Hello Smogon. If you hear creaking and smell something funny, it's cause I'm an old, decrepit pokemon trainer rising from the grave to voice my dissent of this new change. I spent an absurd amount of my life breeding and raising goddamn Pokémon and I want to be able to bring them all to the next game. I can't keep this shit up. I understand the reasoning from a competitive standpoint, limiting the amount of pokemon in the game to provide balance would be fine as long as the others are still coded into the game or whatever and available in the future. If they are not, and are essentially "retired" or something that would suck. I worry some new pokemon will just be reimagined versions of those that are cut. The excuse that it's too much work to include them all doesn't sit well with me either. Fans should be worth the effort at this point.
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Sword & Shield **Official news only** DLC Crown Tundra 22nd October
- Thread starter DHR-107
- Start date
But what makes us so sure they will take away those items?
Gen 7 has a bunch of items from past events coded but never used.
Coded, yes; but not actually in the game. It would still be super dumb if they were still in the game's code, but that's not what concerns me: it won't be taking up space in the overworld or your bag.
Watch non-Landorus and no Ultra Beasts or Fairy Guardians get replaced by either new prevalent mons or the ones come back and starkly remind you that those removed Pokemon are only a symptom of an underlying problem. Dynamax already tells me that this problem ain't going away just because they removed some Pokemon we don't like.
I like Landorus-T, but you cannot tell me that mons like Ash-Gren, Tapu Lele, Magearna, and other overcentralizing mons are easily replaceable. The closest replacement to Gren in Gen 6 was Starmie and Starmie's current viability in Gen 7 should tell you that overcentralizing and unhealthy Pokemon do exist.
Yeah the irony of people saying stuff like that is that there's like 10 non-box legendaries that get almost immediately banned before Landorus now.
This is a bad take bro. We're 2 days away from the 5 month mark til launch, what you see in those gifs is what you get. They're more than likely in post production with bug fixes and localization going on right now.
A part of me is wondering what will happen with Gen IX at this point.
As was pointed out earlier, we've all come around to the idea then Dynamaxing is this gen's gimmick, and that it won't be present 3 years from now. A gimmick GF cut dozens, if not hundreds, of Pokemon out for. The fans accept it, GF had to do what it had to do to keep production of the game (and anime, and tcg, etc.) on schedule, and the games sell well. But what does GF do going forward? What if the Gen IX gimmick doesn't require so many labor intensive models or programming? Does GF add all those pokemon back in? Does GF add them all back in but prevent transfers from Home to keep the "balance" set in the last gen? And if it doesn't, and just keeps adding new Pokemon, what does GF do about the eventual bloat? Wait another 10 years and cull the Pokedex again? Allow only regional Pokedexes from now on, with some new Pokemon missing for a few games?
It's going to be a brave new world indeed.
As was pointed out earlier, we've all come around to the idea then Dynamaxing is this gen's gimmick, and that it won't be present 3 years from now. A gimmick GF cut dozens, if not hundreds, of Pokemon out for. The fans accept it, GF had to do what it had to do to keep production of the game (and anime, and tcg, etc.) on schedule, and the games sell well. But what does GF do going forward? What if the Gen IX gimmick doesn't require so many labor intensive models or programming? Does GF add all those pokemon back in? Does GF add them all back in but prevent transfers from Home to keep the "balance" set in the last gen? And if it doesn't, and just keeps adding new Pokemon, what does GF do about the eventual bloat? Wait another 10 years and cull the Pokedex again? Allow only regional Pokedexes from now on, with some new Pokemon missing for a few games?
It's going to be a brave new world indeed.
Trying be more positive, I decided to try a thought experiment. I'm going to pretend I'm part of GF's PR team and that, after the decision to only have Galar dex Pokemon available, instead of having Masuda give a small little comment during the Treehouse they instead asked me to write the introductory sentence to a major presentation where they talked about their reasoning for doing this. Now obviously this would at most have been a rough draft and had over a dozen editors comb through it choosing better wording & fact checking but this is what I would have roughly said:
But more importantly, after doing this thought experiment, I finally realized what really upset me about all this: that GF completely lost control of the message. This should have been a major announcement, not a small comment during the Treehouse. As soon as things started to get crazy GF's PR should have been on this addressing concerns and clarifying information, not let Masuda make Twitter responses and reveal more big changes in interviews. Masuda is NOT a PR person, he needs to be reeled in so the people's who job is to relate to the public can hear and address concerns to take back control of the situation and calm all the drama down.
