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

[The Immortal Boots]

Why are Pokemon fans the only ones who see the act of grinding and putting a lot of time/money into a game as "unfair" and "unwelcoming", and use it as a justification to cheat?
I consider the amount of effort I put into any game as a badge of honor. If you cheat to win a competition, you're a loser. It's a digital sport, the effort and time you put into it is apart of the challenge.

Late response, but it isnt the grinding to beat the game that people complain about. Its the hundreds of hours needed to raise a team that might not even work.
I used to do VGC shit in HS with friends over a decade ago, and we, along with every single other person at every event used Pokehex. I spent 3 weeks building a nearly perfect IV comp team only to get stomped by cookie cutter teams of the same 6 mons. So I decided to hex to test more quickly and realized: holy shit, the actual competitive side of the game is so fucking divorced from the main story mode, that it shouldn't even be a part of it, and decided to play showdown instead, as should anyone whos not a fucking lunatic.
Weve needed a Coliseum 3 /Stadium 3 for almost 20 years now. Battle Revolution can be modded, but its so arduous, no one is bothering.
Also I cannot remember, but I think he addresses it in one of his videos, but look into Follow Me Magmar, and Dream Ball Aegislash. Multiple world champs have been caught with hexed mons.

 

[AnotherPleb]

Weve needed a Coliseum 3 /Stadium 3 for almost 20 years now. Battle Revolution can be modded, but its so arduous, no one is bothering.

Gamefreak isn't going to do that when they can have you pay $120+ for one game and the DLC filled with power creep. Besides, they will point at the intentionally gimped Battle Revolution level 50 gabite with Dragon Rush and Sand Tomb as Stab[ is beyond criminal as a reason not to make Stadium 3.

 

[Some Lurker Too]

Man, those sprites really make me miss the hours I spent as a little Lurker on the huge web of pokemon fansites, learning to sprite from TCoD's guide and various forum stickies. Back when fusions were known as splices and the internet was millions of little communities of people with the same interests. It's really sad to look at the old sites and find half of them missing or barely clinging on with broken css. Used to be able to spend all day hopping through affiliate after affiliate, seeing what mattered to each host. Pretty sure the Psypokes Image Dex is busted, I know their CSS is. Haven't checked pokemonelite2000's sprite resources in a hot second, they might be gone. Pretty sure teamrocketsrockin is completely gone. TCoD was still kickin' last I checked, and obviously Serebii's eternal. There was one Japanese site that was just custom sprites for every pokemon and then some, but I can't remember the URL... maybe I'll do a dive sometime, see what's still around. It'd be nice to find a couple niche ones that're still up and running despite everything

 

[Grayback]

do people actually like Scarlet and violet? I hear people defending it

I'd be interested to know what you've heard about it. From people who like it, I mostly hear one of two things:
1. People who really liked some small moment or new change or storyline that really resonated with them for some personal reason—but they don't really feel that way about the game as a whole.
2. People who just go along with the game because it was ordained by GF as "the next thing," and they like their online battles and keeping current with other stuff, so this newest generation is just the place where they are now. These people mostly seem to treat the fact that they don't dislike something as being basically equivalent to liking it.

but I played it and even without the bugs it’s still a depressing game 90% of paldea is brown dirt, you’re all alone with no trainers, and cities that bleed out in contrast and the overall apathy of “eh just do what you want” and they’ll eat it up because it’s open world.

Scarlet & Violet reminds me a lot of Elden Ring.
- You start off with a game series about structured, linear encounters, which kept getting more successful over time.
- The devs decide to try making it into an open-world game, just thinking that more content, more freedom, and more choices would necessarily be better.
- They don't realize how removing the past games' linear constraints fundamentally changes how the game plays, or how that's going to make so much of the world feel disconnected and trivial and empty.
- The new game gets a ton of sales, but those sales were really based on the past success of the series, bought by customers who were expecting "more of what we already liked, just bigger and better."
- The game makes a big splash because of its changes and novelty, but after that it actually ends up being pretty forgettable (outside of its aesthetics).
- The casuals have their fun with it, but then they just move on instead of sticking around.
- The long-term fans hate the things that were sacrificed for the sake of the open-world design.

I really hope that both of these games' developers will listen to the fans' reactions, and see what went wrong, instead of just looking at the sales figures and telling themselves that the games were actually a hit on their own merits (and not just because they came riding in on a huge wave of momentum) and that they should continue in this direction.
I guess time will tell.

I’m honestly surprised that I was able to find packs of journey together at a Walmart.

