Dexit discussion thread

[Eeveeto]

From the Competitive point of view, Dexit is one of the best things that ever happened. Limited metas are much more enjoyable and not dominated by the same shit that has been on top since Gen 5 or 6 ( normally legendary Mons). I hope they continue doing Dexits in the next Gens and go even further: make trading between Gens not compatible, so there are less Mons with broken moves such are Toxic ( they started to reduce the distribution of the move too late, this should have been done since Gen 1 or 3), Knock Off or Stealth Rock.

Now, from in-game and especially Nuzlocke perspective, having more options is always better. But that's what the Fan-Made games are for, so I am still a Dexit defender in official games.

 

[Blazade]

I've gone back and forth on making this post and resurrecting this thread due to my personal distaste towards the era of fandom discourse it represents and also just the concern that doing so with the encroaching subject matter will seem like the equivalent of me jumping up and down while pompously shouting "I TOLD YOU SO". After thinking it over, I've decided to move forward with it for the sake of getting this take off my chest.


On December 3, 2019, I made this post. In it, I postulated that the entire concept of transferring was a grave error, my final note being me contemplating the possibility that if it had never been introduced this franchise would've made so much more progress in regards to the main series games.

Slightly over 2 years have passed since. Pokemon Legends Arceus has just released. The way I see it, that game has completely and utterly vindicated every solitary syllable of this post.

Now let me make a few things clear: First off, my statement does not mean to devalue the accomplishments of the people behind this game. Everyone who worked on it from the director to composers to Pokemon designers has more than proven their talents in their respective fields by producing some of their best work on the series to date. At the same time it is also not diminishing the significance of valid critiques or any areas that Game Freak could still stand to improve on. Finally, to an extent this is to be expected: Game Freak steadily improving as a console's lifespan goes on and they get more used to its intricacies is routine.

With all of that taken into consideration, I STILL don't think it's anywhere near sufficient on its own to explain the sheer quantum leap in quality and content in such a short span of time. Remember, that aforementioned 2 year gap in my posts also represents the whole span of time from SWSH to Legends Arceus. Between these two consecutive games we've received improvements to battle flow, Pokemon animations, 3d map design and the initial Wild Area concept whose sheer scope is utterly unprecedented for a franchise more accustomed to incremental improvements. If I could put into a comparison, I'd go so far as to say it would be like if on the DS we went from straight from DP to BW2 in the same timespan in terms of the advancement in using the hardware's greater potential. And frankly even that might be underrating it considering that's in relation to much weaker, less labor-intensive hardware. Don't forget, none of this is even getting into likely more Legends-specific things like the new battle system, the Styles mechanic, new statuses and the major rebalancing of the move roster to accommodate these changes, once again an unprecedented level of mechanical finetuning especially after Dynamax which saw nothing of the sort. It's as if some kind of massive ball and chain was cut off from Game Freak's legs, and considering there are yet to be any apparent overall release schedule changes and at least a decent chunk of this game's development likely being knocked just a tiny bit off-course by a literal fucking global pandemic I can only deduce one potential culprit, the same one I semi-unknowingly deduced 2 years ago.

One more reason I hesitated for a short while on making this post is due to the fact I wasn't sure what to culminate it all in. Double down on my initial bitterness with a whole new retroactive rage about how every pre-PLA Pokemon title has been damaged to some extent? Or perhaps a more hopeful note, closing the book alongside Game Freak on the mistakes of the past and marching towards this exciting new chapter? But in the end, I've decided to end it the same way this whole thread began: Opening up a conversation. Except this time it's not about us trying to come up with a reason why dexit wasn't a mistake. No, what I want to ask this community now is to give me a good reason why the long-standing obsession with absolute backwards compatibility wasn't the true mistake all along, a parasitic presence that only gimped this franchise harder the more Pokemon were made and the more difficult it got to port them over between games. Is there something I'm overlooking here? Is there reason to believe Legends Arceus is but a fluke before we return to business as usual in Gen 9? Abominable PR aside, could anything differently have been done for a smoother transition to this point for all parties?

I think when you change nearly everything about how a pokemon game plays the lack of postgame transferring is not really a significant factor one way or another in how you evaluate it. It's just very clearly the kind of game where transferring doesn't make much sense, dexit or no. A lot like Colosseum in that in any era the main game probably shouldn't have transfers to protect its integrity and there isn't really much of a point in the post game (I'm speculating on LA postgame here). I'm pretty solidly bored by Legends Arceus but future of the series or not I can pretty clearly recognize that it isn't for me.

To answer your original question, absolute backwards compatibility was not a parasitic mistake holding them back, at least as long as the 2d era. It was a natural decision which came out of an era when pokemon games had enough stuff to do that you'd want to bring your old mons in to share the fun with them, and when competitive rulesets allowed that kind of transfer (which imo was cool but that is a hotter take I know).

I'm fully aware that they are not capable of keeping up with the graphical standards they set for themselves when they moved to 3d. And they've been taking more ownership of VGC and ameliorating the competitive process, with mixed results (The gimmick mechanics can be hit or miss, restricted legend metas and regional dex metas are also less interesting than the best natdex metas imo). And they've basically cut out a lot of postgame that isn't an easy fetch quest or a run through all the legends. Dexit was the natural conclusion of a lot of the choices they made since XY. But those choices didn't have to happen either, it wasn't impossible for Game Freak to carry on in the old spirit.

You see the question of whether Gamefreak sees monetary success after Dexit to be the vindicator. That was never my concern. The reason I was mad then and I'm still mad now is that we've lost something big we're not ever going to get back, and that matters. When we get even semi interesting things like the BDSP Tower, Dexit is hanging over them. And the big new things we had to sacrifice transfers for like graphics and wild areas and gamefreak not needing to make banlists to enforce regional dex metas have not been worth the cost.

