Unpopular Opinions: Scarlet & Violet Edition

[pika pal]

The Sun + Moon anime series does have a Mimikyu who’s rotten-to-the-core that resent the Pikachu species’ popularity, which is noted as a large contrast to other members of it’s species. GF should not make the species feeling one-note in terms of potential personality between each species, otherwise it makes them too rigid for fanmade contents by making fans complacent about the species so-called behaviors.

Meanwhile, I’m having mixed feelings about this generation’s power creep.

One one hand, GF really took one step forward, two step backward considering an attempt of rebalancing Zacian (Zamazenta’s nerf isn’t so bad since it did get Body Press + wouldn’t care about Intimidate as much as the sword counterpart would), making sure Terastalization isn’t overwhelming like Dynamax and succeeded for the most part, and making Protean a lot less oppressive, but then we have even more overpowered moves and Pokémon within a single generation, to the point where plenty of Paldea-introduced non-Legendary Pokémon got either quickbanned or suspect banned within few months after Scarlet + Violet release, making their balancing act not sincere at all.

But on the other hand, barring a few stinkers, they did succeeded at making many of the newcomers useful for in-game and competitive, so it’s nice to see many new faces in Singles OU and Doubles OU, as well as VGC. It helps that most signature move and / or Ability were actually useful and gel well with the Pokémon’s toolkit, even it ended up working too well in a few cases.

Truth is, the power creep in earlier generations aren’t that bad, and it were the Pseudo-Legends, Legendary, Mythical and other restricted Pokémon to put the blame for it, since those from later generations were oftentimes blatantly better than what came before. While Gen 5 and, when considering Mega Evolution, Gen 6, were arguable exceptions, it wasn’t until Generation 9 that things went into an overdrive. Though Gen 8 can be considered as a harbringer.

As a singles player myself, this seems a bit harsh on the balancing. Given they tend to balance the game around Doubles as the format they're trying to make an eSport out of, the Generation has had some banworthy mons, but I also think Singles has gained a decent number of influential-but-not-stupid Pokemon like Skeledirge and Meowscarada, Roaring Moon, Iron Valiant, and of course Great Tusk.

Of the Tiering Actions that have happened so far, several of them are Pokemon that definitely are only busted in a 6v6 Singles context (Last Resorts having more faints for power, Chien-Pao and Chi-Yu, Cyclizar for Shed Tail spam, for example), Terastalization got looked at but so far is considered balanced, and Espathra legitimately feels like an accident in that regard as a one-mon Baton Pass chain. Flutter Mane and Iron Bundle seem like the only ones that stick out so far as massive misteps since they seem to have VGC viability on top of Min-Maxed Singles play.

I wouldn't call the effort perfect but I can't call the balancing act insincere just based on this, every Gen's had some stand out players, especially if we include the "big" players like Pseudos or Megas (Garchomp in Gen 4, a lot of Weather Abusers in Gen 5, several Gen 6 Megas, UB's like Pheromosa and Naganadel in Gen 7, etc)

 

[Hugin]

There are other reasons to dislike open-world games besides nausea. In my case, interest in exploring 90% of the environment is not enough to be worth the tradeoffs made to the difficulty curve and the other 10% of the environment is the only area that's closed off. Though unfortunately for both of us, it probably isn't a net loss for GF even though it is a loss.

The difficulty curve isn't that hard to fix, GF just...didn't. Now, Pokemon would find it harder than something like Skyrim or Dark Souls, where player skill and build are much more important than raw stats. A lvl 1 run of Skyrim which beats every boss is perfectly plausible. In Pokemon, if you're lvl 30 walking into a lvl 40 boss fight, good luck. So I get that fixing the difficulty would take a delicate touch. But there's several ways GF could have handled "each boss fight gets harder as you progress, you are expected to level-up to compensate" that wouldn't have been "we've randomly scattered the various bosses around the map, each of them has a set level, and there's no in-game indication which is the next-most-powerful."

 

[Worldie]

The difficulty curve isn't that hard to fix, GF just...didn't. Now, Pokemon would find it harder than something like Skyrim or Dark Souls, where player skill and build are much more important than raw stats. A lvl 1 run of Skyrim which beats every boss is perfectly plausible. In Pokemon, if you're lvl 30 walking into a lvl 40 boss fight, good luck. So I get that fixing the difficulty would take a delicate touch. But there's several ways GF could have handled "each boss fight gets harder as you progress, you are expected to level-up to compensate" that wouldn't have been "we've randomly scattered the various bosses around the map, each of them has a set level, and there's no in-game indication which is the next-most-powerful."

