(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

[R_N]

When I, a layman, think of clay I wind up thinking of all the horrible clay-like dirt that's stupid hard when dry but gets all gunky and over everything when wet, that you then have to basically get wet again to wash off. After that I think of pottery classes where you use wet clay to mold it.

I suspect both of those go into consideration when having clay stuff be weak to water. I also echo a clay Pokemon should get well-baked body at one point.


Also, as a layman, I think of how sand is just constantly sifting through your hands and stuff, but wet sand is great for making sand castles and entombing people. It might be brittle and still easy to break apart but when you're now able to treat it like a solid and are going for the vibe, makes sense to me.

Was thinking about the TCG recently, and I think it's a shame that the Boss's Orders cards only got 4 renditions: Giovanni, Cyrus, Ghetsis & Lysandre.
Lysandre wasn't even the last one of them, it was Ghetsis.

You'd think maybe it was because they wanted to let it rotate out, but they gave it a promo to reset legality on it...and it was the SV era one again so it was just Ghetsis.

Just seems like a lost opportunity, it'd be a fun excuse to give the various remaining leaders another round of full arts and maybe SIRs.

Still baffled that the "generations" promo decks decided the one to pair alongside Professor's Research (the only "exclusion" would be Sonia but that's fair enough I think) was a new card for... the Black Belts. Would have been the perfect time!

Thank you both Starter Deck 100 andthe decision to have a bunch of Z-A themed cards in reprint sets (or "set", as SD100 is) since you couldn't align a proper one.

Maybe there'll even be more Boss's Orders in the other Starter Decks, that'd be fun.

 

[MoonlightRose]

Pointless version differences. Version differences in general, really, but its only really the pointless ones - Like Route 48 Farfetched being level 25 in Heartgold but level 24 in Soulsilver - That count as a little thing that annoys me.

 

[Krockodile]

I dunno whether this is a common annoyance since I started playing Pokemon in Gen 6, but I found it annoying on how the early gens (Gen 1-4) used cheesy strats in their boss battles:

• Trying to take on Clair's Kingdra, a mon that has an excellent dual typing and good BST? She has smokescreen to lower your accuracy.
• Juan's Kingdra makes it worse by instead increasing its evasiveness with Double Team. It doesn't help that even if you can land good hits against Juan, it can use Rest to restore its health and a Chesto Berry to wake itself up, wasting your progress on taking it down.
• Koga's (GSC & HGSS) Crobat has Double Team, as well in Pokemon Stadium 2, every member of his mon having Double Team in its moveset.
• Whitney's Miltank knowing Attract, which will incapacitate your mons combined with the flinch-chance Stomp. It would be bearable if there was a berry that can remove the Infatuation Status, but there isn't. Granted, you could use the traded female Machop to no longer be infatuated against Miltank, but it still can be annoying to find another reliable strat on finding a female mon that handles whitney reliably.

I think a big "cheese" is how they gave Garchomp Sand Veil as its main ability. Sure GF, give the Psuedo-Legendary with a Solid Offensive Typing with an ability that boost its evasiveness in the same generation as Hippowdon, which can set up Sandstorms with Sand Stream.

Remember pre-gen 6 weather was permanent, so the only way to get rid of Sandstorm was the Cloud Nine ability or set your own weather via Sun, Rain or Hail.

 

[Eeveeto]

^ All of the above post is cool and based.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

I dunno whether this is a common annoyance since I started playing Pokemon in Gen 6, but I found it annoying on how the early gens (Gen 1-4) used cheesy strats in their boss battles:

Genuine question: are bosses not meant to use strategies? (I think whether they're "cheesy" is up to interpretation because they're all fairly standard and legitimate techniques)

Not to do the whole "it's a skill issue" line but if a boss is difficult, that should incentivise you to find ways to play around it.

• Trying to take on Clair's Kingdra, a mon that has an excellent dual typing and good BST? She has smokescreen to lower your accuracy.

I mean... yeah. All four of her Pokemon also have multiple ways to paralyse you. Trying to prevent your foe from making a move is... very much a normal approach in battling

• Juan's Kingdra makes it worse by instead increasing its evasiveness with Double Team. It doesn't help that even if you can land good hits against Juan, it can use Rest to restore its health and a Chesto Berry to wake itself up, wasting your progress on taking it down.

That's a fairly standard item combination and of the level of sophistication I would expect from the game's final gym leader. NPCs using move/item combinations is in general a very good thing as it not only makes battles more challenging but also clues in the player about the value of those tactics.

