Small things you dislike about Pokemon fan-games in general.

[Norin]

Have you ever found something common between Pokemon fan-games that you dislike? Did you ever asked yourself why is something apparently small always done "wrong" in every fan-game?

I'm not talking about major problems, like lag, shallow/boring plot and so on, but more about little issues that don't impact the game that much.

 

I will start with a couple of them:

1) Controls. I believe many of us first started playing Pokemon on a PC with emulators, and with them came the concept that Z (or whatever your keyboard has on the bottom-left corner) stood for the A button of a Gameboy and that the X stood for the B button, yet now nearly every non Hack-rom game has the C key controlling the functions of the A, which I presume is a thing that comes with RPGMaker. The only exception I've found are Reborn and the game inspired by it, plus a couple of games that give you the possibility to fully configure your key bindings.

2) Character name length. Here again Reborn is an exception, but in the majority of games we are limited to 7 characters when choosing our name. I mean, I just want to call myself "Sad Claps", only to sigh when the game stops me before the "p".

3) Trainer's Pokemon changing stats, gender or even ability between resets. This is something more evident in harder games, as resetting is more frequent, and the only issue that could almost be considered a bug. You can notice this fact easily against trainers that have Pokemon with relevant differences between genders, like Pyroar or Hippowdon, or when you suddenly need three hits to kill a Pokemon you could easily kill with two before resetting. One time I've also seen a Growlithe losing intimidate, which made the fight much easier.

[Pausaunias]

1) I hate the level cap where your poke starts disobeying you. In official pokemon games there is that, but the lvl cap is much higher and normally you dont reach it one way or the other. In fan games in the other hand is a painfull story.

2) The good items are kinda rare or not easily aproachable. Most times thats the fault of specific events which get reset after an epesode or two and you loose the opportunity to do it and earn the chance to get some items which you ll be able to get when the game is complete after some episodes (which means some years probably)

3) the rare revive items. In some poke games you cannot buy in  any way revive items which is clearly bad and you loose chances, in gamepley, and precious time that you cannot spent only in a game.

Edited June 10, 2017 by Pausaunias

[wildebeast]

Having to unlock EV training areas sucks. Like, I'm gonna do it because my stupid rattata has to be perfect. Having easy access just makes it less time-consuming for crazy people like me.

[Autumn Rain]

What I dislike about small things in fan games is that some people don't know what to type for dialogue in NPCs.

Many people put "Oh, I came from Kalos/Alola! Praise me!" or "Get out of my house!" while other NPCs don't even acknowledge the main character's presence.

I also noticed other people add dialogues of memes and real life references in a pokemon game.

What I would like to see is a dialogue written with confidence and motivation for players to actually feel important and feel like this is a "pokemon" game, not real life.

Like, if everyone had a goal and were to help everyone including the protagonist reach their goal. Maybe even a learning experience about competitive battling or what's in the city?

 

Another small thing I dislike about fan games is the choice of music. I'm not talking about GlitchxCity, I'm talking about the people who use the default essentials music in and outside of battle. Imagine the player comes to the top of a holy castle and a powerful legendary pokemon appears with darkness of pure evil surrounding itself. Then, you hear essential's default wild battle music playing in the background. That doesn't fit at all! There are custom pokemon music out there like ElectricMudkip/Emdasche, PokeRemixStudio, FL. Remix, Pokeli, PokéMixr92, Le Maître Dragon and others if given credit and permission. Heck, you can include music outside of pokemon too!

[Lord C]

Framerate issues

[Dante52]

This is interesting. Some of the things people have mentioned here I personally like. Guess everyone is different. 

On 6/10/2017 at 2:08 PM, Norin said:

 

3) Trainer's Pokemon changing stats, gender or even ability between resets. This is something more evident in harder games, as resetting is more frequent, and the only issue that could almost be considered a bug. You can notice this fact easily against trainers that have Pokemon with relevant differences between genders, like Pyroar or Hippowdon, or when you suddenly need three hits to kill a Pokemon you could easily kill with two before resetting. One time I've also seen a Growlithe losing intimidate, which made the fight much easier.

