-
Check out the relaunch of our general collection, with classic designs and new ones by our very own Pissog!
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon
- Thread starter BriarRose
- Start date
Oh interesting. How often though?
(sorry im a bit late on this topic)
the benefit of the postgame in pokemon to me is similar to that offered by side games: providing an experience different to what you get from the main story formula.
even something like the oras delta episode, xy essentia, or platinum stark mountain quest felt refreshing because while it followed the same "formula" as the main story (you fight a bunch of guys), the very idea of having content after the e4/champion gives me a feeling that's hard to describe. there's a drastic shift in the player's goal. they are no longer training up the toughest pokemon in the region to reach this external goal the game has given them. instead, the player is given free reign over the region and often legitimately gets to do whatever they want.
one of the best examples of this imo is the villa in platinum. rather than a new challenge you have to face with your buffed-up postgame team, it presents itself as a reward for simply playing the game. training up new pokemon to fill out the pokedex, exploring the new areas, and taking on the fights in the survival area are naturally going to leave you with a lot of money, and in this way the villa serves as a reminder for all the progress you have made, even after beating the champion. imagine something like that in games with even more alternative ways of getting rich, like the miscellaneous jobs and quests in usum.
even besides that, though, there's something to be said about playing the game knowing that the main difficulty hurdle is behind you. there's still new content ahead of you, but you can be confident that your current team is equipped to handle anything. the experience becomes relaxing, but not mindless or dull. (that being said, i would like to criticize rainbow rocket here for that; an overreliance on battles rather than alternative content like exploration caused the experience to grow quite stale for me.) white treehollow/black tower, bw/bw2 inaccessible routes/towns, and the platinum battle zone/route 224 fit seamlessly into this for me.
hgss kanto would go here too, but in practice i often find my team lacking in either balance (shoutouts solo totodile) or levels due to the weird level curve and encounter design of the main story. even then, though, 90% of the battles are stress-free, and red is more of a distant target than an inevitable challenge: you can steamroll through him if you want, but there's so much other stuff you can do instead. the elite four present an imminent threat; doing things like pokeathlon and voltorb flip before beating them just feels like you're wasting your time. red, on the other hand, is deliberately placed on the top of a difficult to navigate mountain, and only a few things are actually locked behind beating him. the game implicitly states that you can take him on whenever you want.
let's move on to the battle frontier/tower/whatever. i think it's super cool that there's a dedicated community of facility players on this website-- even though i may not like it, i would say that this part of the game is a success due to how much entertainment it offers to other people.
to me, the problem with the battle frontier is that through streak design, the game pushes the goal of 100% control and consistency on you, and the methods through which this is done (exploiting ai tendencies and the limited pool of sets they have) are simply less fun for me than the dynamic and interactive world of fighting against other players. i recognize my bias here, but i think it would be really awesome, if impractical, if we got ai that could meet or even exceed human competence in pokemon battles. if that doesn't work, even just different ai systems instead of just the same one every time would be cool.
i'm a bit conflicted on the streak mechanic. as someone who's tried out the facilities a bit, losing a streak feels absolutely awful, but at the same time streaks do feel like the best way to tell who's really the best at the game. other more forgiving ranking systems would likely end up rewarding the players who simply played more games, not the most consistent ones. maybe it's worth putting both systems in, to appeal to both types of fans.
issues with the frontier aside, though, it does a fantastic job of being probably the hardest game-imposed challenge (except for hgss pennant capture). yet again, it offers an alternative experience to those who want more pokemon but aren't a fan of the game's mediocre replay value, don't want to do the same things in a different game, or are attached to their in-game team.
overall, postgame in pokemon games is an extremely important element that allows the game to briefly break the limits of what a main series pokemon game is, and if done correctly, it can be something truly inspiring that promises hours and hours of good gameplay. by leaving the control to the player, it allows them to pick up and put down the game on their own terms, rather than there just being a jarring shift from the climactic champion battle to...nothing. although there are obvious negatives to spending effort on an area that many players will never see, the completely changed tone of a game with no more mandatory obligations has tremendous creative potential. although it may seem counterintuitive, the best way to improve on the standard main series pokemon formula may be to start at the end.
