Sword & Shield **Official news only** DLC Crown Tundra 22nd October

Since they're bringing (most of) the legendaries back, any speculation on what Pokemon they probably won't bring back (for the foreseeable future)? Sorry, Unown fans.
 
If Galarian Articuno does not get a Choice Specs version of Gorilla Tactics, I'll be disappointed. I mean, look at those eyes!

The website mentions that "The Isle of Armor expansion will allow you to help some of the Pokémon traveling with you gain the ability to Gigantamax". Makes sense but I'm still surprised.
Anything to fix the dreadful Gigantamax non-host catch rates... except for actually fixing them.
 
I think one important implication of this is that we're almost certainly not getting yearly releases anymore. With the second expansion coming in autumn, a Christmas Pokemon release in 2020 seems extremely unlikely. A slowed down development cycle generally is a good thing, and I'm imagining these expansions require less development time than the third versions they're explicitly replacing.

Since they're bringing (most of) the legendaries back, any speculation on what Pokemon they probably won't bring back (for the foreseeable future)? Sorry, Unown fans.
Smeargle. It's been more and more of a legacy problem.

I also doubt we'll get Vivillon for a loooong time.
 
As someone who was pro-Dexit I'm dissappointed. I liked the fact that SwSh OU wasn't dominated by Legendaries and Megas anymore, and that you weren't one wrong guess away from a Kartana or Volcarona sweeping your team. I liked that the game wasn't tying itself in knots trying to be forwards compatible with games from 17 years ago by including Plates and the Drives and the Orbs and a Relic Song trainer and a magnetic area and a routine to generate Spinda textures and 20 different Vivillon pattern and terrain data to make Secret Power and Burmy work
 
I think one important implication of this is that we're almost certainly not getting yearly releases anymore. With the second expansion coming in autumn, a Christmas Pokemon release in 2020 seems extremely unlikely. A slowed down development cycle generally is a good thing, and I'm imagining these expansions require less development time than the third versions they're explicitly replacing.
I get the feeling they probably equal out, depending on the size of the areas, what's in them, the effort required for the pokemon process, and other misc things like moves, new clothing, how many new galar forms there are, so it may not really get better at all.
 
Since the PMD discussion has been kinda overshadowed, I wanna bring up something interesting about it: The fact they feature Mega Evolution in Rescue Team DX rather than, say, Dynamax.

This could mean one of two things:

1. This game has been in development for a long time, at least before Dynamax was conceived and decided to be pushed as a centerpiece of Gen 8.

2. TPC and co. are fully aware of how popular they are and want to keep them relevant parts of the franchise going forward.

I'm personally more inclined to Option 2. Don't lose hope, Mega Evolution fans!
Personally, I think it's mostly due to Dmax having a difficult time fitting into the rest of PMD gameplay. Massive size and skinny hallways don't mix well and restricting it to boss fights makes it mostly unusable postgame and could undermine the intimidation bosses have. As well, it could produce problems with linking and leveling moves (a point that also applies to Z-moves). Much easier to use an already-extant framework that could be easily applied to about 60% of the plot-relevant cast.
 

Coronis

Impressively round
is a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
Was surprised to come in here and find some whinging but I suppose I shouldn’t be. Anyway, lets get down to it.

WOOOOOOOO! Garchomp and Volcarona and Lycanroc are back!!!!!

I’m not surprised that Pokemon are being added, I really expected this all along. 100% GF planned this all from the start.

The new Regi’s look very nice and offensively based. Galarian Articuno and Moltres immediately took my heart, those are some legit designs right there. Seeing as there are new legendaries, I’m not surprised that Kubfu evolves and we actually get to partner with it throughout the story, and a DLC adventure is the perfect way to include a Pokemon like that. Kubfu is... kinda cute I guess, but Urshifu just seems underwhelming, even what we saw of its G-Max forms I’m not really a fan as of now. I’m actually quite enjoying Calyrex’s overall design, I wish they’d been able to go away from the wolf theme but I guess they already did that with Eternatus.

Both new areas being pretty much all Wild Area is a great choice, actually having story aspects in a more open environment should be interesting if thats how it ends up going. With version exclusive rivals in Isle of Armor I won’t be surprised at all if some of the extra Pokemon added are version exclusive, e.g Beldum/Gible seem like perfect candidates for this.

Hopefully there will be at least a third DLC at some point in 2021, it seems as though it fits the timescale so far. Also I’m so excited that Isle of Armor will be releasing right around my birthday, couldn’t have asked for a better present.

