- Joined
- Sep 19, 2018
Eviolite puts a wrench in those plans.
Pokémon (Not-So) Griefing Thread - Scarlet and Violet Released with 10 Million Copies in First 3 Days in Buggy States
- Thread starter Bugaboo
- Start date
- Joined
- Mar 29, 2021
If there's one item I think Gamefreak regrets introducing, it'd definitely be Eviolite. It's handcuffed them from being able to go back and give any older Pokémon a new evolution, because suddenly they have to worry about how that older 'mon suddenly becoming a Wall.
Though speaking of items, for the love of god I hope Gamefreak keeps the Link Cable from Legends - I get it, it's incentive to actually trade your Pokemon, but it's such a nice QoL item to let you skip the hassle of having to actually deal with people, nevermind Nintendo wanting your money for Online Trades...
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2013
They could have simply just not make it available if they REALLY wanted it gone, they did that with the Gem items that were also introduced in Gen V(outside of the Normal Gem, which for some reason is always brought back) from X and Y onwards, since they were used absurdly often in PVP, even on Pokemon that didn't have Unburden or Acrobatics.
That reminds me, there is a Fairy Gem that has been in the coding of the games since X and Y that has never been officially released.
- Joined
- Jun 5, 2020
Honestly, I fully agree here. So many Pokémon could’ve use new evolution forms but instead we get, this..
(Also, Howdy! Been lurking since the BDSP phase and it’s been great finding a decent Pokémon related thread).
- Joined
- Aug 18, 2018
I've not seen this mentioned in the thread but I was looking at the website and one of the background images caught my eye.
Seems like I'm able to bring over my Hisuian team to the new game! I can imagine it being post-game obviously but I would love to carry over my team and random shinies.
It's a shame the Max Raids aren't being carried over because that was the only saving grace SwSh had and even then, you had to go out of your way to get join requests by initiating a wonder trade. Another good thing about Max Raids is that if the servers ever shut down, you can still play locally or by yourself.
Makes me wonder what new multiplayer feature will they have in it's place if it'll have one.
Seems like I'm able to bring over my Hisuian team to the new game! I can imagine it being post-game obviously but I would love to carry over my team and random shinies.
It's a shame the Max Raids aren't being carried over because that was the only saving grace SwSh had and even then, you had to go out of your way to get join requests by initiating a wonder trade. Another good thing about Max Raids is that if the servers ever shut down, you can still play locally or by yourself.
Makes me wonder what new multiplayer feature will they have in it's place if it'll have one.
- Joined
- May 29, 2018
You guys remember that art contest The Pokemon Company and TPCi was running last year where people from Japan and the US could submit art featuring one of eight Pokemon (Bulbasaur, Charizard, Pikachu, Arcanine, Galarian Rapidash, Scizor, Greninja, or Cramorant) going through its daily routine?
Well apparently the Top 300 entries were revealed yesterday. Surprisingly enough Charizard and Greninja didn’t dominate the placements, that honor goes to Cramorant
And as far as multiplayer features go we’ll definitely be getting one since GF likes to keep some form of social interaction in its games. As for the loss of raids it’s understandable from a lore-based aspect since we’re moving away from Galar and that’s all GF needs to justify it.
Well apparently the Top 300 entries were revealed yesterday. Surprisingly enough Charizard and Greninja didn’t dominate the placements, that honor goes to Cramorant
IIRC they used Hisuian Zoroark as an example of what Pokemon can be brought over via HOME But there may be a chance to get some Hisuian Pokemon in the Scarlet and Violet “naturally” like you can with some Pokemon in SWSH.
And as far as multiplayer features go we’ll definitely be getting one since GF likes to keep some form of social interaction in its games. As for the loss of raids it’s understandable from a lore-based aspect since we’re moving away from Galar and that’s all GF needs to justify it.
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- Jun 28, 2021
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2021
Gamefreak should bring back megas. Even weaker Pokemon can rise up a few tiers if they get a decent mega and also be used as their normal forms in their respective tiers. Some forms like Mega Kangaskhan will always need to get nerfed and imo the game designers did a good job doing this, like with M-Garchomp being slower than regular Chomp or M-Gengar losing it's Levitate ability to become more vulnerable as a tradeoff.
Mega Beedrill is a good example how well-executed the concept of Megas can get. It loses stats it doesn't need and gains a huge boost in viability due to it's increase in Attack and Speed. More megas should be designed like Beedrill.