thanks for reading.
the benefit of the postgame in pokemon to me is similar to that offered by side games: providing an experience different to what you get from the main story formula.
even something like the oras delta episode, xy essentia, or platinum stark mountain quest felt refreshing because while it followed the same "formula" as the main story (you fight a bunch of guys), the very idea of having content after the e4/champion gives me a feeling that's hard to describe. there's a drastic shift in the player's goal. they are no longer training up the toughest pokemon in the region to reach this external goal the game has given them. instead, the player is given free reign over the region and often legitimately gets to do whatever they want.
one of the best examples of this imo is the villa in platinum. rather than a new challenge you have to face with your buffed-up postgame team, it presents itself as a reward for simply playing the game. training up new pokemon to fill out the pokedex, exploring the new areas, and taking on the fights in the survival area are naturally going to leave you with a lot of money, and in this way the villa serves as a reminder for all the progress you have made, even after beating the champion. imagine something like that in games with even more alternative ways of getting rich, like the miscellaneous jobs and quests in usum.
even besides that, though, there's something to be said about playing the game knowing that the main difficulty hurdle is behind you. there's still new content ahead of you, but you can be confident that your current team is equipped to handle anything. the experience becomes relaxing, but not mindless or dull. (that being said, i would like to criticize rainbow rocket here for that; an overreliance on battles rather than alternative content like exploration caused the experience to grow quite stale for me.) white treehollow/black tower, bw/bw2 inaccessible routes/towns, and the platinum battle zone/route 224 fit seamlessly into this for me.
hgss kanto would go here too, but in practice i often find my team lacking in either balance (shoutouts solo totodile) or levels due to the weird level curve and encounter design of the main story. even then, though, 90% of the battles are stress-free, and red is more of a distant target than an inevitable challenge: you can steamroll through him if you want, but there's so much other stuff you can do instead. the elite four present an imminent threat; doing things like pokeathlon and voltorb flip before beating them just feels like you're wasting your time. red, on the other hand, is deliberately placed on the top of a difficult to navigate mountain, and only a few things are actually locked behind beating him. the game implicitly states that you can take him on whenever you want.
let's move on to the battle frontier/tower/whatever. i think it's super cool that there's a dedicated community of facility players on this website-- even though i may not like it, i would say that this part of the game is a success due to how much entertainment it offers to other people.
to me, the problem with the battle frontier is that through streak design, the game pushes the goal of 100% control and consistency on you, and the methods through which this is done (exploiting ai tendencies and the limited pool of sets they have) are simply less fun for me than the dynamic and interactive world of fighting against other players. i recognize my bias here, but i think it would be really awesome, if impractical, if we got ai that could meet or even exceed human competence in pokemon battles. if that doesn't work, even just different ai systems instead of just the same one every time would be cool.
i'm a bit conflicted on the streak mechanic. as someone who's tried out the facilities a bit, losing a streak feels absolutely awful, but at the same time streaks do feel like the best way to tell who's really the best at the game. other more forgiving ranking systems would likely end up rewarding the players who simply played more games, not the most consistent ones. maybe it's worth putting both systems in, to appeal to both types of fans.
issues with the frontier aside, though, it does a fantastic job of being probably the hardest game-imposed challenge (except for hgss pennant capture). yet again, it offers an alternative experience to those who want more pokemon but aren't a fan of the game's mediocre replay value, don't want to do the same things in a different game, or are attached to their in-game team.
overall, postgame in pokemon games is an extremely important element that allows the game to briefly break the limits of what a main series pokemon game is, and if done correctly, it can be something truly inspiring that promises hours and hours of good gameplay. by leaving the control to the player, it allows them to pick up and put down the game on their own terms, rather than there just being a jarring shift from the climactic champion battle to...nothing. although there are obvious negatives to spending effort on an area that many players will never see, the completely changed tone of a game with no more mandatory obligations has tremendous creative potential. although it may seem counterintuitive, the best way to improve on the standard main series pokemon formula may be to start at the end.
thanks for reading.
