(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

[Yung Dramps]

Game Freak really needs to ditch the idea of using icebergs as a base for Ice mons. The type is not defensive. It was never good defensively. Aurora Veil is nice, but not enough. Even Hail is the worst weather.

What happened when we got an offensively-designed Ice mon? We got Weavile!

Weavile is an Ice-type that really takes what's good about the type. (Except the STAB move. Now imagine it with Refrigerate.)

I honestly think Game Freak is starting to see the light as of SWSH when it comes to the Ice type, even in spite of imperfections. People have pointed out how in-game courtesy of the Wild Area you can get guys like Vanillite and Swinub super early, and as for the new Ice types even excluding the hulking behemoth that is Galarian Darmanitan the others such as Frosmoth, Mr. Rime and even Eiscue are built for offense or have an attack stat as their biggest stat with typically alright-good speed tiers.

As for the Normal type discussion, I don't really see much of an issue. There may be some bias here considering one of these so-called arbitrarily typed lategame one-offs is my all-time favorite Pokemon but even aside from that I still thoroughly enjoy the designs and combat applications of recent Normals like Silvally, Obstagoon, Bewear and Diggersby.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

nd as for the new Ice types even excluding the hulking behemoth that is Galarian Darmanitan the others such as Frosmoth, Mr. Rime and even Eiscue are built for offense or have an attack stat as their biggest stat with typically alright-good speed tiers.

*Looks at Frosmoth's stats. Notices 65 Base Speed.*

This mon ain't it. I made a very clear point citing Weavile instead of say, Beartic.

Ice-types have no defensive value, they're hindrances on defense, an Ice Tank that needs to hold Heavy-Duty Boots to not be obliterated by Stealth Rock is not a tank. The physical bulk is abysmal too, and easily compounded by how many weaknesses it got.

If Frosmoth had, say at least Base 100 Speed, I'd make the case that it's a good mon because it can get a lot of mileage out of Quiver Dance, even though it'll be splatted like a mosquito if it ever takes a Bullet Punch.

Oh wait, it got no recovery besides "lol Rest".

Cute mon, love the design, but it's traaaaaaash!!!

The rest don't even get that. (For the most part, Mr. Rime is cool.)

In fact, all of these are trash and not suited for any kind of speedy offense, what are you talking about!? We need a WTF button.

 

[R_N]

Likely because it's believed, not confirmed. Thus, "Gender unknown".

This Pokémon has slumbered for many years. Some say it's Zamazenta's elder sister—others say the two Pokémon are rivals.

The way this is written it sounds like the question is not "possibly girl??" and more "sister or rival".
Oddly Zamazenta doesn't have a companion entry commenting either on its theoretical gender or its relationship with Zacian.

There's also the thing in, like, games and extended universe art books and such where "said to" but at the same time they go out of their way to mention this one very specific thing.

the three genders. Boy, Girl, Rival

 

[DrPumpkinz]

In fact, all of these are trash and not suited for any kind of speedy offense, what are you talking about!? We need a WTF button.

Eiscue is suited for speedy offense. It's just not good at it.

 

[Kurona]

As for the Normal type discussion, I don't really see much of an issue. There may be some bias here considering one of these so-called arbitrarily typed lategame one-offs is my all-time favorite Pokemon but even aside from that I still thoroughly enjoy the designs and combat applications of recent Normals like Silvally, Obstagoon, Bewear and Diggersby.

The discussion was concerning not the quality of recent normal-type 'mon, but how well the label 'normal' really applies to them. Bewear and Diggersby are awesome, but what's being asked is what makes them 'normal' type and not just Fighting and Ground?

 

[DrPumpkinz]

The discussion was concerning not the quality of recent normal-type 'mon, but how well the label 'normal' really applies to them. Bewear and Diggersby are awesome, but what's being asked is what makes them 'normal' type and not just Fighting and Ground?

