Pokémon (Not-So) Griefing Thread - Scarlet and Violet Released with 10 Million Copies in First 3 Days in Buggy States

[ChucklesTheJester]

The best case has to be Lt. Surge. He was known as the "Lightning American" and was referred to as such even when he appeared in the Pokemon World Tournament, which is in Unova, aka Pokemon USA (though the announcer does question if he's from Unova, which just raises further questions). It wasn't until Let's Go that they scrubbed it out of his title.

Has the Kanto War been written out from his backstory yet? Or am I late and gay on that one.

 

[SteelPlatedHeart]

I dunno, as someone who wasn’t bothered by anything in this whole “controversy” with Pokémon SW/SH and really enjoyed the game itself, a lot of these complaints just seem like people massively overreacting. But again, that’s coming from someone not bothered by the Pokédex stuff and everything

 

[X-Shaped Weeaboo]

On PokéDex entries, they've "fixed" it now, but remember back in the original gen(s) they'd reference real-world animals and countries? Arcanine, for instance, is apparently from China, and a Gastly could topple an Indian elephant just by enshrouding it in its gas. Then there's Mew being found in the jungles of Guyana (of which there's a really excellent folklore about a giant magical tree of life that accidentally(?) made its way into the Pokémon anime).

I dunno, I get they didn't plan ahead and that referencing the real world in Pokémon would fuck with its lore and world-building, but it's little details like that that I miss. I mean, even the anime itself in the OG series showed real fish.
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It's such a bizarre case of early installment weirdness, but I kinda liked that about it.

As a tiny little, not "X-Rated" Weeaboo catching Pokemon when it was airing, I was always under the impression that Pokemon were advanced or hyper-evolved portion of an already existing planet of regular animals. I mean, I didn't think about the details to the extent I could now, but I thought it made sense that there were extinct "Pokemon" but still living fish and cows because actual evolution doesn't give creatures bonus points for "bad-ass" or cuteness appeal. I also figured, since not everyone had a Pokemon and that there weren't Pokemon literally everywhere, that Pokemon were just more rare and hardy than realistic animals.

Of course, that kind of suspension of disbelief is dead in the water now with Pokemon actively ripping apart time and space and containing the power to nuke continents and have mega-armor, but hey at least Aegislash exists so the dashed realism of the early days sacrificed for more fantastical Pokemon designs was well worth it.

 

[Gar For Archer]

On PokéDex entries, they've "fixed" it now, but remember back in the original gen(s) they'd reference real-world animals and countries? Arcanine, for instance, is apparently from China, and a Gastly could topple an Indian elephant just by enshrouding it in its gas. Then there's Mew being found in the jungles of Guyana (of which there's a really excellent folklore about a giant magical tree of life that accidentally(?) made its way into the Pokémon anime).

I dunno, I get they didn't plan ahead and that referencing the real world in Pokémon would fuck with its lore and world-building, but it's little details like that that I miss. I mean, even the anime itself in the OG series showed real fish.
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It's such a bizarre case of early installment weirdness, but I kinda liked that about it.

When Cramorant was first revealed people though that this had happened again, but then it turned out to be a nice surprise that the fish in its mouth is actually a Pokémon.

Has the Kanto War been written out from his backstory yet? Or am I late and gay on that one.

If I’m not mistaken, the Kanto war is just a fan theory arising from a line Surge has about his Raichu saving him in ‘the war’. Of course this suggests that a war DID happen, but from an outside perspective, that line is obviously supposed to reinforce his character as a military dude and shouldn’t be taken as evidence that a Kanto war was actually intended to be part of Pokémon lore by the developers.

 

[Rotollo]

I know that this was brought up before in the thread, but can we talk about how so many people are getting ass hurt over a second of footage of a mouse cursor?

Like, read some of the comments - And people are acting like the end of the world here.