To be honest, I was thinking if the real question is what the actual intend about the difficulty curve was.

While our expectation was that "trials can be beaten in any order"m there's a part of me that believes that the actual intent was to create scenarios where the player attempts a gym (or trainer, or story beat, or something) and gets absolutely murdered to create the "I'll come back when I'm stronger" scenario. Incidentally what happened to me a couple times.
Which isn't too different from back when in older pokemon games (as well as several other RPGs) you could tecnically access higher level areas right away yet you'd get destroyed by the encounters. It isn't even a huge deal in Pokemon considering there's basically 0 penalty from getting defeated other than a minor money loss.

Skyrim is often considered how "level scaling done right" works, but even that one is imperfect, with a decent chunk of people often complaining that the system defeats the point of growing up your character if the relative difficulty of the game stays the same, so the aspect of "getting stronger" is completely removed when you're the almighty Dragonborn vanquisher of dragons and yet even the bandits near the starting area are as strong as the ones in the rest of the world for no apparent reason.
There are also plenty of examples of games/series that attempted level scaling and it fucking sucked, with I think the most glaring example being Final Fantasy 8, which is infamous for how the game actually is easier at level 1 than it is at level cap, by a combination of the power you can gain from external sources (Junctions, magic) being way higher at lower level compared to the enemy strenght. (You can get basically maxed stats while having lower than level 10...)

All in all, as I said at start... I do wonder if they actually *want* you to lose. Some games are designed in a way that you're meant to find out by "rude awakening" when you are challenging something stronger than you.
Though if that was the case... the game really should have given some kind of better hint about the actual level of a given gym/trial.

 

[khlaylav]

Dudunsparce is a perfect evolution. Dunsparce was a dorky Pokémon and I am glad its evolution remains a dorky Pokémon. He is My Son and can do no wrong.

 

[Ironmage]

To be honest, I was thinking if the real question is what the actual intend about the difficulty curve was.

While our expectation was that "trials can be beaten in any order"m there's a part of me that believes that the actual intent was to create scenarios where the player attempts a gym (or trainer, or story beat, or something) and gets absolutely murdered to create the "I'll come back when I'm stronger" scenario. Incidentally what happened to me a couple times.
Which isn't too different from back when in older pokemon games (as well as several other RPGs) you could tecnically access higher level areas right away yet you'd get destroyed by the encounters. It isn't even a huge deal in Pokemon considering there's basically 0 penalty from getting defeated other than a minor money loss.

Skyrim is often considered how "level scaling done right" works, but even that one is imperfect, with a decent chunk of people often complaining that the system defeats the point of growing up your character if the relative difficulty of the game stays the same, so the aspect of "getting stronger" is completely removed when you're the almighty Dragonborn vanquisher of dragons and yet even the bandits near the starting area are as strong as the ones in the rest of the world for no apparent reason.
There are also plenty of examples of games/series that attempted level scaling and it fucking sucked, with I think the most glaring example being Final Fantasy 8, which is infamous for how the game actually is easier at level 1 than it is at level cap, by a combination of the power you can gain from external sources (Junctions, magic) being way higher at lower level compared to the enemy strenght. (You can get basically maxed stats while having lower than level 10...)

All in all, as I said at start... I do wonder if they actually *want* you to lose. Some games are designed in a way that you're meant to find out by "rude awakening" when you are challenging something stronger than you.
Though if that was the case... the game really should have given some kind of better hint about the actual level of a given gym/trial.

I agree that the intention was likely that the player would settle in to doing the quests in level order after being pushed back. However, I think that they wouldn't be able to catch players with the same setup if the levels were clearly delineated since I expect more casual players will just follow the sequence anyway. Effectively, I think the part that breaks the system is that the bosses are too easy. You have players accidentally sequence breaking because they didn't notice they were supposed to lose, which then ruins anything they skipped over because those encounters aren't capable of being engaging to a higher-level party. Spreading out the bosses' levels (either by reducing their number or using more of the level range, pokemon games don't really do anything past lvl75) might help, in additon to the obvious answer of increasing the challenge.

