QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
You don't think that's... very much deliberate? You know, because Lance specifically calls out Dragonite as being horrendously tough to raise?
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(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon
- Thread starter BriarRose
- Start date
I mean a deliberate choice can still be bad game design, so I think the argument still stands.
Idk if I agree with it, I think higher rarity/power beasts being harder to raise isn't that orthodox, though I think they made the dratini and dragonair line too annoying for my taste. They don't have to start as game-killing beasts, just being able to pull their weight to alleviate some of the slow exp high level grind
Idk if I agree with it, I think higher rarity/power beasts being harder to raise isn't that orthodox, though I think they made the dratini and dragonair line too annoying for my taste. They don't have to start as game-killing beasts, just being able to pull their weight to alleviate some of the slow exp high level grind
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
Of course, never said otherwise. But I fail to see how the (nominally) most powerful non-legendary Pokemon that's specifically identified as being "hard to catch and raise" being, well, hard to catch and raise is bad game design. Dragonite being easy to raise would be bad game design.
To answer your other point, Dratini largely sucks, but Dragonair generally can pull its weight. It's not a million miles behind things like Persian and Hitmonlee statwise and way ahead of (at the time) fully-evolved others like Onix.
I think that would be fine if the dratini phase wasn't so long by itself imo. Dragonair can hold itself in more recent games, but the movepool in early games was... something for sure
Yes. The lv.55 with subpar mons would be quite enough. It is the highest evo level in RBY after all.
Besides, DNite fails at the whole "tough" part with most of its coverage moves coming off its much lower SpA and a grand total of zero STAB options.
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
then Gen 4 and 5 happened, and it's a menaceYes. The lv.55 with subpar mons would be quite enough. It is the highest evo level in RBY after all.
Besides, DNite fails at the whole "tough" part with most of its coverage moves coming off its much lower SpA and a grand total of zero STAB options.
Something that annoys me, trainer info is horribly spread out on Bulbapedia. If it was nice and set per game so it has the challenge, loss, post, and rematch quotes with the team and icon in one place, that'd be greeeaaat
As it stands, it's unfortunately fractured, and randomly shoved in the Routes area
Coalossal seems to have a habit of butting into patterns and groups that it otherwise should not belong in. Venusaur, Charizard, and Blastoise all have Gmax moves that deal 1/6 damage to all active opponents for four turns... and so does Coalossal. All of the version-exclusive gym leaders in Sword and Shield share their aces with members of the Kanto Elite 4... except for Gordie, who uses Coalossal. I dunno, it's just a small thing that's kinda annoying but it's also a little bit funny.
Plague von Karma
Banned deucer.
Ok so like, I wanna talk about these two. So when a new Pokemon game comes out I typically play it very offhandedly (like anyone else does) just using whatever new sauce looks cool to me. Usually this'll include two early-game Pokemon. I just so happened to pick Grubbin and Crabrawler. Now for anyone familiar with these games, you're probably giggling like a Japanese cartoon schoolgirl right now.
So for those who don't know, you can't evolve these Pokemon for basically the entire game. I have no idea why they are designed like this, nor why Game Freak saw fit to bring back the most ungodly awful evolution method ever devised: location-based shite. Charjabug is a "magnetic field" evolution like Magneton, so you have to be on Blush Mountain or Vast Poni Canyon. Crabrawler needs to be in Mount Lanakila; this is vaguely like Glaceon but not quite as it just has to be on the mountain rather than next to that Ice Rock. Why did they differentiate that again? I scream, for I do not know.
Now I've always disliked location-based evolutions because I swear to god Game Freak just cannot balance them properly. On paper, it seems nice, gating off grinding for evolutions and placing Pokemon that they want you to get at a certain point near an area where they could shine. However, I think the only time they got this shit right was Platinum Nosepass where they just said "You know what? Nobody deserves to suffer with Nosepass" and let you evolve it right away, just like god intended. Now you can definitely say "That's kinda harsh mate, at least stick around for a bit", sure...so do you want the Diamond/Pearl swarm gobshite instead? Thought not. Any other instance of location-based evolution is often a crying failure of human evolution that is either way too quick (Platinum Nosepass but also it's fucking Nosepass) or way too fucking far out in the sticks. And hoo fucking boy do you not see it worse than here.
Anyway!
So where are these locations to evolve Charjabug and Crabrawler, then? Ula'ula Island; in Crabrawler's case, specifically, our equivalent of Victory Fucking Road. It's not Ula'ula Island, it's "Oh my fucking god I can finally evolve the Pokemon that should have evolved and fell off a cliff by now" Island.