I really wish Pokémon Home had some sort of "delete all illegal moves" button. It's getting really annoying seeing all these yellow triangle exclamation marks all over my box, and doubly so when it's for Pokémon I can't even put in SwSh to delete the move right now like Pheromosa or Venipede. Just very messy looking.
I can sort-of understand that Game Freak does not intend the games to be replayed, but why they think so, I have no idea. The games do, after all, have immense replay value, and they offer far more content than a player can explore in a single playthrough. Just look at the starters. There's three of them, meaning you'd have to play the game three times just to try out how each starter fares in the main story. There are also hundreds more Pokémon than you can realistically use in one playthrough. You pick your team of six, maybe with some rotation, and play the game using them, which leaves the other 200-odd choices unexplored. The nature of the game can change drastically depending on which Pokémon you pick, so playing it only once certainly doesn't give you the full experience. Neither does playing it twice, there's just so much to try out. But as you say, the linearity and cutscenes make even one playthrough a gruelling experience as well, so you're unlikely to make it through more than one. To put it that way, I'm not going through Melemele Island ever again. Even if it means I'll never see how fun it would have been to use a Makuhita in Alola.
And the annoying bit is that while you certainly can obtain more Pokémon after your playthrough is over, the "growth and progress" gameplay doesn't continue (nor does anything that resembles a miniature journey), so you can't really catch up on the experience you missed either. Want to see how Scorbunny would have worked against the second Gym, but you picked Grookey as your starter? Sorry, no can do, you'd have to start the whole game over to find out. Sure, you can find a Scorbunny later in the postgame (I believe), but that bit about using it against an opponent on level footing can't be done anymore. All opponents are above level 60 now, so you'd have to let Scorbunny piggyback for XP for 50-odd levels, and miss out on seeing how both Scorbunny and Raboot fare against equal-levelled opponents. All the moves they learn will just be dumped on you at once as well. Effectively, you have to skip far into the Cinderace phase before you can even think of using the Pokémon in battle. At least earlier games let you use the VS Seeker or other trainer rematches to give low-levelled Pokémon some action they were likely to survive, which let you experience their growth and progress in a more gradual way. Granted, those earlier games didn't let you relive any story moments or pit you against bosses, so they were far from perfect in that regard either, but at least there was something.
So for casual playthroughs, the Pokémon games exist in a sort of weird limbo. Each game has a limited amount of "meaningful" content for you to explore per playthrough. You cannot experience everything the game has to offer without starting over. But at the same time, multiple playthroughs are severely discouraged, traditionally because it meant wiping the entire progress on your save file, in modern days because the game is a tutorial hell that gets sloggy and repetitive really fast. So for a good casual experience, you shouldn't play the game only once, but you shouldn't play it more than once either.
I guess the logic could be to encourage players to get multiple copies of the game, or at least to continue playing the series so they can get another taste of that elusive "growth and progress" phase of the game experience (it certainly works - I mean, we keep buying the games even though nothing fundamentally changes between them), but at the same time the series offers zero accomodations for people who have learned the basics and are only held back by the tutorial or lack of difficulty.
So... what the heck does Game Freak expect players to do?
Well, I have my doubt that the multiplesavefiles was intentional... I'm more on the line of thought that they just didn't really think of it and it happened to be a possibility due to the Switch saving system.
If they actually *intended* the multiple saves they would have actually had save slot like, idk, any normal game.
It's nothing to do with it being intentional -- the Switch had built-in multiple save files, so the idea of a third version lost a big draw.
I think DreamPrince nailed it: they expect the buyer to play the game, and either quit after story, or play the postgame if they are competitive players.
Interestingly I believe that the wild area + raids combination actually succeeded in keeping casuals interested in postgame far more than anything done before.
