Things that grind your gears!

[Vini310]

But why can't they include all the Pokemon in the games, along with National Dex? Switch is a lot more powerful than 3DS, so what's the problem here?

Gameplay balance.

The more playable characters you have, the harder it is to properly balance them. Pokémon in particular suffer a lot because of it, with many Pokémon having obvious oversights in their movepools or stats (e.g. Cyrogonal can use Attract despite being genderless). By rotatint the roster, it's possible to fix that, since the Pokémon that DO appear in the game are very likely to have their movepools and stats fixed.

That's exactly what other Mon franchises do, and just to mention two examples:
1) Medarot 2 (GB) has 150 Medarots, it's remake, Medarot Ni CORE (GBA) only has 120.
2) Yo-kai Watch 4 (Switch/PS4) only has 213 Yo-kai, while Yo-kai Watch 1 (3DS/Switch/Mobile) has 245 Yo-kai. And keep in mind that in day 1, there were only around 110-120 Yo-kai in 4, the game that had to be delayed multiple times even.

 

[Orphalesion]

Gameplay balance.

The more playable characters you have, the harder it is to properly balance them. Pokémon in particular suffer a lot because of it, with many Pokémon having obvious oversights in their movepools or stats (e.g. Cyrogonal can use Attract despite being genderless). By rotatint the roster, it's possible to fix that, since the Pokémon that DO appear in the game are very likely to have their movepools and stats fixed.

But Pokemon never was balanced from day one you had your Pokemon like Seaking and your Pokemon like Mewtwo. And I don't see it suddenly becoming balanced just because they cut Pokemon from each game.

 

[Vini310]

But Pokemon never was balanced from day one you had your Pokemon like Seaking and your Pokemon like Mewtwo. And I don't see it suddenly becoming balanced just because they cut Pokemon from each game.

Because simply cutting Pokémon isn't enough.
They need to analyze each Pokémon's individual stats and movepools to see what's wrong:
- Does it learns moves it's not supposed to?
- Doesn't learn moves it should learn?
- Does the Pokémon's movepool fit its stats (i.e. a physical Pokémon shouldn't learn more special moves than physical)?
Among other things.

 

[Requiem Aeternam]

You can’t buy Dive Balls at any of the Marts in BDSP. They’re not even special balls like the Apricorn ones so I don’t see why they aren’t buyable. Makes no sense to me.

 

[TheWanderingMist]

But why can't they include all the Pokemon in the games, along with National Dex? Switch is a lot more powerful than 3DS, so what's the problem here?

Do you even remember how laggy SM and USM could get on the 3DS? Not to mention Pokemon's sheer number of unique models far outscores any other game. Just because something can be done doesn't make it a good idea.

 

[Sceptile Leaf Blade]

How is lag related to the number of mons in the game? It doesn't load them all at once. Also new 3DS ran Ultra Sun just fine, only slow in connecting to the internet

 

[WalesNote]

Trying to catch something, but every move against the pokémon is a K.O.
But then critical capture works, so I'm fine.

 

[Pokefan_1987]

Trying to catch something, but every move against the pokémon is a K.O.
But then critical capture works, so I'm fine.

Yes sometimes i'm overleveled or don't have a pokemon with thunderwave or low powered moves to catch something and have to chuck balls at wild pokemon instead of KO-ing them.

You can’t buy Dive Balls at any of the Marts in BDSP. They’re not even special balls like the Apricorn ones so I don’t see why they aren’t buyable. Makes no sense to me.

Yes they're just like random thing you get from minor npc. Same happened to how i suddenly had dusk balls in BDSP that i had no idea who gave them to me but dusk balls helped me with a few catches in Grand Underground.

 

[Orphalesion]

Because simply cutting Pokémon isn't enough.
They need to analyze each Pokémon's individual stats and movepools to see what's wrong:
- Does it learns moves it's not supposed to?
- Doesn't learn moves it should learn?
- Does the Pokémon's movepool fit its stats (i.e. a physical Pokémon shouldn't learn more special moves than physical)?
Among other things.

But what I'm saying is that even with all that, Pokemon will never be "balanced". No matter what you do to Seaking, it will never be on the same page as Mewtwo.

 

[Ophie]

Gameplay balance.

The more playable characters you have, the harder it is to properly balance them. Pokémon in particular suffer a lot because of it, with many Pokémon having obvious oversights in their movepools or stats (e.g. Cyrogonal can use Attract despite being genderless). By rotatint the roster, it's possible to fix that, since the Pokémon that DO appear in the game are very likely to have their movepools and stats fixed.

