I don’t know if this is an unpopular opinion or not, and thus doesn’t belong here, but I’m gonna post it here anyway. Before I start, I going to provide some background info. Ever since XY, I play Pokémon for PvP, specifically cartridge PvP. Regardless of one’s thoughts on XY, ORAS, SM, and USM, I have put over 900 Hrs in each, thanks to PvP regardless of my personal feelings towards the game- I didn’t like USM, but I put so much hours in. I have not done the same for SwSh. I’ve been thinking about why, and I finally found an answer: Sword and Shield have some of the worst multiplayer in the entire series. To explain why I feel that way, I’ve split this post into several parts.
Dynamax: I’ll be blunt: I hate this mechanic. As someone who plays VGC, BSS, and Smogon metagames, it’s very clear that it was clearly designed for Doubles to little to no regard with Singles. But even in VGC, I think it’s a broken mechanic. Very often I find myself in situations where I think I’m safe only for a surprise Dynamax to happen and I’m suddenly at a disadvantage. One battle I remember having was my Galarian Zapdos and Rotom against an Incineroar and Stakataka. I decided to go straight for a Close Combat on Incineroar and not Dynamax because Stakataka is most likely going for a Trick Room and Zapdos would be prone to be knocked out due to being slower. Instead my opponent Dynamaxes, and knocks Zapdos back with Max Steelspike. Now my opponent at + 1 with his Stakataka, and he sends in Rillaboom against my Excadrill and Tyranitar. Excadrill could Dynamax and trying going for Max Quake, but Stakataka would easily survive and doing massive damage with Max Flare. Rillaboom could also huge damage and use priority with Grassy Terrian boosted Grassy Glide. I ended losing that fight because I didn’t have the stat boosts to take on my opponent by the time I dynamaxed. A lot of players say Dynamax is balanced in VGC because Protect is everywhere and you can mitigate the damage using protect. But I disagree. Even if you use Protect, you are still taking damage, and you are not denying the secondary effects. I remember playing around with an Aurorus + Arctozolt hail core and one issue is Metagross. Metagross will almost certainly Dynamax in that scenario, and even if I protect, Metagross will gain defense boosts so much to the point that. Even if I do stall it out ( which I won’t with this this pairing without losing at least one of my Pokémon ) and by the time I send out my next Pokémon, Metagross already has 3 Defense Boosts. And why didn’t I dynamax there? Well, in that scenario, Dynamaxing wasn’t going to do me any favors, since Aurorus loses 1V1 against Metagross and Arctozolt’s damage is actually weaker with Dynamax and stil wouldn’t beat Metagross 1V1. And that’s not also how easy it is to prop a Weakness Policy when Dynamaxed- In general, I find it strange an item is not required for Dynamax because Masuda explicitly said the reason why Mega Stones were a thing was to make sure you couldn’t use any held items in order to prevent the Pokémon from being too strong. Not sure where that philosophy went after that.
Y-Comm: This is legitimately the worst multiplayer system I have seen that it’s not even funny. For starters, what’s the point of stamps? With the exception of Raid Battles, stamps seem to serve no function other than cosmetics, but who actually pays attention to that? It’s just a clog of space. But’s that not the worst part. I’m guessing the whole point of stamps is to advertise that you are participating in activity, so there’s a technical activity but who has actually joined a communication feature just to join up with you? Well, that seems to be an intentional design, but problems arise when you try to run two different activities at the same time. The game will not let you. I would often use surprise trades to exchange my leftover breedjects away, only to see a raid. I go to join, but the game notes that I can’t advertise more than one stamp and I have to quit the surprise trade before I do the raid. And if I do that, the raid is often full by that time. Why can’t I do activities at the same time?But the main reason for my dislike is the fact that you have to use a link code in order to connect with people. This already got criticism in Let’s Go, so I have no clue why they brought it back here. Instead of using a FC to connect to one another, we have to use a LC to connect, which often means a good chance a matching with the wrong person. And that happened so many times, for both trades and battles. I’ve already said why it’s atrocious in another post, but I’ve spent 30 minutes trying to connect with someone when it comes to trades and battles, simply because I got the wrong person on the first attempt. This was especially worrisome for a VGC tourney I participated in, in which each round had a set timer and I almost miss the round 2 because of our delayed start. Never has trading and battling been so obnoxious in Pokémon.