 

[Worldie]

I agree that the intention was likely that the player would settle in to doing the quests in level order after being pushed back. However, I think that they wouldn't be able to catch players with the same setup if the levels were clearly delineated since I expect more casual players will just follow the sequence anyway. Effectively, I think the part that breaks the system is that the bosses are too easy. You have players accidentally sequence breaking because they didn't notice they were supposed to lose, which then ruins anything they skipped over because those encounters aren't capable of being engaging to a higher-level party. Spreading out the bosses' levels (either by reducing their number or using more of the level range, pokemon games don't really do anything past lvl75) might help, in additon to the obvious answer of increasing the challenge.

Honestly I don't think there was a "good" way to work this system in the way they orchestrated SV.

In general I think that, if my assumption is right, it's a design that wouldn't really work in a turn based rpg like Pokemon, specifically because of what you said, if you do sequence break (either intentionally or accidentally) suddently the rest of the game becomes a joke.

A very recent game that I still consider a masterpiece despite this issue, in fact two, are Octopath Traveler I and II. These games operate on a similar design concept, you have a open map, 99% of the map is open right from the start (everything except chapter specific dungeons), and you can tackle every of the 8 char stories in any order. The locations and level of every chapter are shown clearly on the map, and yet, it's basically inevitable that you will eventually overlevel some of them, simply because by the time you finished two of the last chapters, your "main party" is signifcantly higher level than the chapters and will often end up carrying everyone else, thus making the first 2-3 stories you finish pretty challenging and all others usually a breeze.
(Absolutely great games btw, 100% recommend if you're into oldschool turn based jrpgs)

I just... don't think there's a good way to do this, it's a inherent flaw of leaving the player free to sequence break but also not wanting to do level scaling.
Overally I think Pokemon should just adopt level scaling for gyms (and similar challenges), have them have multiple teams and pick whichever the player level is closer to, maybe with a upper cap of 60-70 (aka their rematch). Ultimately this is canon in the anime (several gym leaders do say they pick their teams based on opponent's experience) and basically also canon in the games since rematches exist. Plus iirc, the bug gym leader in SV literally complains that she's always forced to use her weak pokemon because she's often the first gym the students take due to being the closest so she has to go easy on them.

 

[Coronis]

Honestly I don't think there was a "good" way to work this system in the way they orchestrated SV.

In general I think that, if my assumption is right, it's a design that wouldn't really work in a turn based rpg like Pokemon, specifically because of what you said, if you do sequence break (either intentionally or accidentally) suddently the rest of the game becomes a joke.

A very recent game that I still consider a masterpiece despite this issue, in fact two, are Octopath Traveler I and II. These games operate on a similar design concept, you have a open map, 99% of the map is open right from the start (everything except chapter specific dungeons), and you can tackle every of the 8 char stories in any order. The locations and level of every chapter are shown clearly on the map, and yet, it's basically inevitable that you will eventually overlevel some of them, simply because by the time you finished two of the last chapters, your "main party" is signifcantly higher level than the chapters and will often end up carrying everyone else, thus making the first 2-3 stories you finish pretty challenging and all others usually a breeze.
(Absolutely great games btw, 100% recommend if you're into oldschool turn based jrpgs)

I just... don't think there's a good way to do this, it's a inherent flaw of leaving the player free to sequence break but also not wanting to do level scaling.
Overally I think Pokemon should just adopt level scaling for gyms (and similar challenges), have them have multiple teams and pick whichever the player level is closer to, maybe with a upper cap of 60-70 (aka their rematch). Ultimately this is canon in the anime (several gym leaders do say they pick their teams based on opponent's experience) and basically also canon in the games since rematches exist. Plus iirc, the bug gym leader in SV literally complains that she's always forced to use her weak pokemon because she's often the first gym the students take due to being the closest so she has to go easy on them.

Same with Nemona only being able to go all out when we’re done.

 

[Hugin]

All in all, as I said at start... I do wonder if they actually *want* you to lose. Some games are designed in a way that you're meant to find out by "rude awakening" when you are challenging something stronger than you.
Though if that was the case... the game really should have given some kind of better hint about the actual level of a given gym/trial.

There's even a "Tell me where to go next" feature at the pokemon centers that doesn't actually point you to the next leveled boss for some reason.

