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Unpopular opinions

Yung Dramps said:
So like is there any evidence at all that 15 million copies seller BW1 - the only game on the DS' top 10 best sellers made in the 2010s - which got a 10/10 from Japan's foremost gaming publication was internally deemed a failure? If there's some fiscal report or developer interview I missed let me know
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Numbers-wise, they're the lowest-selling debut games of the series, so while successful on paper they probably aren't viewed by Game Freak as hits. And good reviews aren't a replacement for sales.

Obvious statement is obvious, but if something is viewed as a success then a company will try to repeat that, and in my opinion the fact that they've never done another "soft reset" where the regional Pokedex is 100% new species indicates that they don't view that as a viable route to success. Just my two cents and I say that as someone who loves the Unova titles.
 
I don't think using old games as indication of if something would work or not makes sense.

The playerbase of 15 years ago is not the same of today

Remember: the 'worst pokemon games ever' Scarlet and Violet (according to the internet) have actual record breaking sales.
 
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AztecCroc said:
Pretty sure that would've killed the franchise. Gen 3 was already a low point for the franchise saleswise.
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Games? Debateable

It already was going to be lower, people from the Gen 1 Pokemania grew up and already were losing interest midway into Gen 2. Heck, we know in leaks GF initially only intended to make 120 new mons instead of final's 136. The GBA already couldn't connect to GBC for trade at the time

I could see it as them not needing to invest so much time spriting and updating movesets for old mons. It would make Gens actually more stand out instead of being like Johto/Kalos where they aggressively don't in retrospect. Already Pokemon was a merch machine during Gen 3 dev, it wouldn't matter if the games failed. Heck, I can see them doubling down on merch if that does happen, and GF would be able to do more none Poke games

It's hypothetical of course, but we have literal graphics logs for RS of the devs themselves doing merch designs. They were making money either way
 
Worldie said:
Remember: the 'worst pokemon games ever' Scarlet and Violet (according to the internet) have actual record breaking sales.
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I think that is just part of the phenomenon best described by Dunkey as "Thankfully, gamers were never wrong again."
You are right though that lessons to be learned from decade+ old games is limited. Frankly the development, sales, and fandom environments are each vastly different, and already games have suffered tremendously when a dev thinks they can just do things the same way as before.
 
Sonikku A said:
Them enlisting Capcom for help to do "realistic"/deatailed designs wen?

Funny enough SV's lack of art focus can be seen on human models. Despite *trying* to do more standard lighting, human faces are forcibly flat for shading due to tweaking normals. This is a technique modern "anime" games do to have extremely basic shading that I despise cuz why are your faces so flat!?

Granted I hate how 99% of the time they make the face itself flat even in anime games, but for Pokemon it sticks out worse cuz...why are you even doing this? It looks like a weird gradient cuz of the lighting
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The SV player characters remind me of Facebook avatars, this is not a compliment in any way...

Sonikku A said:
It's hypothetical of course, but we have literal graphics logs for RS of the devs themselves doing merch designs. They were making money either way
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Pokemon is too big to fail for anyone to be afraid of low sales numbers. This applies to both today and back then bc of how huge Pokemania was. I'd like to think that losing fans was expected, Pokemon cannot fade away but not everyone was going to stick around for gen 3 and beyond, so Gen 3 cannot be a commericial failure in any way. Gen 4 was more popular but tbbf it more much more going on in terms of merchandise. It also helped that Lucario was this new Mewtwo-level (literally, he replaced him in Brawl lol) popular mon, and ofc being on the Nintendo DS, which sold much higher than the GBA did.
 
Honestly can relate this to Sonic

Sonic 06 was critically a bomb that harmed moral for devs, but financially Sonic wasn't suffering. There were a bunch of multiplatform 6th gen titles still relevant at the time and handheld platformers that did well. It wasn't financially doomed

Meanwhile, as severely rose tinted as the 32x/Saturn is....it genuinely almost killed Sonic, to where Sonic Team released a genesis game collection because Naka noticed people in Japan no longer knew who Sonic was

So I really doubt if Gen 3 went full reboot Pokemon would die, even if it pisses off the fandom fully. It was already too merch secure
 
The first time I saw the Gen 9 starters in-game I was repulsed… looked like they were in some d-list comedy voiced by JLo and Chris Pratt…

I wonder what the future of Pokemon holds, because you’ve got 1000 + pocket monsters already, and there are only so many archetypes/niches you can make without overlapping and making the same Pokemon over again. Not to mention ideas for designs.

I wonder how kids perceive these games. My friends’ kid was more familiar with the Gen 1-2 Pokemon that you might think. And frankly, in game, it’s becoming harder and harder to learn the type chart between the pure number of Pokemon, type combinations, and abilities that affect damage.

