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Sword & Shield **Official news only** DLC Crown Tundra 22nd October
- Thread starter DHR-107
- Start date
It's definitely overpriced (even though it offers significantly more features than Bank + the possibility to access via phone).
On a positive note, once a game with entire pokedex is available (either SwSh itself with the DLCs, or whatever comes after), the bank can tecnically sit there un-premiumed and still serve the purpose.
Kinda sucks for people who collect a lot of Pokémon like me, though. I relied on Bank a lot and was fine with paying £5 a year again; but this is just taking the mick.
Well, yes, you're not wrong. Will need to flood the SwSh boxes a bit I suppose.
Yung Dramps
awesome gaming
Honestly... I'm more upset because I'm so exhausted. I know what's gonna happen, it's so fucking predictable: more bitching, more moaning, more bitching, more moaning, more crying, more anger, more hatred, and oh yeah more bitching.
I just want it all to stop...
I just want it all to stop...
Brace yourself my friend, nuclear winter is coming
Whoever over at TPC dreamt up this price point must have been quite disconnected from the more hardcore part of the fanbase for sure.
This will only fan the flames.
Considering the sales of SwSh, they probably should continue being disconnected then :P
I'm tired of all that too; but let's not act like there's not legitimate criticisms to be had here. Like, I was mostly fine up to this point.
Like, okay. SwSh being priced higher than previous instalments? Sucks, but that's the normal Switch pricepoint.
Dexit? Had to happen at some point, and especially with updates it's really not that bad.
NSO subscription? Also arguably sucks... but that's a criticism of Nintendo, not anything specifically to do with Pokémon.
DLC? You can certainly argue as with any game with DLC that they may have cut content from the base game specifically for you to pay for it in DLC, or that neither base game nor DLC has enough content to justify the price point. All of that is subjective however, and in my opinion it is a vast improvement over the previous model Pokémon has had with third versions; we are essentially getting a 'third version' for far cheaper than we ever had before with a lot more content than we ever had before. And, of course, the updates to add the Pokémon are free so it's hardly like they're behind a paywall unless you personally want to catch them.
This, however, is a much more blatant and indefensible cashgrab. Pokémon Bank was already a bit dubious in that it gated the previously free Pokémon Transferring behind a paywall, but in terms of the storage at least it was something fairly acceptable because storing on a cloud has server costs, and £5 a year isn't that bad. ... but now that subscription fee has been inflated to a pretty egregious degree with little good reason, and it is compounded by the all the other costs around it. While I'm not going to blame NSO on Pokémon (like I said, that's down to Nintendo), yearly subscription costs have gone from £5 to £35 in one console generation. That's really, really, really not great.
I've frankly been tired of people going on and on about the natdex on twitter for a while now, but again, this is legitimately rubbish and people have every right to be upset about and critical of it.
I agree, but I am giving GameFreaks (or whoever manages Bank+Home) at least 2 positive notes
1) They do let you use the transfer (in Switch games, which for now is Let's Go and SwSh but is eventually going to include the games for the next several years) and GTS function for free.
2) They are also giving 1 month of free Bank subscription to anyone who doesn't have an active one. While limited, it is money saved.
Not saying that I don't agree 16€ per year is overpriced a f considering there's to factor in NSO on top of it, but I do appreciate that both the "previously free" systems are tecnically still free.
Edit: Sniped above
So if Home is free for a month and we transfer over what we can to SWSH, what happens when the free trial is up and the Dexit pokemon are still in the storage? Are they locked until we pay for the access? Can we still access 30 of them? Which 30?
That price point is absolutely horrific but I usually transferred my past pokemon at the beginning of the new gen and then never used in again so I didn't have to worry about paying again. But if they're going to literally hold pokemon hostage then this is gonna be rough.
So if Home is free for a month and we transfer over what we can to SWSH, what happens when the free trial is up and the Dexit pokemon are still in the storage? Are they locked until we pay for the access? Can we still access 30 of them? Which 30?
That price point is absolutely horrific but I usually transferred my past pokemon at the beginning of the new gen and then never used in again so I didn't have to worry about paying again. But if they're going to literally hold pokemon hostage then this is gonna be rough.
A free plan is a good improvement; I'm not saying that there's no upsides to this (it is a vast improvement over Bank in functionality as far as I can see). However, that free plan is extremely limited; and it is still locking transferring Pokémon from past generations behind a paywall, which is the thing most people will be wanting this for.
Storage of 30 Pokémon, as well, is... I'm just going to call it a joke, honestly. If it had been maybe 3 boxes, sure, but this is a pittance.
I am assuming it'd work similarly to Bank (which iirc allows to retrieve but not deposit when the sub is not active)
It is pretty obvious that the plan is allowing players to move and trade pokemon between *Switch* games freely, while cashing in on the cross-console and deposit features.
Interesting turnaround here.
Yes, but again, that's hardly what most people want it for. I guarantee you the majority of people who have been looking forward to this don't care about limited transfer between switch games as much as they do about transferring their old Pokémon to the latest title.
Home isn't free for a month. What they are making free for a month is Bank, so that it won't cost that subscription fee as well to transfer stuff up for February.
That's... actually pretty interesting and good. That means, essentially, that you don't need NSO to be able to do online trades in SwSh (as long as someone else has a premium plan, they can host a room for you and your friends).
Oh for sure, it makes perfect business sense.
Just a pain down here at ground level though.
That's perfectly legitimate, and honestly I'd have preferred if the "free Bank month" was activable "at will" rather than forced after Home release.
That way people could have waited for a game with all the Pokedex available (which at this point I think will be either the final SwSh DLC, or next pokemon game) and only then use the free month and move everything on.
Well shit, I thought for sure there'd be a minigame or something. Not sure if I'm interested in transferring much at this point. Still hoping there'll be some sort of battle frontier content in the DLC ;(
If you're doing online trades there's a very good chance you want to do online battling, which still requires NSO.
TPC is just being your average scummy AAA dev.
As much as I understand the concern, I'd point that anyone wanting to play , say, Smash competitively right now has to do almost exactly same expenses as a competitive Pokemon player, but I don't hear people complaining about how scummy Smash developers are.
If you add up, Smash + NSO + the various DLCs equal over 100€ right now, which is few bucks below buying SwSh + both DLCs + NSO + Home (which is tecnically only necessary to pay 3 € once to bring over breed material, but feel free to account the full 16€ if you please)
You are not obligated to buy Smash's DLC to play competitively, especially since Joker is the only viable character of that group (last I checked). Hell, you don't even need NSO since competitive players will just play locally.
Smash also isn't ridiculously price gouging a service that was previously available for much cheaper.
You can nitpick on viability and quality, but no matter how you put it, the price for the "full experience" is the same.
(Comparable argument can be made for Pokemon: none of the competitive pokemon requires you to purchase a sub, and you don't need NSO to partecipate to tournaments either)
My point being: any concern for quality of the game and services is perfectly legitimate and fine, but the "scummy AAA" is not because other companies who do the same aren't being called like that.
"Scummy AAA" service would be emulating EA or Bethesda and start to wall content behind microtransactions.
Demanding money for online services and providing DLCs is nowhere "scummy", it's normal market.