     I have totally noticed the pokemon changing between resets, and it's bugged me! 

 

On 6/11/2017 at 0:45 AM, Night Fighter said:

Heck, you can include music outside of pokemon too!

     That's actually a really interesting idea that I've never thought of.... This was the music that came to mind when I read your description of an evil legendary appearing... 
   

 

[Infinite Eyes]

I really hate when legendary pokemon get thrown around like candy. I prefer the opposite extreme where catching a legendary is an utterly ridiculous, almost sacrilegious, concept.

 

I also hate frequent fake yes/no choices that actually just make you pick one answer.

Edited June 13, 2017 by Infinite Eyes

[Dante52]

Oh, something small that bugs me is when the text for a "speech frame" or whatever is too long, and so it scrolls before you have a chance to read it. I've noticed this across a lot of different fangames

[VasanthTheFool]

It kind of sucks when you're getting your ass kicked and it feels unfair. It's one thing to lose due to a flaw in your strategy, team, or overall approach. It's another thing to get the People's Elbow over and over again for no good reason. Some games, in trying to be hard, are just obnoxious and instead of strategy you rely on luck and possibly level grinding to get by (looking at you Dark Rising). The worst part is despite getting hammered by some games...you can't help but come crawling back to play again. 

 

[cybershell12]

One thing that really bugs me is  when badges past the 8th don't have a sprite (West Tyron in Victory Fire, Lauren in Light Platinum, Aroma in Zeta/Omicron etc.) because of the trainer card only having space for 8 badges

[Kooper]

On 6/11/2017 at 2:45 AM, Night Fighter said:

Another small thing I dislike about fan games is the choice of music. I'm not talking about GlitchxCity, I'm talking about the people who use the default essentials music in and outside of battle. Imagine the player comes to the top of a holy castle and a powerful legendary pokemon appears with darkness of pure evil surrounding itself. Then, you hear essential's default wild battle music playing in the background. That doesn't fit at all! There are custom pokemon music out there like ElectricMudkip/Emdasche, PokeRemixStudio, FL. Remix, Pokeli, PokéMixr92, Le Maître Dragon and others if given credit and permission. Heck, you can include music outside of pokemon too!

Omg this. This so much, I have dropped so many promising looking games because of that crap ass default Essentials music. 

[Norin]

Another one I forgot to mention: don't give trainers' pokemon moves like belch or last resort, or any other move that requires a special condition to be used. The AI just doesn't know how to use them and will spam them because of the high damage. This happens all the time you are against an eeveelution (except maybe gym leaders in some games). I think this is somewhat related to the "random stats" thing I mentioned in my first post, as I don't think there are many people willing to fine tune every single trainer's pokemon, as that sounds like a lot of work even if I have no idea how RPGmaker/Essentials works.

[KingCoin]

I'll be taking the complaints in this thread into consideration for Pokemon Safari. A lot of the issues mentioned so far are bugs with pokemon essentials or RPG Maker though so they shouldn't be an issue in my custom game engine I've written. Regarding avoiding giving certain moves to pokemon possessed by trainers: I think the solution is to fix the Ai, not to remove game content.

[Balsa]

17 hours ago, KingCoin said:

I'll be taking the complaints in this thread into consideration for Pokemon Safari. A lot of the issues mentioned so far are bugs with pokemon essentials or RPG Maker though so they shouldn't be an issue in my custom game engine I've written. Regarding avoiding giving certain moves to pokemon possessed by trainers: I think the solution is to fix the Ai, not to remove game content.

 

Yeh, after having just played through Rejuvenation and encountering the same issues as in Reborn, I'm getting kinda annoyed at it. Not much people can do as few are capable of writing their own custom pokemon game engine but, damn, it's kinda pathetic that you can run these games on a fairly powerful PC and still the framerate and fluidity just dies when it rains and so on. The lack of 'smoothness' is probably my largest general concern with all these (RPG Maker) fangames. I mean, even the basic scrolling when hardly anything is going on is still stuttering. It's a real bummer because even though Pokemon really doesn't require a high framerate for gameplay's sake, fluidity is king for me even just for the visuals' sake. I'm rather impressed by how good some of these fan devs make the games look otherwise and I can only hope someone provides a modern engine that does them justice via stable, high framerates.

