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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
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Just to put everyone on the same page, the list of remakes and revisits we've seen so far:
Fire Red/Leaf Green, Gen III
Heart Gold/Soul Silver, Gen IV
Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire, Gen VI (gosh, remember when "Hoenn remakes confirmed!" was a meme? Good times)
Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee, Gen VII
Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl, Gen VIII
Legends: Arceus, Gen VIII
Notably, there haven't exactly been many of them, and I don't think most of them were that...improved? FR/LG updated everything and were the easiest way to get Gen I mons that were missing after the GBA released, but the only new thing added was the Sevii Islands. HG/SS were fine, but notably ignored the most common complaints about GSC(though they did replace Crystal's Battle Tower with a clone of the Platinum Battle Frontier). ORAS mostly just added Megas and the postgame plotline while screwing the balance. LGPE and L:A are the only ones I think were massively changed rather than just rebuilt in the new engine.
Fire Red/Leaf Green, Gen III
Heart Gold/Soul Silver, Gen IV
Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire, Gen VI (gosh, remember when "Hoenn remakes confirmed!" was a meme? Good times)
Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee, Gen VII
Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl, Gen VIII
Legends: Arceus, Gen VIII
Notably, there haven't exactly been many of them, and I don't think most of them were that...improved? FR/LG updated everything and were the easiest way to get Gen I mons that were missing after the GBA released, but the only new thing added was the Sevii Islands. HG/SS were fine, but notably ignored the most common complaints about GSC(though they did replace Crystal's Battle Tower with a clone of the Platinum Battle Frontier). ORAS mostly just added Megas and the postgame plotline while screwing the balance. LGPE and L:A are the only ones I think were massively changed rather than just rebuilt in the new engine.
Nah. They still haven't used the Monkeys or Patarat in any Switch games. Those are the only non-Furfrou families to be treated like this. They're being held back for some reason, and Unova remakes/Legends: Kyurem make the most sense.
I’ve been thinking of that, too. While it’s not like the Cranidos + Shieldon situation where every Fossil Pokémon lines except those two are in Crown Tundra which is a massive giveaway even before hindsight, it’s still very odd thay the Elemental Monkies didn’t came back despite SV’s emphasis on type interaction with Terastalization. While I get their and the Patrat line’s absence due to their severe unpopularity, it’s an absence too conspicious, especially since the similarly unpopular Basculin (the Red-Striped and Blue-Stripes, more specifically) also got in base SwSh.
As for Furfrou, it is obvious in hindsight due to already coming with a lot of form changes that does nothing, so GF, rushing their games, wouldn’t want to deal with it until the place is appropriate.
I don't care about the legendaries being shiny locked. It's stupid since there's no reason to do that, but I can't say I actually care either.
There is one actually, and it's more logical than you'd expect.
Shinylocked legendaries have their shinys usually distributed via events.
In last couple generations, this specifically has been done as Battle Spot seasons rewards and occasionally as shop collab rewards (aka, you go to GameStop and get them)
Ultimately, they need incentives for keeping people playing, but they cannot distribute gameplay altering stuff. Kinda like for example League rewards a special skin for reaching a certain rank or higher, TPCI has been distributing Shiny legendaries as reward since gen 7 (when they first gave out the various Shiny Tapus).
It's pretty harmless ultimately as it gives some kind of "trophy" to brag with while not giving any actual "well if you missed it you're out of luck" like it used to be with event-only moves.
i like classic remakes for the simple reason of "i want to play older gens but i am too used to the QoL of newer gens". even the DS games feel a bit clunky in comparison (and original diamond/pearl was Very clunky from day one......). however, obviously legends style of games add so much more to the franchise and is the way to go when it comes to revisiting old regions. i hope we go back to johto soon, by the way - it's been a WHILE
I'd say Legend-type games are a bit of double edged sword.
On one hand, yes, they add a lot more than just a remake does, as they're basically entire new games with new story, new setting, new character and thus, new lore.
On the other hand... the amount of time and money investment for a "Legends" game to be produced is significantly higher than a remake one considering remakes already have a story and map to work with, and just need it to be updated to modern era.
Remakes are sadly more a "we need a game release this year between the dlcs and the next main series one, let's throw a remake in there", and as BDSP shown, GF isn't even willing to commit their own developers to them.
Personally, I'd rather have more "alternative games" than more remakes, realistically speaking there's very little improvements to be done on gen 5 onwards considering the DS era was not that different from the current ones gameplaywise (aside from movepools and the fairy type existing).
I know GF is kinda lacking time and people (off their own choice, sadly, sigh) and thus the "easier to develop" remakes would probably mean we get better ones out (assuming they actually make them themselves and don't half-ass assign them to third parties again), but I would rather them keep with either reimaginations (like Let's Go) or completely new games (like Arceus) than just have "Black and White 1.5 electric halfaloo"
(Moreso considering that, as I said, once we reach gen 6 games... would we even really get anything different from a remake other than updated graphics?)
Scarlet/Violet disproves this because of the extra effort they actually did put in to animations and models that people conveniently like to forget. A lot of old Pokemon got new models, and a lot of new animations were added to old Pokemon. Battle, swim, attack, etc.
"Stupidest mechanical decisions in the history of the series" like what? The new gimmicks? That worked for their audience? Dmax did break up the pacing of VGC which is part of why so many new players got into it in that gen. Tera is popular even if divisive.
"The Switch games even have every single Pokemon in the series programmed in them, but with wiped stats in Gen 8, and completed stats in Gen 9." Okay, add the new texturing, new animations, make it look nice. Something people don't talk about is that for a while, SWSH despite what people said basically did not have Pokemon mods that worked well.
