Unpopular opinions

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
 
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.
That’s a great point!! I was thinking about all the fanmade Pokemon that are cool, and realized I’d made a mistake
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.
That’s true, but there will be ramifications somewhere!! Maybe lol.
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.
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:
 
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"

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.

omg it's almost as if different people appreciate different things

you like what you like, let others like what they like
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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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 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.


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.
There's definitely a lot of factors to it. Part of it is a lot of people are genuinely attached to the Pokémon they catch and raise. Especially when the franchise encourages this, I can see why you would get a lot of personal anger towards this decision. Add in that something like this hasn't happened in the franchise since Ruby and Sapphire, and I can see why it was taken so poorly, but as you said, this is up to a point.

I think we all know by now fandom has been overtaken by a lot of unhealthy elements, and gaming, rather than being an exception, is one of the best examples of this. A lot of people take their hobbies way too personally, both in the sense that people will take someone insulting something they enjoy as a slight against them as well as the phenomenon best summed up as "this game sucks, and you suck for liking it." Not only that, you also have people who take this personal investment and develop weird relationships with game developers because of it. Some people are absolutely devout worshippers of these devs and believe they can do no wrong, or they take the opposite mindset and believe the devs are literally Satan and killed their grandma because they didn't manage the game correctly. It doesn't help that gamer culture is often very conspiratorial, as with much of internet culture, assuming that large institutions want to personally hurt them individually, subbing in the appropriate boogeyman according to their own ideology and neuroses, rather than try to understand the complex array of individual interactions and greater forces at work.

Fandom also has to deal with influencer culture as well. So many people will base their opinions on what popular youtubers or community figures say despite the fact these figures are often just as clueless as the fans that follow them. Let's be honest, most youtubers have a following due to entertainment value more than if they actually know what they're talking about. Add in echo chambers and fan narratives that often go unchecked because they are repeated so often, and you get fandoms that can be wildly off base on facts but still cling to them dogmatically no matter how many times you individually correct people.

In the end you wind up with large numbers of people who have no understanding of the facts, are easily influenced by people with no more understanding than they are, have no clue what may actually be wrong except on the surface level, and will take whatever is wrong as a personal attack. Of course this resulted in the absolutely toxic response to dexit that came about. It's not even the only time this has happened. From scapegoating Genwunners for literally everything they don't like in the franchise to the entirety of the Palworld nonsense, this pattern has played out time and time again. And frankly, nothing I've really seen will stop this until people as a whole realize how silly it is, but that won't happen for some time. Not only because I don't think people really will break with the factors that cause it, but also more new people will come into fandoms who fall for the exact same thing.
 
i like complaining about people complaining. let others like what they like
You're an asshole, got it

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.
And here's the crux of the argument; I am a consumer's rights person so let me ask you, why do you disagree with people complaining about a product?

did you make that product? are you selling it? no? then why?

"oh but the feature is so minor (to me)" so what? setting aside the people for whom the feature is what makes Pokemon special, you're still being sold a more expensive product with less features, regardless how minor or not the features are, you're still being taken advantage of

"oh my, you said taken advantage of as if..." because you're being taken advantage of

are you perhaps thinking this is only (or even mainly) about Pokemon? because it isn't

did your Lipton tea shrink from 1.5 LT. to 1.25 LT?
you should complain about it

did your Colgate toothpaste get smaller, yet is now more expensive?
you should complain about it

your gin lost some of its alcohol content?
you. should. complain. about. it.

and by "you" I don't just mean Adeleine, I mean "you" as in "you the person reading this"

because every company is incentivized to give you the cheapest product for the most expensive price they can get away with, so every time you let them do that, you're being taken advantage of

and not only that, every time you let yourself be taken advantage of, you're telling companies to take advantage of others as well

so yeah, don't do that
 
You're an asshole, got it


And here's the crux of the argument; I am a consumer's rights person so let me ask you, why do you disagree with people complaining about a product?

did you make that product? are you selling it? no? then why?

