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

While that would be cool, I still have a problem with being forced to have Pokemon HOME and pay for it when they should just be able to be transferred to SwSh and then I can cancel after that if I don't like it. I mean, personally I do use Bank annually, but that's because I want to, not because I have to. Also I can tell you, if it's any more than $5 a year like Bank, I ain't renewing it.
There's always the chance HOME gives you a one-week-trial to do whatever you want just like Bank does, which should be enough time to transfer everything you have into SwSh. I did that for Gen 6 at least.
 
Maybe it's me not being able to properly understand what you said here (i'm not an english native speaker), but Salamence and Garchomp weren't balancers of anything. Salamence was banned in Gen IV and I still remember the communicate from Smogon, its unpredictability and wide variety of sets -essentialy DD or MixMence- were too much to handle. And Garchomp was banned in its own generation (Gen IV), not only due to its typing and stats, but because its only ability was sand veil and you couldn't destroy team building banning Pokémon like T-tar, whose only ability was Sand Stream back then.

I don't see why I should get excited or how this reponds to the unpredictable effects of a meta we don't know anything about.



It's a simple oversize of the mon with more HP. The end. And a pool of unique moves, one for each type. Comparing this to a fully new design, with total BST changes, retaining of the Pokémon movepool while transformed, potential changes on their typings are abilities, shouldn't be discussed. In fact, there's no place for comparison.

I don't know if competitive is the only thing you care about, as this topic has been adressed before, but not only depics a sincere, complete lack of effort from Game Freak's part, one that i just objetively described, but this is less atractive in both senses, competitively and in regards to in-game content.

But again, if you think I should be equally interested in seeing a potencial Stantler evolution with new desing, new ability, maybe even new typing, and to see how all this changes can affect it in-game and competitively, as to just seeing the same Pokémon with size==6, sure. Sure it's a great, hard-worked mechanic.

C'mon, let's be serious for a moment and look at the obvious facts. Let's not lose to complacency.

I'll ignore the example you provide because of two reasons. One, it is theorymon and should be forbidden. Secondly, because an infinite number of similar examples and be depicted using Mega-Evolution. In fact, just due to te changes in BSpeed, Ability and Typing, anyone can do a far, far greater example of an ideal an hypothetical scenario in which all this elements combined turned a battle. There's no point. Just get the general idea. Oversizing a Pokémon and giving it 50% plus HP while transforming all its moves in unique attacks would never be more interesting than changing the Pokémon design, giving it a new BST distribution, a new typing or a new ability, or both. And less factor will be involucrated. Simple as that.
I hate mega evolutions and Z moves because they are absolutely unfun mechanically and didn't feel like Pokemon anyhow. I would prefer no mechanic either but a lot of people did not like mega evolutions and Z moves, both casuals and competitive players. I am happy that they are axing it with a mechanic they took forethought, that is all. There are people who prefer simplicity as opposed to the way Pokemon seemed to have shift prior to LGPE.

I would not appreciate using my favorite Pokemon if he got a mega evolution similar to Mega Swampert which completely bastardized its design. Just lower the powercreep.
 
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I haven't seen this point brought up yet, except obliquely with jokes about leaving out Ditto and Smeargle:

Sometimes random trash pokemon are the ones who happen to learn original moves for breeding chains, or they form a link between two egg groups in those chains. I heard an example, that Corsola has be involved at some point to get a Cradily with Recover. Just browsing through the pokedb I see that Volbeat and Illumise are the only two mons with a Bug/Human-Like egg group combo. I'm sure examples could be multiplied.

Dropping just one pokemon from the roster can, at least in theory, make certain breeding chains longer or even impossible. I haven't done any serious breeding in a while but I suspect nowadays, if any one pokemon just disappeared off the face of the earth, in most cases you could just route around that one pokemon and get your egg moves through a different route.

But if just one missing pokemon can have that effect, then what kind of pile on effects will come from taking out three or four hundred? Keeping in mind that a chain only needs one missing link to be broken?

