WOW, and here I thought we'd have a news drought before the livestream! Well, my first quick thoughts from just reading the GameInformer articles & Serebii's reports:
Cover Reveal - General Overview:
So according to this overview article for the entire month they'll be updating their
coverage hub throughout the month. They promise insights about how the game was made, why they picked UK to base Galar on, Dexit, and plenty of interviews and questions. We'll see if anything enticing is revealed. Though considering it's October it's interesting they aren't doing a more Halloween-y theme (though they'll also have articles for Catherine & Persona. Also Shenmue III, though only thing scary about that game is it's PR disasters). And of course the magazine itself will probably have information they won't put on the site... and soon be just reprinted on the internet but hey that's at least one issue sold.
Max Raids Are Pokemon's Most Challenging Encounters:
* The idea for "Max Raids" existed before Pokemon Go, but Go's popularity and ease of accessing them inspired GF to make the Raids similar to Go's.
* Obvious, but not all Raids are created equal. Though they didn't go in how, some Raids will be challenging than others. I'm going to guess it'll probably not only be the Pokemon but also their Moves & Abilities.
* Raids are rated 1 to 5 stars, 1 being easy and 5 difficult. Honestly would rather have a "Recommended Level" number than stars as just having five stars to determine difficulty feels a bit obtuse. Like I could do a batch of 2 stars feeling like I could do a 3 star, then getting creamed because turns out the level difference between 2 and 3 for that challenge was 20 levels (this is, of course, an extreme example).
* OTHER THOUGHTS: Now, are Raids difficult because of "honest difficulty" as in the Raid Pokemon uses a tricky strategy and strong moves or is it "cheap difficulty" where it has tons of HP & stat increases from the start? Also they hopefully put some of that difficulty into the Champion Cup battles and Rivals.
Autosaves (And Turning It Off):
* Sounds like the reason they introduced autosaves was because they wanted the Surprise Trades going on in the background instead of you having to take time out like with Wonder Trade. They wanted to focus on a seamless playing experience. That said, other then after a Surprise Trade, they don't say how often or any other flags that trigger an autosave.
* But thankfully, we can turn it off. However Ohmori than goes into some odd explanation how the Switch is more complicated to turn off (probably referencing how one reason players would want autosaves is so they can soft reset during Legendary battles). But the odd thing about that is we don't need to turn off the Switch, just turn/off restart the game program. Infact, all games up until LGPE
had a button combination you could do that would restart the game. It kind of feels like it's not that they couldn't make soft resetting easy, but they don't want to and sort of pushing/discouraging manual saves because they REALLY want to show off how seamless the autosave is. Hopefully the game will save your choice to turn off autosaves and you don't have to keep turning it off when you start the game back-up or it turns itself back on after a while.
* OTHER THOUGHTS: Also seamless autosaves don't feel that impressive when you've gotten the manual saves you happen within a few seconds. Like I get the autosaves are needed for the Surprise Trades, but the only other time I would want to save the game was after a major event or I was about to turn off the game for the day so I probably was already taking a few seconds to plan on doing that. And depending how often autosaves happen we might end up doing that anyway.
Dexit & Future Returns:
* So Masuda said that, while they prided able having all Pokemon in previous game titles, this resulted in them abandoning previous game mechanics. Now not having to do every Pokemon they want to prioritize all the new gameplay ideas and ways to enjoy the game. Now, if this is true, MAYBE THIS IS THE REASON YOU SHOULD HAVE GIVEN FROM THE START! Now going into what could this possible mean, could this mean they'll bring back older and popular mechanics and features?
Pokemon Contest, Battle Frontier, Secret Bases, Dex Nav, etc.. Of course, they also emphasized they want to move forward with the "NEW" mechanics they're coming up with so we'll see what that means, certainly doesn't mean Mega Evolutions and Z-Moves (please for the love of Arceus do not carry over Gigantamaxing).
* Only other thing worth mentioning is that Masuda confirms there's no culling and Pokemon not in Galar will appear in future gens. Also pushing Home as a place to gather Pokemon not in a gen's Dex so they can wait for one that does. Nice and all, but can they DO anything in Home aside just existing for a few years.
