For the starters? Not in this universe.
If there's one thing that's never going to change is the status quo of fire/water/grass 3 stagers with Blaze/Torrent/Overgrowth as starters.
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
If there's one thing that's never going to change is the status quo of fire/water/grass 3 stagers with Blaze/Torrent/Overgrowth as starters.
With nearly a year to evaluate its impact I can safely say the worst thing to come out of the SWSH outrage long-term was people becoming convinced Battle Revolution was actually a good game and not the hollow, content-barren imitation of the Stadium titles it was rightfully ridiculed as for over a decade prior
That and GF now knows that, despite all the outrage and complaining, Pokemon titles will sell no matter how much lack of effort they put in thus suffering no consequences for cutting corners & content thus encouraging them to continue business as usual. If the squeaky wheel ain't broke and your deaf to the noise don't fix it, the issues are other people's problems.
Actually they should start to cut even more corners and contents to save even more money, thusly gets even more money in long term.
That would be no surprise that GF would lie in the fans' face saying that they would care about the actual quality of the games while they blatantly ends up doing the direct opposite when Gen 9 comes in.
This is not how business works. Gamefreak/TPC clearly know what quality their product needs to be to sell a large amount and come out in time. In particular, they know which specific aspects of the game are the most profitable and/or create opportunities for other parts of the Pokemon brand. The increased focus on NPCs in recent games is evidence of the latter.
Regardless, to insist that they can create progressively shittier products ad infinitum and somehow manage to turn a profit is just bitter venting.
I just hope they get better at PR. Like a simple "We have post-release updates planned for SwSh so stay tuned." would have been way better than what we got at E3.
at least for the cynical this wouldn't have helped
we all know the potential for game devs to just *not update* even with their roadmaps
it probably would've helped but i think the increased distrust on the internet is better in the long run
(however, i believe nintendo actually has a pretty good dlc track record, with kirby star allies and mario oddesey both having great free dlcs)
Yeah, I feel like a lot of the initial backlash from SwSh really could have been addressed with a announcement that there is more pokemon being added to the game / we are reducing the amount of Pokemon for competitive (vgc) balance, more will be added over time. Most of the dexit issues could have probably been avoided with a clearer announcement that more pokemon would be added to SwSh, just that the base game would natively support only 400 pokemon total because that is what is in the Galar region. I see the angle (from a vgc perspective,) where the native Galar dex would be the only pokemon allowed in the 2020 VGC championships, similar to 2011, 2014, and 2017 where it was only the native Pokemon to the region, and later on adding all the other pokemon to a future format.
Honestly, it is not the best reason to not even include some pokemon, but it would have been a clear PR reason to restrict what pokemon are in the Galar pokedex than the weird messaging that (at least Americans received) at / around of E3. TPC / GameFreak / Nintendo has never been the best at PR, and the whole dexit situation could have been avoided with some clearer messaging.
It also really does not help at all that Pokemon Home allows for transfer of all pokemon, but not to a game on the Nintendo Switch that can use all of them in game. Like come on, realllllllly, if you were not going to just expand Pokemon Bank to the Switch, why bother with another pokemon storage service! Why not bring Bank over to the Switch! Its insane that there needs to be another transfer / storage service, when the newest games do not even allow for all pokemon transferred, just keep using Bank (and it's established branding) as the storage of choice, instead of using a new service. Its a simple PR / business move to keep a recognizable name for a service, and,,,, the Switch has to have a new service with a new name. A better PR department should recognize the value in the Bank branding and just keep it, not replace it.
I never understood why Battle Revolution was so negatively recieved in the first place. Wasn’t it supposed to be a stadium for DP? I don’t get how it was worse than the other Stadium games.
Not sure if this is an unpopular opinion or not, but I believe that Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky is hands down the best pokemon game and also one of the best video games of all time. While this game is praised by most of those who have played it (IGN doesn't count), I feel that many pokemon fans overlook this game and are turned off by the dungeon-crawling aspects of the mystery dungeon series.
