blocked by tiering admin + the playerbase generally didnt want them despite them being extremely minor additions with little actual potential to shake things up
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(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon
- Thread starter BriarRose
- Start date
I agree, although I suspect that GF/TPC are likely willing to just eat the negativity cost because the portion of players affected by something like this is relatively very small. If Dexit itself wasn’t enough to cause a significant problem for them, then going back to one-way transfers after two generations of (mostly) free movement will probably be a small blip on their radar at most.
One and a half gens even, ZA is still gen 9.
Yes, that's an important note. This is the first time transfer has been one-way within a generation. (LGPE couldn't transfer to the Alola games, but neither could the Alola games transfer to LGPE.)
I kind of feel like, ever since LGPE, “generations” have become a less useful concept in the context of transferring. Starting from that point, mid-generation games have gotten a lot more experimental and a lot less beholden to iterating on the base pair. That’s only gotten more pronounced with Legends becoming a formal subseries. SwSh, BDSP, and LA are all very different games compared to one another, in a way that wasn’t the case with RSE and FRLG, DPP and HGSS, BW and B2W2, XY and ORAS, and SM and USUM. And that’ll also be true of SV and LZA.
have they given an official reason why the transferring is changing for LZA or are we as a community stuck trying to figure out why? granted I don't remember if they have given official reasons in the past
what do we think it is if they haven't stated one? I've seen the language theory but that doesn't make sense to me. the new code base and/or removal/rework of IVs makes more sense to me but maybe it isn't any of these?
what do we think it is if they haven't stated one? I've seen the language theory but that doesn't make sense to me. the new code base and/or removal/rework of IVs makes more sense to me but maybe it isn't any of these?
If they stated a reason we'd not be having theories about language and IVs so it's one of those things we won't know until we have the game and can pop open the pokemon's inner workings.
After playing the newer games for so long, it’s jarring going back to Gen 6 where I have to shlep back to the Pokemon centre to check the stats on the new team member I just caught/switch out team members in the PC.
On a similar note, I had to pop back into Alpha Sapphire for something yesterday after not having played any of the Gen 6 games for several years, and the clunkiness of the PC having three separate functions — Withdraw Pokémon, Deposit Pokémon, and Organize Boxes (which just cuts to the chase and lets you do both) — was a major shock to the spine.
Lately I’ve found myself exploring a deep rabbit hole about the core series games and what systems they’re released for. Historically, Nintendo has liked to release one, sometimes two original mainline installments for their I.Ps per hardware generation for both consoles and handhelds, and Pokémon is no exception to this. Remakes have been largely the same prior to the Switch, which has three of them and a cross-gen release if you count Legends games. In spite of all of the recent controversy around Nintendo I do believe Legends ZA being a true cross-gen release to be a step in the right direction for Pokémon specifically seeing as this is something Pokémon games have historically struggled with despite the success of the first game on each new platform.
It is this cross-gen pattern of games taking at least a year after the console’s release that first got my attention. Remember all of those special edition Pokémon systems they used to release? I mean, heck, even Scarlet & Violet had one for the OLED. I noticed something with one of these- most of the time they’re released for whatever the current hardware is, but for some reason, all three of these that were ever made for Pokémon Crystal were for the Game Boy Advance despite Gen 2 being Game Boy Color games. It’s not that big of a deal, considering Crystal and the GBA launched so close together and there was backwards compatibility; I just thought it was funny how Crystal and only Crystal ever got this treatment. I mentioned Crystal got three of these; one as for the game itself and the other two were for the Celebi movie and Latias/Latios movie respectively.
Starting with Ruby & Sapphire their attention shifted over to the Game Boy Advance SP, which also makes sense. The Gen 4 Sinnoh games also had their DS Lites, but the original DS didn’t have any of these which is strange because they absolutely could have made one for Blue Rescue Team (2005) or Pokémon Ranger (2006) even though Red Rescue Team got one for the oft-forgotten Game Boy Micro of all things. The pattern should be clear- the special editions are made for whatever system the game in question is designed and “optimized” for- looking at you, Paldea- so that brings me to my main point.
