Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if it was done just to place more emphasis on using TRs as the source of a majority of the actually good moves, and when they got to that point they didn’t really care much about the TMs and where to place them relative to the gameplay so you end up with a lot of pretty much useless TMs for the first and last 40% of the game
I agree with this tbh. I think it's more interesting from a game design standpoint when the player has to make choices and can't just have everything. Last couple times I played Gen 5 (or maybe it was ORAS idk) I remember slapping Earthquake on half my team in the endgame and being all "huh this is kind of homogenizing and boring."
BDSP basically did exactly that with the Move Relearner. (Starts out by charging 1 Heart Scale per use as in DPPt, then becomes free-of-charge after 10 uses.) I think that's a pretty good way to tackle it. Forces you to engage with the process long enough to get the point across, then drops the tedium for the dedicated players.
If it wasn't for the push to make raising Pokémon for VGC/other competitive formats more accessible, I'd be way more on-board with limited TMs again. I think that's the main reason why we even get the ability to get infinite TMs (or why they were even made infinite in the first place).
Here's my take on the the TM System: They have a solution already via spin-offs. In the older Pokemon MD games, when you used up a TM, it became a "Used TM" that you could restore with the move Recycle. Say SV has TMs become "used up" and unusable until you renew them with some resource like Tera Energy, Pokemon Mats, or just paying Money to have them restored, with the more "valuable" TM's requiring more to do so. Main game this makes it lower maintenance but not necessarily less time intensive to "grind" to use a TM again, and post-game this can be alleviated by reducing the cost on TM Restoration or making the resource used very abundant (like ID areas having a lot of Tera Shards and such via the Item Printer). Or just go with something like the Tera Orb where in "true" Post Game it simply never needs to be renewed.
I mean, what else would he give? The only other Water moves in gen 3 are Water Gun, Bubble, Whirlpool, the HMs, Bubblebeam, Crabhammer (Krabby and Corphish lines only), and Muddy Water (which was Swampert exclusive at the time). Water Pulse was literally made because they needed a Water TM.
You could pass TM moves via breeding prior to gen 6.
Ice Beam. His gym is basically part Ice anyway, and there's a precedent for Gym Leaders to give out moves not of their stated types. Otherwise ORAS did the logical thing in having him give you Waterfall, even though it's an HM.
Pretty sure they did that cause the only Water TMs on the Gen 6 list are Rain Dance and Scald.
I still maintain that there should be a universal damage-over-time move, because passive damage is an important part of the battle system in both PVE and PVP contexts (so every team should be capable of interacting with it). This doesn't need to be Toxic itself, but the move has been changed to something designed to be used by multiple types (i.e. much broader than the current distribution). What am I talking about? That, as of Gen 6 (when reusable TMS were in full swing), it gives perfect accuracy when used by a Poison type. At first, that seems like they're going for it being more commonly seen against one type, but the distinction only ever shows up in comparison. There needs to be enough non-Poison Toxic users for the 10% misses to be noticeable for the Poison users accuracy to be appreciated, otherwise they could have just put the accuracy at 100 when the distribution fell off a cliff.
Well exactly. Scald would have been fine but it's not really his flavour, and by then Waterfall was a physical move so wasn't just a weaker Surf.
I should clarify, "a move suited to the Gym Leader who gives it out and which wasn't so powerful it'd have made the Pokemon which learned it horrendously overpowered"
I agree that they've probably always assigned Gym TMs after designing the list, not based on Brock and Falkner's off-type TMs, but rather because the threat level of different Gym Leaders is all over the place, depending on whether they get lucky with their signature move.
Both fair points but a slight correction on the second: in HGSS U-Turn, Attract, Shadow Ball, and Dragon Pulse are all purchaseable from the Battle Frontier.
Sure they don't need to give out a TM but it's a good tradition IMO. I actually think a badge on its own is slightly underwhelming and it makes the occasion more special/memorable. Plus if it's a move associated with the character in question there's a sense of accomplishment in getting to use it - Overheat for Flannery is a good example of this.
i think so many of my opinions on discussions this sub-forum had recently (level scaling, HMs/field moves, TMs etc) warp back to me wishing the badges were as relevant mechanically as they are in lore. like, they Should be doing something beyond being glorified checkpoints (which they do in the pre-alola games by unlocking field moves!)