Ways to fix the level curve:
Level scale the bosses based on your badge count. (obvious)
Make it more obvious where to go next/make the boss route more linear. (Basically, make the route up each side of the map very clearly point you towards the next boss sequentially instead of jumping around and having large gaps on each side)
Include a few more roadblocks to keep players to low/mid/high level areas better(either make it impossible to sequence break, or at least harder. Don't have a 20+ level jump from crossing an unattended bridge)
Some non-battle related badges(this wouldn't fix anything, it'd just be a nice change.)
Rework the entire fight system to not be so level-dependent. (not happening)
Probably other stuff I'm forgetting

 

[Ironmage]

There's even a "Tell me where to go next" feature at the pokemon centers that doesn't actually point you to the next leveled boss for some reason.

Ways to fix the level curve:
Level scale the bosses based on your badge count. (obvious)
Make it more obvious where to go next/make the boss route more linear. (Basically, make the route up each side of the map very clearly point you towards the next boss sequentially instead of jumping around and having large gaps on each side)
Include a few more roadblocks to keep players to low/mid/high level areas better(either make it impossible to sequence break, or at least harder. Don't have a 20+ level jump from crossing an unattended bridge)
Some non-battle related badges(this wouldn't fix anything, it'd just be a nice change.)
Rework the entire fight system to not be so level-dependent. (not happening)
Probably other stuff I'm forgetting

There's a (perhaps foolish) part of me that thinks that while the main stat and damage calculation is strongly tied to level, it's still possible to have fights that don't lean as heavily on level as the current ones by using more of the other mechanics and less direct damage. F.E.A.R. is the gimmicky extreme end of this idea: as long as the opponent is capable of knocking down the user to 1HP, no other stats are relevant.

 

[Worldie]

There's a (perhaps foolish) part of me that thinks that while the main stat and damage calculation is strongly tied to level, it's still possible to have fights that don't lean as heavily on level as the current ones by using more of the other mechanics and less direct damage. F.E.A.R. is the gimmicky extreme end of this idea: as long as the opponent is capable of knocking down the user to 1HP, no other stats are relevant.

Some games do use actual "damage scaling" based on levels.
One of the most recent infamous cases is SMTV, where if you're significantly higher / lower level than the enemy, there are massive damage buffs / penalties at play, to the point where if you're 5 or more lvls below a enemy you basically do negligible damage yet get absolutely deleted by them. It is still possible to beat bosses underleveled (speedruns do that) but it requires significantly more game knowledge and planning on top of luck.

I wouldn't exactly trust GF to make this kind of level scaling work, but it is something some other games do.

 

[Cancel cult]

if one more person complains about how buggy sv is, i will commit a crime of an unspecified but non-insignificant scale. game freak has to pump out a new pokemon game every three years, otherwise no new pokemon come out. that means the anime stops, the merch stops, to some extent the card game stops, and all sources of income for gamefreak are halted until new pokemon come out. and these pokemon have to be good. when people bring up gen 5 pokemon, do they bring up bisharp, volcarona, zoruark, hydreigon, haxorus, krookadile, or any of the other cool pokemon it has to offer. no. they only bring up the lines of kling, vanilite, the monkeys, and garbodor. those are just 14 of the 156 new pokemon introduced in gen 5, and yet they are the ones that get all the attention. and thats just the concepts they have to come up with. they also have to implimant the data for all of the previous pokemon they made, all in the best graphics feasable for the time. this may have been fine when there were only 300 pokemon, but in case you havent noticed, theres a bit more than that now. they have to code over 1000 pokemon in 3 years, while also coming up with new concepts for pokemon, people, places, and stories. they tried to mitigate this by including only some of the pokemon, but despite there being statistically 0 people who like heatmor, fans were outraged that game freak were hesitant to not include over 1000 pokemon in the new games. thats not the only shortcuts they tried to take to keep their buisness afloat. sword and shield is a very unpopular game, and yet few people try to ask why it was so bad. if they want to impliment 1000 different pokemon, a bunch of flashy mechanics, a giant world to explore, a compelling story, ballenced gameplay, and new creative designs, thats gonna cost the weekends of the aproxamately 400 employees who worked tirelessly to make sure the game was even released on time. people like to complain about the situation the games come out in, but under these circumstances, they were gonna complain no matter how the game came out, unless it were to be delayed, which is not an option if game freak wants to keep their buisness running. do you have any idea how cruel the japanese coding industry already is on the workers? they worked tirelessly to feed their families, and you have the audacity to insult their results?