It's also worth pointing out this is in Emerald which in general ups the ante from RS in terms of gym difficulty, Tate&Liza are notoriously much more difficult in Emerald and none of the RS gym leaders even hold an item from my recollection.

• Koga's (GSC & HGSS) Crobat has Double Team, as well in Pokemon Stadium 2, every member of his mon having Double Team in its moveset.

I mean Koga's whole thing is about battling in a passive way instead of a direct one. Evasion gets a bad rap because it's, well, annoying, but speaking for myself, as a younger player evasion moves emphasised the value of moves like Swift.

• Whitney's Miltank knowing Attract, which will incapacitate your mons combined with the flinch-chance Stomp. It would be bearable if there was a berry that can remove the Infatuation Status, but there isn't. Granted, you could use the traded female Machop to no longer be infatuated against Miltank, but it still can be annoying to find another reliable strat on finding a female mon that handles whitney reliably.

You can also just switch, or use a female Gastly, or a female Onix. I'm aware I'm going against popular opinion on this one but I've never really found Whitney that difficult and I'm not sure why.

I think a big "cheese" is how they gave Garchomp Sand Veil as its main ability. Sure GF, give the Psuedo-Legendary with a Solid Offensive Typing with an ability that boost its evasiveness in the same generation as Hippowdon, which can set up Sandstorms with Sand Stream.

Remember pre-gen 6 weather was permanent, so the only way to get rid of Sandstorm was the Cloud Nine ability or set your own weather via Sun, Rain or Hail.

Yeah, we wouldn't want the strongest Pokemon to be any good, that'd be terrible!

Joking aside, Sand Veil isn't that busted of an ability. If you're using 100% or even 90% accurate moves a 20% drop isn't the end of the world. And Garchomp was also introduced in the same generation as Abomasnow, Weavile, Froslass, Ice Shard, Snow Cloak, Choice Scarf... I'm not denying weather play was a bit busted in Gen IV though and it definitely took Game Freak a bit of fine-tuning until they got it right.

Anyway, back on Gym Leader strategies, I definitely appreciate when there's a bit of thought to their tactics even if it's annoying or challenging to face. I remember B2W2 Challenge Mode being good on this front as it allowed more Pokemon to hold items and have better movesets.

That said sometimes less can be more. In Gen II Pryce uses Icy Wind to drop the foe's speed in conjunction with Headbutt to be able to flinch them; Grant does a similar thing in XY with his Tyrunt and Amaura both knowing Rock Tomb (and his Amaura also having Thunder Wave) and then using Bite and Stomp. Simple but effective and occasionally devastating.

 

[pika pal]

Calling Evasion strategies "standard," "Legitimate," or "difficult" even in an in-game context is asinine even facetiously. Any boss that implements these strategies, however (In)effectively is an admission by the game designers that they made this battle 10 minutes before clocking out for the day.

Here's the simple reason: Pokemon's system gives you such a limited option pool to lock into a given battle. In another Monster/Creature party RPG like Dragon Quest (Monsters) or Shin Megami Tensei, or hell in most RPG's in general, your characters will typically be able to carry more skills individually than your Pokemon party usually fits across 24 move slots, so niche options infringe significantly less on your playability to carry around. In something like SMT's infamous Matador fight, the game is already inherently designed around an expectation you will need to use a wide variety of buffs and utility moves because you are able to carry them AT ALL TIMES. I am aware these games are aiming at a higher age demographic, but if we're going with the "Pokemon targets kids who don't want to think while collecting creatures" argument, then that assumed level of intelligence also entails the kids aren't going to think about countermeasures to Evasion, they'll just keep trying until they get the lucky run and learn nothing, BECAUSE this strategy is the kind that this can be done with compared to "Hmm, Whitney's Miltank hurts, maybe I need something that resists Rollout in particular or get strong enough to take the hits."

For an equivalent of what Pokemon is asking of you, imagine if there is a single boss in a Final Fantasy game that is weak to Wind Element and resists everything else; this boss is tanky but not too threatening on the damage front such that it will war-of-attrition you if the battle drags out. Now imagine if to carry a Wind element move, your White Mage (the class that typically learns the Aero spells) had to forgo using the more generally-applied spells like Cure, Haste, Protect, or Slow, unless you took a sidequest to re-learn/swap the moves back in, instead of simply being able to learn and carry the skillset for when the battle happens.

