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

[The Ultimate Ramotith]

I guess the curious are going to pirate this game instead o feeding a problemati company this time.

 

[Rotollo]

I guess the curious are going to pirate this game instead o feeding a problemati company this time.

I mean I would wait a year so I could get a second switch at a cheeper price so I could use this one for hacking. even with Emunand Gen 8 isnt worth getting a ban from online and the e shop

 

[TheImportantFart]

I guess the curious are going to pirate this game instead o feeding a problemati company this time.

Call me a lemming, but I still plan on getting this game. Definitely not at launch, but I will be getting it. The stuff that’s been brought up in this thread is certainly bad, but for me personally, it’s not a dealbreaker since with Pokemon games I usually just play through the story and some of the postgame and call it a day and for those purposes, this looks just fine.

I am a filthy casual though, so I won’t begrudge anyone boycotting.

 

[Buttigieg2020]

Call me a lemming, but I still plan on getting this game. Definitely not at launch, but I will be getting it. The stuff that’s been brought up in this thread is certainly bad, but for me personally, it’s not a dealbreaker since with Pokemon games I usually just play through the story and some of the postgame and call it a day and for those purposes, this looks just fine.

I am a filthy casual though, so I won’t begrudge anyone boycotting.

If you plan on getting a physical copy late, just buy it used. You save money and you don’t support the decisions made. That’s what I’m going to do.

 

[Screech Man Bad]

Call me a lemming, but I still plan on getting this game. Definitely not at launch, but I will be getting it. The stuff that’s been brought up in this thread is certainly bad, but for me personally, it’s not a dealbreaker since with Pokemon games I usually just play through the story and some of the postgame and call it a day and for those purposes, this looks just fine.

I am a filthy casual though, so I won’t begrudge anyone boycotting.

I was in the same camp as you until I realized I'd be paying for a full price console game. If this was some 39.99-49.99 game I'd probably give it a shot. Especially with the game completion time being around 20 hours with no post game worth doing.

 

[Eekum Bokum]

I'll be honest the only way i wasn't going to buy Sword/Shield is if they used teh wild pokemon mechanics from lets go IE just chuck a ball at them no fighting.

Everything else like i've said before as either been a meh or a neat reaction from me.

Though i do get a bit of schadenfreude from the competitive scene losing their shit though that comes mainly from me not liking competitive gaming in general.

 

[ManateeHunter]

I think people are way too optimistic about this new Pokemom title. The game is a straight port of Sun & Moon engine, which is a straight port of X & Y. This is a title from from 2012 mind you. They basically had to deliberately cut out all the things they did, this wasn't a time constraint issue. I know people are excited for a new game in a franchise, especially on the Switch which I love. But you are better off buying Ultra Sun and Moon because it's a better Pokemon game. I mean it's literally an improvement over Sword and Shield in every way. The online battling is free too. It makes me sad to say this.

TBH I think you are way too optimistic on USUM's quality, but yeah this shit's just awful

 

[Rotollo]

Hey bro you know that feature every other game has out of the box, lets lock it behind a key item because HAHA I REALLY DON'T KNOW BUGS IN ANUS
Are you kidding me

looks like Jim's giving his hot take as well on this shit

Mister AntiBully on Twitter

“I get it now. Thank you for delaying Metroid Prime 4 otherwise this is the alternative of releasing something half baked.”

twitter.com

I'll be honest the only way i wasn't going to buy Sword/Shield is if they used teh wild pokemon mechanics from lets go IE just chuck a ball at them no fighting.

Everything else like i've said before as either been a meh or a neat reaction from me.

Though i do get a bit of schadenfreude from the competitive scene losing their shit though that comes mainly from me not liking competitive gaming in general.

I find it funny because all the competitive pokeshills were pro dex cut, until the move cut and the actual dex was shown and they realized how far it goes. Poketubers truly are cancer.

I was in the same camp as you until I realized I'd be paying for a full price console game. If this was some 39.99-49.99 game I'd probably give it a shot. Especially with the game completion time being around 20 hours with no post game worth doing.

