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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
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Koraidon raises its paws and makes noises similar to "Cinema! Cinema!"
When I think country swing dance, I think farms and ranches, so it seems odd to pair it with the one town in Hoenn incapable of agriculture. Though I suppose if anyone would need an instructor to teach them how to country swing dance, it would be someone from Pacifidlog.
I didn't watch the later seasons of the anime, so maybe I'm missing something, but it always struck me as extremely uncomfortable that the Alola League, newly-founded as proof the islands can stand with the rest of the world, was won for the first time by an outsider to the islands who isn't even good enough to reach the League in any other region. That's...pretty imperialist.
As much as I never really liked the anime, I wouldn't really blame them for this. Alola's league being new and its first champion being someone who just showed up is copied from the games. Sure, the SMUSUM protagonist doesn't have a history of losing to the E4, but they don't have a history at all besides being from Kanto.
I think BDSP was put in this awkward position where it was handed off to another company and there wasn't a real push behind it because Game Freak was coming to the conclusion that remakes were no longer needed. There aren't enough mechanics to upgrade and the mainline game's direction has shifted so much that, as we saw with BDSP, trying to balance the modern approach with the traditional style no longer works well.
it would require a massive rework to fully modernize them, and that energy is instead going to be diverted to projects like L:A and Z:A or whatever the new one is called. As for why there's no Platinum, the same reason the attention to detail that made the original games so special is being removed: that's not why the masses play them, apparently.
As I never watched the anime beyond one movie as a kid, but every time I read about it, it seems like a low-effort attempt to sell more toys and shouldn't be taken seriously. Like the manga seems to have some creative intent at least from what little I've seen.
I doubt they meant anything by it since TPCi got mad at what happened in Kalos and demanded Ash be handed a win, but yeah this is some RWBY-tier "oops we put zero thought into this and it turned out problematic as hell" writing lmao.
Doesn't help that Alola is based on Hawaii.
To be fair that's also what happens in the games, I'd blame it on that more than the anime.
That being said, I did always find it kinda sad how Alola has this much more interesting and cool system instead of the typical gyms and stuff, only for the region to be starting to phase that out in favor of a typical pokemon league.
That's the thing, there was no need to.
I know people hate the chibi artstyle and all that, but that's how DP was back in the day.
The one thing they should've done was copy Platinum's code instead of DP's and adjust version exclusives accordingly.
That. Was. It.
People were making mods to change its features to Platinum's since day 1, and it IMMEDIATELY felt just right. Granted, the Exp. Share and removal of affection cap were huge issues, but that's not a lot to ask out of these devs. It's literally the same work, but with a better source material. It would literally cost zero extra dollars to use Platinum as a base instead of DP.
You know what happened? Masuda was the director. He directed DP, but not Plat, and Plat sold less than DP because all third versions sell less. So he forced DP down everybody's throats again. Except now we knew just how much better it could be, and was.
It is a shame, because there are just so many things that game does right, including the Grand Underground, which is an incredibly fun feature, but most people will never see it because you have to mod it all in.
Here are the biggest issues with BDSP:
- It's based on Diamond and Pearl, not Platinum, which causes significant issues for Cyrus' portrayal, and Pokédex, limiting several major trainers and players. This unfortunately, extends to the coding, which was heavily recycled from DP, including its buggy AI.
Using Platinum as a base would've fixed literally all of these issues, even if they had to revert the Mt. Coronet climax to DP's. - The game was very clearly NOT intended to be played with the modern Exp. Share. But we always gotta fix that shit anyway because Exp. Groups are a disaster.
- The soft affection caps from SwSh were removed. Again, no reason. Just shoddy copy-pasted code.
- They didn't add the Hisuian mons and other cross-gen evolutions to the game in an update. What. The. Fuck. They would've been PERFECT in the Grand Underground!!!
The anime is also not above changing things to suit their whims. The anime version of Lusamine is pretty much a separate character from her game incarnations, for instance. The writers weren't really obligated to keep the league stuff the same. Could have easily said "the league is still newish but a native won the first time" and dodged a lot of the unfortunate implications.
Yeah, true. Admittedly I haven't watched much of the anime either.
They were remaking Diamond and Pearl, not Platinum you were never gonna get any elements of Platinum changes cause they were all changes to the main story or Pokémon distribution, neither of which were ever carried over in remakes prior. ORAS has nothing of Emerald and HGSS only carried over part of the Suicune sidequest (even then the end was heavily changed).I agree that he should've won in DP, then get packed up by the Elite 4 or Cynthia.
There, no need to end his journey. The whole argument of "Ash must not win or we'll have to retire him" was stupid. I'm not even going to mention Alola, he got a ring in the Orange Islands!
Now his book ended with Mr. Can't Catch a Dub becoming the World Champ with a fresh team.
Charizard, Snorlax, Sceptile... All of y'all on fraud watch.
That's the one gripe I have with Masuda as a director. It is significantly easier to build upon a solid foundation, and a lot of the games he directed, as horribly flawed as they were, did provide that.
But then...
View attachment 759027
Piece of shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!!