 

[bdt2002]

if one more person complains about how buggy sv is, i will commit a crime of an unspecified but non-insignificant scale. game freak has to pump out a new pokemon game every three years, otherwise no new pokemon come out. that means the anime stops, the merch stops, to some extent the card game stops, and all sources of income for gamefreak are halted until new pokemon come out. and these pokemon have to be good. when people bring up gen 5 pokemon, do they bring up bisharp, volcarona, zoruark, hydreigon, haxorus, krookadile, or any of the other cool pokemon it has to offer. no. they only bring up the lines of kling, vanilite, the monkeys, and garbodor. those are just 14 of the 156 new pokemon introduced in gen 5, and yet they are the ones that get all the attention. and thats just the concepts they have to come up with. they also have to implimant the data for all of the previous pokemon they made, all in the best graphics feasable for the time. this may have been fine when there were only 300 pokemon, but in case you havent noticed, theres a bit more than that now. they have to code over 1000 pokemon in 3 years, while also coming up with new concepts for pokemon, people, places, and stories. they tried to mitigate this by including only some of the pokemon, but despite there being statistically 0 people who like heatmor, fans were outraged that game freak were hesitant to not include over 1000 pokemon in the new games. thats not the only shortcuts they tried to take to keep their buisness afloat. sword and shield is a very unpopular game, and yet few people try to ask why it was so bad. if they want to impliment 1000 different pokemon, a bunch of flashy mechanics, a giant world to explore, a compelling story, ballenced gameplay, and new creative designs, thats gonna cost the weekends of the aproxamately 400 employees who worked tirelessly to make sure the game was even released on time. people like to complain about the situation the games come out in, but under these circumstances, they were gonna complain no matter how the game came out, unless it were to be delayed, which is not an option if game freak wants to keep their buisness running. do you have any idea how cruel the japanese coding industry already is on the workers? they worked tirelessly to feed their families, and you have the audacity to insult their results?

I just recently got around to finishing the main story of Violet for the first time, and while I haven’t had any major issues with the game myself, there may be people that have had issues with this game and/or the other Switch core series games. With a multimedia franchise with as big of dreams as Pokémon, trying to please everyone was not an option from the very start. They have to satisfy so many people and ask if their efforts will be worth it, because we all know Game Freak as a company is entirely carried by the core series Pokémon titles at this rate. As for The Pokémon Company International, they’re out here trying to make ends meet every three years like you said… so what’s the problem here if it’s not Pokémon’s fault?

Simply put, a lot of your comments, while perfectly valid, such as that on the Japanese coding industry for instance, are hurt significantly by the fact that other Japanese IPs don’t have many of the issues that the modern Pokémon games do. It speaks volumes about product quality that franchises like The Legend of Zelda, Xenoblade Chronicles, et cetera can run perfectly fine on the Nintendo Switch hardware when they have enough time to cook in the oven. I’m almost positive Pokémon fans would be more than willing to pay $60 a year for new corse series games that weren’t released on such a tight schedule.

The problem as I see it isn’t anything Nintendo, Game Freak, or The Pokémon Company have done. Rather, this seems to be an issue of poor communication between all three, and for whatever reason this has resulted in the Pokémon franchise as a whole developing an unhealthy phobia of wanting to delay their newest products until they’re up to the standard of quality consumers should expect from a $60 first-party title. In other words, it’s not just the core series games that should be delayed. The next generation of merchandising on all fronts would have to be delayed so the guys over at Game Freak can have time to play catch-up.

 

[MagmaVinnillla]

Elite 4 and Geeta was a letdown

The rivals were great though, especially Nemona, she was the best rival ever for the whole game. But, the world map sucks. It’s a critical part of every open world game and Scarlet/Violet's map really aggravated me.



Also the overlaid grid is just a transparent layer that does not change when you zoom in or out. It's just a clunky decoration.