Consider yourself lucky. I haven't seen any cards in any nearby store since around January.
Today, for the first time in months, one of my local Walmarts actually had some cards in stock—but it was all just the repackaged third-party stuff. I hope they're not all that I have to look forward to from now on.
I bought some because I'm way behind and most of these are still new cards to me, so I thought I'd still get some enjoyment out of it—but also to see if the card selection would be as bad as people online were saying. It was. For two quarters, the vending machines at my grocery store spit out better cards.

 

[Archeops]

I’m honestly surprised that I was able to find packs of journey together at a Walmart. I find the idea of chasing restocks to be retarded and the people who do it always clean out the shelves because they have no self control. It was nice to be able to crack a couple of packs with my wife and pulls a couple of hits, but I have a feeling if I go back tomorrow they’ll be cleaned out.

The TCG stock situation has slowly been getting better, I managed to pick up 3 packs of Journey Together at a Barnes & Noble in my area (they had a limit of three items per person) and I recently managed to get two Iono's Bellibolt ex Premium Collection boxes (one from Target's website, another from Walmart's). On the other hand, none of the Pokémon Center vending machines I've found so far have had products in-stock despite them having new limits.

The scalpers created this mentality in so many people where they have to chase every single restock and buy as much as they can. I work with this woman who chases the restocks and she’ll try to gloat about spending $300+ in one trip and how it’s almost compulsive at this point. Like that’s not fun either and if you’re doing that for a hobby to try to beat out scalpers or avoid FOMO you have other problems.

The simple answer to that is to not buy anything from scalpers, they basically pay off any major purchase with credit cards and doing so forces them to sell for less than the usual "market" value in order to free up more credit for later big purchases.

Consider yourself lucky. I haven't seen any cards in any nearby store since around January.
Today, for the first time in months, one of my local Walmarts actually had some cards in stock—but it was all just the repackaged third-party stuff. I hope they're not all that I have to look forward to from now on.
I bought some because I'm way behind and most of these are still new cards to me, so I thought I'd still get some enjoyment out of it—but also to see if the card selection would be as bad as people online were saying. It was. For two quarters, the vending machines at my grocery store spit out better cards.

You're honestly better off buying singles rather than buying sealed products. The prices for a lot of the newer cards have gone down (barring a fair amount of Secret Illustrator Rares and some Illustrator Rares) in recent times and Journey Together actually has a decent pull rate compared to last year's main sets, Shrouded Fable, and Prismatic Evolutions.

 

[I_Lurk_Here]

Man, those sprites really make me miss the hours I spent as a little Lurker on the huge web of pokemon fansites, learning to sprite from TCoD's guide and various forum stickies. Back when fusions were known as splices and the internet was millions of little communities of people with the same interests. It's really sad to look at the old sites and find half of them missing or barely clinging on with broken css. Used to be able to spend all day hopping through affiliate after affiliate, seeing what mattered to each host. Pretty sure the Psypokes Image Dex is busted, I know their CSS is. Haven't checked pokemonelite2000's sprite resources in a hot second, they might be gone. Pretty sure teamrocketsrockin is completely gone. TCoD was still kickin' last I checked, and obviously Serebii's eternal. There was one Japanese site that was just custom sprites for every pokemon and then some, but I can't remember the URL... maybe I'll do a dive sometime, see what's still around. It'd be nice to find a couple niche ones that're still up and running despite everything

This site is cool and has other nice fan sites linked at the bottom.

Live 2D would fuck hard, now that you mention it. It'd be really similar to the gen 5 sprites but in higher definition.

Think, game freak, in the f2p titles you could even sell skins for pokemon with various TCG/Sugimori art!

I'll fuck you hard!

 

[30+GameOvers]

Late response, but it isnt the grinding to beat the game that people complain about. Its the hundreds of hours needed to raise a team that might not even work.
I used to do VGC shit in HS with friends over a decade ago, and we, along with every single other person at every event used Pokehex. I spent 3 weeks building a nearly perfect IV comp team only to get stomped by cookie cutter teams of the same 6 mons. So I decided to hex to test more quickly and realized: holy shit, the actual competitive side of the game is so fucking divorced from the main story mode, that it shouldn't even be a part of it, and decided to play showdown instead, as should anyone whos not a fucking lunatic.
Weve needed a Coliseum 3 /Stadium 3 for almost 20 years now. Battle Revolution can be modded, but its so arduous, no one is bothering.
Also I cannot remember, but I think he addresses it in one of his videos, but look into Follow Me Magmar, and Dream Ball Aegislash. Multiple world champs have been caught with hexed mons.