At this point, why don’t they just wait a few extra months for games like Crystal, Emerald, B2W2, and USUM and release those as launch titles for the following system instead of releasing them late into the current one? Emerald I can give a pass since it’s similar enough to Ruby & Sapphire to warrant being optimized for the GBA despite the two year gap, but those other three very easily could have been Year 1-2 titles for the GBA, 3DS, and Switch respectively. Black & White 1 are DS games, but more specifically they’re what are known as “DSi enhanced” games which may have something to do with why Black & White’s special edition handhelds are, in fact, DSi systems. For the sequels, though? They’re great games, don’t get me wrong, but imagine how much better they could be if they had the 3DS’s benefits too, and mind you, every single B2W2 spinoff game (provided there aren’t that many) is either a 3DS or Wii U title, usually released in or around 2013. So it would make a lot of sense. I already talked about Crystal, so that just leaves Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon which are games that were practically begging to be released on the Switch in 2017. It could have fit extremely well with the release of Let’s Go the following year, too. Even NINTENDO mistakenly said it would be ported in a Direct at one point!
Oh, and one more thing. Did I mention Explorers of Sky had an extremely limited DSi edition too? Explorers of both Time and Darkness got nothing (released before the DSi was) but even if they did, all three of these games are not DSi enhanced titles I think. The Sky version may have gotten special treatment that I don’t know about.
It is this cross-gen pattern of games taking at least a year after the console’s release that first got my attention. Remember all of those special edition Pokémon systems they used to release? I mean, heck, even Scarlet & Violet had one for the OLED. I noticed something with one of these- most of the time they’re released for whatever the current hardware is, but for some reason, all three of these that were ever made for Pokémon Crystal were for the Game Boy Advance despite Gen 2 being Game Boy Color games. It’s not that big of a deal, considering Crystal and the GBA launched so close together and there was backwards compatibility; I just thought it was funny how Crystal and only Crystal ever got this treatment. I mentioned Crystal got three of these; one as for the game itself and the other two were for the Celebi movie and Latias/Latios movie respectively.
Starting with Ruby & Sapphire their attention shifted over to the Game Boy Advance SP, which also makes sense. The Gen 4 Sinnoh games also had their DS Lites, but the original DS didn’t have any of these which is strange because they absolutely could have made one for Blue Rescue Team (2005) or Pokémon Ranger (2006) even though Red Rescue Team got one for the oft-forgotten Game Boy Micro of all things. The pattern should be clear- the special editions are made for whatever system the game in question is designed and “optimized” for- looking at you, Paldea- so that brings me to my main point.
At this point, why don’t they just wait a few extra months for games like Crystal, Emerald, B2W2, and USUM and release those as launch titles for the following system instead of releasing them late into the current one? Emerald I can give a pass since it’s similar enough to Ruby & Sapphire to warrant being optimized for the GBA despite the two year gap, but those other three very easily could have been Year 1-2 titles for the GBA, 3DS, and Switch respectively. Black & White 1 are DS games, but more specifically they’re what are known as “DSi enhanced” games which may have something to do with why Black & White’s special edition handhelds are, in fact, DSi systems. For the sequels, though? They’re great games, don’t get me wrong, but imagine how much better they could be if they had the 3DS’s benefits too, and mind you, every single B2W2 spinoff game (provided there aren’t that many) is either a 3DS or Wii U title, usually released in or around 2013. So it would make a lot of sense. I already talked about Crystal, so that just leaves Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon which are games that were practically begging to be released on the Switch in 2017. It could have fit extremely well with the release of Let’s Go the following year, too. Even NINTENDO mistakenly said it would be ported in a Direct at one point!
Oh, and one more thing. Did I mention Explorers of Sky had an extremely limited DSi edition too? Explorers of both Time and Darkness got nothing (released before the DSi was) but even if they did, all three of these games are not DSi enhanced titles I think. The Sky version may have gotten special treatment that I don’t know about.
Because Crystal was a gen 2 game and the GBA and GBC cannot connect to each other? Same for Emerald and the DS. You could play the games you could not use any of their multiplayer.
Because the games would likely require more development time to port to and work on a new system. The "extra benefits" of these systems are not necessarily easy to make use of, if anything is made use of at all. The appeal, presumably, of these "upper" versions is you get to reuse all the assets on the same system as a base to build on top of. not everything necessarily ports over easily and the development time & budget may not have allowed for it.
They also likely want games to still be available on the prior systems for these transitional periods; they still have the bigger install base and in the case of the 3DS got to play DS games anyway. Nintendo often releases titles in these in-between spots as a "just in case" thing alongside dev times just aligning in such & such way. WarioWare Gold, Shadows of Valentia, the Mario & Luigi remakes were likely never ever going to be on the Switch, even if it did get increasingly funny to see 3DS titles released after the Switch took off.
