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

How? You have to actually be able to use a move in order to do anything, and the point here is that it's relatively easy to deny a Dynamax Pokemon the opportunity to ever take an action with Fake Out/Roar. As far as I know, there is nothing in the game apart from a couple of obscure abilities that confers immunity to phasing moves, other than if the trainer has no other Pokemon.

When a mechanic is showcased, it's good game design to have counterplay to it (if it's strong enough to necessitate it), but not so great for there to be a single commonly-learned move which hard counters every Dynamax Pokemon. If the main counterplay involves preventing the opponent from using the shiny new mechanic at all (or limiting it to one turn), that isn't fun to play and isn't much fun to watch. It doesn't help that phasing moves feel like an oversight that's being exploited to completely trivialise the mechanic, rather than being intended to be a core part of gameplay.

That said, it's entirely possible that with the mechanic so far not being particularly overpowered, people just won't see the need to bring phasing moves to deal with it. Dynamax has inbuilt counterplay in that the most useful parts of it so far seem to be setting field effects, which is a problem that naturally cancels itself out with how easy those field effects are to clear or overwrite. And the stat boosts we've seen so far are fairly tame. If that's the case, it probably won't make much difference whether Dynamax can be cleared with phasing moves or not.
I think what he was trying to describe is when you are expecting the enemy team to start switching in Fakeout-mons as a response, you should release a dyna-psychic attack to set up a field (though you still can't stop Roar that way but at least you have a better chance in taking the roarer out before then).

Probably this time GF is trying to avoid the same situation as Megas (where they will remain powerful forever until they die) or Z-moves (one-turn mega nuke that is damning hard to block). Everybody can now Dynamax (assuming no other limitations) and be a big boi so you don't need to strictly build a team centered around a pokemon with the move/forme and rely on it to breakthrough, but with such incredible versatility they probably thought make it generally weaker and more prone to force switches/stuff in general is a good limitation.

I'm still wondering how does the dynamax gauge work at this point. Do you need to, idk, take out a few Pokemon or have some of your Pokemon taken out to charge the gauge? Or there's some other use/conditions for it?
 
That's something we have no clue about. It was ineffective in the demo (as the game was basically a pvp-zed and incomplete version of the gym) and wasnt mentioned at all so far.
 
Probably this time GF is trying to avoid the same situation as Megas (where they will remain powerful forever until they die) or Z-moves (one-turn mega nuke that is damning hard to block). Everybody can now Dynamax (assuming no other limitations) and be a big boi so you don't need to strictly build a team centered around a pokemon with the move/forme and rely on it to breakthrough, but with such incredible versatility they probably thought make it generally weaker and more prone to force switches/stuff in general is a good limitation.
If they wanted to give it a downside, making Dynamax mons impossible to switch out -- voluntarily or otherwise -- would have been a more interesting way to do it in my opinion, rather than letting certain moves just void the mechanic completely.
 
If they wanted to give it a downside, making Dynamax mons impossible to switch out -- voluntarily or otherwise -- would have been a more interesting way to do it in my opinion, rather than letting certain moves just void the mechanic completely.
Maybe it will be too limiting for the side who just maxed? While the maxed mons are still pretty strong in comparison to normal mons, against tanky buffers who just buff at any opportunity, they could buff to crazy levels in 3 rounds, and with a pokemon that possibly couldn't do much against them even after maxing would be as good as giving out free turns.
 

Pikachu315111

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Dynamax, Good Mechanically, Poor Aesthetically:
So, before the whole Dexit fiasco, I remember that everyone was actually pretty interested in Dynamaxing. The giant Pokemon was a funny visual but the mechanic itself had merit. Breaking it down to what it basically is, it's just a 3 turn power-up that increases the Pokemon's stats and changes their moves into super moves. The making the Pokemon big is just a visual justification they chose for the power-up and super moves, but had they done something more simple like make the Pokemon glitter or something it wouldn't change the core mechanic.