"oh but the feature is so minor (to me)" so what? setting aside the people for whom the feature is what makes Pokemon special, you're still being sold a more expensive product with less features, regardless how minor or not the features are, you're still being taken advantage of

"oh my, you said taken advantage of as if..." because you're being taken advantage of

are you perhaps thinking this is only (or even mainly) about Pokemon? because it isn't

did your Lipton tea shrink from 1.5 LT. to 1.25 LT?
you should complain about it

did your Colgate toothpaste get smaller, yet is now more expensive?
you should complain about it

your gin lost some of its alcohol content?
you. should. complain. about. it.

and by "you" I don't just mean Adeleine, I mean "you" as in "you the person reading this"

because every company is incentivized to give you the cheapest product for the most expensive price they can get away with, so every time you let them do that, you're being taken advantage of

and not only that, every time you let yourself be taken advantage of, you're telling companies to take advantage of others as well

so yeah, don't do that
I really don't think the practice of selling less of the same product for more is comparable to Dexit, since there's brand new Pokemon being introduced at the same time, and also because they're being attached to a whole-ass brand new game. The quality of said game is up for interpretation, but it is a new product.

Also it's arguably more consumer-friendly to people who are buying Pokemon games for the first time, since the de-emphasis of transfers means a greater number of Pokemon are available within the games themselves.

*glares at certain VGC legendaries*
 
I really don't think the practice of selling less of the same product for more is comparable to Dexit, since there's brand new Pokemon being introduced at the same time, and also because they're being attached to a whole-ass brand new game. The quality of said game is up for interpretation, but it is a new product.

Also it's arguably more consumer-friendly to people who are buying Pokemon games for the first time, since the de-emphasis of transfers means a greater number of Pokemon are available within the games themselves.

*glares at VGC legendaries*
Well, as you said, that is debatable, comparing Sun & Moon to Sword & Shield the latter is not 50% bigger and less character options means less character options

but the point is that people have the right to complain, and in fact should complain, when dissatisfied with a product period
 
no ome here is saying you need to eat whatever slop a company gives you. i never bought swsh proper and all my ds games are from an unlocked 3ds. what people are saying is that dexit has a disproportionate grip on the fandom considering
1. there are much more telling issues with pokemon games 2. its not even a big deal for the average consumer and you're not gonna get anyone rallying against anti consumer practice by picking dexit, when the average player doesnt even touch transfer features and would be more impacted with lack of content, bugs etc
 
but the point is that people have the right to complain, and in fact should complain, when dissatisfied with a product period
I agree, but it's important to be accurate with your complains, otherwise you discredit the actually valid critisims of problems that actually exist.

If someone goes "hey isn't it fucked how Nintendo is overcharging for their subpar online service and justifying it by stripping down their old Virtual Console store, turning it into yet another subscription model, and slapping it onto their online?" and someone else chimes in with "yeah, and their CEO Shuntaro Furukawa personally took a shit on my mother's grave!" that first person's critisism is going to be viewed as less valid due to being forcefully accosiated with the baseless second critisism.
 
You're an asshole, got it


And here's the crux of the argument; I am a consumer's rights person so let me ask you, why do you disagree with people complaining about a product?

did you make that product? are you selling it? no? then why?

"oh but the feature is so minor (to me)" so what? setting aside the people for whom the feature is what makes Pokemon special, you're still being sold a more expensive product with less features, regardless how minor or not the features are, you're still being taken advantage of

"oh my, you said taken advantage of as if..." because you're being taken advantage of

are you perhaps thinking this is only (or even mainly) about Pokemon? because it isn't

did your Lipton tea shrink from 1.5 LT. to 1.25 LT?
you should complain about it

did your Colgate toothpaste get smaller, yet is now more expensive?
you should complain about it

your gin lost some of its alcohol content?
you. should. complain. about. it.

and by "you" I don't just mean Adeleine, I mean "you" as in "you the person reading this"

because every company is incentivized to give you the cheapest product for the most expensive price they can get away with, so every time you let them do that, you're being taken advantage of

and not only that, every time you let yourself be taken advantage of, you're telling companies to take advantage of others as well

so yeah, don't do that
I am frustrated with this post. I put a lot of time into trying to understand your initial post and see where you were coming from, which was not initially obvious to me. In return, it doesn’t seem like you read my post very carefully at all.