If you remind, back at the times when Let's Go was in its early days, one of the interviews talked about the devs were thinking that "kids nowadays like games they can pick up, play a bit on the fly and drop". A direction that both Let's Go and SwSh have. I notice it myself, every so often I'd pick up Swsh, do a raid or two if I saw something I was interested in or if I saw any of my friends / streamers I watch be online, maybe 10 matches or 20 in battle tower, and put it down to do something else, something I definitely never did with gen 7 or 6 games.
I get that I repeat very often that people here on smogon have a very distorted vision of the actual playerbase, but I am very serious about it. Your generic Pokemon player is a kid between 8 and maybe 20 years that plays Pokemon in the same way he plays Fortnite: 1 hour or two, not more, with 0 interest in replaying the game, sometimes not even touching the game at all after having finished it.
And that's something that's been going already in gen 7 eh, I used to meme on discord about my cousin that couldn't beat Pokemon Moon despite me passing them legendaries from my save file because he couldn't be arsed reading what the attacks and abilities do but just wanted to click whatever had "SUPER EFFICACE" written on, but that's the kind of people we're looking at. And we do know how actually spoiled/lazy a lot of young kids are nowadays.
There is a reason for which despite the fact apparently almost any adult player can point the massive flaws in SwSh and the last 6 or so games, the sales have been skyrocketing despite everything, to the point SwSh might very well at some point in next years surpass gen 1 games.
I can think of a few things that GF could have done with Hall of Fame data which would actually make creating a new HoF entry fun. Like how about letting you battle against a Hall of Fame team you used (either with the same Pokemon or a different team)? Infact if they do that they could let players swap around HoF data so that players can sorta battle each other without having to have the other player online.
As for the current discussion going on, don't really have much to say except concerning something they could do with DLC and post game content: add more (preferably free). Why not add in DLC story bits which expand on a character we met in the game we'd like to learn more about (you know, like every Gym Leader?). Remember those little side quests they added in USUM? Why not add a ton of those every so often to expand on the region and maybe even Pokemon world lore. How about having holiday-based events?
Oh, and for the save file thing & replayability, maybe they should just do a New Game+ mode they can play over and over again. It would involve some complex rulebending but I think it's perfectly doable (at least I thought of ways that they could do it).
If memory doesn't fail me, in gen 2 games you were able to re-battle a clone of your last PvP battle but controlled by the PC once per day, which honestly was a pretty neat thing (as well as a nice way to get experience)
The issue isn't that it would be complex to make a NG+ mode, hell for what matters it'd actually be very easy to execute.
The issue is that they don't want nor need to, because that's not how they want their games to be played. (see my rant just above your post)
They want you to buy the game, finish it, go to your classmate who didn't buy it yet and tell him how awesome your dynamax pikachu is, and how you could do raids toghether, so your friend will also buy the game and do the same thing.
Let's be honest, without going down into any conspiracy, that's how gaming works in 2020. You want people to play your game and get their friends to also buy it, because the internet is a powerful tool to share opinions and get "free advertising".
Which is pretty much what Zowayix just posted, unironically.
And as I said earlier, it works.
I don't think Pokemon games are a pain to replay and full of missable content due to corporate greed or plain stupidity. I don't fully agree with the design choice, but I see where Game Freak is coming from.
From the beginning, Pokemon has been designed such that the players are part of the experience. Having more possibilities than you can possibly explore and the difficulty of replaying are in service of that overarching philosophy. Your playthrough of a given Pokemon game is unique. It's extremely improbable that anyone else caught the same Pokemon, fought the same battles, and created the same story as you. And because there's no way to get another playthrough without buying a second game or wiping any trace of your old playthrough from existence, two things happen. First, you cherish your playthrough even more. This is your playthrough. Second, to get the experiences you missed, you go out and interact with other players, trading Pokemon and swapping stories.
Of course, it's not a perfect philosophy. People will invariably reset their game or buy a second copy and feel cheated, and while vicariously experiencing a game through the stories of others is nice, many people would prefer to experience the whole of a game themselves. Additionally, now that Pokemon isn't an obscenely popular fad, the Link Cable has been replaced with wifi, and older fans have had time to mature in their perspectives on the game, Game Freak should really stop pretending that their customers are still kids around the turn of the millennia with Game Boys and wide access to Pokemon-loving peers, and actually get around to updating their design philosophy.