Pokemon like Mewtwo will always be ubers anyway, those megas are clearly fanservice and Gen one pandering for cash. So why don't give weaker mon a new form and possibly some time to shine? Especially those with uncommon typings that otherwise get overlooked in competitive because their stats are just too bad.
This concept is more well-thought of and less broken than Z-Moves (you can argue about that) or Dynamax.
At least they were fun to use ingame and in PvP.
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2020
The issue with mega evolution is twofold in that the original intention was a bandaid to fix issues inherent to Pokemon’s battle system, such as: large swathes of older Pokémon having been rendered obsolete due to the power creep over almost two decades (it’s insane to me that mega evolution has existed for a third of the franchise’s lifespan); while dyna/gigantomax was a bandaid to fix the issues inherent with mega evolution. ScarVi are definitely going to hit 1000 Pokémon, and it is going to be extremely difficult to distinguish the new Pokémon from the expansive roster without power creep or a gimmick (even with a Dexit scenario).
Pokémon really does need a fundamental overhaul to its base formula. I’m personally a fan of making primary and secondary typing more relevant (I.e. primary typing playing a larger role in damage calculation such as stab and type matchups with secondary types having a reduced impact). The problem there is that pokemon’s actual moneymaker has become a class of adults that would become unable/unwilling to accept the level of change the games need.
- Joined
- Mar 29, 2021
I stand by saying a Dexit scenario was bound to happen sooner or later - we’ve long since past the point where they could realistically keep putting more and more models into the game without bloating the game size to shit, especially knowing Game Freak’s relationship with basic competence over the years.
It’s arguably the biggest drawback they’ve had going from sprites to 3D - that and the Player Character looking so generic it hurts…
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2020
That was the initial controversy with Dexit: GF actually put the work in to future-proof the models on X and Y to the detriment of that game running well on the 3DS, and fucked it up when time came to move to a new console. Storage is cheap: they could absolutely fit thousands of Pokémon on a modern game. The problem is the games themselves are bland and empty (and the designs have been weakening since X and Y but that’s a different issue) because GF won’t let fresh blood tackle it.
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2021
It pains me that a lot of megas are beyond useless and irrelevant
Mega-Audino, the only gen 5 mega evolution....it´s practically more useless than a normal audino
And who even remembers mega-Steelix? for example?
- Joined
- Jul 1, 2015
Mega Mawile was also a good example of making an overlooked Pokémon into a power house, without making it super OP. (I think) Even with the massive Attack boost it gets in Mega form, it's still held in check by it's low HP and Speed stats.
Jean Lafitte 1812
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2019
It seems like they are finally open to adding new evolutions in some way. Sword and Shield had Obstagoon, Cursola, and Mr Rime as new regional evolutions. And now you have Ursaluna, who unlike Basculegion is not referred to as an Hisuian Pokemon in the card game. That means Ursaluna is the first new plain evolution they've added since Generation 4. I'm actually hoping that Ursaring is in Scarlet and Violet so I can try out some Eviolite tank strats, but Ursaring was so bad that I don't think that Eviolite will make it amazing.
I'm also glad to see that I can transfer my first legit shiny in over a decade, Hisuian Zoroark, to SV.
As for Megas: bring them back, but only release the stones for Pokemon that need it like Ampharos, Beedrill, and Sableye. At least give Pokemon like Kangaskhan and Pinsir their Mega's abilities so they don't go unused. There is no reason that Kangaskhan should be saddled with 2 anti-sleep abilities and not have Parental Bond in its normal form.
I'm also glad to see that I can transfer my first legit shiny in over a decade, Hisuian Zoroark, to SV.
As for Megas: bring them back, but only release the stones for Pokemon that need it like Ampharos, Beedrill, and Sableye. At least give Pokemon like Kangaskhan and Pinsir their Mega's abilities so they don't go unused. There is no reason that Kangaskhan should be saddled with 2 anti-sleep abilities and not have Parental Bond in its normal form.
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2021
Look how big and detailed AAA games are. There's no good reason they can't churn out 1000 stationary models for the biggest media franchise considering how basic the games look.
- Joined
- Mar 29, 2021
While you aren’t wrong, I’d like to again point at Gamefreaks’s relationship with Basic Competence over the years, combined with the fact the last time we heard anything about the size of the studio being less than 200 people. It’s a downside of them knowing they’re sitting in a literal money printer - they know that “Good Enough” will still make them bank, regardless of how much the fanbase bitches, because this series is marketed towards literal children.
