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Unpopular opinions

iu

Latest hot take is that TPC is generally just an(other) insufferable corporation that is substantially out of touch with their customers. They have such a narrow definition of how to play the game and it shapes their design choices because they only play by that one option. This explains things like the EXP Share change, the lack of bigger battle facilities and the linear story options, amongst other things.

I almost put this in the 'little things that annoy you' thread because my annoyance has always been people jumping to GameFreak's defense when something they deserve bad press for comes to light. This is the biggest media franchise in the world; they don't need randos on the internet jumping to their aid. Like Serebii Joe put out a tweet calling this a "non-story" as it goes against the story he knows about TPC (apparently he's had a direct line with them for a few years), when Kit and Krysta worked at Nintendo for 8 years on Nintendo Minute (both worked at Nintendo in other positions before and after their time on Nintendo Minute), but the larger point here is that there are already attempts to discredit them because it paints TPCI in a bad light.

The current pokemon gameplay is pretty boring. A fortnite version of Pokemon would be amazing.
Careful what you wish for, because PokeFortnite will only have one gun in it because it's the one weapon they wanted you to use.
 
Latest hot take is that TPC is generally just an(other) insufferable corporation that is substantially out of touch with their customers. They have such a narrow definition of how to play the game and it shapes their design choices because they only play by that one option. This explains things like the EXP Share change, the lack of bigger battle facilities and the linear story options, amongst other things.
Out of curiosity (I know this may sound offensive, it isn't a personal attack), you figured it out now?

I've been advocating for basically most of my time on these boards that TPCI sees Pokemon as "a story game for kids that happens to have a competitive scene that apparently attracts adults" and has never had any interest in any sort of challenge (see what I said in the other topic, they always said "you make their own challenge" as why there's no difficulty option).

The removal of postgame facilities (and/or hypersimplification as "just grind these for BPs" in SwSh) was just another of the main proofs of that line of thought.

Honestly, if Twitch didn't make E-sports explode as an actual profitable path, I doubt we'd have ever even seen official streams of the VGC nor any attempts in the game to make the competitive scene more accessible, and the games would have just remained as what they are meant to be, a way for kids to know the new pokemon and have fun with them.

(Not saying I *agree* with their view, but all of this has been pretty obvious to me for years and I've usually always said to anyone denying them that inhaling too much copium is dangerous, because denying that these games have always been designed with only young and possibly "very dumb" kids in mind is kinda delusional by now. And after all, they are also the biggest chunk of the buyers, and they are the kind of player that finishes the game and never touches it again, and hardly ever cares of facilities, postgame or challenge runs)
 
:tauros:
Tauros used to be real strong, huh? I was the one who thought up that one. But Blizzard was a bit too strong, eh?
The reference to Blizzard in particular alongside talking about Tauros makes me think about how RBY PVP went. Interesting seeing that reference since I think Tauros was a lot more stand-out and relevant to Blizzard there than in main-game.




As far as the Nuzlocke subject, I'm told that Vtuber creators have to get their playthrough ideas vetted by the game Publisher before they play it, and several seem to have done Nuzlocke stream runs on their channels. I assume that the restrictions in question are primarily kept to TPC's official platforms and DIRECTLY endorsed brand ambassadors, because they expect those to be where they primarily reach the kiddy audience they want to sell the game to and keep trying to simplify a lot of aspects for.

I also find it amusing people immediately seem to believe Joe Merrick's statement as disproving the Nintendo Minute anecdote, as if a company would not frame their PR in the least inflammatory/controversial position when talking to an outside outlet, even one that has as vested and interest in them as Serebii of all sites. This independent of if the story itself is true or false, the context of that statement doesn't make it anymore trustworthy than the one it's in reaction to.
 
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The reference to Blizzard in particular makes me think about how RBY PVP went. Interesting seeing that reference since I think Tauros was a lot more stand-out and relevant to Blizzard there than in main-game.

The Blizzard he is referring to is even more broken than you think, in the Japanese version of the Gen I games Blizzard had a 30% Freeze Chance(Fire Blast and Thunder also had a 30% chance to induce their status effects in Gen I, with the latter being the only one to still have it)
 
On the topic of Nuzlockes: There could be an agenda to curb out Nuzlockes because most of the popular ones are old games no longer in the market. Or it's possible that those two people that suggested the Nuzlockes talked to the least competent individual in TPCi.

The current pokemon gameplay is pretty boring. A fortnite version of Pokemon would be amazing.
And you say I lack attention span.
 