There's also the dependency on getting dev kits in time
Ah. Right. Didn’t think about that. In this hypothetical future I would imagine that, for example, the GBA version of Crystal still wouldn’t be able to trade with the GBC version because they use a separate link cable. For online multiplayer it’s even more difficult since you’d specifically have to go in and make sure the 3DS “port” of Black & White 2 wouldn’t cause problems with the DS originals, or Nintendo Switch Online be required for a 3DS game in the case of Ultra Sun & Moon. Things like that I could see causing a lot of problems.
Maybe I’m underestimating how difficult it is to port video games, this is probably true. Waiting extra time and denying “last-gen players” those transitional titles like I initially thought about wouldn’t be a good idea for marketing or for profit. I do still think it would be nice in a perfect world if these games were released for both hardware generations, but unfortunately that might just not be very plausible.
A fun trivia fact for anyone who’s interested, by the way- the Game Boy Micro was Nintendo’s first handheld where you could my play every available Pokémon region thus far at that point in time. The Micro can’t play Johto, the DSi can’t play Hoenn or Gen 3 Kanto (it can still access Kanto via the Johto remakes, at least), and if we count Legends ZA for Kalos, the and Switch/Switch 2 currently lacks access to Johto, Hoenn, Unova (no, the Indigo Disk doesn’t count) and Alola, all of which were playable during the 3DS generation. Thanks to the Virtual Console, the 3DS went a perfect seven-for-seven before the shutdown.
"Generations" as you are dividing them by is pure fanon. Internally every Switch release is a different generation from the last according to GF's servers in the Teraleak, which is also why they each have different origin marks. So internally at GF the Switch has had 5 Generations with the 6th and final one being ZA. This aligns with how Pokemon are divided in Home, with Meltan/Melmetal and the Hisui Pokemon both having separate pokedex selections instead of being added to the end of Alola/Galar. I know all of the major fansites, including "fact-based" ones like Bulbapedia, divide them that way, but it seems that Game Freak has never done it that way for the entirety of the Switch's lifespan.
Ironically, I find this very fitting because the Switch itself seems to be pushing the definition of a hardware generation just as much as its games are doing the same. The Big 3 console developers seem to be taking a different approach to this, prioritizing optimization and revisions of current hardware over new console releases in the wake of Nintendo’s Wii U failing to meet expectations. The PS4, Xbox One, PS5, and Xbox Series all have at least four variants if you count a disc drive as a variant, and the gap between what most people call “the eighth generation” and the “ninth generation” was one of the longest in history year-wise.
And then you have the Switch that’s trying to do seven million things at once- it wants to be a 3DS successor, a Wii U successor, an effective hardware reset (that is to say, merging the two lines), an eighth generation console, and a ninth generation console all at the same time. By extension, this has led to discussion about what console generation the Switch 2 should be considered a part of, when in reality Nintendo’s own console generations are unique enough to where I don’t think it’s fair to compare the Switch consoles to the more traditional and powerful ones. Only the Steam Deck and maybe that leaked Xbox handheld (assuming it’s even real) could be considered “true” competition by my own definition.
Nintendo’s Hardware Generations, pre and post Switch merger:
- Color-Game TV & Game and Watch
- NES (still on the Game & Watch)
- SNES & Game Boy
- N64 (the Game Boy Color might also count here, it depends)
- GameCube & Game Boy Advance
- Wii & DS
- Wii U & 3DS
- Nintendo Switch merger
- Nintendo Switch 2
Oh I know, but I was trying to use the term a bit loosely because I do think the colloquial definition of generation is still demonstrably relevant to Game Freak’s procedure to at least some extent — while they clearly don’t consider hardware itself to be a limiting factor, and are even willing to add new Pokémon along with any individual game at this point, the fundamental breakpoint of “this is where we introduce a whole new region with 100+ new designs, a large new cast of characters, new items, new major mechanics, etc.” is likely still a significant developmental lodestone for them.
Like, even though GF almost certainly don’t have a chart on the wall at the office that shows a clear delineation of Gens 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on, the devs can probably feel a meaningful difference between working on Legends: Z-A and working on Pokémon Salt & Pokémon Pepper, because the sheer scope of what we consider generational launch games is going to be a distinctly different beast, and one that Game Freak’s project managers consciously choose to orient their development schedule around. Even if “generation” isn’t the word they use for that regular increase in scope, it is still a distinct thing to them.
In theory, they could just make everything something like a Legends game from now on, and only release about 40 new Pokémon per game. But indeed, they still choose to have the traditional big new region launch at a rate of every 3-4 years. And I also think there’s realistically no way that they aren’t conscious of how this stuff exists in the minds of players, even if they don’t go out of their way to fit into our neat little presumed categories. They must certainly know that what we think of as the beginning of a new generation also happens to be the time when their product gets the most traction in the market, so it’s only natural that they’d formulate their plans around that. It’s sort of symbiotic.