 

I'm not that well-versed in all the different Pokemon fan games, though. Are there any non-RPG-Maker ones that shine on the performance side?

[Commander]

58 minutes ago, Balsa said:

 

Yeh, after having just played through Rejuvenation and encountering the same issues as in Reborn, I'm getting kinda annoyed at it. Not much people can do as few are capable of writing their own custom pokemon game engine but, damn, it's kinda pathetic that you can run these games on a fairly powerful PC and still the framerate and fluidity just dies when it rains and so on. The lack of 'smoothness' is probably my largest general concern with all these (RPG Maker) fangames. I mean, even the basic scrolling when hardly anything is going on is still stuttering. It's a real bummer because even though Pokemon really doesn't require a high framerate for gameplay's sake, fluidity is king for me even just for the visuals' sake. I'm rather impressed by how good some of these fan devs make the games look otherwise and I can only hope someone provides a modern engine that does them justice via stable, high framerates.

 

I'm not that well-versed in all the different Pokemon fan games, though. Are there any non-RPG-Maker ones that shine on the performance side?

 

...I want you to sit down a minute in my shoes. I've had experience in both hacking and RPGmaker and can honestly say that Pokemon Essentials, while not the best system, is a gift that let us go beyond what we could do before with Pokemon. Do you really think Pokemon Reborn could be done using hacking? Anyways, I guess what I should state is that you're in the wrong community if you are expecting a high quality, massive game with little flaws all for free. Lag is going to happen with RPGmaker (and even some massive RPG games you pay for in the store). As for non-rpgmaker, there are some, but there's really not much to dig for since Pokemon Essential is kind of the base engine for all fan-games.

 

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I guess I should state my own little gripes about fan-games. Actually, it's the fact that they are more or less the same (bar like a couple). There's a custom silent protag, 8/18 gym leaders who are fought in order in which the crime organization intervenes along the way. Gym leaders are all mono type users and most maps are more or less linear unless there are HM spots for sidequest or exploring later. I could say stuff about the story, but it's Pokemon. Nobody picked up an official Pokemon game and said it was the best story ever which sets a very, very low bar for story.

[KingCoin]

Pokemon safari can run at any resolution with stable fps atm however I'm debating whether or not players should be able to play at large resolutions because it kind of removes a lot of the exploring aspect of the game when you can see the entire area you're in at once. Does anyone have any thoughts regarding that? There are some screenshots in my signature. I've considered limiting window size, another possibility is adding an effect similar to what you see when you're in a cave around the player. A black box with a large transparent hole in the middle around the player.

[Norin]

On 6/30/2017 at 5:55 AM, KingCoin said:

Regarding avoiding giving certain moves to pokemon possessed by trainers: I think the solution is to fix the Ai, not to remove game content.

True, but I don't think we will see a fix anytime soon, as those moves are not really that useful anyway, so just not letting trainers use them seems like an acceptable workaround.

 

On 7/1/2017 at 1:05 AM, Commander said:

...I want you to sit down a minute in my shoes. I've had experience in both hacking and RPGmaker and can honestly say that Pokemon Essentials, while not the best system, is a gift that let us go beyond what we could do before with Pokemon. Do you really think Pokemon Reborn could be done using hacking? Anyways, I guess what I should state is that you're in the wrong community if you are expecting a high quality, massive game with little flaws all for free. Lag is going to happen with RPGmaker (and even some massive RPG games you pay for in the store). As for non-rpgmaker, there are some, but there's really not much to dig for since Pokemon Essential is kind of the base engine for all fan-games.