Where you see asshurt I see mockery, considering this was the switch's holiday killer app and Nintendo's near constant good QA sans Devils Third and even then they backed up more from that then a big rigs truck combined with the bad PR and general closed off from the fans approach TPC and Game Freak have, they did this to themselves.
At the end of the day pokemon isn't a service people get for free, its a product you pay money for. Like a stand up comic closing after a ton of big acts if you come out half assed and unprepared, expect tomatos to thrown and hope your suit is dry cleanable.

The only game I can think of in recent memory that was an RPG and this fucking exceptional on the halfassed gameplay level was Final Fantasy 15.

But let's think back even to a few generations. take the Atelier Series, shit never got this bad. They had one game with a weird crashing bug but they patched it quickly. But Between the PS3 and PS4 they released 12 games in total. Tales of series had Graces f, Xillia, Xillia 2, Symphonia HD remaster, Symphonia 2, Zesteria, Berseria, Hearts R, and Vesperia. Now Symphonia 2 was just bad on a gameplay level so much that it got disowned by Bandai Namco and Zesteria was kinda mixed but berseria which followed it corrected the mistakes. But none of these games were outright broken or flat out missing shit.
Hell we can even probably count Disgaea. Disgea 3,4, and D2 came out on the PS3 and PS4 had 1, 5, and 4 Complete. Disgaea 1 was felt to be a cheap cash grab but there was nothing about the games that felt as off as sword and shield.

Falcom is another example to compare, they're a much smaller company. The biggest issue they had within the last two generations was with the dub and english translation for Ys8. However the game wasn't shortchanged on anything as far as gameplay went and went on to be the biggest seller in the whole series. but everything falcom puts out is done with care, Trails of Coldsteel has higher production values than fucking Sword and Shield and it's made by a much smaller team with far less resources.

And of course lets not forget Dragon Quest which is the big swinging dick of RPGs in japan. They did the series justice with 11 and fully realized not only the Series' specific style in 3D but made the world full and vibrant, as well with a load of interesting quest chains to do and over 650 unique monsters to fight.

Pokemon being that fucking big has zero excuses to have anything fall that short. Especially since Xenoblade 2 is on the same fucking system. They're not lacking money, they're not lacking man power, Matsuda is fucking Japanese Chris Roberts.

One thing I will give Roberts is this, the guy has ambition, Masuda and Ohmori feel like they kinda are just shitting out a game with no big idea or theme they want with it, or if its there they pull it off very surface level and half assed

 

[Archeops]

XV has the excuse of a decade of too many chefs in one kitchen, studio meddling, rush product and all sorts of fuckery
Whats pokemon excuse again?

The Pokemon Company uses the mainline games as vehicles to push other parts of the IP that are more profitable like the anime, the TCG, official merchandise, and licensing. That's why the games are stuck in this yearly rut.

One thing I will give Roberts is this, the guy has ambition, Masuda and Ohmori feel like they kinda are just shitting out a game with no big idea or theme they want with it, or if its there they pull it off very surface level and half assed

Part of it is more than likely burn out, they've been working on Pokemon projects for years and it really shows. Another one, if Masuda's words on the mobile gaming scene it to believed, is the constant need to cater to the "kid" demographics whose tastes constantly change every other year.

 

[UntimelyDhelmise]

Part of it is more than likely burn out, they've been working on Pokemon projects for years and it really shows.

That's the frustrating part in all this. They're clearly sick of Pokemon and should just hand the reins to a different studio that has the actual manpower, programming skills and passion to give Pokemon the quality and polish it deserves (especially with the strict time crunches it's under these days). But they know damn well the second they do, they basically sign their livelihood away because without Pokemon, they are nothing. Nobody cared about their non-Pokemon games already, but after Little Town Hero it's a fact that they would crash and burn like the Hindenburg if they ever struck out on their own.

So in effect, we're at a standstill where neither dev nor fan is happy as a beloved franchise stagnates into a quagmire.

 

[Rotollo]

Another one, if Masuda's words on the mobile gaming scene it to believed, is the constant need to cater to the "kid" demographics whose tastes constantly change every other year.

