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Pokémon Legends: Z-A General Discussion

I like how we've been so desensitized to it that no one even mentions or jokes "of course" Charizard winning both polls. :bloblul:

EDIT: AND of course the second I said this someone mentions it. Still funny took this long though, lol. :blobnom:
 
Yung Dramps said:
The beatings of "Zeraora is an industry plant" chuds will continue until morale improves
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Listen man I follow some Japanese artists who draw Pokémon and they never seem to draw Zeraora. I've seen the usual suspects (e.g. Charizard, Ceruledge, etc.) but no yellow furball not named Pikachu. idk what's going on outside of supremely silent majority shit or some ranked choice voting shenanigans because it seems like no one directly acknowledges the thing exists.

It legit feels like some sort of industry plant when, statistically, I should have stumbled upon at least one piece of Zeraora fanart within the past decade but haven't.
 
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I love the industry plant jokes/"shoving down throats" complaints when Zeraora's proposed crimes have been:
-movie
-a quasi-prominent anime appearance in its inaugural generation
-a SWSH raid event to get the shiny, which was probably just as much right place, right time
-Skipping SV until it showed up again in Z-A's DLC where it got a Mega

(also tcg & merch but those never actually factor into these conversations)


Anyway Magearna got a movie, a quasi-prominent anime appearance in its inaugural generation (where it got to be attached to one of the most popular characters in the franchise), a follow up quasi-prominent anime appearance in the following generation (because of said popular character), became the defacto National Dex poster child since you can get its special other form for completing the Bulbasaur to Eternatus dex in Home, got to be in SWSH, SV and Z-A, and also got a mega that even gets to look different for both its forms.

E: Realized shortly after this that I was so busy writing up the Magearna joke because it's also in gen 7 that I was blinded to the real plant #wakeupmareeple
protector3.jpg
 
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I feel like people refer to it as an industry plant almost exclusively because its design is in the same park as Lucario as a mostly anthro animal that looks like its wearing shorts. Lucario itself is in fact a mon that gets featured a lot so similar designs might make people feel like TPC is trying to recreate its popularity

But as far as official media goes, it really hasn't gotten anything unusual. The reasonings i've seen feel kinda flawed
  • It got a movie (like most mythicals do)
  • Showed up in the Gen 7 anime (which showed off every gen 7 mon)
  • Was featured in Unite at launch (yknow, with other industry plants, like Wigglytuff and Crustle)
  • Has a lot of TCG art apparently
  • Got a shiny distrib event
  • And now has a Mega

which idk just feels like Mythical things. ZA was the first time it even had any in-game story and even then it was a very short side mission

You could look at Darkrai and say it got even more time in the spotlight given its been the antagonist of a few games already and is the central focus of the DLC's storyline (alongside having events in SV and PLA). But even then I feel like this kinda discussion is a little pointless - specially in the context of letting Mythicals actually do something interesting now instead of just being gifts
 
AquaticPanic said:
I feel like people refer to it as an industry plant almost exclusively because its design is in the same park as Lucario as a mostly anthro animal that looks like its wearing shorts. Lucario itself is in fact a mon that gets featured a lot so similar designs might make people feel like TPC is trying to recreate its popularity
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I mean there is precedent for this mindset because Zoroark exists and received weirdly special treatment. It was Gen 5's preview movie star and an event exclusive mon for a bit. But that kind of flopped (not that people hate Zoroark, it just didn't explode in popularity) so Game Freak dropped the bit.

We've already seen the man behind the curtain before and it feels like he snuck back there when we weren't looking.
 
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That still is reaching. As said, Magearna has gotten more special treatment than Zeraora, and no one is accusing it of being an industry plant/Pokeslop/whatever the new word for things people don't like that they pretend is for an actual reason besides subjective preferences. Zoroark has also gotten more special treatment in a Hisuian form with a new signature move as well as showing up in all but three of the Switch games, two of which were remakes with very specific criteria for mon availability.
 
Mad Ram said:
That still is reaching. As said, Magearna has gotten more special treatment than Zeraora, and no one is accusing it of being an industry plant/Pokeslop/whatever the new word for things people don't like that they pretend is for an actual reason besides subjective preferences.
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Megearna has also had a very fruitful career in competitive singles. Saying "it's good in OU" helps validate a mon's existence and alters how it's perceived since PVP is a big part of the franchise. Zeraora only seems to have made a blip in OU during SWSH, and from little research I did that seems to be a recent development.

And fwiw I have seen complaints about Magearna getting a Mega because it clearly didn't need one.

