Game Freak hit with another hack, info leaking

[Mario With Lasers]

Late to the conversation but if people still want a Frontier they're stupid. There should have been one in ORAS and I don't forgive GF for their fumbling, but every other region is better off having their own little post-game facility (except for Paldea, they could have improved that in-game tournament they have).

 

[Hugin]

Zapdos does learn Hurricane as of SWSH, via TM/TR!

Though something tells me going out of their way to not give it the "good" (?) flying special move for 3 generations would probably mean it would not have gotten Aeroblast -the arguably significantly better move- either.

The general fan theory is that the Legendary Birds never got a Hidden Ability release before Gen VI because the devs were afraid of Zapdos with Lightning Rod breaking Rain in VGC. There's a related theory that I subscribe to that they kept Zapdos from learning Hurricane for similar reasons, being worried that Thunder+Hurricane would be too dangerous in rain(only Dragonite had that move combo for a very long time, and it did get used for that in VGC). It's worth pointing out that both Articuno and Moltres got Hurricane by levelup, while there's no flavor reason Zapdos, with it's association with storms, shouldn't get the move, so clearly something was going on in the Dev's heads.

Aeroblast would get around the rain concern by being weaker, while also having useable accuracy(WHY are all flying moves <100%?) outside of rain for all 3 mons.

 

[Pikachu315111]

The general fan theory is that the Legendary Birds never got a Hidden Ability release before Gen VI because the devs were afraid of Zapdos with Lightning Rod breaking Rain in VGC. There's a related theory that I subscribe to that they kept Zapdos from learning Hurricane for similar reasons, being worried that Thunder+Hurricane would be too dangerous in rain(only Dragonite had that move combo for a very long time, and it did get used for that in VGC). It's worth pointing out that both Articuno and Moltres got Hurricane by levelup, while there's no flavor reason Zapdos, with it's association with storms, shouldn't get the move, so clearly something was going on in the Dev's heads.

Don't know why they didn't just change Zapdos's Ability to something like Volt Absorb/Motor Drive and remove Hurricane's 100% Accuracy in Rain.

 

[Worldie]

Don't know why they didn't just change Zapdos's Ability to something like Volt Absorb/Motor Drive and remove Hurricane's 100% Accuracy in Rain.

Because why would you remove that and nerf every other special flying type just so Zapdos can have Volt Absorb? That isn't a darkrai scenario of signature move. Blizzard's and Hurricane's weather effects somewhat mimic Solar Beam's as "you should really use this move in weather" and it's be a shame to lose the flavour.

(If anything I am surprised Sand hasn't got a "weather move" yet, all other weathers at this point have one or more)

 

[Hugin]

Don't know why they didn't just change Zapdos's Ability to something like Volt Absorb/Motor Drive and remove Hurricane's 100% Accuracy in Rain.

Part of the reason for the theory is that they did change Zapdos's HA to Static for Gen VI and then made all the Legendary Bird HAs available via event. So we can be sure that they thought Lightning Rod was too good for some reason, even if we don't know that VGC Rain is why(though what else could it be?).

As for changing Hurricane, eh. Like I said, I think adding Aeroblast to the moveset would have fit the flavor and had a minimum of spillover balance issues. They added Hurricane eventually(maybe intentionally, maybe someone making the TR lists didn't pay attention), and it's not like Zapdos suddenly became the face of Rain with that, even if it did get better in general(It got the move just in time for Flying Dynamax to break everything).

(If anything I am surprised Sand hasn't got a "weather move" yet, all other weathers at this point have one or more)

There's no relevant charge moves for Ground/Rock and most Ground moves are already perfectly accurate. The only thing they could do is give Stone Edge perfect accuracy, and I'm pretty sure that's illegal under UN rules.

 

[R_N]

There's no relevant charge moves for Ground/Rock and most Ground moves are already perfectly accurate. The only thing they could do is give Stone Edge perfect accuracy, and I'm pretty sure that's illegal under UN rules.

I suppose Meteor Beam could see more usage if it could be a charge move. Still would probably be pretty niche though, I suppose, even as a now-100%-accurate 120 BP special rock move that increases your sp attack every time you use it (BEFORE the damage is dealt, too).

Sandsear Storm gets 100% accuracy in Rain to go with the others (aside from Springtide) but it really feels like it should get 100% accurate in Sand instead.