And the mechanic is good for all the reasons Worldie described. It adds more strategy then how Mega Evos or Z-Moves were done since a Pokemon doesn't need to hold an item and you can choose any of your Pokemon to Dynamax. And with the super moves having secondary effects that can afflict a status ailment, summon weather, terrain, or stat changes there's strategy there too as there's may be cases where a the same species of Pokemon may prefer a different moveset depending on whether they're normal or Dynamaxed: I can see there being cases where you may decide to give a Pokemon a lesser move only because when Dynamaxed it's super move has a desired secondary effect. And since it only lasts 3 turns it's not that centralizing of a mechanic.

BUT I will say it is the aesthetics where it fails on many aspects. Let's start with the fact that every Dynamaxed Pokemon is its own model (potentially 3 if the clouds above the Pokemon's head do count down). Now, on one hand it does make sense as you can't just blow up a model and expect it to still look good, you do have to re-texture for the resize. But then comes the big question: is it even worth it then? And, no, it's not. If you have to fill up a chunk of the game's memory space in order to just have bigger models of the Pokemon, I think you have a problem with your priorities. And, as you guessed, this does come back to dexit: is this taking up a chunk of the game's memory space and having to spend extra time to clean-up the bigger model's texture the actual reason they're not allowing Pokemon in the Galar dex to return?

And then there's additional factors such as them removing Mega Evolutions and Z-Moves instead of re-working them and having Gigantamaxing which repeats the "problem" they had with Mega Evolutions being something only a handful of Pokemon could do. But I feel those are outside factors here, the discussion is whether Dyanamax is good mechanically (which it looks like it will be) but poor aesthetically (a big model of a Pokemon isn't as impressive as GF thinks it is, especially if what was needed to get these big Pokemon may have resulted in more problems then it was worth to get it).

Who's Making The Demands:
Yeah, no, GameFreak is NOT innocent here. No one is making them do yearly releases, GF is making that decision and is telling Pokemon Company and Nintendo "oh yeah, we'll have the games ready by next year!". So Pokemon Company goes on ahead and starts making merchandise for the next games with expectations the games will be released at that time. In addition, with Pokemon being one of Nintendo's biggest franchises, they too are expecting Pokemon to be on time with their predicted release date. So what this means is that GF can't really delay the games because they have deadlines and expectations to meet... BUT it was deadlines and expectations that GF set for themselves by not giving themselves wiggle room either because of lack of foresight or they're trying to keep shareholders appeased. The Pokemon development cycle is an absolute mess because GF has gotten too big for its breeches.

Except, it doesn't have to be too big for its breeches. Because, as I noted above, GF is the creators of one of Nintendo's biggest franchises! They make millions if not billions from selling not only the games but also from merchandise handled by the Pokemon Company which they owe an equal part in. Yet, despite them doing yearly releases, they stick to a studio size of about 200 employees. WHAT?! They could VERY EASILY hire dozens if not a few hundred programmers and animators to get parts of the games faster so they could include other features they want it, maybe even getting people with knowledge of new programming and animating methods to save on memory size and do things quicker. And in that respect not only could they easily do a new generation of Pokemon within a year but have it packed full of features and looking current gen. But no. They don't do that. Instead the top staff members mostly stick with the team they've had for years (possibly even overworking them) to shove out a game with cut content and last gen looking graphics. It's the worst forms of complacence, entitlement, and favoritism.
 
Who's Making The Demands:
Yeah, no, GameFreak is NOT innocent here. No one is making them do yearly releases, GF is making that decision and is telling Pokemon Company and Nintendo "oh yeah, we'll have the games ready by next year!". So Pokemon Company goes on ahead and starts making merchandise for the next games with expectations the games will be released at that time. In addition, with Pokemon being one of Nintendo's biggest franchises, they too are expecting Pokemon to be on time with their predicted release date. So what this means is that GF can't really delay the games because they have deadlines and expectations to meet... BUT it was deadlines and expectations that GF set for themselves by not giving themselves wiggle room either because of lack of foresight or they're trying to keep shareholders appeased. The Pokemon development cycle is an absolute mess because GF has gotten too big for its breeches.
Wait, where'd you hear that? I hadn't heard anything about this.
 
