Unnatural aspects in Pokemon games, and how you'd change them.

[Lanstar]

While Pokemon may be a fantasy, there are areas that might feel very awkward, to a point of being nonsensical - even in fantasies.

One example of this: In battles against the ingame AI, you are somehow, some way notified about what the next Pokemon your opponent will send out after you knock out one of theirs. Yes, it make battling easier... But what trainer in their right mind would "announce" the name of a Pokemon long before sending it out like that?

"Hey! I'm about to send my Charizard out! Want to prepare yourself?"

Really... Would you actually say this in a battle? I'd laugh hysterically if someone said that during an important battle - And laugh even more if they faked it and sent a different Pokemon instead!

My solution... Well, defaulting to double battles for ingame trainers could easily solve the problem, as they have never announced Pokemon that way at all in doubles - not even in Colloseum. If that doesn't prove popular, they could also just not pre-announce the Pokemon - but to keep the difficulty still fairly low, allow the player to return their pokemon, and make both players send out their Pokemon at the same time, not knowing each other's choices. Maybe a little luck based, though.

Feel free to suggest other unnatural aspects you might take issue with, and you'd fix them.

 

[Kallyle]

One example of this: In battles against the ingame AI, you are somehow, some way notified about what the next Pokemon your opponent will send out after you knock out one of theirs. Yes, it make battling easier... But what trainer in their right mind would "announce" the name of a Pokemon long before sending it out like that?

"Hey! I'm about to send my Charizard out! Want to prepare yourself?"

Really... Would you actually say this in a battle? I'd laugh hysterically if someone said that during an important battle - And laugh even more if they faked it and sent a different Pokemon instead!

Yeah, that does seem a bit rediculous if you think about it from an in-universe standpoint rather than it solely being a game mechanic. I would like to see an example of someone sending out a different Pokémon than what was told to the player though, especially if we go up against a member of the evil team that has more than one Pokémon they could send out at the time.

 

[Esserise]

Is that not why Set mode exists?

 

[Lanstar]

Is that not why Set mode exists?

True, but my ideas are a replacement to shift mode in itself - A change of defaults.

I would like to see an example of someone sending out a different Pokémon than what was told to the player though, especially if we go up against a member of the evil team that has more than one Pokémon they could send out at the time.

Wow... Now that would be one of the biggest trolls Game Freak could ever do.

 

[RK9]

I would actually want evil teams to send out more than 1 Pokémon at a time. I find it hard to believe that teams that don't abide to the law in various ways would abide by the 'Pokémon Trainer Guidelines'.

 

[Lanstar]

I would actually want evil teams to send out more than 1 Pokémon at a time. I find it hard to believe that teams that don't abide to the law in various ways would abide by the 'Pokémon Trainer Guidelines'.

While there hasn't been case of one villain just sending out a illegal amount of Pokemon at once, In ORAS there were cases of 5 grunts sending out five Pokemon at once in the form of a horde battle. Other than framerate limitations of the 3ds, I don't know why they never brought something similar back - It was so hilarious.

 

[Puddle]

Egg groups seem very unnatural to me. If I had a chance to overhaul the breeding system, I'd scrap egg groups and make it so that Pokemon can only breed with other members of their evolution family (including regional forms and regional evolutions - so Persian could still breed with Perrserker).

The only exceptions to this would be the Nidoran family, Tauros/Miltank, and Volbeat/Illumise, which would still be able to breed with one another. Nidorina and Nidoqueen would be able to breed (why on Earth can't they at the moment?), and eggs produced by Miltank would be able to hatch into either a Tauros or another Miltank.

Ditto's ability to breed with any Pokemon seems a bit unnatural too (surely a Ditto can only Transform into an exact duplicate of its partner, not an opposite-gender version?), but I'd probably keep this unchanged as it's something I can suspend my disbelief in, and it's handy for getting duplicates of rare Pokemon.

All Pokemon, even mammals, hatching from eggs is another oddity that doesn't bother me too much. It would make things unnecessarily complicated if some Pokemon had to be hatched, but not others.

 

[Kallyle]

I just thought of something else in Pokémon that doesn’t feel quite right, and it’s actually a thing that’s baffled me for a while: the fact that ‘magic’ is still lumped in with the Psychic-type instead of taking advantage of the Fairy-type. By magic, I don’t mean stage magic which is just trickery and optical illusions, because that’s something Psychic-types take advantage of with actual powers behind them. The kind of magic I’m referring to is fantasy magic involving wizardry and witchcraft, casting spells, and even general sorcery.

Back then it made sense because Psychic-type was the closest analogue to magical powers, but we have the Fairy-type now. However, magic in general continues to be conflated with psychic powers with signature moves like Hatterene’s Magic Powder and Galarian Slowking’s Eerie Spell. Even Delphox back in Generation 6 was classified as Psychic-type with an obvious magic theme.

To make things even weirder, Fairy-type is still considered more magical in-universe at the same time as spell-casting moves getting lumped into the Psychic-type. Is there some reason that magical attacks aren’t considered Fairy-type territory that I’m not aware of? If so, then why call the new type Fairy-type in the first place if magic is supposed to be covered under the Psychic-type?

I just want to know why magical attacks seem to favor the Psychic-type rather than the Fairy-type. Is this a cultural difference between Western ideals and the Japanese developers? I’d like to know what’s up with that.

