Creatures Inc. Designer Wants To Know "What UI / UX Mistakes Drive You Absolutely Mad In Pokémon Games"

@Robo-Knight Ah yes, removing the National Pokedex. What a bad user interface design decision.

@Robo-Knight That doesn't really belong here, I'm still with you though.

I find the search functions quite annoying in boxes...and the item list isn't great when you have lot.

But they're always improving the experience in some way, and I don't remember being bothered by the old systems when I was kid. I guess I have standards now 😅

I do think Sword and Shield have the best user interface out of Pokémon games by far. Things like being able to use multiple items at once is a godsend and the "sort by type" function has been there since forever. To be honest there's not much bothering me about it right now, they're going in a great direction

Single save file.

Don’t let me copy, don’t let me save as, but let me have more than one.

The easier and more straightforward online components are, the better. Nintendo doesn’t have a great history of that.

They need more sorting options for the boxes. I should be able to sort (not filter) my Pokemon by type, ascending level, descending level, A-Z, Z-A, etc.

@Robo-Knight You all need to get over that. I'm pretty critical on the recent generations of mainline Pokemon, but Dexit's one of the few things that I feel doesn't hold water. There's absolutely no way they were going to be able to keep adding new pokemon ad infinitum while maintaining the old pokemon, while adding more to the games in a single game forever. We're almost at 1000 pokemon as is. Time to do what other monster games do and have a rotating roster.

I have a friend who complains a lot about how some of the games have colour-blind options and some of them do not. So when important information is highlighted in certain colours he can't see it.

The EV training mini game in XY was high impossible to play as a leftie. L=A is a great option, until it means you can't do certain menu functions. And SuMo's Rotom screen was distracting and annoying to open the map on.

@Incarna I miss the PSS system.

The searching in boxes. Just let us us type in the name of the Pokemon and not have to scroll through a page a letters and only being able to choose one!

Shouldn't we be posting these suggestions on Twitter?

How about bringing back the P.S.S. (Player Search System)That was probably one of the best used interfaces we had in the series. Access to trades, Battles, and even chat.(Though that could be a blessing in disguise now that it's gone.) I also don't think it would be too much trouble to.reintegrate the G.T.S into the main game as well I get that they want to make it convenient but I don't want to grab my phone just to trade especially when I'm already playing the game.

When I play Pokemon games I look past the UI/UX to enjoy the games. So it doesn't matter me what type of UI each new Pokemon gets. I don't play Pokemon Detective Pikachu but I started playing Pokemon Masters on my phone and the UI for that is really good.

The battle interface in mainline Pokemon games is one of the biggest sore thumbs. It's the slowest it's ever been. In terms of the UI specifically, text like "It's super effective" needs to be stripped from the text box and communicated via visual means (such as a splash animation on the Pokemon being hit, or a sound effect). Text like "Pokemon uses move_xyz!" is entirely unnecessary, players can see the Pokemon's 3D model is using the move, they don't need to be told anymore like it's still the RBY era, which benefitted from flavor text like this due to the graphical limitations. "Pokemon is poisoned/frozen solid/etc." should be communicated entirely with visuals, there is no longer a need to alert the player to a status change with text. Essentially anything you can do to minimize the number of times users have to press the A button to proceed through the onslaught of useless text is a good thing. If anything, get rid of the text menu entirely, let players simply "play" without it and focus more on the battle.

The use of items is entirely ridiculous during battles. Even having a dedicated Pokeballs section is still annoying because the Pokeballs are still selected by name via a vertical text menu. A visual Pokeball selection wheel a la Zelda's Twilight Princess should be mapped to the Y button for example, and Pokeballs should be castable at any time during the battle irrespective of the currently occuring animation, it should be entirely dynamic. A toggleable "Use this ball?" pop-up can exist to save players from accidentally wasting a ball they wanted to keep, with the option to disable it via the game menu from the start of the game (ie: don't hide user settings behind easily-missed "items" received by random NPCs). The standard Pokeball would be highlighted by default in the wheel, and any Master Balls would bump it over one slot to take its spot if they are in your inventory.