What I had in mind with this topic was really just discuss over "minor" issues, I've even written that in my first post. My idea was to maybe give some feedback to authors on small things that could increase the quality of their games, and someone actually talked about interesting things that could easily do that, like not using the standard RPGMaker music, or giving NPCs more interesting dialogues and so on. The lag issue isn't something that can be worked on by a dingle author/team, as the only thing they could do is keep the game small by cutting down contents, and I think no one really wants that.

 

On 7/1/2017 at 1:05 AM, Commander said:

I guess I should state my own little gripes about fan-games. Actually, it's the fact that they are more or less the same (bar like a couple). There's a custom silent protag, 8/18 gym leaders who are fought in order in which the crime organization intervenes along the way. Gym leaders are all mono type users and most maps are more or less linear unless there are HM spots for sidequest or exploring later. I could say stuff about the story, but it's Pokemon. Nobody picked up an official Pokemon game and said it was the best story ever which sets a very, very low bar for story.

It could be interesting to open another thread to discuss the potential of Pokemon on PC in terms of non-linear progression.

[Ice Cream Sand Witch]

Re: the comments about randomized Pokemon attributes and hindering movesets: there are certain qualities of a Pokemon (ability, IVs, gender, nature, probably more that aren't coming to mind right now) that are randomized if you don't set them. This isn't a bug; it's just how Essentials works. For learnsets, if you don't set those for a Pokemon, than the Pokemon will have the latest four moves it can learn through level up. Most people (including me) don't bother to set that kind of data for the regular NPC trainers (except in special circumstances) and only do so for boss battles. 

 

Re: the thread topic, one thing that I've always been critical of both in the main series and fangames is using enemy team grunts as roadblocks when we could just battle our way through them. This doesn't work well when you consider how contradictory it can make a game when doing this: if it's an area you're not supposed to be in yet, your character will just turn around and listen when the grunt(s) say(s) to get lost, but if you're supposed to be stopping an attack or infiltrating a base, your character will battle your way through the guards. This just makes me question: if I'm battling my way through these grunts, what's stopping me from battling my way through those other grunts? 

 

The first example that comes to mind for the main series is those Rocket grunts who make you pay a toll to pass through their gate to the Lake of Rage. Why do we let them extort us when we should easily be able to take care of two grunts? 

 

There are a few cases where grunt roadblocks work:

-if we don't know these are members of Team X because we haven't had any fights with them yet

-if we know they're from Team X, but we're waiting for backup or a strategy before proceeding because it's their main base or a major attack and we'll be severely outnumbered if we go in alone

-if there really are too many guarding somewhere to fight alone. This almost never happens, but if using grunt roadblocks is necessary, there could be at least ten guarding somewhere as opposed to one or two. 

-if we know they're from Team X, but right now we're not concerned with these grunts blocking off a building or path because the team is actively attacking somewhere else and battling them away from every path or building would waste time. See: Saffron City in Kanto and Goldenrod City in Johto, where they were blocking off several buildings but Silph Co./Radio Tower were the highest priority. 

-if they're running an operation that on the surface seems legal or even good and we need to report it and be strategic about it so we don't look like a criminal by barging in and attacking them. (I imagine this to be case with the BCC in Spork if the player does happen to interact with the guard at the entrance after the ranger leaves, although the ranger takes care of reporting everything to Chelsea)

 

However there are plenty of examples of grunt roadblocks where it's like "Why can't I just battle you to get you to leave?" 

 

This is also more of a personal preference, but I don't like not having infinitely rebattleable trainers since grinding on wild Pokemon takes 50 eternities and level grinding isn't something I enjoy doing. This isn't much of a problem anymore since I can open most games in RPG Maker and set my levels to whatever I want, but not everyone can do that and there are still some games where I have issues opening them either because the game uses an older version of RPG Maker than mine or because the game deletes an encrypted archive when trying to open it which also deletes all game data within RPG Maker.