GF is most likely not the one calling the shots when it comes to the general release date. Remember the whole Pokemon thing is easily a million-billion dollar franchise and games are just only a part (although a pretty critical one) of the whole chain - there's like a gazillion tons of stuff (merchandise, anime, Nintendo's own roaster of stuff etc) within this whole chain, which demands when the Pokemon games will be released. With the current atmosphere demanding quicker and shorter gaming cycles GF also suffered from this - could've released their game later but instead of they don't want to, they kinda couldn't bargain for one either. GF don't have nearly as much bargaining power as you'd expect.

And that GF is the company responsible for the million dollar franchise......and that's what they really are. The company only makes games for the same franchise without any other notable stuff outside of Pokemon, and until now other standalone projects turned out to be flops. If GF is a company having much more employees and have a few at least workable projects that sells well, they would've had more money to maintain their expenses as well (which unfortunately is not the case), allowing them to refine the game better without worrying about income. No game, less income, and a whole lotta pressure from Nintendo and other stakeholders of the Pokemon Company. (they could've hired a lot more people to help build their games, but what if those games doesn't sell either, and how do they keep up with their expenditure?...a vicious cycle all over again)

This is obviously not to say GF is not responsible for any of the mess caused by Sword/Shield since it's pretty obvious their incompetency is a major part of the cause, but we shouldn't be blaming absolutely everything on GF as if it's a dumpster of all faults - they have their own pile of dump they have to handle and take care of, and they just simply don't have a whole lot of power nor resources you'd expect due to how overly specialized their roster of games (aka only Pokemon main series) is.
 
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We’re slowly working our way back to the Dexit Flame War so let’s maybe shift gears?

I have a feeling we’re going to be seeing starter evolutions soon. Any hopes for designs or typings? I can see Grokey getting another stick (so he’s a proper drummer) or a little block to hit it against. I have a feeling Sobble’s camo and melancholy is going to be played up so he’s going to look emo. Can’t figure out where they’d go with Scorbunny without repeating Combusken.
 
“They” was just being used a gender neutral pronoun, sorry.

Also, what the hell are you on about? You can’t call other people’s points fallacies when you provide them yourself (false equivalency when saying blaming the pokemon company is akin to blaming capcom for gf’s corner cutting, strawman when you attack the lazy design of Dynamaxing without actually addressing the point of his topic, that being the gameplay aspect of it). An actual counterargument would help a lot here- claiming they’re arguing a point you never made while still being argumentative achieves nothing.
He was likely being sarcastic: We are ignoring all of GF’s faults compared to worse studios because it’s GF.
He never talked about how strong dyamaxing is until worldie beought it up, then because it’s all theorymon we don’t know the true impact so it could be imbalanced

Dynamax has inbuilt counterplay in that the most useful parts of it so far seem to be setting field effects
It can give stat buffs too, which is powerful.
Even noctowl was somewhat good in theorymon because specs + max flying speed boost (and tinted Lens). Now imagine a fast mon gaining spa/atk boosts while firing off max attacks. Though rip in pex
Edit: Clarified wording a bit
 
(oh btw, just adding that my sentence is in perfect English, i'm sorry sir)
Pretty sure you should've started that sentence with a capital O and the pronoun I isn't spelled in lower-case. Just sayin'.

Plus, why is gamefreak the bad guy here when it’s the Pokémon Company likely forcing the yearly release schedule, no wonder a poorly equipped studio like gf ends up cutting corners
That's why. How come Game "Money Printer" Freak is still trying to make these games like a tiny indie studio? Of course the quality of the games are going to suffer down the road.

Not gonna try to estimate how much of the blame falls to TPC, even though surely some of it is on their hands, but the games spearhead each new generation. Game Freak needs to expand as a company if it wants to keep the franchise running smoothly.