 

[Sonikku A]

I hate Sandshear so much, it really should be limited to Sand

 

[QuentinQuonce]

All the theories for why the bird trio never got Aeroblast and here's a really obvious one: they'd all use it better than Lugia can.

Not that Lugia uses it brilliantly (it's not a move that meshes particularly well with a bulky mon like Lugia) but all three of the birds have better Special Attack stats than Lugia does, so Aeroblast would hit way harder coming from them. And that would make them seem more powerful than their supposed boss.

 

[Blanca Weiss]

Because why would you remove that and nerf every other special flying type just so Zapdos can have Volt Absorb? That isn't a darkrai scenario of signature move. Blizzard's and Hurricane's weather effects somewhat mimic Solar Beam's as "you should really use this move in weather" and it's be a shame to lose the flavour.

(If anything I am surprised Sand hasn't got a "weather move" yet, all other weathers at this point have one or more)

Sand actually did get one in the from of Shore Up.

 

[Hugin]

Sandsear Storm gets 100% accuracy in Rain to go with the others (aside from Springtide) but it really feels like it should get 100% accurate in Sand instead.

There's 4 genies, 4 types of weather, I am shocked that they didn't just make each of them boosted by a specific weather. Springtide Sun, Sandsear Sand, Bleakwind Snow, Wildbolt Rain. It's not like it matters, the moves are fine but the Genies have comparable options that are at least on-par in or out of weather, but it would have fit cleanly and instead giving us 3 moves boosted by rain and one not boosted at all is weird.

 

[Esserise]

This all just makes me realize how thematically confused Landorus is.

His Hidden Ability and signature moves are both themed around sand, but the Hidden Ability activates in Sandstorms, while the signature move works better in Rain, even though… have you ever seen what water does to sand?

I suppose you could look at it as Landorus overpowering the rain since he’s the authority over Tornadus and Thundurus, but even then… it’s weird for him to be associated with sand in the first place imo, because sand and sandstorms makes me think of deserts, which aren’t exactly known for their fertility and abundance… the Ground type is a sensible choice for Landorus as a Pokémon of agricultural abundance, but mainly if you interpret it in terms of like, soil, not sand.

 

[AmbientDinosaur]

I started to document BW level-up movesets

BW Starters

Legend

• Red: Newly introduced move / move does not appear in previous set.
• Blue: Move was in previous set but was placed in another slot.

Snivy:

Servine:

Serperior:

Tepig:

Pignite:

Emboar:

Oshawott:

Dewott:

Samurott:

I think it is cute that the starters used to have the Pledge moves as level-up moves
Also it is interesting that they used to have Headbutt instead of Tackle. This was before Tackle got buffed in revision 22868.

 

[Coronis]

There's 4 genies, 4 types of weather, I am shocked that they didn't just make each of them boosted by a specific weather. Springtide Sun, Sandsear Sand, Bleakwind Snow, Wildbolt Rain. It's not like it matters, the moves are fine but the Genies have comparable options that are at least on-par in or out of weather, but it would have fit cleanly and instead giving us 3 moves boosted by rain and one not boosted at all is weird.

I mean for Landorus and Enamorus I see that, but hasn’t Tornadus always been associated with Rain like Thundurus?

 

[Esserise]

I mean for Landorus and Enamorus I see that, but hasn’t Tornadus always been associated with Rain like Thundurus?

Legends: Arceus connected Tornadus to cold weather and snow. Tornadus is encountered in the Bonechill Wastes in the Alabaster Icelands, and Bleakwind Storm (called Chilly Wind Storm in Japanese) had a chance of inflicting Frostbite.

 

[TheMantyke]

I too think it’s lame everyone got Tornadus’s rain buff for their moves. Landorus should have its move be perfectly accurate when it’s raining sand. Enamorus should have its move be perfectly accurate when it’s raining men.

 

[Worldie]

I too think it’s lame everyone got Tornadus’s rain buff for their moves. Landorus should have its move be perfectly accurate when it’s raining sand. Enamorus should have its move be perfectly accurate when it’s raining men.

By this extension, who will get the perfectly accurate move when it's raining cats and dogs?

 

[DrrT]

PLA isn't really a counter example since PLA is a singleplayer only game. You can't even do online battles in it, let alone have a reward structure for doing it.

It's also probably the lowest effort Battle Facility type thing, it uses an arena that was basically just decoration in the base game and it's just event coding, which is probably a bit time consuming but also doesn't really have unique assets.