Considering I've seen (unofficial) events where players have a limited time to catch pokemon before making a team from them and battling, having a battle royale setup (the genre, not gen 7's failure of a battle mode) doesn't seem that far off from what people are interested in. Where it would run into issues is that any individual fight takes a lot more time in an RPG than other genres.
 
I think pitching a nuzlocke when the first rule is often phrased as perma death to a pr team is a bit stupid. You can reprase it but due to how popular lockes are, I think if they knew about it it'd be shot down immediately.

As for what actually happened: probably a mix of the most popular nuzlockes editing games, different teams have different amounts of knowledge on the subject, and the whole death thing just resulted in a miscommunication mess
 
I don't like Nuzlocke, I've never done once, but really TCP ? Nuzlocke is the same thing as a HACK/Rom Game ? Are you so stupid ? People do this to add challenge !
Well now that we're on the subject and in the proper thread for it, Nuzlocke isn't a good playstyle. The games aren't designed well around them, and I don't know why people enjoy so much throwing 12 hours of game time down the sink so readily.
 
Well now that we're on the subject and in the proper thread for it, Nuzlocke isn't a good playstyle. The games aren't designed well around them, and I don't know why people enjoy so much throwing 12 hours of game time down the sink so readily.
It's called addiction.

"I'm so addicted to this game that I need to find new ways to play it to justify keeping doing it because I can't stop"

Incidentally also a problem that far too many people on these boards tend to suffer from :psysly:
 
Wow this thread blew up while I was away

Anyway here's my probably-awful game mechanic take: I've never really understood why Trick Room doesn't work on priority instead of on Speed stats. It's really weird to me that the move makes slower Pokemon move first but you can still use Quick Attack et al to get around that, sort of defeats the purpose.

I guess game balance is the reason because otherwise Iron Ball Rampardos would probably murder everyone and everything but idk.
 
So as someone who never really does Nuzlockes, why exactly is finding new ways to play games you already enjoy a bad thing?
It isn't, at least, I don't think it is, but for some people it actually ends up being a product of addiction.

Like most things, obsessing over a single thing (being it a game, a series, a movie, anything) is not healthy. Sometimes you gotta move on.

Personally, I consider it as silly as the now-with-its-own-thread "Pokemon fans and trying to not find patterns in literally everything challenge - level impossible".
 
Well now that we're on the subject and in the proper thread for it, Nuzlocke isn't a good playstyle. The games aren't designed well around them, and I don't know why people enjoy so much throwing 12 hours of game time down the sink so readily.
I think Nuzlockes present a more extreme version of a problem I encounter when playing pretty much any RPG: the more knowledge you have, the less exciting it is to play through the game. The feeling of discovery and improvisation in a world of boundless possibility is one of the main draws of the genre, so you get diminishing returns each time you replay it. It's worse for the Pokemon games because there's no execution element to the combat (not that I think there should be), so any battle you're familiar with from past experience will mostly be decided in advance by your team composition and intended strategy, just with the possibility of being helped or hindered by hax.

Nuzlockes encourage safe, careful play to protect your mons from 'death'. Provided you don't add rules to limit item use and/or overlevelling, there's no reason why you should lose any battle that you can grind for beforehand. If you do set reasonable limits to make it fairer, then you can definitely lose, but only as a result of bad luck (available encounters, hax) or a gap in your knowledge.

Some professional Nuzlockers optimise their play to such an insane degree that they're literally going into each major battle with a full list of how each turn could play out and how they'd respond. Every attack is calced and they have perfect knowledge of what the AI can choose to do in any situation. It's common to hear 'as long as X doesn't happen, we win' which means the entire battle is just waiting to see if they get crit at an inopportune moment or whatever. It works ok as entertainment because there's a sense of a community being bonded by the tension, but on your own I find it's mostly just frustrating or boring.

I much prefer challenge runs with pre-planned teams (which I'm sure have the same issues for other people), because I think it's more satisfying to have all your team limitations defined from the start so you're free to strategise as much as you like within that predefined space. Monotypes and other themed runs (genderless, specific animal types, stat trainer team, etc) have a fun little narrative element that isn't as serious as the forced attachment/tragedy aspect you often see in Nuzlockes.
Wow this thread blew up while I was away

Anyway here's my probably-awful game mechanic take: I've never really understood why Trick Room doesn't work on priority instead of on Speed stats. It's really weird to me that the move makes slower Pokemon move first but you can still use Quick Attack et al to get around that, sort of defeats the purpose.