From the beginning, Pokemon has been designed such that the players are part of the experience. Having more possibilities than you can possibly explore and the difficulty of replaying are in service of that overarching philosophy. Your playthrough of a given Pokemon game is unique. It's extremely improbable that anyone else caught the same Pokemon, fought the same battles, and created the same story as you. And because there's no way to get another playthrough without buying a second game or wiping any trace of your old playthrough from existence, two things happen. First, you cherish your playthrough even more. This is your playthrough. Second, to get the experiences you missed, you go out and interact with other players, trading Pokemon and swapping stories.
Of course, it's not a perfect philosophy. People will invariably reset their game or buy a second copy and feel cheated, and while vicariously experiencing a game through the stories of others is nice, many people would prefer to experience the whole of a game themselves. Additionally, now that Pokemon isn't an obscenely popular fad, the Link Cable has been replaced with wifi, and older fans have had time to mature in their perspectives on the game, Game Freak should really stop pretending that their customers are still kids around the turn of the millennia with Game Boys and wide access to Pokemon-loving peers, and actually get around to updating their design philosophy.
While you're not wrong, the issue is that as long as their philosophy sells, there's no reason to change it.
Call me boring, but "If it aint broken, don't fix it". We can hate it as much as we want, but the sales don't lie, and this philosophy *is* what kids like and will buy.
Yes, they will buy it with daddy's credit card, the same way they buy skins on Fortnite or League of Legends, with which they pay some MMO subs, the same way they give money to streamers and youtubers. But they will, whenever we like it or not, because this is what the latest generation likes: simple, brainless games, that do not require commitment nor complex understanding, and that you can put away or re-sell once you finished them.
Or are you telling me you didn't notice that in the last 20 years, there's been an extreme lack of actually challenging games, expecially in the JRPG genre? Outside of series specifically aimed to hardcore gameplay like Dark Souls or some Roguelikes, AAA industry has been slowly but surely making easier and easier games, often without the option to even set a harder difficulty or with harder difficulties that literally just increase the damage.
And in the case of turn based JRPGs like pokemon, generally the games in last decade have been plagued by a extremely high customization / variety of gameplay options, which as well resulted in the games becoming extremely easy because they aren't balanced around the player taking advantage of ALL the systems offered while the AI doesn't.
Pokemon games arent exactly an outlier in this: it's very common and everywhere.
So there was something I was thinking of that is related to branched evolutions.
Pokémon with branched evolutions have their own different, controllable ways to pick each branched evolution (with varied levels of difficulty, such as Tyrogue) at any time you have that Pokémon. This applies to all Pokémon with branched evolution... except for two. These are Wurmple and Toxel (counting its forms as a branched evolution of sorts).
That being said, my issue is with Wurmple and Wurmple alone, because not only you can't choose what to make it evolve into, but you can't even KNOW what it will evolve into (unless you have additional software that lets you look at the personality value). Toxel at least has a "warning" in form of its nature. But Wurmple? You can't know until you try to evolve it.
Pokémon with branched evolutions have their own different, controllable ways to pick each branched evolution (with varied levels of difficulty, such as Tyrogue) at any time you have that Pokémon. This applies to all Pokémon with branched evolution... except for two. These are Wurmple and Toxel (counting its forms as a branched evolution of sorts).
That being said, my issue is with Wurmple and Wurmple alone, because not only you can't choose what to make it evolve into, but you can't even KNOW what it will evolve into (unless you have additional software that lets you look at the personality value). Toxel at least has a "warning" in form of its nature. But Wurmple? You can't know until you try to evolve it.
Honestly, I don't really follow the JRPG genre, and most of non-Pokemon interests are speedruns and tough indie games (also I spent like a quarter of the past 20 years not playing video games), so I really haven't noticed a lack of challenging games, or at least I haven't internalized it like that. For me, it's more "the games from before my time were harder than the games I grew up with". You've got ten years on me; our points of reference are different.