 

[Worldie]

No, what I want to ask this community now is to give me a good reason why the long-standing obsession with absolute backwards compatibility wasn't the true mistake all along, a parasitic presence that only gimped this franchise harder the more Pokemon were made and the more difficult it got to port them over between games. Is there something I'm overlooking here? Is there reason to believe Legends Arceus is but a fluke before we return to business as usual in Gen 9? Abominable PR aside, could anything differently have been done for a smoother transition to this point for all parties?

I've been reading and listening to a lot of opinions, both from random redditors, VGC players, and actual game designers.

Most of the more "culturate" (aka, not your standard redditor) opinions are on the line that carrying everything in the games should have never been a thing in first place.

It was their mistake to create this standard for a series that would, eventually, have reached the point where carrying everything over was just not feasible. Not only from technical standpoint, but also from creativity one, as they would have had to come up with both reasoning for "old mechanics" like Megas or Z-moves being everywhere despite being supposedly "unique to a region".
The technical problem came up already in gen 6, with the move to 3d.
Some of the design choices that worked very well for 2d sprites, notably the choice to use "projectile type" attacks rather than actually animate the sprites, suddently become a problem when 3d is factored in. They choose to stick with a similar design to reduce development time (it's much easier to animate 3-4 attack animations per pokemon and then use some VFX after, compared to fully animate every potential type of attack both given and received), but as the games progressed and the amount of both Pokemon AND attacks increased, the problem became bigger and bigger.

A notable comparison that both in the past and now people make is with Digimon games.
We all know that Digimon and Pokemon games basically only share the monster-collectible and battling aspect and nothing else really, but something a lot of people have brought up was how Digimon games very often have fully animated attacks during battles. This was possible because from the very inception of the series, "full availability" was never a thing, so their developers were able to only animate the ones present in a game, and for that specific game. "Dexit" discussions never happened between fans of the series/game, because full portability was never a thing in first place.

Overally, the "Dexit controversy" to me is just a result of a extreme lack of foresight from GameFreaks (or whoever took that decision) already in gen 4.
They should have known it was not going to be possible at some point.
Gen 3 already did a "dexit" of sort, they should have really just stuck with it since then.
However, the damage was already done and we know where it brought.

As of now, I think that they actually should stick to "partial pokedex" games, simply because they already shown they are slow developers, and having less stuff to code in would result in higher quality in the stuff that actually is in. Plus... I'm also on the line of thought that for one fanfavourite pokemon that's missing, there's 100 that noone cares for. Everyone got mad that Greninja wasn't in SwSh, I don't recall anyone pepegaing about the lack of Wurmple though.
I also echo the people who said that it's ultimately also better to create more variety if there's never a guaranteed of which pokes will be available in a game, both from the game itself and from the competitive scene. Pokemon is a series that constantly needs to "reinvent the wheel" to keep competitive fresh, and rather than continuing to dish out super mechanics, actually changing the available cards honestly sounds like a better way to keep it interesting.

With all of that taken into consideration, I STILL don't think it's anywhere near sufficient on its own to explain the sheer quantum leap in quality and content in such a short span of time. Remember, that aforementioned 2 year gap in my posts also represents the whole span of time from SWSH to Legends Arceus. Between these two consecutive games we've received improvements to battle flow, Pokemon animations, 3d map design and the initial Wild Area concept whose sheer scope is utterly unprecedented for a franchise more accustomed to incremental improvements. If I could put into a comparison, I'd go so far as to say it would be like if on the DS we went from straight from DP to BW2 in the same timespan in terms of the advancement in using the hardware's greater potential. And frankly even that might be underrating it considering that's in relation to much weaker, less labor-intensive hardware. Don't forget, none of this is even getting into likely more Legends-specific things like the new battle system, the Styles mechanic, new statuses and the major rebalancing of the move roster to accommodate these changes, once again an unprecedented level of mechanical finetuning especially after Dynamax which saw nothing of the sort.

I will agree also that they have definitely done a notable amount of progress from the release of SwSh to Arceus, both quality wise and design wise.
The SwSh DLCs shown notable improvement to the ambitions design of the wild area, with both DLCs basically being in a giant wild area that was much more interesting, varied and way less laggy than its original counterpart. Some new concepts like a (very basic) level scaling, new types of facilities, additional QoL, new interesting (and a tad op) pokemon design came up, which are all nice to see.

But I will still caveaut that... the lack of quality in their work is still inexcusable at this year.
I do usually excuse the fact that the Switch is a terrible console when it comes to performance, but the low polygon textures of Arceus in 2022, as well as the whole problem of trying to make story focused RPG s with lot of plot exposure and absolute lack of voicing of any kind, and some horrible messes of FPS here and there, there's just no excuse for it.
Not when there's games like Xenoblade 2, Shin Megami Tensei V, Monster Hunter Rise, Super Mario Odyseey, Astral Chain, ... which run on the exact same console, have much bigger and more detailed openworld sections as well as a lot more shit going on on the screen and yet produce such amazing graphics and enthralling backgrounds.

As a lot of reviews said, Arceus is basically a diamond in rough: it really shows the potential and amazingness of what GameFreaks can come up with, except the presentation REALLY suffers from the lack of quality.

A game should never be "it's amazing and fun if you can survive the tutorial and not puke at the textures".
There's design choice, and there's quality. Some games purposely use weird designs (Minecraft, Octopath Traveler, several anime-like games, Okami, etc) but that's actually part of the intent and scope of the game. Legends to me seems tried to use an artstyle similar to Valkyria Chronicles, pastel colored, with everything looking very similar to drawing in books, but produced a weird mix of low quality textures mixed with high quality animations, which often creates a pretty weird contrast that isn't pleasant to the eyes.



TLDR:
Dexit was good.
Full portability should never have happened in first place.
Legends Arceus is a game that really shows the potential of the series and GF's design.
Gamefreaks has achieved massive improvements in last 2 years.
There's still no excuse however for the terrible quality of the graphics and for some of their choices.

