Sword & Shield **Official news only** DLC Crown Tundra 22nd October

[Sirya]

I ask you all, do anyone believe, truly believe, that this decission to cut down half the Pokémon to balance the game is leading us anywhere? They haven't balanced the games like never, never in their history. 2 changes here and there to some ability and attack, so few that you can count them easily, and that's all. We've never had a serious system of patches changing BSTs, Abilities, Attacks... Nothing, like MtG or any other competitive game (which is part of the problem, Pokémon is a casual game with competitive options).

Do you really, really think, Game Freak will take let's say... 400 Pokémon in Galar, and will check every one to change all the aspects they deemed necessary to balance the game and make it more fun? Do you see them doing that? Or do you believe that, even withh those 400 Pokémon, 40 will be good, 360 will be filler and 3 of those 40 will be broken and that's all, so we will play with effectively a pool of 20-30 Pokémon, like we always have, and thus the changes will mean nothing because we'll end on the same place?

I believe the second.

 

[nightwolf]

I'm not the person you are adressing but having less options available would definitely hurt my experience.


Unless you mean those mini sprites in menus, Game Freak hasn't actually used sprites since XY.
They switched to future-proof HD models with the release of XY in 2013. The size of those future-proof HD models is literally the reason why Gen VI and VII battles had ridiculous frame drops. Those models are done. Adjust for the lighting and maybe brush up a few textures here or there.


Why would Dynamaxing affect the file size unless Game Freak wips out their programming fail magic again? They are literally just scaled models that already exist in the game.


I can easily see SS being an enormous file size because of Game Freak's incompetence. Content has barely anything to with that.

1. Cool story, don't care because you're only one person. Just like I won't be affected by the limit because I have never been into the whole collct all the pokemon out there.
2. I meant the models, and how would dynamax not effect file size? You have to have over 800 ginormous models so each pokemon can be dynamaxed. That's over 1600 models just for pokemon. Incompetence or not, thats going to be a large file size.

I ask you all, do anyone believe, truly believe, that this decission to cut down half the Pokémon to balance the game is leading us anywhere? They haven't balanced the games like never, never in their history. 2 changes here and there to some ability and attack, so few that you can count them easily, and that's all. We've never had a serious system of patches changing BSTs, Abilities, Attacks... Nothing, like MtG or any other competitive game (which is part of the problem, Pokémon is a casual game with competitive options).

Do you really, really think, Game Freak will take let's say... 400 Pokémon in Galar, and will check every one to change all the aspects they deemed necessary to balance the game and make it more fun? Do you see them doing that? Or do you believe that, even withh those 400 Pokémon, 40 will be good, 360 will be filler and 3 of those 40 will be broken and that's all, so we will play with effectively a pool of 20-30 Pokémon, like we always have, and thus the changes will mean nothing because we'll end on the same place?

I believe the second.

You said that they never balance the game, and then admit that they change the power of moves and abilities? Which us it? Do they not balance the game or do they? You can't have it both ways. And for the record, nerfing dark void, mega khan, and mega mence in gen 7 means that you're factually wrong.

 

[BlackoutSLM]

Why are people saying that removing entire evolutionary families is good for competitive?
Game Freak only cares about VGC and they can restrict the mons you use without removing them from the game.
They've literally done so for these past years.

Most people play on Showdown anyways, wich sets the boundaries of the meta as the community deems necessary.

And i call bullshit on the whole models/filesize thing. I guess we'll see the real size of the rom when it's datamined.
I bet it will be barely double the filesize of USUM.

 

[Zé Capáu]

So umm, will Gen 8 OU just forever be Galar only mons, will smogon say fuck it and just allow everything or will we get like an unnoficial "unrestricted" ladder?

Uber is almost "unrestricted", so they might add that rule to it.

 

[Codraroll]

My assessment of value will be based on replay value- how many times can I replay it and have a fresh and unique experience. The wild area alone (and info that you can go anywhere in it, but not catch too powerful Pokémon) heavily hints towards a more non-linear and varied play through experience. If the game delivers on this, I’ll gladly say it was worth (temporarily) losing 400 mons I wouldn’t have ever used in the game anyways (not meaningful content to me).