This is the shit I hate, the way to "appeal" to kids is to make it appeal to everyone.
I mean look at how the switch was trying to market itself compared to the wii u, that shit is night and day.

 

[Neet Tokusatsu]

That's the frustrating part in all this. They're clearly sick of Pokemon and should just hand the reins to a different studio that has the actual manpower, programming skills and passion to give Pokemon the quality and polish it deserves (especially with the strict time crunches it's under these days). But they know damn well the second they do, they basically sign their livelihood away because without Pokemon, they are nothing. Nobody cared about their non-Pokemon games already, but after Little Town Hero it's a fact that they would crash and burn like the Hindenburg if they ever struck out on their own.

So in effect, we're at a standstill where neither dev nor fan is happy as a beloved franchise stagnates into a quagmire.

It is a shitty situation indeed, nobody knew who GF were before Pokemon, and GF hasn't been able to create a single successful IP ever since, and, i'd dare to say, excluding the better Pokemon games (Crystal, FRLG, Emerald, BW 1 & 2) they seem to be completely incapable to make an above average game, they're sick of Pokemon, but they can't do anything else

 

[Questionable Ceviche]

The cursor in the scene isn't really a big deal, but it is indicative of the level of give a damn they put into the game. They really phoned this release in. GF just doesn't really care about the release quality. They're done with pokemon and want to move on to making different original content. The attention put into small details makes or breaks releases, at least for me personally, and GF totally screwed the poochyena on it.

There's a lot of good things about it, don't get me wrong. I don't hate the game or flip tables about it. The pokemon games always seem like they're lagging behind compared to other big titles after the first couple of gens on the gameboy. They're always missing QoL, missing features, and missing polish that other games have. They seem very resistant to change. It takes them years to implement features that players have already come to expect from other properties. SwSh still plays like it's a 2D title. There's a lot of instances on routes and caves where you have to run towards the camera and can't see where you're going. There's been a lot of times where I wanted to move the camera around to look at the scenery, but I can't. Being able to move the camera freely in specific open spaces should not be a big deal in 2019. Consumers are more sophisticated now than they were 20 years ago. GameFreak is not. They're stagnant and inflexible.

It's like GF collectively isn't playing other titles or consuming other creative media. They're stuck in a weird bubble where all they do is make pokemon without seeing what other content is out there. It's understandable that remaking the same thing over and over again with minimal changes leads to creative burnout.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

I dunno, as someone who wasn’t bothered by anything in this whole “controversy” with Pokémon SW/SH and really enjoyed the game itself, a lot of these complaints just seem like people massively overreacting. But again, that’s coming from someone not bothered by the Pokédex stuff and everything

Yeah, I mean ultimately the only major issue I have with the game that keeps it from being a top tier Pokemon game is that the online functionality is so terrible that it would have been disgraceful if it was released in 2010. It's mostly a complete game without it though, aside from a few 5 star Max Raid Battles that not even a 100 Eternatus can carry the NPC 'mons through because the Gigantomax spams moves that hit all pokemon.

 

[ChucklesTheJester]

It's like GF collectively isn't playing other titles or consuming other creative media. They're stuck in a weird bubble where all they do is make pokemon without seeing what other content is out there. It's understandable that remaking the same thing over and over again with minimal changes leads to creative burnout.

It's likely crunch time all the time at GF with the yearly pokemon cycle. I doubt in the little free time they have, most of them wants to look at a game when all they do is work on a game for long hours.

 

[SnowBall]

Why do people trash RSE and beyond for core series flaws but give the first two gameboy generations a free pass? Because the series had a shitton of problems since the very beginning. I replayed RBY on the 3DS VC and it was absolute shit. I see all these terrible coding mistakes and gameplay that was barebones even by the standards of the time it was released and am baffled by the 10/10 reviews it got. The only reason I could see why it was tolerated at the time was because fans played them when they were kids and it was the latest craze. Even the “it was their first Pokemon game” excuse doesn’t cut it as I have seen indie games created by people who had very little to no previous experience in coding make better, more stable games.