[Norin]

2 hours ago, Ice Cream Sand Witch said:

Re: the thread topic, one thing that I've always been critical of both in the main series and fangames is using enemy team grunts as roadblocks when we could just battle our way through them. This doesn't work well when you consider how contradictory it can make a game when doing this: if it's an area you're not supposed to be in yet, your character will just turn around and listen when the grunt(s) say(s) to get lost, but if you're supposed to be stopping an attack or infiltrating a base, your character will battle your way through the guards. This just makes me question: if I'm battling my way through these grunts, what's stopping me from battling my way through those other grunts? 

 

The first example that comes to mind for the main series is those Rocket grunts who make you pay a toll to pass through their gate to the Lake of Rage. Why do we let them extort us when we should easily be able to take care of two grunts? 

 

There are a few cases where grunt roadblocks work:

-if we don't know these are members of Team X because we haven't had any fights with them yet

-if we know they're from Team X, but we're waiting for backup or a strategy before proceeding because it's their main base or a major attack and we'll be severely outnumbered if we go in alone

-if there really are too many guarding somewhere to fight alone. This almost never happens, but if using grunt roadblocks is necessary, there could be at least ten guarding somewhere as opposed to one or two. 

-if we know they're from Team X, but right now we're not concerned with these grunts blocking off a building or path because the team is actively attacking somewhere else and battling them away from every path or building would waste time. See: Saffron City in Kanto and Goldenrod City in Johto, where they were blocking off several buildings but Silph Co./Radio Tower were the highest priority. 

-if they're running an operation that on the surface seems legal or even good and we need to report it and be strategic about it so we don't look like a criminal by barging in and attacking them. (I imagine this to be case with the BCC in Spork if the player does happen to interact with the guard at the entrance after the ranger leaves, although the ranger takes care of reporting everything to Chelsea)

 

However there are plenty of examples of grunt roadblocks where it's like "Why can't I just battle you to get you to leave?" 

Funny, I always ask myself why they let you pass after you defeat them. I mean, what could you do if they just stayed there? You can't use your pokemon on them, because that's not allowed, you can't really force them to move by means of brute force, as most of the time it would be a adult against child situation, and I really don't think there is a rule where the defeated trainer has to do whatever you ask them to do. I think there was one instance where you defeated a grunt and he just went "guess what, i'm not going to move", but I could be wrong.

 

What really bothers me with the 2 grunts at the gate is how the whole "if you see another trainer you can force them into battle" only works against you. Why can't I force anyone to have a battle with me? Like, let's say I'm a masochist and want to fight Lance at Lake of Rage, what right does he have to refuse? Let's say that the protagonist doesn't do that because you really are in a hurry to stop Team Rocket, what about your rival in Olivine? What about NPCs that don't fight you but must have at least one pokemon because they are in areas where wild pokemon appear?

[The Fangame Connoisseur]

On 7/1/2017 at 5:48 PM, GS BALL said:

 That rejuvenation's unspeakable "Love Letter" sidequest for example, almost made me delete the game at once!

Eh? I don't remember that sidequest in Rejuvenation. What was it about?

 

Now back to the topic at hand, am I the only one who dislikes the level caps? I understand that they're there to add to the challenge, but it makes no sense in universe. Why would a Pokemon you caught, much less your starter, start disobeying you for not owning enough badges?

[shinymissingno]

One thing that bugs me is fangames and romhacks that increase difficulty by way of jacking everybody elses levels and stats while decreasing the experience you're able to get per fight. Like, they don't even try to be clever or interesting, just 'lets make everybody you fight like ten levels above you but give maybe a third of the experience at best'. Reborn and Rejuvenation did the difficulty spike really well; just using moves and abilities to give the AI strategies that, while powerful, have a good number of counters if you sit and think for a minute. I don't want a grindfest, I want a game.

 

Although at the same time AI's with strategies piss me off too. I've never been able to get anywhere in Reborn, for example, because every single gym leader has forced me to replace like half my team and grind for days to get them leveled enough to be useful at all. Rejuvenation is WORLDS easier because of the breeders you can fight, Reborn is just... mean about it.