Basically, post game isn’t my priority, main game variety is.

It seems like your play style is somewhat like mine, in that I rarely spend time in postgame facilities or with competitive battling. I mainly play the Pokémon games to experience the trainer's journey, from the humble beginnings with only the starter to the Hall of Fame with a diverse and carefully assembled team. The way in between is the fun part, and there are endless possibilities for what your team will be like and what you do with it. Exploring these possibilities, pitting different creatures against the many in-game challenges, that's the fun part of Pokémon for me.

But occasionally, I want to try some other Pokémon in my playthroughs than the ones the games place in my path. For instance, I love Ice-types, but decent Ice-types are rarely available until after the sixth Gym or so, so to use them in-game I trade over some bred ones from another game. And sometimes I look over the National Dex and think "Wouldn't it be fun to use this Pokémon in my next playthrough?" Currently, I'm going through Ultra Moon using Pokémon such as Tangela, Yamask and Combee, neither of which are native to Gen VII. But they are compatible with the games, so I could easily get them through online trade.

As I recently said in another thread, some of the Pokémon I use have movesets that haven't been expanded on for many years (Klink and Vanillite being major offenders), and it's evident the game scripters haven't given them much of a thought since their movesets and stats were laid out in Gen V. But they have models and animations, and their technical implementation is flawless. With only a minimum of care from the designers, these Pokémon still work perfectly in the games, and I can use them without problems.


Sword and Shield will not let me have that same freedom in my casual play. If, say, Heracross isn't in the Galar Dex, I will never be able take it with me on my Galar adventure, no matter how many Heracross I transfer over to Home. I can't pick and choose freely from my previous-gen favourites anymore, but have to cross-check with the Galar Dex to see if I can play with it in glorious Switch graphics. That feeling of restriction will place a bitter taste in my mouth, even though I may fully be able to assemble many fun teams using only Galar Dex Pokémon. But it's exceedingly unlikely that the Galar Dex will have all the Pokémon I ever want to use in-game again. That unlimited pick-and-choose freedom I had in USUM will be no more. Sure, there are plenty of Pokémon I probably never would have used for in-game runs even if I could, but knowing that my options are restricted will be a negative experience in itself. Halving the number of available Pokémon will take away from the in-game variety we used to have.

 

[Zé Capáu]

I didn't show more than 2 what? Those elements are all part of Pokémon. I care about competitive, but I also care about in-game content. If my only interest were the competitive scene I wouldn't buy the games, i'd just wait and play on Showdown. I think the error here may be from my part, for I am trying to understand someone who 10 post ago said that complaining about GF erasing hundreds of Pokémon is just an act of "showing off". But I did my best, trust me I did even tho the barrier language makes things difficult.

Let's put this simple: if you had like 12 gyms, a great yet long story and radiant quests or a larger post-game than what regularly is but without 400 pokémon. Would it be less content? if not, how significant would the 400 mon loss be for single player?

 

[Nelson Tangela]

1. Cool story, don't care because you're only one person. Just like I won't be affected by the limit because I have never been into the whole collct all the pokemon out there.
2. I meant the models, and how would dynamax not effect file size? You have to have over 800 ginormous models so each pokemon can be dynamaxed. That's over 1600 models just for pokemon. Incompetence or not, thats going to be a large file size.

Well, I guess that point is over when your whole argument is "I don't care so why would I care that you care about something that you care about?". Whatever.

Why would a competent developer include multiple identical models at different sizes into the code if he could just include it once and then display it at whatever scaled sizes he wants wherever he wants with a few lines of code? That's some Game Freak tier solution, but a horrible argument for cutting content to save file size.

 

[xfix]

If you transfer everything to Home, you won't need bank anymore. At least not for more than one month at a time when you want to do some more transferring.

But regardless, I think this is misleading. Game prices are stupidly cheap nowadays. Costs of making games have been going up year after year, the amount of content in games has been going up ridiculously. Yet the prices have barely budged. Not even for inflation.

Pokemon Red Version cost 30 bucks in '98. That's the equivalent of about $47 today. Pokemon Ultra Sun cost $40 today. That's cheaper than Red, despite Red being an 11 MB glitchfest and Ultra Sun being a refined 3.6 GB game with far higher production values.