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I apologize for the double post; in my defense my phone doesn’t let me do sub-bullets on the Forums for some reason even though my laptop does. Just wanted to clarify some things about this list and how it pertains to Pokémon:
- The Game Boy and Game Boy Color are internally recognized as the same hardware, but the Game Boy Color’s games are officially recognized as successors to those on original Game Boy. For this reason there is discrepancy about whether or not the Gen 2 Pokémon games are on the same hardware as Gen 1 or if they should be listed separately, with Nintendo usually opting for the first option.
- Similarly, the DSi line of systems is not recognized as a successor to the DS internally even though the DSi has more of a difference to its own system than the Game Boy Color did. The Gen 4 Pokémon games are all designated as original DS titles, including spinoffs, while Gen 5’s core series games and Pokémon Conquest are “DSi enhanced” games.
- The Nintendo Switch OLED is not considered a midway point between the original Switch and the Switch 2, or as a direct competitor to the 2020 consoles from Sony and Microsoft. Pokémon Scarlet & Violet are in a unique spot where they were made with the OLED screen in mind but also optimized for the Switch 2; effectively what this means is that a hypothetical Switch 2 OLED would be the preferred way to play those games. The games we consider as Gen 8 Pokémon are the ones optimized for the original Switch despite Let’s Go usually being associated with Gen 7.
They definitely know about our definition- the Arceus arc of Pokémon Journeys and the Mega Voltage… season? Arc? of Pokémon Horizons are both treated as a part of their respective series. Let’s Go, a Switch game, was associated with Sun & Moon more than Sword & Shield, and only the games we consider as part of Gen 9 are/were the ones getting Switch 2 versions. I think this is a situation where they use our definition for marketing but use their definition for the actual hardware, if that makes sense. The three-four year development cycle and Game Freak’s working on and alternating between two games at a time has been going on for a while now, but I would imagine Pokémon Champions will also be internally considered its own thing despite the marketing and advertising associating it with the Scarlet & Violet Era.
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Been building fake Regional Dexes recently, and I had a realization: Pokemon has some issues with futureproofing mons. I was playing around with including Paradoxes, and it dawned on me that the Paradox Pokemon might ironically be the least futureproofed mons in the series. Unless you're willing to break up the set, that's a minimum of 14 slots, meaning these guys probably aren't getting included in another proper regional Dex. Add to that the DLC trios, which are also spinoffs of Legendaries that themselves will likely be saved for post-game in DLC 2 each gen, I am really curious how they're going to handle these guys going forwards.
But that's not the only case of newer Pokemon not being futureproofed. The other obvious example is regional forms, especially ones that have the same base stage. It's been over five years since you could evolve Exeggcute into A. Exeggutor or Pikachu into A. Raichu, and they're only going to get harder to obtain the further we get from Alola; that is, of course, barring making those forms catchable in the wild but unevolvable because apparently making it so a mon can evolve into two different forms is too hard to figure out? Ditto the Hisuian forms. That's also not mentioning the nonsense with how Ursaluna and Kleavor are available in SV but you can't evolve into them because...? Wyrdeer is especially baffling since they did figure out something for Overqwil.
Though that's not to say this is a wholly new issue. For instance, the Nidoran line definitely got screwed over in the long run because they got introduced before genders were a thing. They've been in almost no regional Dexes post-Johto, and it's easy to guess it's because the planners don't think their 6-slot cost is worth it. You also got the elemental monkeys, a six-pack of what's basically the same line 3 times and who aren't especially popular, so why bother bringing them back? In a series all about bonding with your Pokemon and taking them on journey after journey, it would feel wrong for any of them to be permanently left behind.
I could go on, so a few more examples:
But that's not the only case of newer Pokemon not being futureproofed. The other obvious example is regional forms, especially ones that have the same base stage. It's been over five years since you could evolve Exeggcute into A. Exeggutor or Pikachu into A. Raichu, and they're only going to get harder to obtain the further we get from Alola; that is, of course, barring making those forms catchable in the wild but unevolvable because apparently making it so a mon can evolve into two different forms is too hard to figure out? Ditto the Hisuian forms. That's also not mentioning the nonsense with how Ursaluna and Kleavor are available in SV but you can't evolve into them because...? Wyrdeer is especially baffling since they did figure out something for Overqwil.