And yes, I know, I joined in with that drama. I admit it and I do somewhat feel a bit ashamed being exaggerated as I was, my only defense was that I was venting my frustrations and if anyone felt offended by my behavior I apologize. I'll also defend that at first I did overall agree with GF's decision to do this and I only flipped around because Masuda made it sound like they were doing this out of laziness, without really thinking about what he was probably trying to say (but, once again, since Masuda isn't a PR person he didn't word it right which led to confusion and risen tempers).
Not going to really have time to respond to comments today, hopefully during the weekend I can catch up (and since a lot of posts are about this news I can quick read through it without having to respond to much of them).
And from there I'd probably go into more detail like how Home will have the Pokemon not included can contribute, maybe mention a batch of Pokemon who won't appear and announce every week or so more will be revealed, and maybe even going as far as mentioning the Pokemon that are returning and what is being done with them. And heck, if they are planning any future games (like a Stadium/Battle Revolution sequel that'll have all the Pokemon plus replaced mechanics), maybe also tell that tidbit of information to give fans something to look toward too; though obviously also trying to sell Sword & Shield by explaining it's the only way to get the new Pokemon, Moves, and Abilities to use in those games.Fake GF PR Spokesmon Pikachu31511 said:
But more importantly, after doing this thought experiment, I finally realized what really upset me about all this: that GF completely lost control of the message. This should have been a major announcement, not a small comment during the Treehouse. As soon as things started to get crazy GF's PR should have been on this addressing concerns and clarifying information, not let Masuda make Twitter responses and reveal more big changes in interviews. Masuda is NOT a PR person, he needs to be reeled in so the people's who job is to relate to the public can hear and address concerns to take back control of the situation and calm all the drama down.
And yes, I know, I joined in with that drama. I admit it and I do somewhat feel a bit ashamed being exaggerated as I was, my only defense was that I was venting my frustrations and if anyone felt offended by my behavior I apologize. I'll also defend that at first I did overall agree with GF's decision to do this and I only flipped around because Masuda made it sound like they were doing this out of laziness, without really thinking about what he was probably trying to say (but, once again, since Masuda isn't a PR person he didn't word it right which led to confusion and risen tempers).
Not going to really have time to respond to comments today, hopefully during the weekend I can catch up (and since a lot of posts are about this news I can quick read through it without having to respond to much of them).
So there's another interview about the games, this time on the Pokémon website: https://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-...hmori-about-pokemon-sword-and-pokemon-shield/
They mostly talk about inspirations for the game's setting, but what I found mostly interesting are:
- That the main inspiration for Dynamaxing was... that the Switch has a higher resolution, so they can show giant creatures without everything else becoming tiny unrecognizable pixels.
- Max Raid Battles can be played with three AI partners. IMO it wasn't entirely clear when it was first shown whether you needed at least one human partner to do them.
- They did not expect Wooloo's reception.
(- Dynamaxing will be possible in PvP.)
They mostly talk about inspirations for the game's setting, but what I found mostly interesting are:
- That the main inspiration for Dynamaxing was... that the Switch has a higher resolution, so they can show giant creatures without everything else becoming tiny unrecognizable pixels.
- Max Raid Battles can be played with three AI partners. IMO it wasn't entirely clear when it was first shown whether you needed at least one human partner to do them.
- They did not expect Wooloo's reception.
(- Dynamaxing will be possible in PvP.)
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Yung Dramps
awesome gaming
Surprised you didn't mention this little bit of important info.
Fair enough. For some reason I took it as a given.
I was browsing around, and found that it seems even before this debacle, relationship between Nintendo and GF isn't as smooth as we think. That, and GF unfortunately are averse to hiring new people. Two other forum sites raised this issue. There seems to be internal problem GF is having that manages to make the crash and burn this year, which is not entirely not their fault (yes, double no).
I think to put this to rest, the problem is this rushdown. Shouldn't be any hardware limitation (with Technology Marching On, I doubt we should ever hit this 'critical mass' technical-wise, but as Nelson Tangela said, horribly inefficient coding). The main problem is time development, and the solution is as we have raised, we don't need a core title every single year!! Even making it biennial games should help a lot, everyone had raised. Oh, and hire new people, nabbit!