GSC was better but even those games has a ton of problems. Balancing issues and the way Pokemon were distributed around the areas were bad. Most Johto leaders did not have Johto Pokemon. I loved GSC to death as a kid and played it to the point where the internal battery wore out fast but looking back as an adult it felt less like a complete game and more like an expansion pack for RBY. I am aware it was originally called Pokemon 2 but Johto as a region relies way too hard on Kanto. I really don’t want to know what the games would have been like if Iwata didn’t step in.

 

[Etrian Autistry]

It's likely crunch time all the time at GF with the yearly pokemon cycle. I doubt in the little free time they have, most of them wants to look at a game when all they do is work on a game for long hours.

GF actually boasts about having next to no crunch time, with all employees working a standard 9-5 shift, a rarity in the modern gaming industry. Its very ethical and its something I do like, but the games are still shit to the point I wish they would've had crunch to justify the low development time

 

[Tanner Glass]

I dunno, as someone who wasn’t bothered by anything in this whole “controversy” with Pokémon SW/SH and really enjoyed the game itself, a lot of these complaints just seem like people massively overreacting. But again, that’s coming from someone not bothered by the Pokédex stuff and everything

I enjoyed the game as well, but I think a lot of the nitpicking is just frustration that the actual game just isn't very great.

I finished it in 20 hours and put it down hard, even specifically spending a lot of time fucking around and filling out the dex. There isn't much post-game (a small post game title defense, battle tower).

There's a lot less battling in Sword and Shield (much less trainer battles) and traveling in general, there's a lot more talking, and the Max Raid system is neat, but the implementation is really bad at higher star levels and I don't feel any need to grind them out with how random they are (there's a small chance a den is active, and then a smaller chance that den has something you want, and a small chance the AI will be able to not be a 100% liability).

 

[Gar For Archer]

Why do people trash RSE and beyond for core series flaws but give the first two gameboy generations a free pass? Because the series had a shitton of problems since the very beginning. I replayed RBY on the 3DS VC and it was absolute shit. I see all these terrible coding mistakes and gameplay that was barebones even by the standards of the time it was released and am baffled by the 10/10 reviews it got. The only reason I could see why it was tolerated at the time was because fans played them when they were kids and it was the latest craze. Even the “it was their first Pokemon game” excuse doesn’t cut it as I have seen indie games created by people who had very little to no previous experience in coding make better, more stable games.

GSC was better but even those games has a ton of problems. Balancing issues and the way Pokemon were distributed around the areas were bad. Most Johto leaders did not have Johto Pokemon. I loved GSC to death as a kid and played it to the point where the internal battery wore out fast but looking back as an adult it felt less like a complete game and more like an expansion pack for RBY. I am aware it was originally called Pokemon 2 but Johto as a region relies way too hard on Kanto. I really don’t want to know what the games would have been like if Iwata didn’t step in.

Those games obviously get a pass because of the technical limitations when they were developed. Obviously they don’t hold up by today’s standards, and are chock full of bugs that make them incredibly broken, but they had to pull a lot of coding tricks to even get it to work. I’m sure there’s many cases where they literally COULDN’T fix a bug because doing so would fuck up ten other things somewhere else in the code.

Nowadays, you really do not have many hard technical limitations beyond how fancy you can make the graphics, so there’s less of an excuse for dumb bugs and balance issues.

 

[whatever I feel like]

A lot of those bugs people know about take effort to go out and find too, I played yellow on original hardware and never had a crash or glitch (though I did lose a bit of progress due to batteries dying, aka my own stupidity.)

Other flaws like the stagnant metagame are Gamefreak's fault, but things like Ghosts and Dragons being strong against everything weren't really going to become an issue unless adults took up the game and continued to play it for years. Oops.

 

[ducktales4gameboy]

There is also the Ghost/Bug from Gen 3..that eats your soul if you look at it's back.

I always assumed that was a direct reference to Perdido Street Station, which has something very similar as a key plot element and came out roughly 2 years before Gen 3.