Timer: They removed the Match time option in Let’s Go and replaced it with your time feature in those games, and those changes have travelled here. What makes your time so obnoxious is that each player has 20 minutes, like a chess timer, but unlike a chess timer, the time goes down even while animations of moves are playing, meaning if you use moves with long animations or dynamax you will have less time to complete battles. What’s worse, there’s an invisible timer that counts for match time that counts as well, and it often goes down before your time is finished. What’s the point if “your time” if doesn’t reach the bottom anyway? It really seems like this way because TPC despise Chansey and Blissey stalling strategies, but that shouldn’t cost the ability to play 6V6. Yes, 6V6 is next to impossible to do on cart thanks to the timer changes, and Joey from PokeAim MD has worked with other YouTubers like FSG and Cybertron to bring attention to the timer.
Raid Battles: Raid Battles are clunky and slow, and the AI is terrible. That’s a universal opinion. But the reason why I bring it up is because of the fact you are required to grind them in order to gain prizes like TRs and Exp. Candy. The barrier mechanic would be alright if it was a one time thing for a boss fight. But it isn’t. You have to do it multiple times to obtain the prizes, and when you do, the clukniness starts to really show. The barrier mechanic isn’t the only problem- consider the fact that the raid bosses get multiple moves and the fact that AI get really bad Pokémon and intelligence and it comes to hoping if the raid boss is stupid enough so you can defeat it before it KOES the team. And then there is the idea you can use players. Only if players want to join you that is! No seriously. I remember I was doing preparing for a online tourney and I needed a Mudsdale for a breeding project. I tried getting some people to play with me, but I couldn’t get anyone. In the end, I had to use the AI and it took me more than three tries to catch that Mudsdale. And then there’s Gigantamax Pokémon. I think Gigantamax is handled very poorly overall. For straters, it not even that different from Dynamax- just a difference Max Move mechanically while and a different appearance. And obtaining it is an absolute nightmare. The game never tells you where to go find Gigantamax, and the only way to obtain it is from very specific dens from the rare pool. It seems that this was intentionally designed to be used through the Wild Area News, which is another criticism I have with Max Raid Battles: They seem to be strongly promoting the use of multiplayer to use them. Here’s the problem: You have to pay for online play now. This isn’t a problem with GF but Nintendo, but GF seems to have taken adavantage with that by designing the wild area events distributing Gigantamax and having raid battles have AI that are so dumb that it makes you have to use human controlled characters to win. If you don’t have Switch Online, you are out of luck and are already at a disadvantage. Kirby: Star Allies also features AI controlled allies that can defeat bosses with little to no help from the player to the point, that I strive to keep them alive for as long as possible when playing that game. There’s no reason why SwSh can’t do the same. And while Dynamax Adventures are a lot better since you don’t have to do barriers, the catch limit of one legendary is just dumb . If TPC is going to insist on making a GS cup a thing, then they can at least make obtaining and distributing Legendaries easier. The Dynamax Adventures were a perfect opportunity for this, since multiple legendary Pokémon of same species could be encountered, but no for the sake of tradition, only one per save file. It’s really a shame because Pokémon like Palkia or Thundurus have multiple sets and you can’t catch multiple even though this would be a perfect opportunity
Before I go onto the next to the point, let’s address something positive: While the raids are clunky, you can at least obtain Version Exclusive Pokémon through them, and they make Dex completion easier thanks to obtaining most evolved forms through the raids.
Season Changes: The sudden rule set changes for VGC and BSS makes it hard to focus on a meta games and develop new strategies and watch the game evolve. One of the best things about VGC and BSS is that you got to see a meta game evolve without any kind of bans or clauses ( Not saying I disagree with Smogon banning anything ). One of my favorite archetypes of Gen 7 BSS was a Slush Rush core of Aloan Ninetales + Alolan Sandslash + Mega Gyarados that could easily beat cores like Mega Salamence + Hippowdown + Aegislash or Choice Scarf Tapu Lele and Mimikyu. I remember the times where I used to ladder to 1780s with that core and those are some of my favorite moments. There were also tactics like Moody and Minimize that you could use that you can’t use in either Smogon or VGC. Now with these sudden rule changes, it’s so hard to focus on one meta game and develop strategies around it. After playing a few months and finally have built a team that works, you suddenly get the notification that they are switching to GS cup for the next month. This was after a few months after they released Crown Tundra, which is just roughly two months after they announced the top 12 Pokémon are being banned, which was also two months after the Isle of Armor was launched. As you can see, it very hard to focus on a meta game when it changes so quickly. Add insult to injury, a similar practice happened in Gen 6 and 7 when they had special ladders to incorporate unique rules that were separate from the primary ladders. I’m guessing they got rid of it Gen 8 because no one participated in it as much, but if they were going to incorporate special rules on the main ladder then they should have kept the special ladder to ensure those who wanted to focus standard metagames could.