Like originally it was pretty easy, because if a Pokemon was blue it had water involved, and if it had a poison typing it looked poisonous and used some sort of poison move, that you could identify over time you fought it over and over.

Now you see most of these freaks once or twice a game in battle, and between the 3d models and everything else, I’d be genuinely surprised if a kid knew the type chart as well as they did 10-15 years ago.

When you have that many Pokemon, of course you can’t have anywhere near that many Pokemon in every game, it would be too much work. Collecting 400 Pokemon is a challenging enough task, there isn’t a reward in the game worth collecting 1,000 for.

I’ll never understand Dexit because if your biggest complaint is you can’t use a specific set of pixels in one version of a game, you must have a spoiled life. Like you’re 30 years old at this point, don’t you have anything better to complain about? I love Lapras but if I can’t use it in a game oh well. I’ll just use something else.

And ofc Pokemon will put their most popular Pokemon in more games. That’s how capitalism works. You can’t affirmative action Beedrill to get all the same spotlight as Pikachu because these aren’t real creatures, people as a whole like Pikachu more
 
Now I do wish the graphics looked better. I would spend more time on Scarlet if the Pokemon actually looked cool enough to collect instead of reminding me of times when they did.

But more presciently, i just finished the Platinum postgame, or well, the Heatran stuff.

I def liked it, but it seems like a slightly beefed up version of Sevii Islands which everyone hated on.

Like you get to catch a few legendaries, get a few more routes to explore, in the form of islands. There are battle centers for more serious battle fans.

And again, Platinum has slightly better versions of those things compared to FRLG but it’s pretty much the same premise. Pokeradar is cool too. There are some routes or paths you could have missed during the game too.

But compared to B2/W2 they don’t hold a candle. B2/W2 has more competitive facilities, more story, more routes and dungeons to explore, more legendaries to catch, not to mention the whole White Tree thing.

And it’s fine that every game doesn’t have that, there’s nothing you can do about it. But when discussing PostGames, Platinum, Emerald, HHSS, and B2/W2 are all considered “up there” which seems reasonable at first, but the gap between B2/W2 and the others is literally double than the other three and the “bad” postgames like FRLG’s Sevii Islands.

I didn’t really discuss HGSS, but honestly Kanto is really pared down, if it takes an afternoon to finish Platinum’s (exploration/new routes/finish story) then it takes two to finish HGSS’s, minus Red, which will take grinding if you challenge right after the 16th gym.

I never played White’s postgame because I heard White 2’s was better, but I may do so shortly and lowkey it may beat out some of the top 4’s.
 
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Basedwell said:
The first time I saw the Gen 9 starters in-game I was repulsed… looked like they were in some d-list comedy voiced by JLo and Chris Pratt…

I wonder what the future of Pokemon holds, because you’ve got 1000 + pocket monsters already, and there are only so many archetypes/niches you can make without overlapping and making the same Pokemon over again. Not to mention ideas for designs.

I wonder how kids perceive these games. My friends’ kid was more familiar with the Gen 1-2 Pokemon that you might think. And frankly, in game, it’s becoming harder and harder to learn the type chart between the pure number of Pokemon, type combinations, and abilities that affect damage.

Like originally it was pretty easy, because if a Pokemon was blue it had water involved, and if it had a poison typing it looked poisonous and used some sort of poison move, that you could identify over time you fought it over and over.

Now you see most of these freaks once or twice a game in battle, and between the 3d models and everything else, I’d be genuinely surprised if a kid knew the type chart as well as they did 10-15 years ago.

When you have that many Pokemon, of course you can’t have anywhere near that many Pokemon in every game, it would be too much work. Collecting 400 Pokemon is a challenging enough task, there isn’t a reward in the game worth collecting 1,000 for.

I’ll never understand Dexit because if your biggest complaint is you can’t use a specific set of pixels in one version of a game, you must have a spoiled life. Like you’re 30 years old at this point, don’t you have anything better to complain about? I love Lapras but if I can’t use it in a game oh well. I’ll just use something else.

And ofc Pokemon will put their most popular Pokemon in more games. That’s how capitalism works. You can’t affirmative action Beedrill to get all the same spotlight as Pikachu because these aren’t real creatures, people as a whole like Pikachu more
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I maintain the position that the lack of full transfers has made the games a worse experience for me. This is because most of my time and fun with the games has come from the teambuilding process, which ends up being something of a creative or artistic exercise. This is a known playstyle in other parts of the gaming sphere (MTG refers to this player archetype as Johnny, for example).

I will often have an idea for a mon that would be a perfect inclusion for thematic and/or mechanical reasons only to find that it is not available in a given restricted format. While this is fine when I'm expressly building around that limitation, that's not something I can sustain across a large number of teams (with the sole exception of monotypes, which aren't defining regional dexes). So instead of feeling satisfied with my game experience, I leave disappointed.

