When did you start feeling hms were a liability/outdated?

[Palamon]

By what generation did you feel HMs were an outdated concept? I honestly feel that by generation 4, hms were already showing their age. Generation V, we barely needed them. We could pretty much go through the game with only Cut and Strength (and Surf in B2/W2). But Gen IV was just way too much. Needed 5 hms just to get through Victory Road.

Also, while I'm glad HMs are gone, the newer roadblocks (like team yell blocking the way) are just worse, in my opinion. but linearity is inevitable in pokemon these days

 

[Duck]

That's a complicated question. HMs were always bad as a concept: the things they are things that should be able to be done by Pokémon without prompting (like say, surfing, flying or Flash) or things that you could have easily gotten via a key item (think Clippers for Cut, Flashlight for Flash, etc.)

There was never a need to burden a Pokémon with them as moves and because they're moves they naturally introduced situations where you could softlock, making GF have to test and avoid softlocking.

Still, I think the worst it got was probably Gen IV, yes. To the point that GF themselves were already easing them out in the next gens (that's one of the reasons Gen V is so linear).

Still, the lack of HMs doesn't have to mean linearity. The Alola system works out fine, Key Items would also work as well and those are the "lazy" options. The Switch has the power to have dynamic levelling / look-up-tables so in theory there's no particular (game) reason you need linearity to have a steady game curve.

In the subject of roadblocks, a good roadblock should be something you as the player can see, understand why it's happening and think of how you can solve it.

So, for example, when you have people say "We're just dancing here for no reason!" (cough cough BW2) it's annoying because:
- there's no decent reason why you couldn't just squeeze through in-universe
- there's no obvious in-universe indicator of how to stop it

ShSw's Team Yell is actually a little bit better because the roadblocks there are dumb on purpose. Team Yell is coming up with dumb excuses to hinder your progress and make Marnie get a bigger lead. So it's dumb and annoying but it's meant to be dumb and annoying (at least I think so, maybe I'm being too generous with GF right now).

That said, it's not good because it's not something you as the PC could theoretically solve. If Marnie just got stumped by one of the gyms when you didn't, Team Yell could have very easily just said "lol nope. you're all staying here until Marnie gets through" and kept stalling - the only reason your gym win opened up the way was because of plot contrivance.

So it's not so much the lack of HMs that are making bad roadblocks, it's just that Game Freak is being even lazier than they needed to be with their game design c :

 

[Adam Levine]

I always thought HMs were bad game design, but watching Pikasprey's Soft Lock Picking videos drove the point home for me.

 

[Megan]

HMs were a good thing...in gen 1. Reasons for that are:
- there's only 5 of them
- 2 are optional
- 2 of the remaining three are really good in-battle moves you want to teach your Pokemon, anyway

Furthermore, all of them had their distinct purpose. Cut and Surf are accessibility tools that expand the map (on land and sea, respectively) so the player can get to more areas and explore. Strength is a puzzle solving tool and Fly and Flash are convenience tools, that you don't need to beat the games, which is why you can skip getting them altogether.

When GF moved on to gen 2 they, for some reason, decided they really want to introduce more of them. But since the basics are already covered by the first 5 ones, there's no real need. So what did they do? They added sea based moves. That sounded like a good idea back in the day (addding more places on water based areas) but it did absolutely not work out. Waterfall was worse than Surf in battle and Whirlpool really was just another version of Cut, but on water. They're also Water type moves, so you naturally need to have more Water type Pokemon, especially if one of them doesn't learn all Water type HMs.

Gen 3 didn't make things better. Still 3 Water HMs, but replacing Whirlpool with Rock Smash (so, another version of Cut) while also adding Dive. And then gen 4...

So, yeah, they always where a liability, but gen 1 at least did it "best".

 

[Poke fan number 489]

That's a complicated question. HMs were always bad as a concept: the things they are things that should be able to be done by Pokémon without prompting (like say, surfing, flying or Flash) or things that you could have easily gotten via a key item (think Clippers for Cut, Flashlight for Flash, etc.)

There was never a need to burden a Pokémon with them as moves and because they're moves they naturally introduced situations where you could softlock, making GF have to test and avoid softlocking.

Still, I think the worst it got was probably Gen IV, yes. To the point that GF themselves were already easing them out in the next gens (that's one of the reasons Gen V is so linear).