But anyway, reflecting on the games you listed (Fortnite, League, Minecraft even though you didn't actually mention it), you're right that Pokemon isn't an outlier. It was just really ahead of its time. It reached "mega popular social cultural phenomena" status almost immediately, and the only game I can think of that did that before then was Doom (obviously there were other huge games before them, but I can't think of any that were social). While Pokemon hasn't topped the ridiculous popularity of Gen 1, you're right that I undersold its continued popularity. RGBY, GSC, SMUSUM, DPP, and RSE (in that order) are all on Wikipedia's top 50 list of best selling video games, and SS is shaping up to join that list (my first grade teacher mom has noted that her students are more into Pokemon this year than usual).
ok 2 things
1) eternamax being a form that can only be battled, not captured/used goes against one of the main things that makes pokemon so appealing as an rpg. even kyurem-b/w and some megas, which were shown to hurt the pokemon, could still be used freely. the series has been moving in this direction ever since the boosted totem pokemon from gen 7, and i'm really not a fan, especially because this is actually a new pokemon form with unique battle mechanics that just can't be used.
2) battle agency in usum managed to actually recreate the battle factory, one of my favorite facilities, but the aesthetics alone somehow completely turned me off. why is it accessed through the already super cluttered festival plaza? why am i fighting with 2 other guys??? what's up with this lame computer generated background????? it's honestly amazing how badly the aesthetics alone screwed up something that was otherwise super fun.
1) eternamax being a form that can only be battled, not captured/used goes against one of the main things that makes pokemon so appealing as an rpg. even kyurem-b/w and some megas, which were shown to hurt the pokemon, could still be used freely. the series has been moving in this direction ever since the boosted totem pokemon from gen 7, and i'm really not a fan, especially because this is actually a new pokemon form with unique battle mechanics that just can't be used.
2) battle agency in usum managed to actually recreate the battle factory, one of my favorite facilities, but the aesthetics alone somehow completely turned me off. why is it accessed through the already super cluttered festival plaza? why am i fighting with 2 other guys??? what's up with this lame computer generated background????? it's honestly amazing how badly the aesthetics alone screwed up something that was otherwise super fun.
I was following along until you pulled this crap. I really don't gotta elaborate on why this is peak boomer logic and how just a quick glance at any "top selling games" list/most culturally relevant games of the past 3-4 years immediately debunks this. This includes games like the open-world LoZ Breath of the Wild based around extreme player freedom, the Mario Maker titles whose fundamental concept lets kids be super creative with very little restriction/handholding aside from typical parts limits for games like this, and don't forget the menagerie of popular games that cover some really deep topics from Undertale to Celeste to Persona 5. Yes, some of those definitely aren't kids' games, but they're at least played and discussed enough a lot by modern teenagers (e.g. Undertale and P5) to where I immensely doubt that their 4 to 5 years younger brethren are somehow gonna turn out radically different.
Apologies to everyone for this little tirade, but I have absolutely nothing but cold contempt for people who have such brazen lack of faith in modern youth such as what Worldie has shown here.
I partly feel you. While the "you can use anything you fight" aspect is indeed incredibly cool, it is somewhat restrictive of what can be done with boss fights. If they make an obscenely strong boss Pokemon that the player can also catch and use to its full power, VGC will eventually have to deal with that monster. I'd rather Eternamax Eternatus stay unusable if the alternative is something with Recover and 255/250/250 bulk bringing every VGC match to a timer stall.
Kind of adding on to this, Pokémon games have an inherent advantage over other games because it is technically 2 game sales are being treated as one game sales. The dual versions are marginally different, even though they are effectively the same game. Lot of people buy two versions, like breeders who can’t stand trading for Pokémon, and children who buy the two versions in hopes of finding the differences will be disappointed to find that they are the same. It also doesn’t help that now the expansion pass has purchased off both versions instead of being able to share it among your save files, so that’s an additional 60$ for the expansion pass for both SwSh games, which is equivalent to another Switch Game. So yeah, this is an outdated business model that only manages to get away because Pokemon is about catching them all.
