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Pokemon rant


LeatherRebel5150

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So we all know that Pokemon Sword/Shield is coming out this week and there has been a lot of controversy and complaints about it. I haven't seen any discussion of it on here so I'll throw the topic and my 2 cents out there.

I normally would be very excited for a new mainline Pokemon but I am one of the ones who is very disappointed with the cutting down of the Pokemon available in the game. To be honest there have been a lot of mechanics in recent entries that disliked but I could generally just ignore of let slide, Z-Moves, Mega Evolutions (seriously evolutions that don't stay after battle!, this isn't Digimon!), and lack of gyms in Sun and Moon. But cutting out the Pokemon is just a killer for me. My interest in Pokemon since day 1 was the "gotta catch'em all" aspect. That's basically why I played the games to complete the pokedex. I never cared about competitive battling or all those post game gimmicks. I just wanted to work on catching/evolving/trading to get all the pokemon. I realize that there is now close to 900 pokemon before variants so at some point there was going to be a time when something had to give. It eats up a lot of time always adding the old ones in while trying to design new ones. But there are better ways they could have done it.

An idea me and a friend discussed could satisfy everyone. First make the each installment of the usual console games without any previous generation Pokemon at all. Only new designs. Then make a online MMO of the Pokemon universe in a full massive scale (my preference would be to use BOTW art style). This online game would allow free roaming in all regions and all the Pokemon would be present in their respective regions. Everything free flowing without hard transitions again BOTW style. Your in Kanto and want to go to Hoenn? Travel down whatever path/through whatever woods/lakes/streams/mountains etc encountering free roaming Pokemon the entire way. 

Now you might be saying then why make the usual dedicated game? That comes from the business side of things. We tried to think of something to satisfy the companies financial interests as well. The MMO would be something like $60 a year which allows access to the battling, trading, catching etc. and allows you to explore all the regions of any entries prior to the creation to the MMO. Now where the standard release comes in, it's also a full price game obviously but by purchasing it you gain access to that region in the MMO. Each game has its own unique, one time use code/key so one game purchased = one entry into that region. That deters used sales, which we know companies love.

So this pleases those who;  are looking for an open world game,  want all of the Pokemon available, want more/better interaction with peers. While also pleasing the companies by allowing more time and freedom to create new stuff in the mainline games without the weight of past generations, and also gives them a subscription based revenue stream as well as the normal game sales while reducing used sales. 

OK, rant over

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11 minutes ago, arch_8ngel said:

Wait...they are up to 900 Pokemon in the game and you are complaining about them cutting it down?

151 was plenty 😛

just seems like a major balance issue to try and manage hundreds from a design standpoint.

Yup, I am complaining. The whole point of the games for me was to go out and acquire them. Like I said I'm aware that at some point I knew it would have to be dialed back that's why I offered the idea in my long winded rant. As of now you can't catch or do anything with the ones not in the game currently all Game Freak gave us was a response of "put them in Pokemon Home so you can use them in future games" that's real fun.

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8 minutes ago, arch_8ngel said:

Wait...they are up to 900 Pokemon in the game and you are complaining about them cutting it down?

151 was plenty 😛

just seems like a major balance issue to try and manage hundreds from a design standpoint.

It has nothing to do with balance, they just don't want to use resources to add all of them to the game.

Pokemon has always been VERY unbalanced, and LeatherRebel hit the nail on the head. Game Freak makes questionable moves every game. I don't think there is a game that allows you to catch every single Pokemon in game, but you have been able to transfer every Pokemon you have up to your current game going all the way back to 2002 on Game Boy Advance. Even if they decided to patch in additional Pokemon as the time goes on I would have been fine with it, but they stated that they are not going to have the complete Pokedex available in this game at any point.

As another thread on here said, one of the cool things about Pokemon is each one is somebody's favorite. Collecting them all was a huge part of the game for a lot of people, It's pretty lousy they can't be bothered to add that core mechanic to this generation and decided to use those resources toward a dumb battle mechanic like making your Pokemon supersized instead.

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Realistically I would want a new core game that starts in Kanto after the events of the rest of the games. Have red the grand champion/final battle or don't doesn't really Matter but it sure would be nice to visit all the regions m collect all the gym badges. Have every pokemon available. Etc. Old man brock being your first gym leader. Something like that. Or that idea of a prequel that floated around Years back focusing on oaks beginning research. 

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Glad I had my Pokemon fun back with red and blue I guess.

Just seems ridiculous to complain about having the monster roster reduced from 900, when from the outside looking in, it strikes me as insane  that they ever reached that number in the first place.

 

 

And if balance has always been a problem, I would have thought what fans would really want was cutting the roster back down to something manageable, and better balancing the gameplay so that it was a better game overall.