Pokémon Home: I’ve already addressed why Pokémon Home is a terrible and a complete scam in an unpopular opinion post, but I’ll address some points again. Despite being a free version, free is severely limited by allowing only 30 Pokémon for the entire storage, and it terms of Data, Google Drive gives you more storage than Home does for free. The GTS has been placed to monetize it, not helped by the fact that you only have up 3% of the entire National Dex to work with at a time for the basic version, which makes trading very difficult. Not to mention that PokeTransfer is locked behind a 16$ paywall and another 5$ paywall, so effectively 21$ just to transfer mere kilobytes of data, which is more than Switch Online. As someone who pays for Switch Online and couldn’t get any job because of COVID, that way too much money for an online experience. It sucks seeing how scummy TPC and GF have become with transferring as of recent.
National Dex: Lastly, I’ve been playing a lot of National Dex Monotype recently, and it made me realize how much I miss the National Dex. I miss Z-Moves, Mega Lopunny, Mega Altaria, Mega Ampharos, Mega Banette, Greninja, Vivillon, Sunflora, Mismagius, and Glameow to name a few. And while we did the majority back with the DLC, Kanto got a huge portion of it Dex back while the other regions did not get as much, as for the Crown Tundra, all the Psuedo-Legendaries and Legendary Pokémon returned, as well as most fossil Pokémon. If Dexit is a norm, then Pokémon who are either Legendaries, Psuedos, or just marketable will get more priority over Pokémon like Glameow and Sunfora, meaning it might take year for them to return in a game just because they are not popular.
In the end, I really do feel burned on SwSh and it might be last my cartridge Pokémon game as a result. I had always felt that the series had been stagnating ever since Gen 6 and competitive play has been my main reason to keep going further. Now with dwindling interest in cartridge formats,I don’t see much point in purchasing cartridge games. I have been Smogon metagames and have tried LC, Ubers, and 1V1 much more recently. But I don’t need a cartridge game to play Smogon metagames. It saddens me to say that Shield might be my last cartridge game. As for BDSP and Legenda Arceus, I’ll have to wait for reviews. Right now BDSP literally looks like remaster than a remake, with them keeping even the text box and Union room the same as the originals. ORAS for reference, did not have the link room. I was hoping for updated character designs, but based on what we’ve seen now, I’m not betting my money on it. As for Legends Arceus, It looks promising but I still need reviews before purchasing it.
Dynamax: I’ll be blunt: I hate this mechanic. As someone who plays VGC, BSS, and Smogon metagames, it’s very clear that it was clearly designed for Doubles to little to no regard with Singles. But even in VGC, I think it’s a broken mechanic. Very often I find myself in situations where I think I’m safe only for a surprise Dynamax to happen and I’m suddenly at a disadvantage. One battle I remember having was my Galarian Zapdos and Rotom against an Incineroar and Stakataka. I decided to go straight for a Close Combat on Incineroar and not Dynamax because Stakataka is most likely going for a Trick Room and Zapdos would be prone to be knocked out due to being slower. Instead my opponent Dynamaxes, and knocks Zapdos back with Max Steelspike. Now my opponent at + 1 with his Stakataka, and he sends in Rillaboom against my Excadrill and Tyranitar. Excadrill could Dynamax and trying going for Max Quake, but Stakataka would easily survive and doing massive damage with Max Flare. Rillaboom could also huge damage and use priority with Grassy Terrian boosted Grassy Glide. I ended losing that fight because I didn’t have the stat boosts to take on my opponent by the time I dynamaxed. A lot of players say Dynamax is balanced in VGC because Protect is everywhere and you can mitigate the damage using protect. But I disagree. Even if you use Protect, you are still taking damage, and you are not denying the secondary effects. I remember playing around with an Aurorus + Arctozolt hail core and one issue is Metagross. Metagross will almost certainly Dynamax in that scenario, and even if I protect, Metagross will gain defense boosts so much to the point that. Even if I do stall it out ( which I won’t with this this pairing without losing at least one of my Pokémon ) and by the time I send out my next Pokémon, Metagross already has 3 Defense Boosts. And why didn’t I dynamax there? Well, in that scenario, Dynamaxing wasn’t going to do me any favors, since Aurorus loses 1V1 against Metagross and Arctozolt’s damage is actually weaker with Dynamax and stil wouldn’t beat Metagross 1V1. And that’s not also how easy it is to prop a Weakness Policy when Dynamaxed- In general, I find it strange an item is not required for Dynamax because Masuda explicitly said the reason why Mega Stones were a thing was to make sure you couldn’t use any held items in order to prevent the Pokémon from being too strong. Not sure where that philosophy went after that.
