Dexit discussion thread

idk why anyone is calling gamefreak lazy or greedy. The cutting of the pokedex is obviously a very calculated product decision; they're not going to just remove 400 pokemon for no reason. They want to bring as valuable a product to market that is still going to meet their business goals. They have limited resources to spend on development and have to pick the most important features to ship. That's also not to say that more pokemon is always a good thing -- are all 800+ pokemon meaningfully differentiated? Do a significant portion of users derive value from having that many pokemon compared to the cost of their inclusion? What are the implication on long term maintenance? etc. It's not so black and white.

And if instead, you are telling me that they are just cranking out some junk product that people will eat up anyway, then that's just the buyers that are being chumps. Pokemon is a business, but they are clearly not a stupid business.
The complaint about lazyness are because one of GameFreak's main objective has always been to keep a minimal staff.

Their refusal to either hire more people or outsource part of the work is ending up only costing product quality at realistically no gain while risking negative reviews and player anger.
Not that the anger of smogoners or elites matters anything considering casual players (which remember, are the vast majority) will buy it anyway but that's why people call GF "lazy".

GF has been a huge WinnersCurse victim, as the fact their games will sell anyway no matter how bad they are makes them think that their design choices have always been successful.
Little do they know, that the only reason is because Pokemon games have no valid competitors for their niche/genre, and they are basically carried by the rest of the franchise's merchandise.
 
It also seems they have done this in some hopes that more casuals will start considering playing pokemon competitively and make it a true e-sport. A lot of the calculated decisions we've seen through the leaks and such (and revealed information) seems to point toward this game really pushing online multi more then past games have.
And that nature mints and the new day care mechanics seem to strongly encourage competitive play, since they made the process easier.
 
It is kind of funny that the one gen that they really push competitive play in....is behind a pay wall for multiplayer (Though that's probably the point)
 
For the record, I'm going to point out that paying to play online is the industry norm, not something Nintendo is doing specifically to screw people over. Nintendo was just slow to catch up to what Microsoft and Sony have been doing for years, and even then Switch Online is much cheaper in comparison to the competition.

Also, I'm pretty sure Gamefreak didn't do this because they're incompetent or lazy or whatever people are saying. It had to happen eventually, and they probably figured the jump to the Switch was a good time to establish "not all Pokemon are usable in any given game" as the new standard going forward.
 
For the record, I'm going to point out that paying to play online is the industry norm, not something Nintendo is doing specifically to screw people over. Nintendo was just slow to catch up to what Microsoft and Sony have been doing for years, and even then Switch Online is much cheaper in comparison to the competition.
This so much.

As much as I understand that coming from free online of 3ds to switch online it seems an annoyance, I think it'd be time people stopped calling it a "paywall". It's not only extremely cheap compared to competitors (a year of Switch online costs less than 2 monts of Playstation Plus...), but nothing exactly new. I will also happily take a minor payment in order to ensure a stabler net (3ds net was a real disgrace).

There's nothing greedy on GF's side there.


That said, it saddens me that this gen managed to introduce at same time some of the most welcome QoL changes demanded since years and also some of the most hated things at same time :/
 
But making a tiny turtle for drednaw of course sells merchandise cause it's cute, but it does not help the increasing number of pokemon.
I do not understand your point here. So you are saying that the Pokemon may be well-liked by players and make money for TPC but it should not be included because it takes up space. Any Pokemon takes up space though, so when is a Pokemon worth it's space? I think that popularity would be one of the major criteria. If a certain Pokemon is popular and people want it then that's a good reason to put it in.
 
The complaint about lazyness are because one of GameFreak's main objective has always been to keep a minimal staff.

Their refusal to either hire more people or outsource part of the work is ending up only costing product quality at realistically no gain while risking negative reviews and player anger.
Not that the anger of smogoners or elites matters anything considering casual players (which remember, are the vast majority) will buy it anyway but that's why people call GF "lazy".

GF has been a huge WinnersCurse victim, as the fact their games will sell anyway no matter how bad they are makes them think that their design choices have always been successful.
Little do they know, that the only reason is because Pokemon games have no valid competitors for their niche/genre, and they are basically carried by the rest of the franchise's merchandise.
Okay but they did exactly that? Like, they doubled the core staff and outsourced a ton of people for this game. There's several articles on this i can pull for you and the gameinformer magazine which i have on hand that all correlate.
 
