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Sword & Shield **Official news only** DLC Crown Tundra 22nd October
- Thread starter DHR-107
- Start date
While it would, in the end they sell games for money, and it's already enough that they bothered to make sure that people without the DLCs can still both get every pokemon that get added as well as partecipate to raids hosted by people that own the DLC.
As much as I understand your point, I see no reason to give out random stuff for free if your intent is to actually sell said DLCs (possibly multiple time per person in case of people who own both games)
I'm sorry, for some reason I thought we were on the 16th. Guess I'm officially hyped.
While today is June 15, it's June 16 in Japan because of the time zone difference. At least that's how it is on the west coast of the United States. By tomorrow morning in my time, it will be June 17 in Japan. Depending on what time of the day in Japan the DLC arrives, many of us will be able to access it tomorrow. This assumes a simultaneous worldwide release of course, which I assume will occur.
It's extremely unlikely that it's not a syncronized release. Since in this case it's the activation of a DLC that should also concur at same time on bank.
As stated earlier in the post, the most realistic guess is just after the Home maintenance ends.
So does this imply it's gonna be released tomorrow or in 2 days?
Yeah, anyways, I kinda hope that the DLC does add something to the initial game outside of pokemon so when they do drop and you don't have the money to buy the DLC you're not stuck out of the fun, at least not to the full extent.
EDIT: Actually, never mind, the above post probably answered it quite well.
Well, SWSH itself doesn't need any maintenance, after all it is a single player game. What'll likely happen is that the online will go down for a bit (potentially but not necessarly at same time as Home) and once it's "live" we'll get the patch to download.
I have a hard time seeing GF organizing something more complex like MMOs do (who let you predownload the entire expansion and then "turn it on")
Adds Dragon Dance to Garchomp's movepool LMAO
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If this is really their ultimate motivation for doing this then that's pretty lame but I'm not really mad frankly. GF purely made things harder for themselves by not taking this chance to calm people down sooner, ignoring that in favor of some sense of "surprise" is peak cutting off your nose to spite your face
Smash goes down for maintenance every time, and I believe animal crossing did as well.
There is a significant online component, after all, so they'll likely want that taken down for a bit in preparation and they'll need to mention it
You know as an aside it's impressive they made sure Home is updated in tandem with the DLC (some of it already put in ahead of time, even). Bank was always like a month or two behind, for whatever reason.
You know, you're not wrong, but having been invested in multiple japanese videogame franchises at this point, honestly GameFreaks behaviour isn't even the weirdest "self-harming" decision I've seen at this point.
All I know is that they rarely if ever do stuff maliciously (in the way certain other western companies monetize/purposely downgrade their games cough cough), they really take decisions with the convinction they are good.
Ok so timewise. Ingame news (my game is english and usa) says the game will drop on the night of 17th june jst (which is japan time). The dates for the uk, usa and japan all have the 17th listed as their release day for the dlc. Home is updating between the time of 5 am est to 11 am est. In between that time also happens to be when those timezones lineup on the same day. Slowpoke galar when it dropped came around that very time. So it can be assumed that dlc time will fall somewhere around that time and at earliest 5 am est. This is my personal assumption based on current data. However, in any case the release globally the same time and not at 12 am each time or at 00:00 utc as raid den updates have been.
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If I recall it is guessed to release afternoon in Japan, 3PM. What would that be on Pacific time (Edit: around 11PM)? Or do updates typically go live at midnight in Japan?
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I don't think there's really any use to predicting. Most DLC or update packages (Smash, Mario Maker, Fire Emblem, etc.) just drop at arbitrary times, whenever they push the update patch to the game. Sometimes this ends up being early morning, sometimes it's in the evening. There will likely be some server maintenance to prepare Bank, and the game will be updated to the next version.
It's almost certain that the IoA will drop at the same time worldwide (for compatibility reasons), and that it will be sometime during the Home maintenance window. It can't be before the window obviously, and it can't be after the window because the window ends right as it becomes the 18th in Australia (and we already have a 17th release date on the Australia site).
So this corresponds to:
So this corresponds to:
- 9pm - 2am New Zealand
- 7pm - 12am Australia east coast
- 6pm - 11pm Japan
- 11am - 4pm Central Europe
- 10am - 3pm UK
- 5am - 10am US east coast
- 2am - 7am US west coast
Yeah, they really shot themselves in the foot with that.