So basically, even the pokemon who do make it into the game could have their movepools crippled if the trashmons who would've helped pass them their best egg moves don't exist any more.
 
So basically, even the pokemon who do make it into the game could have their movepools crippled if the trashmons who would've helped pass them their best egg moves don't exist any more.
Not really, as you could do the chain in SM and breed with the result in SwSh. You only need to go through the chain once, after all.

It's going to be difficult for new players, though.
 
So I think at some point, especially given the climate the gaming industry is in... you start to get less angry and more worried.

Because you see things like this, right? You see the games degrading in quality so much; having to cut so much basically to meet deadlines. And you have to admit at some points that this is because they have to have main games come out every year, yes? So that makes sense why the quality would be so low. And then also Game Freak is less than 200 people, so that's another point as well.

Then you realise, hang on, less than 200 people have to bring out a main game for the most profitable franchise in the world every. Single. Year.

I'm starting to get a bit worried about Game Freak's employees. Are... they okay...?
 
I also wonder about swapping items onto the pokemon. Putting Black Sludge onto it might be useful.
Oh, I missed this. But I doubt raid boss mon have held item to begin with (or always have held item), so this is unreliable if outright not possible.

That is, unless I forgot there's a move that bestows held item. But Sticky Barb might work as long as the rest of raiders are non-contact using.
 
So I think at some point, especially given the climate the gaming industry is in... you start to get less angry and more worried.

Because you see things like this, right? You see the games degrading in quality so much; having to cut so much basically to meet deadlines. And you have to admit at some points that this is because they have to have main games come out every year, yes? So that makes sense why the quality would be so low. And then also Game Freak is less than 200 people, so that's another point as well.

Then you realise, hang on, less than 200 people have to bring out a main game for the most profitable franchise in the world every. Single. Year.

I'm starting to get a bit worried about Game Freak's employees. Are... they okay...?
I can’t post a link because I’m on mobile, but I posted on unpopular opinions that a Glassdoor review of GF stated that it was a terrible place full of jerks, too much overtime, and little to no improvement that the younger staff can do to name a few.
 
Look, I know gamers can be irrational, but I'm pretty sure I've just seen these changes compared to literal murder. :D

I'm excited for this new system. It might be the first time since Gen V you can actually 'catch 'em all' through exploration and trades without it getting tedious.

Hands up who enjoyed grinding Ultra Space for legendaries who had no place being there? That's right, no-one, because it was stupid.
 
There's literally a move called Bestow.
That might work, although then depending on how the battle is coded, it may mean losing the Black Sludge each time someone do this, costing 48 BP... or become exploitable and everyone who catch the boss gets the held Black Sludge too. Well, sound too good to be true, but I suppose we will have to see how they do that in the end.

... scrap, I can now imagine people cloning items like Ability Capsule or Gold Caps.
 
That's… assuming they will be available. Remember the Gems?
They're not as broken as the type gems. Ability Capsule is just shortening a little of breed grinding if you got the wrong roll (and may be obsolete if one wants hidden ability instead) and Gold Cap Hyper Training is really Quality of Life feature that allows significant shortening of SRing legendaries or possibly making the mon you brought in story like starters at the beginning of game relevant. It's not like breeding perfect things is hard either, this is just QoL time-cutting (but significant QoL feature at that, as someone who SRed near-perfect Lati_s and Cresselia in AS and bred 8 boxes of Eevees can attest), so unlike the type gems, people would be mad if those are removed.
 
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Pikachu315111

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for as pathetic as the end game content of the past 3 gens has been, you'd think they'd at least let us fill out the national dex to waste time after the main game. what a shitshow
Now to be fair to GF, they never said we'd be able to catch all Pokemon during main game. For all we know they may have added dozens of Pokemon that'll appear during the post game to specifically give players a reason to back to old locations to fill out their dex. Just cause not all Pokemon will be in the game doesn't mean the game won't have extra Pokemon to catch. If anything they can use this to push the new Pokemon to the forefront by having them all available during the main game (thus more likely to be on your team so you can see how they are) while then providing those Pokemon specifically added for competitive to have their time in the spotlight once the main game is done.