Hopefully GF won’t troll us and I can finally have my DD Garchomp.
 

Yung Dramps

awesome gaming
As someone who was pro-Dexit I'm dissappointed. I liked the fact that SwSh OU wasn't dominated by Legendaries and Megas anymore, and that you weren't one wrong guess away from a Kartana or Volcarona sweeping your team. I liked that the game wasn't tying itself in knots trying to be forwards compatible with games from 17 years ago by including Plates and the Drives and the Orbs and a Relic Song trainer and a magnetic area and a routine to generate Spinda textures and 20 different Vivillon pattern and terrain data to make Secret Power and Burmy work
It's admittedly a little bit disappointing from that perspective, but it's not like that idea has been totally overturned. Even with around 200 additions we're still only at around 600, 700 Pokemon at most, which is roughly the size of Generations 5 and 6, which isn't too terrible. Besides, seeing as these extras are coming via post-launch updates rather than in the base game, it makes the ever-growing roster more flexible and easier to manage on GF's end.
 
Are we *sure* the raid exploit hasn't been patched? I'm changing the date on my console and the raid is just staying the same. Not reloading the Watts, and I'm rolling the same Ditto every time. And yes, this is a den generated by a Wishing Piece.
 
As someone who was pro-Dexit I'm dissappointed. I liked the fact that SwSh OU wasn't dominated by Legendaries and Megas anymore, and that you weren't one wrong guess away from a Kartana or Volcarona sweeping your team. I liked that the game wasn't tying itself in knots trying to be forwards compatible with games from 17 years ago by including Plates and the Drives and the Orbs and a Relic Song trainer and a magnetic area and a routine to generate Spinda textures and 20 different Vivillon pattern and terrain data to make Secret Power and Burmy work
A lot of these are so minor though. Like, yeah its a bunch of bloat but they're so minor and they have to drag them out every time they bring the pokemon back anyway (see: silvally's 17 memories cluttering my bag for no reason, rotom's machines which are at least now a key item). Or they introduce MORE bloat like with the 2 pots & apples and milcery's 10 items & now slowpoke-g's two new items
And then other things like terrain data is probably just establishing & setting some flags. Though at this point they've just thrown up their hands and made them stone evolutions, my least favorite bloat (look forward to magnezone now also being a thunderstone evolution).

In the grand scheme of things they're kind of meaningless in terms of effort, especially since the bulk of the work was done on their introduction. It's just setting them up again somewhere in the world. Like Necrozma & Kyurem have to have their items in the game so whatever, they just threw them into the rare item vendor when you have them.


What i'm saying is i wish gamefreak actually cared about this bloat because it's kind of annoying. More rotom catalogs, please
 

Yung Dramps

awesome gaming
You all know what time it is. Yes ladies and gentlemen, the day has come and isn't even for a new game: YET ANOTHER DEX UPDATE!!!! Remember: This is just for Pokemon shown in the trailer, I'm not counting other potential additions like speculated legendaries and counterparts. The last count before this update was at 433, factoring in the regional dex and the known extra Pokemon datamined at the time. And while this should be obvious considering how Regigigas was classified, I will nonetheless clarify that the new Regis are being counted as Galar originals.

Raw Numbers
Kanto - 77 (66 original, 11 regional variants) (+16)
Johto - 42 (26 original, 8 cross-gen evolutions, 4 cross-gen pre-evolutions, 2 regional variants) (+7)
Hoenn - 49 (45 original, 2 regional variants, 2 cross-gen pre-evolutions) (+7)
Sinnoh - 44 (26 original, 12 cross-gen evolutions, 6 cross-gen pre-evolutions) (+6)
Unova - 97 (93 original, 4 regional variants) (+5)
Kalos - 35 (31 original, 1 cross-gen evolution) (+3)
Alola - 54 (all original) (+2)
Galar - 86 (81 original, 5 cross-gen evolutions) (+5)
Total - 484 (+51)

% Representation By Region (Rounded Down)

Kanto - 50% of Kanto mons
Johto - 42% of Johto mons
Hoenn - 36% of Hoenn mons
Sinnoh - 41% of Sinnoh mons
Unova - 62% of Unova mons
Kalos - 48% of Kalos mons
Alola - 62% of Alola mons

The total Pokemon in SWSH thus far is now just 8 less than every Pokemon that existed in Gen 4, and as we know there's a LOT more to come, so that landmark is set to be surpassed. Kanto has built a bit more of a gap over other generations in terms of % representation while Unova and Alola keep up their neck-and-neck decisive lead.
 