BDSP works well because they did straight up rip the models with no new texturing. But even SWSH, if you just put in an old model at a higher resolution, it will look out of place because every Pokemon in SWSH has different texturing. This is also true of LGPE. Programming a Pokemon gameplay wise is fairly fucking simple, that's always been the case- it's literally a turn based RPG. You are basically putting in spread sheets. That doesn't mean it gets done in the pipeline and ships launched.
"animations are worse than any 3D Pokemon game prior to dexit," They literally are not, which is why there is currently a process of replacing the old animations for Pokemon with the SV ones on Showdown. Because they are pretty much just better, more expressive.
Game Freak fundamentally is a company full of developers who give a shit about the games, and is mostly made up of younger fans (frankly, because it's easier to underpay people if it's their dream job). The higher-ups are money hungry for sure, but so is fucking Nintendo.
Do you know how fucked Nintendo would be a lot of the time? I guarantee you Nintendo is a big part of why Pokemon releases so quickly, because Pokemon is a system seller that they can guarantee basically every year, every holiday. Ship their consoles, and oh yeah they make major profits off of it too. Literally the same amount as Game Freak.
Here is the concept art for Scarlet/Violet's overworld:
Does this read to you as an entirely cynical attempt to just crash out games? Dexit is not entirely justified in every game, I agree. Particularly, BDSP did literally nothing to the models, and I'm pretty sure that was definitely just "We have to stay in line with the new Dexit norms". But even SWSH touched up the models, had to scale for Dynamax, and they've also become entirely ambitious.
The newer dev team has been pining for an open world since well, most of them have been hired; Sword and Shield. If everything about these Switch games was designed just cynically, they'd stick to extremely safe sequels. They'd make an artstyle that works with the basic upscaled 3DS models with no change, so they didn't have to change texturing or shadows on the SWSH models. They'd never implement an open area and new camera, which easily made the most technical errors and housed almost no essential gameplay time.
Scarlet and Violet would have split areas with more loading screens, cut up the game, or just make it flat out linear. Sun and Moon gameplay in 720p would still basically sell as well, and the new artstyle would be unneeded. They made hundreds of new animations, unnecessary, mostly unthanked by players; clearly a sign of the games being designed from the ground up to require less resources or time, even as resources increase.
Legends Arceus would not have been made, they would have been put to work on BDSP. Speaking of, Let's Go was made as pretty much Junichi Masuda's swan song game, and mostly by veteran staff to commemorate their accomplishments. It started dev around the 20th anniversary, the devs wanted to make it. The GO stuff is because that was the majority of what Masuda has been doing for a while.
There is absolutely 1000% a profit element, and that is simply time. But also, Dexit has extremely reasonable points and frankly people underestimate the work into making a 1000 creatures compatible and looking good in a new game. The new Pokemon models and animations are the best looking part of SV, and frankly, I think SWSH battles looked pretty good. Not mindblowing because it's a turn based RPG, could have used better UI work like Legends, which takes notes from Persona 5. But the models, texturing, lighting gave a much better anime look to the battles in that game than Gen 6 or 7 IMO.
So basically, you are somewhat right. A little. Dexit is at least somewhat because profits, but also if you analyze the Switch games by "oh well they did this to cut down on work needed", it doesn't really make fucking sense.
Increase the time for the games please, but frankly, I don't need the National Dex. Scarlet and Violet is an ambitious game by Game Freak with no polishing period, and I want them to keep down that path of ambition.
I truly do not understand the narrative that Game Freak has played it super safe and just designs the games to be easier to develop. My x in Christ,, in two generations of Pokemon we went from semi open world to entirely open world. Six years out of over 30 to create the one major genre shift, and to one that is more costly, expensive, and time consuming to make.
Ransei: SV doesn't really disporve this as they butchered just about all the signature move animations, and many other battle animations this generation harder than ever. There's even been recent posts about it here: and here , about people agreeing with this sentiment.
They are also a very far cry from how they were in Legends Arceus. The running and swimming animations are pretty basic and are part of something they implement every gen, including Gen 7 when they were unused. Animations in general were a significant downgrade from Gens 6, 7, 8. Even the basic eating animation is extremely messed up.
"Stupidest mechanical decisions in the history of the series" like what? The new gimmicks? That worked for their audience? Dmax did break up the pacing of VGC which is part of why so many new players got into it in that gen. Tera is popular even if divisive.
Ransei: Terastallization has been destroying OU and Anything Goes pretty hard, alongside many other formats. VGC is in one of its most broken states ever and a large portion of the community has been hating it this generation, especially for the Pokemon they decided to bring in like Urshifu and Flutter Mane. Moves that are extremely blatantly problematic like Last Respects, Rage Fist, Population Bomb, Revival Blessing now exist and are ruining a truckton of Smogon formats, for creating an awful environment for those formats. I've watched Pokemon tear itself to shreds throughout the past year because of how battle mechanics have altered the nature of many Gen 9 formats and it's never been anywhere like this before.
"The Switch games even have every single Pokemon in the series programmed in them, but with wiped stats in Gen 8, and completed stats in Gen 9." Okay, add the new texturing, new animations, make it look nice. Something people don't talk about is that for a while, SWSH despite what people said basically did not have Pokemon mods that worked well."
Ransei: Gamefreak are not very incentivized to try very hard to do this.