So why do I love this game? For me, a great game has to nail one of the following: good characters, a good story, and gameplay that challenges me and requires me to think of my next move. PMD Sky has all of these in spades. This game is pretty challenging, especially in boss fights and later dungeons that require you to carefully manage items and moves. The Story is one of the best that I have ever experienced, with a climax that has the honor of one of the few times I cried in any form of media. The characters are also fantastic, as they ooze personality and have understandable motives. PMD Sky also has a fantastic soundtrack, with each song doing an incredible job of setting the atmosphere and tone of scenes/ dungeons.
So why do I love this game? For me, a great game has to nail one of the following: good characters, a good story, and gameplay that challenges me and requires me to think of my next move. PMD Sky has all of these in spades. This game is pretty challenging, especially in boss fights and later dungeons that require you to carefully manage items and moves. The Story is one of the best that I have ever experienced, with a climax that has the honor of one of the few times I cried in any form of media. The characters are also fantastic, as they ooze personality and have understandable motives. PMD Sky also has a fantastic soundtrack, with each song doing an incredible job of setting the atmosphere and tone of scenes/ dungeons.
It mainly came down to two things:
1. Lacking critical single-player formats the Stadium games had, namely the minigames and Gym Leader Castle. The former were charming side attractions with lots of character and entertainment value in their own right and the latter was the definitive single player gauntlet mode which even let you fight the E4, Champ and Team Rocket across 1 and 2.
2. The true dealbreaker for many, the abhorrent rental Pokemon selection. A big part of the appeal of the original Stadium titles was their vast variety of rentals for all of the in-game formats encompassing most of the existing Pokemon sans legendaries letting you hop right in even if you didn't have a copy of RBY/GSC. All Battle Revolution had were preset teams which never advanced beyond the level of NFE mons or weak fully evolved mons like Mightyena meaning that past a certain point progression became effectively impossible without a copy of Diamond or Pearl to transfer Pokemon from.
People talk up its presentation so much because that literally was and still is its only appeal and even then if you ask me I think even that aspect is vastly overrated (nobody seems to talk about Pokemon like Pidgeot and Electabuzz still using their N64-era models just with new textures making them look insanely janky and off-model compared to the new guys). Add this all up and it's no wonder it sold an absolute pittance compared to the Stadium games, 1.95 million compared to 5.6 million and 2.5 million for Stadium 1 and 2 respectively. Keep in mind both those titles, especially the latter, came out pretty late into the N64's lifespan while Battle Revolution was around through the genesis and heyday of the Wii, a massively successful console in its own right. Oh yeah in case you're wondering Colosseum also outsold it despite the GameCube not doing so hot in its own time and while it did outsell XD that came out late into the purple lunchbox's life (2005, literally the last year before the Wii's launch) and it isn't by a huge margin either way.
I agree wholeheartedly with Yung Dramps, and there was far less singleplayer wise to justify the purchase of PBR. PBR was closer to Stadium in terms of what you got out of the disk, but that was why it was negatively received, Colosseum / XD featured a story mode to go along with the 3D modeled battles, while PBR had no story mode. For all of Colosseum (and XD's) story doubts, it was a clear step up from Stadium JP/1/2, which is why PBR is such seen as worse. It was not the N64 era anymore, and PBR was still essentially living in the N64 era all the way into 2006/07, not even including its own standalone story.
PBR still used N64 models and did not even offer more gameplay wise than you got from Stadium, the overall game was very barebones even in comparison to Stadium. There was a larger standalone experience you could get from the Orre games, and the Stadium games offered minigames / gym leader castle. Why pay $50~60 (American dollars) MSRP for a game that had far less content that the Colosseum series.
To make things worse, the subdivided Gen 1 models were done with varying levels of quality, and detailed textures were reduced to flat colors. Faint anims are weirdly sped up, most walking anims were horrid, and noticeably Gen 4 mons had worse anims
GS was rushed, and lying with the teaser makes it worse
GS was rushed, and lying with the teaser makes it worse
Of course there are many, MANY issues with PBR, most of all the price tag (and we talk about SWSH being an unfinished game! 