While Dexit continues to be a strong downside for me, I currently thing it isn't an insurmountable one. However, I don't feel that the current games are doing anything particular to appeal to the Johnny side to compensate for the cuts. I don't consider Showdown to be a high bar to clear: I generally prefer playing my jank in PvE, and player counts for Natdex formats can be inconsistent. But without a solid postgame sandbox for singles like the Battle Frontier, there isn't enough advantages to justify a full-price game.
 
Basedwell said:
I wonder what the future of Pokemon holds, because you’ve got 1000 + pocket monsters already, and there are only so many archetypes/niches you can make without overlapping and making the same Pokemon over again. Not to mention ideas for designs.
Click to expand...

While I do think some overlap in terms of gameplay archetypes is inevitable due to how Pokémon games are designed (there’s 18 types and 6 kinds of stats that tend to be capped at 200 points, so a lot of the possible permutations are going to be similar), the well of ideas for designs is essentially infinite. Pokémon can be based on animals, plants, objects, and imaginary entities like yokai and cryptids, which is an incalculable number of starting points to choose from. They’ve got plenty of scrapped designs that they can always revisit. And even in a hypothetical worst-case scenario where the entire art team throws their hands up and declares burnout, Game Freak can hire more artists with fresh perspectives.

Basedwell said:
Like originally it was pretty easy, because if a Pokemon was blue it had water involved, and if it had a poison typing it looked poisonous and used some sort of poison move, that you could identify over time you fought it over and over.

Now you see most of these freaks once or twice a game in battle, and between the 3d models and everything else, I’d be genuinely surprised if a kid knew the type chart as well as they did 10-15 years ago.
Click to expand...

This is true, but it’s also not as necessary to know the type chart by heart anymore because the game itself says whether a move is super effective, not very effective, or ineffective as long as you’ve battled that species of Pokémon once before.
 
Basedwell said:
Now I do wish the graphics looked better. I would spend more time on Scarlet if the Pokemon actually looked cool enough to collect instead of reminding me of times when they did.

But more presciently, i just finished the Platinum postgame, or well, the Heatran stuff.

I def liked it, but it seems like a slightly beefed up version of Sevii Islands which everyone hated on.

Like you get to catch a few legendaries, get a few more routes to explore, in the form of islands. There are battle centers for more serious battle fans.

And again, Platinum has slightly better versions of those things compared to FRLG but it’s pretty much the same premise. Pokeradar is cool too. There are some routes or paths you could have missed during the game too.

But compared to B2/W2 they don’t hold a candle. B2/W2 has more competitive facilities, more story, more routes and dungeons to explore, more legendaries to catch, not to mention the whole White Tree thing.

And it’s fine that every game doesn’t have that, there’s nothing you can do about it. But when discussing PostGames, Platinum, Emerald, HHSS, and B2/W2 are all considered “up there” which seems reasonable at first, but the gap between B2/W2 and the others is literally double than the other three and the “bad” postgames like FRLG’s Sevii Islands.

I didn’t really discuss HGSS, but honestly Kanto is really pared down, if it takes an afternoon to finish Platinum’s (exploration/new routes/finish story) then it takes two to finish HGSS’s, minus Red, which will take grinding if you challenge right after the 16th gym.

I never played White’s postgame because I heard White 2’s was better, but I may do so shortly and lowkey it may beat out some of the top 4’s.
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I had the rare opportunity to watch my sibling who was I think 12 at the time play through LGPE for their first Pokemon game, and he struggled with type matchups even when it was just 151 Pokemon.

The biggest sore spot were Poison types, if anyone cares about that sort of thing.
 
Basedwell said:
I’ll never understand Dexit because if your biggest complaint is you can’t use a specific set of pixels in one version of a game, you must have a spoiled life. Like you’re 30 years old at this point, don’t you have anything better to complain about? I love Lapras but if I can’t use it in a game oh well. I’ll just use something else.
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More money for less options

also, are you seriously equating people being upset about receiving an inferior product with being spoiled?

"yo, Nestle why's my drink both smaller and more expensive?"

"oh you're just being spoiled"

:blobshrug:
 
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Mon balancing after 500 gets silly

I'm annoyed Gen 8/9 DLCs have bloated the roster and are repeating XY's issue of areas barely repping their new Gen mons
 
Esserise said:
While I do think some overlap in terms of gameplay archetypes is inevitable due to how Pokémon games are designed (there’s 18 types and 6 kinds of stats that tend to be capped at 200 points, so a lot of the possible permutations are going to be similar), the well of ideas for designs is essentially infinite. Pokémon can be based on animals, plants, objects, and imaginary entities like yokai and cryptids, which is an incalculable number of starting points to choose from. They’ve got plenty of scrapped designs that they can always revisit. And even in a hypothetical worst-case scenario where the entire art team throws their hands up and declares burnout, Game Freak can hire more artists with fresh perspectives.
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That’s a great point!! I was thinking about all the fanmade Pokemon that are cool, and realized I’d made a mistake
Esserise said:
This is true, but it’s also not as necessary to know the type chart by heart anymore because the game itself says whether a move is super effective, not very effective, or ineffective as long as you’ve battled that species of Pokémon once before.
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That’s true, but there will be ramifications somewhere!! Maybe lol.
ant4456 said:
I had the rare opportunity to watch my sibling who was I think 12 at the time play through LGPE for their first Pokemon game, and he struggled with type matchups even when it was just 151 Pokemon.