They were never gonna add Looker or whatever other Platinum changes even if BDSP had been more in line with previous remakes.
Don't fight wild Pokémon you don't intend to catch and don't randomly run around with less than six mons for extended periods and you'll be just fine. With the exception of Wake, since his levels are literally exactly the same as Maylene, you'll always be roughly around the Gym Leader/E4. So long as you're actually using a full team the whole time so the exp gets spread out instead collecting into only a couple mons. Don't try and play it like original game and leave team slots fully empty for Pokémon you want but can't catch yet or only have one or two mons do all the fighting. Switch which of your party members leads off if one's level starts to break off from the pack.
This isn't correct. BDSP's Exp. Share doesn't split the exp. between benched mons, it just gives each one 50% of the base yield. Whether or not team slots are empty doesn't matter.
I did manage to mostly avoid overlevelling (and, more relevantly to me, unsatisfying affection procs) in my playthrough, but it was by taking slower lines through fights that often included sacrifice plays (since fainted mons lose a bit of friendship and don't gain Exp). But that just kind of highlights that the system isn't that good at its intended purpose. It can't really help players that need a boost without overcompensating for ones that don't if it gives more total exp. from a clean sweep than just barely making it through.
I think it worked a lot better back then, I thought the overworld and people looked hideous on the Switch lol.
Yeah, they were already being lazy, and having to think about how to synthesize the differences between Diamond and Pearl into Platinum's plot was too much. Because there have to be enough to justify creating two versions of the game.
also, TBF, pretty much every remake has had this issue. HGSS didn't fix some flaws in the original games that could have been solved with a few lines of code, and both that remake and ORAS didn't incorporate in a lot of the material from the third version of the game. They were both made with more love and care than BDSP, which both speaks to the shift in paradigm Game Freak now operates under, and it was easier to modernize them to their corresponding generation.
Interestingly, I wonder if they get concerned about fans getting neurotic when the games aren't identical to the first two versions. And honestly Pokemon fans are that level of neurotic, but not about this.
This is pretty much the only positive way they could modernize it. I had mixed thoughts on the feature. I thought it was cool but combined with poor overworld encounters and the fact that many of the Pokemon were overleveled down there, it wasn't enough to save the game imo.
I agree. It's a good example to show how the direction of the games has changed. And the problem isn't just xp share - animations are also slower in 3d. Battles take forever to start. It made the game feel slow and easy, I lost any sense of curiosity.
yeah, they don't care about those details anymore, especially not in what was probably their last remake, although tbf they didn't do a great job of this in FRLG or HGSS. idk. BDSP was my introduction to Sinnoh and I hate the games so much I didn't finish them and felt negatively about the region as a whole until I made myself play through Platinum. And it still won't ever be my favorite region because of that first impression. Alongside SM, the only game I haven't finished.
I left it at a friend's house who I fell out with and I hope I don't need anything for competitive because I don't care enough to get it. He has a kid and the kid will get more out of it than me lol.
We play games to have fun, and sometimes banning things for the sake of "competitive integrity" takes the fun out of the game. Broken stuff is legitimately fun to use, and as long as there is counter-play, and the broken strat isn't just a straight up guaranteed win, we should caution on the side of fun. I play gen 1, and this is the main reason I want a gen 1 NC 97 ladder, which is a format closer to the vanilla game, with less bans than ou.
I used to think that way but after playing for awhile on Showdown i'm grateful for the ban lists. And by definition Broken is bad for the metagame, where counterplay is limited or nonexistent
tbh I feel the exact opposite. Even if something isn't necessarily overpowered, sometimes it's better to just ban things to make the game funner.
My counter argument is that broken stuff stops being fun when every team I play or use is one of 5 or so templates that functions with or against the OP element the game is based around. Getting rid of overcentralizingly broken elements and pure luck-sac elements IS cautioning on the side of fun, because a stricter and smaller meta gets stale WAY faster
My counter point here: Just because it's the precedent doesn't change that the remake we were given was made under a short-sighted and stupid design philosophy that resulted in a lesser product. Toothpaste used to be made from powdered chalk and brick and you know what we did when they found something that worked better? Stopped using the old crap that we knew full well was worse instead of just excusing it as what we always used and saying to just deal with it.
As a Gen 4 fan, Diamond and Pearl are flat out AWFUL games to play through without Platinum's updates, and more than simply not doing Platinum's improvements, BDSP didn't do enough of ANY improvements on those problems (if not introducing more with the botched EXP Share curve for example)
I feel the same tbh. I think to me this is the appeal of ubers formats (although I do just hate some of the way overtuned win-in-one-turn legendaries, primarily xerneas), pure hackmons (bad PH formats inclusive) & miscellaneous oldgen formats like gen2ou and BW doubles (pre nerf thundy my beautiful beautiful boy). it's an interesting friction, trying to navigate obviously broken tools that still have defined counterplay
whenever i accidentally stumble across a competitive pokemon subreddit, they're saying something snarky about the "Karen Quote." The one where she says "Good trainers can win with weak pokemon" or whatever. And I'm not sure what they expect, like is she supposed to describe what a metagame is and talk about how you should evaluate Pokemon based on how well they fit a specific role?
and honestly she's not that wrong. like 70 percent of competitive Pokemon entertainment content is centered around winning with bad pokemon, and if you actually take the time to learn how to use the teams, you can make them work better than the YouTubers. I was maintaining my ELO on Gen 3 ladder with Muk, for example. Now, in serious matches, you have to be more careful because weak Pokemon have more weaknesses, and you lose the element of surprise if your opponent prepares for them, but even then there are plenty of instances where a team with a "shitmon" wins.