I know a lot of people in this thread have managed to catch ‘em all over the various games, but does anyone have a white whale Pokemon they’ve wanted but never managed to obtain?

Fucking Tauros in R/B. It was a Safari Zone exclusive with a super low catch-rate, and a friend corrupted my savefile at 149/150 attempting to do the link cable dupe glitch with Mewtwo. Tauros was the only non-Mew uncaught pokemon I had left. It stung a bit because I was like 13-14 at the time but eh, videogames.

 

[Rotollo]

I know a lot of people in this thread have managed to catch ‘em all over the various games, but does anyone have a white whale Pokemon they’ve wanted but never managed to obtain?

Mine’s Steelix. When people first told me about it (in the days before I had high speed Internet to verify things), I thought it was a hoax since I never played the original Johto games and very few trainers had one. I love its design, but I’ve never found anyone I can trade with to get one.

For me it was a platinum shaymin, I kinda lost my time for the event due to not being able to find where my kart was for like 3 years, which is why while they were cool I'm kinda glad we don't have as many now.
Though I did hack in oaks letter in like two years ago to catch the fucker, so satisfying

 

[zyclonPD]

This video seems to explain why SwSh was such a lazy entry. Bottom line of the video is that the game sales are less than 30% of the revenue of pokemon. Most the sales are from toys and merchandise which seems to check out.

Just consider any local Gamestop near you. If you walk in there you will see a whole section of Pokemon plushes, toys, etc. Those things likely costs pennies to make but are retailing for $20 each or more. The games are just the vehicle to introduce new toys and plushes for you to buy. Even when Pokemon did that Buildabear partnership last year, those Pokemon you could buy were more expensive than anything else Buildabear sells.

Pokemon won't change their ways until the toy sales dry up and they actually have to capitalize on the game's revenue itself.

Edit: random articles about Pokemon toy sales:

The Pokémon Company Raked In $2.1 Billion In Retail Revenue In 2015 - Siliconera

The Pokémon Company announced their 2015 retail revenue results for brand licensing through License Global!, which reveals that the company has achieved $2.1 billion in retail revenue in 2015.

www.siliconera.com

Pokemon made 2.1 billion dollars in "retail" revenue in 2015 ( to give some context to the other years increases after this and put a floor on their retail revenue figures).
Pokemon as a brand ranked #29 in company retail revenue with Disney being #1 in that category.

5% Growth in U.S. Toy Industry | News

Juli Lennett, senior VP and U.S. toys industry analyst at the NPD Group ponders the future of the toy industry as it continues to show steady growth.

www.npd.com

Pokemon was the top growth item in 2016 toy sales.

Sales of Pokémon toys and TCG soar in 2016

The property saw 285% boost in sales throughout the year, says new NPD data....

www.licensingsource.net

They saw a 285% increase in sales in 2016.

Global Toy Market | Toy Industry Sales Grew by 1% in 2017

On par with the world’s collective performance, toy sales in the United States, the world’s largest toy market, grew by 1 percent to $20.7 billion in 2017

www.npd.com

Pokemon caused the growth of the entire toy Market in 2017 by a percentage point off the back of Pokemon Go alone and boosted the market for 8 months.

"THE POKÉMON COMPANY INTERNATIONAL SALES REACH NEW HEIGHTS FOR POKÉMON TRADING CARD GAME AND TOYS THROUGHOUT 2017 " - The Pokémon Company International Official Press Site

pokemon.gamespress.com

Pokemon saw sales increases in markets like italy,Tcg sales went up 644%. Pokémon toys went up 146% in Italy. Fairly big increases.

It begins: Pokemon Sword and Shield plush figures are on the way

Pokemon Sword and Shield just recently launched on Switch, and although many are lamenting the loss of some of their favorite creatures, a lot of them are celebrating the arrival of new ones. Eldegoss is one of my new favorites, Yampe...

www.destructoid.com

Sword and Shield toys are about to hit the market like a truck and I'd be willing to bet record breaking sales for Christmas this year. They seemed to have missed the black Friday window but I doubt that will slow the sales.