Being able to rebattle/battle important trainers has been more of a trend in recent generations than Battle Facilities, ironically.

Let's break this down:

(Note, this is adding to my distaste of Serebii because apparently it doesn't have a resource for the Champion Defense battles lol)

Sun and Moon has Champion Title Defense which IMO started the trend, though B2W2 is arguably the real creator of the concept of course. In it you can rebattle most important trainers along with other trainers that are miscellaneous, but often with unique designs or important in some way:

-Faba
-Gladion
-Hapu
-Hau
-Kukui
-Molayne
-Plumeria
-Ryuki
-Sophocles
-Tristan (aka the youngster joey guy lol)

USUM takes away Molayne and Faba to add in Lusamine and Guzma. This along with the Battle Tree IMO marks a recent trend in the franchise where they seem to really value giving you a way to rebattle important trainers, and not just Gym Leader rematches.

Sword and Shield continues the trend when, in DLC2, you're given the Galarian Star Tournament where you will play in double battles in pairs with plenty of story relevant trainers, if not all of them:

View attachment 687902

And then in Scarlet/Violet we get the Academy Ace Tournament, clearly a successor to this concept. You can fight

-Arven
-Jacq
-Dendra
-Geeta
-Hassel
-Miriam
-Raifort
-Saguaro
-Salvatore
-Tyme
-Penny
-Nemona
-Clavell

Which is basically every base game character trainer that matters IIRC. And then you get the Indigo Disk rematch capability with the DLC, where you can rematch basically everyone.

Legends Arceus' training grounds also lets you rematch a bunch of trainers, though not everyone.

So IMO it's clear that one of their focuses with post-game content nowadays is letting you rematch the characters rather than playing against NPCs, probably partially because they tend to be putting more emphasis on the characters in general.


I don't know if I'm misreading this part, but Blueberry Points are basically entirely designed to be grinded online in co-op.

Like I actually quit doing the Blueberry Dex because I started a year after people stopped caring about the DLC, because I calculated it'd be something like 30 hours to grind the points needed solo, and that'd be tedious. The game also continuously encourages you to do it online with friends, and people talk about how it is a really fun co-op experience.

BP is like very explicitly designed for multiplayer tbh.


I spent like 300 hours in SWSH even though I thought the games were mid, a lot because of the Dmax Raids. It's addicting to get on and see what rare high stats Pokemon I could get, and to have friends ping me that they found a shiny we could all grab.

Dynamax Adventures in the DLC also took up a considerable amount of my gametime with it being really fun to grind with friends tbh.


The incentive for dens is simple: Good Pokemon. All of them are guaranteed to have pretty good stats, they were the only way to get HAs on launch, and they also gave plenty of other rewards.

Den grinding was very common before the DLCs. I'd say the DLCs took away a lot of the reward by adding Ability Patches, making HAs much easier to obtain.

On top of just giving good Pokemon, it was also basically a built-in dupe, with all of your friends getting too mooch off of your find and catch their own. I remember hopping on several times in December 2019 when friends told me they got good Ditto raids, for example.

This is the kind of thing of why I don't care for "Getting competitive Pokemon should take 5 seconds and have no work in it" because a lot of the endgame stuff is about getting good Pokemon in recent gens, almost like an MMO that doesn't blow up the Switch.


I still think it'd be nice to have battle facilities, I just don't agree that SV and SWSH don't have thought out endgames.

I honestly have no idea what you are getting st there. Yes, the Battle Facility of LA is cheaply done. That was my entire point. It's the living example on how they don't need to create a single new asset to make them. It's dialogue and Pokemon battles, in an already existing background, that also reuses different music tracksm

It being a single game player game is irrelevant. Battlle faciliries are not the only postgame single player you can do in Pokemon. Hell the game is again a walking example of this: Daybreak has way more content than just the batyle facility. It has rematches again actual characters, actual new sidequests and tasks which is what the entire game is about, as well as the Path of Solitude challenges with a single, specific Pokemon. LA is, of anything, the one game that is less focused on trainer battles, ans that didn't stop them from including the equivalent of a batlle facility, because it doesn't need to be tied to random NPCs.