Speaking of which, I see that happening on battle simulators. (Except for the blackjack... and hookers :P) Actually, I'm pretty sure it's going to happen because we've already kind of done it with CAP. It's going to be interesting to see how different the Cartrage and "Full Dex" metagames will be.
Yeah, I can see thing having an odd increase use of Pokemon Showdown! by competitive player just to see what the "what if's" would have been. Heck, maybe even some casual players would use it just to see how their not included favorites would stack up against the new Pokemon or could benefit from the new moves (and maybe Abilities). Of course, this is a double-edge sword, this might draw unwanted attention to Showdown from GF and Nintendo and, well, they're very skilled with the "cease and desist" hammer. :(

if you are indeed not advocating for Pokemon to be removed, then just add the national dex at that point ffs because at that point it might literally be a day's worth of labor to make a separate dex using preexisting dex coding. same dumb issue as with sm/usum, and people were pissed then too
Hmm, I wonder that, if the issue was that they didn't want to re-balance all Pokemon, if they couldn't have just copy & pasted all the non-Galar Pokemon into the game but you simply can't battle with them. They'd still have their stats and moves they came with for future-proofing, but mechanically they're just there to wait in the actual game for the next generation instead of Pokemon Home. And while in the game they could still let you trade them and play with them, maybe even create a small side mechanic where you can send them to a Pokepelago expy location to do side work for you like grow extra Berries, find items, help hatch eggs and raise other Pokemon's happiness, etc..


Of course, the other option (other than patching) would just be to release the rest of the dex when they make the Sinnoh remakes or third versions/sequels or whatever, and I’d be completely happy with that too.
I wonder how remakes and "advanced" versions would work if they have completely different Pokedexes? Will every next game in the generation have the dex of the previous plus extra? Will that mean they'd have to do what they did with ORAS between XY and USUM between SM and, if connected with an older version you'll have to use the Pokemon only those games had? I guess so, but that would make the old versions outdated really quickly.


Depending on how they inflate the boss' HP and AI partner's competence, I hope this is at least soloable with strong enough mon.
Since a major part of Raid Battles look to be buffing your side of the field, I'm wondering if maybe they accounted for that and AI partners will have Pokemon with Intimidate and be using Reflect & Light Screen (like in the demo) so the player doesn't need to worry about doing it themselves. If so it could turn out using the AI partners may be better then with other players. Of course, since you can pick any Pokemon you have in the box to do Raid Battles you could always train up a "Raid" Pokemon with moves more suitable for team work.


I'd take this one step further, I don't mind Dynamax for Raids or Gyms, as they both will pose a challenge we've been lacking. I just think it looks a bit silly and truly hope it won't be outside of those two places (still determining how I feel about it in competitive...)
The wording on all the announcements, website descriptions and mechanic itself shows it can only be used in Gyms and raids.
(And most likely competitive battles / postgame facilities as they are usually played in arenas as well)

You won't be able to use Dynamax in regular encounters / trainer battles.
There is no way they'd pass up Dynamaxing when you're facing the Pokemon League, the villain team (or at the very least the final boss battle), and against the mascot Legendaries (and maybe some others, or they could even make these into one-player Raids).

You still have to pay for Pokémon Bank.
You now also have to pay for Pokémon Home.
Wait, they're aren't just making it one payment for both? What in the world does Home have that makes you have to pay for it? As far as I can tell Home is just the app that let's you do things with the Pokemon in the Bank and transfer them to Sword & Shield. Without Bank I don't think Home can do anything so they shouldn't be charging anything for it.

Of course I still think it's BS you have to pay to transfer Pokemon now when before Bank it was free! This I feel was the first biggest betrayals on GF's part as they could have simply gave us a free transferring app, but nope they forced us to start paying.


If you did that then they literally got you. A bunch of your collection would be held hostage in HOME until Game Freak decides to release a game that allows you to get them out. (Game Freak has no financial incentive to do so)
Also is something happens to the Home servers it could potentially affect the Pokemon on your account in who know what ways (you can call be a bit paranoid but I'm afraid my Pokemon might get accidentally deleted if I'm not storing them on a physical device I own). I'm personally going to keep the Pokemon I have which can't transfer over to Sword & Shield in my Ultra Moon file.