In Diggersby's case, it seems just as Normal as most of the Normal/Flying birds.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Eiscue is suited for speedy offense. It's just not good at it.

MFW Froslass is better suited at speedy offense.

 

[DreamPrince]

Honestly, at this point I think Normal is kind of an unessacry type outclassed by pretty much every type in a niche. Offensively, Normal is outclassed by Flying, which hits Bug, Grass, Fighting super effectively, while Normal does not hit anything super effectively. Both are resisted by Rock and Steel, and is resisted by Electric for Flying and an immunity from Normal for Ghost. You could say that they are on par for neutral coverage, but Flying outclasses Normal in terms of Super effective coverage, so Flying will be the better choice in terms of coverage for the majority of Pokemon. This comparison is really important, since Flying/Normal is by far the most common pairing for Flying, but if we were capable of removing the Normal Type, it Pokemon like Pidgeot, Braviary, and Staraptor could function mostly unchanged. That being said, Normal/Ground do pair well with each other, but there's only Diggersby with this distinction, and other Ground Types can't really take advantage of this coverage because Normal does not hit anything super effectively. So aside from STAB, Normal gets the award for the worst type for Super Effective Coverage, only being beaten by Dragon.

Defensively, It only has one weakness, which gives it this distinction alongside Electric. However, yet it only has one resistance, an immunity to Ghost. This is valuable considering, that Ghost is one of the best offensive typing due to only having Dark and Normal resistances. However, despite having an immunity to Ghost, they cannot offensively threaten without relying on a coverage move, which makes them much weaker checks in comparison to Dark types. That lack of an effective coverage option can even invalidate them as Ghost Type check at certain cases.

More on to Aethstics, I definitely agree that the Normal type is definitely the outcast of the types. Codraroll already explained it, but to show how generic the type is, it's the only type to date to have lost Pokemon, losing several when the Fairy type was introduced. It's probably just easier to remove Normal since its quite generic in typing. Also worth noting despite Normal types having wide move pools, most of them really couldn't take advantage of it due to having abysmal SpAtk, in fact, Normal types on average have the lowest Sp.Atk of all fully evolved Pokemon. Celever brings up the sound moves, but the majority abusers happen to be those with the -ate Abilities. Speaking of the -Ate Abilities, Normal is the only type to have such interaction, probably because its the most "basic" type among the types themselves.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

Another instance of Normal being the "eh, whatever" type: in gen 5 and onward, if a pure Flying-type uses Roost, it temporarily becomes a Normal type, even though "typeless" is still a thing used by Struggle and later Burn Up.

Fun fact: Burn Up and Roost interact strangely. If a Fire/Flying Pokemon seemingly becomes pure Flying by using Burn Up, using Roost will make it typeless, not Normal.

 

[Pikaman_Ultra]

And the rival gets to do a lot of things he shouldn't. How come he/she always gets the starter that's super effective against yours?

Unless you're playing the new games and nintendo decided they now pick the one you beat type wise, that's my minor quip, rivals should be a challenge, but their starters in the latest game are weak to yours and they never adjust with the other team slots, Hau sucks.

 

[Codraroll]

Also...while I get what you mean by "filler"...I think that's a little unfair and these recent generations have an Issue with type distribution to begin with due to their small size. Remember how Gen 6 had one bug line and 2 ground types? Vivillon was the token starter bug, Diggersby was the default rodent and Zygarde was a legendary. The fact Normal got to have its "filler" Furfrou along side three (THREE!) dual types is a small miracle, most types didn't get to have the luxury of filler at all. Or how Alola had to rely heavily on Alolan forms to get around the fact it had one ice type & 2 dark types.

I guess it's kind of interesting how they keep going out of their way to include Normal in this fashion? WIth the dual types, I mean. They don't need to by any means, they have no qualms about leaving even common types at low representation per generation, but they never the less keep doing it.

