To be fair, there was one big issue with facilities, which is that they were required to do to obtain important PvP items, and "normal" people really really really hated them. Facilities in general are enjoyed by a minor part of the playerbase, which is probably why it was decided for a more facerollable one as main one, and have actually challenging ones as DLC.
While I myself do not agree with this and would have much rather had just difficulty modes in Tower instead (kinda like the old ones had "normal" and "super" modes), I definitely can see the reasoning for this design.
In fact I have yet to hear a VGC player that didn't hate the fact you had to go through "RNG facility that cheats by reading your inputs and countering your team"(tm) and actually enjoyed playing them. And most of them just faceplanted in singles with hyperoffense teams until they had enough BPs, then never touched them again.
Like, honestly, before DLC happened and actually brought sparring and dynamax adventures, we weren't expecting anything at all, we thought that the Tower would be it, since the chunk of playerbase that actually enjoys the facilities is extremely small, to the point they are basically a waste of design time.
Good points. I would also have liked to see two modes for the Gen 8 Tower: one hard/classic, and one easy/casual. That way, everyone would have been able to enjoy it. If anything, I am unhappy about how they removed the hard mode in Gen 8 and made the easy mode the only one by default, thus forcing you to do a self-imposed challenge in order to experience the hard mode. In comparison, I think US/UM did everything right as they made the normal lines super easy (even easier than in the Tower in S/S because entering with Pokémon above level 50 won’t get their levels lowered), while also keeping the super lines the same as in S/M. That way, they had an easy way to grind up BP for those who only wanted the battle items, while also keeping the regular challenge for those of us who are interested in that.
And I never expected them to add new facilities with the DLC either, but I was wrong and I’m happy about that. The unfortunate thing is that for me personally, it is just too little, too late. I have no desire to try either of them at the moment because I am burnt out on Pokémon. But maybe I'll get back to Sword and try them in the future. The game and the challenges aren’t going anywhere, and completing battle facilities many years after they are the most recent ones is something I have done many times in the past too.
I also think it would be fine if they sort of kept the ranking system from the Agency and the S/S Tower in some way. But at the same time, they shouldn’t be too kind to you when you lose, I think the heavy punishment for a loss is a big part of the challenge (and it is one reason as for why I like battling in facilities so much). If anything, I think they should sort of have a save point after you beat the boss so you can continue for endless battling after beating the boss, but when you lose, you can continue directly from after the boss instead of starting from battle #1 again.
Basically this:
Another alternative would be using the ranking system from the Galar Tower, BUUUUT after you beat the Frontier Brain for good, he unlocks an endless mode for you, where players can attempt perfect streaks and share their highest records.
Yes, though to be fair, a "in between" would work better.
For example, for Tree, we all knew that the "hard part" started battle 50 onwards, yet getting there was often a chore due to the stupidity of early sets (which were mostly bad pure RNG sets like confusion spam or fully inaccurate moves, or boring wastes of time like fly/protect combos).
A system where you climb ranks so you'd always start from the max one, but can *also* keep track of how many wins in a row you've done, would be ideal.
Both of your ideas here are very similar to mine.
Yeah, this was a minor peeve of mine when it came to Battle Facilities. You'd have to manually remember your record instead of they recording it for you. You think for a mode that emphasizes keeping a winning streak, they would have a score tracker, but no, nothing. What an odd design choice.
Not sure what you are referring to here. In the Facilities from Gen 3-7 (unsure about the Crystal Tower), the games kept track of your current streak, there was no need to do that manually unless you used multiple teams for the same format or something.
To add on to this, The teams are always the same every time you go through it. This could be changed in the Japanese version(and the Trainer hill in Emerald that was just a copy/paste of it), via using e-cards. But outside of Japan FireRed and LeafGreen, (and Colosseum and Emerald) removed all e-reader compatibility from the coding of the games, and as a result also never released the sets of cards meant for those games(or even the second wave of Ruby and Sapphire cards, because the e-reader was pretty much a flop everywhere BUT Japan).
Yeah, this too. It makes things extremely predictable if you go through the Trainer Tower multiple times. I wonder how the E-reader would have changed things.
To say something positive about the Trainer Tower, I did like how some of the Pokémon used by the opponents were shiny. That was pretty cool, it is one of the very few times in the games where opponents would use shinies 100% of the time.
And here are some thoughts on some other topics since yesterday:
Anniversary games (and the anniversary in general)
I’m not the biggest fan of Pokémon remakes (they are my least favorite type of Pokémon games), and I have mixed views of the potential D/P remakes as I think there are many potential problems with them (Codraroll listed several notable ones) as well as more than one notable Catch-22 regarding them (though I won’t go into that now). The hype for D/P remakes also seems to have died down recently, I have seen more and more fans being negative rather than positive towards the idea of them. However, I wouldn’t go as far as to say they are an awful choice for an anniversary game. If anything, I’d much rather take D/P remakes over another Kanto game. Of course, having a mostly equal focus on all generations for the anniversary would without any doubt be the best. But if they are going to focus on any single generation during the anniversary, I’d say they should focus on the the most recent one which is Gen 8 (unless Gen 9 gets released this year). Other than that, any older generation that’s not Gen 1 would be very welcome in my eyes.
I don’t care if GF or the fandom thinks Gen 1 is more important or “special” than the others, or if it should get more spotlight just because it is the first generation, the most well-known, the most iconic or whatever. None of this changes the fact that I am personally very tired of Gen 1 right now (and I have honestly been for many years). I don’t want to see it get even more focus just because of the anniversary. Gen 1 has gotten so much focus lately (see the list that Samtendo09 posted) to the point that it shouldn't get any more. Despite the fact that I started with Gen 1 and my first game was Blue, I don’t care much for Gen 1 anymore and I’m almost starting to dislike it because of the extreme focus it seems to constantly get. IMO, going back to Gen 1 again would be way more awful than a D/P remake. It wasn’t very long since we got LGP/E and I really hope they wait many years before they go back to Kanto again.
As for the anniversary in general, I think they should focus less on Gen 1 in general this time. I think the 20th anniversary had way too much focus on Gen 1, especially S/M which were filled to the brim with Gen 1 references at the cost of all other regions (including Alola itself). But at the same time, I think they actually succeeded with some things during the 20th anniversary, the two most notable being the mythical events and Pokémon Generations, both had a great equal focus on all generations.
No new game this year would be fine for me too, despite what I said in the anniversary thread yesterday. If an extra year of development means a better game in the end, then I’m all okay with that. I have other Switch games to play anyway, and if I feel like going back to Pokémon, there’s nothing stopping me from playing the games I already have. I guess I just want a new game this year with the small hope that it will restore my interest in Pokémon a bit as it is currently very low. Some sort of collection of older games would be cool too, I have my own idea(s) for a “Pokémon Anthology” as I have named it... but I’ll stop here since this is getting wishlisty.
The fandom
I mostly agree with what others have said here. The Pokémon fandom isn’t a hivemind (even if it defintely can act too much like one at times). We are all Pokémon fans, but our experiences and opinions regarding Pokémon are very different… which becomes apparent here on the forums, especially in this thread. However, all Pokémon fans have one thing in common: we will always complain about things regarding Pokémon, no matter what happens. That never changes.