That's exactly what other Mon franchises do, and just to mention two examples:
1) Medarot 2 (GB) has 150 Medarots, it's remake, Medarot Ni CORE (GBA) only has 120.
2) Yo-kai Watch 4 (Switch/PS4) only has 213 Yo-kai, while Yo-kai Watch 1 (3DS/Switch/Mobile) has 245 Yo-kai. And keep in mind that in day 1, there were only around 110-120 Yo-kai in 4, the game that had to be delayed multiple times even.

No, the reason is time. Pokémon games come out on an annual schedule, with a new game coming out around the holiday season every year, or in the case of 2020, multiple DLC expansions.

There are well over 1,000 Pokémon designs accounting for every different form. You'll need a different model for each of these different forms, whether it be the 28 variants of Unown, Eiscue with and without its Ice Face, the different Furfrou trims, etc. Each of these takes time to make, and more importantly, each of these takes time to test to make sure they look okay; Sword and Shield in particular use Dynamax, which enlarges a Pokémon's 3-D model, and low-poly flaws REALLY stand out when the model is enlarged. Each of them also needs time to animate in different ways (contact move, non-contact move, introduction, fainting, eating, walking, running, being happy).

Mechanically, there are numerous edge cases as well. For instance, Diglett, Dugtrio, Sandygast, Palossand, and Gigantamax Gengar are anchored to or embedded within the floor, meaning moves, abilities, and other mechanics involving lifting the Pokémon off the floor won't work, which has to be determined on a case-by-case basis. Mawile has its back facing its opponents but is turned to face the audience in Pokémon Contests of varying types; should Turtonator be usable in contests, this would happen too. If Neutralizing Gas is in effect and Golisopod's HP is below half, Emergency Exit wouldn't trigger, but if the Pokémon with Neutralizing Gas is removed from play, when does the switch-out occur? (The answer is immediately after the Pokémon with Neutralizing Gas goes away.) Can Trace copy Neutralizing Gas? (No, it cannot.) Do Abilities that reduce physical damage, like Fluffy and Fur Coat, increase the power of Body Press? (No, they do not.) Does activation of a Kee Berry increase the power of Body Press? (Yes, it does.) If you use Cherrim in a double battle and its partner is holding a Utility Umbrella, does that partner still get the Attack and Sp. Defense boost from Flower Gift? (Yes, it does.)

There are hundreds, if not thousands more cases like these, and new ones come up every generation while older ones are sometimes revised if a problem comes up. (A notable one is the decrease of Confusion from 1/2 to 1/3 chance of hurting oneself due to the rise of Swagger followed by Foul Play, a combination that the developers probably didn't account for at the time. Another one is the havoc Smeargle unleashed at VGCs because it can learn Dark Void from Darkrai, which led to a severe nerf in Dark Void.) The last thing they want to see happen is someone crashing, softlocking, or otherwise rendering unplayable the game because they were looking for new strategies (which has happened in the past involving using Gravity when Sky Drop was in effect).

Game Freak BARELY got every Pokémon in to Pokémon Sun and Moon; there were programmers literally working 24/7 up to their scheduled end of production fitting Pokémon into the games that weren't previously there. They were actually ready to announce that the Alola games won't have all of the Pokémon until this occurred. If they made it in the nick of time for Generation VII, they certainly couldn't do it for Generation VIII, as there are more Pokémon and on a brand new system they needed to understand first.

 

[Ignition]

Really enjoying BDSP rn but the amount of glitches and other omissions is annoying. I’m not even “directing” this towards ILCA or even GF but rather TPC for wanting Pokémon games out on such a strict deadline. Pokémon feeling rushed is far from a new criticism but I feel like this is too much on an already unfortunate circumstance

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

Really enjoying BDSP rn but the amount of glitches and other omissions is annoying. I’m not even “directing” this towards ILCA or even GF but rather TPC for wanting Pokémon games out on such a strict deadline. Pokémon feeling rushed is far from a new criticism but I feel like this is too much on an already unfortunate circumstance

Everyone keeps talking about glitches but I haven’t found any beyond the invisible Riley glitch. I don’t think that BDSP are nearly as glitchy as RB were as GF could have taken the time to iron out more of the bugs in those games before their international releases. Remember that Nintendo used release games months after being released in Japan and during that time improved the games and dealt with glitches. The glitch to get to where the Mythicals were in DP were patched out by the time they came to the West.

 

[Sceptile Leaf Blade]

Being less glitchy than Red and Blue is a very low bar, I think most people set the bar quite a bit higher.

 

[Ignition]

Everyone keeps talking about glitches but I haven’t found any beyond the invisible Riley glitch. I don’t think that BDSP are nearly as glitchy as RB were as GF could have taken the time to iron out more of the bugs in those games before their international releases. Remember that Nintendo used release games months after being released in Japan and during that time improved the games and dealt with glitches. The glitch to get to where the Mythicals were in DP were patched out by the time they came to the West.