The same goes for battle-useable items. Hold the X button to display an item wheel with item type tabs you can cycle through by pressing L or R, such as "Food/Medicine", etc. If there are too many items in the game, therefore making the wheel appear over-cluttered, that's your first sign that the game has a lot of bloat. Players can live without items like "Moo Moo Milk" and the endless list of pointless "Berries" if it means they have easy access to a series of 10-15 items they'll actually use.

I can go on. The entire battle and trade system needs to be thrown out and re-thought from the ground up. It simply no longer works in a 3D game. It's bizarre, chunky and meandering, needlessly wordy to the point of taking you out of the fun, and just plain tiresome. It barely serves the function it's intended to perform, just a very lazy Frankenstein solution from two decades ago that is still unaccountably in use and no longer fulfills its purpose. It's easy to forget that the Pokemon battle system is very much an RPG battle system, yet it's presented from a UI standpoint as more of a college student's embryonic resource management project with an incredibly dry "action, result" response.

The dissonance between finding Pokémon in the "Wild Area" in Sword/Shield and battling them is very unsettling, as well. It defeats the purpose of having a large area to explore when it disappears every time you battle a Pokémon. They should be battleable in the field a la Xenoblade Chronicles 2, the transition between overworld exploration and battles should be entirely dynamic with no environmental transitions. Wild Pokémon should be targetable by the trainer by pressing the right control stick to change what nearby wild Pokémon you are focusing on, with the ability to break the focus by running away from battle. The trainer can choose a Pokémon to battle them with by holding the LZ button to display a list of their party Pokémon and pressing a corresponding button to cast that Pokémon, similar to how Pokémon are selected for battle in Pokémon Stadium. Moves should be selected in a similar way, hold RZ to display the list of moves and press a corresponding button to use the move. Wild Pokémon should have intelligent AI, so it wouldn't be uncommon for example to see Pokémon who are prone to flock together join each other in battle, turning one on one fights into dynamic 1v3, 1v4, or even 1v6 fights, which creates a need for the player to strategize by using moves that affect multiple Pokémon at once, or know when to run from battle.

don't have twitter so someone tell em for me that going from the PSS to festival plaza is god awful. didn't bother with gen 8.

@traceman being able to send messages was convenient had to forfeit a match because i was running late for class but was able to tell my opponent. i sort of get why they separated the gts, probably to loophole the NSO subscription requirement, free to download get free online features.

Does this guy work on the mainline Pokemon games in any way, or does he only work on the spin-offs like Detective Pikachu?

He is a Creatures employee, not a Gamefreak employee.

How about for Detective Pikachu, don't have the game treat me like Im 5

I hope that the Feedback (or most) given at this time has been in a responsible and conscientious way, we already know that many still (yes, "still") have a "resentment" and may show an unpleasant attitude, but it is better to show a correct attitude and nothing irresponsibility, because, obviously, it is a reason why feedbacks are not taken seriously, and right now that they are "more" open to see and take note of all the opinions; We do not miss the opportunity.

Oh yeah, I forgot this was happening. As someone already mentioned above, removing unnecessary text will make shiny hunting (not something for detective Pikachu but still) much more tolerable.

@westman98 He works on Creatures games so yeah

@Brydontk in reality though they have no excuse, pokemon is the top grossing media franchise in existence, and yet they still remain with a work force comparable to indie teams.

@ian8911 I make that argument all the time. But when I say it, I mean that they have no excuse not to make the games better. But of COURSE they have an excuse for not shoving 893 pokemon into the new game. Having a ton of money doesn't mean being the top media franchise should be able to stuff a thousand pokemon into a game cartridge (which I guess would have unlimited space) AND fix its stagnation problem. If Dexiters have it their way, eventually, a mainline pokemon would eventually just be the Pokedex 3D app on the 3DS. It will have all the pokemon, they'll all have fresh animations, but there will be no room for anything else because all the resources would go to stuffing 893 pokemon into a single game cartridge.

