Unpopular opinions

SV for sure should have its own teambuilder and more power to everyone that pirate and gen but to do a surprised pikachu face when you get a DQ doing those on a official VGC championship is silly. The price is irrevelant because unless it's free it will always be too expensive to some people in the world.
 
Speaking of accessibility, would be REAL nice if they made a move/ability almanac that goes fully in depth of what each one does, along with a practice sim post game that's customizable (EVs, IVs, items, mons, moves, etc)
You know, like practice mode in fighting games letting you change P1 and 2. Would be neat
Would also cut out a lot of time experimenting
 
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Breaking away from the VGC stuff for a bit, I wanted to voice why I think Raging Bolt is a very well done and clever design. Two things though:

1. Is that I understand why this design isn’t liked, taking Raikou, a generally well liked not just Pokémon but Legendary Pokémon, and making it into this thing isn’t gonna go down people’s throats in one go.

2. Is my own personal complaints with this design: I think the head should’ve been changed. It’s kinda jarring to see this supposed dinosaur Pokémon and it still has the fangs of a saber tooth tiger. I also think the body could’ve been bigger. I also kinda think the feet look like slippers, and not in a good way.

So onto to why I like it:

I believe that the head being above its mane and in the obviously intended to be thunderclouds is just a simple nod to the phrase 'Head in the clouds'.

The neck being so long is meant to invoke the imagery of a thunderbolt coming from those very same thunderclouds (I like this one a lot cause it’s very easily noticeable and charming imo). It also leads into the point which is it’s dinosaur inspiration.

Raging Bolt seems to be just generally based off of sauropods, and in the sauropod group of dinosaurs, there’s that was called the Brontosaurus (key word: was, nowadays it goes under a different name because the dinosaur it was thought to be was actually just a more underdeveloped one compard to what it actually was). Brontosaurus’s etymology comes from Greek, where the words it pull from mean 'thunder lizard'. Raging Bolt seems to just be generally be a sauropod with its long neck, and so if they wanted it to be more directly a Brontosaurus they probably should’ve made its body bigger.

I really like this thing and the more I learned about potential inspirations the more I liked it. It’s a very different take on a beloved mon so to that degree I understand the disappointment/disgust. I just wanted to post in this thread because I’m fairly it’s written somewhere that liking this thing is sacrilege.

One thing is for sure though:

With that neck and body, this guy is never beating the giraffe allegations.

(Re: the VGC stuff though, I think we can agree that the format for worlds including Pokémon that aren’t obtainable in the game the tournament is taking place in is very silly and bad)
 
So, in terms of getting optimal mons that are purely legitimate, the old sources of variance are still all there but now you've added on new sources of variance through the dependability of your source. (Case in point, at least one of the players who got DQ'd claims they tried to get legit PLA/SwSh mons from a reputable source and those mons failed the hack check.)

In contrast, if you gen it all yourself you don't have to worry about that variance.

I want to add that the source seemingly did nothing wrong and it was just the hacker's fault for being lazy. This tweet explains what happened in more detail and Brady himself liked the post. He was traded legitimate mons originally, and afterwards he modified them for some reason when his Landorus and Urshifu didn't even need any 0 IVs, and managed to taint perfectly good legit mons to fail a hack check afterwards.

As an aside I also found it strange that he kept saying that buying "Legends of Arceus" was his only option to get a Landorus, a staple of VGC teams for over a decade now and a mon that he himself previously used in SWSH competitions, which would be available from HOME even if he didn't have his SWSH copy anymore.
 
(key word: was, nowadays it goes under a different name because the dinosaur it was thought to be was actually just a more underdeveloped one compard to what it actually was).
False. Brontosaurus has been a separate thing again since 2015.
Also it (not actually) being the younger version of Apatosaurus wouldn't have affected which name was kept, it matters which name was officially recognized first not which name belongs to the older member of the species.
 
"SS" is a fucking terrible acronym for sword and shield that is literally deadass only used by smogon players


everywhere else I see people use SWSH, especially because "SS" means "Soulsilver" to 99% of people who play shit outside of Smogon

"I'm playing SS" "oh cool did you pick cyndaquil" is how I see people talk about soulsilver

speaking of, four letter acronyms are already used by smogon

"ORAS", when technically "OA" is a unique acronym for the games and therefore is also a valid two letter version. You'd just never see someone use that ever, just like SS outside of Smogon.