Precisely, unless you're going to train with the team in question in virtual environment, there is no sense in even training it in-game. If you're going for some quick challenge in Battle Tower or Battle Frontier, it's best to just train 3 guaranteed good picks from OU and even then it might not work.
However, when you finally build a team of decent Pokemon that you've raised yourself, and win? That's the best feeling in the world, one you will never ever get from a genned team that might as well be rentals. Bonus points if these are your Pokemon from your single player walkthru and you still manage to win with them even without perfect IVs/EVs, as I've done before.

Pretty sure teamrocketsrockin is completely gone

I recall it's been gone for some time. Shame, I used spend a lot of time on that site.

 

[Anonitolia]

This site is cool and has other nice fan sites linked at the bottom.

It's part of a ring of some 20ish fansites that cropped up on Neocities a while back and all decided to circlejerk each other by only linking to each others' sites in their affiliates. It generally includes:

• Lycanroc.net
• The Cave of Dragonflies and Altered Origin (I think these guys have the same webmaster. Much older than the rest.)
• Buried Relic
• Blue Moon Falls
• Serfetch
• Nose Club
• Legendary Birds (another older one)
• Pokeprint (barely a fansite, more of a resource for printables)
• Pokémon Dungeon (I don't know much about this one, I think it's been defunct for years now)
• Pokémon Trainer (awful, mostly-Spanish forum with so many affiliates that they can't fit on its front page. It's only here because, for whatever reason, a good half of the sites in this group constantly link to it.)
• Mirage Island
• Absol Moonlit Cave (no longer exists, but part of this group)
• Indigo Corner (same situation as the above)
• Hallowed Tower
• Pamtre Berry
• Stareon's Hideout
• Poliwager.net

If you look at these sites' affiliate pages, 90% of them only link to each other. The sole exceptions are the older sites that have a bunch of defunct stamps still in their affiliates from ages ago. I'm not sure why this is, or what the purpose of such incestuous advertising is supposed to be, but a fair amount of these are run by trannies so I guess it's some weird validation thing or whatever. Dunno, don't care. Just noticed this when I tried browsing the general network of fansites on Neocities and found myself going in a circle.

 

[Noxe]

I’m honestly surprised that I was able to find packs of journey together at a Walmart..

They have them at dollar tree for like $5

 

[I was a Teenage “JA”-man]

@Grayback I totally agree

“Scarlet & Violet reminds me a lot of Elden Ring.

- You start off with a game series about structured, linear encounters, which kept getting more successful over time.

- The devs decide to try making it into an open-world game, just thinking that more content, more freedom, and more choices would necessarily be better.

- They don't realize how removing the past games' linear constraints fundamentally changes how the game plays, or how that's going to make so much of the world feel disconnected and trivial and empty.”



People just like open world slop, no linear cause fortnite rotted thier brains and are impatient

there was the attempt at a healthy balance with the traditional linear mixed with new free roaming in swsh and if it wasn’t so poorly executed It would have been a great idea. But that wasn’t the Idea… it was the experiment to see how a Pokemon game would look in an open world environment. Hence blowing 70% the creative budget onto the fucking wild area and saying “see this barren wasteland? thats the next game!”

I guess if we’re on the topic of switch Pokemon I might just bring up the elephant in the room Like I’m not a bitter guy who just wants to bitch about modern things like the star wars fans who constantly complain but have no ideas on how to improve the franchise

It made me sad because unlike paldea and it’s creatively bankrupt flat boring lands the galar reigon had a lot of squandered potential with its pretty cool towns and characters packed inside, the SWSH manga was so great and I watched the anime with my daughter and hell they really had a world full wonderful stuff I wish I could have seen in that game. still following the story but more in depth explaining or filling some of the stupid plot holes the game had.

the wild area could have worked better if It was an event zone, where some on some random occasions the area could change like a “ominous fog” where the entire area is covered in spooky fog and willow whisps, the pool changes to ghost and dark types and for an incentive to explore have a tiny chance to catch a mythical Like marshadow and add some Pokemon that weren’t originally in the dex slowly over it’s 2 year life giving replayability without trading to catch everything, give some specific trainers like hex maniacs or grave diggers who will challenge you to stop it from being such an empty experience. that’s just one example, There could be more events too like a space one with jirachi or deoxys and catch star fragments for money.