Y-Comm: This is legitimately the worst multiplayer system I have seen that it’s not even funny. For starters, what’s the point of stamps? With the exception of Raid Battles, stamps seem to serve no function other than cosmetics, but who actually pays attention to that? It’s just a clog of space. But’s that not the worst part. I’m guessing the whole point of stamps is to advertise that you are participating in activity, so there’s a technical activity but who has actually joined a communication feature just to join up with you? Well, that seems to be an intentional design, but problems arise when you try to run two different activities at the same time. The game will not let you. I would often use surprise trades to exchange my leftover breedjects away, only to see a raid. I go to join, but the game notes that I can’t advertise more than one stamp and I have to quit the surprise trade before I do the raid. And if I do that, the raid is often full by that time. Why can’t I do activities at the same time?But the main reason for my dislike is the fact that you have to use a link code in order to connect with people. This already got criticism in Let’s Go, so I have no clue why they brought it back here. Instead of using a FC to connect to one another, we have to use a LC to connect, which often means a good chance a matching with the wrong person. And that happened so many times, for both trades and battles. I’ve already said why it’s atrocious in another post, but I’ve spent 30 minutes trying to connect with someone when it comes to trades and battles, simply because I got the wrong person on the first attempt. This was especially worrisome for a VGC tourney I participated in, in which each round had a set timer and I almost miss the round 2 because of our delayed start. Never has trading and battling been so obnoxious in Pokémon.
Timer: They removed the Match time option in Let’s Go and replaced it with your time feature in those games, and those changes have travelled here. What makes your time so obnoxious is that each player has 20 minutes, like a chess timer, but unlike a chess timer, the time goes down even while animations of moves are playing, meaning if you use moves with long animations or dynamax you will have less time to complete battles. What’s worse, there’s an invisible timer that counts for match time that counts as well, and it often goes down before your time is finished. What’s the point if “your time” if doesn’t reach the bottom anyway? It really seems like this way because TPC despise Chansey and Blissey stalling strategies, but that shouldn’t cost the ability to play 6V6. Yes, 6V6 is next to impossible to do on cart thanks to the timer changes, and Joey from PokeAim MD has worked with other YouTubers like FSG and Cybertron to bring attention to the timer.
Raid Battles: Raid Battles are clunky and slow, and the AI is terrible. That’s a universal opinion. But the reason why I bring it up is because of the fact you are required to grind them in order to gain prizes like TRs and Exp. Candy. The barrier mechanic would be alright if it was a one time thing for a boss fight. But it isn’t. You have to do it multiple times to obtain the prizes, and when you do, the clukniness starts to really show. The barrier mechanic isn’t the only problem- consider the fact that the raid bosses get multiple moves and the fact that AI get really bad Pokémon and intelligence and it comes to hoping if the raid boss is stupid enough so you can defeat it before it KOES the team. And then there is the idea you can use players. Only if players want to join you that is! No seriously. I remember I was doing preparing for a online tourney and I needed a Mudsdale for a breeding project. I tried getting some people to play with me, but I couldn’t get anyone. In the end, I had to use the AI and it took me more than three tries to catch that Mudsdale. And then there’s Gigantamax Pokémon. I think Gigantamax is handled very poorly overall. For straters, it not even that different from Dynamax- just a difference Max Move mechanically while and a different appearance. And obtaining it is an absolute nightmare. The game never tells you where to go find Gigantamax, and the only way to obtain it is from very specific dens from the rare pool. It seems that this was intentionally designed to be used through the Wild Area News, which is another criticism I have with Max Raid Battles: They seem to be strongly promoting the use of multiplayer to use them. Here’s the problem: You have to pay for online play now. This isn’t a problem with GF but Nintendo, but GF seems to have taken adavantage with that by designing the wild area events distributing Gigantamax and having raid battles have AI that are so dumb that it makes you have to use human controlled characters to win. If you don’t have Switch Online, you are out of luck and are already at a disadvantage. Kirby: Star Allies also features AI controlled allies that can defeat bosses with little to no help from the player to the point, that I strive to keep them alive for as long as possible when playing that game. There’s no reason why SwSh can’t do the same. And while Dynamax Adventures are a lot better since you don’t have to do barriers, the catch limit of one legendary is just dumb . If TPC is going to insist on making a GS cup a thing, then they can at least make obtaining and distributing Legendaries easier. The Dynamax Adventures were a perfect opportunity for this, since multiple legendary Pokémon of same species could be encountered, but no for the sake of tradition, only one per save file. It’s really a shame because Pokémon like Palkia or Thundurus have multiple sets and you can’t catch multiple even though this would be a perfect opportunity
Before I go onto the next to the point, let’s address something positive: While the raids are clunky, you can at least obtain Version Exclusive Pokémon through them, and they make Dex completion easier thanks to obtaining most evolved forms through the raids.