That's the strange thing, too. Normal, despite not having that many good Pokémon, remains the second most common type after Water. It's as if the designers still insist on adding a comparable lot of Normal-types despite not really having any ideas of what to do with them. I mean, Ice and certain other types like Electric or Poison are screwed over both in terms of quantity and quality, while Normal is one of the most common types and still doesn't manage to find a foothold.

 

[Ironmage]

Fun fact: Burn Up and Roost interact strangely. If a Fire/Flying Pokemon seemingly becomes pure Flying by using Burn Up, using Roost will make it typeless, not Normal.

In other words, Burn Up will seemingly always replace Fire with Typeless. Roost probably only applies Normal for pure flying (flying/flying internally), reads Flying/Typeless, and changes it to pure Typeless.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Unless you're playing the new games and nintendo decided they now pick the one you beat type wise, that's my minor quip, rivals should be a challenge, but their starters in the latest game are weak to yours and they never adjust with the other team slots, Hau sucks.

Hop is even worse.

You pick Scorbunny, a Fire-type. His brother and main rival have a Charizard as his signature mon.

Hop immediately proceeds to pick Grookey, the Grass starter, instead of Sobble.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

That's the strange thing, too. Normal, despite not having that many good Pokémon, remains the second most common type after Water. It's as if the designers still insist on adding a comparable lot of Normal-types despite not really having any ideas of what to do with them. I mean, Ice and certain other types like Electric or Poison are screwed over both in terms of quantity and quality, while Normal is one of the most common types and still doesn't manage to find a foothold.

Again, a lot of these are early-game trash that just isn't good.

GF is stuck in tradition so deep that they just can't really stop putting out this kind of garbage.

Even SnS have both Wooloo and Skwovet as early Normal-types. Skwovet is absolutely redundant if you look at it from an in-game design perspective.

Wooloo was a smash hit and fulfills the beginning route Normal-type role. In a limited dex scenario, there's just no reason it should've gotten in. Berry Tree mons could've been changed to any other mon related to berries. Crabrawler was introduced on the previous gen for that exact purpose.

It's all so formulaic, so stuck in conventions, so shoddily designed that you'd think that the team that developed RBY left and a bunch of hacks are just trying to fill in their shoes and milk some money off it.

 

[DreamPrince]

Again, a lot of these are early-game trash that just isn't good.

GF is stuck in tradition so deep that they just can't really stop putting out this kind of garbage.

Even SnS have both Wooloo and Skwovet as early Normal-types. Skwovet is absolutely redundant if you look at it from an in-game design perspective.

Wooloo was a smash hit and fulfills the beginning route Normal-type role. In a limited dex scenario, there's just no reason it should've gotten in. Berry Tree mons could've been changed to any other mon related to berries. Crabrawler was introduced on the previous gen for that exact purpose.

It's all so formulaic, so stuck in conventions, so shoddily designed that you'd think that the team that developed RBY left and a bunch of hacks are just trying to fill in their shoes and milk some money off it.

To be fair you can find Cherrim on Berry Trees as well, though it only has a 1% encounter rate, so I don’t blame you if you never fought it.

 

[Codraroll]

It's all so formulaic, so stuck in conventions, so shoddily designed that you'd think that the team that developed RBY left and a bunch of hacks are just trying to fill in their shoes and milk some money off it.

Rather the opposite: The team that developed RBY stuck around to lead the company, with RBY standing as their pinnacle success they always try to recreate. Meanwhile, their years of making games that sold millions of copies means nobody protests or speaks up against their decisions. Add to that the Japanese corporate culture and their respect for seniority, and you really get a stale show where the same stuck-in-a-rut bigwigs keep calling all the shots. As a freshly graduated programmer who just landed a dream job in a culture like that, would you try to protest when one of the most successful producers in gaming history suggests you lock the game's sound settings behind an item found by speaking to a random NPC?

 

[CPU]

The discussion was concerning not the quality of recent normal-type 'mon, but how well the label 'normal' really applies to them. Bewear and Diggersby are awesome, but what's being asked is what makes them 'normal' type and not just Fighting and Ground?