"You can just try again after you know the strategy, especially with the move relearning in Gen 8 onward"
Okay, so this fight is designed for me to either have advanced knowledge or to risk wasting an attempt on an increasingly-less-favorable die roll for a strategy I would not carry a countermeasure for 90% of the time otherwise. Thanks for respecting my playtime, whether I'm a middle schooler with 90 minutes of game time in between homework/after school activity or an adult trying to enjoy myself after work/on a weekend.


Here's where I get venomous

Salty, read if you want

I feel the same way about Evasion in main Pokemon as I do about something like Wigglytuff and Bastiodon in Go PvP: there's no strategy, no skill expression, next to no room to learn as a result of the battle, you just won a game of random alignment and wasted your time and/or mine for the sake of a quick dopamine rush on a single tiny battle. If you play this way or think this is a valid strategy to use/design, you contribute nothing to the game by existing, no one should want to play with you this way, and the space will always be lesser for your participation in it with these methods.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

I'm... you know what, possibly responding isn't even the best approach here but fuck it

I'm going to speak immediately: Calling Evasion strategies "standard," "Legitimate," or "difficult" even in an in-game context is asinine even facetiously. Any boss that implements these strategies, however (In)effectively is an admission by the game designers that they made this battle 10 minutes before clocking out for the day.

...alrighty then. Like, I don't know what to tell you here. It is legitimate. It's a technique the game designers created and put into the game. Ergo, it is a legitimate one. I did not say it was a strategy I liked or that I'm given to using or even that I particularly approve of anyone else using.

Here's the thing: Pokemon is a game with a virtually unlimited array of strategies, of which evasion is one. And it's true that it's just about the cheapest possible one. That does not change the fact that the whole setup is a game of chance. A mix of skill and chance, ultimately, but then that's true of numerous other luck-based games. There are an array of other techniques in this game based entirely on chance to a far greater degree than evasion/accuracy, and are no less infuriating for it.

Here's the simple reason: Pokemon's system gives you such a limited option pool to lock into a given battle. In another Monster/Creature party RPG like Dragon Quest (Monsters) or Shin Megami Tensei, or hell in most RPG's in general, your characters will typically be able to carry more skills individually than your Pokemon party usually fits across 24 move slots, so niche options infringe significantly less on your playability to carry around. In something like SMT's infamous Matador fight, the game is already inherently designed around an expectation you will need to use a wide variety of buffs and utility moves because you are able to carry them AT ALL TIMES. I am aware these games are aiming at a higher age demographic, but if we're going with the "Pokemon targets kids who don't want to think while collecting creatures" argument, then that assumed level of intelligence also entails the kids aren't going to think about countermeasures to Evasion, they'll just keep trying until they get the lucky run and learn nothing, BECAUSE this strategy is the kind that this can be done with compared to "Hmm, Whitney's Miltank hurts, maybe I need something that resists Rollout in particular or get strong enough to take the hits."

For an equivalent of what Pokemon is asking of you, imagine if there is a single boss in a Final Fantasy game that is weak to Wind Element and resists everything else; this boss is tanky but not too threatening on the damage front such that it will war-of-attrition you if the battle drags out. Now imagine if to carry a Wind element move, your White Mage (the class that typically learns the Aero spells) had to forgo using the more generally-applied spells like Cure, Haste, Protect, or Slow, unless you took a sidequest to re-learn/swap the moves back in, instead of simply being able to learn and carry the skillset for when the battle happens.

I'll address this below:

"You can just try again after you know the strategy, especially with the move relearning in Gen 8 onward"
Okay, so this fight is designed for me to either have advanced knowledge or to risk wasting an attempt on an increasingly-less-favorable die roll for a strategy I would not carry a countermeasure for 90% of the time otherwise. Thanks for respecting my playtime, whether I'm a middle schooler with 90 minutes of game time in between homework/after school activity or an adult trying to enjoy myself after work/on a weekend.

...no? Not quite, anyway. Yes insomuch as the fights are designed for you to have advanced knowledge because when you fight a Gym Leader you know what specialism they have. Hell, there's literally a guy at the entrance who'll tell you their weakness.

But no in that you're not expected to have a specific countermeasure for any given strategy. And that's because basically everything in the games tells you that the most effective way to play is with a balanced, flexible team. You are advised to approach any fight with a balanced team containing an array of different options so that you have an answer(s) for whatever you're fighting. But that's not the same as going in thinking "this boss uses move x, I should have something with ability y to prevent that". If your opponent knows Attract you don't need to have a Pokemon with Oblivious or a Mental Herb or whatever. Sure, if you do it helps and good for you. But it's not like it's impossible to win if you don't have a specific countermeasure to that technique.