News coming on Sunday, huh? I wonder if we'll get some clarification on what are the real differences between D-Max and G-Max. It's a safe bet that at least a new mon will be shown, so that's something to look forward to.
 
Pretty sure you should've started that sentence with a capital O and the pronoun I isn't spelled in lower-case. Just sayin'.



That's why. How come Game "Money Printer" Freak is still trying to make these games like a tiny indie studio? Of course the quality of the games are going to suffer down the road.

Not gonna try to estimate how much of the blame falls to TPC, even though surely some of it is on their hands, but the games spearhead each new generation. Game Freak needs to expand as a company if it wants to keep the franchise running smoothly.



News coming on Sunday, huh? I wonder if we'll get some clarification on what are the real differences between D-Max and G-Max. It's a safe bet that at least a new mon will be shown, so that's something to look forward to.
Think I mentioned this before, but outside of the crap show GF internally is, they gained actually not that much from making the games. Unlike Nintendo who make tons of goodies (consoles, games, licensing games etc) GF only makes a single game that sells twice in three years. They will need to expand and improve their skills down the road, sure, but the harshness of reality often gives them the finger. (Now that you can say they can make their employees do better……but considering they are already in super overload state I guess that's not an option)

This is why GF mentioned about instead of prioritizing Pokemon SwSh they instead are focusing Town - to generate more revenue and to step up their game in the future, and no longer just known as "that company who makes games for one of the best selling franchise and gain painfully little". Call this meaningless bravado, but this is also the reason why they refused help from Nintendo directly even if everything could be done much more efficiently (so as to not letting Nintendo actually know what's up with the company).

The news should be up for me, let's see what we got
Edit: apparently not rip
 
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The problem I have with dynamaxing is that it seems that each elemental move has one animation that all pokemon share, and despite being turned into massive kaijuus, the pokemon just... stand there. Breathing. Lifelessly.

Sure, it's a cool idea on paper to have giant Pokemon, but when Gamefreak has struggled with visuals for so long, trying to scale things to giant size seems like a recipe for disaster.

On top of that... gonna be honest, the red lighting and the clouds don't look good. I can barely make out what's going on with Alcremie and Drednaw, and the red is gonna clash with some of the colour schemes that pokemon have, like Drednaw.
 

Pikachu315111

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Wait, where'd you hear that? I hadn't heard anything about this.
GF is most likely not the one calling the shots when it comes to the general release date. Remember the whole Pokemon thing is easily a million-billion dollar franchise and games are just only a part (although a pretty critical one) of the whole chain - there's like a gazillion tons of stuff (merchandise, anime, Nintendo's own roaster of stuff etc) within this whole chain, which demands when the Pokemon games will be released. With the current atmosphere demanding quicker and shorter gaming cycles GF also suffered from this - could've released their game later but instead of they don't want to, they kinda couldn't bargain for one either. GF don't have nearly as much bargaining power as you'd expect.

And that GF is the company responsible for the million dollar franchise......and that's what they really are. The company only makes games for the same franchise without any other notable stuff outside of Pokemon, and until now other standalone projects turned out to be flops. If GF is a company having much more employees and have a few at least workable projects that sells well, they would've had more money to maintain their expenses as well (which unfortunately is not the case), allowing them to refine the game better without worrying about income. No game, less income, and a whole lotta pressure from Nintendo and other stakeholders of the Pokemon Company. (they could've hired a lot more people to help build their games, but what if those games doesn't sell either, and how do they keep up with their expenditure?...a vicious cycle all over again)

This is obviously not to say GF is not responsible for any of the mess caused by Sword/Shield since it's pretty obvious their incompetency is a major part of the cause, but we shouldn't be blaming absolutely everything on GF as if it's a dumpster of all faults - they have their own pile of dump they have to handle and take care of, and they just simply don't have a whole lot of power nor resources you'd expect due to how overly specialized their roster of games (aka only Pokemon main series) is.
That just doesn't make sense to me.