... ah, finally I feel some peace, knowing the root problem.
Either way, assuming I do have the money to get it, I think I'm interested in Raids. I want to make various sets to counter various Bosses' types. We have powerful things like pseudolegends that would be popular choices as well as other competitive-popular mon like Weavile, so I think I want to make hypothetical counters (thankfully, it is not GO where I have to scurry around finding the Pokemon first; I can just breed in USunand hope someone can transfer them to next Gen later.) Flygon and Milotic are already solid enough mon that are already confirmed, Milotic maybe more so with her self-healing, bulk, and Max Torrent against weather setting bosses like T'tar. Lucario seems good enough to completely screw Raid Weavile.
For phyical sweeping bosses, Burn seems to be a good ailment status to inflict to reduce casualty and greatly improve raiders' survivability, is it not? I think I'll want to see Burn inflicting moves (ha, Milotic with Scald of course). Spore Sleep seems to be too good to be true.
I forgot, any note if the raiders are allowed to use held items? Assault Vest, Choice Items, berries can significantly help.
I think to put this to rest, the problem is this rushdown. Shouldn't be any hardware limitation (with Technology Marching On, I doubt we should ever hit this 'critical mass' technical-wise, but as Nelson Tangela said, horribly inefficient coding). The main problem is time development, and the solution is as we have raised, we don't need a core title every single year!! Even making it biennial games should help a lot, everyone had raised. Oh, and hire new people, nabbit!
... ah, finally I feel some peace, knowing the root problem.
Either way, assuming I do have the money to get it, I think I'm interested in Raids. I want to make various sets to counter various Bosses' types. We have powerful things like pseudolegends that would be popular choices as well as other competitive-popular mon like Weavile, so I think I want to make hypothetical counters (thankfully, it is not GO where I have to scurry around finding the Pokemon first; I can just breed in USun
For phyical sweeping bosses, Burn seems to be a good ailment status to inflict to reduce casualty and greatly improve raiders' survivability, is it not? I think I'll want to see Burn inflicting moves (ha, Milotic with Scald of course). Spore Sleep seems to be too good to be true.
I forgot, any note if the raiders are allowed to use held items? Assault Vest, Choice Items, berries can significantly help.
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I found that entire manpower of GF is around or less than half the team working for BoTW, so I am convinced this is a lot from GF's mismanagements. Kinda sad knowing that Pokemon is literally the biggest franchise in the world, even compared to Disney (excluding extra things like MCU and whatnots).
Oh, and male trainer still has Levitate.
Well, to be fair, these might be just "best" shots while the Pokemon one is "bad" shot. Can someone find the "best" shot from Pokemon?
Assuming the graphics are also used in the final games, I think the starters trailer should tell the overall quality. Not bad and actually a step up, but still can't really match them.
I have a question: is there any reason for Gamefreak to have removed Megas from the game other than to sell the new gimmick?
Like, they had Megas in LGPE, and a significant number to (if not all of them). If they just imported them to Gen 8 (which we're assuming they're doing for the others) they'd be about 30% done. Even if they wanted to be really awful and just import those 15 Megas, its still free Pokemon they don't have to use a whole lot of effort to add.
Eh, just more reasons to hate on the new gimmick.
Like, they had Megas in LGPE, and a significant number to (if not all of them). If they just imported them to Gen 8 (which we're assuming they're doing for the others) they'd be about 30% done. Even if they wanted to be really awful and just import those 15 Megas, its still free Pokemon they don't have to use a whole lot of effort to add.
Eh, just more reasons to hate on the new gimmick.
CTNC
Doesn't know how to attack
It's kind of weird to realize I'm still excited for these games even though I might wait for the third version. Maybe it's because I know I'm getting this stuff eventually.
A little thing I like is how the tall grass works now. Because you know where you'll find encounters, you can just avoid them and I'd be pretty happy about that, but it's like ORAS's Dex Nav, so I'll want to check out the Pokemon. Tall grass went from kind of annoying because you may run into Pokemon when you don't want to to being fun because you want to see the Pokemon it throws at you.
By the way, do Dynamax Raid Pokemon take passive damage behind their shield? I don't remember Steelix taking burn damage, even before the shield, now that I think of it... Speaking of Dynamax, will someone at E3 use please Max Guard so I know how "good" a moveset of that move four times is?