I mainly tell Dexiters to get over it because this is something that no matter how much you complain about it, is not going to happen. I'm all for offering criticism towards a product because developers need to learn from the positives and the negatives to make for a better product, but I'm not for complaining over something that makes no sense to complain about. For Dexit, it was ALWAYS inevitable that this was going to happen. They can't exponentially create new pokemon and keep bringing back every single old one. When would you all have them start cutting pokemon? At 1000? At 1500? At 2000? It's just... Not... Possible.

I get the frustration at Pokemon, I talk about it a lot. But having every single monster they've ever invented go into a game is not the issue, nor is it plausible. Zelda BOTW only has 21 different creatures to fight, not including the fire, electric, ice, gold, white, etc variants of each of the creatures or the bosses, and it's lauded as one of the best video games of all time. Pokemon's issue is that it's maintained the exact same formula it's had for over 20 years and it keeps slapping a new coat of paint on it with every new game instead of truly trying to innovate.

The UI is actually very good overall, but search functions could stand to be a little better and playing with friends made a little easier.

@Brydontk AAA games will typically top out at 100 or 150 character models. Most will be far fewer than that.

Not only are there 893 pokemon with each one having unique polygon frames, textures, animations, light maps etc., they all have at least one color variant, some have texture variants (Spinda, Vivillon), some have multiple forms (Thundurus, Hoopa, Morpeko), 200 or so have gender differences (Pikachu, Eevee, Zubat) and so on.

If they stick with 2d, it's possible they could've delayed the pokedex prune by another generation or two, but it still would've happened eventually. Because migrating assets to a different game on the same platform is much easier than going from 3DS to Switch, it's entirely possible the next generation (or even a future DLC) will be able to include everything, but for Sword/Shield initial release, it's ridiculous to expect all 893 to show up.

@Ashunera84 Couldn't have said it better! (And I really mean it, it seems as though you have a better grasp of the processes and terminology of game development than I do 😂) And I agree about the jump from 2D to 3D and the jumps from different platforms. But although it could theoretically possible to take the assets they've created and move them all to a new Switch game while adding the pokemon they left out... I really hope they stick to their guns. It'll only serve to sate the people who oppose Dexit for a game or two before the permanent roster rotation is implemented.

Online interface as a whole has just gone down since peaking with the PSS and the search features kinda suck in the main games, but other than those the mistakes that drive me crazy are ones that are because GameFreak is not good at being game devs in 2020. Haven't seen too many annoying interfaces in spin-offs.

@Brydontk I still have to disagree with you. This isn't some technical obstacle to over come. I guarantee you they could have fit every mon on that sd no problem at all. There main problem was that they didn't have the "time" to get it done, it would take "to long to get them all in", which again is complete bs. As a company they need to expand to meet the needs of there consumers or the consumers will move on to companies that do, and yet they refuse. You say all the resources would be stuffed solely into the mons, again that makes no sense. They have the money to hire many many new animators and modelers on so that no on there has any more of a work load than they currently have, they are just to greedy.
Tech isn't the issue.
Money isn't the issue.
But you can't buy time, but you can hire on more employees to get the most out of the time you have.

@Brydontk what are you basing that inevitable cap on? sword is just 11GB(mortal kombat is twice that), people are modding in goku and agumon, the models and animations are from xy, they were able to make animations for 718 pokemon plus moves and even the walk and run animations were unused until recently, Battle revolution(wii) used models and animations from battle stadium(n64), and pokemon lets go had the learn sets and abilties of all 808 pokemon at the time in its files. what is your background? what are you basing that on? are you over it? why did you say that? it's not helping us get over it. this isn't me riled about pokemon, i'm riled about this disconnect we're having.

@ancientlii its people like him that allow game devs with such power and ability to become so lazy and full of greed. There mind set is clearly "why would we hire more people? We get less money, and people will buy are product regardless due to the name attached to it. Its just a loss to do more than the bare min."

Let's Go!'s stupidly forced motion control in TV mode.
Makes no sense to not have an option for the Handheld Mode controls in TV mode except to shove the awful motion gimmick on us, as is sometimes Nintendo's way.