For one thing this completely ignores that GF partly owns The Pokemon Company. Sure, their specific responsibilities is only making the games. But, that said, THEY MAKE THE GAMES. Without the games there would have been nothing to build the franchise on top of and they're the ones who make the new Pokemon that merchandise is made out of. Go ahead and point out that game sales make up less then 10% of the Pokemon franchises profits, but don't forget without those game attracting players they won't have the other 90% of the sales. To say GF has no say in when the next games are to be released just doesn't make sense. Like, how would that discussion look like:

GF: Hey, glad we could meet up and talk about next year's plan.
TPC: Oh, we and Nintendo already talked about that.
GF: Oh, alright, well would you like to know how the new games are coming along? We just finished planning and heading into development.
TPC: And they'll be out by next year's deadline, right?
GF: What? What deadline? Wait, next year? We were hoping to maybe spend maybe two years on development.
TPC: As we said, we and Nintendo already planned everything without you. And yes, next year. We already have the new merchandise being made so we need the games out next year.
GF: But we don't think we can do everything within the year, we planned for two.
TPC: And we planned for one. Figure it out and get those games out there by this year so we can start selling the new merchandise.

See how that doesn't make sense? GF has to be the one saying they can make the games in one year because they're the ones making the game. That's a very important detail that you just shrugged off. GF are the ones who know how long development would take (and theoretically also plan for possible issues that may come up that may cause a "delay"). TPC going ahead and making plans without getting GF's input would be disastrous if the unfortunate happen and am unplanned delay does happen. TPC isn't innocent in this as they are the ones forcing GF to keep to their deadlines because of the merchandise while other Nintendo games are free to have delays to improve them, but GF has to be the one to approve the deadlines because their the game makers. The only other entity that could "impose" a deadline on GF would be Nintendo, but that sort of goes directly against Nintendo's policies to force such a strict deadline.

Also why are you bringing up GF's other game? They have nothing to do with their handling of the Pokemon franchise.

If GF is a company having much more employees and have a few at least workable projects that sells well, they would've had more money to maintain their expenses as well (which unfortunately is not the case)
... Are you saying GF are having financial problems? Where was that said? Because they said one reason for Dexit was due to budget costs? That doesn't mean they're having financial issues, that just means the budget they set for Sword & Shield might not have been enough so they're trying to be careful with costs. Once again, they're part owner of Pokemon Company. I don't think they're in any danger of running out of money. And if some reason they were, I'd imagine Nintendo would probably help out the makers of their most profitable franchise.

(they could've hired a lot more people to help build their games, but what if those games doesn't sell either, and how do they keep up with their expenditure?
... I'm not talking about their side game projects. I'm talking about a main series Pokemon title! You can't tell me they're afraid to hire more people to help make the main series Pokemon title look and play better because they're afraid it won't sell. Heck, despite all our complaining, I'm going to bet you Sword & Shield will probably end up one of if not the best selling Pokemon generation only because it's on a main Nintendo console instead of a handheld, the extra money from those additional sales alone would more then pay the salaries of dozens of extra programmers and animators they could be hiring to make the game better. BTW, from what I understand, their side game projects are all handled by small teams anyway, the only exception being the new Town (working title) game... WHICH looks to be having better animations then Sword & Shield so I guess, yes, they aren't afraid to put money and staff on a new title they aren't sure will be successful or not.

EDIT: BTW, the newest JAPE is out! See the panelists opinions on Alcremie, Duraludon, and Rolycoly!
 
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For one thing this completely ignores that GF partly owns The Pokemon Company. Sure, their specific responsibilities is only making the games. But, that said, THEY MAKE THE GAMES. Without the games there would have been nothing to build the franchise on top of and they're the ones who make the new Pokemon that merchandise is made out of.
Yes, GF partly owns TPC, but remember they are not the biggest shareholder and, unlike what you are thinking right now, the ones that actually do work is not the one with the biggest say (damn Japanese enterprise hierarchy).

