Pokémon/Scrappy Mechanic

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  • Wild Pokémon requiring you to send a Pokémon out every single encounter, in situations where you're just going to run from them anyways. Wild Pokémon encounters are the most basic and trademark part of the game (other than trainer battles), but it can get irritating when you're in an area with pesky high-Speed Pokémon that don't let you run, making you wonder "Why did I have to send out my Pokémon in the first place?!"
  • Roaming Pokémon. They're legendary, which makes them hard enough to catch on their own. They only show up randomly, and it's often hard to track which route they're on at all, not to mention they often switch randomly. They run at the first opportunity and the Standard Status Effects don't prevent them from fleeing; only trapping them will work, and the trapper must remain in battle. A few running Pokémon even have the move Roar, which instantly forces you out of the battle (and, in FireRed and LeafGreen, at least, prevents you from ever encountering them again.) The one upside is that their HP and status don't replenish between encounters. The runners' natures and stats are determined randomly when they start running, not when you catch them so Save Scumming for one that's actually usable is impossible.
    • Awkward Zombie mocks this here.
    • So does this DA artist.
    • It's not bad in Pokémon Black and White though. Right before your game's respective roamer is introduced into the game's plot, Professor Juniper gives you Chekhov's Gun in the form of a Master Ball. Wherever the roamer may be (be it Tornadus or Thundurus), the marquees at each rest stop will tell you that a storm is going on in that area which will save you the trouble of blindly searching for it.
  • HMs: They're required to make it through the game, but they each take up a move slot and most of them are practically useless in battle. Each use comes with a time-wasting animation and the moves themselves cannot be forgotten until you meet the Move Deleter, who always appears fairly late in the game. In fact, in Generation I there wasn't a Move Deleter at all! If you clumsily taught your Charmander Cut, better be prepared to have your Charizard still have it during the Elite Four battles. What were they thinking?
    • This used to be justified to some extent, given that since HMs can (in Gen. I) be placed in storage like any other item, a Pokémon could be traded in knowing the move without the player having obtained the HM in the first place, and screen transitions cause trees to regrow after being cut down, boulders to replace themselves after being moved or broken, and so on. A player could inadvertently render the game Unwinnable by overwriting a necessary HM move in the wild and leaving himself trapped. Of course, this whole train wreck could have been averted with some Gameplay and Story Segregation.
    • Many players use an HM Slave(s) to avoid wasting moveslots on their good Pokémon, but that means they don't have 6 good Pokémon with them in caves (where they are often needed most).
    • Black and White fixed this. There are only 6 HMs, and you only need one to progress through the story (ONCE, at the beginning). The others lead to hidden items.
  • The Pokéblock system in Generation III. It seemed like Contests in that it could be seen as a minor gimmick you can move on from and forget about. However, it's necessary to evolve the already elusive Feebas into Water-type powerhouse Milotic. Cue hours spent tending to Berries, making Pokéblocks and stuffing its ugly face with them until it reaches the right Beauty value. Don't forget that Pokéblocks take the place of bait in Hoenn's Safari Zone (as well as the fact that there's always a chance that a wild Pokémon won't like the Pokéblock thrown at it). Want that rare Phanpy to not run from you? Better make more Pokéblocks! GameFreak thankfully fixed their mistake with Feebas in HeartGold and SoulSilver. Massages from Daisy will raise a Pokémon's Beauty, and nature will not affect it. It is still a Guide Dang It moment, but hey, at least you don't have to find the right-natured Feebas, then be nearly perfect at blending rare berries, then PRAY that the Pokéblocks/Poffin are high enough quality to bring Feebas to a high enough Beauty. Fixed even further in Generation V. There is no more Beauty stat. Instead, Feebas evolves if traded while holding Prism Scales.