chimp

Go Bananas
is an official Team Rateris a Contributor to Smogonis a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnus
Correct me if I'm mistaken but the math here isnt adding up to me.
So let's say SW/SH had a development time of about a year. In that time they were able to only make 1 Wild Area and 400 Pokemon total. Now this DLC is coming out and that means either 1 of 2 things:

1) The DLC packs had a development time of roughly a year, yet somewhere they were able to squeeze 2 Wild Areas that are both bigger than the base game's area PLUS 200 more updated mons + some new designs. Thus proving that SW/SH was entirely underdeveloped for what is was.

2) The DLC packs were developed concurrently with SW/SH, which means they purposefully withheld content to sell later as DLC, effectively making SW/SH at $90 game despite barely having the content to justify it, or that they are the very least took resources away from the main base game in order to prepare DLC for later.

Does that make sense? If anything this DLC really gives us insight into how TPC is handling this series, and probably will be for the foreseeable future.
 
Correct me if I'm mistaken but the math here isnt adding up to me.
So let's say SW/SH had a development time of about a year. In that time they were able to only make 1 Wild Area and 400 Pokemon total. Now this DLC is coming out and that means either 1 of 2 things:

1) The DLC packs had a development time of roughly a year, yet somewhere they were able to squeeze 2 Wild Areas that are both bigger than the base game's area PLUS 200 more updated mons + some new designs. Thus proving that SW/SH was entirely underdeveloped for what is was.

2) The DLC packs were developed concurrently with SW/SH, which means they purposefully withheld content to sell later as DLC, effectively making SW/SH at $90 game despite barely having the content to justify it, or that they are the very least took resources away from the main base game in order to prepare DLC for later.

Does that make sense? If anything this DLC really gives us insight into how TPC is handling this series, and probably will be for the foreseeable future.
Games aren't developed like you're making them out to be. Most of the time spent is building the architecture/engine to make the games. The systems are now in place which probably took the most time during development, now they can use their already built tools to makes new areas, which would probably just mean new texture work or reusing already existing assets. Additionally, from what we've seen, the pokemon models have had slight updates, not entire reworks. Also, workflow only gets faster the longer you do something, so if you spent 2 years already working on 3d models or scenery, by year 3 you're just better and more efficient at doing them, ignoring how quickly the management pipeline has probably gotten at this point. Lastly, it seems that town diverted resources in gamefreak, meaning they might have a larger staff to spare for the DLC.
 
Correct me if I'm mistaken but the math here isnt adding up to me.
So let's say SW/SH had a development time of about a year. In that time they were able to only make 1 Wild Area and 400 Pokemon total. Now this DLC is coming out and that means either 1 of 2 things:

1) The DLC packs had a development time of roughly a year, yet somewhere they were able to squeeze 2 Wild Areas that are both bigger than the base game's area PLUS 200 more updated mons + some new designs. Thus proving that SW/SH was entirely underdeveloped for what is was.

2) The DLC packs were developed concurrently with SW/SH, which means they purposefully withheld content to sell later as DLC, effectively making SW/SH at $90 game despite barely having the content to justify it, or that they are the very least took resources away from the main base game in order to prepare DLC for later.

Does that make sense? If anything this DLC really gives us insight into how TPC is handling this series, and probably will be for the foreseeable future.
You are making some weird assumptions
SWSH wasn't developed in a year, for one. New generations always start production once the previous generation ends, with the sub games typically being handeled by the "b team" i nthe mean time. USUM & Let's Go were developed in tandem with SWSH, for example.
And there's a lot more to SWSH than the Wild area and its 400 pokemon.

you can't really equate the two at all here

That said the DLC probably had some time in the oven towards the end of development of SWSH, regardless. There's going to be people wrapping up the former that aren't having anything to do at various points, just as an example, and if we believe development troubles the idea of DLC probably came up as a solution. It seems like this is being lead by the B Team considering its neither Ohmori or Masuda, but Tahni, so this probably had at least a slightly similar pipeline as a typical third version, adjusted for being DLC.
 

chimp

Go Bananas
is an official Team Rateris a Contributor to Smogonis a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnus
You are making some weird assumptions
SWSH wasn't developed in a year, for one. New generations always start production once the previous generation ends, with the sub games typically being handeled by the "b team" i nthe mean time. USUM & Let's Go were developed in tandem with SWSH, for example.
And there's a lot more to SWSH than the Wild area and its 400 pokemon.