GF could've asked for something like "we want an extra year or two to further refine the game", but remember it's already 2 years after Ultra Sun Moon's release (and looking at previous release dates, there's about 2-2.5 years between each release, so that's about a new cycle for a Pokemon game). The anime's coming to an end as we speak and it's not like you can force the producers to further extend for a year - which also means the other products sold along with the anime - since everything is pre-planned with absolutely every other companies (say the TV channel, product designs etc) else. If there's a, let's say a sudden extra one-year-gap because GF decided they still need more time, the other stakeholders of TPC will not be able to adjust nor they will take it since there's bound to be a huge shake to their own income. They wouldn't just accept a blank year unless there's something to maintain the popularity of the franchise (say the anime or a Pokemon spin off like Pokken).

The reason why Town (and the failed projects of GF) is brought up is of one simple other thing - revenue. Money makes the world go around, and unfortunately the Pokemon game as well as the shares from TPC is practically the thing they live on. This is partly why although GF is biting more than they could chew at this point in the technical aspect there's not much they can actually choose. IF GF does have other games in the oven (and if they do sell) they can worry less about the money they required to keep the studio running, and unfortunately that is not a choice. This is why they (potentially) have to accept the deadline.

Are you saying GF are having financial problems? Where was that said? Because they said one reason for Dexit was due to budget costs? That doesn't mean they're having financial issues, that just means the budget they set for Sword & Shield might not have been enough so they're trying to be careful with costs. Once again, they're part owner of Pokemon Company. I don't think they're in any danger of running out of money. And if some reason they were, I'd imagine Nintendo would probably help out the makers of their most profitable franchise.
Just because they are partly TPC doesn't mean they have tons of money they can just take and use.

The thing is while Pokemon games always sells like hot cakes every season, the sale revenue is mostly stable at the 1000 Million USD mark. Sounds like a ton lot but GF doesn't get to have all that. They can't just be like "Oh Pokemon games always sell anyway, we can hire a bunch of people and have more people work on it despite it's getting niche down the years with our base moving up in the age scale and our revenues doesn't grow a lot". No company likes to rely on a single line of products or franchise (like Nintendo doesn't just make Mario series despite it's a huge franchise) and definitely not for a small company like GF.

This is why (again) focusing on Town is now of great importance to them so that they can explore potential new markets and gain more from that instead of relying entirely on Pokemon which is much more restrictive than ever - they can roll the die of everything about their own franchise (at least before it does grow into something huge and entangled with everything else) rather than having to make lots of deals with others.

It's likely Nintendo would've helped, but GF just refused. The reason is unclear but not hard to guess it's a political issue among the two - Nintendo doesn't really need GF if they have the copyright of the franchise but GF absolutely needs Nintendo to do all the publishing, sales, etc.. And that no company wants other companies to stick their nose and peek into its own internal affairs.
 
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GF: Hey, glad we could meet up and talk about next year's plan.
TPC: Oh, we and Nintendo already talked about that.
GF: Oh, alright, well would you like to know how the new games are coming along? We just finished planning and heading into development.
TPC: And they'll be out by next year's deadline, right?
GF: What? What deadline? Wait, next year? We were hoping to maybe spend maybe two years on development.
TPC: As we said, we and Nintendo already planned everything without you. And yes, next year. We already have the new merchandise being made so we need the games out next year.
GF: But we don't think we can do everything within the year, we planned for two.
TPC: And we planned for one. Figure it out and get those games out there by this year so we can start selling the new merchandise.
I'm sorry, but this is very disingenuous. You can't seriously read "Nintendo and/or TPCi would be the ones giving them deadlines" and think this is the only possible way that could happen, right? They can still force deadlines while still planning around it and keeping in communication with Game Freak whether Game Freak likes it or not. And perhaps most crucially, Game Freak might have to reluctantly say "... yeah, sure, we can get it done in a year", because even though they know they can't put out a quality product in that tight a timeframe, it's what Nintendo is needing and demanding.