And it’s, undeniable that one version will sell more than the other, Sword has outsold Shield on the Eshop. I can’t even find the individual sales of Sword and Shield anywhere. Now looking at 3rd versions, Platinum sold 7.06 Million copies, while Diamond and Pearl sold 17 Million copies, However, that’s Diamond and Pearl combined, a more logical sales for Diamond and Pearl individually would be like 10 million sales for Diamond and 7 Million for Pearl, (keep in mind these are purely guesses and I have no actual numbers to back this up) roughly on par with Platinum. Interestingly enough, I can’t find individual sales of paired versions anywhere- it’s as if TPC purposefully hiding the sales under a secret rug.
I’m half and half on this. I definitely feel that some JRPGs have gotten easier, though not on a Pokémon level, and there are some really tough fights even on normal modes. I also agree with Yung Dramps that children are a lot smarter than we give credit for; though I speculate GF’s obsession with mobile games is more of a Japanese thing in which mobile games happen to be the most popular form of gaming in Japan currently, hence GF’s obsession and the fact that they primarily care about Japanese playerbase over the international playerbase despite mobile games having more competition there.
No need to make this some big conspiracy. Pokemon counts sales of both games together because, as you said, both games are effectively the same game. It would honestly be pretty weird if they were counted separately.
Not my intention. I was just curious to see which versions sold more, and I couldn’t find any.
Premise, I can understand if this could count as derailing the thread (since in theory it's annoyances about pokemon and not about games in general), so if that's the case I don't mind continuing the topic on DMs or elsewhere.
Premise n2: my extreme lack of faith in the last generations as well as humans in general isn't exactly new expecially considering where I live and the current situation, so please forgive my... a bit extreme tone there.
That said, I found fun that you brought up Persona 5. Persona and SMT in general has a hardcore community that expresses exactly the same opinions I read on these boards about Pokemon games.
In the speedrun community which I belong to for example, "They are too easy", "the plot is boring in the last entries", "the last good game was Persona 3", "Atlus only wants to milk our money and stopped making good games" are topics I hear all the time. Don't they sound a bit familiar to what you read on the smogon boards?
And on some, they aren't wrong. Persona 5 and 5 royal are extremely easy games compared to their predecessors, and even an idiot would be able to complete them, and in the latest entry they even went as far as reworking the so called "Merciless" difficulty to the point where it's actually easier than normal mode once you understood the only mechanic change. And indeed some of the new plot entries are very terrible superficially (that is, if you aren't able to scratch the surface and read the metaphors)
You can look for similar shenenigans in a ton of "hardcore" communities of multiple games, at this point I'd be surprised if there's not a subreddit where people praise lord and savior Ocarina of Time and spam how all games after it are trash and BotW was just a overhyped garbage. Which is always overshadowed by a ridicolously bigger number of casual players and newcomers to the series that absolutely adore the latest title
Now, why do I bring this up? I think you misunderstood what I said with the latest entries of the various RPGs.
I did not say the games became "bad", or that they don't touch important subjects or don't have good stories, because it's not the case.
In fact, expecially JRPGs more and more love to make metaphors or the real life scenarios
Even Pokemon Sword and Shield, while not optimally, touches important themes like orphans, energy conservation, pollution, excessive fanboyism, and the Twilight Wings anime series is doubling onto touching serious themes in a more "child friendly" light.
While games, Pokemon included, have evolved to give a lot of real life references and try to """guide""" young people, however most of them have also been becoming easier and more accessible, with difficulty options all but disappearing in a lot of franchises and leaving any difficulty to the player's self-imposed challenge.
They also often have been hit by the issue I mentioned earlier, where they give a LOT of possibilities to players to play in whatever way they prefer, but with the result that any player capable of combining the systems offered ends up breaking the game inevitably very early, as soon as all the options are available.