[Yagami]

8 hours ago, shinymissingno said:

One thing that bugs me is fangames and romhacks that increase difficulty by way of jacking everybody elses levels and stats while decreasing the experience you're able to get per fight. Like, they don't even try to be clever or interesting, just 'lets make everybody you fight like ten levels above you but give maybe a third of the experience at best'. Reborn and Rejuvenation did the difficulty spike really well; just using moves and abilities to give the AI strategies that, while powerful, have a good number of counters if you sit and think for a minute. I don't want a grindfest, I want a game.

 

Although at the same time AI's with strategies piss me off too. I've never been able to get anywhere in Reborn, for example, because every single gym leader has forced me to replace like half my team and grind for days to get them leveled enough to be useful at all. Rejuvenation is WORLDS easier because of the breeders you can fight, Reborn is just... mean about it.

I honestly disagree with everything you just said.In reborn,you can get different grand hall trainers everyday.You can fight with them as much as you want.For example,there is one trainer who use a squirtle evolution team.Just use any grass pokemon.Then there is the clown trainer in agate circus who will give you very high money and shard.In reborn,the first time I had to grind my entire team was before Samson.There are many parts of the game when you will have partner with you.So you can train as much as you want and get healed.

The first time I beat the game my team was charizard,exploud,unfezent,scrafty,lunatune,kricketune and lanturn.I did not even had any pokemon in rotation.

In rejuvenation,the audino trainer don't even have a pokemon with healing wish.

There are many fan games and hacked roms with bad idea.But Reborn is and will be the best game because of its story,planning,ideas etc.

[Balsa]

On 7/9/2017 at 11:18 PM, shinymissingno said:

One thing that bugs me is fangames and romhacks that increase difficulty by way of jacking everybody elses levels and stats while decreasing the experience you're able to get per fight. Like, they don't even try to be clever or interesting, just 'lets make everybody you fight like ten levels above you but give maybe a third of the experience at best'. Reborn and Rejuvenation did the difficulty spike really well; just using moves and abilities to give the AI strategies that, while powerful, have a good number of counters if you sit and think for a minute. I don't want a grindfest, I want a game.

 

Although at the same time AI's with strategies piss me off too. I've never been able to get anywhere in Reborn, for example, because every single gym leader has forced me to replace like half my team and grind for days to get them leveled enough to be useful at all. Rejuvenation is WORLDS easier because of the breeders you can fight, Reborn is just... mean about it.

 

So I recently tried out the Pokemon Sage demo and, good lord, the XP curve was bullshit. Winning the immediate rival battle at the beginning doesn't even get you to level up to 6. The XP gain for way lower level mons was fine but everything else was a complete slog. In addition, there were lots of annoying early level mons with Sand Attack, Defensive Curl or Tickle, making your early physical attacks like tackle less effective. Also mostly ice and normal type mons, so you couldn't take much advantage if you didn't pick the fire starter. And on top of all that the Pokecenter placement was extremely sparse and there was no other healing available so that I constantly had to backtrack. That game also doesn't have a turbo mode implementation yet so...that might have been the worst slog I've encountered, yet. Right from the beginning, you're slowed down to a crawl. Because I was interested in the Fakemon I pushed on nevertheless but eventually resigned some time after the first gym battle when I couldn't handle it anymore. I also only beat the first gym because hidden power was available early on and luckily steel type on one of my strongest mons and thus super effective against the ice type gym with its really high level, powerful mons on the gym leader. 

 

The XP gain curve is something I didn't use to pay much attention, too, but oh boy did I take notice quickly when it's done as badly. Especially at the beginning of the game where you have few options, it's an absolute killer.

[TY97mus]

The evolution animation where the pokemon just spin and spin until the end of the world as we know it. Also, terrible dialogue and action, rejuvenation really killed the mood for me when Madame X brings out her legendary sword. I watch anime regularly but this just doesn't fit in at all. Otherwise it was quite a cool game. The last thing is the starter choice, it's a fan game so I really don't want to see traditional starter choice style (the three only). Reborn gave you every starters from all region which is cool, desolation got me into using Pancham that grew on me. These are really great ideas.