You also can literally rematch *everyone* in LA thanks to Daybreak, you even get to battle new trainers you could not face before. Again not sure what the point is here. If anything is again proof that rematching named characters can perfectly coexist with a battle facility. I'm also confused at to what you are trying to say with your breakdown. Again, LA has *both* named characters and a battle facility. They don't have to be mutually exclusive.

My point with the Blueberry points is that they are used for a lot of stuff and they are clearly there so the player keeps playing aftee Terapagos. But they could have just not been there. Starters and legendaries could have been unlocked after the story without the need to spend them. So we already have "content that wants the player to keep returning to the game" without raids (and there are exclusives for a reason, you can still get them all by yourself just by doing BB tasks during the story), that are also not as long as they can extend raids. It doesn't make sense to argue SV doesn't have a battle facility because it has raids, when it still has content that makes the player come back for a while, multiplayer or not. They don't overlap.

Again, the battle facility in LA is a shining example of how it doesn't overlap with anything else, not even fighting named characters, and how it can just be there if they want even with vastly different battle mechanics and no NPCs. It isn't resource intensive. It doesn't need new assets. It can literally just be added in an update. There was nothing preventing them to addonf something like that to SV where, unlike LA, trainers already do exist. They simply didn't wanr to. We can argue if it was a good decision or not- but there was no major reason for it not to exist. SWSH has both raids and a Battle Tower. LA has a battle facility, it just doesn't have raids because as you said yourself, it's all single player. SV is the one who only has raids. I love the games, but not having any kind of battle facility in ID is just lame- specialy because again most players won't even get to the fun coach matches because they use the same currency as unlocking starters and legendaries which are the priorities of most casual fans. Casal players are not going to gridn multiplayer just to hear new lore about Nemona in dialogue and get a Tauros trade. At most, they will do the minimum for the shiny Blitzle.

 

[pika pal]

I suppose Meteor Beam could see more usage if it could be a charge move. Still would probably be pretty niche though, I suppose, even as a now-100%-accurate 120 BP special rock move that increases your sp attack every time you use it (BEFORE the damage is dealt, too).

Sandsear Storm gets 100% accuracy in Rain to go with the others (aside from Springtide) but it really feels like it should get 100% accurate in Sand instead.

We do have some precedent with Archaludon's Electro Shot, and Rock is already the "primary" Sand type in that respect with the SpD boost. The only caveat I could foresee is maybe GF is fearful of what giving a move like that to certain Sand mons would lead to (Some Gen 7 UBs/Legendaries might make good use of it since I know Celesteela was decently common), given it's proving decently strong on Archaludon as a non-STAB move already.

 

[Mario With Lasers]

This all just makes me realize how thematically confused Landorus is.

His Hidden Ability and signature moves are both themed around sand, but the Hidden Ability activates in Sandstorms, while the signature move works better in Rain, even though… have you ever seen what water does to sand?

I suppose you could look at it as Landorus overpowering the rain since he’s the authority over Tornadus and Thundurus, but even then… it’s weird for him to be associated with sand in the first place imo, because sand and sandstorms makes me think of deserts, which aren’t exactly known for their fertility and abundance… the Ground type is a sensible choice for Landorus as a Pokémon of agricultural abundance, but mainly if you interpret it in terms of like, soil, not sand.

Cowards should have given it Harvest instead.

 

[reaverz]

Looking at the translated Sun/Moon planning document, I'm finally vindicated in my long-standing suspicion that Alolan Rattata/Raticate were not originally part-Normal and that it was only tacked onto their Dark type so that Alolan Raticate could be featured in the first trial in Moon and further emphasize its counterpart status. I'm sure others found it strange that Totem Raticate has the cry of Gumshoos in the cutscene leading into the battle with it (which was not fixed in Ultra Moon, funnily enough), which along with the Normal type being secondary for the line made me sure that having it be a Totem was a very late change.

There are tons of other interesting tidbits about the development of Gen 7 Pokémon in that document, even for a few scrapped ones. My favorites have to be the notes about Alolan Golem and Alolan Ninetales being designed specifically to counter certain Gen 6 VGC threats. Alolan Golem is labeled a "killer" of Talonflame and Mega Kangaskhan (lol), while Alolan Ninetales is meant to be "fast against Garchomp." I did always find Alolan Ninetales' increased base Speed when compared to classic Ninetales to be suspiciously deliberate since it was the only Alolan form with base stat changes that didn't stick to increasing/decreasing by a multiple of 5.