"BDSP works well because they did straight up rip the models with no new texturing. But even SWSH, if you just put in an old model at a higher resolution, it will look out of place because every Pokemon in SWSH has different texturing. This is also true of LGPE. Programming a Pokemon gameplay wise is fairly fucking simple, that's always been the case- it's literally a turn based RPG. You are basically putting in spread sheets. That doesn't mean it gets done in the pipeline and ships launched."
Ransei: The graphics are continuously complained about by the community for being awful for a Nintendo Switch console. Most people would say it did not work out for BDSP, and the graphics for every Switch game past LGPE are not good.
"animations are worse than any 3D Pokemon game prior to dexit," They literally are not, which is why there is currently a process of replacing the old animations for Pokemon with the SV ones on Showdown. Because they are pretty much just better, more expressive. View attachment 581542
Ransei: Some models are being replaced with fan models people come up with for projects but I'm gonna be honest some of them backfired. This Espeon for example, looks like it's trying to pounce, which is very unrealistic for an Espeon by nature. I'd also argue the same for Mega Absol and Mewtwo received a very massive downgrade off having its 3D model changed to resemble its SV model. Not to mention the animations are absolutely worse here than in previous entries, as many of the move animations are now more devoid of soul than ever before, and the way characters move in cutscenes are very unsettling for a Nintendo Switch game.
"Game Freak fundamentally is a company full of developers who give a shit about the games, and is mostly made up of younger fans (frankly, because it's easier to underpay people if it's their dream job). The higher-ups are money hungry for sure, but so is fucking Nintendo.
Do you know how fucked Nintendo would be a lot of the time? I guarantee you Nintendo is a big part of why Pokemon releases so quickly, because Pokemon is a system seller that they can guarantee basically every year, every holiday. Ship their consoles, and oh yeah they make major profits off of it too. Literally the same amount as Game Freak."
Ransei: This is taking a massive influence on how the games turn out, and through employee reviews, Gamefreak is being scored incredibly low because of it. One staff confirmed they know they're releasing low quality games, just because they still make profit anyway.
"Does this read to you as an entirely cynical attempt to just crash out games? Dexit is not entirely justified in every game, I agree. Particularly, BDSP did literally nothing to the models, and I'm pretty sure that was definitely just "We have to stay in line with the new Dexit norms". But even SWSH touched up the models, had to scale for Dynamax, and they've also become entirely ambitious."
Ransei: Dexit carried no real positive aspect on the games or the Pokemon community throughout the entirety of its presence so far. SwSh didn't really touch up on models. They just copied off Gen 7, and made them high res, There was even code in the Gen 6 and 7 games to make the games high res but the 3DS could not handle them. Dynamax scaling was extremely lazy, and no Pokemon outside Dynamax were affected. Pokemon like Wailord and Groudon were still atrociously small for their real sizes in SwSh battles. For Gen 7 it was reasonable due to 3DS limitations, but in an ambitious game on a new console with the most controversial decision made at stake? It's just not acceptable.
"There is absolutely 1000% a profit element, and that is simply time. But also, Dexit has extremely reasonable points and frankly people underestimate the work into making a 1000 creatures compatible and looking good in a new game. The new Pokemon models and animations are the best looking part of SV, and frankly, I think SWSH battles looked pretty good. Not mindblowing because it's a turn based RPG, could have used better UI work like Legends, which takes notes from Persona 5. But the models, texturing, lighting gave a much better anime look to the battles in that game than Gen 6 or 7 IMO."
Ransei: I believe dexit would have to happen inevitably but right now the community has profited 0% from it, especially for the Nintendo Switch console. They could have had the National Dex in Gens 8 and 9, especially with how simplistic the effort they put into each game was in compared to games like Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom and Xenoblade Chronicles. The games don't even take up remotely as much space. They really just wanted to rush this out as fast as they could and tried to create nearly the minimal amount of what would make people think it could have been worth the money.
Legends Arceus was a step in the right direction but it was unfortunately one blown to the dust one month after release, for the next major game, and yet the major games of the Switch were all less developed in their animations, worldbuilding, and even overall concept than this game, which was designed as testing grounds for them.
Rantsei strikes again
It's a coin flip whether a move animation's remain detailed or not. Blastoise finally uses its cannons in a mainline game after only using them in the Stadium games, but Volcannion's Steam Eruption no longer shoots from both its cannons. The Hisuian starters keep their special move animations, but most of the other non-Paldean starters lose theirs (Greninja and Rillaboom seem exempt).
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I don't agree with literally anything you said here. Especially at the end.
I'll go step by step, and this will be my last post on this topic.
For one, the idle animations and general animations of the Pokemon matter fucking 10x more than oh, the signature moves! The idles, general attack animations, and similar matter more than actual move animations because it will be actually on screen way more.
No, the extra animations are new. Especially the battle ones. Legends Arceus did not have all of these animations, neither did Gen 7. You are probably thinking about the walking/running animations, which did exist and were made in preparation for following Pokemon to come back.
It does not matter if a gimmick ruins OU or whatever, why should they care. The point of Smogon since the very beginning is to clean up their mess for 6v6 Singles, otherwise known as a format they will never adopt competitively ever. Both mechanics are way better for their target audience; VGC. Which is what actually matters. The issues with VGC right now come down to individual Pokemon and mostly stat spreads, which is something they have fucked up since forever. Why are you acting like Game Freak making bad decisions for competitive is new in that way? Urshifu is one of the few examples you may have, but even then I'd bring up entire archetypes added to the fucking game in VGC which have existed for almost 20 years.
"Game Freak is not incentivized..." Okay?