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20 minutes ago, arch_8ngel said:

Glad I had my Pokemon fun back with red and blue I guess.

Just seems ridiculous to complain about having the monster roster reduced from 900, when from the outside looking in, it strikes me as insane  that they ever reached that number in the first place.

 

 

And if balance has always been a problem, I would have thought what fans would really want was cutting the roster back down to something manageable, and better balancing the gameplay so that it was a better game overall.

 

Balance is really only an issue at the competitive level. The competitive community got around that by creating their own tiers/rulesets that designate which Pokemon and move/item combos are and aren't allowed. They also have it separated into categories, so you can use the "Uber" ruleset where all Pokemon are allowed, or you could do something like "Overused", "Neverused" or "Underused" where the pool you have to draw from is more limited. Pokemon games from a single player point of view are pretty easy so balance isn't really an issue there.  It's a good solution, because it allows casual players to be able to go through the game using powerful 'mons and steamroll everything if they want to, while people that compete can have their own balanced rules.

One of the cool features that they ARE adding this time is an ability to make more pokemon viable by letting you change their natures/stats. So if you caught a really rare Pokemon but it has a terrible stat spread you don't have to hunt down another one.

It's also worth noting that Game Freak tends to reuse a lot of assets across games. I think a lot of the models they are using now are the same ones from Pokemon Go/Let's Go. So while having to model 900 Pokemon may seem like a lot, you also have to keep in mind they've been using the current models for more than 3 years and they are likely going to continue using them for the rest of the Switch's lifetime, so it's not like all that work would be limited to just one game.

Edited by ZBomber
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2 hours ago, arch_8ngel said:

Glad I had my Pokemon fun back with red and blue I guess.

Just seems ridiculous to complain about having the monster roster reduced from 900, when from the outside looking in, it strikes me as insane  that they ever reached that number in the first place.

 

 

And if balance has always been a problem, I would have thought what fans would really want was cutting the roster back down to something manageable, and better balancing the gameplay so that it was a better game overall.

I mean think of it like game collecting. Its crazy they ever reached what? 700ish NES games. Now what if you had a full set and someone comes along and says well you can't use half of those games, including some of your favorite games, with this console. But pay us a storage fee to hold onto them and eventually we'll release another console where you can use some of those but still not all of them. Oh your favorite game didn't make this round? Welp tough luck maybe next time, or the time after that.

That's kind of what's going on, here. People have a whole dex full of Pokemon that in years past could be brought in, or caught anew. Now they get to rot in Pokemon Home, that also has to be paid for. 

But your not wrong, 900 is a huge number. But again everyone could be made happy if they had a core game experience where you can bring all them in and play, in addition to the normal bi-yearly games. Most of this boils down to Game Freak not investing in the man power and infrastructure to do so.

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Well I could see being upset about the pokedex and if i were like hardcore into it, I definitely would, but I will say it bothers me.  I mean with like what 900 of them now storage at a premium that is getting a bit insane so if that was the rationalization about it I get that.

But that said the complaints about the changes in US/UM/Sun/Moon most of them I found an insanely welcome change.  I liked that the tired boring ass played out rerun of 20 years was removed, wash, rinse repeat a gym...YAWN.  The islands, the lack of a gym, the wider exploration, the story that was progressively moving along and changing like a normal JRPG blew me away.  This made me enjoy pokemon more than I have since the GBA era.

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2 hours ago, LeatherRebel5150 said:

I mean think of it like game collecting. Its crazy they ever reached what? 700ish NES games. Now what if you had a full set and someone comes along and says well you can't use half of those games, including some of your favorite games, with this console. But pay us a storage fee to hold onto them and eventually we'll release another console where you can use some of those but still not all of them. Oh your favorite game didn't make this round? Welp tough luck maybe next time, or the time after that.

That's kind of what's going on, here. People have a whole dex full of Pokemon that in years past could be brought in, or caught anew. Now they get to rot in Pokemon Home, that also has to be paid for. 

But your not wrong, 900 is a huge number. But again everyone could be made happy if they had a core game experience where you can bring all them in and play, in addition to the normal bi-yearly games. Most of this boils down to Game Freak not investing in the man power and infrastructure to do so.

I haven't kept up with Pokemon since they came out, so I am not at all familiar with this paid storage thing.

But do your Pokemon not still exist in whatever previous version supported them, eliminating the need for the paid storage?

 

And I think the game library argument really falls flat, because essentially no classic consoles supported backward compatibility, but it isn't like the games just stopped working on their original console 😛

 

I don't expect every MegaMan game to have every previous robot master...why would I have expected Pokemon to drag every ridiculous creature they have concocted forward into every new version?

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6 minutes ago, arch_8ngel said:

I haven't kept up with Pokemon since they came out, so I am not at all familiar with this paid storage thing.