So here's the deal. In Grubbin's case, some dude looked at Masuda dead in the eyes, with a straight face, and went "ayup mate so how about we break the uniformity with early-game bugs by having you get stuck with the shitty second stage that normally goes after 3 levels until your entire team is like level 40", and he was like "yooo sound mate that sounds good don't it". Then in Crabrawler's case, that same drunk ass developer in the corner went "yo it would be so funny if we did that again with that new early-game crab yeah?" and Masuda went "sound lad, ship it". Then, on 18th November 2016, those developers were out drinking while I was looking at some cool boxer crab going "yooo it's dudley from third strike innit".
So I'm late into the second island right, and I was like "wait why aren't these evolvin mate" and finally decided to google this shit. 5 minutes of wading through wack ass Reddit posts on Day 2, and I'm like
I have no fucking idea why it's like this. The early-game bug has always been a consistent trope throughout the series, designed to teach the players how evolution works. They're not meant to be anything special, just no-nonsense evolving, stage 1 to 3 real quick, jumps off a bridge or something after a few hours. Crabrawler is meant to be sort of like Geodude, Krabby, or Dwebble, being obtainable via niche overworld interactions, both of which are also reasonably easy to evolve. Something to make you go "ohhh so you can encounter Pokemon like this too" and smile a little bit. So why in god's name are these early-game Pokemon that are utter dogshit after 10 minutes of staying pre-evolved meant to be considered remotely usable? What were they thinking? Aren't these meant to be the Pokemon you keep along with you for a hot minute, sometimes to the endgame, because they're kind of like a second starter or something?
Now, you'll probably come up to me like "oi mate, they're kinda strong if you keep em though, yeah?" nah man, they're not even that great once evolved, especially at that point. Look at these stats 'ere lad.
These Pokemon are pretty damn flawed if you ask me mate. Both of them are slow as shite and while they hit bloody hard their typings aren't exactly the greatest. Vikavolt is admittedly kind of impressive; Levitate is neat and it's got very high BST compared to early-game bugs. However, Crabominable is like an average Pokemon, being behind even Toucannon. Fucking Toucannon! Again, yeah, they come in swinging with those haymakers, but anyone who's been in a fight knows how useful a haymaker is: not very!
By this point in the game you could be chilling with your overpowered lads and that freshly caught Jangmo-o you're going to spend the next hour training because funny dragon. If anyone has gone through the suspicious activity of actually bringing these Pokemon to the endgame from the first few routes, please tell me how painful it was and rate my self care of aborting the mission for a Salandit and Wimpod.
In case you can't tell this has been on my mind ever since Sun and Moon's release and it keeps me up at night. Please send help.
As an amendment, Blush Mountain wasn't made a magnetic location until USUM, so SuMo players couldn't get Vikavolt until Vast Poni Canyon (I was one of those players). Likewise USUM was more generous to Crabominable, as tall grass was added to Mount Lanakila's base so you could evolve Crabrawler upon reaching Tapu Village. Glaceon fans were out of luck however, as the Ice Rock was still inside Mount Lanakila's caves rather than being relocated.
Don't forget the Gen 4 Eeeveelutions in BW2. They're both locked to postgame iirc. It's really uncool. Icy Rock is almost always lategame, and Mossy Rock is also extremely late in XY. Glad that they switched those two to stone evos.
Ok so like, I wanna talk about these two. So when a new Pokemon game comes out I typically play it very offhandedly (like anyone else does) just using whatever new sauce looks cool to me. Usually this'll include two early-game Pokemon. I just so happened to pick Grubbin and Crabrawler. Now for anyone familiar with these games, you're probably giggling like a Japanese cartoon schoolgirl right now.
So for those who don't know, you can't evolve these Pokemon for basically the entire game. I have no idea why they are designed like this, nor why Game Freak saw fit to bring back the most ungodly awful evolution method ever devised: location-based shite. Charjabug is a "magnetic field" evolution like Magneton, so you have to be on Blush Mountain or Vast Poni Canyon. Crabrawler needs to be in Mount Lanakila; this is vaguely like Glaceon but not quite as it just has to be on the mountain rather than next to that Ice Rock. Why did they differentiate that again? I scream, for I do not know.