I don't think you understand that effort put in is not = to what you get in game development. And this is something that is actually very obvious in how people react to games, especially with graphics. I can promise you, the effort put into graphics has not decreased, ever. What changed was what types of games they are making, HD with no tiling and more unique modeling, with free camera movement. Which, hey! LGPE is a top-down, tile-based turn-based RPG with no free camera movement, and it looked the best! Crazy.
BDSP had probably less than 2 years of dev time from what we know of it, but also it does have some good looking parts.
Let's Go did not have more effort put into its graphics, it had a simpler game to make graphics for. Not just because "oh HD in 3D", but things like having to optimize for being able to move the camera all around, the point-of-view, the differences between having Pokemon battles start in the overworld (which is why the actual attack animations are worse in SV and Legends, you have to account for basically every type of terrain rather than set battle positions), and having you just go to a separate battle scene.
As the biggest fucking Espeon fan ever, I do agree that the Espeon is not entirely within my headcanon view of it. But also, it's a fucking cat and it is wayyyy more expressive. There are other Pokemon that are better examples, but Espeon is literally my favorite Pokemon and I am happy it got a new animation, so. And in the past, I've seen people say the old Espeon animation is not active enough, doesn't look like it's ready to battle, etc. etc.
On top of that, I also forgot to mention that SV does the most texture work in the series, with basically every Pokemon having it while before it was like play-doh.
I can promise you that Dexit has absolutely made an impact on the development. Like, literally I don't think you get how big a jump to HD and a bigger scope genre is. It is HUGE.
Real size for Pokemon isn't even objectively better? This is like, a romhack thing where people get obsessed with it, but when I showed people that Scarlet/Violet used pretty accurate scaling for Pokemon, they just were like: "Why the fuck are the Pokemon so small? I can barely see them." And bigger Pokemon can be problematic in the terrain, or just look weird. I don't see the obsession with it, scaling should be better but there is a middleground, and frankly Wailord being smaller is fine lmao.
I could see a world where SWSH has a National Dex because it is still largely developed more like Gen 7 if they did a slightly different artstyle, but Gen 9 absolutely no fucking way with the time frame.
Lastly, in my opinion, Legends Arceus is being overblown as a "big step". Scarlet/Violet is actually translating Pokemon into open world, while Legends Arceus is basically an extremely mediocre collectathon with very light action elements.
Also, as a large lorehead, the worldbuilding and characters and lore of Legends is super fucking dogshit LOL, and the mainstory of SV was wayyy
The last thing I want to stress once again is: the end result does not necessarily indicate on the surface how much effort was put into a game.
This is the most complicated medium ever conceived with the most factors and most effort to make even pretty simple things. The games could absolutely be better, but the developers are absolutely working their asses off. Just because a game does not look that good graphically, does not mean there was not care from the actual people making the game to make it look good.
I'll go step by step, and this will be my last post on this topic.
For one, the idle animations and general animations of the Pokemon matter fucking 10x more than oh, the signature moves! The idles, general attack animations, and similar matter more than actual move animations because it will be actually on screen way more.
No, the extra animations are new. Especially the battle ones. Legends Arceus did not have all of these animations, neither did Gen 7. You are probably thinking about the walking/running animations, which did exist and were made in preparation for following Pokemon to come back.
It does not matter if a gimmick ruins OU or whatever, why should they care. The point of Smogon since the very beginning is to clean up their mess for 6v6 Singles, otherwise known as a format they will never adopt competitively ever. Both mechanics are way better for their target audience; VGC. Which is what actually matters. The issues with VGC right now come down to individual Pokemon and mostly stat spreads, which is something they have fucked up since forever. Why are you acting like Game Freak making bad decisions for competitive is new in that way? Urshifu is one of the few examples you may have, but even then I'd bring up entire archetypes added to the fucking game in VGC which have existed for almost 20 years.
"Game Freak is not incentivized..." Okay?
I don't think you understand that effort put in is not = to what you get in game development. And this is something that is actually very obvious in how people react to games, especially with graphics. I can promise you, the effort put into graphics has not decreased, ever. What changed was what types of games they are making, HD with no tiling and more unique modeling, with free camera movement. Which, hey! LGPE is a top-down, tile-based turn-based RPG with no free camera movement, and it looked the best! Crazy.
BDSP had probably less than 2 years of dev time from what we know of it, but also it does have some good looking parts.
Let's Go did not have more effort put into its graphics, it had a simpler game to make graphics for. Not just because "oh HD in 3D", but things like having to optimize for being able to move the camera all around, the point-of-view, the differences between having Pokemon battles start in the overworld (which is why the actual attack animations are worse in SV and Legends, you have to account for basically every type of terrain rather than set battle positions), and having you just go to a separate battle scene.
As the biggest fucking Espeon fan ever, I do agree that the Espeon is not entirely within my headcanon view of it. But also, it's a fucking cat and it is wayyyy more expressive. There are other Pokemon that are better examples, but Espeon is literally my favorite Pokemon and I am happy it got a new animation, so. And in the past, I've seen people say the old Espeon animation is not active enough, doesn't look like it's ready to battle, etc. etc.
On top of that, I also forgot to mention that SV does the most texture work in the series, with basically every Pokemon having it while before it was like play-doh.
I can promise you that Dexit has absolutely made an impact on the development. Like, literally I don't think you get how big a jump to HD and a bigger scope genre is. It is HUGE.
Real size for Pokemon isn't even objectively better? This is like, a romhack thing where people get obsessed with it, but when I showed people that Scarlet/Violet used pretty accurate scaling for Pokemon, they just were like: "Why the fuck are the Pokemon so small? I can barely see them." And bigger Pokemon can be problematic in the terrain, or just look weird. I don't see the obsession with it, scaling should be better but there is a middleground, and frankly Wailord being smaller is fine lmao.