Though that's not to say this is a wholly new issue. For instance, the Nidoran line definitely got screwed over in the long run because they got introduced before genders were a thing. They've been in almost no regional Dexes post-Johto, and it's easy to guess it's because the planners don't think their 6-slot cost is worth it. You also got the elemental monkeys, a six-pack of what's basically the same line 3 times and who aren't especially popular, so why bother bringing them back? In a series all about bonding with your Pokemon and taking them on journey after journey, it would feel wrong for any of them to be permanently left behind.
I could go on, so a few more examples:
- Ultra Beasts: Predecessor of the Paradox mons, similar problem with Dex space.
- Meltan and Melmetal: Unless Go's servers stay open forever, they will eventually need another way to obtain this guy.
- Gholdengo: What happens if future titles don't adopt the collectable parts system?
- Hydrapple: A cute reference to G-Max forms, sure, but in games without Dynamax Hydrapple's existence puts Flapple and Appletun into an awkward spot.
- Lycanroc-Dusk: I will never forgive GF for making me breed for this shiny thanks to that stupid ability lock.
Dusk Lycanroc's as future-proofed as either of the other two they just tend to make it rarer than the others.
We know how they'd handle the Paradoxes because it'd be the same way as the UBs: just put them outside the regional Pokedex with all the other legends & random other Pokemon. I think the Kalos dex (& I guess the Johto "new" pokedex but that's a different thing) is the only regional dex that includes "outside" legends. I'd say largely by design, they're not very interested in having old legends (& company) take up "slots" even when every game had every Pokemon from the onset.
The stuff pertaining to evolution is resolved by just making a new evolution method*. They've already done this multiple times; they introduced the prism scale for Feebas to help accommodate the lack of contests necessitating the beauty stat to be visible and be raised. When they decidd to stop having location-based evolutions they just changed them to use evolution stones; now they never need to worry about that and can just reactivate the location method when it's appropriate. As such whenever Go goes down or they drop collectables, they'll just come up with another method. There's just no need to do so right now when it could be years and years before it's relevant.
And yes this IS what makes Kleavor, Ursaluna & especially Wyrdeer stupid because the options are right there, easy as can be, they just actively chose to not implement evolution methods in SV.
fwiw they did make rockruff with own tempo be something you can just grab normally in SV it's just not very obvious without specifically hunting for abilities.
*all this said please just make "regional" stones at this juncture
I agree with you in theory, but in practice GF is really bad about not wanting to change things. Now, part of the problem is that GF decided to make regional evolution lines AND split regional evolutions, which makes for a mechanical mess*, but nevertheless, I suspect GF would rather make Alolan Raichu a thing they can distribute when they choose rather than something the player can access.
*Make the Alolan stone a held item that causes F!Geodude who breed while holding it to produce Alolan Geodude AND Pikachu exposed to a Thunderstone while holding it to evolve into Alolan Raichu
It’s not really a matter of them “not being able to figure it out,” given that there already are Pokémon that can evolve into different forms. While I’m really not a fan of it either, it’s clearly a deliberate choice to have regional forms work as they do.
Only if you’re operating under the belief that a given set of Pokémon need to be equally capable for a certain reason, but that’s never been something Game Freak have been very concerned with. Most likely they’ll just have the three evolutions exist as they currently do, with Hydrapple outclassing the other two. And I actually think that’s fine; anyone who wants to use Flapple or Appletun can simply choose to do so even though they are the less optimal choice. Plenty of people play with complete shitmons for one reason or another, and Flapple and Appletun aren’t even that bad for in-game single player. And competitive will always be a different beast that favors a very small group of highly optimized Pokémon.
For regional forms, I feel like the easy solution is to just include them in the wild in various fitting biomes the same way the indigo disk DLC did. Evolution methods could be altered to make it more location based as well. Execute could evolve normally in a jungle biome, but in a tropical biome, the Leaf Stone's properities might be altered and it evolves in Alolan Exeggutor. You could probably do the same with Galarian Weezing by leveling it up in buildings. I feel like the Pokemon company will probably decide to do this at some point. This could run into same issue that Magnezone ran into where you needed a vaguely Electric area in every game to evolve it at, but I think these general biomes like a tropical or a frosty biome are generic enough were pretty much every game going forward will have them .
"Special" Pokemon like Gholdengo probably could have an evolution requirement change down the line - I feel like it'll either get a rare item like a "Spooky Chest" or just use the Dusk Stone to evolve in the next game, with a potential stat nerf to accommadate that. We saw this with Urshifu, so I think it will happen here.
You've got me stumped on legendaries - I do not know how a lot of them would be integrated into new regional dexes without big reworks. I feel like the paradox Pokemon specifically will just be an SV feature and won't return ever again.