 

[Yung Dramps]

Centro has posted a complete Teraleak download link with the announcement that their work is done. The actual leaker posted one last Discord message and bailed two weeks ago. I reckon that other than perhaps a handful of minor discoveries left here and there the Teraleak is basically over.

With that in mind, anyone got closing thoughts on the whole ordeal now that there's been time to stew over it? What were the big takeaways and things you personally found the most interesting?

 

[R_N]

1. People are quick to jump to conclusions and not bother to double back when more info or context is given
2. GameFreak clearly does put a lot of thought into their story stuff even when it doesn't always pan out, and I think we were very lucky to get things like the Gen 4 lore documents and Gen 5 trainer write ups. I'd love to have similar documents -which I'm certain exist "off site"- for all the other gens
3. It's a shame that due to how much there was and how it was distributed that there's a lot of stuff that's just spread across forum posts, reddit posts, google docs, discord messages, etc that'll probably take ages to be properly combed through, fully transatled & compiled and a bunch of stuff -especially pertaining to any email, planning documents and ESPECIALLY anything dealing with the anime- that'll probably never get put into one easily accessible spot. Despite being out there I suspect a lot of stuff will just get buried and quasi-lost
4. objectively very funny that Phione's internal label is "quasi-mythical" and specific notation to say to keep it vague and weird.

 

[Blitz]

Yea, I think the unfortunate reality is that a lot of this will be straight up lost to time - even with resources like TCRF being fairly comprehensive. I know there’s still a lot of undocumented things from the gigaleak a few years ago, and lots of tidbits lost to 404’d 4chan posts or nuked discords. The teraleak actually had examples of things that resurfaced as “new info” that… already existed from the gigaleak.

That aside, best things for me were everything to do with the beta designs: Gen 3 having a very whacky ensemble of mons + the existence of LatiKen being more than just concept art / Gen 4 having Lickilicky’s OG sprite, or how the beta Crani line had official art made at some point / Gen 5 having planned fusion in advance with an “overt” ying-yang connection with the Tao Trio, or the awesome Bug Melo / Gen 6 having some cool beta mons, and the whole history with Mega Jynx… it thoroughly satisfied what I was looking from smth like this. I do wish we got the Gen I backsprites, or the period of time where Beta Gyarados and Omega existed, but hey. Cool shit

 

[R_N]

Yea, I think the unfortunate reality is that a lot of this will be straight up lost to time - even with resources like TCRF being fairly comprehensive. I know there’s still a lot of undocumented things from the gigaleak a few years ago, and lots of tidbits lost to 404’d 4chan posts or nuked discords. The teraleak actually had examples of things that resurfaced as “new info” that… already existed from the gigaleak.

That aside, best things for me were everything to do with the beta designs: Gen 3 having a very whacky ensemble of mons + the existence of LatiKen being more than just concept art / Gen 4 having Lickilicky’s OG sprite, or how the beta Crani line had official art made at some point / Gen 5 having planned fusion in advance with an “overt” ying-yang connection with the Tao Trio, or the awesome Bug Melo / Gen 6 having some cool beta mons, and the whole history with Mega Jynx… it thoroughly satisfied what I was looking from smth like this. I do wish we got the Gen I backsprites, or the period of time where Beta Gyarados and Omega existed, but hey. Cool shit

The other problem even with things like TCRF is it's based on the community upkeeping it. If the people responsible fall off for one reason or another, it will languish.

on a smaller scale you can see it similar with Helix Chamber, who were pretty good at cataloging and analyzing things for Gen 1, but the members had priorities in real life, burn out, fall out, etc. erasaur/flowers bloom had a lot of insights from their continued look into Gen 1/2 stuff that only ever got posted to twitter as far as I know, either never making the leap elsewhere or having nowhere to make that leap.

There's a lot of people interested in this stuff (me!!!!) but not nearly as many people interested in upkeeping this stuff (me.....)

It's understandable but very unfortunate, even if the archives of information will (hopefully) be floating around for a long time.

 

[Yung Dramps]

This one's admittedly kind of petty but the most satisfying/vindicating thing in the whole leak for me was that Legends Arceus presentation that showed Game Freak discarded the idea of a traditional DP remake very early on and indirectly confirmed BDSP being shoehorned in post-hoc. I had suspected this for a good while and getting proof feels very illuminating about their creative outlook and (in part) the direction of the series going forward