Now I've always disliked location-based evolutions because I swear to god Game Freak just cannot balance them properly. On paper, it seems nice, gating off grinding for evolutions and placing Pokemon that they want you to get at a certain point near an area where they could shine. However, I think the only time they got this shit right was Platinum Nosepass where they just said "You know what? Nobody deserves to suffer with Nosepass" and let you evolve it right away, just like god intended. Now you can definitely say "That's kinda harsh mate, at least stick around for a bit", sure...so do you want the Diamond/Pearl swarm gobshite instead? Thought not. Any other instance of location-based evolution is often a crying failure of human evolution that is either way too quick (Platinum Nosepass but also it's fucking Nosepass) or way too fucking far out in the sticks. And hoo fucking boy do you not see it worse than here.
Anyway!
So where are these locations to evolve Charjabug and Crabrawler, then? Ula'ula Island; in Crabrawler's case, specifically, our equivalent of Victory Fucking Road. It's not Ula'ula Island, it's "Oh my fucking god I can finally evolve the Pokemon that should have evolved and fell off a cliff by now" Island.
So here's the deal. In Grubbin's case, some dude looked at Masuda dead in the eyes, with a straight face, and went "ayup mate so how about we break the uniformity with early-game bugs by having you get stuck with the shitty second stage that normally goes after 3 levels until your entire team is like level 40", and he was like "yooo sound mate that sounds good don't it". Then in Crabrawler's case, that same drunk ass developer in the corner went "yo it would be so funny if we did that again with that new early-game crab yeah?" and Masuda went "sound lad, ship it". Then, on 18th November 2016, those developers were out drinking while I was looking at some cool boxer crab going "yooo it's dudley from third strike innit".
So I'm late into the second island right, and I was like "wait why aren't these evolvin mate" and finally decided to google this shit. 5 minutes of wading through wack ass Reddit posts on Day 2, and I'm like
I have no fucking idea why it's like this. The early-game bug has always been a consistent trope throughout the series, designed to teach the players how evolution works. They're not meant to be anything special, just no-nonsense evolving, stage 1 to 3 real quick, jumps off a bridge or something after a few hours. Crabrawler is meant to be sort of like Geodude, Krabby, or Dwebble, being obtainable via niche overworld interactions, both of which are also reasonably easy to evolve. Something to make you go "ohhh so you can encounter Pokemon like this too" and smile a little bit. So why in god's name are these early-game Pokemon that are utter dogshit after 10 minutes of staying pre-evolved meant to be considered remotely usable? What were they thinking? Aren't these meant to be the Pokemon you keep along with you for a hot minute, sometimes to the endgame, because they're kind of like a second starter or something?
Now, you'll probably come up to me like "oi mate, they're kinda strong if you keep em though, yeah?" nah man, they're not even that great once evolved, especially at that point. Look at these stats 'ere lad.
View attachment 366128
View attachment 366129
These Pokemon are pretty damn flawed if you ask me mate. Both of them are slow as shite and while they hit bloody hard their typings aren't exactly the greatest. Vikavolt is admittedly kind of impressive; Levitate is neat and it's got very high BST compared to early-game bugs. However, Crabominable is like an average Pokemon, being behind even Toucannon. Fucking Toucannon! Again, yeah, they come in swinging with those haymakers, but anyone who's been in a fight knows how useful a haymaker is: not very!
By this point in the game you could be chilling with your overpowered lads and that freshly caught Jangmo-o you're going to spend the next hour training because funny dragon. If anyone has gone through the suspicious activity of actually bringing these Pokemon to the endgame from the first few routes, please tell me how painful it was and rate my self care of aborting the mission for a Salandit and Wimpod.
In case you can't tell this has been on my mind ever since Sun and Moon's release and it keeps me up at night. Please send help.
And then Ice Stone is the one Evo stone not available until lategame in SWSH. Every other eeveeloution is available roughly as soon as you can access the wild area, but unless you spam Watts at the Dig Bros, you can't get Glaceon until gym 6. I did an all eeveeloutions run and spent way too long doing the Rotom Rally for the Dig Bros. WHY, gf?
Something that bugs me totally not fav mon bias , of most Gen 1 mons, Psyduck line has been mostly left alone. The only major change was level up moveset FINALLY getting a buff Gen 4, but that's it. No stat buffs (no stats are over 100), no ability change worthwhile (as nice as Cloud 9 is since Gen 3), no real changes
I get it's Matsuda's fav, but c'mon. It's so unremarkable since Gen 5 it needs....something
I get it's Matsuda's fav, but c'mon. It's so unremarkable since Gen 5 it needs....something
Don't forget those poor souls that brought MALE Salandit through the game and wondering why he hasn't evolve yet
Ok so like, I wanna talk about these two. So when a new Pokemon game comes out I typically play it very offhandedly (like anyone else does) just using whatever new sauce looks cool to me. Usually this'll include two early-game Pokemon. I just so happened to pick Grubbin and Crabrawler. Now for anyone familiar with these games, you're probably giggling like a Japanese cartoon schoolgirl right now.