At least in Bewear's case, it's not only the most dangerous bear hugger you'll ever encounter, but it's also meant to be just... a guy in a suit. In design, at least. I suspect that's where its Normal typing comes into play.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

Unless you're playing the new games and nintendo decided they now pick the one you beat type wise, that's my minor quip, rivals should be a challenge, but their starters in the latest game are weak to yours and they never adjust with the other team slots, Hau sucks.

As a freshly graduated programmer who just landed a dream job in a culture like that, would you try to protest when one of the most successful producers in gaming history suggests you lock the game's sound settings behind an item found by speaking to a random NPC?

I've heard that some Japanese companies will actually hire a few Americans specifically so they'll have someone around without any reservations towards telling their superiors that an idea is bad. They're called "Loud Americans".

 

[Worldie]

I've heard that some Japanese companies will actually hire a few Americans specifically so they'll have someone around without any reservations towards telling their superiors that an idea is bad. They're called "Loud Americans".

You know, that doesn't surprise me.
I do know that japanese work companies tend to have extreme respect for their superiors and would rarely contest their decisions.
Their work ethics are... very different from the western ones.

I do wonder if anyone at GameFreaks actually realized the issues with the games but was never capable of speaking up...

 

[HottieLamatie]

Ants are cool. Spiders are cool.

Dewdiper's leg layout reminds me of some alien-spider hybrid. Looks like they should have a little blaster, too. :P But I think I get the overall concept.

Araquanid, though...just...why? Araquanid looks cool, don't get me wrong! I just really have to question why the name of both Pokémon in the line are spider-related when Araquanid seems so much more antlike. Ants typically have longer bodies and a more distinct head...and 6 legs. If Araquanid has 8 legs, my bad, but it's certainly easy to misremember, given their silhouette.

I don't feel that a spider-inspired creature needs to have 8 legs, but I do feel like layout of the body and legs should resemble a spider much more than an insect with a noticeably different layout of body and legs. Also, I think that the two giant eyes, particularly their design, elicit feelings of an ant. I think that I associate Araquanid's eyes with the eyes of the Chimaera Ant Queen from Hunter x Hunter; not sure if I have any other reference.

A general thing which bothers me is that the evolutions can be so significantly different, especially when I like a form that's quite different from an evolution line's other forms. In this case, while I like the design of both Pokémon, I'm not totally sold on the changes Dewdiper undergoes to evolve into Araquanid (why do their head placement and structure end up so different from in their base form?), especially with a spider-related name but acquiring an ant-shaped body.

 

[R_N]

Ants are cool. Spiders are cool.

Dewdiper's leg layout reminds me of some alien-spider hybrid. Looks like they should have a little blaster, too. :P But I think I get the overall concept.

Araquanid, though...just...why? Araquanid looks cool, don't get me wrong! I just really have to question why the name of both Pokémon in the line are spider-related when Araquanid seems so much more antlike. Ants typically have longer bodies and a more distinct head...and 6 legs. If Araquanid has 8 legs, my bad, but it's certainly easy to misremember, given their silhouette.

I don't feel that a spider-inspired creature needs to have 8 legs, but I do feel like layout of the body and legs should resemble a spider much more than an insect with a noticeably different layout of body and legs. Also, I think that the two giant eyes, particularly their design, elicit feelings of an ant. I think that I associate Araquanid's eyes with the eyes of the Chimaera Ant Queen from Hunter x Hunter; not sure if I have any other reference.

A general thing which bothers me is that the evolutions can be so significantly different, especially when I like a form that's quite different from an evolution line's other forms. In this case, while I like the design of both Pokémon, I'm not totally sold on the changes Dewdiper undergoes to evolve into Araquanid (why do their head placement and structure end up so different from in their base form?), especially with a spider-related name but acquiring an ant-shaped body.