Okay but they did exactly that? Like, they doubled the core staff and outsourced a ton of people for this game. There's several articles on this i can pull for you and the gameinformer magazine which i have on hand that all correlate.
That being said, they likely hired staff BECAUSE Ultra Sun/Moon and Let's Go were taking some of their existing staff away for those projects.

And in the end, that does more harm than good.
 
As far as I remind, the extra staff wasn't hired to have more people to work on a single game, just because they had too many project on at same time.

There's good chance that if they never tried to make Town (which, ended up horrible, as a mediocre game without a franchise to back it up unsurprisingly doesn't work) they wouldn't really have hired much more either.
 
As far as I remind, the extra staff wasn't hired to have more people to work on a single game, just because they had too many project on at same time.

There's good chance that if they never tried to make Town (which, ended up horrible, as a mediocre game without a franchise to back it up unsurprisingly doesn't work) they wouldn't really have hired much more either.
Right, forgot about Team too.

So yeah, they didn't see anything wrong in working with four different things at the same time...
 
As far as I remind, the extra staff wasn't hired to have more people to work on a single game, just because they had too many project on at same time.

There's good chance that if they never tried to make Town (which, ended up horrible, as a mediocre game without a franchise to back it up unsurprisingly doesn't work) they wouldn't really have hired much more either.
Not true. There are at least 1000 people working on this game, sword and shield, right now. In fact...


EDIT: Okay idk why this shows upside down, but clicking open in new tab and it should be fine
 
I do not understand your point here. So you are saying that the Pokemon may be well-liked by players and make money for TPC but it should not be included because it takes up space. Any Pokemon takes up space though, so when is a Pokemon worth it's space? I think that popularity would be one of the major criteria. If a certain Pokemon is popular and people want it then that's a good reason to put it in.

What I'm saying is that dreadnaw could have been a stand alone mon, with no pre evolutions or evolutions outside of big giga. But they decided adding a tiny turtle baby form would probably sell plushies so they did. People mainly use or remember the adult forms of pokemon, which makes sense because they are used more often in that stage. Meanwhile we have things like full grown absols, kangaskhan, and snorlax coming from eggs. Not saying baby forms shouldn't be made or exist, but that 1,000 number could have been reached much slower if they had better planning for this.

I didn't think it was necessary to design baby forms for certain things, did iggybuff need to exist? Or cleffa? But again, its because they are small and cute and could sell toys.
 
What I'm saying is that dreadnaw could have been a stand alone mon, with no pre evolutions or evolutions outside of big giga. But they decided adding a tiny turtle baby form would probably sell plushies so they did. People mainly use or remember the adult forms of pokemon, which makes sense because they are used more often in that stage. Meanwhile we have things like full grown absols, kangaskhan, and snorlax coming from eggs. Not saying baby forms shouldn't be made or exist, but that 1,000 number could have been reached much slower if they had better planning for this.

I didn't think it was necessary to design baby forms for certain things, did iggybuff need to exist? Or cleffa? But again, its because they are small and cute and could sell toys.
Babies specifically don't usually need to exist because they usually suck in single-player, but prevos in general are good for single player. Also, if I recall, some people gave Game Freak flack for having too many single-stage Pokemon.
 
Babies specifically don't usually need to exist because they usually suck in single-player, but prevos in general are good for single player. Also, if I recall, some people gave Game Freak flack for having too many single-stage Pokemon.
Also, babypokemon were added in a generation where the game was in early experimentation, the merchandise wasn't anywhere as big, and they probably just introduced them to present the breeding mechanic better.

Ok that we are criticizing some of their decisions, but not everything they have done in the past was "just to sell more plushies" lol
 
Also, babypokemon were added in a generation where the game was in early experimentation, the merchandise wasn't anywhere as big, and they probably just introduced them to present the breeding mechanic better.

Ok that we are criticizing some of their decisions, but not everything they have done in the past was "just to sell more plushies" lol
I'd argue that was during the time pokemon was the biggest in terms of merchandise. If people thought frozen merchandise was annoying being in every store pokemon in generations 1-2 was the biggest it ever was. Cereal boxes, figures, plushies, commercials, McDonalds toys. Everywhere you go you would see something related to pokemon. Now it's more toned down and specific locations/times but still prints gold.