SWSH has no possible other meaning, no ambiguity, four letter acronyms are clearly acceptable, SWSH > SS and I will not be taking questions
Sir dont get me started on how much it tilts me to see people use "ScaVio" instead of SV...


Back on the VGC stuff, I think the main issue people have with hacking specifically in this moment and why there's such a shitshow about it is that GF for first time took a extremely weird and unpopular decision:
They made a Worlds format where you cannot obtain all the available non-breedable pokemon in the games of that generation

This is I believe a *FIRST* as so far non-native Legendaries were generally not allowed until the 2nd games (2nd DLC for SwSh), and they were *catchable in these games* via the various gimmicks (Hyperspace holes in gen 6, Ultrarifts in Gen 7, Dynamax raids in gen 8).
This is also not helped by the fact that several of the actually breedable mons coming from Legends Arceus *cannot evolve in SV*

I am honestly baffled at this decision.
I want to believe this is just a terrible oversight. It's clear that they did receive the complaint that metas were pretty "stale" during previous Worlds, where they've tried to shake it up with progressive introduction of new mons. But allowing a bunch of pokemon not available at same time of Worlds and most importantly with nearly 0 time to prepare for it (Home was released in May, people had barely 2 months to get a idea of the new meta on top of actually getting new mons in first place) was a REALLY REALLY POOR DECISION.
Even more of a horrible decision if it was intentionally made to force people to buy Legend Arceus. Even as GameFreak apologist myself, this is something I would be really disappointed to if it was the case.
 
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Sir dont get me started on how much it tilts me to see people use "ScaVio" instead of SV...


Back on the VGC stuff, I think the main issue people have with hacking specifically in this moment and why there's such a shitshow about it is that GF for first time took a extremely weird and unpopular decision:
They made a Worlds format where you cannot obtain all the available non-breedable pokemon in the games of that generation

This is I believe a *FIRST* as so far non-native Legendaries were generally not allowed until the 2nd games (2nd DLC for SwSh), and they were *catchable in these games* via the various gimmicks (Hyperspace holes in gen 6, Ultrarifts in Gen 7, Dynamax raids in gen 8).
This is also not helped by the fact that several of the actually breedable mons coming from Legends Arceus *cannot evolve in SV*

I am honestly baffled at this decision.
I want to believe this is just a terrible oversight. It's clear that they did receive the complaint that metas were pretty "stale" during previous Worlds, where they've tried to shake it up with progressive introduction of new mons. But allowing a bunch of pokemon not available at same time of Worlds and most importantly with nearly 0 time to prepare for it (Home was released in May, people had barely 2 months to get a idea of the new meta on top of actually getting new mons in first place) was a REALLY REALLY POOR DECISION.
Even more of a horrible decision if it was intentionally made to force people to buy Legend Arceus. Even as GameFreak apologist myself, this is something I would be really disappointed to if it was the case.
I also doubt it helps that this update dropped in the middle of a Worlds Season, as noted on the 0-prep time. Usually if this drops between/early in the season people have time to see the Meta develop casually or experiment with/trade for non-native Pokemon if they matter. Now here it's "Urshifu is a big deal so better find someone willing to part with the one-off pick-one-of-two-forms Legendary from LAST GEN's DLC campaign" while the competition is already underway.

For reference I play Pokemon Go in part because it gives me a way to collect a few Gen 7-8 Pokemon I never got due to dropping USUM/skipping Galar. I imagine there are other players who similarly passed on the other entries and have relied on trading to get their non-native non-breedable Pokemon before. Here though the time table with an active competition to prep for was WAY too short.
 
False. Brontosaurus has been a separate thing again since 2015.
Also it (not actually) being the younger version of Apatosaurus wouldn't have affected which name was kept, it matters which name was officially recognized first not which name belongs to the older member of the species.
Thank you for the correction, I try to do my research on these types of things and I do recall seeing that - I just wasn’t sure on how to put it into words. As long as I’ve got the whole 'Brontosaurus = Thunder Lizard' thing down, I think the intention behind the post remains the same (seriously though Ty for informing me)
 
Simple unpopular opinion from me....I'm good with the amount of Eeveelutions and hope they never bother bringing another to the game. I think if they hadn't created the Fairy Type that Gen 4 would have been the finish so unless they create another new type (feeling unlikely at this point) that they're never going to create another one.
ayeee I had this take too lets fucking go

though looking at my pfp... let's just say I don't wanna live in a world without Sylveon
 
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So, not posting this to start a fight, but when the Pokemon Company themselves are tacitly admitting that yeah maybe our last few releases have been rush-jobs, perhaps we could stop defending the yearly release model and admit that recent games haven't been anywhere near as polished as older ones?