 

[Ironmage]

Do I think it was worth it for Legends? No. I'm not interested in basic exploration of a generic world with a stripped-down battle system.

Do I think it was worth it for animations? No. If I ever manage to get in the situation where I'm seriously enjoying myself with these games again, I'm probably turning them off to save time.

Do I think it was worth it for competitive? No. Even putting aside that I teambuild in such a way that I highly value more options and that the two most frustrating things for me personally are both specific to gen 8, it's unnecessary. Restricting to current mons has been available and used since gen 6.

I'm not seeing the massive upsides here.

 

[earl]

Legends is by far the most entertaining Pokemon game I've played in the past decade and the game only having 250~ Pokemon in it makes catching them all feel actually feasible so it's cool with me

As long as Showdown exists (the only context where I actually care about all Pokemon being available in some form) I'm fine with whatever dex cutting/adding they do going forward

 

[Yung Dramps]

I think when you change nearly everything about how a pokemon game plays the lack of postgame transferring is not really a significant factor one way or another in how you evaluate it. It's just very clearly the kind of game where transferring doesn't make much sense, dexit or no. A lot like Colosseum in that in any era the main game probably shouldn't have transfers to protect its integrity and there isn't really much of a point in the post game (I'm speculating on LA postgame here). I'm pretty solidly bored by Legends Arceus but future of the series or not I can pretty clearly recognize that it isn't for me.

That's the thing though. Game Freak got this opportunity because of Dexit, not in spite of it. They got to pick and choose a self-contained Pokedex of 242 Pokemon, and with that infinitely more manageable number for a 3D game they were able to make what remained feel more alive and in tune with the world than ever before. I could go on all day on PLA's exquisite attention to detail in regards to its Pokemon: The entire usage of Unown, Sudowoodo's standing still when you spot it, Mr. Mime blocking your Pokeballs with its barriers, just about every Pokemon they selected has an awesome quirk or unique encounter. Almost nothing feels like it's in there just for the sake of it, which is remarkable considering they didn't have a ton of choice by sticking to the Platinum dex with Hisui newcomers and a handful of miscellaneous extras appended on.

To answer your original question, absolute backwards compatibility was not a parasitic mistake holding them back, at least as long as the 2d era.

Yeah I agree with this to some extent. I definitely don't think it was as severe of an issue on handhelds with both less Pokemon and sprites probably(?) being easier to reuse and redo when needed. Still tho, even just marginally better versions of Platinum, HGSS and the Unova duology wouldn't have hurt.

You see the question of whether Gamefreak sees monetary success after Dexit to be the vindicator.

On the other hand, literally when did I say this? I talked purely about the jump from SWSH to Legends Arceus as games in terms of like, game design and content and shit. I was actually considering adding some more info on current player reception with sales being referenced but decided against it to avoid this issue lol

 

[Blazade]

That's the thing though. Game Freak got this opportunity because of Dexit, not in spite of it. They got to pick and choose a self-contained Pokedex of 242 Pokemon, and with that infinitely more manageable number for a 3D game they were able to make what remained feel more alive and in tune with the world than ever before. I could go on all day on PLA's exquisite attention to detail in regards to its Pokemon: The entire usage of Unown, Sudowoodo's standing still when you spot it, Mr. Mime blocking your Pokeballs with its barriers, just about every Pokemon they selected has an awesome quirk or unique encounter. Almost nothing feels like it's in there just for the sake of it, which is remarkable considering they didn't have a ton of choice by sticking to the Platinum dex with Hisui newcomers and a handful of miscellaneous extras appended on.


Yeah I agree with this to some extent. I definitely don't think it was as severe of an issue on handhelds with both less Pokemon and sprites probably(?) being easier to reuse and redo when needed. Still tho, even just marginally better versions of Platinum, HGSS and the Unova duology wouldn't have hurt.


On the other hand, literally when did I say this? I talked purely about the jump from SWSH to Legends Arceus as games in terms of like, game design and content and shit. I was actually considering adding some more info on current player reception with sales being referenced but decided against it to avoid this issue lol

I agree that an open world game like Legends Arceus simply doesn't work if you plan to put all the pokemon in its dex. Legends Arceus also doesn't have multiplayer, or as far as I know, any reason to transfer at all. So I don't see why dexit in the main series needed to happen before such a game could be made. You can just make Legends Arceus, and design that game how it's supposed to be designed. Colosseum probably wouldn't have needed transfer in if there wasn't a demand for local 3d battles, and I would have been fine with that. Gamefreak should experiment with the ingame experience and make games like Colosseum and Legends Arceus more often, and neither need to reflect heavily on what the main games ought to do.

Ah the point about Legend's Arceus' launch numbers was in the post below yours, so I'm sorry for misattributing. It's a point I've seen often enough for Sword and Shield and it gets grating. It's like being told "see you must have been wrong to like this aspect, because everyone else still likes/buys the games without it".

 

[A_Wild_Noob_Appeared!]

It was their mistake to create this standard for a series that would, eventually, have reached the point where carrying everything over was just not feasible. Not only from technical standpoint, but also from creativity one, as they would have had to come up with both reasoning for "old mechanics" like Megas or Z-moves being everywhere despite being supposedly "unique to a region".

I'll admit to having fairly negative feelings towards Dexit and SWSH as a whole. (I also haven't actually played the Gen 8 games, though I've absorbed a lot secondhand from my friends). That being said, I'd agree that carrying everything forward is almost impossible at this point. Even ignoring the chaos of trying to continually port Megas/Z-Moves/Dynamax, there's a lot that's difficult to carry forwards from a game design standpoint (all the random one-off evolution items, Deoxys form changes, Furfrou haircuts, Genesect drives, Rotom appliances, etc). I've played some fangames that have every Pokemon up to a certain generation (or are planning to) and it is noticeable how many specialized NPCs/locations you have to add to make all of those things work. The weird evolution requirements can be patched, but for those other things, the Pokemon's gimmick wouldn't really work without (and do we really want to slap a random Furfrou groomer in every game).