All of this is conjecture, of course; but so is what you presented. Ultimately neither me or you can say what is or isn't the case, and I think it's a weak argument to confront "Nintendo and/or TPCi could be the issue here" with pure conjecture of the most ridiculous scenario you can think of.

The only other entity that could "impose" a deadline on GF would be Nintendo, but that sort of goes directly against Nintendo's policies to force such a strict deadline.
Which policies? Are you referring to how other Nintendo games have been delayed like Animal Crossing and Metroid Prime 4? If that's the case, then you yourself highlighted how Pokémon is very different to those games in terms of needing to play around merchandising and media. I would also add to that that while those two franchises to bring in money, Pokémon brings in an unimaginable amount more money to the extent that Nintendo would certainly be a lot more concerned about the idea of delaying it. I would add further that according to what's scheduled for this year, unless we get an announcement completely out of the blue in the next couple months; Pokémon is the Switch's only really significant holiday title this year. They are relying on it and no other new game to bring in money not just on its own merits, but also to sell both Switch units and the new Switch Lite.
I would like to live in a world where Nintendo is a wonderful angelic company, but unfortunately no such thing exists; and despite how good they might be with other IPs, when it comes to their big money makers, they're going to crack down a lot harder.

Heck, despite all our complaining, I'm going to bet you Sword & Shield will probably end up one of if not the best selling Pokemon generation only because it's on a main Nintendo console instead of a handheld, the extra money from those additional sales alone would more then pay the salaries of dozens of extra programmers and animators they could be hiring to make the game better.
This is a very confusing line of argument to me. Nintendo's handhelds have very consistently outsold their home consoles by a mile -- even the juggernaut that was the Wii only sold about 2/3 as much as the DS ultimately did, and right now the Switch's total sales aren't even half of the 3DS's. So, naturally, I don't understand how being on a main Nintendo console is going to let Game Freak see more money than they have before. With what little we know about their finances, we can at least do the math on that.

This is not to address the rest of the argument, which again; I feel is very much conjecture when we know little to nothing about Game Freak's financial situation nor how they budget.

I'm sorry, but I really cannot follow the arguments you've presented when it lacks solid facts to back it up and seems to rely on personal theories. Just because they make the games does not mean they're the ones calling the shots on everything here and I hardly think it a wild baseless idea that deadlines can be forced by companies who need holiday titles for their consoles or need to sell merchandise.
 
I'm not convinced that GF can't churn out spinoffs to keep the cash flow while they polish the next main series game.
Also, even as a minor shareholder, GF definitely has enough cash to not be indie-sized.
 
I'm not convinced that GF can't churn out spinoffs to keep the cash flow while they polish the next main series game.
Also, even as a minor shareholder, GF definitely has enough cash to not be indie-sized.
I'm convinced they can't without a shadow of doubt…… *looks at how poorly performing 3DS series are in general*

And that Pokemon spin-offs this year has Pokken (made by Bandai Namco) and LGPE, not too sure if they still can get away with releasing even more spin-offs before the main game comes out.
 
Plus, why is gamefreak the bad guy here when it’s the Pokémon Company likely forcing the yearly release schedule, no wonder a poorly equipped studio like gf ends up cutting corners
Because it's getting obvious GF would rather force the consumer to make sacrifices if it means they won't have to make some themselves?

Don't get me wrong. Both The Pokemon Company and Nintendo are also likely to blame for the direction the newer games have taken these past years, whether it's by imposing the seemingly unshakable 3-year development time or by just simply excluding the franchise from the "we care about our product's quality to the point we're willing to restart a game from scratch" talk respectively. But as far I'm seeing it, every other questionable decision the games have was entirely up to GAMEFREAK.

It was their decision to not expand more or outsource parts of the games they lack expertise with, unlike with other franchises like Zelda and Fire Emblem who got support from Monolith Soft and Koei Tecmo.