SV is a little harder considering I just built on already existing galar with linear mixed with closed free-roam without changing much of the base game.

but I’d say make the gym challenges better, maybe make them real gyms for one instead of… uh auctions of seaweed. the Arven story was good but area zero was very underwhelming for how the game hyped it up to be this alien and dangerous place but it was nothing. But that was the best story, team star was just “we got bullied we are going to fight back” “the bullies dont go to the school anymore“ “oh” the problem solved itself. the gym one was just as you expect but with absolute freedom and getting a level 50 greavard with an ultraball you sweep everyone away because theres no real limit they cut you off at because of the lack of linear progression

yeah I just can’t think of ways of improving without tearing the whole thing down. Just let the morons buy a 100$ hd re-master and maybe we can pray that Nintendo realizes open world is kinda shit and goes back even to a mix between Classic linear with some free roam spaces this time executed better.

 

[Registration]

@Anonitolia

Man, seeing all these websites I got reminded of how when I started playing pokemon in middle school. A school friend printed for me all evolution levels in cit piece of paper.

I believed I still had it but it appears I lost it. But I found my Pokemon cards and two of those plastic stuff that came with chips that I posted here before. These items are over 20 years old.

 

[The Ultimate Ramotith]

Man, those sprites really make me miss the hours I spent as a little Lurker on the huge web of pokemon fansites, learning to sprite from TCoD's guide and various forum stickies. Back when fusions were known as splices and the internet was millions of little communities of people with the same interests. It's really sad to look at the old sites and find half of them missing or barely clinging on with broken css. Used to be able to spend all day hopping through affiliate after affiliate, seeing what mattered to each host. Pretty sure the Psypokes Image Dex is busted, I know their CSS is. Haven't checked pokemonelite2000's sprite resources in a hot second, they might be gone. Pretty sure teamrocketsrockin is completely gone. TCoD was still kickin' last I checked, and obviously Serebii's eternal. There was one Japanese site that was just custom sprites for every pokemon and then some, but I can't remember the URL... maybe I'll do a dive sometime, see what's still around. It'd be nice to find a couple niche ones that're still up and running despite everything

TCoD i still going.
teamrocketsrockin got a mirror: trsrockin.xyz
Both of the ones who headed these websites are active on social media, too.
There is an interview regarding pokemonelite2000: https://johto.substack.com/p/interview-with-pokemon-elite-2000

 

[30+GameOvers]

Sword/Shield looks like it had potential because it does. It's just as much of an overrated, overpriced tech demo as Scarlet/Violet is. Besides the Wild Area, everything else follows the traditional 3DS era formula because the game was originally going to be a late addition to the 3DS library, before Nintendo decided they would rather have a Switch exclusive.
I don't really care about these titles as they're not proper games and never will be, last proper game was either Ultra Sun/Moon or Legends Arceus.

TCoD i still going.
teamrocketsrockin got a mirror: trsrockin.xyz
Both of the ones who headed these websites are active on social media, too.
There is an interview regarding pokemonelite2000: https://johto.substack.com/p/interview-with-pokemon-elite-2000

Now that's a blast from the past. Did the site actually get any new content updates, or is it just an archive?

 

[Squawking Macaw]

Man, those sprites really make me miss the hours I spent as a little Lurker on the huge web of pokemon fansites, learning to sprite from TCoD's guide and various forum stickies. Back when fusions were known as splices and the internet was millions of little communities of people with the same interests. It's really sad to look at the old sites and find half of them missing or barely clinging on with broken css. Used to be able to spend all day hopping through affiliate after affiliate, seeing what mattered to each host. Pretty sure the Psypokes Image Dex is busted, I know their CSS is. Haven't checked pokemonelite2000's sprite resources in a hot second, they might be gone. Pretty sure teamrocketsrockin is completely gone. TCoD was still kickin' last I checked, and obviously Serebii's eternal. There was one Japanese site that was just custom sprites for every pokemon and then some, but I can't remember the URL... maybe I'll do a dive sometime, see what's still around. It'd be nice to find a couple niche ones that're still up and running despite everything

Speaking of old Pokemon sites, most people use Bulbapedia or Serebii as their wiki of choice, but as a kid I used PokemonDB, and I still use it sometimes. It doesn't have nearly as much info as Bulbapedia, but the info it does have is easy to search for, the pages aren't as disorganized and bloated with anime and spinoff info, and it also has some neat tools like the type coverage checker, a national dex with images, a shiny dex, and the recently added text list generator. It's still online, but the admin, Pokemaster, has practically abandoned the site and the last time I checked on the Q&A section it gave me reddit vibes.