And why exactly is having to try again a bad thing? Is your premise that we should expecting to ace everything first time? Because that's absolutely not the sort of game Pokemon is, and it never has been. You're allowed to try again because losing is relatively low-cost, just as you'd respawn if you died in a platforming game; outside of battle facilities in which chaining wins is the entire point, you don't forfeit your progress and have to restart the entire game if you lose a battle.

Here's where I get venomous

Salty, read if you want

I feel the same way about Evasion in main Pokemon as I do about something like Wigglytuff and Bastiodon in Go PvP: there's no strategy, no skill expression, next to no room to learn as a result of the battle, you just won a game of random alignment and wasted your time and/or mine for the sake of a quick dopamine rush on a single tiny battle. If you play this way or think this is a valid strategy to use/design, you contribute nothing to the game by existing, no one should want to play with you this way, and the space will always be lesser for your participation in it with these methods.

I don't play go PvP at all so I have no opinion on this, soz. But much appreciate the sentiment

 

[R_N]

Evasion boosting stuff would be a lot less annoying if there were more options for countering it. Depending on the generation, or the game, the options can be slim and depending on what that option even is you honestly might just be better rolling the dice.

Stuff like Smokescreen is annoying but whatever. It's basically just treating it like you would a status condition: deal with it or switch out. be on the back foot for a bit with an immediate out.



Sitting there, about to hit post, when remembering that oh right there's X Accuracy. I legitimately forgot that's an X Item. It's not even rare you can just buy it. Well sucks for no-item challenges but really wishing I'd remembered to get some whenever I was dealing with evasion jerks like Koga right about now....

 

[Castersvarog]

Evasion boosting stuff would be a lot less annoying if there were more options for countering it. Depending on the generation, or the game, the options can be slim and depending on what that option even is you honestly might just be better rolling the dice.

Stuff like Smokescreen is annoying but whatever. It's basically just treating it like you would a status condition: deal with it or switch out. be on the back foot for a bit with an immediate out.



Sitting there, about to hit post, when remembering that oh right there's X Accuracy. I legitimately forgot that's an X Item. It's not even rare you can just buy it. Well sucks for no-item challenges but really wishing I'd remembered to get some whenever I was dealing with evasion jerks like Koga right about now....

Like if moves like Aerial Ace or it’s contemporaries weren’t just 60 bp you could make a genuinely interesting strategy against evasion instead of using the no-miss move because it’s the easiest but weakest solution possible.
Or heck, even just more ways to reduce evasion would be neat, there’s just Flash for that off the top of my head

 

[Esserise]

Thanks for respecting my playtime, whether I'm a middle schooler with 90 minutes of game time in between homework/after school activity or an adult trying to enjoy myself after work/on a weekend.

My reaction to this is basically: Oh well…?

It’s a video game, you’re probably gonna lose sometimes. You should know that going into it. It’s not so big of a deal that it merits being seen as some kind of slight against the player, even if the reason you lost is a little cheesy. If you lose to a boss Trainer, you just assess why you lost, and then come prepared the second time. That’s a fundamental part of learning the game, and in these games, evasion is a factor that the game does need to teach you about in one way or another.

I’m largely in agreement with peoples’ grievances toward evasion in competitive battling, but in-game I think it’s fair game because not only does the game need to teach you about the basic mechanics, but the instances in which evasion strats are used really aren’t that abundant. And I also just fundamentally don’t believe that the devs should be responsible for catering to the player’s work-life balance.

 

[pika pal]

I'll address this below:



...no? Not quite, anyway. Yes insomuch as the fights are designed for you to have advanced knowledge because when you fight a Gym Leader you know what specialism they have. Hell, there's literally a guy at the entrance who'll tell you their weakness.

But no in that you're not expected to have a specific countermeasure for any given strategy. And that's because basically everything in the games tells you that the most effective way to play is with a balanced, flexible team. You are advised to approach any fight with a balanced team containing an array of different options so that you have an answer(s) for whatever you're fighting. But that's not the same as going in thinking "this boss uses move x, I should have something with ability y to prevent that". If your opponent knows Attract you don't need to have a Pokemon with Oblivious or a Mental Herb or whatever. Sure, if you do it helps and good for you. But it's not like it's impossible to win if you don't have a specific countermeasure to that technique.