). However, I think the reason it's starting to get nostalgia-baited is because back then the series was in full 2D on a handheld, and the 3D games on home consoles kinda represented what many felt would be the "future" of Pokemon. Things like the announcer (seriously, there are so many lines I can hear in my head SO CLEARLY, dude was an icon. "It couldn't take it. It's down!" "It started to hail in the Colosseum!") or the super extra death animations would probably end up being annoying in a main game, but PBR really only had to try to be cinematic, and we were left to imagine how cool the main games were going to look like in the future. In comparison, the transition from USUM to SWSH was far less dramatic, with the only thing that really makes the latter different from an upscaled 3DS game being the wild area. The battle engine itself has looked the same with marginal upgrades to particle effects and pre-existing 3D models for the last 3 gens. Without equivalents to PBR's on-hit and walk-up animations, the battles still look very static, which I do believe is a conscious design choice, but will always be seen as a downgrade for those who think the ideal representation of pokemon battles is found in the anime.
So while I do get the hypocrisy point (seriously, imagine the current fanbase's response to a 60 bucks battle sim lmao), I also understand the PBR nostalgia. That shit blew my 12 yo mind in the same way that I hope the new Snap game will — after all, I think the harshest critics are those who compare the current games with those they had made up in their heads fifteen years ago!
). However, I think the reason it's starting to get nostalgia-baited is because back then the series was in full 2D on a handheld, and the 3D games on home consoles kinda represented what many felt would be the "future" of Pokemon. Things like the announcer (seriously, there are so many lines I can hear in my head SO CLEARLY, dude was an icon. "It couldn't take it. It's down!" "It started to hail in the Colosseum!") or the super extra death animations would probably end up being annoying in a main game, but PBR really only had to try to be cinematic, and we were left to imagine how cool the main games were going to look like in the future. In comparison, the transition from USUM to SWSH was far less dramatic, with the only thing that really makes the latter different from an upscaled 3DS game being the wild area. The battle engine itself has looked the same with marginal upgrades to particle effects and pre-existing 3D models for the last 3 gens. Without equivalents to PBR's on-hit and walk-up animations, the battles still look very static, which I do believe is a conscious design choice, but will always be seen as a downgrade for those who think the ideal representation of pokemon battles is found in the anime.So while I do get the hypocrisy point (seriously, imagine the current fanbase's response to a 60 bucks battle sim lmao), I also understand the PBR nostalgia. That shit blew my 12 yo mind in the same way that I hope the new Snap game will — after all, I think the harshest critics are those who compare the current games with those they had made up in their heads fifteen years ago!
It also had some awesome music (entire soundtrack)(extended versions of battling music) and had the narrator from the anime commentating on the battle (something you'd think would be in SwSh considering it's based on big sport events... also being a main console game you'd expect ANY voice acting).
It had online random battles and 3d for all the Pokemon as well as surprisingly decent graphics (better than SWSH imo). I agree it was literally just a battling simulator but it did offer things that Diamond / Pearl did not. Okay I'm full of shit and just talking through nostalgia goggles. It was a 6/10 game.
It DID have 10/10 music though.
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Perfect example of this is difficulty modes. On one of the " fan edits" of gen 6 there was a tool included to edit Pokemon rosters so they player could change first gym leaders team to 4 pokemon from 6 if they wanted. I ended up playing around with it and you could change every single trainer pokemon in a matter of a few hours while still keeping balance and a cohesive theme in mind (and this was with a third party tool). Game freak could literally have:
A hard mode (analogous to gen 5 hard key)
A game+ ( for players know what they are doing: competitive sets and like EV totals that rise as the number of gyms goes up, earlier shop access to helpful items etc)
A national dex+ (same as game + but now all pokemon can be available in trainer rosters, but not caught, which gives way for room for opponent team diversity and flavor).
All of that would take like 3 people a day to do. I just don't believe GF doesn't know that they have fans who thoroughly understand all the game mechanics who want a harder challenge. Its not that they wish they could implement these things but cant focus on it, it's that they literally don't believe it is necessary or worthwhile despite the practical non sacrifice it would take to do it.