 

[Worldie]

if one more person complains about how buggy sv is, i will commit a crime of an unspecified but non-insignificant scale. game freak has to pump out a new pokemon game every three years, otherwise no new pokemon come out. that means the anime stops, the merch stops, to some extent the card game stops, and all sources of income for gamefreak are halted until new pokemon come out. and these pokemon have to be good. when people bring up gen 5 pokemon, do they bring up bisharp, volcarona, zoruark, hydreigon, haxorus, krookadile, or any of the other cool pokemon it has to offer. no. they only bring up the lines of kling, vanilite, the monkeys, and garbodor. those are just 14 of the 156 new pokemon introduced in gen 5, and yet they are the ones that get all the attention. and thats just the concepts they have to come up with. they also have to implimant the data for all of the previous pokemon they made, all in the best graphics feasable for the time. this may have been fine when there were only 300 pokemon, but in case you havent noticed, theres a bit more than that now. they have to code over 1000 pokemon in 3 years, while also coming up with new concepts for pokemon, people, places, and stories. they tried to mitigate this by including only some of the pokemon, but despite there being statistically 0 people who like heatmor, fans were outraged that game freak were hesitant to not include over 1000 pokemon in the new games. thats not the only shortcuts they tried to take to keep their buisness afloat. sword and shield is a very unpopular game, and yet few people try to ask why it was so bad. if they want to impliment 1000 different pokemon, a bunch of flashy mechanics, a giant world to explore, a compelling story, ballenced gameplay, and new creative designs, thats gonna cost the weekends of the aproxamately 400 employees who worked tirelessly to make sure the game was even released on time. people like to complain about the situation the games come out in, but under these circumstances, they were gonna complain no matter how the game came out, unless it were to be delayed, which is not an option if game freak wants to keep their buisness running. do you have any idea how cruel the japanese coding industry already is on the workers? they worked tirelessly to feed their families, and you have the audacity to insult their results?

Tbfh, to be precise, the people who complain about SV quality that aren't just being pepegas for the sake of it, are complaining of GameFreak's leadership's choice to not expand the development teams nor seeking help from other Nintendo studios.

Anyone with a grain of salt knows this isnt the employee's fault, if anything they're likely suffering from the poor reception on top of the amount of threats they got last generation.
That doesn't remotely excuse the poor decisions of the leadership.

They've always been notoriously bad with 3d graphics, and the game development suffers greatly from it. As you said, this isnt 2d games anymore, the "small staff" doesn't cut it anymore.
If they didn't own 33% of the IP, chances are they'd have been all fired ages ago and TPCI would have hired a different company for the games.

And honestly, Monolith studios are a 260-ish employees company also owned by Nintendo and is capable of producing masterpieces like the Xenoblade series on the same platform. GameFreaks have 170-ish employees and still pretend they are able to keep up with the "one game per year" release cycle that Nintendo demands of them.
Whatever the fuck GameFreak's leadership is doing, it's been horribly hurting the quality of the games for a while, and probably the psyche of their employees too.

 

[R_N]

I feel the need to point out that while Nintendo likely bears some blame in so far as they also own a third of TPC and likely does influence developmental decisions and timelines and could likely step in and go "hey we're not doing this" as much as they can "hey we're doing this" it probably is far more on Gamefreak who are the ones actually developing the game, the ones presenting their game plans to Nintendo for approval, the ones working with Nintendo on the timelines, and the ones that provide that guidance for the conglomerate of TPC's various other stuff based on what they're doing.

Also want to point out while we're here that the remaining third is fucking Creatures Inc. the ones making the pokemon models anyway! Literally a company dedicated to this!



Anyway all that aside the series would easily be able to, like, delay things if needed. Hell it already has: the SV TCG set didn't start until a few months after the games came out and the anime didn't start up until April. And the anime barely even needs to be about the new games at this point; and the TCG certainly doesn't either. And there's plenty of non-Gen 9 merch lines they can put out, or merch focused on ones already revealed.
And above all they can literally just go from the start of development "this will be a 4 year dev cycle" if they want, and everything is planned around that. But they don't. GameFreak themselves likely feels there wasn't a problem despite all the problems.

now that they had to publically apologize for how buggy the game was maybe they'll go "perhaps the next one can be longer in the oven" but that likely won't help the immediate next game that's likely locked in.

 

[Ironmage]

I'm at the point where my interest in the current mainline games isn't enough for me to buy them, so while a game might be releasing every year I sure haven't been playing a new pokemon game each year. Effectively, a longer dev cycle that leads to a more complete experience stands to increase the number of new games I would be buying and playing.