But do your Pokemon not still exist in whatever previous version supported them, eliminating the need for the paid storage?

 

And I think the game library argument really falls flat, because essentially no classic consoles supported backward compatibility, but it isn't like the games just stopped working on their original console 😛

 

I don't expect every MegaMan game to have every previous robot master...why would I have expected Pokemon to drag every ridiculous creature they have concocted forward into every new version?

They at first created a pokemon storage system that had a yearly fee so that pokemon could be transferred between sun/moon, and I believe the omega ruby/alpha sapphire and black2/white2. They said they were going to stick with that system so that going forward it would. Easy to impory pokemon. Then they decided to scrap that system and create a new one pokemon home which has a another yearly fee.

Now you could leave pokemon in the games they came from but depending on the game you can not fit all of them in the game itself. In some instances once you moved them to the storage system they could no longer be transferred back to the original game which I think was the 3ds versions of red/blue/yellow, and if you stopped paying you would obviously lose them all.

Your correct you wouldn't expect every robot master in Mega man to be carried over. But Capcom never claimed that was the case. Game Freak created and maintained that expectation for literally the past 20yrs. So yes there is a fair expectation to carry them forward. I know this is all first world problems and really shouldn't matter. But its one of those things that you grow up with and all of a sudden it's completely changed.

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4 hours ago, arch_8ngel said:

I don't expect every MegaMan game to have every previous robot master...why would I have expected Pokemon to drag every ridiculous creature they have concocted forward into every new version?

Always wanted that. Every since Twisted Metal 2 I imagined an arena style Megaman game taking place across various worlds where you can use every robot master and battle it out against others, running around shooting, stealing powers, climbing ladders, jumping platforms, avoiding traps on the field, everything from all the original Megaman games but in 3D perspective instead of side view, destroy all opposing robot masters on that stage and then do it again somewhere else, and boss fights would be bigger Wily machines. Also a mode to create your own robot masters. Damn, still wish such a game existed, at least the way I envisioned it, would have been addictive fun.

I only know some Pokémon, most of the main ones, well whichever ones were when it first came out. But hey, trying out Pokémon for the first time because of this topic. Not sure for how long, but I'll play it for a little while at least to know how the game(s) play.

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Well I don't about it being a misstep.  Maybe an oversight at best not letting the public know that in time there would be too many to fit into one game storage device.  It's pretty insufferable and immature for people to get so pissed off and nasty about it really flaunting that negative stigma of the whole entitlement culture going on.  To think that when it hit 500 they kept them all was pretty generous, but now that we're teetering near a 1000 of them it's asinine and delusional to think they'd keep placing everything in every game.

Stepping back to think about it you'd need all the end user statistical data, goofy texture descriptions, the sound effects, the bodies from all angles and every single animation of them, their attacks, their defenses, and other odd animations too.  That stuff really begins to add up.  And despite the obvious giant amount of space to hold all that data, you have to figure the dedicated members of the team that would solely be stuck on just working this junk into each game every year or two.  And that would be a job in itself on top of designing a whole new set of characters, worlds, stories, and the new batch of critters and all their requirements to work too.  At some point enough is enough, grow up and respect the developers and understand you can't expect to get 15, 20, 25 year old creatures in each new game.

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It was inevitable with how they add a large amount of new Pokemon each generation. The jump to a new console was the right time to implement it, logistically.

Please don’t take this as me shutting down your opinion or concerns because I certainly have my own concerns with the Pokemon franchise that I’ve voiced in the past. It’s totally okay to be disappointed by the trimming of the National Dex. But the “controversy” is way, WAY overblown. It’s an extremely loud online minority. Everyone I know in real life and talked to at stores or whatever has basically said “Yeah it sucks, but I’m incredibly excited for Sword and Shield.” Every person. This game will do well just like the rest. And frankly with the National Dex issue aside, the game looks incredibly enjoyable, but that’s up to personal taste I guess.

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15 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Well I don't about it being a misstep.  Maybe an oversight at best not letting the public know that in time there would be too many to fit into one game storage device.  It's pretty insufferable and immature for people to get so pissed off and nasty about it really flaunting that negative stigma of the whole entitlement culture going on.  To think that when it hit 500 they kept them all was pretty generous, but now that we're teetering near a 1000 of them it's asinine and delusional to think they'd keep placing everything in every game.

Stepping back to think about it you'd need all the end user statistical data, goofy texture descriptions, the sound effects, the bodies from all angles and every single animation of them, their attacks, their defenses, and other odd animations too.  That stuff really begins to add up.  And despite the obvious giant amount of space to hold all that data, you have to figure the dedicated members of the team that would solely be stuck on just working this junk into each game every year or two.  And that would be a job in itself on top of designing a whole new set of characters, worlds, stories, and the new batch of critters and all their requirements to work too.  At some point enough is enough, grow up and respect the developers and understand you can't expect to get 15, 20, 25 year old creatures in each new game.