So for those who don't know, you can't evolve these Pokemon for basically the entire game. I have no idea why they are designed like this, nor why Game Freak saw fit to bring back the most ungodly awful evolution method ever devised: location-based shite. Charjabug is a "magnetic field" evolution like Magneton, so you have to be on Blush Mountain or Vast Poni Canyon. Crabrawler needs to be in Mount Lanakila; this is vaguely like Glaceon but not quite as it just has to be on the mountain rather than next to that Ice Rock. Why did they differentiate that again? I scream, for I do not know.
Now I've always disliked location-based evolutions because I swear to god Game Freak just cannot balance them properly. On paper, it seems nice, gating off grinding for evolutions and placing Pokemon that they want you to get at a certain point near an area where they could shine. However, I think the only time they got this shit right was Platinum Nosepass where they just said "You know what? Nobody deserves to suffer with Nosepass" and let you evolve it right away, just like god intended. Now you can definitely say "That's kinda harsh mate, at least stick around for a bit", sure...so do you want the Diamond/Pearl swarm gobshite instead? Thought not. Any other instance of location-based evolution is often a crying failure of human evolution that is either way too quick (Platinum Nosepass but also it's fucking Nosepass) or way too fucking far out in the sticks. And hoo fucking boy do you not see it worse than here.
Anyway!
So where are these locations to evolve Charjabug and Crabrawler, then? Ula'ula Island; in Crabrawler's case, specifically, our equivalent of Victory Fucking Road. It's not Ula'ula Island, it's "Oh my fucking god I can finally evolve the Pokemon that should have evolved and fell off a cliff by now" Island.
So here's the deal. In Grubbin's case, some dude looked at Masuda dead in the eyes, with a straight face, and went "ayup mate so how about we break the uniformity with early-game bugs by having you get stuck with the shitty second stage that normally goes after 3 levels until your entire team is like level 40", and he was like "yooo sound mate that sounds good don't it". Then in Crabrawler's case, that same drunk ass developer in the corner went "yo it would be so funny if we did that again with that new early-game crab yeah?" and Masuda went "sound lad, ship it". Then, on 18th November 2016, those developers were out drinking while I was looking at some cool boxer crab going "yooo it's dudley from third strike innit".
So I'm late into the second island right, and I was like "wait why aren't these evolvin mate" and finally decided to google this shit. 5 minutes of wading through wack ass Reddit posts on Day 2, and I'm like
I have no fucking idea why it's like this. The early-game bug has always been a consistent trope throughout the series, designed to teach the players how evolution works. They're not meant to be anything special, just no-nonsense evolving, stage 1 to 3 real quick, jumps off a bridge or something after a few hours. Crabrawler is meant to be sort of like Geodude, Krabby, or Dwebble, being obtainable via niche overworld interactions, both of which are also reasonably easy to evolve. Something to make you go "ohhh so you can encounter Pokemon like this too" and smile a little bit. So why in god's name are these early-game Pokemon that are utter dogshit after 10 minutes of staying pre-evolved meant to be considered remotely usable? What were they thinking? Aren't these meant to be the Pokemon you keep along with you for a hot minute, sometimes to the endgame, because they're kind of like a second starter or something?
Now, you'll probably come up to me like "oi mate, they're kinda strong if you keep em though, yeah?" nah man, they're not even that great once evolved, especially at that point. Look at these stats 'ere lad.
View attachment 366128
View attachment 366129
These Pokemon are pretty damn flawed if you ask me mate. Both of them are slow as shite and while they hit bloody hard their typings aren't exactly the greatest. Vikavolt is admittedly kind of impressive; Levitate is neat and it's got very high BST compared to early-game bugs. However, Crabominable is like an average Pokemon, being behind even Toucannon. Fucking Toucannon! Again, yeah, they come in swinging with those haymakers, but anyone who's been in a fight knows how useful a haymaker is: not very!
By this point in the game you could be chilling with your overpowered lads and that freshly caught Jangmo-o you're going to spend the next hour training because funny dragon. If anyone has gone through the suspicious activity of actually bringing these Pokemon to the endgame from the first few routes, please tell me how painful it was and rate my self care of aborting the mission for a Salandit and Wimpod.