 

[Cancel cult]

I feel the need to point out that while Nintendo likely bears some blame in so far as they also own a third of TPC and likely does influence developmental decisions and timelines and could likely step in and go "hey we're not doing this" as much as they can "hey we're doing this" it probably is far more on Gamefreak who are the ones actually developing the game, the ones presenting their game plans to Nintendo for approval, the ones working with Nintendo on the timelines, and the ones that provide that guidance for the conglomerate of TPC's various other stuff based on what they're doing.

Also want to point out while we're here that the remaining third is fucking Creatures Inc. the ones making the pokemon models anyway! Literally a company dedicated to this!



Anyway all that aside the series would easily be able to, like, delay things if needed. Hell it already has: the SV TCG set didn't start until a few months after the games came out and the anime didn't start up until April. And the anime barely even needs to be about the new games at this point; and the TCG certainly doesn't either. And there's plenty of non-Gen 9 merch lines they can put out, or merch focused on ones already revealed.
And above all they can literally just go from the start of development "this will be a 4 year dev cycle" if they want, and everything is planned around that. But they don't. GameFreak themselves likely feels there wasn't a problem despite all the problems.

now that they had to publically apologize for how buggy the game was maybe they'll go "perhaps the next one can be longer in the oven" but that likely won't help the immediate next game that's likely locked in.

your asking them to stop all means of income for them, just to apeal to some ungrateful crybabys that cant handle games having bugs in them, even though gen 1 exists. thats not happening even if game freak wanted it to happen, because they are a second party developer for nintendo. all the complaining about the bugs is doing is ruining some japanese programmers day.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

your asking them to stop all means of income for them, just to apeal to some ungrateful crybabys that cant handle games having bugs in them, even though gen 1 exists. thats not happening even if game freak wanted it to happen, because they are a second party developer for nintendo. all the complaining about the bugs is doing is ruining some japanese programmers day.

Most of their income comes from merch.

 

[Cancel cult]

Most of their income comes from merch.

and the merch stops if no new pokemon come out.

 

[pika pal]

and the merch stops if no new pokemon come out.

I can't believe Gen 9 delays stop the sales of their 300 Charizard Toys.

Real talk though this is a point for stretching the Gens out more to me. I barely had time to remember or internalize most of the Gen 7 and 8 mons outside of the big Mainstay Legendaries with Anime appearances because by the time I got a feel for any of them we were on to something else.

Iron out the games before jumping into the next Gen both so the new games function better (I love SV's design and region but the 18 FPS genuinely hurts my eyes if I play as long as I usually would a game) and so that the old ones have time to make more than a superficial impact on the brand.

 

[R_N]

your asking them to stop all means of income for them, just to apeal to some ungrateful crybabys that cant handle games having bugs in them, even though gen 1 exists. thats not happening even if game freak wanted it to happen, because they are a second party developer for nintendo. all the complaining about the bugs is doing is ruining some japanese programmers day.

No, because they can just keep making merch of the stuff they already have, until a new game is out. It'll be okay, I promise the entire pokemon apparatus won't spiral out of control if they have to go another year without brand new Pokemon (even ignoring that if they revealed it earlier as teases they have Pokemon to make merch of anyway)

I can't believe Gen 9 delays stop the sales of their 300 Charizard Toys.

Real talk though this is a point for stretching the Gens out more to me. I barely had time to remember or internalize most of the Gen 7 and 8 mons outside of the big Mainstay Legendaries with Anime appearances because by the time I got a feel for any of them we were on to something else.

Iron out the games before jumping into the next Gen both so the new games function better (I love SV's design and region but the 18 FPS genuinely hurts my eyes if I play as long as I usually would a game) and so that the old ones have time to make more than a superficial impact on the brand.

I will say as a minor aside, the the point of "I barely had time to remember/internalize" might be more of a you thing. The 3-year cycle has been a thing for a long time. Gen 2 -> Gen 3 was about 3 years, Gen 5-> Gen 6 about 3 years, Gen 6-> 7 about 3, 7 -> 8 about 3 too.