Now, that DLCs are planned in advance is a given (every serious corporation plans 2-3 years of expected turnover in advance and then it updates with rolling adjustments): it is obvious they were already in their thoughts ahead of SwSh's release. Come to think of it, they even let some plausible time pass before announcing and releasing the DLCs (some games are far, far more blatant, with DLCs dropping 3 months after the main game's release - at that point it is really just withheld content).
The oddball gets only odder considering how bad the base game is in terms of design and content. Not only it is bad (here everybody can disagree subjectively), the problem is that while you play, the game tells you blatantly that it's rushed: overworld complexity plummets after the first two towns, the Wild Area and the space you traverse is extremely linear. I know, I know, they said that the game was streamlined apparently due to a design choice (duh, kids get bored), but one thing is to streamline the game, another is to realize that, bar for 3, maybe 4 places, everywhere you go it's the same: a pokemon center, a stadium, a couple of houses to walk into to get an item (maybe). Slap onto this template either a fairy-esque cover, or a wild-west cover, or a costal cover, and you get all the towns. Now, place uniqueness has never been a strong suit, but in SwSh it is unbelievably slapped in your face.
And, when you delve into the details, it becomes even more apparent: battle tower could not bother with rules (or different rules for different tiers) or boss designs, there is no side activity to speak of... hell, half the available mons have now less than 4 egg moves (even Pokemon with stupidly large movepools like Larvitar), a testament on how they slapped things together without giving it much thought.
Time was at the essence and GF clearly run out of it, early to mid 2019.
They could have kept the fire at bay much better but, as Worldie says, it's not a first for such companies.
Now, come tomorrow, some minor things will probably be updated, movepool expanded, etc... and I am for once generally curious to see how they tackle it, since this is uncharted territory.
Level scaling, for instance, was necessary but it's extremely challenging from a design perspective in a game like this: does the enemy scale according to your team average level or to your highest mon? Will it be capable to scale instantly as you move Mons in and out of the team? Will learnset adapt or remain the same?
Will mons eligible for a Gigantamax upgrade become perennial Gigantamax or can you scale it back to normal Dynamax? Machamp, Drednaw come to mind as possible conundrums.
Now, if they do well, this could bode incredibly well for the future of the franchise, as the above few, apparently minor examples are in reality important game design and development choices.
And, for heaven's sake, release Magearna. You gave Jail a fantastic reward for a very advanced achievement, might as well allow us to use the price, no?
Well, no, there would be a reason; it would make the base game itself look even better to potential future buyers. Plenty of games with paid DLC will do this; they'll provide additional content as a free update to give the air of the base game being 'improved' and hence a better investment even without DLC. Often this is also content that was being worked on pre-release anyway and making it a post-release free update makes it look like "hey, on top of the already-complete game, we're giving you even more stuff at no extra cost!"
I get what you're saying, but it's hardly like this isn't a move used by a lot of developers in the industry.
(Also, preeeetty sure it was easier and simpler to make the code of the 200+ Pokemon and new items available to everyone rather than find some way to lock it off to DLC purchasers)
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I would imagine we'll just get this from showing the guy in Stow-on-Side one of the genies, in the same way we currently get the items for Kyurem and Necrozma. I'd be surprised if Furfrou returns at all, and even more surprised if they keep the haircut mechanic, unless we do eventually get *all* of the old Pokemon -- it's a classic example of a quirky mechanic for a little used Pokemon that creates a lot of graphical work unlikely to be meaningfully appreciated.
If they can fit cap pikachu, they can fit furfrou.
Well there is the detail that Pikachu is actually a fan favourite while noone really cares for Furfrou :D
That said, I don't really see them killing the Furfrou mechanic. I do believe every pokemon will (gradually) come back, and since they kept similar stuff like a trillion Vivillion or Spinda forms for ages, little reason to think they'd cut it.
Plus to be fair, I am assuming those """forms""" are stored in the same variable for each pokemon with multiple forms that isnt ash-chus, and while upgrading/porting the models might take some effort (it doesnt considering they've basically re-used the old ones with minor shading improvements), the animations which are the actually big work are shared between each form, so it's not like it's taking extra work.
That's unfair, you beat me by 1 minute in reporting it :(
13 UTC - 15 GMT+1 if you're too lazy to make conversions
I guess they're going to actually reveal how the "release" will work, + maybe some random extra data.