My actual unpopular opinion is this: if there were a 3-year break between this year's release and the next main series game, I think we'd all be much the better for it.
 
I'm gonna be honest I don't like this. Between bad games where workers at least have decent work life and good games where the workers are crunched to hell to make due the release constraints, I'd rather take the former. "keeping up their release cadence" is a scary notion

Does it have to be either/or? Call me a utopian but I think it should be possible to live in a timeline where we have good games and workers who aren't nose-to-grindstone.

I'd rather they weren't keeping up their release cadence.
 
I'm gonna be honest I don't like this. Between bad games where workers at least have decent work life and good games where the workers are crunched to hell to make due the release constraints, I'd rather take the former. "keeping up their release cadence" is a scary notion
well there are two ways

the current way where devs have 2-3 years to make an open world jrpg

the world where they get more ILCAS to fill year gaps

there is no universe where TPC solves capitalism

I'm not experienced but from my short time in the world of Computer Science, splitting up more projects and giving them more time to ensure quality would imo be better for the devs.Only issue would be a larger lack of direction.

i dont disagree with you necessarily but you can interpret this as better for the workers
 
Does it have to be either/or? Call me a utopian but I think it should be possible to live in a timeline where we have good games and workers who aren't nose-to-grindstone.

I also want that, but I'm going off what's actually being talked right now: making the games better and keeping the same schedule. Brother if life could be a dream i'd have pokemon games release once per 6 years and everyone would work 4 hours a day with paid healthcare etc. I think gamefreak should unionize



well there are two ways

the current way where devs have 2-3 years to make an open world jrpg

the world where they get more ILCAS to fill year gaps

there is no universe where TPC solves capitalism

I'm not experienced but from my short time in the world of Computer Science, splitting up more projects and giving them more time to ensure quality would imo be better for the devs.Only issue would be a larger lack of direction.

i dont disagree with you necessarily but you can interpret this as better for the workers

I think this is the more optimistic result of this, which can be a net gain (or at least a sidegrade?). I'm just fearful of how easy crunch can be picked up as an industry standard for quality
 
tangent: maybe ILCA would do a better job with not-remakes? not to defend a universally panned pair of games i haven't even played yet, but maybe they'd do well with an original title with less at stake (but still core series please my extent of interest in spin-offs is pokémon go)
maybe it'd help if they didnt have 1 to 1.5 years of dev time
 
tangent: maybe ILCA would do a better job with not-remakes? not to defend a universally panned pair of games i haven't even played yet, but maybe they'd do well with an original title with less at stake (but still core series please my extent of interest in spin-offs is pokémon go)
I'm still thinking ILCA was mostly constrained by having to do carbon copy of DP.

Now, I don't think ILCA are this marvelous developer company bare in mind, their latest release (One Piece Odyssey) was ok but far from an impressive game from what I heard, though once again, it suffered from problems of the *series* (which constantly has to re-tell stories to the newcomers due to being a insanely long series) and not of the game design itself (which iirc had a pretty intriguing combat system).

I do wonder what ILCA could be if given the tools / time to actually make a proper pokemon game and not just "copy this and upgrade it a bit".
 
Yeah part of me is inclined to believe much of BDSP turning out the way it did is also in part due to the strict creative control Game Freak tends to impose on Pokemon games not directly made by them.

Japan has a philosophy when it comes to art and creations of artists to not tamper with the work of other creators by their own hands, and it's very possible the folks at Game Freak don't really want anyone other than themselves to have a say in how mainline Pokemon games are developed. It's very likely that ILCA was expressly ordered to make sure everything they considered important aspects of DP was kept exactly as it was in the original Diamond and Pearl lest they be lawyered out of existence. That would almost certainly explain why things like the level curves, rosters, etc. were basically a copypaste from Diamond and Pearl, and whatnot.