I can see it too, but you won't be able to catch them in the Faraway Island, Roca Ombligo or Isla del Sur (sry i don't have time to check their respective names on english but u get the idea). That would mean designing an event and also a map for that event (like Darkrai, Shaymin...).

You'll find them in generic Raid Encounters to appeal even more to the Pokémon Go scenario. I can see it.
I not only can see it, we have seen it. The ORAS and USUM Legendary Hunts anyone? While I'll grant you ORAS did try making getting each Legendary (or Legendary group) feel a bit unique, USUM just tossed its hands in the air and made getting every Legendary the same procedure, Ultra Warp Ride into a Level 5 portal, run down the small hallway, see if you got lucky and it is a Legendary, if not leave & try again, if it is battle & catch the Legendary, rinse and repeat.


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.
And right here I feel is the main reason why anyone should be upset. Because obviously for your first playthrough you're going to use what the game gives you. In VGC they usually always limited what Pokemon you could use which was the in-game dex. But it's those additional playthroughs that mostly suffer from this. The challenge runs, the randomizers, all once exciting to do as you were open to Pokemon not part of the normal dex to see how they did in this environment... now would feel less exciting. Infact randomizers, which involves you hacking the game, may retain their fun but challenge runs where you send over another Pokemon to be your starter would definitely be affected as you may not be able to pick your favorite Pokemon or the theme you chose can't be fully done as members of that theme aren't in the Galar Dex.

So overall, it's not the main game or VGC this is affecting, but rather it's affecting replayability.


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.
Not to mention GO didn't have PvP battles and trading (despite advertising they would before it was released) until I think it was when they released Gen III?


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.
Not to mention GO didn't have PvP battles and trading (despite advertising they would before it was released) until I think it was when they released Gen III?

Not sure if anyone has seen this yet but they’ve apparently since confirmed in an interview that LESS THAN 200 non-Galar Pokémon exist in the game.
So that’s over 75% of all Pokémon now unusable. Such a pathetically low amount!! Also that they have specifically chosen “fan favourites”.

https://www.newsweek.com/pokemon-sword-shield-junichi-masuda-home-1443677
Already been explained, though just wanted add my own quick note: there is NO WAY Masuda would reveal the size of the Pokedex at this point in time, especially to anything that's not the main site or CoroCoro. And with them announcing this banning plus Gen 6 & 7 having a dex of 400 or so Pokemon would be extremely odd for Galar to have less then that considering how big it is. Infact with the banning I wonder if they wouldn't just include more Pokemon then they would have normally. Like we'd be getting a dex of 500-600 Pokemon (those who like to complete the dex may not scream at that prospect).


Just 10 more pages...

BTW, the next JAPE article is out! See my thoughts on the "wooly trio" as well as all the other panelists think about the com mon Pokemon revealed in the Direct:

(Ignore the two wolves in the back, we're not about ready to discuss them yet...)
 
I'm excited for this new system. It might be the first time since Gen V you can actually 'catch 'em all' through exploration and trades without it getting tedious.
I mean I caught them all early into Gen 6, largely through online trading with randoms. Hate on Gen 6 all you want, but what it go absolutely right was its wifi systems. Had a lot of fun tracking down Pokemon and trying to communicate with non-english speakers lol. Granted I was not doing it from a cold start, but I had ~300 Pokemon to get, and most of the legends.

Also turns out people will dump legendaries into your lap if you grab a bunch of Steelix from Gen 4 Victory Road and transfer them up to trade :P.
 
Looks like we have even more distribution for Levitate
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I'm sorry for being pessimistic again, but this with how the textures are handled too like here seem to degrade my hype even further. I mean, I think my Pokemon GO looks not far from it. I know it is more about development time than quality, but I don't feel like I am now hyped for a game which graphic is barely better than mobile one in my iPhone 5s when it is on dedicated console. Thinking about it, this is the first time my hype really crashed, but that's on me for being too enthusiastic by the start....