But you know what is really difficult to carry over from a creativity standpoint? Legendaries. A lot of them have some sort of pre-existing story/lore, so if a fangame write some story about them then the encounters often don't really make sense. And that's why it annoys me that literally every Legendary/Mythical (except for 7) is allowed in the SWSH games.

I also echo the people who said that it's ultimately also better to create more variety if there's never a guaranteed of which pokes will be available in a game, both from the game itself and from the competitive scene. Pokemon is a series that constantly needs to "reinvent the wheel" to keep competitive fresh, and rather than continuing to dish out super mechanics, actually changing the available cards honestly sounds like a better way to keep it interesting.

If Gamefreak really wanted to cut the Pokedex for the purpose of changing up the competitive scene and reducing workload, then cutting the busted legendaries was by far the easiest way to do it. Instead, legendaries (when I say this I mean Legendaries, Mythicals, and Ultra Beasts) are allowed in the game at a grossly disproportional rate. 75/82 (91%) of pre-Gen 8 legendaries are allowed in SWSH compared to 496/727 (68%) of pre-Gen 8 non-legendaries. Many of these legendaries, such as the genies and Kyogre/Groudon, have also been highly used in past gen VGC metas and appear to be highly used yet again in the current gen (I'm not that knowledgeable about VGC so forgive me for any errors here).

The ability to obtain most legends is also done through the boring legend catch fest that they've done several times now, and the appearance of many of these Pokemon makes zero sense from a story standpoint (like the Weather Trio, the Creation Trio, the Tapus, and the Ultra Beasts). Like I get that designing a story encounter for so many legendaries is impossible, but that's why it's a good reason to cut a lot of them.

It doesn't help that recent gens have been massively increasing the number of new legendaries/mythicals added relative to the number of regular Pokemon. Just look at this post for reference. The current gen batch would already have a fair amount even if they didn't make it possible to catch the vast majority of old legendaries as well. Honestly, even knowing that you don't have to port every Pokemon forward to every new game, they really should cut back on legendaries because often there's no logical reason to have them appear in any future game. The "merely very rare" type legendaries like the elemental birds and Latis are workable, whereas the "god" type legendaries like Kyogre/Groudon and the Creation Trio are basically impossible to fit into other games.

I don't really have high hopes that they'll do that. Just look at cover legends, despite the fact that they usually fit in the second group, they've been using that as the basis for their games since Gen 2. And it works! I've seen so many people say that they want <x> version because it has <y> legend. I guess it'd be okay if they were comfortable with making it so that the cover legends never appear again (until the inevitable remakes) but throwing them all into Ultra Wormholes/Dynamax Adventures/Ramanas Park is an easy way to sell games/DLC.

So I guess that summarizes why there's a lot I dislike about the transition to Gen 8. While a lot about the dex cuts/movepool changes was necessary and perhaps good (like fixing the issue with near-universal Hidden Power and Toxic distribution), I dislike a lot about how they did it (like keeping the legend bloat, also the massive move overdistribution though that's a topic for another day).

(Not trying to attack you, just trying to explain why I don't really see Gen 8/Dexit as a particularly good sign for the future)

 

[Worldie]

If Gamefreak really wanted to cut the Pokedex for the purpose of changing up the competitive scene and reducing workload, then cutting the busted legendaries was by far the easiest way to do it. Instead, legendaries (when I say this I mean Legendaries, Mythicals, and Ultra Beasts) are allowed in the game at a grossly disproportional rate. 75/82 (91%) of pre-Gen 8 legendaries are allowed in SWSH compared to 496/727 (68%) of pre-Gen 8 non-legendaries. Many of these legendaries, such as the genies and Kyogre/Groudon, have also been highly used in past gen VGC metas and appear to be highly used yet again in the current gen (I'm not that knowledgeable about VGC so forgive me for any errors here).

It's quite a misconception that "cutting legendaryes would cause a diverse meta" fwiw.

During the regional dex format, there were pretty much 0 legendaries allowed (there were no "regular" legendaryes in base SwSh), and the format still had 10-15 poke in 99% of the team with the odd outlier.
Lapras, Incineroar, Togekiss, Whimsi+Terrakion, Rillaboom, Cinderace were in pretty much every team, in same way you would usually see Lando-T or Xerneas in the metas where they are allowed.

"Cutting legendaries" doesn't really solve any problem as far as variation. What's important is to not have *everything* available, so who is at the top changes.
They even had a very interesting attempt at a "banlist" at some point, where they went "ok the 10 most used pokes are illegal this month", which created some creative scenarios.

When everything is available, it's always the same faces. When not-everything is available however, which legendary is op and which isn't changes.
Ironically, for example Lando-T was almost nonexistant in VGC due to it being a liability without Z-moves and either requiring to commit Dynamax to it to have usable stabs, compared to Incineroar who provides much more utility even in the face of actual restricteds.
Conversely, former staples like Xerneas have all but disappeared due to the fact they just die to actual meta pokes like the abundance of steel types and the load of switcheroo cheese that was used to remove Dynamaxed boosters.
And incidentally, even this year restricted meta and the pokemon seen have variations notably in the 3 type of "restricted formats" they have tried: 1 restricted + dynamax, 1 restricted with Dynamax banned, and then 2 restricted now.
Pokes (legendaries and non) viable in one format weren't necessarly viable in the other two. Except Incineroar, Incineroar still is the most used Pokemon to this day and makes OU Lando-T look like a joke.

TLDR:
""Legendaryes are op"" isn't and never was the problem of competitive. People will always attempt to use the best available. Remove the legendaryes, everyone will still use only 10-15 pokes, because why would you use literal trash when you are trying to win? Noone plays VGC for "fun", people who play it at top level play it to win.
That is why partial pokedexes are actually the only real answer to making the competitive scenario work.

 

[A_Wild_Noob_Appeared!]