The switch to the Switch and the $60 price tag that comes with it is probably the first time on the series history that games got more expensive, not less, and even then I doubt it is nearly as much of a cost per unit value as the oldest games.

Gamers are getting a steal on games today (and unfortunately are turning the industry to a shithole of microtransactions in the process). The idea that we are somehow getting less for our money, simply because of the number of pokemon, and ignoring everything else, is already an argument that rings hollow to me. But add in the fact that games are dirt cheap compared to what they are worth makes any such argument over price kinda silly, imo.

I did some calculations here, making use of data from Nintendo's Investor Information site. While it doesn't provide the information I'm exactly interested in, I did some rough estimates (they are very rough). Pokemon Red/Green costed about 8 million dollars to produce (excluding marketing cost, which I don't feel like calculating), and Pokemon Sun/Moon costed about 22 million dollars to produce (again, excluding marketing cost).

Pokemon Red/Green/Blue ended up selling 31.38 million copies, with an average price of $40.50 ends up $1.9 billion revenue (after considering inflation, would be about $1.2 billion if I didn't). Of course, cartridges, taxes and sending the game to the shops costs a lot, so in practice it's more like $500 million, but still it's like 60x return.

Pokémon Sun/Moon ended up selling 16.13 million copies with an average price of $53.50 (yeah, not everywhere the games are cheap), making for $897 million revenue (more like $350 million, making for 15x return). The costs of selling a copy are lower due to digital distribution, although admittedly most people still play on cartridges.

The $60 price tag is not here because it's necessary, the games would be very profitable selling for $10 digital distribution only (even if the game would sell the same number of copies as with a higher price tag), rather it's here because they can have such a price tag, and investors want more money. Similarly, this isn't related to Pokemon, but microtransactions are here to stay as investors like money - the games would be profitable without those, but microtransactions sell so much that it would be crazy to not put those.

Also, this is a minor point, but Pokemon Red (Japanese) is a 1MB game, not 11MB game. The English translation is a 2MB game.

 

[Sirya]

Let's put this simple: if you had like 12 gyms, a great yet long story and a Sevii Islands-like post-game but without 400 pokémon. Would it be less content, if not, how significant would the 400 mon loss be for single player?

Let's put this even more simple: i we had like 12 gyms, a great yet long story and the Sevii Islands returning as Post-Game features, why wouldn't they give us all the Pokémon (aka content) we had before plus the new ones? Hardware limitations? No. Balancing issues? Lies. So, why?

That's sounds like the logical reassoning to me. Why would I choose between 400 Pokémon or content when I, as a consumer, should -and have every reason to- ask for the Pokémon and the content?

Sure you can cut 400 Pokémon and then give us the greatest editions ever made, with lots of features, both new and returning ones that make Sword and Shield a paradise. Well, I doubt this. Not only I doubt it, it's in the hypothetical realm. What isn't a theory is the objective fact about them erasing Pokémon from the game, and so I do my balance based on the real information we know. And surprise: it isn't possitive.

 

[Xucrute]

Alright, I think some people are missing the issue here, the problem isn't the incomplete dex but not being able to transfer some the Pokémon you caught in past games, if you guys have some minutes to scroll through some Trade Threads on the Wi-Fi forums, like Max. Optimizer's Cheap Thrills & Rare Pokémon Extravaganza or Christian's ★ The Pokémon Village ★ you'll see how much effort these guys put onto their Pokémon, and now you tell me all their hard work might be for nothing. I mean, I know some of you guys don't care about collecting mons and stuff, and that's fine, that's how you enjoy the game, but for some people having their cherished buds alongside them is what make this game make special and enjoyable.

 

[nightwolf]

Well, I guess that point is over when your whole argument is "I don't care so why would I care that you care about something that you care about?". Whatever.

Why would a competent developer include multiple identical models at different sizes into the code if he could just include it once and then display it at whatever scaled sizes he wants wherever he wants with a few lines of code? That's some Game Freak tier solution, but a horrible argument for cutting content to save file size.