Just think they should think more about what it means to add other stages to a pokemon. "Does this need something else" because I'm sure drednaw needed a baby stage compared to duraludon who's meant to be a rival to a powerful pokemon that actually does evolve 2 times.
 
idk why anyone is calling gamefreak lazy or greedy.
Let's take this usually heard statement and and break it down shall we?

Why is Gamefreak , lazy?
Well simply put because Pokemon is one of the most profitable games franchises of all time and yet is putting out a game with mediocre graphics, the same gameplay they've been using for over 20 years (not necessarily a negative, some people want a classic experience look at Madden.... then again look at Madden) and cutting down on half of its characters rooster
and before anyone says "the games don't really make that much money, it's the merchandise" Pokemon has made 17 billion dollars with just the games, yes the franchise as a whole is much bigger (92 billion total across all media), but if Pokemon was just the games it would still be in the top 25 biggest franchises of all time

So, how do we determine whether a videogame is lazy or not? well let's compare it to a franchise similar in size
Assassin's Creed is a very successful videogame franchise with an significant exploration element and standardized gameplay across it's installments
does Pokemon have better or equal graphics than a franchise a quarter its size? no
better or equal story? not really
world size? content? optimization?
no
no
no
and if you don't like Assassin's Creed try comparing Pokemon to The Legend of Zelda a franchise which makes significantly less than either

So why are upset with the games now and not before if the games have always had these same faults?
Why now?

Because before we could simply point out to the huge rooster of pokemon and say "no other game has that" so what if the graphics have been behind the times ever since the GBA? so what if the stories are either poorly developed or poorly constructed or both? so what if the "exploration" of these games amounts to just a couple of optional areas and nothing more?
Pokemon has several hundreds of creatures which you can train with, bond with, even take with you future games and use them there

But with "dexit" all of that's gone, have fun getting attached to a pokemon which you may not be able to use again for the next five years if not more, oh and if the pokemon you like isn't in this game good luck, cause that pokemon may still not be in the next game, or the next game, or the next game
have fun buying a Switch with no guarantee that you may use the pokemon you like during the system's lifetime

So now we are left with these games wondering "Why would I play a game that has worse graphics and less options than something like Yo-kai Watch?" "Even tough the games keep telling me I should why would I get attached to these creatures if I have to store them later not to be used again for years?" "Why should I turn a blind eye to all of these flaws when games that sell less do better?"

As for Gamefreak being greedy, well Pokemon's been a yearly release for the last years, something that has hurt most franchises who have ever attempted it, something that Gamefreak knows since that's what diminished Yo-kai watch
whether that's a decision motivated by greed or not is up to debate but it's a poor decision regardless


Simply put, "dexit" has forced us to focus on all the flaws in Pokemon games by getting rid of the reason we care most about the Pokemon games the pokemon themselves
 
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Gamefreak is a titan that succeeds with a single franchise. If you know your success is guaranteed as long as the quality of the product is "passable," you'll care much less about the quality of the product as long as it sells well through your promotion of it. It's inevitable.

This "corporate corrupts content" idea has been relevant in Pokémon since the 3DS era, if you ask me. It only comes to our attention now because one day, one trailer, a face comes from the clouds and says that we can't transfer non-Galar mons, and then some guy says that this one tree looks ugly. Every generation of Pokémon games introduces new problems, there are new things that came out of every generation that I can easily say I resent. What we shouldn't be talking about is the predictable existence of new problems, what we need to talk about is the old problems that don't get fixed.

What comes to mind when we say "old problems that don't get fixed"? People complain about hand-holding, Gamefreak playing favorites with genwunners, and dry postgame content. I thought these complaints were just "new gen is bad" rants when they first started in X/Y, but once I saw the same story play out in gen 7, I knew that there was a real problem growing with the franchise, and not just me growing. I say that these issues we saw in X/Y and S/M are the real reason Gamefreak is losing their touch with Pokémon, not some tree way off in the background of an early video (they made the graphics better in a later trailer, anyways, didn't they?)