    • Vespiquen. It evolves from Combee at Level 21, but only if it's female. First wait no less than six hours due to the Honey Tree mechanic, then you have roughly a 5% chance of finding a Combee AND a 12.5% of it being female. Didn't find a Combee? Too bad, the species is decided when you slather the tree, so you'll have to try again and wait another six hours. Gender can be decided, though. So you can save beforehand and keep restarting until you get a female. Or just get one of either gender and breed with a ditto until you get a female.
    • The honey tree mechanism itself could also be considered a Scrappy Mechanic. There are twenty-one trees throughout the game in Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum which one can slather with honey, and between six and 24 hours later could come back to find one of a number of Pokémon there. The species is set once you slather the tree, so there's no real way to manipulate what Pokémon appears (if you decide to not save and turn it off if it's the wrong species, then you've just wasted the last six-through-24 game hours). It's also incredibly likely that a player will forget to check a tree after slathering it, and after 24 hours the tree resets and to get a Pokémon from it you have to slather it again. Oh, and a number of Pokémon can only be obtained from these trees (without trading). One of them is the infuriating Munchlax, which only appears in four trees out of twenty-one, and the game gives you no indication as to which four trees these are. And to make it worse, it only has a one percent chance of appearing on those four trees. It could potentially take months to find one.
  • Many Gyms have gimmicks that are borderline Guide Dang It in case you want to get straight to the Leader while avoiding the other Trainers. While this is very hard to do, it is feasible (the Saffron Gym is an example) - but only, as mentioned, if you have a guide handy so you'll know where to go (again, the teleporters in the Saffron Gym are an example; another frustrating one is the Opelucid Gym in Black/White where you have to step on switches on the dragons' hands so they'll go up or down and, depending on the hands' position, the statue's head will go up or down, enabling you to go where you want - or not). Even if you don't intend to take on the Leader right away, you may find yourself running in circles so often to the point of being frustrating (once again, the Saffron City Gym is guilty of this; first-timers may also have a hard time with the rollercoasters in the Nimbasa Gym).
  • Pokémon and items which require a rare Pokémon to unlock. You want an Aerodactyl in Gold/Silver/Crystal without calling upon the first-generation games? You need to catch a Chansey and trade it to an NPC. The encounter rate for finding Chansey? 1%. And then you have to either breed it or catch another one if you want to add a Blissey to your Pokédex. Generation III made it necessary to catch a Relicanth to get the legendary golems, which - with its 5% encounter rate in a handful of very specific areas - has been known to require 101 consecutive uses of Sweet Scent to actually find. Oh, and if you want a Zorua in Black/White? You need a 'Celebi. Full stop.
  • Catching Beldum in Diamond/Pearl/Platinum, which has the same catch rate as an average legendary, is around Level 52, shows up only on a certain day (it IS a swarm Pokémon after all) and the only move it knows is Take Down. Metang and Metagross can be found in the wild in Generation V, and while they lack Take Down and can appear on any day, they still have the lowest possible catch rate.
  • Safari Zones. They force you to catch rare and hard-to-catch Pokémon with just Safari Balls (which have the same catch rate as Great Balls), bait, and rocks (or mud). Shiny Pokémon in Safari Zones deserve special mention. They're already incredibly rare, and now they have a chance of running away... WONDERFUL. In Black/White, they didn't bother with one.
  • The third generation introduced the split between the Regional Pokédex and National Pokédex. Basically, rather than allowing old and new Pokémon to be found wherever you go, a la Generation II, now you can only catch the newest ones (with a few old standards like the oh-so beloved Zubat) until you unlock the National Dex which will finally allow you to encounter older Pokémon. The catch? The National Dex can't be obtained until you've pretty much finished the main game. True, you can trade regardless of what Pokédex you have, but it does seem like the developers were a little too keen to ensure you used the new Pokémon.
  • The IV system. Natures are similar, but they're much easier to breed for. While the series values friendship and working hard as key to success, if your favorite Pokémon has bad IVs or an inconvenient nature, the key to success will be to breed a better one.