The question of “why do you disagree with people complaining about a product” is just… showing that you didn’t understand me at all. I took great pains to indicate that I understood some level of negativity for many people, and that for some people - like you - I even understood very high levels of negativity!

I objected to the motivation of many people complaining - somebody can do a correct thing for the wrong reason. Then, I objected the intensity of the complaining - not every consumer slight warrants deep, venom-filled, personal rage.

Instead of talking with someone who pulled out the stops to treat you right, you breezed past what she had to say so that you could lecture at the field. We aren’t impressed. However, if you consider what I have to say, take it seriously, and respond to it - even if you strongly disagree! - conversation could be much more fruitful.
 
you're still being sold a more expensive product with less features, regardless how minor or not the features are, you're still being taken advantage of

But there’s subjectivity in how much a given feature or kind of content is “worth” to the individual person. Like for me, I literally could not physically care less about things like the Battle Frontier or Dexit. Meanwhile, SwSh has tons of quality of life changes that meaningfully improve my personal experience of the gameplay, and new features that I actually do want to engage with like Max Raid Battles, which added something that I thought the games had been sorely missing for a long time (rewarding coop battles). SwSh isn’t even one of my favorite games, and I do like several of the older games more than it, but it is nevertheless a product that I had a good time with and feel that I got my money’s worth out of.

I’m not going to say that you can’t or shouldn’t complain about features you like being removed, but I also don’t really think of myself as some poor hapless victim being sucked dry by the corpos just because SwSh has less of stuff that I don’t put much value on to begin with. I’m capable of determining for myself whether I think it’s worth what I spend on it and whether or not I’m being “taken advantage of.” I had the agency to say that this game wasn’t worth what I was paying for it if that’s how I really felt, but I fundamentally didn’t feel that way.
 
Saying to move on from Dexit because of other features also seems like it misses the possibility for someone to value features differently. The open world, overwold mons, raids, picnics, etc. SV does have are not things I have any interest in. I don't care enough about presentation or bugginess that fixing them would move the needle. Fixing Dexit would, probably singlehandedly.

In terms of amount of passion, to be blunt I've had to restrain myself pretty hard in some of these conversations. I have only been able to connect with people through hobbies, and I knew right away that this would compromise one of my biggest ones. Since then I've been mostly unsuccessful at finding a long-term replacement. Business is going to business, and I'd say that this isn't the place to express all of the anger directed at them only because it isn't going to burn all of capitalism to the ground and that's something that I believe needs to happen and will incidentally solve the Gamefreak end of the problem. My own outrage every time this gets brought up is generally more personal. Because my preferences with the series align strongly with the areas of content that are being reduced, "it's fine because of other features" consistently comes off as "you don't matter here because you like unpopular stuff." So I feel the need to make my presence known, not to GF, but to people I am actively attempting to socially engage with. And sometimes that requires shouting over the crowd.
 
So to move on from people literally advocating for the death penalty for monetization practices in a video game, here's a more mild take.
Battle Spot Singles should take up more of a place in what people think of as "Competitive Pokémon" rather than just 6v6 singles and VGC. Not only is it one of the main ways people on cartridge can engage in competitive without having to go to some external forum, but it is also one of the main formats Gamefreak seems to balance for.
 
So to move on from people literally advocating for the death penalty for monetization practices in a video game, here's a more mild take.
Battle Spot Singles should take up more of a place in what people think of as "Competitive Pokémon" rather than just 6v6 singles and VGC. Not only is it one of the main ways people on cartridge can engage in competitive without having to go to some external forum, but it is also one of the main formats Gamefreak seems to balance for.
I don't really agree with GF's balancing philosophy, so I'd actually consider that a downside. Now 6v6 Smogon-managed doubles, that's something that could get more credit.
 
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