After all, despite not being directly created by Game Freak, the thing is that Masuda was still involved in BDSP's development himself and oversaw its creation. This is in line with the prevailing philosophy in Japan's culture of artistic creations. Diamond and Pearl is very much the work of Junichi Masuda, and as such he effectively has "ownership" over it from a Japanese culture point of view, so naturally ILCA couldn't do much with what was essentially his work without him overseeing it to ensure it still remained in line with the creative visions he had for it when he created it. As such it wasn't really ILCA's fault inherently, but more to do with them being forced to stay in line with Masuda's visions for DP because they had little creative say in the matter otherwise considering the culture there. In the very few instances where they were able to add something or change something, they actually created something quite solid for the most part in such a case.

This isn't to blame anyone, it's just more a matter of a clear case of two parties being involved in the development of BDSP but their intentions with the product ultimately working antithetical to each other, not in tandem with each other, creating the weird slop of a game we know now.

If ILCA were to work on their own Pokemon game, they would probably be decent at it given how great the few original ideas they implemented were.
 
I want to add that the source seemingly did nothing wrong and it was just the hacker's fault for being lazy. This tweet explains what happened in more detail and Brady himself liked the post. He was traded legitimate mons originally, and afterwards he modified them for some reason when his Landorus and Urshifu didn't even need any 0 IVs, and managed to taint perfectly good legit mons to fail a hack check afterwards.

As an aside I also found it strange that he kept saying that buying "Legends of Arceus" was his only option to get a Landorus, a staple of VGC teams for over a decade now and a mon that he himself previously used in SWSH competitions, which would be available from HOME even if he didn't have his SWSH copy anymore.

Thanks for noting this clarification. I had been giving this player, who I had not heard of before he used Wolfe's NAIC team, the benefit of the doubt on things (e.g., that he opted to use Wolfe's team after getting beaten by it on ladder and not because he'd heard it was Wolfe's team), but the more I see this guy talk the less he comes off as deserving that benefit of the doubt.
 
perhaps we could stop defending the yearly release model and admit that recent games haven't been anywhere near as polished as older ones?

Tbf, does anyone really defend the release schedule? (I mean, I know, it’s the Internet; cast a wide-enough net and I’m sure you’ll find someone, but you know what I mean.) Even people like me who are still generally positive about the games I think are willing to admit that the schedule they keep to for a game as big as Pokémon is pretty absurd on the face of it. I do see people assessing the reason for it being as tightly cyclical as it is and saying, “Well, considering the interconnected, multi-headed beast that the franchise is, it’s probably difficult to start pumping the brakes without causing problems somewhere along the line, and there probably isn’t a lot of motivation to finally pull the trigger that will materialize those problems and force them to need to be dealt with when the product is still doing well enough commercially to get by,” but I don’t typically think that’s a sign of endorsement; it’s just a diagnosis.

At any rate, it’s nice to see them acknowledge the issue. Maybe Nintendo starting breathing down their neck after they had to apologize for SV’s performance issues. (Though the continued absence of any kind of describable plan to improve those issues has me thinking it’s probably not time yet to start holding my breath.)
 
Tbf, does anyone really defend the release schedule? (I mean, I know, it’s the Internet; cast a wide-enough net and I’m sure you’ll find someone, but you know what I mean.) Even people like me who are still generally positive about the games I think are willing to admit that the schedule they keep to for a game as big as Pokémon is pretty absurd on the face of it. I do see people assessing the reason for it being as tightly cyclical as it is and saying, “Well, considering the interconnected, multi-headed beast that the franchise is, it’s probably difficult to start pumping the brakes without causing problems somewhere along the line, and there probably isn’t a lot of motivation to finally pull the trigger that will materialize those problems and force them to need to be dealt with when the product is still doing well enough commercially to get by,” but I don’t typically think that’s a sign of endorsement; it’s just a diagnosis.

I mean there’s definitely gotta be some ways to get around the whole needing to press the brakes on other projects without losing too much profit. New toys and merchandise can still be made, we have over a thousand different Mons to work with here. The anime can always make filler of some kind like with the Orange islands and battle frontier, though even they’ve been having issues a little while back. The only thing that could have the biggest issues with slowing down is the TCG cause of the need for new gimmicks, but even then a lot of people have been struggling to keep up with the newest meta.
 
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Everyone here saying it would be better if Pokemon had a more spaced release schedule (I don’t necessarily disagree) but if they did there’s be an absolute onslaught of complaints, including from some people who argue for a longer release time.
 
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