you can't really equate the two at all here

That said the DLC probably had some time in the oven towards the end of development of SWSH, regardless. There's going to be people wrapping up the former that aren't having anything to do at various points, just as an example, and if we believe development troubles the idea of DLC probably came up as a solution. It seems like this is being lead by the B Team considering its neither Ohmori or Masuda, but Tahni, so this probably had at least a slightly similar pipeline as a typical third version, adjusted for being DLC.
I said atleast a year because if they spent longer than a year then it just feeds into my original point that the base game didn't have the content to warrant it's price tag.
I understand game development and the ends they need to make in order to make the original game work, but to me it just feels as if GF is diverting resources away from the base game in order to work on DLC to be sold later. But either way I won't try and rant too much about the development of the game because who knows what is happening behind the scenes, so I apologize about my cynical tone.

What I WILL bitch about though is that my main gripe with SW/SH felt like they were forcing in the 'pokemon' standards because "it's a Pokemon game and we gotta have the things every Pokemon game has." Gym leaders, a professor, a rival who gives you a pokedex, a villainous team, etc. Even when the pieces themselves hardly seem to fit and so many different, more interesting, avenues could've been explored. And now, not 2 months after paying $60 for the main content, they introduce a DLC that actually takes strides towards expanding the game's worlds and introducing new content. It seems Game Freak is learning from their mistakes, but I am so tired of Game Freak HAVING to learn from their mistakes. It seems like it's every gen on loop we have to just wait until "Game Freak figures it out" and we have to pay for more content. And I'm unsure that this will push SW/SH to being worth it's $90 pricetag.
 
You all know what time it is. Yes ladies and gentlemen, the day has come and isn't even for a new game: YET ANOTHER DEX UPDATE!!!! Remember: This is just for Pokemon shown in the trailer, I'm not counting other potential additions like speculated legendaries and counterparts. The last count before this update was at 433, factoring in the regional dex and the known extra Pokemon datamined at the time. And while this should be obvious considering how Regigigas was classified, I will nonetheless clarify that the new Regis are being counted as Galar originals.

Raw Numbers
Kanto - 77 (66 original, 11 regional variants) (+16)
Johto - 42 (26 original, 8 cross-gen evolutions, 4 cross-gen pre-evolutions, 2 regional variants) (+7)
Hoenn - 49 (45 original, 2 regional variants, 2 cross-gen pre-evolutions) (+7)
Sinnoh - 44 (26 original, 12 cross-gen evolutions, 6 cross-gen pre-evolutions) (+6)
Unova - 97 (93 original, 4 regional variants) (+5)
Kalos - 35 (31 original, 1 cross-gen evolution) (+3)
Alola - 54 (all original) (+2)
Galar - 86 (81 original, 5 cross-gen evolutions) (+5)
Total - 484 (+51)

% Representation By Region (Rounded Down)

Kanto - 50% of Kanto mons
Johto - 42% of Johto mons
Hoenn - 36% of Hoenn mons
Sinnoh - 41% of Sinnoh mons
Unova - 62% of Unova mons
Kalos - 48% of Kalos mons
Alola - 62% of Alola mons

The total Pokemon in SWSH thus far is now just 8 less than every Pokemon that existed in Gen 4, and as we know there's a LOT more to come, so that landmark is set to be surpassed. Kanto has built a bit more of a gap over other generations in terms of % representation while Unova and Alola keep up their neck-and-neck decisive lead.
Do you have a list of all the new Pokemon for the expansions as well as each type? Looks like most are not known, and others like Marshadow are still unconfirmed but were hinted at in unofficial datamines.
 
Because I've seen no-one point it out yet; at the very least the UK eShop gives a specific month for The Crown Tundra -- it's scheduled to be released by November 30th. It could be released before then (like how Smash DLC seems to crush deadlines), but I find it interesting nonetheless that it's projected to be coming out on the same month that a full game usually does.


Very excited for this DLC, but possibly moreso for the free updates! Volcarona's back; Marill's back; Magnemite's back; Crobat's back... just a lot of my favourite I was sad to let go. Frosmoth finally gets its elemental moth friend! Shame about Landorus, but the whole thing's still exciting. Has created more work for me as a collector and breeder, though!

Has today's update been completely datamined? It took a while to download, so I was curious if anything else had been added other than what they told us on the direct. For instance, did they sneakily add in any other transfer-only Pokémon, or perhaps preparation data for the DLC?
 