""Legendaryes are op"" isn't and never was the problem of competitive. People will always attempt to use the best available. Remove the legendaries, everyone will still use only 10-15 pokes, because why would you use literal trash when you are trying to win?

I didn't really mean to say that. I'm an OU player; I don't really mind using legends and I know that most Pokemon metas have a small number of Pokemon with high usage. I guess I was under the impression that people liked Dexit because of removing some of the legends that had been at the top for so long? I don't really mind using Lando-T in OU for 10 years in a row, but I've seen a lot of people complain about that so I was under the impression that people liked Dexit pre-Crown Tundra for that reason.

When everything is available, it's always the same faces. When not-everything is available however, which legendary is op and which isn't changes.

Is this necessarily because of only having a partial Pokedex? A lot of what you described seems like the viability of Pokemon changing due to the existence of Dynamax/new Gen 8 mons. Is there an example of the absence of a certain pre-Gen 8 Pokemon making a certain restricted legendary more/less viable? (Not counting removed Megas/Primals, because that's not exactly the same. I guess you could say that PDon not existing helped with the increase in Steel-types you described? Maybe it's unfair to ask but I want to know why you think no-Megas restricted dex is better than no-Megas Natdex). All of the cut legendaries were Mythicals, so aside from the removal of Mega/Primal forms, all of the legendaries that were used in past VGC metas are still available in the current one.

Personally, the same legend being used several gens in a row isn't a huge problem for me. For example, even though Lando-T and Heatran are both highly used in Gens 5-8 I think it's interesting how the sets change over the generations and I don't consider it "boring" that they've been at the top for so long. I'm just wondering why people see Dexit as such a good thing in regards to how it changes things. Like for example how a lot of people disliked the genies being at the top for so long, but it seems that Thundurus-I is still highly ranked according to the viability chart on Smogon (though of course as you said, Lando-T has dropped off). Of course the sets for Thundurus (and other legends that have been highly-ranked across several generations, such as Kyogre) change every gen. I'm wondering why people consider the change for these Pokemon from Gen 7 -> Gen 8 differs from the change from Gen 5 -> 6 -> 7.

Edit: Added some stuff

Edit 2: I couldn't find an analysis for Thundurus in Gen 7, so I apologize if I was mistaken about it being highly used for multiple generations in a row.

 

[CPU]

I have a chip on my shoulder about certain transfer moves (the biggest one is Wish Blissey, though there are others), but the big thing about Dexit for me is that it opens up an opportunity for Game Freak to make changes to long-standing traditions about the games without players getting upset about inconsistency. I mean, that's at least part of the reason why Espeon and Umbreon don't evolve via Sun/Moon Stone (the other is to show off the time feature in Gold and Silver). Leafeon and Glaceon evolving via Leaf and Ice Stones (and Magneton/Charjabug evolving via Thunder Stone) is honestly remarkable to me, but it also shows that even the devs got tired of including mossy and icy rocks (and magnetic locations) in each new region.

To me, Dexit represents an opportunity to shake up existing conventions and to try new ideas out without creating undue stress on the dev team to have to consider a constantly expanding list of Pokémon and how they "can't make that change, that would be inconsistent." Games like Let's Go and Legends show a bit of this, though they still demonstrate a reluctance to change more evolution methods than they actually have to, as evidenced by the inclusion of all the old trade evo items appearing in legends on top of adding more for "consistency." (That said, a Link Cable item was a long time coming, and it's a great addition).

While I'm also opposed to cutting moves, there's no denying that the longer a Pokémon is in the series, the more likely it is that its level-up move (and egg move) list has become bloated and the more difficult it is to fit in new moves. Dexit also allows for the chance to cut moves that no Pokémon learn.

I'm of the opinion that Dexit is actually most frustrating for casual fans who want to bring their Pokémon friends to new regions as they play the newer games. It really shouldn't be an issue for competitive players. My only real example of another long-term, collectable, competitive game is MtG, but they keep the allowed cards for their main format in a three-year rotation to restrict having to accommodate for all the old cards and their effects (of course, it's also to sell more products too lol). A rotating amount of legal Pokémon, per generation, is something that probably should be seen as a standard addition from here on out. That said, Magic has plenty of players who play with all cards ever released, and just like in Pokémon, the longer a game series like this goes on, the more you're going to have crazy combinations and introduced power creep that makes it harder and harder to cover every possible scenario.

 

[Worldie]

I'm of the opinion that Dexit is actually most frustrating for casual fans who want to bring their Pokémon friends to new regions as they play the newer games

It's actually the opposite, that's the fun part.

"Casual" fans never really cared, they usually just play the games once and that's it, often don't even play the postgame outside of trying to finish the dex if even that.
The only people upset by dexit were the old, ""hardcore"" fanbase.
Your average 10 year old kid isn't bothered by the fact Teddiursa isnt in the game because they are looking at how cute Sobble is instead.

 

[UninspiredLunch]

Sorry but this is pure circular reasoning. "Everything I liked about the switch games was thanks to dexit, everything I hated about the 3ds games was because of the burden of dex compatibility" lol. I also don't think PLA is a "quantum leap" of quality compared to SWSH, as a matter of fact I think not having to deal with the multiplayer side of things was probably far more freeing for Gamefreak than the limited dex.

 

[Siggu]

A rotating amount of legal Pokémon, per generation, is something that probably should be seen as a standard addition from here on out.

That was the point of the marks. You didn't need a Dexit for that.

 

[Worldie]

That was the point of the marks. You didn't need a Dexit for that.

Well, sort of.
The main distinction came in the "natdex format", where they added more pokes to the game that were not native to the region.

SwSh had a distinct change in how the mechanic worked: in previous titles, you basically were told "ok feel free to import and breed old pokes", in SwSh all the returning pokes were actually available in the game in some form without requiring to import them from previous generations, which was however matched with not actually having the entire dex available.