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2019
Normal gem probably gets to stay because it can't give a type advantage boost.
No one who claims this has proven able to give me an example of a series that has even near the same number of monsters in play as Pokemon, for better or worse. And most of those series that hit the hundreds have reused models - it's easy to call it lazy if you're used to even Regional variants having noticeable model differences, but it's efficient, shows forward planning, and scales much better. An equivalent project just doesn't exist, which makes calls on how fast, expensive or good the thing should be going largely theoretical and not couched in any real examples.
It just seems to be a case of believing that if you throw enough money in, you can speed up the development of the models as far as necessary with no risk of bottlenecks or diminishing returns.
At a certain point, there is a bottleneck problem that comes into place. Someone has to ratify all these designs, and if you have more than one group doing it, you're going to get stylistic mismatches.
Moreover, if you increase the size of the team remaking models, managing and keeping them all in-style becomes harder too.
Simply remaking models for characters that already exist could very well take years to get to a level of quality fans want. And that assumes "a level of quality fans want" is a reasonable goal.
If I had to guess, they're going to milk the XY models and skeletons for as long as they reasonably can and double that besides, quite possibly up until there's a couple more major graphical upgrades, and possibly start the process of developing a new high-def set some time during the sequel to the switch.
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2021
No one who uses that as a defense understands just how big the gulf between Pokemon and other Pokemon-esque series is. Its profitability dwarfs even Digimon and Yokai Watch by far, quite arguably the next biggest Pokemon clones (unless something is bigger in the mobile market, or is Japan-only).
Even if you include the entirety of Dragon Quest despite only a small fraction of their games emulating Pokemon, it's not even close. You'd have to stretch the notion of "monster collecting" pretty far to get anything even remotely close, like Yugioh, which is...a stretch.
They could very easily open an entirely separate team dedicated solely to monster modeling, or even just outsource the work, and it wouldn't make a dent in their profitability. They're just getting away with what they know they can, because it's common for people to defend their bad business tactics.
Nothing indicates throwing money at the problem wouldn't solve it.
That's why to don't just pick a random team. You get one who can do the job right. You realize collaborations are fairly common between different teams, right? Not just in games but anime as well.
Nintendo seems to have a close working relationship with Bandai Namco (and worked on Pokemon spinoffs), have them help. Oh but that would cost money, and would take work to coordinate, so let's just make a subpar game and make just as much money anyway.
What's this aversion to hard work? Super Smash Bros Ultimate was hard to make and multiple teams worked on it. Guess what, turned out fine.
Unlike Pokemon, Smash can't coast off mediocrity and rake in infinite money regardless. Pokemon makes most of its money from merchandising, the core games are just the source material. Shit those out and if they're adequate that's good enough to continue the series.
Fans are obviously willing to accept anything so that's not a high bar to clear.
See? Low standards. We already know what to expect and it won't hurt sales a bit.
Sorry if this comes across as aggressive or overzealous via text, I mean it all rather casually. I disagree with you but I'm not trying to fight over it, I'm just interested in a conversation about it.
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2019
Oh, I'm quite fine with that. I enjoy a good round of debate too.
By "a level of quality fans want" I mean "a level of quality that'd mollify and/or silence most complaints like these".
Let me give an example of what I mean, using some of the games you've mentioned. I'll come back to the scale problem later after the next quote.
This is Komasan and Komajiro, from Yo-kai watch. They're treated as two different numbers of Yo-kai watch's dex, despite being essentially recolours... and the entire medallium is riddled with things like this. We're not going to mention Jibanyan.
Conversely, here's Sandshrew and it's regional variant.
They have a model difference, though it doesn't significantly affect their skeletons in the Sandshrew stage at least. What is also notable is that they have entirely different animations - for example, when running, Sandshrew will run on all fours, while A.Sandshrew will mimic a curling stone and spin across the ground (somehow this gets reversed when they evolve - Sandslash curls into a ball and rolls, and A.Sandslash runs).
This makes the gulf in numbers between Pokemon and other games even bigger than it already looks. There's not many Agi/Agilao/Agidyne or equivalent exchanges, either, every Pokemon Move is it's own deal, and doesn't generally just have "itself but bigger".
Persona 5 Royal has somewhere in the range of 220-250 unique moves, not counting passives, and a not-insignificant amount of those are very explicitly just multi-target or higher power versions of others. Pokemon sword and shield, after the move cuts, has about 660-670.