Mad Ram said:
Zoroark has also gotten more special treatment in a Hisuian form with a new signature move as well as showing up in all but three of the Switch games, two of which were remakes with very specific criteria for mon availability.
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I was taking a break from Pokémon during PLA's news cycle so correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Hisuian Zoroark was pushed any harder than the other Hisuian mons? And said Hisuian forms were a grab bag of Pokémon of variously levels of popularity. I don't think people were begging for new versions of Qwilfish or Basculin. Presence in any games post-Dexit doesn't say much of anything either when other popular Pokémon are not immune to being shafted; see Greninja being completely absent from SWSH.
 
Karxrida said:
I was taking a break from Pokémon during PLA's news cycle so correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Hisuian Zoroark was pushed any harder than the other Hisuian mons?
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For what it’s worth, they only revealed 5 Hisuian forms out of 17 prior to release: Growlithe, Voltorb, Zorua, Zoroark, and Braviary, and I would definitely say that Hisuian Zorua / Zoroark got the lion’s share of promotion. After the game’s release, they also got the central focus in the Hisuian Snow animation, and there was a distribution for a Zoroark-themed mask your character could wear. Then a Hisuian Zoroark with Happy Hour was given out as an early purchase bonus for SV.
 
Esserise said:
For what it’s worth, they only revealed 5 Hisuian forms out of 17 prior to release: Growlithe, Voltorb, Zorua, Zoroark, and Braviary, and I would definitely say that Hisuian Zorua / Zoroark got the lion’s share of promotion. After the game’s release, they also got the central focus in the Hisuian Snow animation, and there was a distribution for a Zoroark-themed mask your character could wear. Then a Hisuian Zoroark with Happy Hour was given out as an early purchase bonus for SV.
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and then they put a hisuian zoroark in za
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R_N said:
I am stunned you don't have Rotom. Based purely on my data across 15 scans

Battle Zone
Wild Zone Frigibax (Avalugg)
Special Zone Latias
Wild Zone Rotom
Wild Zone Frigibax (Goodra)
Wild Zone Rotom
Wild Zone Frigibax (Avalugg)
Battle Zone
Special Zone Cobalion
Wild Zone Rotom
Wild Zone Poison
Wild Zone Frigibax (Avalugg)
Battle Zone
Wild Zone Rotom
Special Zone Latios

My assumption was that the game was biased towards Rotom & the frigibax zones (technically it's 2, an Ice zone and a Dragon zone) since they're the new non-legend encounters. After that would be Battle & Special zones, then the "other" wild zones.
I actually kind of really hate the Rotom zones because they're really hard to get all the points in if you roll bad missions. "Catch 3 without being detected" is extremely tough even in an area with cover; i stick my toe out and they can see me and their catch rates arent that high so if you whiff you can alert the whole group. Also swear they saw me from across the map; and if the map is SMALL then now EVERYONE in it knows where you are. I also do not like the "catch 6 species" task; I timed out a zone once because I just could not get the final appliance to spawn.




Do you want me to trade you one. I think I have a bunch in my box.
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Esserise said:
I also seemed to get a Legendary zone every five scans or so — I wasn’t keep exact track, but that feels right. But the scans I tend to get most are Starters, Fossils, and Frigibax (Avalugg).
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I didn’t perfectly keep track, but a legendary around every 5 scans sounds about right. I got tons of battle zones, and alternated between Baxcalibur/Avalugg lines, Starters and Fossils, with an Eeveelution Zone sprinkled in there and one Dragon zone with the Hisuian Sliggoo and Goodra (think it came with Baxcalibur as well?) before finally coming upon Rotom and Gimmighoul zones much later on. Was worried I was gonna get unlucky, the Rotom Zone was the small circle with scaffolding and didn’t initially have all the forms spawned. Tough to efficiently KO everything there.
 
Not sure if this is the proper place since it does cover Teraleak 2 material, but Turtlebro on Youtube released a vid on the various builds of the game up until the teraleak occurred. Not gonna link the vid just to be safe, but you should be able to find it easily. Probably the most important thing from it was a lot of the flat building textures weren't originally a thing and it was something they changed January 2023. For reference, SV came out just 2 months beforehand and we had no indication the games would be released in 2025. Make of that what you will.
 
Mad Ram said:
Not sure if this is the proper place since it does cover Teraleak 2 material, but Turtlebro on Youtube released a vid on the various builds of the game up until the teraleak occurred. Not gonna link the vid just to be safe, but you should be able to find it easily. Probably the most important thing from it was a lot of the flat building textures weren't originally a thing and it was something they changed January 2023. For reference, SV came out just 2 months beforehand and we had no indication the games would be released in 2025. Make of that what you will.
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I'm watching the video and I don't think there's much to make of it.