@westman98 Creatures does do development on the mainline games, but I am not sure if they develop the UI for them.. probably not.

@Haruki_NLI that wasnt in sun and moon either my guy......

@ancientlii tell him yourself twitter is free

@ancientlii youre missing out on a fun game......you dont deserve an opinion on pokemon if you havent played it

@NintendoPok did i give one?

@Kalmaro Did he delete the comment I don't see it?

@roboshort
That's what I'm trying to figure out.

I know Creatures works on creating Pokemon models and animations, but I'm not sure they also work on the UX/UI of the mainline RPGs.

@Snatcher Yep, it's gone. It was pointing out how much dexit sucked.

@ian8911 I'm not disagreeing with you on any of that except for Dexit. It's like you completely missed both mine and @Ashunera84 's points as far as why it's not plausible to keep adding new pokemon forever. Like I said, I completely agree that Gamefreak can hire more staff. I completely agree that there's no legitimate excuse why the animations are lazy and the gameplay is rushed. And I completely agree that Dexit is no excuse why the games are the way they are. Look through my past comments, I talk about how Gamefreak should do more and stop being lazy all the time. The ONLY thing I'm arguing is that Dexit itself is not a good argument. They can not add new pokemon forever. No matter how much you all complain about it, it's not going to happen. And it's not out of lack of desire, effort or resources. It's literally not possible to keep doing it. If it was possible to add new pokemon and keep the old ones until the sun burnt out, I'd be right there with you. But it's not.

@ancientlii I'm basing the inevitable cap on the fact that, again, there's no such cartridge, and never will be one, that can hold infinite data. That's the case with everything in existence, nothing can hold something that's ever expanding except space. There's always inevitably going to be a cap. And even if there was, I wouldn't want it. To continue exponentially adding new pokemon, new animations for the pokemon, new moves for the pokemon, new forms for the pokemon, new characters for the games, etc, etc. Something would have to be sacrificed. Now, I've always argued that pokemon has been getting stagnant, and they need to innovate. Keeping old pokemon is not the issue

Pokemon Battle Revolution and Battle Stadium are bad comparisons. They're not RPGs. They're literally just battle simulators. So yes, the creators could take their times just to focus on the pokemon. They didn't have stories to write. They didn't have an entire region to traverse or puzzles to create. They didn't have new and interesting characters to create and write for. They didn't have new pokemon to create either. They literally just had to take the 493 pokemon (not 718; and only 151 in Pokemon Stadium and 252 in Pokemon Stadium 2) and animated attacks that were created, make them move in interesting ways and create models for characters.

I'm not saying that they didn't work hard. They did, but creating a game that's just back to back battling is completely different than creating a game with an adventure and RPG elements. And I'm not saying Pokemon Sword and Shield didn't cut a lot of corners and rush to get to the deadline. I think they did, and it shows. They absolutely need to start every pokemon from the ground up and not just copy/past "futureproofed" pokemon from XY to every game. But that takes time. Even if they hire more devs (which they absolutely should) that's time taken away from development to make the games evolve and become more interesting in other ways that the games have been lacking. That's space in the cartridge being taken away that could be utilized to make the series go above and beyond. Pokemon Sword and Shield has A LOT of issues, but Dexit is not one of them.

And what are you talking about? Pokemon Let's GO has the original 151 pokemon plus Meltan and Melmetal, not 808 pokemon. If you're talking about Pokemon Go? It's a phone application. It's not an entire RPG. None of the moves are animated like on the mainline games, there's not nearly as many items in the game, the pokemon don't have abilities, the game map is basically just Google Maps and there's only like... 5 written human characters

Please let us delete Pokémon from your boxes in bulks, doing it one at a time is painful.

We need the ability to search for Pokémon on the GTS by Ability! That's one of the most important factors in acquiring Pokémon by trade, and there's only one very rare option for changing it (and none at all for the Hidden Abilities or in earlier generations). Why should I waste my time and resources trading for multiple copies of the same Pokémon or trying to breed one (which has its own issues) until I luck into one with the right Ability?