  • Pokémon Stadium was programmed with an anti-cheating mechanic that wouldn't allow you to transfer data from a Red/Blue/Yellow game save that was tampered with a cheating device like a Game Shark. Which was fine and all... except for the fact that it also refused transfers from saves which had encountered natural glitches, even something as basic as encountering a Missingno. And even worse was that some game paks still wouldn't transfer even if you deleted the save and avoided glitches. Needless to say, there's still quite a few Pokémon fans who felt screwed by that block.
    • If you trade a mon from a Gen II game who knows moves that existed in Gen I, but could not learn naturally in Gen I, the same thing also happens [2]
  • The Global Trade System (GTS) in the Generation IV games was an excellent concept, especially for people who've missed event-only Pokémon, but its terrible execution prevents it from being useful. Some of its flaws, in no particular order:
    • You can only search for Pokémon you've seen in-game. This makes it nearly useless for completing the National Dex since there are many species which you will never encounter unless you follow obscure steps to make it possible for them to appear, and many others that you simply won't ever see unless you get one. It doesn't help that battling other players and playing the special battle formats don't fill out the "seen" entries.
    • Fixed in Generation V. In Pokémon Black and White, over 100 Pokémon are unobtainable via normal gameplay, but most of them (such as the Eeveelutions, Garchomp and Scyther) are used by NPC trainers during the postgame - if you battle the NPC trainers, you record the unobtainable mons as "seen", allowing you to trade for them over the GTS. This was probably done to make the GTS a bit more of a help in completing the National Dex.
    • Search results are heavily limited (a maximum of 7 results per search) and they restrict it even further if you haven't been using the system much. You start with 3 search results and get upgraded to 5 and 7 by having made trades recently. While this was presumably done as a way to encourage people to be active in trades, it comes across as punishing players for not being able to use the system well by making it harder to use. The only way to work around this and find more search results is to restrict your searches (say, look for a level 9 or under male, then a level 9 or under female, then a level 10+ male, then a level 10+ female; luckily, this mechanic seems to have been removed in Gen. V). And you will need to refine your search results, because...
    • The system has no way of filtering or enforcing a concept of reasonable trades. It is largely clogged up by trade offers that are absolutely ridiculous (Offering a level 1 Bidoof and asking for a level 100 Deoxys) or even impossible (I'd like a level 20 Dragonite, please).
      • The impossible ones are often done on purpose, with people exploiting a Good Bad Bug that lets you clone. It can really backfire if someone actually trades them a hacked Pokémon in the process, though.
  • The Pokémon Dream World. It was originally for getting Pokémon with new or different abilities, but everything about it is a pain:
    • It's the only place to grow berries in Black and White, berries cannot be transferred from a Generation IV game (so no internet connection means no berries), and you start of with only 6 berry plots and a maximum of 15.
    • It crashes all the time. That's annoying enough in and of itself, but it also means you might not be able to water your berries, so you might lose them through no fault of your own.
    • A lot of the mons simply aren't available on the Dream World, so their new abilities can't be obtained legally. Many aren't available as females, so you can't breed their good abilities onto Pokémon with Egg Moves or better IVs/natures.
    • The sheer amount of time to "tuck" a Pokémon in: it can take upwards of five minutes to send one to the Dream World from the cartridge and about that much time to retrieve it from the Dream World, and you have to do this every time you want to get a single Pokémon from the Island of Dreams.
    • Also, visiting the Island of Dreams throws you in a random location instead of choosing which part of the Island you want to visit. Stack that on top of Pokémon ceasing to approach you for the rest of the day after you visit the island enough times, and it can get pretty aggravating, especially if there's a certain Pokémon in a certain location you're after.
  • The less said about Stealth Rock and evasion boosts, the better.
    • Losing battles that should have been easy wins through no fault of your own thanks to a critical hit is almost a rite of passage for competitive Pokémon battlers. Since switching is extremely commonplace in those matches, Pokémon will frequently switch onto a resisted hit or one that should deal a survivable amount of damage - only to see the dreaded "A critical hit!" message. If that was the only counter to the opponent's mon? Game over.