This one's far from being specific to Pokemon, but whenever I'm looking for sprites or models I go for the Spriters Resource and Models Resource. They've probably got the largest collection of free sprites and models on the internet, it's just a shame that they're troon sympathizers.

 

[Grayback]

I finally found a little store that still has card packs.
$8 for Journey Together ($4 for Japanese), $7 for Temporal Forces, $9+ for everything else.
Back in my day (literally just 4 months ago), Pokémon card packs were $5 at most, and it was a scandal if the store wanted more than that. But I guess we're living in different times now. I still don't really get it.

Weirdly, the store also had some of those promo packs that you usually see by the checkout lanes in Walmart or Target—the ones that come with one or two regular packs, a holographic card in the front that you can see, and a plastic coin, all held together in thin clear plastic on a cardboard backing.
They were from normal, contemporary sets, not vintage or rare or anything, but they had prices in the $20-$40 range. I have no idea what was going on there.
They also had some packs from Sword & Shield sets going for normal prices ($8-$10), but then some other sets going for almost $30.
I should have taken pictures.

Does anyone know why some of this recent (seemingly-random) stuff would be so expensive, beyond the price hikes that the cards already have these days?

 

[The Ultimate Ramotith]

They could do live 2d with the illustrations. Not even sprites.

Here is an example from a bootleg Pokémon game:

Consider yourself lucky. I haven't seen any cards in any nearby store since around January.
Today, for the first time in months, one of my local Walmarts actually had some cards in stock—but it was all just the repackaged third-party stuff. I hope they're not all that I have to look forward to from now on.
I bought some because I'm way behind and most of these are still new cards to me, so I thought I'd still get some enjoyment out of it—but also to see if the card selection would be as bad as people online were saying. It was. For two quarters, the vending machines at my grocery store spit out better cards.

I saw quite a few in the Walgreens' tores here in Puerto Rico.

If you look at these sites' affiliate pages, 90% of them only link to each other. The sole exceptions are the older sites that have a bunch of defunct stamps still in their affiliates from ages ago. I'm not sure why this is, or what the purpose of such incestuous advertising is supposed to be, but a fair amount of these are run by trannies so I guess it's some weird validation thing or whatever.

I say that is mainly nostalgia. Pokémon fansites were once the way fans kept up with any Pokénews, walkthroughs, and other stuff. They mainly communicated through dedicated forums, too. Nowadays, Facebook, X, and wikis transformed the Pokémon information space forever. The people from this circle must have been pining the times when Pokémon fansites had 'character' and 'connection' instead of being 'homogenised'. There is probably no coincidence that a lot of them are hosted o Neocities, a free web hosting service that is also based on communal nostalgia.

Now that's a blast from the past. Did the site actually get any new content updates, or is it just an archive?

That is just an archive.

 

[30+GameOvers]

Well, I just spend 5-6 hours, whatever my DS battery life is, trying to catch Ho-Oh in Fire Red Remixed. First 3 hours were fruitless, couldn't even encounter a single one. I used 240 Max Repels and nothing. I was confused, HexManiacAdvanced shows that the encounter table should be correct, Ho-Oh is in the 1% tier. Surely, it must just be bad RNG, right? Lugia also took me quite a while to catch.

Well, no, in reality, the catch rate was set to 0, meaning nothing would ever show up in that grass, even tho you can still hear the cries of the Pokemon mocking you in the background. Very sloppy, this is the second time a Pokemon is simply not possible to be caught in this romhack(first time being no Celebii in Berry Forest). Well, after I fixed the issue and spend another 30 Max Repels, I encountered two Ho-Ohs and each one died before being caught. That's 100 Repeat Balls I wasted on it already on top of repels. I only stopped because my battery finally gave out.

Gonna have to whip up a quick tutorial on what you need to do in order to fix these issues when I finally get around to reviewing this romhack. First time I am encountering any serious technical issues with one of these.

 

[Registration]

@The Ultimate Ramotith

This was better than I thought, in my mind it would be the same moviments of gen 5, but with the illustration instead of sprites.

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

Playing Emerald Rouge. Got a pokemon called Kleavor in my party and it slaps hard with rock slide with Choice Scarf. The only problem is when it misses not only one, but TWO pokemon. Got reket and send back to the start.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Back when fusions were known as splices

Holy shit that's such an archaic term, even older than those forum signature Pokédoll adoptees.

EDIT: Yeah, by Yoru Ryu, back when she was a thing and had her own website. The only thing of hers I can find anymore, and I think they were just chibis and not dolls, but I swear she said they were designed as such.