I guess game balance is the reason because otherwise Iron Ball Rampardos would probably murder everyone and everything but idk.
I think it's more about preserving the mechanics of moves with negative priority, which are often either balanced around their priority bracket (phazing moves etc.) or require going second to work (e.g. Mirror Coat/Counter).
 
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So as someone who never really does Nuzlockes, why exactly is finding new ways to play games you already enjoy a bad thing?
You see, there is this thing called subjectivity that few people seem to understand correctly.
What is fun for a few people can be boring to others, and vice versa.
And Nuzlocke is one of several challenges built on the idea that restricting things can result in arguably more interesting stories, as seen with walkthroughs that follow the Nuzlocke rules.
 
You see, there is this thing called subjectivity that few people seem to understand correctly.
What is fun for a few people can be boring to others, and vice versa.
And Nuzlocke is one of several challenges built on the idea that restricting things can result in arguably more interesting stories, as seen with walkthroughs that follow the Nuzlocke rules.
I'm not sure you replied to the right person. I never said Nuzlockes aen't fun, in fact the implication was supposed to be exactly the opposite. While I personally don't much care for them, I don't see the problem if other people do. I don't think enjoying Nuzlockes necessarily implies addiction or anything like that and I'm not sure how you'd even make that logic follow.
 
I think Nuzlockes present a more extreme version of a problem I encounter when playing pretty much any RPG: the more knowledge you have, the less exciting it is to play through the game. The feeling of discovery and improvisation in a world of boundless possibility is one of the main draws of the genre, so you get diminishing returns each time you replay it. It's worse for the Pokemon games because there's no execution element to the combat (not that I think there should be), so any battle you're familiar with from past experience will mostly be decided in advance by your team composition and intended strategy, just with the possibility of being helped or hindered by hax.

Nuzlockes encourage safe, careful play to protect your mons from 'death'. Provided you don't add rules to limit item use and/or overlevelling, there's no reason why you should lose any battle that you can grind for beforehand. If you do set reasonable limits to make it fairer, then you can definitely lose, but only as a result of bad luck (available encounters, hax) or a gap in your knowledge.

Some professional Nuzlockers optimise their play to such an insane degree that they're literally going into each major battle with a full list of how each turn could play out and how they'd respond in each situation. Every attack is calced and they have perfect knowledge of what the AI can choose to do in any situation. It's common to hear 'as long as X doesn't happen, we win' which means the entire battle is just waiting to see if they get crit at an inopportune moment or whatever. It works ok as entertainment because there's a sense of a community being bonded by the tension, but on your own I find it's mostly just frustrating or boring.
Incidentally, I agree that this is a issue with... pretty much any turn based games.
These games tend to basically boil down on "do you know what the boss does y/n". When you don't, well, there's all the surprise factor and how well you can prepare for any potential situation at same time. Once you do however... they're all facerollable. This counts even for historically difficult RPGs which you can always break by just being patient and grinding beforehand.

I always feel that the lack of a actual real time thing is what really prevents turn based games to not get into that situation: since there's nothing really demanding you to not take your time over something, you don't really have a way to "test" the player skill during a battle, you can really only test their preparation.
 
Idk, I think stress testing an RPG on multiple playthroughs is the only real way to figure out if it's good. If it holds up when you know a lot of the mechanics and how the bosses work, then it's a really great optimization problem.

Now I personally don't enjoy Nuzlockes because I find the play patterns really boring but I respect the effort. My personal challenge of choice is speedrunning. You're encouraged to fight at lower levels and minimal resources, you have to shortcut all the long cheese things that you might be able to do to trivialize the game, and there's literally an infinite amount of optimization you can do. I've gotten to enjoy many RPGs to the fullest this way, older pokemon games included.

As a bonus, you even add that active time component that's been mentioned. Often in a run you're rewarded for quick improvisation in addition to preparation.
 
It's called addiction.

"I'm so addicted to this game that I need to find new ways to play it to justify keeping doing it because I can't stop"

Incidentally also a problem that far too many people on these boards tend to suffer from :psysly:

Or, news flash, people enjoy challenge runs in video games, and like to do them in one of the most popular video game series ever made? I can’t imagine being so cynical about this series that you need to scorn people who find enjoyment in an optional ruleset, even if you don’t care for it yourself.

Even if this is tongue-in-cheek, it’s not only an absurd take but minimizes the actual impact that addiction can have on people. Enjoying a challenge run strictly for your own sake is not comparable to being so dependent on something to live that it tears your life apart, and frankly it’s shameful to even compare the two.
 
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