We see the builds and see...yeah their earliest "just putzing around" prototype in 2021 had a bunch of highly detailed buildings. In the 2022 builds they were pasting those around a lot with a lot of new buildings just being flat textureless boxes for blocking, and only slowly adding newer detailed buildings.
Then comes Jan 2023 and likely the decision to scale that back. Considering the sheer amount of buildings and the number of windows they were shoving into the placeholders I can see why the decision probably occured here, even without SV's potential influence. Even the late 2022 December builds where they were starting to add texture work to more buildings outside the starting area they were starting to favor the flat final-styled work.

Like I dunno I feel the general assumption was probably it was done for like framerate or other stability reasons. no real stunning revelations on that front. I was more interested in seeing how their gameplay ideas evolved into final.
 
Mad Ram said:
Not sure if this is the proper place since it does cover Teraleak 2 material, but Turtlebro on Youtube released a vid on the various builds of the game up until the teraleak occurred. Not gonna link the vid just to be safe, but you should be able to find it easily. Probably the most important thing from it was a lot of the flat building textures weren't originally a thing and it was something they changed January 2023. For reference, SV came out just 2 months beforehand and we had no indication the games would be released in 2025. Make of that what you will.
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I saw the video. While Turtlebro tends to get some things wrong in his videos, I do appreciate the effort at compiling the dev's magazine. It really gives insight into how Game Freak used this game as a sandbox to experiment with a lot of wild ideas in. Even if you didn't end up liking the game (not saying you specifically, in general), I think you can look at this and see there was a lot of effort at creating a Pokémon experience that was unique from other games. The optimist in me says that people will eventually come around to appreciating Z-A as much as they do PLA, as I think both the games are their own flavor of unique and interesting, but right now that doesn't seem to be the case. Legends is clearly GF's blank check to throw whatever wild ideas they have at the wall, and for a series that plays it as safe as Pokémon usually does, I really like that they're able to branch out now.
 
I'm at 27 special scans, with 2 more remaining. I am really wishing the legend scans were like 40% chance.

Assorted thoughts as I descend into madness and should really put the game down but I am so close:
-The sewer layouts are really terrible for wild zone special scan missions. There is a medium and a large variant to them, but I've only ever seen the large one once (in a battle zone iirc) and medium doesnt seem that common. If you get one where you have to collect all the Pokemon or a specific one, it can be really easy to just not get them to spawn. If you get the "catch undetected" mission it's a very cramped room with a lot of spawns of often aggressive Pokemon. And if you miss one from an invisible wall it can mess up your shots later. You need to do a lot of "kiting" and running away to try & reroll; clearing out the groups can be a death sentence to your time as you wait for them to respawn that way.
-Furthermore, I feel like the special scan Pokemon also coincidentally are the really aggressive ones. Why do all these damn Sliggoo have beef with me I am just standing here. The cramped quarters of the sewers or the alleys does NOT help.
-DO NOT BRING AN ALPHA DONUT
-I feel like some trainer classes have a bigger sight range than others. I was caught by a youngster a full rooftop away meanwhile a nurse was looking directly at me, on the same roof, and it barely went to yellow
-I am almost at the 1000 trainer mission completion! In the 900s! I'm not sure if I want this hunt to go on long enough to reach that stage or not.
-I wish I had kept better track of my time playing the DLC because I think the last 10-15 hours have been primarily special scans.
-Gotten better at the mega rematches. I still think the amount put in vs what you get out of it is a bit whack but a guaranteed 10k is worth way more when all you care about is rolling special scans. I do wish you could reroll them easier.
-That said the last 3 have been Mawile. I fear resting on the bench and seeing a 4th....statistically this just feels really unlikely!
-I rolled a shiny donut and did not see a single shiny and I mean it was only level 1 but still...it's actually been a while since I've run into one. Kind of funny I've ran into more shinies before the charm than I did after.
-Here's one about Meloetta specifically. Relic Song is kind of annoying to deal with; since wild mons dont have real AI, it can just spam it. And during then sicne its a form change, it can break your lock on and I thiiiink makes it immune to attacks & balls. Sort of like when you or the AI megas.
-I do like that each legend area has the legend roam a specific spot. It is fun to track them down. Terrakion hanging out in a small area I recognize as having a larvitar, Meloetta in the shopping center, Latios in a rooftop I'd never been to before, Latias in a cute garden rooftop where I think a different Larvitar usually is...Cobalion just chilling at the dock. I wish the special scans leaned into this more, somehow.
-I think the legend scan chance probably is 20%. My notes get close to that on average and that seems to line up with other people's observations. So on average, if that holds, I'll be done by like 35 scans. I'd prefer less. It will probably be more.
 