Well, maybe because it's not just a simple case of the pokemon increasing in size on the field? Literally the trailer from last week shows the female trainer recalling her raichu for dynamax and then sending it out in dynamax form. Which tells me that there's two models at work here.

 

[Sirya]

2. I meant the models, and how would dynamax not effect file size? You have to have over 800 ginormous models so each pokemon can be dynamaxed. That's over 1600 models just for pokemon. Incompetence or not, thats going to be a large file size.

Dude you don't have 1600 models, which the Nintendo Switch can afford, by the way. You have 800 models and then reescalate them to the size you want to. That's how this things are done.

You said that they never balance the game, and then admit that they change the power of moves and abilities? Which us it? Do they not balance the game or do they? You can't have it both ways. And for the record, nerfing dark void, mega khan, and mega mence in gen 7 means that you're factually wrong.

I made myself pretty clear:

I ask you all, do anyone believe, truly believe, that this decission to cut down half the Pokémon to balance the game is leading us anywhere? They haven't balanced the games like never, never in their history. 2 changes here and there to some ability and attack, so few that you can count them easily, and that's all. We've never had a serious system of patches changing BSTs, Abilities, Attacks... Nothing, like MtG or any other competitive game (which is part of the problem, Pokémon is a casual game with competitive options).

Two changes.
Here
and
there.

Yup, Parental Bond, Mega Mence, Dark Void. Keep, keep sharing. I want to see that serious patch system with regular changes in everything that needed it, like you know, almost everything that has remained unchanged. Yet we've to believe game freak has follow a politic of updating the game to constantly balance it amongs the years.

Sure!

And somehow do you believe that now they'll take hundreds of Pokémon and will start to change things at a massive scale -something they have never done- to balance the game. Nope. You'll be playing with an established meta of OU 40 from which 2-3 will be broken and 300 Pokémon will be rendered useless, as always.

 

[BlizzardHero]

I did some calculations here, making use of data from Nintendo's Investor Information site. While it doesn't provide the information I'm exactly interested in, I did some rough estimates (they are very rough). Pokemon Red/Green costed about 8 million dollars to produce (excluding marketing cost, which I don't feel like calculating), and Pokemon Sun/Moon costed about 22 million dollars to produce (again, excluding marketing cost).

Pokemon Red/Green/Blue ended up selling 31.38 million copies, with an average price of $40.50 ends up $1.9 billion revenue. Of course, cartridges, taxes and sending the game to the shops costs a lot, so in practice it's more like $500 million, but still it's like 60x return.

Pokémon Sun/Moon ended up selling 16.13 million copies with an average price of $53.50 (yeah, not everywhere the games are cheap), making for $897 million revenue (more like $350 million, making for 15x return). The costs of selling a copy are lower due to digital distribution, although admittedly most people still play on cartridges.

The $60 price tag is not here because it's necessary, the games would be very profitable selling for $10 digital distribution only (even if the game would sell the same number of copies as with a higher price tag), rather it's here because they can have such a price tag, and investors want more money. Similarly, this isn't related to Pokemon, but microtransactions are here to stay as investors like money - the games would be profitable without those, but microtransactions sell so much that it would be crazy to not put those.

Also, this is a minor point, but Pokemon Red (Japanese) is a 1MB game, not 11MB game. The English translation is a 2MB game.

You also have to factor in hardware sales as well. Pokemon is a powerful console mover beacuse it has such high brand recognition. How much sales revenue is generated as people buy the newer consoles to exclusively play Pokemon?

I haven't purchased a Switch yet (nor am I planing on it now given how this gen is shaping up) but if I were to buy it would be as a result of Pokemon. I might like the Fire Emblem series, but I'm not going to buy a Switch to play Three Houses.

 

[Nelson Tangela]

Well, maybe because it's not just a simple case of the pokemon increasing in size on the field? Literally the trailer from last week shows the female trainer recalling her raichu for dynamax and then sending it out in dynamax form. Which tells me that there's two models at work here.

What you are saying is definitely something that I might see Game Freak doing (they have done shit like this before more than once), but that doesn't change the fact that your argument and Game Freak's decision to implement this into their game code is anything but stupid.
Just because it can be done, does not mean it should be done.