I could see a world where SWSH has a National Dex because it is still largely developed more like Gen 7 if they did a slightly different artstyle, but Gen 9 absolutely no fucking way with the time frame.
Lastly, in my opinion, Legends Arceus is being overblown as a "big step". Scarlet/Violet is actually translating Pokemon into open world, while Legends Arceus is basically an extremely mediocre collectathon with very light action elements.
Also, as a large lorehead, the worldbuilding and characters and lore of Legends is super fucking dogshit LOL, and the mainstory of SV was wayyy
The last thing I want to stress once again is: the end result does not necessarily indicate on the surface how much effort was put into a game.
This is the most complicated medium ever conceived with the most factors and most effort to make even pretty simple things. The games could absolutely be better, but the developers are absolutely working their asses off. Just because a game does not look that good graphically, does not mean there was not care from the actual people making the game to make it look good.
I also notice that the flipside of 'mon designs continue to be creative' appears to be 'mons are not necessarily designed for a post-dexit reality.' Gen 8 has a lot of examples because several mons feel like much of their concept is tied to their GMax form. For example, Copperajah's only claim to fame is a Max Move-exclusive hazard, and while Duraludon-GMax has the joke of inverting kaiju destroying buildings, base Duraludon is kinda just the thing that can become Duraludon-GMax. Duraludon and Applin ended up needing post-hoc evolutions to feel complete without a mechanic that GF knew they were going to discard. At least, unlike legendaries, they can have evolutions stapled on. Ogerpon and [is it still spoiler season?] are destined to share the junkyard with Necrozma and Eternatus.
Ogerpon definitely won't.
While Ogerpon is guaranteed to be losing its terastal gimmick, the Mask forms are going to be staying since that's not related to terastal in any way.
Simply in future generation, the 4 Ogerpon forms will be stuck with their pre-tera ability (so no Zacian 2.0 anymore) which is sure they don't mind as honestly the base forms are plenty strong as they are and adorable as well.
to most degree same applies to Terapagos.
While its Stellar form is definitely going to be erased, its Terastal form won't as it's as simple form change not related to the mechanic.
Its signature move will have same treatment as the gen 8 legendaries where it'll just become a stab with no extra effect, unfortunate.
While its Stellar form is definitely going to be erased, its Terastal form won't as it's as simple form change not related to the mechanic.
Its signature move will have same treatment as the gen 8 legendaries where it'll just become a stab with no extra effect, unfortunate.
I think this is why they are avoiding "form changes that make a completely new pokemon" like the case of Ultra-Necrozma, since they are unlikely to be available in future games, they're just having the "super form" power up aspects of the pokemon which doesn't completely remove its existance, es as I said, Fire Ogerpon is still Fire Ogerpon even without its ability to have a giant crystal mask in front of it.
And at least in the case of Ultra Necrozma there is the consideration that it was a Super form on top of an upgrade already since you needed Dusk Mane/Dawn Wings to do that step. Eternatus you can even see them stepping further away from it since Eternamax is just outright unusable by the player, so it's not like mechanically they're losing anything when that form gets Dexited along with Dynamax.
The thing I wonder about is if Gamefreak has any forward thinking with their broad strokes design: They have to tread on eggshells for any future Gen because VGC is liable to turn into a fuster-cluck if a Generation allows Tapu Koko or a comparable ET setter alongside the Paradox Pokemon like Iron Hands (heck I'm already expecting potential shenanigans when Restricted Meta uncorks Flutter Mane + Groudon type comps)
The thing I wonder about is if Gamefreak has any forward thinking with their broad strokes design: They have to tread on eggshells for any future Gen because VGC is liable to turn into a fuster-cluck if a Generation allows Tapu Koko or a comparable ET setter alongside the Paradox Pokemon like Iron Hands (heck I'm already expecting potential shenanigans when Restricted Meta uncorks Flutter Mane + Groudon type comps)
I think their only concern is "well if it's too broken we fix it next gen".
I am honestly surprised we didn't get Koko in first place considering Ancient paradoxes have two solid enablers (and in fact, once restricted are allowed, they again get two, as Groudon exists) whereas the Future ones are stuck with ... Pincurchin... and Miraidon.
(Moving this reply here because while it was in the Little Annoyances thread, the part I responded to both got away from me in length and wasn't really the main point of the response)
The thing that gets me about the level scaling is that it wouldn't really fix what the source of the difficulty is (or is not), which I think even the Teal Mask kind of showcases both intentionally and unintentionally: the actual Pokemon selection.
What good is scaling Katy up to Level 30 if you do Iono first going to matter unless they also evolve her Pokemon past the intentionally-low-power first stage Bugs and Teddiursa? To make the difficulty scaling actually matter you'd have to have checks to update the usable roster by the major opponents (if not at every single milestone, something like every 2-3 out of 18 leaders you fight), which is a massive scope increase for the team design that, let's be frank, NOBODY is going to approach for variance more than 1/20 runs where they specifically want the challenge. How many times do players skip around or take a different order for Erika, Sabrina, and Koga in Kanto, or go to Pryce before Olivine and Cianwood in Johto?
Level Scaling isn't going to get anywhere because outleveling the opponent is always a solution, unless they scale directly with your team by taking an average (as some RPGs do to keep new recruits "on pace" with you). Fighting a Level 50 Grusha with Level 60's isn't that different a challenge from fighting a Level 20 one with Level 25-30's in practice, you're still mostly going to roll over the Ice Weaknesses with maybe a stat check by his Fully Evolved Mons. SV's open nature is down to what order you want to gain certain rewards in: Gym Battles let you catch stronger Pokemon with obedience (opening your roster up for Wild Encounters with a "level floor" by where they spawn), Titans give you more movement options to look for items and special areas more easily if not totally new accessibility, and Starfall Street unlocks TMs so you have more moves available to customize your team or give you objectives to look for and craft them.