It seems like everyone only read my first paragraph, lol. Yes, I'm complaining about not having all the pokemon. But also offered a solution. Which is to more or less allow the yearly games to tie to a greater overarching game that contained all of them. The point is there are solutions to pretty much make everyone happy and I was trying to point out one such way in the original post.

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As someone who got a living dex on OR/AS and a living dex on US/UM, I honestly couldn't care less that they aren't putting all of the 900+ Pokmeon in Sword & Shield. It took over 400 hours to get the living dex on OR/AS and about 150 on US/UM. The writing was on the wall when they didn't put the national dex in S/M and US/UM. On top of that, mythicals are almost always tied to some event that may or may not take place in game. GameStop had codes last time they were available, and you had to go get them from the store to have those 'mons (or trade for them on the GTS). They weren't catchable in game.  There was no way a national dex was going to happen considering mythicals and the removal of the national dex from S/M.

Let's be honest. People are upset that their favorite or one of their lesser favorites are not going to be included in the game. But every person I've ever talked to who plays the card game or the video games doesn't play the game with only one Pokemon and refuse to use the rest because they're not their favorite. People have many Pokemon they like, and they use their favorites. Besides, people who competitively battle already know that most of the popular 'mons suck competitively, and are only competitive in certain restrictive tiers. You're not going to play the game with 900 Pokemon. You're going to play with maybe 50 and box the rest. 

Here's my take on it: if leaving a few hundred Pokemon out would mean they can polish the experience more and improve the graphics to be even last gen, I'll be happy. Considering that they have to release this game on time to not delay the arrival of all the other Pokemon merchandise they release alongside a new game (TV shows, cards, plushies, other toys), I'm cool with it. Sun & Moon did a good job revitalizing the formula, but the last two big releases have been remakes. Arguably, they should have just waited to release US/UM and not released S/M, since they're basically the same game and the rush job shows in S/M's paltry postgame. Since they've now started releasing a main-line Pokemon game yearly, I want something that's going to capture the magic that Sun & Moon and to a lesser extent X/Y did, and if I have to sacrifice some Pokemon for that, so be it.

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Well, we also don't know what their plans are with everything yet. Yes they may have made cuts from this game now, but maybe this is the start of killing yearly releases for expansions or something. No one actually knows what the future holds because the game isn't actually out yet and we don't know if there's a pokemon road map. Granted road map has some negative connotations, but I think game freak could put together a road map and implement it well. I think there might be bigger plans in the works. With all the leaks and stuff I'd say nothing else is happening too were I game freak.

 

I also think it's fine to be upset about the change. I'm really bummed I won't get to have a skitty in this game. That sucks. I'm sad my pokes can't just easily come over. I think disappointment is fair and valid. I'm also irritated about Pokemon home and I'll continue to be irritated about that probably forever. I need to remember to get pokes out of there and throw them in S/M before I have to renew my membership.

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3 minutes ago, VenusBananaPeel said:

I'm sad my pokes can't just easily come over. I think disappointment is fair and valid.

So how did importing pokemon from previous games work?  Did they come over leveled and ready to rock?  Or were they reduced to some minimum level?

Was there a limit on how many you could import?  Was it something that was blocked until the late game?

 

Just seems like a crazy thing to have to design around, when you also have to design to accommodate people who are playing it as their first-ever Pokemon adventure.

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11 minutes ago, arch_8ngel said:

So how did importing pokemon from previous games work?  Did they come over leveled and ready to rock?  Or were they reduced to some minimum level?

Was there a limit on how many you could import?  Was it something that was blocked until the late game?

Just seems like a crazy thing to have to design around, when you also have to design to accommodate people who are playing it as their first-ever Pokemon adventure.

You'd have your Pokemon game in the cartridge slot and open Pokemon Bank. If you have the games digitally on your 3DS, It'll give you the option of selecting whichever one you want to manage.

Pokemon Bank pulls up whatever is in your PC/Pokemon storage, and you can choose which Pokemon from the cartridge/save to transfer to Pokemon Bank. If the Pokemon has any held items, that item gets put in the bag of your trainer in the game. All levels, EVs, IVs, and moves are kept. Pokemon with illegal moves or stats cannot be moved into Pokemon Bank. The limit is 3000.

To prevent Pokemon from newer gens from being imported into an older Pokemon game,  Pokemon Bank only allows you to transfer Pokemon from an older generation to the newest one. So, for example, if you put Pokemon from X/Y into Pokemon Bank, you could only withdraw them in Sun/Moon or Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon.

It's kinda convoluted how you get what you want into a specific game:

pokemon-bank-diagram-ultra-sun-ultra-moo

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