    • Serene Grace Flinch is another thing that makes many competitive battlers' blood boil. There are three mons (Jirachi, Togekiss, and Shaymin-S) with access to a move that has a 30% chance of causing the opponent to "flinch", a.k.a. miss their action for that turn, and the ability Serene Grace, which doubles the chance of any added effects taking place - to 60% in this case. Togekiss frequently combines this with paralysis, which adds an additional 25% chance of skipping a turn. Jirachi frequently combines this with a Choice Scarf, making outspeeding it nigh-impossible outside of mons with normally overkill Speed such as Speed Forme Deoxys. And Shaymin-S has access to the move Seed Flare, which has a whopping 80% chance with Serene Grace factored in to double the damage of its flinching move. Any of these mons can easily flinch an opponent over and over and over until even should-be counters are dead. When Shaymin-S was nominated for banning by Smogon...well, let's just quote the overseeing moderator on the results:

"That's right folks, we just made history. Smogon just had its first unanimous vote ever! I would like to take this time to thank Shaymin-S for being so annoying that literally every voter wanted to ban its ass."

  • Black City and White Forest. Both are cool places, but to keep them at their best, the player must regularly use Entralink and the C-Gear. Thus, these locations are fairly useless to anyone without a lot of local friends who play a lot of Pokémon.
    • Not to mention that you also have to talk to all the people living in your respective city on a near-daily basis just to make sure they stay there. It doesn't sound so bad with White Forest at first since the population doesn't exceed 10 new people, but then there are those times where you just need to take a break from your Pokémon game or you misplace the cartridge for a while. Then you realize how much of a chore it is to make sure the people you invite to your game's city stay there.
    • Black City is worse. In order to make people stay there, you have to battle them. Even the weakest trainers will take an extra minute just to beat. It's not hard to imagine how tedious this gets day after day.
  • The Name Rater. Game Freak could've made it as simple as including a name-changing app on whatever personal device you have depending on the region your game takes place in or maybe a function for the PC over at the Pokémon Center. Instead, you have to look for this guy and have him judge whether you can rename your Pokémon or not. He always gives you the option (granted, his occupation would make more sense as a name CHANGER since he never gives you an actual rating for your Pokémon's name), however unless the Pokémon was obtained through a trade, migration, or an event. The former two would be somewhat more tolerable if he only reacted this way to the ones that already had names, but this reaction towards event-obtained Pokémon is unacceptable. You aren't even given a side-quest to obtain the Pokémon most of the time like they did with Victini; they just straight-up give it to you. The least they could do there is let you name the Pokémon after the delivery guy gives it to you like any other gift Pokémon you get within the game.
    • Now in Black and White Versions, all new Pokémon's names are in lower case (Raichu) so when you have your old (RAICHU) from a previous generation, you can't get its name lower-cased. If your Pokémon is one that can still evolve, its name will become lower-case once it evolves.
  • Being a side game and all, it's understandable that Pokémon Mystery Dungeon would change the way a few of the moves work. Some changes, however, should not have been made. Spite removing all of a move's PP as opposed to only four and Knock-Off potentially rendering a held item permenantly unusable, to name a few.
  • The inability for players to buy Game Corner coins in Heart Gold and Soul Silver is this to many. A new minigame called Voltorb Flip allows players to amass coins for free, but rather slowly relative to the number of coins needed to buy anything worthwhile. Factor in the fact that some players don't have the patience to learn how to play Voltorb Flip...
  • Evolution by happiness. Unlike Level Grinding, trading, or use of a certain item, there's no quick way to evolve a Pokémon by happiness. You have to keep it in your party, battle with it, pile on the items and/or not let it faint. Depending on the game you might be able to feed it Poffins or Pokeblocks, but it can still eat through your supplies very quickly. It's bad enough when it's a Pokémon you want to use, but when you just want to get it on the Pokedex it's downright annoying. Plus, since there's no set level for a happiness evolution, if you aren't careful you can potentially lose out on a good move by evolving too early/late.
  • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky hit a few new lows with these things:
    • One type of trap surrounds you with enemies, and then gives all enemies on the same floor a status condition which drains all your Power Points of the move you used to KO it. The status condition is applied to every enemy that ever gets spawned on the floor again, and never wears off, and the dungeons these appear in are ones which prevent you from bringing items in for refills.
    • Another type of trap randomly chooses one of the possible types of traps, then applies the effects to your whole party whether or not anyone else stepped on it.
    • And the worst of all: The new Bonus Level of Hell keeps all traps invisible, whether you've stepped on them or not, and whether you are using any item that normally makes them visible. Okay, Luck-Based Mission, we get the freaking point already.
    • The Monster Houses. Quite annoying when you spawn in one, or just enter one altogether.
    • Eugh, 'quite' annoying? Try highly. Take the Sky Tower in the first game. The selection of Pokémon in it include Aerodactyl with Pressure (lowers your PP quicker) and Agility (raises the speed of EVERY enemy Pokémon by 2), ghosts like Shuppet who can sneak through the walls and attack you while you can't attack them back and who have Curse which takes away a quarter of your health each turn, Shedinja who can only be brought down by certain types of moves (and can also sneak through walls), Koffing who can and will poison you, Lunatone who can send you to sleep rendering you helpless... Get all these lovely creatures in one room, times their numbers by 5, give them a fierce desire to murder you and that is what Monster Houses are all about. And what if you enter one so your team-mates are unable to help you? They'll either stand idly by and watch you get slaughtered or prance off to find a way around to get to you and get knocked out themselves, which is usually what will happen unless you spawn in one.
    • Perish Song. The hit rate is fairly low, but when you've got a half dozen Politoed spamming it like there's no tomorrow, the law of averages is bound to catch up. Once you've been afflicted, you're boned unless you can reach the stairs in 3 moves.
  • The trading system. For many years, the only way to get Pokemon from other versions is to physically find another player and either player needed a link cable to connect the two game boys so they could trade. This wasn't a problem for kids at school since the series grew popular with them and someone was bound to have a link cable, but if you lived in a place where not many people had the games, you were out of luck for One Hundred Percent Completion. People either opted to own two game boys, a link cable, and both versions of the current generation of the Pokemon games so they can trade with themselves, or went for the cheaper route and got a Gameshark or Action Replay so they can just cheat for the Pokemon they needed and get the event Pokemon that they couldn't get. This trading mechanic is very popular in Japan due to how densely populated most cities and towns are, so it wouldn't be hard for players to meet other players that had the game. Outside of Japan, it is not the same case.
  • Gift or Event-only Pokemon themselves, too. Want a Celebi? Too bad, they're nigh-unobtainable without cheating or hearing about a giveaway and being in the right place at exactly the right time. Worse, due to it being linked to a real-world addon that was never released outside of Japan, Celebi was actually completely unobtainable in the West during its original generation. Wi-Fi connection events in Gen IV and Gen V fixed it somewhat, but if for some reason you couldn't connect to the Internet on your DS (and even going to a McDonald's wasn't guaranteed to work, as you still might not be close enough to the router), you're screwed.
  1. ↑ (especially considering Pokémon Gold and Silver included a method to transfer Pokémon from Pokémon Red and Blue, a very rejoice-inducing feature, all of this right before the third generation)
  2. ↑ Keep in mind the region lock only checks that a Gen I mon doesn't know a move that doesn't exist in Gen I, as long as the move exists in Gen I, it will let it be traded, even if that species couldn't learn that particular move in Red/Green/Blue/Yellow's time. This commonly happens among egg moves, an example being Bulbasaur, who cannot normally learn Light Screen in any way in R/G/B/Y, but can learn it as an egg move if bred with a Chikorita, Mareep, or either of their evolutions who know the move. Because Light Screen existed in Gen I, Bulbasaur can be traded to a Gen I game, but because bulbasaurs can't learn light screen then, Stadium reads the bulbasaur as a hacked pokemon.
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