Ultimately I fail to see how this is anymore railroaded than previous entries, in that there at least exist side objectives you can make for yourself regardless of if the main progression has an intended order. Compare XY: what is there to do if you're not going through the clear story path? Some stuff like Pokemon performances but no real items to collect or side areas to explore just for their own sake (compare the Safari Zone/Great Marsh in previous games, Fuego Ironworks in Gen 4, the Abyssal Ruins in Unova or B2W2 specifically with the Desert Resort and Relic Castle).
Onto the Teal Mask as my counter example of the Level Scale aspect: Kieran sucks at the start of the DLC, just having a Sentret whether you do it main game or post-game. He's depicted as a meek kid without a lot of prowess for battling or even socializing, but as the plot shows him developing a drive and then obsession with being able to match up to you, his team gets stronger until it ends in what many consider a decently formidable in-game boss. This isn't simply the result of him leveling up his early stage jokers, he adds and replaces members that are more formidable in terms of stats or running strategies (EX: His Poliwrath swaps from using Special moves off its worse stat to stronger Physical attacks and a Belly Drum set up with a Sitrus Berry). If Kieran's battles were simply a team of 4-5 mons like his Paradise Barrens or Loyalty Plaza team jumping 5-10 levels each time, there wouldn't be any increase in difficulty as you do them all.
In turn the reason they can do this feasibly is because Kieran is one recurring opponent to build upon, rather than 8-18 opponents with varying type specialties or outright different strategies necessitated by their Pokemon that you could challenge in any order. Imagine them having to do Kieran's thing for over a dozen different battles, knowing that 75% of those variations are not going to be seen by an appreciable number of players, and is it any wonder that's not where they choose to put their incredibly crunched time and resources?
And this might just be me, but I personally don't get this obsession with Open Exploration games also needing to have non-linear progression. No game is truly non-linear in a meaningful way. Even something like Metroidvanias have gates in the form of movement upgrades or keys that you need to acquire using other abilities that take massive effort to skip over if they even can be. And the other side of the coin is something like the Open Zelda games, where none of the subplots mean jack to each other because they can't know which order players will do them in, and they barely mean anything to resolving the larger conflict because you could potentially go punch Ganon in the face without having done any of them. I remember a TotK compilation that put every Sage next to each other and showed they literally tell you the exact same information multiple times because they can't build off anything established prior in the story without knowing if you've done it already.
tl;dr Level Scaling is a lie, it won't fix any of the complaints people have about the progression in SV on a meaningful level, and the necessary measures are a waste of manpower by Gamefreak.
Then again they also buffed Incineroar who was already managing top usage in Restricted-allowed Metas so I can only assume the Mon designers are not on the same page as anyone tracking VGC trends. Heck I wonder if those designing new Pokemon are even aware of what Old Pokemon are returning ahead of time.
The thing that gets me about the level scaling is that it wouldn't really fix what the source of the difficulty is (or is not), which I think even the Teal Mask kind of showcases both intentionally and unintentionally: the actual Pokemon selection.
What good is scaling Katy up to Level 30 if you do Iono first going to matter unless they also evolve her Pokemon past the intentionally-low-power first stage Bugs and Teddiursa? To make the difficulty scaling actually matter you'd have to have checks to update the usable roster by the major opponents (if not at every single milestone, something like every 2-3 out of 18 leaders you fight), which is a massive scope increase for the team design that, let's be frank, NOBODY is going to approach for variance more than 1/20 runs where they specifically want the challenge. How many times do players skip around or take a different order for Erika, Sabrina, and Koga in Kanto, or go to Pryce before Olivine and Cianwood in Johto?
Level Scaling isn't going to get anywhere because outleveling the opponent is always a solution, unless they scale directly with your team by taking an average (as some RPGs do to keep new recruits "on pace" with you). Fighting a Level 50 Grusha with Level 60's isn't that different a challenge from fighting a Level 20 one with Level 25-30's in practice, you're still mostly going to roll over the Ice Weaknesses with maybe a stat check by his Fully Evolved Mons. SV's open nature is down to what order you want to gain certain rewards in: Gym Battles let you catch stronger Pokemon with obedience (opening your roster up for Wild Encounters with a "level floor" by where they spawn), Titans give you more movement options to look for items and special areas more easily if not totally new accessibility, and Starfall Street unlocks TMs so you have more moves available to customize your team or give you objectives to look for and craft them.
Ultimately I fail to see how this is anymore railroaded than previous entries, in that there at least exist side objectives you can make for yourself regardless of if the main progression has an intended order. Compare XY: what is there to do if you're not going through the clear story path? Some stuff like Pokemon performances but no real items to collect or side areas to explore just for their own sake (compare the Safari Zone/Great Marsh in previous games, Fuego Ironworks in Gen 4, the Abyssal Ruins in Unova or B2W2 specifically with the Desert Resort and Relic Castle).