 

[GG Unit]

Let's put this simple: if you had like 12 gyms, a great yet long story and a Sevii Islands-like post-game but without 400 pokémon. Would it be less content, if not, how significant would the 400 mon loss be for single player?

This seems to be hopelessly naive, which should be obvious since you're referring to games that came out literally 15 years ago. There has been a pretty clear pattern of diminishing post-game content (coming up on 10 years since the last version with a Battle Frontier) and the whole "here's basically the same game we put out before with a stronger version of the box legendaries and some move tutors" schtick has gone through enough iterations to be getting old.

It's been disappointing in that way for a while, and the prospect of a main series Pokemon game on the Switch has consistently been used as the carrot at the end of the stick. For example, Sun and Moon got rid of triples and rotations and even double battles were pretty much unplayable for me on my regular 3DS due to the lag, and we were told that this was because Gamefreak was future-proofing the models so they'd be ready to go for the Switch. Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon were the laziest sequels of the entire series (so much that I didn't even buy a copy), and we were told that this is because Gamefreak was using their B team for those games and had the A team getting out ahead and working on Pokemon for the Switch. Of course, those games ended up being Let's Go, but people still found a way to justify that in terms of "well it's alright for them to get used to the Switch's capabilities first with a light, casual game and then take their time to do the real game."

Since then, what we've gotten is "oops, turns out you can't have all your Pokemon in this game even though we made the last couple games worse in order to have models/animations that ostensibly could could be more easily ported to the Switch" and the most-hyped features (aka the things that took enough time/resources that a bunch of Pokemon won't be available) are pandering to Pokemon Go players with the wild area and Dynamax, which appears to be a relatively shallow mechanic whose main purpose is to allow for PoGo-style raid battles. On top of that, the games are very clearly being pushed out in an unpolished form to be able to sell consoles over the holidays.

But even if this were the case that there were more of a story to the postgame, I'm sure most competitive players would rather have more Pokemon (more options for coming up with new strategies in PvP or the battle facility) than some little post-game quest in what is a kiddie RPG difficulty-wise. Most people are fine with just getting through the story without too much hassle before getting to the more interesting aspects rather than trying to turn Pokemon into a 'serious' RPG with adult themes.

 

[Scuba Diver]

I'm actually excited for a more restricted Pokedex (at least for a while). OU will be so dramatically different than Gen 7 in both function and form; it's going to be a blast having to think up new strategies and make teams without the same tired staples (Lando / Heatran/ Rotom etc). I understand people's frustration but it might be a breath of fresh air.

 

[BlizzardHero]

What you are saying is definitely something that I might see Game Freak doing (they have done shit like this before more than once), but that doesn't change the fact that your argument and Game Freak's decision to implement this into their game code is anything but stupid.
Just because it can be done, does not mean it should be done.

Do you know about Gen 7 with Totem Pokemon? Did they just scale up the models or did they stupidly just make additional models for the Pokemon?

 

[xfix]

You also have to factor in hardware sales as well. Pokemon is a powerful console mover beacuse it has such high brand recognition. How much sales revenue is generated as people buy the newer consoles to exclusively play Pokemon?

I haven't purchased a Switch yet (nor am I planing on it now given how this gen is shaping up) but if I were to buy it would be as a result of Pokemon. I might like the Fire Emblem series, but I'm not going to buy a Switch to play Three Houses.

Yes, that's true, but it doesn't affect the $40/$60 point I wanted to argue about. But yeah, you are welcome to consider revenues to be bigger than the values I provided because some people purchased a console purely to play a game, and Nintendo doesn't sell consoles at a loss.

 

[Nelson Tangela]

Do you know about Gen 7 with Totem Pokemon? Did they just scale up the models or did they stupidly just make additional models for the Pokemon?

The latter iirc.

Gen 7 has copies of the same identical Lillie model with textures and animations for literally every location she appears in.
Game Freak does not give a single fuck about file size.

 

[Codraroll]

Well, maybe because it's not just a simple case of the pokemon increasing in size on the field? Literally the trailer from last week shows the female trainer recalling her raichu for dynamax and then sending it out in dynamax form. Which tells me that there's two models at work here.