There's legitimately no spider pokemon that has 8 legs
Spinarak, Dewpider, Araquanid has 6
Ariados....technically....has 6 in the sense I think its "hind legs" are those thingso n its abdomen. But let's face it's more like 4
Galvantula's forarms are at least more of a set of legs than ariados' adbdomen but it's still 6
Joltik may not be a "spider" but it's still an arachnid and has only 4 legs

I might be forgetting a spider but iirc there's just no arachnid in the game with 8 legs. I assume thsi is done as a design conceit...we also dont have many non-spider bugs with 6 legs

Araquanid & Dewpider are based on the diving bell spider though bulbapedia points out that its body shape, especially its very prominent legs with very small body, might be based on sea spiders. The resemblance is quite uncanny....



which i will not be linking images of because i hate them

 

[DrPumpkinz]

Ants are cool. Spiders are cool.

Dewdiper's leg layout reminds me of some alien-spider hybrid. Looks like they should have a little blaster, too. :P But I think I get the overall concept.

Araquanid, though...just...why? Araquanid looks cool, don't get me wrong! I just really have to question why the name of both Pokémon in the line are spider-related when Araquanid seems so much more antlike. Ants typically have longer bodies and a more distinct head...and 6 legs. If Araquanid has 8 legs, my bad, but it's certainly easy to misremember, given their silhouette.

I don't feel that a spider-inspired creature needs to have 8 legs, but I do feel like layout of the body and legs should resemble a spider much more than an insect with a noticeably different layout of body and legs. Also, I think that the two giant eyes, particularly their design, elicit feelings of an ant. I think that I associate Araquanid's eyes with the eyes of the Chimaera Ant Queen from Hunter x Hunter; not sure if I have any other reference.

A general thing which bothers me is that the evolutions can be so significantly different, especially when I like a form that's quite different from an evolution line's other forms. In this case, while I like the design of both Pokémon, I'm not totally sold on the changes Dewdiper undergoes to evolve into Araquanid (why do their head placement and structure end up so different from in their base form?), especially with a spider-related name but acquiring an ant-shaped body.

I'll give you that Araquanid looks more like an ant than a spider, but the reason they're named after spiders is because they're based on aquatic spiders, which are real actual things. The most notable examples are the spiders in the genus Dolomedes (known as "fishing spiders") which mostly hunt at the surface of ponds and can climb underwater when necessary, and the sole member of the genus Argyroneta, the diving bell spider, the only spider known to live almost its entire life underwater. When these spiders go underwater, the hairs on their abdomen trap a bubble of air from which they can breath (spiders breathe from their abdomens, not their heads). Dewpider and Araquanid reverse that concept (and move the bubble location to resemble a diving helmet and to make sense to people who don't know spiders breathe from their abdomens) to create a water-breathing spider that uses a bubble of water to hunt on land.

Aquatic ants are technically also real actual things, but I was only able to find one example: Polyrhachis sokolova. This species of ant is very obscure, "recently" discovered (it's frequently referred to as a recent discovery from 2006, but there's a paper on it from 1996 and it seems to have been named in 1902, so I'm pretty sure no one actually gives enough of a shit about this ant to notice it isn't recent anymore), and doesn't seem to swim to hunt or anything, but just so that it doesn't drown in the Oceanic mangrove forests where it lives.

 

[Sonikku A]

Arquanid is salvageable, but Dewpider is EW
Also, anyone else tired of blatant shapes being used for designs? We had enough "borbs", but then things based on actual animals looking like a freaking box..

Or an icosahedron

 

[R_N]

Those are some of my favorite designs so ones based on general shapes own in my book

Charjabug in particular is top tier pokemon design.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

anyone else tired of blatant shapes being used for designs?

Not really. Charjabug is made to resemble a 9-volt battery, and Dottler is made to resemble a radome. Game Freak isn't just sitting there drooling and saying "what if animal in funny shape".