used that much, but gender-locked evolutions. Burmy->Mothim/Wormadam is kinda OK since both genders get an exclusive evolution, but there's no reason to ever use a male Combee or Salandit, and female Ralts/Kirlia and male Snorunt are straight up worse than their counterparts outside of gen 3 because they're missing their dawn stone evolution choices.

I get this too. The series is already not-so-great with making all mons usable and doing something like this makes certain ones completely useless, which stinks. Especially if you're a newer player and not aware that what you're using isn't going to be viable for the story at all since it can't evolve a la male Combee.

 

[Elder Trainer]

This may be a fairly minor one, but it aggravates me regardless. I hate it when, during tera raids, the cursor moves back to the top of the move list at random. High difficulty raids are hard enough without the game suddenly placing the cursor off the move you were using and back at the top again at a time when it could potentially ruin your chances of winning.

I also hate the change Gen V made to earning exp. The various candies help when levelling up, but at times it still feels slow and tedious, so having an alternative option can help to alleviate the tedium. But when your Pokemon earns less exp. the more it levels up just because the Pokemon you beat get increasingly stingy with the exp. they give, it takes an already long process and makes it more mindnumbing.

 

[Pyrax]

GameFreak adding all these neat features, mechanics and activities only to drop it in the next game. Pokeathlon, Pokestar Studios, mantine surfing, seasons, etc.

Whenever a Pokémon raises all of its stats with a move like Ancient Power and rather than just saying "all stats increased" it makes you sit and wait while the text mentions every specific stat being raised. Especially annoying in Tera Raid battles when it eats up the timer while slowly going through each raised stat.

^In general the sequential order of turns. Moves like Double Slap that hit 5 times have you wait through what's basically 5 different attacks, animation and all. Or additional damage through e.g. burn that also takes its sweet time every turn.
Another SV-related one: why is it that the battle system waits for the other Pokemon to do their cry animation before finally allowing your Pokemon to be switched?

Higher level Tera Raids are borderline unplayable to me because of this. It's so bizarre to me that GameFreak thinks separate text boxes and animations for every stat change is adequate, especially with every other jrpg doing the exact opposite. Just makes battles in SV a slog.

 

[Squirtkipfan01]

im still salty that after black and white 2 they just stopped making decent post games. You just get a really short side story, a battle arena thing for battle points, and some post game legends and thats about it. Sword and shield was SLIGHTLY better with its DLC but still a drop in the bucket...

 

[Adam Levine]

Salt Cure could only deal a single hit point of damage, but for some reason, the chip damage from Salt Cure removes much more of my Pokémon's health each turn. This makes no sense to me.

That's the thing about passive damage, though; in most cases it's based on the percentage of the target's max HP, not the user's attack stat, because let's be real: if passive damage wasn't like this, defensive Pokémon would be much, MUCH more annoying to deal with, especially Steel- and Water-types, who have a reputation of already having solid defensive profiles. Think of Salt Cure like a vaccine: the initial jab might not hurt much, but the effects really kick in after a while.

Anyway, speaking of status effects, though, something that bothers me is the fact that Scald, a Water-type move, has a higher chance to burn than most Fire-type moves. The same could be said for Scorching Sands, but apparently people actually like that move so whatever.

Type-effectiveness being stackable (i.e. 4x weaknesses and resistances) also irks me out because, more often than not, they're more a result of the type chart than any active attempt to balance the Pokémon in question (e.g. Bastiodon, Aurorus, Frosmoth, the list goes on). Sometimes they do indeed balance a Pokémon and provide them with a mildly interesting Achilles heel, such as Bug/Steel-, Water/Ground-, and Ground/Flying-types, but it feels counterintuitive for Pokémon made of rock and steel to die to a punch, especially when they're made to be defensive.

 

[Corveone]

Whenever a Pokémon raises all of its stats with a move like Ancient Power and rather than just saying "all stats increased" it makes you sit and wait while the text mentions every specific stat being raised.

That's the main reason why I hate Moody and Klawf's signature Anger Shell, and will probably never use Pokémon with those Abilities unless for some weird reason I have to. Ancient Power / Silver Wind boost is annoying to watch but at least it rarely happens.