Yeah, I'm pessimistic about getting this game. I think I'll hold back and buy something else to see if I still have spare money for it, but....
 
I'm sorry for being pessimistic again, but this with how the textures are handled too like here seem to degrade my hype even further. I mean, I think my Pokemon GO looks not far from it. I know it is more about development time than quality, but I don't feel like I am now hyped for a game which graphic is barely better than mobile one in my iPhone 5s when it is on dedicated console. Thinking about it, this is the first time my hype really crashed, but that's on me for being too enthusiastic by the start....

Yeah, I'm pessimistic about getting this game. I think I'll hold back and buy something else to see if I still have spare money for it, but....
Honestly, Nintendo's greatest issues has always been having goat games but bad hardware. The Switch has been the easiest console to crack by far and it's literally just an underclocked NVIDIA Shield. I would've bought the Switch ages ago had it proven to be a proper handheld, but honestly I'm not interested in buying a mid-tier console that I can't comfortably play on-the-go due to how big the thing is. Anyhow, I think it's lower resolution compared to even Switch titles because Nintendo understands that most people will be (at least attempting) to play it on the go.

Dear lord though is the Switch way more uncomfortable than the 3DS. I doubt they can make the Switch a bit smaller and more comforting in your pocket without massive overheating issues either.
 

DHR-107

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Orange Islands
CRoll and I will be having a chat about this thread at some point. We will likely be locking it much earlier than we intended too because you guys cannot move on from the Dex fiasco. We know it's a major discussion point, but I think everything that needed to be said has been. It's not going to be forgotten any time soon.

The decision GameFreak has made is shit, we all agree. If something changes, brilliant. But there is literally no need to keep going around in a depressive circle jerk over that decision. Come do it in the OI discord if you want.

As CRoll said a few pages back, discuss any other new stuff they have shown us. Max Raids, the Wild Area, the map, the new Pokémon (Which I have barely seen anyone post about). Lets just try and move onwards. I'll be monitoring this thread today and deleting posts I see about the dex stuff. Regardless of how you frame it.
 
I hate mega evolutions and Z moves because they are absolutely unfun mechanically and didn't feel like Pokemon anyhow. I would prefer no mechanic either but a lot of people did not like mega evolutions and Z moves, both casuals and competitive players. I am happy that they are axing it with a mechanic they took forethought, that is all. There are people who prefer simplicity as opposed to the way Pokemon seemed to have shift prior to LGPE.

I would not appreciate using my favorite Pokemon if he got a mega evolution similar to Mega Swampert which completely bastardized its design. Just lower the powercreep.
Subjective. A lot of people likes them.

I love when pople put effort and work in new designs and ideas, especially if im paying 60 bucks for a game. But I know an oversized model of an already existing Pokémon is also fun, it all depends on what things you value the most, simplicity -which is not, in fact, Mega Evolution is not a complex mechanic, it's not simplicity but not giving a shit about anything, which is what game freak has been doing the past years- or real work.
 

TMan87

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Another intriguing thing about Nessa is that we've seen Grookey battle her, simiarly to Milo.
Are they both early Gyms? Was Grookey just a placeholder mon of sorts? (though iirc Scorbunny was present as well in Nessa's trailer)
Are there Gyms that differ based on which Pokémon you chose as your starter, as someone already mentioned in this thread?
 
Alright moving away from the Dex, is it just me, or does Nessa look a lot like Shelly from ORAS? They have dark complexions, associated with water types, wear suits and hair highlights that are blue? I cannot post a photos due to being on mobile, but just a thought.
People already do the math:

Olivia + Shelly = Nessa

That, or Nessa is Shelly and Archie's daughter.
But either way, it's just two or three announcement, and 2 out of 3 important females revealed are waifus (fine, 2 or 3/4 if you count the girl PC, although the people outside portrayed her as Violent Glaswegian already....). What's with GF and waifu nowadays?
 
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