 

[Norzan]

I would actually want evil teams to send out more than 1 Pokémon at a time. I find it hard to believe that teams that don't abide to the law in various ways would abide by the 'Pokémon Trainer Guidelines'.

It would be a breath of fresh air if evil teams would do dirty tricks during combat, like decided that it's their turn twice in a row or something. It would make them more threatning, it would bring much needed gameplay variety, and make the evil team actually unique from the standard trainer battle.

 

[RK9]

It would be a breath of fresh air if villains pokemon would do dirty tricks during combat, like decided that it's their turn twice in a row or something. It would make them more threatning, it would bring much needed gameplay variety, and make the evil team actually unique from the standard trainer battle.

Not to mention you could do lots of things with it in terms of mentality, like a commander who's actually a honorable and prideful battler. Because he joins an evil organization doesn't mean he has to use or approve of dirty tricks forced upon them from a higher authority within the organization.

 

[Epic Spheal]

Boss battles having less than 6 Pokemon.

Now I think realistically most people in the Pokemon world who aren't dedicated to being career trainers wouldn't have a full team of six (barring exceptions like breeders). So I'm not too pressed about random route trainers not having 6 (although I do think as you progress through a game more 6 Pokemon teams should be available for Ace/Veteran/Rising Star trainer classes and any NPCs on Victory Road or post-game routes)

However the lack of full team of 6 on many major boss fights isn't realistic. I think definitely by the Post-game all matches should be 6 on 6 in non battle-tower clones. But honestly I think with so many people usually having 6 Pokemon before the first couple of gyms, the first gym leaders should be programmed to have 6 Pokemon too. Either that or if they're going to only have 3-4, limit the player to bringing only 3 to 4. Shouldn't be a reason in a fair fight against a gym leader they have 3 Pokemon and you can use 6 (which often includes cannon fodder to heal up your party in case one of the opponent's Pokemon happens to get a few good hits in)

 

[CynthiaLover]

Trade evolutions are something I find totally strange. Like, how does that work, exactly? How does trading a Mon like Machoke trigger its evolution into Machamp? The same goes for Trade + Held Item evolutions like Kingdra. I mean, I get that the whole concept of trading is part of the franchise, but why include something as tedious as trade evolutions? I don't understand how that works in-series. Especially since you can sometimes find trade evolution Mons like Steelix in the wild. How can a Mon that evolves via trade (and sometimes needing an item attached to it) also be found in the wild? That doesn't make any sense to me. I'd rework most trade evolutions to have different conditions, like have Kadabra evolve via Level Up at, say, 36, or Kingdra evolve by leveling up while holding the Dragon Scale, or even just use the Dragon Scale like a Stone. That would heavily simplify things and make the need for trading a Mon in order to evolve it completely unnecessary.

I get that the franchise is designed to encourage players to interact with other players/friends to complete the Dex, but even so trade evolutions seem very unnecessary and overly annoying, especially if you have limited access to other players in order to perform a trade. And, as I said before, you can find various Mons that evolve via trade in the wild, so it makes you wonder how they can evolve when they're wild while you have to perform a trade to get the same Mon. Trade evolutions are just not logical and don't make any sense in the grand scheme of things other than creating an annoying aspect for players who don't always have access to another player. Granted, the fact that starting with the DS era the whole trade evolution thing has gotten easier, as wifi and the internet exist, thus you can gain better access to the process, but it still feels rather unnecessarily complicated to get certain Mons. So, yeah, I don't understand how trade evolutions work and they should be scrapped for a more simplified version like standard Level Up or Stone-like processes.

 

[Chip Clip]

Speaking of evolutions, how you have to physically turn your console upside to evolve Inkay into Malamar. Like this is a ridiculous gimmick irl and in universe it doesn't even make sense. Are you supposed to just hold your Inkay upside time to time and hope it evolves??

 

[CynthiaLover]

Speaking of evolutions, how you have to physically turn your console upside to evolve Inkay into Malamar. Like this is a ridiculous gimmick irl and in universe it doesn't even make sense. Are you supposed to just hold your Inkay upside time to time and hope it evolves??

That was actually addressed in the XY Adventures manga. And... that's exactly what happened. The male Team Flare scientist (forgot his name) demonstrated how Inkay evolves into Malamar... by holding it and turning it upside-down, which, in fact, triggered its evolution. Strange, I know, but that's how it was demonstrated in-series. So... yeah, that's probably how it works in-series, as Adventures tends to keep it's mechanics close to "reality" in the Poke-world (early on, it was considered what the Poke-world was really like to the creator, which was a lot more cut-throat and savage (compare RBY chapters to later ones like DP), though that mentality died down around the RS chapters and it became a bit more "tame"). But, back to Inkay, it seems that holding it upside-down at a certain point will, in fact, trigger its evolution in-series.

 

[Stellarquake]

Speaking of evolutions, how you have to physically turn your console upside to evolve Inkay into Malamar. Like this is a ridiculous gimmick irl and in universe it doesn't even make sense. Are you supposed to just hold your Inkay upside time to time and hope it evolves??

Grr I hate that feature because there was even a few times when I did meet all the requirements for Inkay to evolve and flipped the 3DS over and it still didn't evolve.