* OTHER THOUGHTS: Like how they said they had plenty of criteria for what Pokemon got in... and then never bothered giving any examples aside "yeah, I guess I can see this Pokemon existing in this fictional region we can mold in anyway we want". Like, sure, I guess the Blitzle family wouldn't fit as there's no zebras in the UK, but then again zebras aren't native to the US yet that's the gen you introduced them. Infact, since you've made a wild area that environment changes with the weather right alongside heavily industrialized cities, is there any Pokemon they wouldn't fit some place or another in Galar?
HMs Are AWOL Again:
No HMs because they didn't feel like it fit with the concept of the Wild Area being a massive free space. Not that it matters as they said the Rotom Phone will be giving you HM-like power-ups. It'll turn your bike into a water bike which is really the only "major" obstacle that would naturally exist. Darkness to Flash, boulders to Strength, bushes to Cut, Fog to Defog, all those are artificial road blocks that they don't need to include if they railroad you where they want you to be (which isn't a bad thing, though in a way it does mean effect exploration as they need to make an area big and expansive to give a sense of exploration instead of in previous games where exploration was backtracking through the region when you got a new HM to see what you could do with it).
Exp. Share Is Always On:
Exp. Share no longer exists, instead they're going the LGPE route of just having all your Pokemon earn experience after a battle/catch from the start. An obvious change and, as long as they level curve correctly, hopefully shouldn't be that bad. Would I like for a way to turn it off like they can with autosaves? Sure, for those looking for a challenge. But otherwise I have no major problem with it. "Do you have a minor problem with it"? Eh, sort of. If all Pokemon are getting equal experience then all Pokemon would probably keep even leveled with each other and I use my Pokemon being lower level to give them an excuse to put them in the front of my party. Now sounds like I won't really be changing who is the front of my party (and you know what, maybe that's something they should change for at least Trainer Battles: let me choose which Pokemon I sent out first instead of it always being the one leading the party. Wild Battles makes sense it's the lead Pokemon, you're suddenly jumped and sent out the first Pokemon on hand. But trainer battles or organized so should have a choice, would make me use more of my party for sure).
Every Pokemon Is Competitively Viable:
* Making new backend mechanics to make the Pokemon you grown attached to during your adventure you can actually take into competitive. YES! This has been on of the major issues with the Pokemon's message of forming a bond with your Pokemon only to having to toss them in the PC and raising a completely new team for competitive! Curious what they exactly plan on doing, but if this works out would be possibly one of the biggest boons Pokemon needed to get players hooked on competitive (and maybe into them doing more competitive focused things like the Battle Frontier)!
* One of these systems is heavily suggested to be changing a Pokemon's Nature. YES DOS! Something many of us have suggested! You can breed a Pokemon with perfect IVs but got to keep on breeding until you get the right Nature which is tedious grinding. Now if they also make Hidden Power's Type something we can choose we can just breeding to being something to do if you want a specific Egg Move (though I can understand this kind of making breeding feel less important so maybe they could add in new things to breed for like Egg Abilities or maybe even Egg Types, but I'm just mindlessly wishlisting so I'll stop). Eitherway, good job GF! And once again THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN SAYING TO EXPLAIN WHY YOU'RE CUTTING THE DEX!
Gyms For All 18 Types:
There will be 18 Gyms, one for each Type! This will be done via there being a "Major League" that need to be completed in the main game for the Champion Cup then a "Minor League" which takes place during the off season. WOOT! Awesome! Now, since they're introducing Version Exclusive Gym Leaders I have a feeling not all 18 will be battleable (though for a connectivity bonus they could have you able to battle the other version's Gym Leaders). Also I think this firmly confirms there will be no Elite Four (unless the Elite Four aren't Type-based... yeah, probably no Elite Four). Anyway, let's play around with how they can do this:
1. Let's assume for Major League both versions will share 4 Gyms.
2. Then the remaining four Major League Gyms are version exclusive (8 + 4 = 12).
3. That leaves 6 Gyms saved for the presumably post game Minor League.
4. From there they can do a lot of things. What I would do would have 4 shared Gyms, then make the last 2 version exclusives, and finally having the other 3 Gyms being version exclusives from the other version's Major League.
5. That would mean there would be 2 version exclusive Gyms for each version (one from the Major League and one from the Minor League).
Not sure if there's any number game that can be done that wouldn't result in at least some Gyms being version exclusive.
Running late, will post comments/responses tomorrow.