And why exactly is having to try again a bad thing? Is your premise that we should expecting to ace everything first time? Because that's absolutely not the sort of game Pokemon is, and it never has been. You're allowed to try again because losing is relatively low-cost, just as you'd respawn if you died in a platforming game; outside of battle facilities in which chaining wins is the entire point, you don't forfeit your progress and have to restart the entire game if you lose a battle.

My reaction to this is basically: Oh well…?

It’s a video game, you’re probably gonna lose sometimes. You should know that going into it. It’s not so big of a deal that it merits being seen as some kind of slight against the player, even if the reason you lost is a little cheesy. If you lose to a boss Trainer, you just assess why you lost, and then come prepared the second time. That’s a fundamental part of learning the game, and in these games, evasion is a factor that the game does need to teach you about in one way or another.

I’m largely in agreement with peoples’ grievances toward evasion in competitive battling, but in-game I think it’s fair game because not only does the game need to teach you about the basic mechanics, but the instances in which evasion strats are used really aren’t that abundant. And I also just fundamentally don’t believe that the devs should be responsible for catering to the player’s work-life balance.

Okay this is just not getting what my point is (I don't assume strawmanning or bad faith, but this is not at all what my sentiment was). My point is NOT "this strategy is one you lose to more often therefore it is bad design"

Knowing a gym's type is not the same category or level of inference as knowing the boss is going to use Evasion moves vs using Weather vs being a Double Battle etc.

And the reason I take umbrage with Evasion as a strategy for, an in-game context, is because it is a shallow strategy. Your ability to win at that point does not come down to reacting to your opponent so much as the random chance favoring you over the opposition. Everyone's familiar with the "unfortunate" crashout over a triple flinch winning a PvP match-up it should not have, but for the in-game experience against CPU, it presents the same problem of "I can pick ideal options for each turn and still be met with identical results to picking outright bad moves." If anything, Esserie's mention of how Evasion and Accuracy strategies are seldom used factors into my point that you so rarely have to deal with the concept that it turns those instances into annoying speed bumps instead of another trick in the bag.

For a regular player, either this doesn't teach anything (besides to hate Accuracy/Evasion strategies as happens in many Pokemon playing circles) or it teaches a bad lesson because the countermeasures it encourages are absolutely sub-optimal in literally any other context. For example:

Like if moves like Aerial Ace or it’s contemporaries weren’t just 60 bp you could make a genuinely interesting strategy against evasion instead of using the no-miss move because it’s the easiest but weakest solution possible.
Or heck, even just more ways to reduce evasion would be neat, there’s just Flash for that off the top of my head

Short of going first and one-shotting any attempted user, playing by the strategy's idea entails kneecapping your damage output (very rarely has a Pokemon game given a sure-hit move at a time when it is on-time for the power curve AND with an evasion-using opponent that it can assist against) or leaving the outcome up to a chance that becomes less and less reasonable the longer it takes to land. The lesson it will most likely enforce is the existing conundrum of Pokemon playthroughs favoring quick KOing before the opponent gets to do anything for their strategy.

This is a mechanic that makes more sense when a game is designed to make accuracy a consistent factor rather than an infrequent speed bump, like if 100% base accuracy was not typical of your "bread and butter" moves (like imagine if Accuracy increased inverse to BP so 90 BP moves were ~80%, vs 70 BP being 100% and 110-120BP were 70%). A lot of competitive dilemmas are almost built around that idea in a way that would translate (i.e. Focus Blast is strong but less accurate, do I click that to gamble on a better outcome or pick a play that advantages me less but also comes with a lesser penalty for the opponent responding "well" to it?). Type Match-ups/Coverage are things even very young children will learn because they are constantly engaging with it, and depending on the game with dungeons/gauntlets you also have PP to weigh as a factor for time between heals.

I brought up the differences compared to how other RPGs handle skills because you can carry more abilities than your core party will typically require, meaning you are utilizing rather than wasting resources or slots if you carry status moves or such for more specific/niche scenarios. This is a limitation of Pokemon's battle system that results in fight design that works for other RPGs not translating to its own as fair play. In most RPGs, countermeasures might be as basic as "Mages don't contend with accuracy, but have to watch elements more often" with one damage type not doing accuracy checks, or the battle system involving multiple characters mean that it's expected that some are built for versatility or support while others make progress through damage and the like (which even Pokemon shows signs of with the myriad of Support moves and abilities that only matter or even WORK in Double Battles).

tl;dr Evasion is still a bad strategy in game because it's infrequently used and has limited, bad tools to respond with, while being based primarily on the player's luck rather than their decision/strategy.