Still, the lack of HMs doesn't have to mean linearity. The Alola system works out fine, Key Items would also work as well and those are the "lazy" options. The Switch has the power to have dynamic levelling / look-up-tables so in theory there's no particular (game) reason you need linearity to have a steady game curve.

In the subject of roadblocks, a good roadblock should be something you as the player can see, understand why it's happening and think of how you can solve it.

So, for example, when you have people say "We're just dancing here for no reason!" (cough cough BW2) it's annoying because:
- there's no decent reason why you couldn't just squeeze through in-universe
- there's no obvious in-universe indicator of how to stop it

ShSw's Team Yell is actually a little bit better because the roadblocks there are dumb on purpose. Team Yell is coming up with dumb excuses to hinder your progress and make Marnie get a bigger lead. So it's dumb and annoying but it's meant to be dumb and annoying (at least I think so, maybe I'm being too generous with GF right now).

That said, it's not good because it's not something you as the PC could theoretically solve. If Marnie just got stumped by one of the gyms when you didn't, Team Yell could have very easily just said "lol nope. you're all staying here until Marnie gets through" and kept stalling - the only reason your gym win opened up the way was because of plot contrivance.

So it's not so much the lack of HMs that are making bad roadblocks, it's just that Game Freak is being even lazier than they needed to be with their game design c :

I honestly have no idea what I was trying to get across here, I think I was tired.

 

[Sheep]

4, god. Absolutely. In 3 I could tolerate it but the roadblocks in 4 really got to me as a teen. :s I'm so glad they removed them and hope it stays that way!

 

[Corveone]

Since Gen 3. I was enjoying Hoenn until it became so much water I started hating it. I was ok with Surf, but Surf+Dive+Waterfall, Gee, come on...

Then it didn't get any better in Gen 4, because although I appreciated not needing so many HMs to go through water, Defog and Rock Climb were pretty annoying too.

 

[pkmin3033]

I never really did? I actually find it kinda funny that people get so worked up over HMs - honestly, you should see the shit other JRPGs of the time and earlier could put you through with things like inventory management, a complete lack of direction for progression, and erratic difficulty spikes. HMs were a positively trivial inconvenience by comparison - if anything, they were extremely helpful signposts telling you exactly how you needed to get past an obstacle, and with their removal the games actually lost some of their flavour because the environmental puzzles were practically removed entirely.

I'm not going to argue that the concept embodied in HMs couldn't have been implemented better, but putting it in perspective it could have been much, MUCH worse than it was.

 

[Zeostar]

As soon as I needed Waterfall, Surf, and Whirlpool.

 

[BoulderSmolder]

Gen 1 handled HMs pretty well! Surf, Fly, and Strength are all solid moves. Surf opens up water routes in a natural-feeling way, Strength opens up a variety of mostly optional puzzles, and Fly is a quality of life mechanic flavored as a Pokemon move. Cut sucks, but it thankfully isn't needed that often after the early game. Flash feels more like something added after people had trouble with Rock Tunnel. Without Flash, Rock Tunnel being so dark that you can't see the trainers is just the area's unique gimmick.

Gen 2, the HM bloat mostly just affected optional areas like the Whirl Islands and Mt Mortar. I personally didn't like going through most of the optional areas (Mt. Mortar is one of my least favorite dungeons in the series), but at least HMs mostly came up when deliberately going off the beaten path. Whirlpool and Waterfall were definitely mistakes; they're functionally aquatic versions of Cut, and feel just as useless in battle.

Gen 3, HMs started blocking more mandatory progression. Still, the HMs don't feel overbearing at all until you reach the waterlogged eastern sections of Hoenn. Dive opens up new areas in a cool way, but should have been a better move in battle. Rock Smash is Cut but in Caves, and is annoyingly weak for a move used so often.

Gen 4 is when I lost my patience with HMs. And it looks like this is a pretty common sentiment. Sinnoh is such an annoying region just to travel around. The worst has to be Defog, which twists the concept of Flash into something a thousand times worse. Then there's Rock Climb, which sounds cool until you realize it's basically just another variation on Cut.

 

[Raicheot]

Never used to mind hms that much some of them could be useful moves but I'm glad they got rid of them

 

[Incudust]

By what generation did you feel HMs were an outdated concept? I honestly feel that by generation 4, hms were already showing their age. Generation V, we barely needed them. We could pretty much go through the game with only Cut and Strength (and Surf in B2/W2). But Gen IV was just way too much. Needed 5 hms just to get through Victory Road.