There is of course the issue of someone starting a game on a mode that ends up too hard or too easy for their liking and having to delete their beloved Pokemon to start again, but that can easily be solved by being allowed to change the difficulty setting at any point and not just on file creation.
Or make it so you can change the difficulty at any time like almost every other modern game.
That's exactly what I just said.
Wow apparently I can not read. My mistake!
A discussion on cut features in another thread made me think of this:
The removal of triple and rotation battles is completely justified and understandable. It's simple with 0 need to beat around the bush; despite having 2 generations or the effective equivalent of 6 years to prove themselves nobody played them. While I lack statistics just anecdotally I know that time and time again these formats failed to accrue the relevance and playerbase of Singles and Doubles even with the aforementioned pair of 3-year-long chances. This goes for both the official formats and Smogon: the last Triples VR thread I could find couldn't even get to page 2 of discussion, compare this to the nearly 30-page Gen 6 Doubles VR. Searching for Smogon Rotation Battles threads brings up an old article and absolutely 0 proper resources of any kind.
Look, I'm not saying these formats didn't have their merits or interesting unique quirks, but if your new game format is getting usurped in popularity by the average Smogon OM then maybe it's not worth investing the resources for such little, if any gain.
And before anyone says anything, no, trying to boost their numbers by featuring them in major tournaments wouldn't have worked. It's been proven time and time again that trying to inflate an Esport's popularity with massive official prize pools and the like is a waste of time, organic growth needs to happen for said ESport to get anywhere (see Artifact and Heroes of the Storm for examples of how this approach is unhelpful at best and damaging at worst).
The removal of triple and rotation battles is completely justified and understandable. It's simple with 0 need to beat around the bush; despite having 2 generations or the effective equivalent of 6 years to prove themselves nobody played them. While I lack statistics just anecdotally I know that time and time again these formats failed to accrue the relevance and playerbase of Singles and Doubles even with the aforementioned pair of 3-year-long chances. This goes for both the official formats and Smogon: the last Triples VR thread I could find couldn't even get to page 2 of discussion, compare this to the nearly 30-page Gen 6 Doubles VR. Searching for Smogon Rotation Battles threads brings up an old article and absolutely 0 proper resources of any kind.
Look, I'm not saying these formats didn't have their merits or interesting unique quirks, but if your new game format is getting usurped in popularity by the average Smogon OM then maybe it's not worth investing the resources for such little, if any gain.
And before anyone says anything, no, trying to boost their numbers by featuring them in major tournaments wouldn't have worked. It's been proven time and time again that trying to inflate an Esport's popularity with massive official prize pools and the like is a waste of time, organic growth needs to happen for said ESport to get anywhere (see Artifact and Heroes of the Storm for examples of how this approach is unhelpful at best and damaging at worst).
I mean on one hand since literally every casual fan I ever heard even mention Double Battles complains about how they're gimmicky and they'd prefer they wheren't in the games; I'm pretty sure that the only reason Double Battles get as much attention as they do is because they're the official format of the VGCs
on the other hand the only people that even care about the VGCs are a fraction of the hardcore fanbase and, despise beign pushed hard by the Pokemon Company, when people speak of "competitive pokemon" they speak of the little fanbase rules made here on Smogon first and foremost
and the VGCs remain incredible obscure relative to the size of the franchise
So, you're right on both accounts just for all the wrong reasons
They probably think it's gimmicky because in the story mode, double battles only appear at most five times. Your team is never prepared for them because why would you be prepared for double battles when 95% of the game is single battles?
I truly believe that the mainline games should adopt the Colosseum/XD model of having every trainer battle be a double battle, even if there's no special reason for it to be a double battle. We complain about players ignoring the utility of status moves, but when like half of them are only useful in double battles, it's no wonder they get overlooked.
Our Battle Maison Leaderboards probably have in aggregate half the Triples/Rotations games ever played, lol