The biggest sore spot were Poison types, if anyone cares about that sort of thing.
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Lol!! That actually makes sense as Poison is a more secondary typing. I had trouble with how the Bug type interacted with others because in the earlier gens I was playing, I wasn’t using Bug pokemon nor Bug moves. Also made it abnormally far before realizing Dark was immune to Psychic.

It took me a year, well after I was playing on Showdown, to fully get the Type Chart down. I have a Masters in math and was teaching at a college up until recently, i swear i have a little bit of sense at least!!
 
i will never blame anyone for being confused about the pokemon type chart. my ass is autistic (for realsies im not pulling an autistic joke) and obsessed w memorizing stuff like this so i know, but thats a very specific experience. Not everything makes intuitive sense, especially removed from a japanese cultural context.

it doesnt help how much it changes too. you may think since it hasnt changed since 11 years ago thats fine, but remember how much of those pre-xy games are recommended for newcomers and are babies first emulation, the nuances like steel no longer resisting dark are not intuitive at all
 
Me fucking with it:
types.png


:psysly:
 
Rapti said:
More money for less options

also, are you seriously equating people being upset about receiving an inferior with being spoiled?

"yo, Nestle why's my drink both smaller and more expensive?"

"oh you're just being spoiled"
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Feeling negatively in response to Dexit was perfectly reasonable. They made a change that made the game worse for some people, and the communication around that change was, to be blunt, bad! And not good! If you were a person who cared about this dimension of Pokemon, I don't believe anyone here would begrudge you for feeling negatively.

To a degree. For a time. To an extent.

There comes a time when, in the big picture of life, something is unimportant enough to let it go, or at least to not get sooooo angry about. But so many people got so angry about Dexit, so wrapped up in vitriol, that people like me and Based were watching very confused from the sidelines.

And I'm not even going to say like, oh it's just a video game, deal with it. Because something can be just a video game, but still mean a lot, because it represents something important. Maybe you're a big consumer protections person, and you think a product is being sold at a morally repugnant price, and that's why you care. If so, I disagree with that interpretation of reality. To level with you, when I hear this perspective from most people, I think it is usually poorly-developed. Even still, though, I would understand where youre coming from. You connected the pixels to something that really matters big-picture. At any rate, I do sense severe anger coming from you, and, since it's been 5 years after SWSH's release, I do hope there's some kind of good reason, whatever it is.

Maybe that'd reason explain your vitriol, but there's a lot of angry fans beyond you who need explaining, and I lack many explanations for them. Trading Pokemon across Pokemon games is just such a specific feature. It's not like they turned the game into a pet simulator and removed the battles. There were already some restrictions on using past Pokemon in future games – the level / trade obeying rules made it hard to use high-leveled Pokemon for much of a game, and official competitive formats often had curated legality lists – and nobody seemed to mind these restrictions. Maybe more to the point, even if you can't transfer an old Pokemon to a new game, it still exists in the old game (or Pokemon Home, or whatever it's called now), and nobody is taking it away from people.

Given all that, I'm skeptical that many of these people inflamed about Dexit have a good reason to be as upset, so upset as they got. I think a lot of people were overreacting, parroting the takes of popular YouTubers and other figures, indulging in rage for its own sake, or some combination of the three. After all, getting miffed at inferiority in other contexts (e.g. a restaurant getting your order wrong) is understandable, but seething with rage is often unhealthy, yeah!

Maybe you know something I don't. Maybe there was some widespread factor that connected this feature removal to Real Stuff for a wide swathe of people. But I just don't get it.

Rapti said:
omg it's almost as if different people appreciate different things

you like what you like, let others like what they like
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I'll briefly comment on this in a similar vein to my above. It is good and healthy to be "intellectually critical" of what people like, and how much they like it. When I say "intellectually critical," I don't mean "abrasive and unkind" critical, I mean being thoughtful to try and understand why people form preferences, and whether those preferences are good or not. Not all preferences are created equal, as Baku cheekily alluded to. I don't think "trading Pokemon across games" is some bad thing to like, obviously, but I'm "intellectually critical" with how deeply attached some people apparently are to it. As I describe above, I'm suspicious of how many people seemingly formed deep attachment to this feature, and think they may be insincere.
 
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