Not that Game Freak wouldn't do it such a stupid way (if I understood things correctly, in Gen VII all overworld locations have their own separate library defining all models used in them, effectively meaning that for instance, the game has a dozen identical, but separately stored Lillie models, one for each of her appearances), but I'm more suspecting that simple scaling of the same model is used here. The bit about recalling the Pokémon to the ball might be because it's a simpler transition to show, instead of the Pokémon growing in size and being moved behind its trainer. It requires only a stock animation and allows reuse of the "exit from Poké Ball" animation when the Pokémon reappears, instead of a custom "leap backwards while growing" animation for every Pokémon.

 

[BlizzardHero]

https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/bzr9hp
They'll delay Animal Crossing to produce a better game but not Pokemon?

 

[Nelson Tangela]

https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/bzr9hp
They'll delay Animal Crossing to produce a better game but not Pokemon?

There is an anime with TV schedules, movie releases, TCG releases, a metric shit ton of other merchandise and events like VGC and event Pokémon attached to the Pokémon video games. Animal Crossing might be popular, but the logistics of the franchise are faar from Pokémon's level...

 

[Zé Capáu]

This seems to be hopelessly naive, which should be obvious since you're referring to games that came out literally 15 years ago. There has been a pretty clear pattern of diminishing post-game content (coming up on 10 years since the last version with a Battle Frontier) and the whole "here's basically the same game we put out before with a stronger version of the box legendaries and some move tutors" schtick gets old.

Dayum! I previously said the post-game shallowness started in Gen5, but you had to pull an extra Gen before (that would trigger our fellow Sirya just sayin').

Let's put this even more simple: i we had like 12 gyms, a great yet long story and the Sevii Islands returning as Post-Game features, why wouldn't they give us all the Pokémon (aka content) we had before plus the new ones? Hardware limitations? No. Balancing issues? Lies. So, why?

That's sounds like the logical reassoning to me. Why would I choose between 400 Pokémon or content when I, as a consumer, should -and have every reason to- ask for the Pokémon and the content?

Sure you can cut 400 Pokémon and then give us the greatest editions ever made, with lots of features, both new and returning ones that make Sword and Shield a paradise. Well, I doubt this. Not only I doubt it, it's in the hypothetical realm. What isn't a theory is the objective fact about them erasing Pokémon from the game, and so I do my balance based on the real information we know. And surprise: it isn't possitive.

First, balancing issues indeed... as for now. VGC since ORAS got seemingly broken beyond repair, putting those broken things apart would indeed balance the game competitive-wise... unless GameFreak screws at it again and make the new pokémons as broken as the ones who they have excluded.

Second. Take a look at Pokémon GO. "Gotta Catch 'Em All!" combined with the nostalgic 151 pokémon on the pokédex on your phone was the hype that led near a half billion players to play it, but since Gen2 being introduced it started dying, as more pokémon start to get released and people start to lose patience to catch them all. Now imagine a patience of a console player to get all the ~1000 pokémon, here's a tip: none. Most people are typing out there #BringBackNationalDex but the hard truth is that none of them ever completed one since Gen4.

 

[Tmi489]

So umm, will Gen 8 OU just forever be Galar only mons, will smogon say fuck it and just allow everything or will we get like an unnoficial "unrestricted" ladder?

Gen 5 had Dream World (before all HA's were released) and Gen 7 had Pokebank so its safe to say all 'Mons will be available in a Smogon tier - even if its an OM

 

[Ivy]

Second. Take a look at Pokémon GO. "Gotta Catch 'Em All!" combined with the nostalgic 151 pokémon on the pokédex on your phone was the hype that led near a half billion players to play it, but since Gen2 being introduced it started dying, as more pokémon start to get released and people start to lose patience to catch them all. Now imagine a patience of a console player to get all the ~1000 pokémon, here's a tip: none. Most people are typing out there #BringBackNationalDex but the hard truth is that none of them never completed one since Gen4.

Alright, this is a false correlation lol. The decline of Go began long before Gen 2 was conceptualized, precipitated by stagnation of gym battles, burnout, and frustration at the lack of legendaries and Ditto. Gen 2 came all too late, although now the game's chugging along and recuperating decently with Gen 4 almost complete.