I think SwSh has the best "middle ground" for now: expand the pokedex naturally, but this pokedex is still not complete AND is available in the game in its entirety (ok, minus version exclusives, I guess, but even these can now be obtained via raids which is something I suppose).
The Battle Ready mark was a nice addition but it was mainly aimed at collectors or long time players who maybe had a shiny or specific poke they were really attached to and wanted to not need to breed a new one.

"Regional Dex only" acted as pseudo-dexit for a while, but until gen 8 it was always followed by a "natdex" format where everything was available and well, as you know, you'd just have the same returning faces, legendaries or not, take over the scene, + occasionally some new particularly strong additions from the current gen.

Expanding the dex gradually while still not including the entire pokedex is (imo) a good way to limit the available pool and create diversity.
They should however stop with the "every gen must have every legendary available" if they want to commit to this though. I don't advocate for "ban legendaryes", as I said that serves no purpose, but if the benefit of limited dex is also to create diversity in the competitive scene, refilling it with the entirety of the top tier just kills that benefit since (duh) most of them will take over regular pokemon. Even generational powerhouses like Dragapult and interesting bullshit crit machines strategies like Togekiss all but disappeared as soon as the full pokedex of legendaries was available, because they just gets outclassed.
A limited pool of legendaries also proved being interesting, for example once they did the (small) pokedex update after SwSh release, allowing the Knight trio and couple other more to join the pool.
(To this day I still don't quite understand why they and the small bunch of mythicals were in the game files tbfh...)

 

[CPU]

That was the point of the marks. You didn't need a Dexit for that.

The marks were more to make sure the moves available to the Pokémon were all from Sword and Shield; no transfer moves to give an "unfair advantage" to those who had other games and transferred Pokémon from them. I feel like the marks would actually mean something if they didn't make it so any Pokémon could receive marks (I don't actually follow VGC so I don't remember when this was added or if it was just in the base game, lol)

The marks wouldn't be necessary if you couldn't transfer Pokémon from older games in the first place.

 

[Dialganet2]

Sorry but this is pure circular reasoning. "Everything I liked about the switch games was thanks to dexit, everything I hated about the 3ds games was because of the burden of dex compatibility" lol. I also don't think PLA is a "quantum leap" of quality compared to SWSH, as a matter of fact I think not having to deal with the multiplayer side of things was probably far more freeing for Gamefreak than the limited dex.

This. Absolutely this.

There is a huge lack of causation evidence here and nothing prevented games from improving in presence or absence or Dexit.

I will try to formulate something more elaborate later.

 

[BlizzardHero]

Dexit was good.

I've debated whether or not I should bother responding to this; this argument has the same tired back and forth every single time. Everyone has pretty much made up their minds already so any sort of discussion is futile. However, I will leave this with you to think about.

When mechanical changes such as forced Exp Share, or (in BDSP) forced Affection rewards made it so Nuzzlockers couldn't play the game as they wanted, did everyone say that those changes were actually good for the game? Or did people agree that it was bad change, and that group should be able to play the game as they wanted?

When the postgame Battle Tower/Maison/Tree kept getting paired down or removed after Gen 5, did people shout from the rooftops proclaiming their joy that it was getting yeeted? Or, was there a general consensus that the postgame battles becoming nonexistent/lackluster was a bad thing, and we should hope GF someday improves them.

When people who deeply enjoyed the spin-off titles (such as Mystery Dungeon or Ranger) stopped getting releases of any good titles, did everyone agree that it was better that GF was focusing their effort on the mainline games? Or, did they lament their loss and want them to return in full?

So when all these sub-communities were affected by GF's poor decisions, most people wanted things to improve for them. But when Dexit occurred, suddenly people who want to transfer and play with their buddies are suddenly the pariahs of the Pokemon community, and that their desires keep ruining the game for everyone else.

Food for thought.

Even ignoring the chaos of trying to continually port Megas/Z-Moves/Dynamax, there's a lot that's difficult to carry forwards from a game design standpoint (all the random one-off evolution items, Deoxys form changes, Furfrou haircuts, Genesect drives, Rotom appliances, etc).

Unfortunately, the very real consequence of Dexit regarding gimmicks (cosmetic or not) is that it makes investing in said gimmicks not worthwhile - beacuse you now know that they're going just going to be cut at the next opportunity.

Ignoring the competitive complains about Megas, they were not only visually fun, but also a great investment in breeding/raising/learning about. The understanding was that they'd be permanent, so anything you'd done regarding them would be useful. Breeding, for example, a SpAtk Pidgeot for its mega form would be a good idea, even though the base form was a better physical attacker. This mentality held true though Gen 7, even if the gimmick was trunked.

However, with Dexit, suddenly any investment into those gimmicks was wasted. Nothing you learned about Megas would be useful, so into the dumpster with it all. But what does that say about future gimmicks?

Why should I care about Max stuff or whatever, when I now know it's a one-off mechanic that wont last even one game (since it's not in BDSP or Legends)? I just played through SwSh for the first time: I dynamaxed my Lunatone like 3 times the entire game, and haven't done anything with the mechanic since. Can't be bothered.

I've been using Megas as the primary example, but this is applicable to literally every other gimmick as well. Why bother looking into Furfrou haircuts, or Deoxys forms, or getting all the Sawsbuck seasonal forms when you know that that variance guarantees that they're on the shortlist to be yeeted.

Granted, all this variance (items and Pokemon) bloat is bad in terms of development - that's a popular argument. But, who's fault is this anyway? Was it the fault of the natural progress of adding more Pokemon, or was it beacuse the devs keep deciding to add unneeded bloat? Megas did not need an individual mega stone for each Pokemon - a single mega stone and a list of Pokemon who could use it would have sufficed. Silvally didn't need a whole set of elemental disks that only work for it, when there's literally an elemental plate system already implemented that would have accomplished basically the same thing. I could keep going.

It also seems that GF didn't learn their lesson in the slightest. Alcremie has like what, 50 forms? I think that's the second most form changes ever for a Pokemon behind Spinda (and I think Spinda's is determined by algorithm instead, though I might be wrong). We all know why they don't learn: new gimmicks means that they can generate more toys and merchandise to sell. But, that still ultimately leaves the fault in their court alone.