Onto the Teal Mask as my counter example of the Level Scale aspect: Kieran sucks at the start of the DLC, just having a Sentret whether you do it main game or post-game. He's depicted as a meek kid without a lot of prowess for battling or even socializing, but as the plot shows him developing a drive and then obsession with being able to match up to you, his team gets stronger until it ends in what many consider a decently formidable in-game boss. This isn't simply the result of him leveling up his early stage jokers, he adds and replaces members that are more formidable in terms of stats or running strategies (EX: His Poliwrath swaps from using Special moves off its worse stat to stronger Physical attacks and a Belly Drum set up with a Sitrus Berry). If Kieran's battles were simply a team of 4-5 mons like his Paradise Barrens or Loyalty Plaza team jumping 5-10 levels each time, there wouldn't be any increase in difficulty as you do them all.
In turn the reason they can do this feasibly is because Kieran is one recurring opponent to build upon, rather than 8-18 opponents with varying type specialties or outright different strategies necessitated by their Pokemon that you could challenge in any order. Imagine them having to do Kieran's thing for over a dozen different battles, knowing that 75% of those variations are not going to be seen by an appreciable number of players, and is it any wonder that's not where they choose to put their incredibly crunched time and resources?
And this might just be me, but I personally don't get this obsession with Open Exploration games also needing to have non-linear progression. No game is truly non-linear in a meaningful way. Even something like Metroidvanias have gates in the form of movement upgrades or keys that you need to acquire using other abilities that take massive effort to skip over if they even can be. And the other side of the coin is something like the Open Zelda games, where none of the subplots mean jack to each other because they can't know which order players will do them in, and they barely mean anything to resolving the larger conflict because you could potentially go punch Ganon in the face without having done any of them. I remember a TotK compilation that put every Sage next to each other and showed they literally tell you the exact same information multiple times because they can't build off anything established prior in the story without knowing if you've done it already.
tl;dr Level Scaling is a lie, it won't fix any of the complaints people have about the progression in SV on a meaningful level, and the necessary measures are a waste of manpower by Gamefreak.
Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if GF hadn't even thought as far ahead as what Legendaries they were bringing back for the DLC, so they hadn't decided Tapu Koko wasn't coming back by that point (or even if they shifted gears after early VGC while Sun was just already locked in because Torkoal was base game, Groudon was base transfer, and Ninetales had been announced for the DLC ahead of time). The thing is while Flutter Mane is one dumb case, a LOT of the Paradoxes feel like they turn into VGC Ubers with the right support (Bundle outruns Flutter while having Icy Wind for fast Speed Control, Iron Hands goes from a Rocket Launcher to a Rail Gun with Quark Drive, and Iron Crown prefers Psychic Terrain for Expanding Force but they withheld Tapu Lele too so I count this).
Then again they also buffed Incineroar who was already managing top usage in Restricted-allowed Metas so I can only assume the Mon designers are not on the same page as anyone tracking VGC trends. Heck I wonder if those designing new Pokemon are even aware of what Old Pokemon are returning ahead of time.
Just going to say it: I think Pokemon should nix the traditional method of catching Legendaries altogether and model future encounters off the battles to catch Ogerpon and Bloodmoon and the like.
Now that I'm working my way through the Indigo Disk Legendaries, I've come to question what the low catch rates of Legendaries really adds to the game. By the point you get to encounter most Legendary Pokemon, you should already have a high-level team and enough resources to keep that team alive if it comes down to that, so the difficulty is mainly just a matter of not killing the thing before you catch it. So ultimately, having the Legendary break out of the ball as often as it does even at minimal HP doesn't make the encounter harder- it just makes it take longer. Just this morning, I had one Legendary that broke out so many times I was legitimately worried the idiot was going to end up struggling to death; looking at its remaining PP, turns out that one battle took 29 TURNS! And like- what did I really gain out of that taking so long? Ultimately, I couldn't even feel tense over the "struggle to death" prospect because I just so annoyed at the game wasting my time. By design, this type of encounter kind of minimizes the role of player skill, since once you have the Legendary low the whole thing just devolves into, "spam resources until the Legendary feels like letting you get on with your life."
Then there's the fact that the low catch rate means you're largely restricted on what types of PokeBalls you can actually use; if you don't use Ultra, Timer or Master, you're probably going to fail that catch (hell, even with Ultra and Timer you probably statistically fail). And that especially sucks if you want to put the Legendary in one of those more unique PokeBalls. Either you waste the one special Ball you have, or you need to be willing to reset potentially hundreds of times until the Pokemon decides to cooperate. Admittedly, this point is also a consequence of them making all these stylish balls and then only giving you 1-2 with no option to ever buy more; at the very least I think there should be a post-game option for acquiring stuff like the Fast Ball, Moon Ball, etc. outside of the Dex reward system. It may be an entirely aesthetic gripe, but it does make the process of acquiring your Legendary collection feel a bit less special since they're largely in the same 2-3 balls.
In contrast, something like the battle to catch Ogerpon focuses on the battle itself as the challenge. It tests your battle prowess, then lets you claim your prize once you've proven yourself without a luck-dependent phase that adds nothing to the encounter. The fact that the catch is guaranteed means you're free to use any type of PokeBall you want, allowing your Legendary collection to feel more dynamic since you essentially customize that bit of aesthetic. Plus, this system means you can't just immediately undercut the encounter with a Master Ball.
Finally, I feel this approach gives the developers more freedom in how these encounters can play out. The "free-catch" battle lets you include phases, such as a mid-battle type change like Ogerpon that prevents you from spamming one move or letting the Legend summon allies ala the Totem Pokemon to make you adapt your strategy to a 2v1 scenario. Structuring future Legendary encounters like these battles could make give GF far more potential for creativity, and I personally feel that this kind of battle just makes the encounters feel more special. The sheer glut of Legendary Pokemon nowadays has gradually led to them feeling less special, and I think the traditional encounter contributes a bit to this since they don't really distinguish these guys from regular Pokemon, especially now that regular Pokemon are open-world spawns, meaning the RBY method of showing X on the overworld is now far from unique. (Hell, there's an argument that the "stand in one place and pose like a statue" thing we still see with many modern legendary encounters now makes these beasts feel less real, less special than normal Pokemon, who walk around the world, fall asleep, sometimes eat a random berry and react to your presence in different ways.) With the right execution, "free-catch" battles could revive some of the awe for these Pokemom that has gradually been lost over the years, give them something that can help them stand out from the crowd again. And also they're just inherently less annoying than the traditional encounter.