In case you can't tell this has been on my mind ever since Sun and Moon's release and it keeps me up at night. Please send help.
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You know what? I'm gonna vent a bit about one of my personal favorites.
Why is Surskit a 1% encounter in RS/ORAS? It's Surskit. The little guy isn't gonna break the game open or anything, what with Masquerain's downright embarrassing statline that features a cool base 80 special attack as its highest stat until Gen 7, and its stunningly shallow movepool in its debut generation. Surskit has no present and no future in Generations 3 and 6, and yet it is a 1% encounter. 1%. Is it really so good that it should be locked behind low such odds? I just want to use one of my favorites, even if it's terrible, but I get punished for simply wanting to find one and put it on my team with up to an hour of grinding. I hate that.
Why is Surskit a 1% encounter in RS/ORAS? It's Surskit. The little guy isn't gonna break the game open or anything, what with Masquerain's downright embarrassing statline that features a cool base 80 special attack as its highest stat until Gen 7, and its stunningly shallow movepool in its debut generation. Surskit has no present and no future in Generations 3 and 6, and yet it is a 1% encounter. 1%. Is it really so good that it should be locked behind low such odds? I just want to use one of my favorites, even if it's terrible, but I get punished for simply wanting to find one and put it on my team with up to an hour of grinding. I hate that.
I have no idea what you're talking about
Yung Dramps
awesome gaming
Idk about RSE but in ORAS there are multiple spots you can get Surskit at higher encounter rates via Surfing, notably Route 120 where it's a clean 30%
Surskit & Skitty are both swarm Pokemon, so that's why.
"Why are they swarm Pokemon"
for....flavor? And ............record mixing!!
"Why are there only two swarm Pokemon"
*exaggerated shrugging*
Something I hate to agree....RSE has too much water
Not cuz surfing is visually bleh, but because even if you had all the sea faring water types in Gen 1-3, there isn't enough to make the routes encounters less monogamous
And believe me, I tried
Unrelated, for a region with water as heavy prevalence, it somehow has more fire mon families than DP. WHY DP!? Why are you so bad!?
Not cuz surfing is visually bleh, but because even if you had all the sea faring water types in Gen 1-3, there isn't enough to make the routes encounters less monogamous
And believe me, I tried
Unrelated, for a region with water as heavy prevalence, it somehow has more fire mon families than DP. WHY DP!? Why are you so bad!?
I find the Pokémon chosen to be excluded from the "third" versions oftentimes bugs me. I understand why it's done, to keep the original pair relevant. But in every third version there is a Pokémon missing that I really like. In Yellow it's Electabuzz, in Crystal it's Ampharos, in Emerald it's Medicham, and in Platinum it's Honchkrow. It sucks because these are the "complete" versions yet inevitably there's something missing. Albeit relatively small, but still.
Plague von Karma
Banned deucer.
Man what was I on last night
It's kind of whatever, though, as all this does is make it so that accessing the third island makes it possible, bringing the average evolution level down to like 35 instead of 40-50. I still don't see what psychopath would try using Charjabug or Crabrawler, especially since USUM is actually one of the less forgiving games in this regard.
Yeah, whoever made USUM must have been like "what the fuck" and at least tried to fix it.
It's kind of whatever, though, as all this does is make it so that accessing the third island makes it possible, bringing the average evolution level down to like 35 instead of 40-50. I still don't see what psychopath would try using Charjabug or Crabrawler, especially since USUM is actually one of the less forgiving games in this regard.
After the traumatic experience of realising my ~L28 Crabrawler and Charjabug weren't going to evolve for a good long time, you bet your sweet bippy I checked on Salandit's condition LOL
I uh... buffed Crawbrawler slightly in my hack. And made it and Charjabug stone evos. And buffed their evos as well. And you can buy Eviolites a bit before where you can buy the stones. Really, there's no more location based evos besides Magneton (For balance reasons. Magnezone is still really fucking good. And as mentioned before, you can buy Eviloites to help it keep up in the mean time.). I like to think that I helped here.
Good news then since GameFreaks apparently thought the same, and all the previous "location evos" are stone evolutions in generation 8!
(and then there's galarian yamask...)
That's the point, though. They want to make sure that people that only own the original games of that generation actually have some bargaining chips for trading with people with the upper versions and/or remakes of that generation.
Yamask-G is absolutely ridiculous. The HP requirement is already annoying, but then you also have to pass a specific arch that iirc has nothing indicating it's special.
I even think I tried several times to pass the arch only to get confused as to why it didn't do anything.
And don't get me started on Malamar.