All of this is to say that GF made their own bed, and by refusing to lie in it, they've shown that no one should bother caring about their shiny toys either.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

Why should I care about Max stuff or whatever, when I now know it's a one-off mechanic that wont last even one game (since it's not in BDSP or Legends)? I just played through SwSh for the first time: I dynamaxed my Lunatone like 3 times the entire game, and haven't done anything with the mechanic since. Can't be bothered.

I've been using Megas as the primary example, but this is applicable to literally every other gimmick as well. Why bother looking into Furfrou haircuts, or Deoxys forms, or getting all the Sawsbuck seasonal forms when you know that that variance guarantees that they're on the shortlist to be yeeted.

I feel like if you haven't been dynamaxing or styling your dog for fear that they'll become irrelevant in a few years then you probably aren't the kind of person who would do those things very often even if they were guaranteed to be permanent. There's nothing wrong with not jiving with a mechanic, but your reasoning for lack of jive seems extremely misplaced.

 

[CPU]

There's a big difference between cosmetic forms (Furfrou, Sawsbuck, Alcremie, Spinda) and forms with stat/ability/etc changes (Deoxys, Rotom). I don't see a particular harm in the first (though Alcremie does have items associated with its forms, but at the end of the day it doesn't actually matter).

As painful as the item bloat is with Mega Stones and Silvally's Memories, there are at least gameplay reasons for all the different items (restricting Mega Evolution to only some Pokémon during the main game, not giving extra power boosts to Silvally's attacks). I agree that these are instances that could be streamlined like Rotom was in SwSh.

 

[BlizzardHero]

I feel like if you haven't been dynamaxing or styling your dog for fear that they'll become irrelevant in a few years then you probably aren't the kind of person who would do those things very often even if they were guaranteed to be permanent. There's nothing wrong with not jiving with a mechanic, but your reasoning for lack of jive seems extremely misplaced.

Because there's a strong difference between irrelevance and non-existence. Sawsbuck forms became irrelevant after Gen 5 and the removal of seasons - you couldn't change their forms like in Gen 5, and the only form actually available was the Spring form. However, you could still get their forms if you transferred them (and/or bred off those forms). You could still play with your Winter Sawsbuck, and take them on any adventure you could want, even if you couldn't change their form.

In Gen 8, Sawsbuck forms aren't obtainable beacuse Sawsbuck literally does not exist anymore.

It's not a matter of fear; it's a matter of energy invested. If you invested hours - perhaps even hundreds of hours - into learning a skill, making a friend, working on a project, are you going to chose an investment that is probably permanent, or something that you know isn't going to last with a clear expiration date? That's not to say either decision is the correct one, but it's a decision you must make.

I think you've missed the point that this kind of decision was literally not a factor in Pokemon until Dexit. There was a guarantee that, even if a Pokemon or mechanic fell out of favor, it would still be present. It could still be enjoyed as much as desired, and decisions could be made about what new things you wanted to engage with without fear of them being removed. Post Dexit however, well...

 

[DrPumpkinz]

Because there's a strong difference between irrelevance and non-existence. Sawsbuck forms became irrelevant after Gen 5 and the removal of seasons - you couldn't change their forms like in Gen 5, and the only form actually available was the Spring form. However, you could still get their forms if you transferred them (and/or bred off those forms). You could still play with your Winter Sawsbuck, and take them on any adventure you could want, even if you couldn't change their form.

In Gen 8, Sawsbuck forms aren't obtainable beacuse Sawsbuck literally does not exist anymore.

It's not a matter of fear; it's a matter of energy invested. If you invested hours - perhaps even hundreds of hours - into learning a skill, making a friend, working on a project, are you going to chose an investment that is probably permanent, or something that you know isn't going to last with a clear expiration date? That's not to say either decision is the correct one, but it's a decision you must make.

I think you've missed the point that this kind of decision was literally not a factor in Pokemon until Dexit. There was a guarantee that, even if a Pokemon or mechanic fell out of favor, it would still be present. It could still be enjoyed as much as desired, and decisions could be made about what new things you wanted to engage with without fear of them being removed. Post Dexit however, well...

These are all the situations in which anybody would engage with Dynamaxing beyond the handful of story battles where it's available:

1. They enjoy racking up a streak at the battle tower
2. They enjoy doing max raid battles (or other side modes that involve Dynamaxing like that tournament)
3. They enjoy the current ranked meta (VGC, BSS, whatever)
4. They enjoy battling with friends and also enjoy battling with dynamax

In none of those cases does the threat of Dexit affect your willingness to engage with Dynamaxing. What's stopping you? You're worried about the time spent teaching your Porygon Hyper Beam is going to go to waste when Hyper Beam can no longer be powered up into Max Strike? Optimal movesets can change within a single generation and will certainly change in the next generations when new moves and top threats are introduced.

You haven't dynamaxed your Lunatone because nothing on the list appeals to you. Which again, is fine.

 

[Yung Dramps]

Sorry but this is pure circular reasoning. "Everything I liked about the switch games was thanks to dexit, everything I hated about the 3ds games was because of the burden of dex compatibility" lol. I also don't think PLA is a "quantum leap" of quality compared to SWSH, as a matter of fact I think not having to deal with the multiplayer side of things was probably far more freeing for Gamefreak than the limited dex.

First off, I agree with the last point to an extent: Not having to deal with multiplayer balancing and infrastructure was most likely another big boon to PLA's production, and it's no wonder that in the wake of its release the idea of totally segregating VGC and the like to some sort of official battle simulator run by a third party has seen an immense surge in popularity among the fanbase.