Now that I'm working my way through the Indigo Disk Legendaries, I've come to question what the low catch rates of Legendaries really adds to the game. By the point you get to encounter most Legendary Pokemon, you should already have a high-level team and enough resources to keep that team alive if it comes down to that, so the difficulty is mainly just a matter of not killing the thing before you catch it. So ultimately, having the Legendary break out of the ball as often as it does even at minimal HP doesn't make the encounter harder- it just makes it take longer. Just this morning, I had one Legendary that broke out so many times I was legitimately worried the idiot was going to end up struggling to death; looking at its remaining PP, turns out that one battle took 29 TURNS! And like- what did I really gain out of that taking so long? Ultimately, I couldn't even feel tense over the "struggle to death" prospect because I just so annoyed at the game wasting my time. By design, this type of encounter kind of minimizes the role of player skill, since once you have the Legendary low the whole thing just devolves into, "spam resources until the Legendary feels like letting you get on with your life."
Then there's the fact that the low catch rate means you're largely restricted on what types of PokeBalls you can actually use; if you don't use Ultra, Timer or Master, you're probably going to fail that catch (hell, even with Ultra and Timer you probably statistically fail). And that especially sucks if you want to put the Legendary in one of those more unique PokeBalls. Either you waste the one special Ball you have, or you need to be willing to reset potentially hundreds of times until the Pokemon decides to cooperate. Admittedly, this point is also a consequence of them making all these stylish balls and then only giving you 1-2 with no option to ever buy more; at the very least I think there should be a post-game option for acquiring stuff like the Fast Ball, Moon Ball, etc. outside of the Dex reward system. It may be an entirely aesthetic gripe, but it does make the process of acquiring your Legendary collection feel a bit less special since they're largely in the same 2-3 balls.
In contrast, something like the battle to catch Ogerpon focuses on the battle itself as the challenge. It tests your battle prowess, then lets you claim your prize once you've proven yourself without a luck-dependent phase that adds nothing to the encounter. The fact that the catch is guaranteed means you're free to use any type of PokeBall you want, allowing your Legendary collection to feel more dynamic since you essentially customize that bit of aesthetic. Plus, this system means you can't just immediately undercut the encounter with a Master Ball.
Finally, I feel this approach gives the developers more freedom in how these encounters can play out. The "free-catch" battle lets you include phases, such as a mid-battle type change like Ogerpon that prevents you from spamming one move or letting the Legend summon allies ala the Totem Pokemon to make you adapt your strategy to a 2v1 scenario. Structuring future Legendary encounters like these battles could make give GF far more potential for creativity, and I personally feel that this kind of battle just makes the encounters feel more special. The sheer glut of Legendary Pokemon nowadays has gradually led to them feeling less special, and I think the traditional encounter contributes a bit to this since they don't really distinguish these guys from regular Pokemon, especially now that regular Pokemon are open-world spawns, meaning the RBY method of showing X on the overworld is now far from unique. (Hell, there's an argument that the "stand in one place and pose like a statue" thing we still see with many modern legendary encounters now makes these beasts feel less real, less special than normal Pokemon, who walk around the world, fall asleep, sometimes eat a random berry and react to your presence in different ways.) With the right execution, "free-catch" battles could revive some of the awe for these Pokemom that has gradually been lost over the years, give them something that can help them stand out from the crowd again. And also they're just inherently less annoying than the traditional encounter.
You can actually get more of them!
The Porto Marinada auction sometimes has one available and the albeit DLC exclusive Item Printer’s Poke Ball lottery event can give you more as well
Yeah I feel like the method for Eternatus, Dynamax Adventures, Ogerpon, Terapagos, and Bloodmoon and the like, turning the legendary into a formal boss encounter where they have an elevated HP encounter or other things like shields for Terapagos and 4 phase Gauntlet for Ogerpon and whatnot makes the catch feel more satisfying where although the catch is guaranteed, the battle to get them to the point where they let you capture them is so hard and challenging that it feels genuinely satisfying, is what they should do moving forward.
The "low catch rate" worked in older games because the capabilities of the hardware at the time was more limited, so for something like Gen 1, where the birds and Mewtwo were dungeon bosses and the "fail to catch" was straight up the ball missing instead of zero shakes+break, the low catch rate helped them be a challenging boss fight in that manner. But it's very much an archaic way of making the legendaries hard "boss fights", whether they be dungeon bosses or story bosses like mascots in Gens 3-7.
Such a method, while good for its time, has long run its course and isn't as fun anymore and has aged poorly now that they have hardware capable of delivering more fun ways to make RPG boss fights. They should definitely try and move away from that and focus on what they've been doing in recent times with legendaries like the Ogerpon gauntlet or Terapagos, among other special legendaries in the Switch games like LGPE, SwSh, and PLA before it,
I'm pretty sure people are referring to changing the pokemon too when they mention level scaling. I know I do.
Which is why I went into significant detail about how much work changing the Mons themselves entails when you balloon it out to the entire collection of story bosses instead of a linear progression for one character.