@Menardi They could get rid of some of the battle text, but some text messages like status effects and stat changes and especially the more rare move effects need to be kept. It would be extremely annoying to need to memorize and instantly recall visual effects for each of those things when it's much easier to keep them straight by simply reading about them. Besides, you call always set the text scroll speed to its fastest setting in the options menu.

As for items, Moo Moo Milk is the only item that restores 100 HP, so it needs to stay. I agree that the more redundant items should go, though, and they did indeed drop some of them in Sword & Shield. I also agree that item selection needs a tune-up. The Gen 6 games at least automatically sorted your items into a few major categories, but then they dropped that function in Gen 7. Why would they do that?!

@BulbasaurusRex This would hardly require memorization. A poison effect would be as simple as having a purple sludge effect ooze down the screen for a second, with a skull and bones icon hovering over the Pokemon until the effect dissapates that flashes red when the poison effect damages the Pokemon.

@ancientlii Typically, animated models need to be remade or heavily edited and reanimated anytime the hardware changes. Depending on the scenario, this can take as long or longer than simply starting from scratch.

Sword/Shield's models and animations look nearly identical to 3ds (though light/texture maps are dramatically improved) but that does not mean they didn't start over with them. They simply remade them to be the same as before. This takes a great deal of time. A direct import from 3DS without modifications would look glitchy or nonsensical.

Each one being totally unique is the key here. No other game does that. Animations and textures are frequently recycled for multiple models within most games or even across multiple games for larger businesses, but not for Pokemon. The time investment is colossal, and quite a large number of game devs came out in support of Game Freak because of the sheer volume of work they needed to do to bring the 400 over that they did initially.

Keep in mind Wii was designed to be backwards compatible with GameCube, and transferring models very well may have been a lot easier because of it. Before that, there just weren't that many pokemon, and they were much lower quality.

One could say the world's largest multimedia franchise could "hire more people" to get this stuff done faster, but that's not really how it works. Look up a concept called Brooks' law. Adding people to a project often makes it take longer due to required training (done by your best workers) and increased communication complexity and other social dynamics etc.

I do believe Game Freak can do better in some areas, but solving some of these problems is not a simple task, and there really is nothing in Sword and Shield that actually indicates they are bad game developers.

@ancientlii dude you literally told the comment section to post to twitter for you. Thats lazy and careless no one is going to do that for you.

@ancientlii yes you did "don't have twitter so someone tell em for me that going from the PSS to festival plaza is god awful. didn't bother with gen 8."

@Menardi That's only one of them. You'd also have to memorize sleep, paralysis, burn, freeze, confusion, toxic poison, seeded, trapped, protected, recoil, speed up/down 1 or 2 stages, attack up/down 1 or 2 stages, special attack up/down 1 or 2 stages, etc, and those are only the most common battle effects, many of which can't be so intuitively depicted by a visual effect.

@BulbasaurusRex I think we are splitting hairs for the sake of splitting hairs here, there is no reason why any of these status effects could not be visualized. RPGs have visualized these status effects for decades, there is no "memorization" required. Some of these aren't even status conditions, but they can still be communicated with a quick, eloquent visual. Recoil? Little grey splash above the affected Pokémon with the word "RECOIL!" in white text on it that fades after a second or so accompanying the drop in the Pokémon's health bar. Attack Up? Little orange-yellow up arrow floating upwards and then fading with "ATK UP" next to it with an adjacent meter icon indicating how many stages the Pokémon's attack has been raised. Blue down arrow with "DEF DOWN" floating downwards for impaired defense effects. Little question marks flashing above the Pokémon during confusion, little animated flowery growths seeping up below the Pokémon with subtle green arrows or vines or what have you on the battle floor pointing towards the seeding Pokémon when seeded, etc. Use your imagination, my friend!

In previous Gens, at the start of battle only the slowest pokemon will have its weather ability activate. In the current gen spamming weather effects/animation at the start of the battle is the norm. I hate the change.