NodeCraft
- 18 Dec 2022 20:09
#213028
I picked up Pixelmon about a month ago and have been enjoying it plenty. However, I try to be observant and critical to think of small improvements that could be made to make the experience smoother - since it's a bunch of small things and general observations about experience, I don't feel like this is appropriate for the Suggest a Feature forum.
If the observations or suggestions I make have been made before, that's OK - I don't know if I'm really breaking new ground here or anything, and that's not what I'm trying to do.
A huge game feel thing that gets on my nerves is the way that the time it takes to catch a Pokemon is tied to the actual animation of the Poke Ball model - if the ball your trainer throws rockets off a ledge, the ball won't start capturing the Pokemon until it lands and starts wobbling. If you're in The End, when my trainer threw a ball, it rocketed off the edge, and I was frozen in the battle because the ball... never landed.
For the sake of wasting less time, the animation and the actual capture process should probably be decoupled; the ball should probably just land on an "invisible block" if there's nothing below it anywhere near where you threw it, in addition to being faster overall. At the very least, there should be a cap for the maximum amount of time between the ball being thrown and the ball beginning to capture.
In the same vein, when you send out a Pokemon, there should be a cap to the amount of time that you have to wait until you throw it again, probably not more than a few seconds. When hunting down flying Pokemon, especially, it really hurts to have to wait until your ball lands after a miss and releases the Pokemon before you can throw again, and you have to awkwardly side-eye the chat to see when the Pokemon is able to be thrown again.
On the topic of reducing wait time, animations such as Mega Evolution "cutscenes" should either be able to be skipped by clicking through, or should just take less time to complete. For the most part, you can just mash click through battles, and it's super convenient, so it feels very odd that you have to wait ~10 seconds or more just for the Mega Evolution animation. Very annoying!
Huge other gripe is the way flying Pokemon work. It is an EXTREME hassle to hunt flying Pokemon down when you're mounted on your own because of the physics of your mount. Generally, it is easier to fly above a Pokemon and try to hit it with your ball on its way down, but because you are riding a Pokemon, you can't actually see through the model of your mount and it just feels insanely awkward. You have to flap up above the Pokemon and then fall below, throw your own Pokemon to start battle and likely miss, and if you move forward, you're almost always going to be faster than the Pokemon you're pursuing, so then you need to slow down... it's a mess and isn't fun. There needs to be more flexibility in the way your flying Pokemon can move in order to steady yourself and get a better chance to aim, because right now it is just painful.
Last thing, and this compounds a bit with the last issue, is that some Pokemon are deceptively hard to hit. Pokemon like Zubat and Mega Beedrill's hitboxes that you need to hit to initiate battle are largely or entirely divorced from the actual visual model, and it's a very jarring experience to have to readjust because your ball just phased through the actual creature you're trying to fight. I don't really know if this would be considered a bug, but if it's not, then that's even worse; I would just appreciate a re-examining of some hitboxes to make things make more sense.
I write this because I care! Mod is very fun! Just want to suggest some things here and there, maybe others feel the same way, maybe not. Cheers to whoever reads!
If the observations or suggestions I make have been made before, that's OK - I don't know if I'm really breaking new ground here or anything, and that's not what I'm trying to do.
A huge game feel thing that gets on my nerves is the way that the time it takes to catch a Pokemon is tied to the actual animation of the Poke Ball model - if the ball your trainer throws rockets off a ledge, the ball won't start capturing the Pokemon until it lands and starts wobbling. If you're in The End, when my trainer threw a ball, it rocketed off the edge, and I was frozen in the battle because the ball... never landed.
For the sake of wasting less time, the animation and the actual capture process should probably be decoupled; the ball should probably just land on an "invisible block" if there's nothing below it anywhere near where you threw it, in addition to being faster overall. At the very least, there should be a cap for the maximum amount of time between the ball being thrown and the ball beginning to capture.
In the same vein, when you send out a Pokemon, there should be a cap to the amount of time that you have to wait until you throw it again, probably not more than a few seconds. When hunting down flying Pokemon, especially, it really hurts to have to wait until your ball lands after a miss and releases the Pokemon before you can throw again, and you have to awkwardly side-eye the chat to see when the Pokemon is able to be thrown again.
On the topic of reducing wait time, animations such as Mega Evolution "cutscenes" should either be able to be skipped by clicking through, or should just take less time to complete. For the most part, you can just mash click through battles, and it's super convenient, so it feels very odd that you have to wait ~10 seconds or more just for the Mega Evolution animation. Very annoying!
Huge other gripe is the way flying Pokemon work. It is an EXTREME hassle to hunt flying Pokemon down when you're mounted on your own because of the physics of your mount. Generally, it is easier to fly above a Pokemon and try to hit it with your ball on its way down, but because you are riding a Pokemon, you can't actually see through the model of your mount and it just feels insanely awkward. You have to flap up above the Pokemon and then fall below, throw your own Pokemon to start battle and likely miss, and if you move forward, you're almost always going to be faster than the Pokemon you're pursuing, so then you need to slow down... it's a mess and isn't fun. There needs to be more flexibility in the way your flying Pokemon can move in order to steady yourself and get a better chance to aim, because right now it is just painful.
Last thing, and this compounds a bit with the last issue, is that some Pokemon are deceptively hard to hit. Pokemon like Zubat and Mega Beedrill's hitboxes that you need to hit to initiate battle are largely or entirely divorced from the actual visual model, and it's a very jarring experience to have to readjust because your ball just phased through the actual creature you're trying to fight. I don't really know if this would be considered a bug, but if it's not, then that's even worse; I would just appreciate a re-examining of some hitboxes to make things make more sense.
I write this because I care! Mod is very fun! Just want to suggest some things here and there, maybe others feel the same way, maybe not. Cheers to whoever reads!