All of this is due to a big generational shift in the gaming habits that GameFreaks actually read correctly: your typical 202x gamer is someone who enjoys playing a game for a small amount of time then dropping it. Playing it on his Switch with friends at the park. Who doesn't really care to look at complex mechanics. Who doesn't want to pidgeonholed in one playstyle, and wants to be able to "play the game as he likes".
The gamer like us have been long gone. The players who enjoyed playing the original World of Warcraft without a guide and discovering everything on our own by committing several hours per day every day. The players who loved to replay Super Mario Land over and over until you could finish it with 1 life. The player who yes, liked to get hardwalled by Miltank in Pokemon Silver and had to grind it out or find on his own a way to stop getting literally rolled over. The player who spent a ridicolous amount grinding the hell out of Disgaea's postgame to beat the final postgame boss.
Those are type of gamers that are dieing, and certain genres like MMOs are dieing with them.
In this case I'm not really ranting on "stupidity" of your modern gamer or young in general, but literally a generational shift of players who do not want to invest excessive time in the game, and that when they get stuck, will either look at a guide online, ask a friend how they beat it, or just give up.
And, if you are a gaming company, expecially an AAA one under the pressure of their publisher and investors that demand you to gain a minimal revenue that's a ridicolous number... who are you going to aim your game at?
Are you going to invest your money and development time into that small % of older playerbase who liked challenging, long games, and looked at graphic details and coherency as prime successes, or at the younger, way more numerous playerbase who likes casual approaches, doesn't exactly care of graphical artifacts and is guaranteed to be easy to make happy by just making a fun story with typical stereotypes?
I sure know the answer there, and who am I to blame them?
If anything, I am happy that despite the fact that the AAA design is moving more and more toward the casualization of gameplay rather than longevity and details, most of them (expecially in Japan as I believe it's a cultural thing for them, and yes this includes Pokemon) still do their best to include deep thinking moments and address real life situations.
That said, as I said in the premise, if you or the others think this derails the topic, I am glad to provide further details via DM if you prefer and want.
Last edited:
Maybe not "annoying" but definitely "confusing":
Why are they treating "Leaf" and "Green*" as separate characters?
Like this isnt a Lyra/Kris situation, where Lyra is just the replacement for Kris and both are actualyl still distinct from each other, these are so obviously the same character adjusted for differing art styles.
They're even doing the same "holding pokeball behind their back" pose with the same bag slung over the same shoulder. And inversely colored shirt.
And its like okay, maybe it was just a retcon, right? To bring her in line with Red & Blue now that she's actually in the games. Sort of like how "Gold" became "Ethan"**
But no!
Leaf got new merch and is referred to as "Leaf" explicitly. And she got into Masters well after Let's Go as "Leaf". Meanwhile Green got a TCG card labeling her as Green ("Green's Exploration")
It's very silly.
*Yes yes she's Blue in Japan. It is kind of funny how it aligned though, with the whole "Leaf Green" thing
**Though it is goofy how Gold got an updated name to go with modern conventions but Silver's still Silver.
e: As I was typing this out the other thread went on the same tirade. Love the synergy
Why are they treating "Leaf" and "Green*" as separate characters?
Like this isnt a Lyra/Kris situation, where Lyra is just the replacement for Kris and both are actualyl still distinct from each other, these are so obviously the same character adjusted for differing art styles.
They're even doing the same "holding pokeball behind their back" pose with the same bag slung over the same shoulder. And inversely colored shirt.
And its like okay, maybe it was just a retcon, right? To bring her in line with Red & Blue now that she's actually in the games. Sort of like how "Gold" became "Ethan"**
But no!
Leaf got new merch and is referred to as "Leaf" explicitly. And she got into Masters well after Let's Go as "Leaf". Meanwhile Green got a TCG card labeling her as Green ("Green's Exploration")
It's very silly.
*Yes yes she's Blue in Japan. It is kind of funny how it aligned though, with the whole "Leaf Green" thing
**Though it is goofy how Gold got an updated name to go with modern conventions but Silver's still Silver.
e: As I was typing this out the other thread went on the same tirade. Love the synergy