In those important matches, even being at a disadvantage by an extra 1-2% can be a difference maker. In VGC, where you are stuck with using the same team for a tournament, those 1-2% can add up and you're less likely to see something crazy there. But I'd contend that most people are poor teambuilders (there isn't the same infrastructure for learning and understanding the game compared to chess) so they're going to stick with what they know. The full potential of teambuilding is not yet reached.
And I'll also say: if you make a game with 1,000 monsters in it and only 20-30 can actually be used in your competitive format, well that seems like power creep has become out of hand, no? Or maybe some sort of tiering system is in order.
Or maybe the real annoying thing about complaining about Karen, is that your rival sees Pokemon as tools, constantly bringing up the idea of weak and strong Pokemon, and saying only strong Pokemon matter. And there's something charming about a Dark pokemon trainer reminding you that there is beauty everywhere you choose to see it.
also the Johto Elite 4 quotes read like AI now. A ton of dashes and "it's not x it's y"
and honestly she's not that wrong. like 70 percent of competitive Pokemon entertainment content is centered around winning with bad pokemon, and if you actually take the time to learn how to use the teams, you can make them work better than the YouTubers. I was maintaining my ELO on Gen 3 ladder with Muk, for example. Now, in serious matches, you have to be more careful because weak Pokemon have more weaknesses, and you lose the element of surprise if your opponent prepares for them, but even then there are plenty of instances where a team with a "shitmon" wins.
In those important matches, even being at a disadvantage by an extra 1-2% can be a difference maker. In VGC, where you are stuck with using the same team for a tournament, those 1-2% can add up and you're less likely to see something crazy there. But I'd contend that most people are poor teambuilders (there isn't the same infrastructure for learning and understanding the game compared to chess) so they're going to stick with what they know. The full potential of teambuilding is not yet reached.
And I'll also say: if you make a game with 1,000 monsters in it and only 20-30 can actually be used in your competitive format, well that seems like power creep has become out of hand, no? Or maybe some sort of tiering system is in order.
Or maybe the real annoying thing about complaining about Karen, is that your rival sees Pokemon as tools, constantly bringing up the idea of weak and strong Pokemon, and saying only strong Pokemon matter. And there's something charming about a Dark pokemon trainer reminding you that there is beauty everywhere you choose to see it.
also the Johto Elite 4 quotes read like AI now. A ton of dashes and "it's not x it's y"
It's just funny when this clashes in a playthrough where the player character is steamrolling with tryhard high-BST / legends. It's one of those cases that's prime for narrative dissonance, like when Oak scolds Blue for not caring about his Pokemon at the end of RBY despite nothing in the game discouraging the player from treating his/her own team even worse. Just some cases where the games don't do a great job of "showing their work," per se.
Though in Karen's case, IIRC she's pretty clearly just calling out Silver for blaming his own shortcomings on his Pokemon, which is pretty well demonstrated.
given the static nature of npc quotes, there are many similar instances throughout the series. ie when you're Fighting the Elite 4 in the remakes and they say some quote when they're down to their last pokemon, even when your pokemon is +6 and one shotted the previous 4 pokemon, and are clearly about to one shot the fifth.
Technically no, she never met Silver (he never even got to the E4), but it does run counter to his general theme of "I MUST GET THE STRONGEST" before his maturing
The Oak shitting on Gary thing is more bullshit cuz Gary literally did the dex hunting for you Prof!
Hell he encourages the player to fill the Dex too frequently, cuz again, that's what Prof. Oak asked
Even the idea of him being an asshole is misreading his general friendly rivalry ("smell ya later" is just teasing). He straight up says he needs his rivals (meaning, YOU) to be strong to improve his own skills. The anime meanwhile makes him a legit jackass thriving on nepotism for the Indigo League, completely missing the point
Prof. Oak's the real jackass, and only got away with it cuz people take his league quote out of context even though nothing indicated that Gary didn't take care of his mons
I think he did need to get humbled. The whole game you're chasing him, and beating him as champion is the moment when you finally surpass him. But yeah you aren't supposed to take Gary's snide remarks too seriously: that's why I don't mind they continued on the Sevii Islands, he likes to trash talk.
It really shouldn't go understated that the Pokemon profs are just sending 10 year olds out into the wilderness to do a bunch of dangerous unpaid field research for them. Quite the racket.
They have nobody but themselves to blame that so many of the Pokedex entries have wildly fantastical "facts" about so many species. That's what you get when you hand over the reigns to children.
This is libel. They are actually sending 11-15ish-year-olds smh.