Yung Dramps

awesome gaming
One more thing about chimp's comment not covered by the others that have responded to it: There's, uh, still quite a ways to go before these expansions launch. It's gonna be another 6 months before we get Isle of Armor, and if the release date Kurona mentioned is anything to by it's gonna be 11 before The Crown Tundra releases. That's a perfectly reasonable timeframe for the bulk of the necessary coding and modeling to be done, and there is surely more work to do: We don't even have in-game screenshots of stuff like the new Regis and Gigantamax Venusaur and Blastoise, and the brief gameplay snippets of the new areas seem to lack overworld Pokemon.
 
One more thing about chimp's comment not covered by the others that have responded to it: There's, uh, still quite a ways to go before these expansions launch. It's gonna be another 6 months before we get Isle of Armor, and if the release date Kurona mentioned is anything to by it's gonna be 11 before The Crown Tundra releases. That's a perfectly reasonable timeframe for the bulk of the necessary coding and modeling to be done, and there is surely more work to do: We don't even have in-game screenshots of stuff like the new Regis and Gigantamax Venusaur and Blastoise, and the brief gameplay snippets of the new areas seem to lack overworld Pokemon.
That is disappointing. Any new Pokemon that will come before the expansion passes? I assume the 35 leaked in the datamine a few months back will come soon. Any specific release date for Home? I'm going to assume the other 200 will be spaced out between the two expansions and won't come with the release of Home, but maybe there is some hope.

Personally I am not liking the expansion packs in place of a new game. I don't mind them, but I would rather have normal game releases annually. In times where there may be a big delay such as switching to a new console as seen with Ultra Sun to Sword-Shield, I think expansions would be ideal so we can skip over side games like Let's Go.
 
Because I've seen no-one point it out yet; at the very least the UK eShop gives a specific month for The Crown Tundra -- it's scheduled to be released by November 30th. It could be released before then (like how Smash DLC seems to crush deadlines), but I find it interesting nonetheless that it's projected to be coming out on the same month that a full game usually does.
I think that is just the deadline for it to still be "Autumn" so far as Nintendo is concerned. Like, by the end of <relevant timeframe> this dlc will be out. If Home was DLC and didn't have a hard date they'd probably list it as "out by March 31". Three Houses did similar where relevant (& released earlier than expected which was nice)


Has today's update been completely datamined? It took a while to download, so I was curious if anything else had been added other than what they told us on the direct. For instance, did they sneakily add in any other transfer-only Pokémon, or perhaps preparation data for the DLC?
If sciresM's twitter is anything to go by they only added slowpoke-g's data and vanilla slowpoke's data (sans sprite, unsure of model). In terms of pokemon, at least, obviously the rivals models are there. Maybe we'll see something interesting in their animation files.
 

chimp

Go Bananas
is an official Team Rateris a Contributor to Smogonis a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnus
One more thing about chimp's comment not covered by the others that have responded to it: There's, uh, still quite a ways to go before these expansions launch. It's gonna be another 6 months before we get Isle of Armor, and if the release date Kurona mentioned is anything to by it's gonna be 11 before The Crown Tundra releases. That's a perfectly reasonable timeframe for the bulk of the necessary coding and modeling to be done, and there is surely more work to do: We don't even have in-game screenshots of stuff like the new Regis and Gigantamax Venusaur and Blastoise, and the brief gameplay snippets of the new areas seem to lack overworld Pokemon.
I would be worried if, by this point in development, they aren't so far along that they don't even have working models of the Pokemon they're announcing yet. 11 months is a good amount of dev time, but that also includes bug testing, balancing, shipping and finalizing the game. For them to be this far along after less than 2 months since the main release certainly implies they've been working on it since before then.
 
If sciresM's twitter is anything to go by they only added slowpoke-g's data and vanilla slowpoke's data (sans sprite, unsure of model). In terms of pokemon, at least, obviously the rivals models are there. Maybe we'll see something interesting in their animation files.
Wait, is the data for Slowbro and Slowking not there? Not necessarily the new Galarian forms; but the vanilla ones at least?
 
I would be worried if, by this point in development, they aren't so far along that they don't even have working models of the Pokemon they're announcing yet. 11 months is a good amount of dev time, but that also includes bug testing, balancing, shipping and finalizing the game. For them to be this far along after less than 2 months since the main release certainly implies they've been working on it since before then.
It's likely that they started working on this when they simply realized they couldn't bring this in november.
 

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