Excusing Gen 1-> 2 since that whole thing is kind of a mess that involved a full reboot of what GS would even really be, Gen 3 -> 4 was the only time we had a 4 year cycle.. And we should go back to that, certainly, but I think that it's not a year, per say, that really stops you from internalizing it. There can be all kinds of factors. Not as young, disinterest in the franchise orspecific game, there's a ton of Pokemon now, playing other things taking up your time/mental space, real world stuff, etc, etc.
Like, personally & anecdotally, I have no problems interliazing these generations. I know other people who likewise dont have much of an issue. I also know people who never internalized anything after gen 1 or gen 2, even in the generations they still really liked.
Another year in the oven could have helped but it also easily have just still not internalized them for you, is what I'm saying.

 

[Coronis]

Personally I haven’t had any glitches or bugs in Violet or even framerate issues. Honestly it feels very overblown. BotW has many glitches but I never saw people whinging about that (obviously it is a better overall game, plus many of those can end up being used in a positive way). If a game is worse people will whinge more about stuff like this just to denigrate it further. Plus these things get completely overblown by people posting shit on the internet and whining when the glitches themselves are extremely rare.

I’ve learned to block out these sorts of criticisms of video games in general over the years.

 

[Worldie]

Look sir idk what kind of emulator you are using, but there is no way you havent noticed the absolutely massive fps drops in the lake area

 

[Cancel cult]

No, because they can just keep making merch of the stuff they already have, until a new game is out. It'll be okay, I promise the entire pokemon apparatus won't spiral out of control if they have to go another year without brand new Pokemon (even ignoring that if they revealed it earlier as teases they have Pokemon to make merch of anyway)


I will say as a minor aside, the the point of "I barely had time to remember/internalize" might be more of a you thing. The 3-year cycle has been a thing for a long time. Gen 2 -> Gen 3 was about 3 years, Gen 5-> Gen 6 about 3 years, Gen 6-> 7 about 3, 7 -> 8 about 3 too.

Excusing Gen 1-> 2 since that whole thing is kind of a mess that involved a full reboot of what GS would even really be, Gen 3 -> 4 was the only time we had a 4 year cycle.. And we should go back to that, certainly, but I think that it's not a year, per say, that really stops you from internalizing it. There can be all kinds of factors. Not as young, disinterest in the franchise orspecific game, there's a ton of Pokemon now, playing other things taking up your time/mental space, real world stuff, etc, etc.
Like, personally & anecdotally, I have no problems interliazing these generations. I know other people who likewise dont have much of an issue. I also know people who never internalized anything after gen 1 or gen 2, even in the generations they still really liked.
Another year in the oven could have helped but it also easily have just still not internalized them for you, is what I'm saying.

and people wont by 5 different versions of the same pokemon. new pokemon boost merch sales drastically. the point im trying to make is that from an economic standpoint, waiting even a year longer in between games is not an option. as a second party developer, they are under a lot of stress to make as much money as possible, and that means cutting corners to get the games out on time. if you have a solution for them that dosent involve shouting at them to do better or telling them to take their time and dont worry about their income, (like for example: maybe dont do it in hd, take pokemon concepts from fans, debug using known glitch hunters, cut out move animations, ect.) they would probobly love to hear it. but complaining about the final product will only get the games and the game makers undeserved hate, and ruin everyones day. this isnt a leadership problem, this isnt a technical issue, this is an unavoidable side effect of trying to keep up with the demand of the highest grossing media franchise of all time. even now, the devs are still working tirelessly to fix the issues with the game, even though its already out. no one here is in a position to critisize gamefreak for this, and it makes my blood boil every time i see someone do this.

 

[R_N]

and people wont by 5 different versions of the same pokemon. new pokemon boost merch sales drastically,

they absolutely positively will buy them, shown if nothing else by them constantly doing exactly that. People will buy merch because it looks cool or because it has their favorite. Some lines are Eternal Sellers.
It is one (1) extra year. It would be fine. There's a ton of Pokemon, they can find new little lines to create and put out.

or as I mentioned before, put out merch of revealed Pokemon. Or both!

Look sir idk what kind of emulator you are using, but there is no way you havent noticed the absolutely massive fps drops in the lake area

or the lag in the various cities or in mesagoza, or the very public memory leak glitches at launch or seeing all the pokemon enter their T Pose or simply running around and just seeing the game stutter trying to handle Koraidon's speed + loading in the next area + spawning the Pokemon. Or anything going on in Raids, the jankiest battle stye.

The really bad glitches are relatively rare, but the game is absolutely full of them and really easy to notice just by casually playing the game. Like I like the game! I like running around Paldea! It is impossible not to notice the jank and framerate.