There’s a Twitter thread that has several glitches recoded some which can softlock you and a lot of which can easily happen to the average player. BDSP is not as glitchy as the original games (I never implied that) but I don’t think that such a given should be praised. Things like glitches should be ironed out and although I can a slight pass due to this being ILCA’s first time developing for the franchise, TPC/Nintendo should have been aware of the state of the game and should give them more time.

 

[masdog]

But why can't they include all the Pokemon in the games, along with National Dex? Switch is a lot more powerful than 3DS, so what's the problem here?

There are well over 1,000 Pokémon designs accounting for every different form. You'll need a different model for each of these different forms, whether it be the 28 variants of Unown, Eiscue with and without its Ice Face, the different Furfrou trims, etc. Each of these takes time to make, and more importantly, each of these takes time to test to make sure they look okay; Sword and Shield in particular use Dynamax, which enlarges a Pokémon's 3-D model, and low-poly flaws REALLY stand out when the model is enlarged. Each of them also needs time to animate in different ways (contact move, non-contact move, introduction, fainting, eating, walking, running, being happy).

I think @Ophie covered most of this, but I wanted to add one point that I think many people overlook.

The Switch is Nintendo’s first HD-capable platform, and it either displays content in 720P in handheld mode or 1080P in docked mode. The 2DS XL was 800x240, so there was a significant display resolution bump between generations. This means that all of visual assets needed to be checked and upgraded to support higher resolution displays.

 

[WishIhadaManafi5]

There’s a Twitter thread that has several glitches recoded some which can softlock you and a lot of which can easily happen to the average player. BDSP is not as glitchy as the original games (I never implied that) but I don’t think that such a given should be praised. Things like glitches should be ironed out and although I can a slight pass due to this being ILCA’s first time developing for the franchise, TPC/Nintendo should have been aware of the state of the game and should give them more time.

This. Exactly. There's glitches in the game that can softlock it and that's not good, like you mentioned. I hope that any glitches like the softlock ones get patched. Played Lufia The Ruins of Lore and it's glitchy... and it has a very bad softlock bug for example. Tried numerous ways to try to do so, but nothing worked. And it was before companies patched their games, so I was out of luck.

 

[Yveltal91057]

People creating pointless threads on the forums which is annoying in its own special way.

 

[Pokefan_1987]

Finding too many Gyarados's and Octillery's when fishing for Luvdisc scales. Luvdisc only spawns on top of the waterfall outsode the Pokemon League in BDSP.

The reason, level 60 starters in BDSP don't always have ideal movesets, and when luvdisc didn't have a scale (i'm using banette with frisk and thief)

 

[janejane6178]

This. Exactly. There's glitches in the game that can softlock it and that's not good, like you mentioned. I hope that any glitches like the softlock ones get patched. Played Lufia The Ruins of Lore and it's glitchy... and it has a very bad softlock bug for example. Tried numerous ways to try to do so, but nothing worked. And it was before companies patched their games, so I was out of luck.

Maybe they will release a 2nd patch?

 

[Auraninja]

There’s a Twitter thread that has several glitches recoded some which can softlock you and a lot of which can easily happen to the average player. BDSP is not as glitchy as the original games (I never implied that) but I don’t think that such a given should be praised. Things like glitches should be ironed out and although I can a slight pass due to this being ILCA’s first time developing for the franchise, TPC/Nintendo should have been aware of the state of the game and should give them more time.

Technically, this isn't ILCA's first time with the franchise, as they basically developed Home, but I'll give you that this was the first time they worked on Pokemon on this scale. What I want to dissect more though is how much time ILCA was or should have been given. Personally, I think the pandemic might have hit them hard. We live in such a time that upsets from the pandemic can happen. Now, maybe the games should have been delayed as to give them a bit more time to iron out programming flaws. I do think whomever was in charge of seeing the game through release should have considered that. Other than that, I haven't experienced too many glitches, and some of the more bizarre glitches seem to be either rare or purposely perpetrated. That all said, I do believe they should patch the game eventually, and that is the only kind of option they have in regards to the games moving forward.

This. Exactly. There's glitches in the game that can softlock it and that's not good, like you mentioned. I hope that any glitches like the softlock ones get patched. Played Lufia The Ruins of Lore and it's glitchy... and it has a very bad softlock bug for example. Tried numerous ways to try to do so, but nothing worked. And it was before companies patched their games, so I was out of luck.

The only softlock I heard about extensively was the Snowpoint Gym puzzle softlock, and while that isn't good, it can be circumvented by that backup save feature, which really lends itself well to these games.