In general, Pokemon has made the worst choices when it comes to making an optimised model set that is easy to iterate on - basically nothing can be easily transferred between multiple instances. Whatever they're doing on their monster design front, at least at the conceptual levels, has clearly paid off, but it makes making some large scale revamp hell.
Anyone being compared to as a comparison point bot only has less strict quantity, but is making careful choices wherever they can to take shortcuts as subtly as possible, cuts whole swaths of the cast at will during graphical upgrades, or does other things to inflate the number without completely inflating the work. This is not a bad thing, in many cases it's by far the smarter and more sustainable option, but it means that the gulf is bigger than it looks.
TL;DR, my counterpoint to the claims of effectively "if someone else was making as much money as Pokemon, they could and would do this" is to say that no one even dares to come close.
To be clear, the biggest bottleneck I'm talking about is in whoever would look at the 1000+ revamped Pokemon models and go "yeah, that looks okay, no, this looks bad, change this". You could give one thousand modelers each one Pokemon to revamp, but unless you have one person or small group who's going to give the final say on the models, it's going to have huge issues in consistency of style and quality. And even assuming this goes hyper-smoothly, it'd very easily take a couple of years just to get all new models improved and approved... without touching a single human character or non-pokemon anything.
People were saying that Smash Ult looked too similar to Smash 4, and were calling it a port at the time of release. This is partially because Smash largely iterates on designs, and smash ult in particular was focused on bringing back everything the series had to offer.
With that said, not counting echo fighters there's about 90 smash characters, all of whom have their own movesets, and you could make a case that there's a comparable scale their between the increased animations per model, decreased models, hitbox/frame data and all the npc-like assists and pokemon. But at the same time, Smash Ultimate is very explicitly something that they're not planning to do again, and the equivalent approval bottleneck (Sakurai) is pretty much literally falling apart at this point. They also got rid of any models that are not used in the pvp and pve aspect - no trophies, no smash tour or subspace mode with different enemy characters, just static images often lifted wholesale from source art.
Not to mention that Amiibo are another source of monetisation for the smash bros franchise in particular. Actually, now that I think about it, Pokemon as a game series rarely touches amiibo, which is... surprising. They had their own thing for a while, that didn't go anywhere. Not really related, just a thought.
Putting aside the first comment because I don't even know how to begin approaching that bold fucking statement - like a smash ultimate port with the most minor of improvements and a few new characters wouldn't sell like mad on the next console - while they can theoretically siphon their money from other parts of the franchise to the games, that could likely mean the games becoming a loss leader, and when the company who actually makes the games are separate from the other branches, it's understandable why people would want to avoid that. Even if they take that money, see my bottleneck comments above.
I'm not blind to the issues, I just don't think the alternatives people speak about are based in reality, they're just theories about the possibilities in the land of the funny money, that you can just scale up infinitely and there's going to be no significant issues. making a set of models in the background while chugging along with the current quality in the foreground is pretty much the only way i see as practical once you reach these sorts of scales.
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2021
It's almost like Game Freak makes it worse with every new feature they implement.
With dynamax even getting banned from Single Battles in Pokemon showdown, i'm looking forward to the next catastrophe Gamefrak is gonna pull out of their sleeves.
I would even prefer a game with just 200 selected Pokemon but photorealistic graphics over a rushed game with 1000 Pokemon which uses the same old models from 2013 again. Imo Gen 4 had the most balanced meta and BDSP singles is more fun to play than SwSh Singles because it's easier to use weaker Pokemon with gimmicky sets due to the lack of overpowered later Gen mons.
Sometimes, less is more.
This.
Pokemon has always been a game/franchise with great potential but since X and Y, a lot of the unique appeal is lost due to cutting corners, releasing the titels with unfinished areas and boring maps. Also, some 3D Models heavily need a Makeover, like all the T-posing flying types and also ugly models like Typhlosion that dont capture the spirit of the respective pokemon.
Even though I never played it myself, the Change in the Battle System introduced in Legends:Arceus is a step into the right direction.
You have to think twice before selecting a move and it sometimes requires planning ahead. There is defintiely potential for more.
There are many flaws the newer games suffer from that the developers have to fix and Megas or even some new gimmick should be the least important point at their priorities list.
All of this won't happen because as you said, Pokemon Games are a money printing machine no matter how good or bad they are.
I'd love to see Gamefreak being ballsy, releasing a Mainline-Title with High-End graphics and a huge map to discorver for PC tho.