There are precisely two times Berries are useful: once at the very beginning of the game when an Oran berry can give you a little health boost before you get potions, and once in raids when the Sitrus berry can save you from goofy Belly Dance shenanigans. Other than that, that's it.
With that in mind, how would you fix berries and make them less useless item bloat?
>what is chesto resto and lum berries
bring back pokeblocks
I don't know if this is an unpopular take, but berrys are fine and properly balanced. The ONLY problem is that in every game they are fricking aids to acquire and basically a limited resource for everyone who doesn't have the time to tend to a virtual garden. Because of this you don't want to use them since they are so limited and can't be replaced or only through tedious labour. Just make one city have a dedicated berry shop where all "standard" berries (status cure and healing) are readily available and all novel berries (stat changers for example) get rotated in and out by picking a handful to be sold each day at random to keep some sense of rarity.
I for one hate how they never did propper farming sidegame. The X/Y one was quite solid
You're a massive homosexual if you can't even grow your own berries, it's as simple as booting up the game for like 30 seconds 1-3 times at some point over the course of a few dozen hours. Even if you don't want to water them at all, you can usually gain at least 2 from any given plant regardless of whether you water it. People like you who can't be fricked to engage in fleshed out side content are why we the games never have any anymore.
I guess it's now homosexual to have a job and be busy throughout the day, but I'm probably wasting my time replying to someone who can't fathom more fun and engaging side content than fricking berry farming.
>i don't want to engage with the game mechanics at all and this is the game's problem
people like you are why HMs are gone and these games have no meaningful progression anymore
>I don't want to engage with boring shitty game mechanics
yes indeed
>Belly Dance
the problem is that they're one-use consumables and the ones that are actually good are too hard to get
even in SV, where held consumables regenerate after battle, berries are left as the sole exception and still get permanently consumed. HGSS showers you with resist berries and is the only game where they're good, but they're locked behind a mechanic that many players will say no to at the start of the game without knowing what it does, which self-defeats the point of berries being accessible
I am happy most of healing ones now work procentally. Theyare way more fun to use in play now.
I would porsonally make healing items more expensive and rare while berries should be farmable and colectable.
pokeblocks were fairly useful, as are leppa berries in certain situations.
The status restoring berries are useful, since I always seem to have a ton of them and don't generally need to stock up on full heals anymore. Also the harvest/recycle mons can use Sitrus berries fairly well. You get a lot of berries passively in SV and SS, which is kind of nice.
>doesn't know about custap
Never EVER gonna make it
These games take like 5 hours to beat, there's simply no way to balance a time consuming farming minigame to make it genuinely useful in a playthrough.
Still, one thing I would do is make it so that if a berry is used in battle then you should just automatically give the pokemon a new berry from your bags at the end of the battle. Oran berries heal so little they're fricking useless but if you didn't have to go into your bags for a new one after each battle then at least you might as well actually use them if you don't have anything better to use.
I wish berries were better
This is just straight up wrong.
>automatic status healing
>covering double weaknesses
>quicker friendship before luxury balls/friend balls/soothe bell is available
>removing EVs
>contest stats
>leppa/switcheroo/skill swap shenanigans for legendaries that like to run out of PP and kill themselves
What would make berries feel less useless is if you could actually obtain them without dicking around. Almost every other kind of battle item is trivial to get these days just from a shop for cash instead of a battle facility as in past gens, yet if you want a specific berry you can't even grow them anymore and have to hope you find one on the floor or in a raid reward or randomly for auction. The fact they're consumable is salt in the wound.
Literally every function of a berry is better fulfilled by another item or so useless that it's not worth wasting a slot on that could be used for another item.
What about pinch berries, leppa berries for recycle shenanigans, pokemon with Harvest, and Friendship berries for lowering EVs and raising friendship
>belly dance
You know what meant nerd
>With that in mind, how would you fix berries and make them less useless item bloat?
Give Pokémon 2 held item slots: One for non-consumable items and one for consumables like berries or only for berries. A lot of items would have to be reworked entirely for this system to be balanced, but I think it'd be an overall improvement to items and berries.