I don't need to tell you why hand-holding, genwunner favoritism and little to no postgame are bad things. We all sat through this stuff for two generations in a row. Dexit is the least of our worries; whatever happened to the complaint that there were "too many Pokémon"? Instead why don't we focus on the problems that have made us stop trusting Gamefreak in the first place? Appealing to the lowest common denominator, young kids and people playing since gen 1 just for nostalgia, versus when they put things in like the Battle Frontier and Pokéathlon just so more people could have fun.

And now that I believe I've brought up the real issue, I'm going to write in defense of Dexit, just with the following ideas:

What's the point in completing the national Pokédex if most of it is already done for you when you transfer from your old games and then just wondertrade and GTS for the rest? You're not really "catching them all," the idea has been dead since online trading meant you could make other people do the work for you. Transferring has always been forced to complete the national dex anyways, and I don't see a problem with saying that you don't need to buy all these extra games to complete the dex. I couldn't imagine starting with B/W and being told that I'd never complete the Pokédex just cause I don't own games from the early 2000's. Having the goal be attainable that you can catch everything just with SW/SH incentivizes it, and will probably make more people go after dex completion.

I've never transferred all that much myself, so maybe I'm biased when I say that new beginnings are a good thing. Nobody cared about the 80ish new Pokémon in S/M because they already had 721 favorites to choose from. I think people can learn to like other Pokémon, it's not like there are no other Pokémon to appreciate if the Sceptile from Ruby or Typhlosion from Soul Silver or whatever you had when you were a kid can't be in the picture, too.

Thanks for reading/skimming/scrolling, I hope you understand my stance on the issue. If you reply on something you are confused by or disagree with, I'd be pleased to explain further.
 
lmao you're acting like more pokemon is intrinsically better. There are dozens if not hundreds of garbo designs that aren't meaningfully differentiated from other Pokemon, and, flatly, are unpopular... basically 75% of everything after gen 2. Performing the same rote of catching and training a pokemon doesn't become more valuable to the user after 900 iterations as opposed to 400. Pretty obviously, the effort of including the other 500 pokemon isn't worth the investment; their inclusion has little marginal business value.

To the other guy above, no one in the world has ever played pokemon for its graphics, and comparing it to console games is apples to oranges.
 

earl

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We’re living in the shadow dimension in which people are also bitching about gen 5 favoritism, don’t forget that!

Like there’s so much to complain about, don’t shit on James Turner because suddenly the least appreciated gen is getting a semi-disproportionate amount of attention. Not targeted at this thread really, but I’ve seen a few people complaining about this.
 
Somehow I don't see the following argument often, especially in comparison to the argument that it sucks to not personally transfer your favorites and enjoy the postgame/other playthroughs/complete the whole dex:

I want it to be POSSIBLE to stage battles between every species of pokemon casually. I want a Blaziken to square off against a Cinderace, I want a Dreadnaw to fight against a Magnezone, exploring synergies and complexities as vast as can be delivered by a 20 year franchise passing the baton across each generation.

I've been complaining about how pokemon has been going downhill on the postgame for years, the ORAS battle frontier cut was frankly insulting when you consider how easy it could have been to deliver on that. And while VGC has always been a mixed bag in what formats are going to be fun, it's grown quite a lot since I started in 2013. But in the beginning, the postgame focus was on getting us the tools we needed to have as much fun in our own pokemon battles as we possibly could. When did we forget all that? Without that philosophy, self made communities like Smogon wouldn't exist. I'm SHOCKED to see that philosophy sacrificed time and time again in favor of a more curated experience that seems to end at the Hall of Fame.

There are plenty of JRPGs with a larger roster of characters or monsters you can recruit and build your own experience fighting with. Just about none of them have any kind of multiplayer whatsoever, let alone anything close to the legacy that pokemon built. It's why a new pokemon game can sell just by saying "here's 60-120 new pokemon, a new region and story which aren't appreciably different, and a couple of tweaks to the battle system we thought might be fun", it builds on every community's personal experience with the series that they already like and gives them more to play with.

400 pokemon is a lot. It's enough to support healthy metagames and future games will have the ability to curate good lists. But when you go from 800 to 400, 63/64 of the random teams you might think of from the full pool will have at least one pokemon missing. You don't get this complexity in a popular series without taking a simple formula and baking it in the oven for a long time. It breaks my heart to see us throw it away and presumably never get it back again. And I don't think this needed to happen eventually or couldn't have been prevented without significant sacrifice, not if they really had their priorities straight as they once did.
 