That said, I don't like the way you've represented my initial argument. It makes intuitive sense at first that not everything about a videogame is DIRECTLY tied to modelling capabilities - at a glance, the variance in writing quality throughout the games from Alola to Hisui is all on their respective writing teams, not the 3D modellers. That can be said for several other things too. Such a thing, however, can have indirect knock-on effects; when one aspect of a team-based production falters, EVERYONE else suffers from the delays and troubles. If you got a SWSH situation where the gameplay aspects are having a hard time getting sorted out, that leaves the writing team less time to refine their script and less setpieces to properly convey character beats, it leaves the composers hanging with less impactful gameplay areas to make their music around. Even in development that isn't that level of troubled, the trickle downs can still exist. XY is a notoriously mediocre game, but if they only had to worry about the 457 Pokemon they chose for the regional dex and not the 250something extras that in the context of Kalos are total third wheels, do you not think it's possible that at least a little more time could have been devoted to refining other aspects of the game for a better experience? Is clinging on to Patrat and Phione really worth it? Sure, that game specifically would still be dealing with the growing pains of moving to 3D, but couldn't that have been offset even just a little? This is why I struggle to see Dexit as anything but good for casuals; as PLA as shown, when a game is designed without the ball and chain from the onset rather than hastily cutting it off because development is a shitshow and it's what's needed to get the game shipped without delays like SWSH, they get more refined, exciting, content-rich experiences with the only "sacrifice" being some extra Pokemon that they were probably never going to use anyway.

On that note, as for your questioning of my "quantum leap" comment I'm not sure what to make of that. I assume you're implying I'm exaggerating how big of a jump PLA is, or that it's still not good enough? I can't speak for the latter, but as for the former I don't really know what to add. You can pick just about any non-multiplayer aspect of base SWSH and the improvement is all but certain to be palpable and immediate in Legends Arceus. Even just one of any of the game's open zones utterly trounce the increasingly pitiful base Wild Area, the story is way more high-concept with more fleshed out and compelling characters, Pokemon behaviors are more dynamically designed and intriguing to learn and navigate around to catch them, and even for the standards of a franchise that has consistently done well in this aspect the soundtrack represents some of Go Ichinose and others' finest work.

Going back to your main point, I suppose the question can be summed up as "Which was more liberating, Dexit or no multiplayer?". This is not a question I am qualified to give a definitive answer to. But for a franchise that is undoubtedly only gonna dive deeper into the idea of dynamically catching its creatures in its overworld, an idea that even in its most rudimentary stages is absolutely tantalizing to its audience and even moreso now that it's being really fleshed out, I will not be convinced for a second that the ability to fully invest their time on whatever assortment of creatures they see fit to populate the game in question while not having to split their attention on the remainder can't be a MAJOR impact.

 

[BlizzardHero]

These are all the situations in which anybody would engage with Dynamaxing beyond the handful of story battles where it's available:

1. They enjoy racking up a streak at the battle tower
2. They enjoy doing max raid battles (or other side modes that involve Dynamaxing like that tournament)
3. They enjoy the current ranked meta (VGC, BSS, whatever)
4. They enjoy battling with friends and also enjoy battling with dynamax

In none of those cases does the threat of Dexit affect your willingness to engage with Dynamaxing. What's stopping you? You're worried about the time spent teaching your Porygon Hyper Beam is going to go to waste when Hyper Beam can no longer be powered up into Max Strike? Optimal movesets can change within a single generation and will certainly change in the next generations when new moves and top threats are introduced.

You haven't dynamaxed your Lunatone because nothing on the list appeals to you. Which again, is fine.

I'm really confused what you're trying to get at here?

The original point is that Dexit introduces doubt that a mechanic, item, Pokemon/variant, etc., will last beyond a game or generation. Within that doubt becomes a new decision: do you want to bother investing time/resources in learning that new mechanic, catching all the variants of a Pokemon, etc. if they're only going to be around a short while? There is no right choice in that decision: only a do or do not. However, the decision (while not the end of the world), is detrimental to the adoption of new content simply beacuse it may cause people to not engage with it.

Developers add new mechanics/content to games beacuse they want players to engage with them. They don't add them to make players go "oh look, shiny thing, can't be bothered". If players aren't going to bother using the new things, it's a waste of time for the developer to add them. So any hesitancy is really bad.

Maybe I was a little too wordy, in which case I apologize. I like to explain the entire logic at length beacuse the historian in me demands it.

 

[Rarycaris]

It doesn't help that recent gens have been massively increasing the number of new legendaries/mythicals added relative to the number of regular Pokemon. Just look at this post for reference. The current gen batch would already have a fair amount even if they didn't make it possible to catch the vast majority of old legendaries as well. Honestly, even knowing that you don't have to port every Pokemon forward to every new game, they really should cut back on legendaries because often there's no logical reason to have them appear in any future game. The "merely very rare" type legendaries like the elemental birds and Latis are workable, whereas the "god" type legendaries like Kyogre/Groudon and the Creation Trio are basically impossible to fit into other games.

I don't really have high hopes that they'll do that. Just look at cover legends, despite the fact that they usually fit in the second group, they've been using that as the basis for their games since Gen 2. And it works! I've seen so many people say that they want <x> version because it has <y> legend. I guess it'd be okay if they were comfortable with making it so that the cover legends never appear again (until the inevitable remakes) but throwing them all into Ultra Wormholes/Dynamax Adventures/Ramanas Park is an easy way to sell games/DLC.

I'd definitely agree with this to an extent. I liked the whole idea of a "some legends allowed" meta at the start of SwSh Home, but the specific selection was problematic because of massive gen 8 power creep and the fact that literally about 70% of the chosen selection shared a single type weakness. It makes things more interesting when there are legends allowed but you can't be sure the same ones are going to be dominant every time, and I much prefer environmental appearances over random legendary hunts that seem to have less and less interesting variation each time. Having full legendary sidequests and environments in PLA and to some extent in the Crown Tundra was a breath of fresh air.

I wouldn't mind the occasional cover legendary appearing though. HGSS has the weather trio and I don't think it felt *too* out of place.