Season Changes: The sudden rule set changes for VGC and BSS makes it hard to focus on a meta games and develop new strategies and watch the game evolve. One of the best things about VGC and BSS is that you got to see a meta game evolve without any kind of bans or clauses ( Not saying I disagree with Smogon banning anything ). One of my favorite archetypes of Gen 7 BSS was a Slush Rush core of Aloan Ninetales + Alolan Sandslash + Mega Gyarados that could easily beat cores like Mega Salamence + Hippowdown + Aegislash or Choice Scarf Tapu Lele and Mimikyu. I remember the times where I used to ladder to 1780s with that core and those are some of my favorite moments. There were also tactics like Moody and Minimize that you could use that you can’t use in either Smogon or VGC. Now with these sudden rule changes, it’s so hard to focus on one meta game and develop strategies around it. After playing a few months and finally have built a team that works, you suddenly get the notification that they are switching to GS cup for the next month. This was after a few months after they released Crown Tundra, which is just roughly two months after they announced the top 12 Pokémon are being banned, which was also two months after the Isle of Armor was launched. As you can see, it very hard to focus on a meta game when it changes so quickly. Add insult to injury, a similar practice happened in Gen 6 and 7 when they had special ladders to incorporate unique rules that were separate from the primary ladders. I’m guessing they got rid of it Gen 8 because no one participated in it as much, but if they were going to incorporate special rules on the main ladder then they should have kept the special ladder to ensure those who wanted to focus standard metagames could.
Pokémon Home: I’ve already addressed why Pokémon Home is a terrible and a complete scam in an unpopular opinion post, but I’ll address some points again. Despite being a free version, free is severely limited by allowing only 30 Pokémon for the entire storage, and it terms of Data, Google Drive gives you more storage than Home does for free. The GTS has been placed to monetize it, not helped by the fact that you only have up 3% of the entire National Dex to work with at a time for the basic version, which makes trading very difficult. Not to mention that PokeTransfer is locked behind a 16$ paywall and another 5$ paywall, so effectively 21$ just to transfer mere kilobytes of data, which is more than Switch Online. As someone who pays for Switch Online and couldn’t get any job because of COVID, that way too much money for an online experience. It sucks seeing how scummy TPC and GF have become with transferring as of recent.
National Dex: Lastly, I’ve been playing a lot of National Dex Monotype recently, and it made me realize how much I miss the National Dex. I miss Z-Moves, Mega Lopunny, Mega Altaria, Mega Ampharos, Mega Banette, Greninja, Vivillon, Sunflora, Mismagius, and Glameow to name a few. And while we did the majority back with the DLC, Kanto got a huge portion of it Dex back while the other regions did not get as much, as for the Crown Tundra, all the Psuedo-Legendaries and Legendary Pokémon returned, as well as most fossil Pokémon. If Dexit is a norm, then Pokémon who are either Legendaries, Psuedos, or just marketable will get more priority over Pokémon like Glameow and Sunfora, meaning it might take year for them to return in a game just because they are not popular.
In the end, I really do feel burned on SwSh and it might be last my cartridge Pokémon game as a result. I had always felt that the series had been stagnating ever since Gen 6 and competitive play has been my main reason to keep going further. Now with dwindling interest in cartridge formats,I don’t see much point in purchasing cartridge games. I have been Smogon metagames and have tried LC, Ubers, and 1V1 much more recently. But I don’t need a cartridge game to play Smogon metagames. It saddens me to say that Shield might be my last cartridge game. As for BDSP and Legenda Arceus, I’ll have to wait for reviews. Right now BDSP literally looks like remaster than a remake, with them keeping even the text box and Union room the same as the originals. ORAS for reference, did not have the link room. I was hoping for updated character designs, but based on what we’ve seen now, I’m not betting my money on it. As for Legends Arceus, It looks promising but I still need reviews before purchasing it.
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