It was their decision to split the company into 2 teams if it meant they could kinda work on Pokemon and a different new IP entirely.

It was their decision cut unavailable pokemon from the game's code as a way to future-proof their MO regarding game development, which is clearly not gonna be sustainable in the long run if their unwillingness to hire more staff stays around (I wouldn't even be surprised if more old features get axed in the future just because).

Looking for a bad guy right now is a moot point. Every existing evidence suggest GAMEFREAK's priorities no longer lie in delivering a polished product rich in quality nor are bothered to actually fight for it. Their games won't get post-release content because they fear it would jeopardize the existence of their enhanced versions, so if you really want to play Sword and Shield (or even any future game for that matter) and expect them to be anything but what they advertise them as, then you're in for a rude awakening.

Man, I still can't believe half the reason I got myself a Switch in the first place was because I was legit excited for the franchise's future since SM and USUM -flaws aside- were looking to be a step in the right direction. Now that I realize my trust was misplaced, I'm afraid I no longer care about where the franchise goes from now on. I will still stick around here mostly for Showdown, the competitive scene and maybe even some spinoffs, but as far the core games are concerned, I'm done.
 
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Beers and Steers
is a Contributor to Smogon
Man, I still can't believe half the reason I got myself a Switch in the first place was because I was legit excited for the franchise future since SM and USUM -flaws aside- were looking to be a step in the right direction. Now that I realize my trust was misplaced, I'm afraid I no longer care about where the franchise goes from now on. I will still stick around here mostly for Showdown, the competitive scene and maybe even some spinoffs, but as far the core games are concerned, I'm done.
Holy fuck, what a paragraph of emotion. I feel for you here though. I can't imagine how disappointing it must be to drop $300 on an investment of sorts and be let down entirely.

Regarding your post as a whole. It's crazy how much this has effect people. I scrolled through twitter last night specifically the #bringbacknationaldex portion of the site. It blew my mind how many other people are heated. I suppose i shouldn't be suprised because when you think about breeding implications when you breed legitimate pokemon that can take awhile. Not to mention the countless hours of gameplay people have poured into collecting teams of pokemon who've lasted over a decade.
 
Regarding your post as a whole. It's crazy how much this has effect people. I scrolled through twitter last night specifically the #bringbacknationaldex portion of the site. It blew my mind how many other people are heated. I suppose i shouldn't be suprised because when you think about breeding implications when you breed legitimate pokemon that can take awhile. Not to mention the countless hours of gameplay people have poured into collecting teams of pokemon who've lasted over a decade.
Uuhm... I'm not really sure how the limited pokedex has any connection to breeding pokemon considering you can *still* bring Pokemon to gen 8 and re-breed them there keeping egg moves by breeding them with a pokemon of same species or Ditto if present in the game at all.

Please, enough with the "dexit" complaints, expecially baseless ones, we've been over this far too many times.
 

So uhhh... What mons would you like to get in to benefit the developing metagame? FerroPex has our defensive backbone covered for now, so right now I'm mainly hoping for more Fire types to alleviate the current shortage as well as more bulky Fairy types to take on Weavile better.
There's a surprising lack of fire types so far amongst those revealed...

I do have a heavy suspect that both Scorbunny and Charizard will be getting a Gigamax form though.
Alcremie looks like it might be a bulky type too, since his Gigaform is based on "soaking phisical hits and healing back up" so I'd expect its base form to also be similar.
 

So uhhh... What mons would you like to get in to benefit the developing metagame? FerroPex has our defensive backbone covered for now, so right now I'm mainly hoping for more Fire types to alleviate the current shortage as well as more bulky Fairy types to take on Weavile better.
I feel that we can have an alternate Fire/Steel that is more attack focused (luckily it seems that the fire starter probably is a Fire/Steel but that could be wrong, god please no more Fire/Fighting) especially if Heatran is gonna be gone this season.
 

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