Possibly Semi-off Topic Notes: I have some weird thoughts sometimes... If I ever have to have a leg amputated, (which I hope does NOT happen) I decided I'd rather have a cool looking prosthetic than a high tech realistic leg one. I was thinking something that looks like a bird's claw or has a mewtwo foot, but Corviknight made the choice much easier. A less morbid fashion idea I had is a cape that looks like Corviknight's wings. Tell me that wouldn't look awesome! Also, spell check doesn't think Corviknight is a word for obvious reasons. It guesses I mispelled Cockfighting... 0_o
A little thing I like is how the tall grass works now. Because you know where you'll find encounters, you can just avoid them and I'd be pretty happy about that, but it's like ORAS's Dex Nav, so I'll want to check out the Pokemon. Tall grass went from kind of annoying because you may run into Pokemon when you don't want to to being fun because you want to see the Pokemon it throws at you.
By the way, do Dynamax Raid Pokemon take passive damage behind their shield? I don't remember Steelix taking burn damage, even before the shield, now that I think of it... Speaking of Dynamax, will someone at E3 use please Max Guard so I know how "good" a moveset of that move four times is?
Possibly Semi-off Topic Notes: I have some weird thoughts sometimes... If I ever have to have a leg amputated, (which I hope does NOT happen) I decided I'd rather have a cool looking prosthetic than a high tech realistic leg one. I was thinking something that looks like a bird's claw or has a mewtwo foot, but Corviknight made the choice much easier. A less morbid fashion idea I had is a cape that looks like Corviknight's wings. Tell me that wouldn't look awesome! Also, spell check doesn't think Corviknight is a word for obvious reasons. It guesses I mispelled Cockfighting... 0_o
It frustrates me that by culling the dex, Game Freak have now validated the kind of graphical comparisons shown above. I've always been of the opinion that graphics didn't really matter in a mainline pokemon game. I would still be playing if the series was in 2D. I would still be playing if we had pixel sprites. I think most of the charm of the games and most of my immersion in the pokemon world comes from the pokemon themselves. One of the best part of playing the pre-3ds era games for the first time was seeing what your favorites would look like now. When Crystal came out, my fave Porygon had gotten this cool glitching out animation that I remember thinking was truly the ~Next Gen experience.
Of course, that's something we had to lose with the switch to 3D models, but even then it felt like Game Freak understood it was key for players to stay engaged with old pokemon. To this day I'm surprised just how nice Amie/Refresh is to use with a freshly-hatched shiny pokemon. In fact, my appreciation of certain 'mons, like the Klink line, relies entirely on those cool Amie-exclusive animations. In USUM, I was part of the apparent minority that really enjoyed and made full use of the photo club. It's just plain cool when the game actually tries to convince you that your pokemon are not just a pile of data that sits in a box.
I don't think the new trade-off Game Freak is offering — ie, a semi-open, vibrant world, with a fraction of the pokemon — will be worth it, now or in the long run. The pokemon games are already fairly behind the rest of the industry in terms of graphics and to a lesser extent animations. I know not everyone here necessarily plays other monster collecting games, but imo Yo-kai Watch's overworld graphics on the 3DS were much more polished than Pokemon's. The Digimon Vita games had fully animated battles with lots of 3D models. Even then, I preferred the Pokemon franchise, because imo it has by far the best monster roster of them all. Of course, the comparisons posted by Breadboy are not very fair, since those games don't have to worry about putting in a literal thousand pokemon, but it's still important to remember that these are the modern RPG/Adventure games that Pokemon is competing against, on the same platform.
I understand that, in the grand scheme of things, this design change really doesn't matter that much. It'll still be a fun video game. But I wanted to put into words why the news has actually put a damper on my enjoyment of other new features I thought I would love, like the wild area, that are completely unrelated to the dex restriction. It's simply that I didn't really use to mind that the franchise was lacking in this or that area compared to other games, since the most enjoyable part has always been the pokemon themselves. But now, without all of the pokemon, why should I care that the games are only fractionally less embarrassing to look at next to BOTW?
Of course, that's something we had to lose with the switch to 3D models, but even then it felt like Game Freak understood it was key for players to stay engaged with old pokemon. To this day I'm surprised just how nice Amie/Refresh is to use with a freshly-hatched shiny pokemon. In fact, my appreciation of certain 'mons, like the Klink line, relies entirely on those cool Amie-exclusive animations. In USUM, I was part of the apparent minority that really enjoyed and made full use of the photo club. It's just plain cool when the game actually tries to convince you that your pokemon are not just a pile of data that sits in a box.
