Sorry to double post but here are my impressions of the BDSP version 1.2 update that came out a few hours ago and added a bit more online functionality.
The Jubilife TV ranking room is a thing, but it doesn't seem to be all there yet from what I could tell. I could not actually see anyone else's rankings even on the global modes, so for now it just lets you see your own ranks. They could have at least used your friends list to populate it. The left machine has pokemon defeated, caught, hatched, and fished. The middle has battle tower master streaks/average wins and the right has contest star of the show count, percentage, and ribbons collected. I was confused at first because pre-patch they had one man blocking the middle machine and the others just didn't do anything, but they are all separate records. I thought I might need to interact with people to get their records since it doesn't even connect to the internet and there's an option to delete records, but nothing showed up after fighting random strangers. I feel like when this actually works it will just be covered by hackers if it is completely public. Shame that groups are still local only.
The union room definitely has more than 8 players allowed despite what the
patch notes say, which will make it pretty convenient to find someone who you want to play with. I personally saw 14 and assume the maximum is 16. I tried the capsule decoration feature. It took me to a black screen with some beeping and a message of stickers being attached and that was it. I was not able to choose a capsule to send or even look at anything. When I left the room I found that I had a very basic capsule added to my collection, assuming that it came from that experience. Overall a very disappointing feature and battles remain the only way to actually show capsules. Now what I was personally expecting was being able to see a menu with a list of stickers like the ingame showcases above, and being able to choose to copy it into one of my slots.
The Colosseum is actually pretty alright for a dedicated battle mode, and it is the first classic Colosseum with full online support and random matchmaking. You can play singles, doubles, and multis. It has the same classic pre battle room where you walk on squares before the battle.
I think the person who gets onto the blue or first square decides who gets to decide the rules. They use the same UI that the contest matchmaking uses but you only see it after you get in your overworld places. I noticed that it says Team A1 and B1 as placeholders in the loading screen for a second.
The options I had were 1-6/3/6 for number of pokemon, set all to lv50/up to lv50/no restrictions, and allow/disallow various settings. Overall it gives slightly more freedom than the fixed Union Room rules but you are still bound by the invisible timer. I played 2 matches of the BSS pick 3/level 50/none x3 metagame against Japanese players and lost pretty hard.
EDIT: Here is how the battles went down, with my ingame teams. My first match was against Volt Switch/Reflect Ampharos, Substitute Lucario, and EQ Tyranitar and I actually managed to knock Tyranitar out. In the next I led Empoleon vs Qwilfish, switched to Luxray and got Aqua Tailed, then they switched to Electivire to Motor Drive and swept me with Earthquake and Thunder Punch. Also notably nicknames are still shown in these battles though there is an option in the options menu for turning them off.
A couple lows that I noticed was that the battles just start with sending out pokemon with no intro transition at all or message saying "you are challenged by TRAINER X". You cannot select battle music or any of the great arenas other than the union room aesthetic. Also it still plays the winning music when you lose and it doesn't even show how many pokemon you had left alive like the originals.
Even though this patch addressed some mentioned missing features, there's still some left to be added.
- No Global Wonder Station. I can only assume they are saving this for the HOME patch or whatever future updates there may be, but it's still a blatantly inaccessible part of the world that is specifically mentioned in the town map. I will be surprised if this is even used that much if you have to physically go to Jubilife every time unless they bundle it into the Y menu later.
Mid-post EDIT: So this isn't new 1.2.0 news but the GWS and its functionality has existed apparently. I saw some twitter replies mentioning that the GWS is accessible and I found a few videos on it, one in particular showing that the entrance exists in 1.0.0 and can be glitched past the NPC and walked into, with the GWS actually working when saving and loading on 1.1.3 and surprisingly allowing you to access the globe menu when accessed the first time even without NSO. You also can't set your birthday in BDSP currently because the NPC that does it is behind the GWS. It seems like the goal is to cover all the points in the world with each trade. Who knows when it will be unlocked, but it's a shame that it's so late when the big new thing about Gen 4 was wifi and internet connectivity around the world in the first place.
- No underground interactions. Now this was never promised and I admit it will probably never happen, but the trainer's guide implied you could talk to other players for Spiritomb, and this Eterna NPC mentions being able to "Great" Secret Bases, which is probably just a rewrite around traps or flags, but it's a reference to a new feature that doesn't even exist.
EDIT:
https://www.pokemon.co.jp/info/2022/02/220222_gm01.html
The Japanese patch notes clarify it is 8 local and 16 online players in the Union Room and that the GWS/GMStation will be added in the future.
Also the guy blocking the middle machine was actually there in the originals to stop you from looking at Battle Tower records.