The Teraleak never stops giving! Poketuber Turtlebro, who has made quite a few videos showing cut content and development timelines, had posted a couple of days ago their hour & fourteen minute long timeline development of Pokemon Legends Z-A:
Maybe when I have more time I'll give it a watch and give my thoughts, though of the few minutes I watched already I can see GF had a lot of ideas, excitement, and expectations for it.
 
Caught Virizion on Scan #32; I'm up to Scan 35. Ideally I'll get it within the next 2 attempts


Does it kind of feel like there might be something wrong with the RNG? Not so much in the distribution of zone categories (special zones being about 20% seems about right, wild zones seem more common than battle zones but not THAT much), but with what the zones spawn?
Battle Zone
Wild Zone Frigibax (Avalugg)
Special Zone Latias
Wild Zone Rotom
Wild Zone Frigibax (Goodra)
Wild Zone Rotom
Wild Zone Frigibax (Avalugg)
Battle Zone
Special Zone Cobalion
Wild Zone Rotom
Wild Zone Poison
Wild Zone Frigibax (Avalugg)
Battle Zone
Wild Zone Rotom
Special Zone Latios
Wild Zone Gimmighoul
Battle Zone
Battle Zone
Wild Zone Water Starters
Special Zone Terrakion
Wild Zone Fire Starters
Wild Zone Rotom
Wild Zone Frigibax (Avalugg)
Battle Zone
Wild Zone Frigibax (Goodra)
Special Zone Meloetta
Wild Zone Fire Starters
Battle Zone
Wild Zone Frigibax (Avalugg)
Battle Zone
Battle Zone
Special Zone Virizion
Battle Zone
Battle Zone
Wild Zone Fire Starters

Like there's a lot of Wild Zone variants that I've just never seen. Grass starters, either eevee zone, porygon fossils...it's kind of odd to only ever see one gimmighoul, water starter and poison zone.
But even outside of that, I've been doing way more Rogue Mega refights and I'll see things like 4 Mawiles in a row. Back to back Meowstics. Tatsugiri shows up a lot. It's just weird to see stuff like this happen multiple times. Not like the Rogue pool is small.
 
R_N said:
Caught Virizion on Scan #32; I'm up to Scan 35. Ideally I'll get it within the next 2 attempts


Does it kind of feel like there might be something wrong with the RNG? Not so much in the distribution of zone categories (special zones being about 20% seems about right, wild zones seem more common than battle zones but not THAT much), but with what the zones spawn?
Battle Zone
Wild Zone Frigibax (Avalugg)
Special Zone Latias
Wild Zone Rotom
Wild Zone Frigibax (Goodra)
Wild Zone Rotom
Wild Zone Frigibax (Avalugg)
Battle Zone
Special Zone Cobalion
Wild Zone Rotom
Wild Zone Poison
Wild Zone Frigibax (Avalugg)
Battle Zone
Wild Zone Rotom
Special Zone Latios
Wild Zone Gimmighoul
Battle Zone
Battle Zone
Wild Zone Water Starters
Special Zone Terrakion
Wild Zone Fire Starters
Wild Zone Rotom
Wild Zone Frigibax (Avalugg)
Battle Zone
Wild Zone Frigibax (Goodra)
Special Zone Meloetta
Wild Zone Fire Starters
Battle Zone
Wild Zone Frigibax (Avalugg)
Battle Zone
Battle Zone
Special Zone Virizion
Battle Zone
Battle Zone
Wild Zone Fire Starters

Like there's a lot of Wild Zone variants that I've just never seen. Grass starters, either eevee zone, porygon fossils...it's kind of odd to only ever see one gimmighoul, water starter and poison zone.
But even outside of that, I've been doing way more Rogue Mega refights and I'll see things like 4 Mawiles in a row. Back to back Meowstics. Tatsugiri shows up a lot. It's just weird to see stuff like this happen multiple times. Not like the Rogue pool is small.
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The fact you got the Rotom zone 5 times, and I've yet to get it once since unlocking special scans is making me go insane ngl
 
R_N said:
It's posts like these why I have just been keeping a bunch of extra of most of the added Pokemon, would you like me to trade you one to put you out of your misery
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Thank you but I'm good. Theorymon traded me one of theirs a few weeks ago. I just want to shiny hunt for all the rotom forms lmao
 
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