 

[Krockodile]

I do agree that that a strategy against evasiveness could be reasonably handled if the mons themselves weak. For example, Grant's Amura could be annoying with Thunder Wave and Rock Tomb, and Tyrunt's Stomp. However, it can be handled in time because they're weak defensively, like how both of them are weak to Fighting, or how Amura is weak to Water and Grass whilst having a Double Weakness to Steel and Fighting. Similar could be for Lt Surge's Raichu, as it can't really do anything to Ground types like Sandshrew or Diglett (unless if they get lucky with a critical hit Quick Attack).

The issue is more pronunced with the Kingdras. Clair's Dragonair's are fine to handle as paraylsis can be cured with Berries or an Antitode, the real issue is Kingdra. It has decent bulk for the game, but the real issue is that there aren't many types that could handle Kingdra. In Johto, the only Dragon Type available is Kingdra, which requires a trade. The player can try to stall Clair out with Light Screen or items like X Accuracy or potions, but this also increases the chance for Kingdra to get a critical hit, which can be boosted by its Sniper Ability. Juan's Kingdra might be easier to handle given that you can get Flygon, but you have to evolve it from Trapinch which can be a pain given its long time to evolve and initial bland movepool, not to mention dragon moves are coming from its 80 special attack.

Like if moves like Aerial Ace or it’s contemporaries weren’t just 60 bp you could make a genuinely interesting strategy against evasion instead of using the no-miss move because it’s the easiest but weakest solution possible.
Or heck, even just more ways to reduce evasion would be neat, there’s just Flash for that off the top of my head

Def agree, plus not every mon can learn the move and the ones that have STAB on it are too weak to stand against them. They might be more reliable, but Pokemon more encourages the player to focus on type match-ups, so it won't necessarily teach them on to have moves that ignores evasiveness.

 

[tentaghost]

Like if moves like Aerial Ace or it’s contemporaries weren’t just 60 bp you could make a genuinely interesting strategy against evasion instead of using the no-miss move because it’s the easiest but weakest solution possible.
Or heck, even just more ways to reduce evasion would be neat, there’s just Flash for that off the top of my head

honestly i think they should just do away with evasion/accuracy stages entirely

I mean theres only 4 moves that increase accuracy and 4 moves that reduce evasion.. and its not even worth it most of the time anyways..

 

[Omastar68]

honestly i think they should just do away with evasion/accuracy stages entirely

I mean theres only 4 moves that increase accuracy and 4 moves that reduce evasion.. and its not even worth it most of the time anyways..

Yeah tbh I agree. I agreed that it was valid too...but I mean the fact that it ultimately wastes time more than anything is annoying. IDK though, even though I won't play stall at all, it kinda is like that. I guess what ANNOYS me is the relatively short cart timer, in conjunction with stall and it's various time wastes in animations, protect, this maybe, etc. in and of itself it's legit, if still maybe not exactly what I'd go for often.

Uh but back to the whole eva thing. It seems a slippery slope to condemn it, a lot of strats are about making moves/mons not do the intended/anything. So like who is next on the chopping block? Para? Sleep/freeze? Just even type immunities? Yea, cause let's ban ghosts lol. No, it probably is fine, though maybe shouldn't be that prominent on those boss teams as a gimmick kinda. Not that I'm advocating them having a GOOD Approach to eva boost...

 

[Hugin]

Pointless version differences. Version differences in general, really, but its only really the pointless ones - Like Route 48 Farfetched being level 25 in Heartgold but level 24 in Soulsilver - That count as a little thing that annoys me.

That one honestly seems like someone screwed up when entering the data, swapped the levels around a little bit between Vulpix/Growlithe/Farfetched.

On Evasion, the reason bosses use it is because these are games for children. The idea is "This will make the boss harder, forcing resets/training, but not in a way that makes it impossible." A child can ram their head into the wall repeatedly until RNG works out in their favor and move on, but will remember it as a really difficult fight.

I don't particularly like that sort of design, but it is clearly something the devs consider a good thing, since they regularly went to that well.

Whereas my preferred boss design is "teach the player something." Build the gym trainers and the Leader with specific strategies and tactics that force the player to find counters to those strats. Sometimes this can be as simple as "level up more", but also have ones that use weather, setup moves, Counter/Mirror Coat, etc. Now, Evasion CAN BE one of those strats. But when no other gym really forces the player to do more than level up, it's difficult to figure out that you actively need to play differently to win.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

An evasion-spamming gym leader next to a route with a Poison-type that naturally learns Toxic could be cool.