Also, while I'm glad HMs are gone, the newer roadblocks (like team yell blocking the way) are just worse, in my opinion. but linearity is inevitable in pokemon these days

The moment in gen 1 when I realized I couldn't make my Pokémon forget an hm and I had 3 solid moves that I didn't feel like deleting because an hm was stuck in my mons move list like a f&/):(/&{king tumor. So about, 15 years ago I disliked hm's

 

[Sydian]

gen 3...lol which is saying a lot bc i completed a playthrough of sapphire before i finished a gen 1 or 2 game to even get to the HMs there. but i think it really really hit in gen 4. i was annoyed with how many HMs i needed to fully explore and enjoy the region and how utterly useless some were. defog? rock climb? like. it just seemed like they were added for the sake of having more obstacles. like they REALLY loved HMs by the time they got to gen 4 didn't they lmfao.........

 

[Amore]

I only played Gen III-V and whilst initially I enjoyed the lack of HMs - and think Strength being permanent makes a lot of sense - the linear nature of the game hinders replay value - although in comparison to the relative freedom of Sinnoh and Hoenn and the real flexibility in Kanto and John, it makes a nice change of pace.
I think Hg/Ss was the most annoying, as I wasn't expecting Rock Climb to be a thing (and hadn't notice all the walls dotted around previously) given they were remakes from when the move didn't exist, had my team all set up with the best TMs etc. to face Red, then had to find a moveslot. But overall Gen III/IV are equally flawed in pretty much ensuring you need either 2 Water-types of a HM slave. At least Rock Smash had 40 power in Gen IV though, its completely useless in Gen III.
I do like the idea though that although in theory your Lapras / Wailord could carry a human across the sea, they have to learn the technique i.e. don't flip them off and/or drag them to the depths drowning them!

 

[PokemonPotatoHero]

Never liked that it takes up a slot for the pokemon moves.

 

[colours]

personally, i've never really questioned the existence of HMs when i started playing pokemon back in gen 3ish because i figured it was kinda an evil necessity. it was at the gen 5-6 point that i started to ask myself why game freak insists on bringing something this archaic back without at the very least making it more intuitive. lo and behold, however, gens 7 and 8 came along and did just that (to which degree i suppose is debatable but i digress).

 

[Fairy]

Dive and Waterfall ruined HMs for me.

 

[Roni]

I was ready to deal with it for life, but Gen 5 showed me how needless it was for story progression, then ROM hacks made me realize you could replace HMs with real world items completely and render them obsolete.

I'm not too much of an outside-the-box thinker, so I'm glad others came up with it first heh.

 

[Drayton]

Need I say more when you need like surf, waterfall and dive are heavily required to progress, Surf and Waterfall majority needed and Dive is nice optional way after story progressions is done that is like teaching my gyarados 3 HMS.

Just few things like Strength, Surf, Flash and dreaded Whirlpool again kinda overwhelmed needing much HMs in Gen2

Gen 5 teaches me that not much HM neccesary needed for story progression and only handful feels needed
Gen3 might suffer me because it becomes mundane now, just gotta accept it

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

I never really felt they were outdated, but I did feel they needed to be adjusted,
well I guess that's not true actually, its definitely been a bit annoying to have to carry an hm slave around.

I don't remember when it was but it was the game where HMs where extremely necessary to get to the elite four.

You had to surf, then go up a waterfall, go through a strength and rock smash cave, and I think even use rock climb?

So I think what happened is since I needed to use more than 4 HMs to get through I didn't have enough space,
so I actually had to teach one of my main pokemon an HM just to get through...

That was so annoying, either that or I had to leave and get another pokemon then go through the whole thing again until I could just fly there.

Can't exactly remember which it was.

The way they did things in bdsp isn't exactly how I would have done it but it works I guess.

The other is that HM moves, usually just aren't desirable, other than fly and surf.
The moves need to be improved so we'd actually want to use them.

like idk, rock smash is weak but since its literally about breaking rocks, then maybe give it extra damage when used against a rock pokemon.

Do like drayano hacks and make cut a grass move, that near everyone can learn.

stuff like that, on top of not making it unforgettable.

I like the idea of HMs being like hidden abilities, something a pokemon is already able to do,
because of its physical characteristics, but teaching the HM will allow them to use it for battle.

The Bidoof thing was a nice meme for bdsp, but it would be a bit weird for a random wild pokemon to show up,
every time in other games going forward.