I don't think the new trade-off Game Freak is offering — ie, a semi-open, vibrant world, with a fraction of the pokemon — will be worth it, now or in the long run. The pokemon games are already fairly behind the rest of the industry in terms of graphics and to a lesser extent animations. I know not everyone here necessarily plays other monster collecting games, but imo Yo-kai Watch's overworld graphics on the 3DS were much more polished than Pokemon's. The Digimon Vita games had fully animated battles with lots of 3D models. Even then, I preferred the Pokemon franchise, because imo it has by far the best monster roster of them all. Of course, the comparisons posted by Breadboy are not very fair, since those games don't have to worry about putting in a literal thousand pokemon, but it's still important to remember that these are the modern RPG/Adventure games that Pokemon is competing against, on the same platform.
I understand that, in the grand scheme of things, this design change really doesn't matter that much. It'll still be a fun video game. But I wanted to put into words why the news has actually put a damper on my enjoyment of other new features I thought I would love, like the wild area, that are completely unrelated to the dex restriction. It's simply that I didn't really use to mind that the franchise was lacking in this or that area compared to other games, since the most enjoyable part has always been the pokemon themselves. But now, without all of the pokemon, why should I care that the games are only fractionally less embarrassing to look at next to BOTW?
Less models to do.
In addition, they are very much the old toy - 5 years by now - and so aren't exactly useful as a marketing tool. Why bother wasting resources on a gimmick that doesn't sell anymore?
Plus, as far as I've read megas weren't really meant to be in Let's Go originally (which I mean, makes sense, most megas without abilities are just inflated BST pokemon) and were added later in the development as basically fan service.
If they are as expected being limited by modeling / texturing time, it makes perfect sense to completely skip them (plus, they'd avoid to run into the same issue they had in SM where the playerbase would complain about the decision to only include part of them. Either all or none :P )
As ambivalent as I am to the National Dex brouhaha, I don't really buy this argument. The "less effort" argument has been beaten to death do I won't rehash the counterpoints but the "old toy" argument I find to be particularly confusing. You could say that mechanics like abilities, new types, or even Pokemon themselves are the "old toy" and therefore don't deserve the attention, but how can we even assert that Megas won't sell when GF refuses to expand on them beyond their introductory generation? At that point it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as to how people lose interest in Mega Evolution. People lose interest because they aren't expanded on, they aren't expanded on because people have lost interest, repeat ad infinitum.
I feel like if GF actually ends up doing something about Dexit we're all instantly going to have something akin to Stockholm Syndrome. Everyone's going to gas up GF and Masuda as some pinnacle of reception to audience opinion, but like. What's the point. In a vacuum, I don't super dislike the National Dex removal, but GF has been removing features for a long time. Stuff like Battle Frontier, seasons, now Z-Moves and Megas? I hate to be some cynical edgelord but why praise them for bringing back what we expect to be the bare minimum. We have accepted mediocrity. To many people though, Dexit and Mega removal is a step too far.
I don't think turning them into a separate evolution is a good idea. Like others have said, it would give certain lines four stages and break others with eviolite existing (I wouldn't be opposed to getting rid of eviolite entirely but that's a separate issue).
What would be a nice compromise is sorta transferring some of the buffs and themeing to the base pokemon itself, but toned down so it isn't broken now that it can hold an item and doesn't take up a "mega slot" in your party any more. Some of the really weak ones could probably be straight ported over to their base forms (absol, audino, etc), whereas needless ones like garchomp's I don't think anyone would miss, but you could do things like give regular mawile huge power or regular charizard drought without giving them stat boosts, or buffing gyarados' stats a bit while still keeping it water/flying with intimidate/moxie.
The problem with this kind of solutions is that they would incurr in the same backlash as the whole rotating dex does: "Why X pokemon got his stats buffed like its mega, and Y didn't?"
(Also, again, Megas aren't getting retconned, so you can't just randomly alter the base forms anyway. They might or might not come back in future titles if so they decide. Rotating pokedex isn't a permanent Thanos snap, it only is as far as a single specific game goes, nothing prevents them from deciding that gen 9 game could revolve around megas again)