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Are you guys wondering on how Japan is feeling on Dexit? This is from the tree house where Dexit was first announced, and its from a Japanese Player:

People here in Japan are very angry about this also. I am not speaking for everyone in Japan, but a lot of other Japanese people on the internet seem to be upset about Gamefreak removing Pokemon. It is not just westerners that are concerned. This is a huge deal for two reasons, the first reason is that in Japan we are rarely vocal about our opinions because we don't like to start conflict. If we are very passionate about something and tell people our opinion publicly, it must be very important. Pokemon is a very popular video game series in Japan and a lot of people care about it. We want Gamefreak and Nintendo to put as much effort into these games as they can to make it the best quality game it can be. They could have definitely added all of the Pokemon and had no real reason to cut them. The Switch can definitely handle 1000+ Pokemon models, it is much more powerful than the 3ds and that could handle 800+ Pokemon plus their walking/running animations. They already had every old Pokemon model from Sun and Moon to use and just had to update it graphic wise. Plus they already had the 151 Kanto models finished in Let's Go. They could have put Sword & Shield as a priority and had the best team working on the game but they didn't, instead they side lined Pokemon in favor of a new game and had their secondary team developing Pokemon. They didn't hire enough people to work on the game and treated it like it wasn't important. The second reason this is a problem, is that when they realized they weren't going to have enough time to update every Pokemon model and put it into the game, they chose not to hire more people and do it. Instead they came up with an unconvincing excuse all so that they wouldn't have to spend any extra time, money, or effort into developing the game. They figured they could get away with cutting content because they figured people would buy the game no matter what terrible decisions they make. They think saving money is more important than making a great game. I am not saying everything about these games is bad. I am not blaming the developers, they did the best they could being understaffed and rushed for time. I think Sword and Shield had the potential to be great games with some really good new features. Unfortunately due to bad choices and response to fans, that potential was damaged. But I am disappointed with the direction Gamefreak has been going with the Pokemon games recently and this terrible policy. If you don't care about anything Gamefreak does and want to buy Pokemon games anyway that is fine. I am just saying my concerns and other people's for the future of Pokemon. I also hope people don't threaten to harm Masuda Junichi or any other higher member Gamefreak and the Pokemon company. Corporate greed is one of the biggest issues people have with this whole thing. It is a major problem with a lot of big companies. Gamefreak is planning on cutting a ton of Pokemon that people love from their future games because they don't want to bother hiring more people or spending more time and money to make the games fun for everyone. It's about more than just the fact that they are not including all of the Pokemon. Gamefreak has been prioritising other games over Pokemon for a while now and have not been putting nearly enough effort into recent games. They have been making games with unfinished areas like the train station in X and Y or no post game. They have started handing out legendary and mythical Pokemon as gifts instead of introducing them through in-game events that allow us to catch them in a new area of the game and add to their lore. And sometimes they add extra things in a version two of the game but we shouldn't have to pay for a whole other game just so we can get a finished version. But it seems like for every step forward they take another two steps back. Some people are pretending not to notice these these things and are still looking through rose colored glasses (I hope I used that English phrase right). I understand that people want to see the best in all Pokemon games but in reality the games have some large flaws and arent perfect. The problem with that is that it allows Gamefreak to get way with almost anything, that is partially why there was a drop in quality. People criticize certain parts of a game because they want them to be fixed in the next game. The other reason for some parts of the games being unfinished is that they are very persistent with yearly releases. They don't listen to their fans for the most part and that has to change. Pokemon is an important franchise that deserves a super high quality game with a ton of time and effort like Breath of the Wild or Mario Odyssey. The semi-open world areas of Sword & Shield is a good idea and the Pokemon in the over-world is a great new feature. But at the same time they got rid if very popular and creative things like Mega Evolution in favor of one time gimmicks. And if you like those gimmicks that is fine, but it shows that they are not listening to what the majority of fans want. And now they are giving us an unfinished product that has even less than their 3ds games did. That is not acceptable and that is the biggest problem, Nintendo and Gamefreak as a company think it is okay to put less effort into Pokemon games because we will buy them any way. People want to let them know that we are tired of our favorite games being set to the side . We want them to prioritize Pokemon for once. Sword & Shield deserve to be the best quality Pokemon games they can be.
 

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