Yeah doesn't game freak just price this shit at 40 at this point?

 

[Eekum Bokum]

So i found a near 2 hour video of someone who got teh game early, i only watched about 20 mins but didn't see anything bad except for a bit of slowdown when Leon is talking to a crowd of people and the camera pans across the people.

I have no idea how to archive videos or save them so if anyone wants to the link is below. I'm sure i could figure out how to archive but my internet has been as consistant as GF right now so fuck it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH9UuYKfaVQ

 

[Coelacanth]

The starters you get at the beginning of the game have been shiny locked apparently alongside the usual legendaries (and the shiny forms for the starters look awful). Shiny hunters on twitter aren't happy so it looks like GF/TPC is making things unpleasant for even the most eccentric parts of the fandom.

Guess I'm not going to consider getting the games second hand either, now. I'll stick to the older games and wait to see if gen 9 will actually be an improvement (though that's probably an thought more than anything else).

 

[Mangy Mutt]

Some dude compiled a handy dandy list of all known biggest issues that've been noted so far in the game.

I'll throw the list under a spoiler for ease.

Spoiler

1. The number of usable Pokemon has been cut, only less than half are now usable, known as Dexit, it means that you won't be able to use these pokemon in the new games, you won't be able to transfer them in, and you won't be able to do anything with them sans sticking them in home for the foreseeable future (Home will probably be a paid only subscription based service just like its predecessor), for all intents and purposes, these Pokemon are basically removed from the main games franchise and they will take probably years to come back, if ever.
   An image with the cut/not cut pokemon can be found here, pokemon in green are confirmed to be in, pokemon in purple have galar forms, pokemon in yellow are in the data, but there's nothing for them, they could be leftover data like the items and other things, could be giveaway/event only, could only come from other games, etc, there's no way to know what's the plans for them at the moment, if any, pokemon in red are cut.
   The excuse GF used for this culling was that it let's them work on delivering better animations and a more carefully crafted game, since they don't have to put more time and effort into redoing the models.
   This is complete BS as the game polish is worse than ever, and the models seem to just be somewhat edited XY models.
2. Just like the Pokemon cut, about 144 moves were removed, 99 moves excluding the let's go and other outlier moves, this includes extremely important and used mainstay moves like Hidden Power, return/frustration and Pursuit, on top of extremely old moves that have been there since gen 1, some of these moves were important for the viability of several Pokemon, which may cause them to be way less effective if not way worse when it comes to battles, on top of this, it also removed some SIGNATURE MOVES of certain Pokemon.
   The full list for deleted mainstay pokemon moves can be found here
   Attempts at transferring Pokemon with these moves will apparently get this message: "This move can’t be used. It’s recommended that this move is forgotten. Once forgotten, this move can’t be remembered."
3. Short game, the first streamer beat the champion at around the 14 hour mark, while he did this by skipping a fair amount of trainer battles, other streamers are clocking in about 16-20 hours, seems like the average will be about 18 hours to beat the game.
   Here's one of the many streamers, he's right before champion and clocking in at 14:34.
4. The graphics are extremely mediocre, it constantly looks worse and less polished than LGPE, the textures are often inexcusable.
   Examples of the bad graphics seen here
   1
   2
   3
   4
   5
   6
   A comparison with LGPE can be seen here and here
   Here's a game recently released for switch, another picture found here, the difference is unreal.
5. There's constant graphical issues, not just low quality graphics, pop in is present at all points of the game due to bad coding, trainer models will also disappear mid battle when an attack with a high number of particles is used, this also happened in SM, however, SM moved the camera away to avoid people seeing it, they didn't even try this time.
   This means it's either a carry over from SM and they just copy pasted most of the code, or they somehow have to remove the trainers to avoid a switch from somehow getting fps drops.
   The pop-ins can be evidenced here and here
   Trainers dissapearing mid battle can be evidenced here
6. Animations, one of the main reasons why GF cut pokemon, at least in the interviews, are as shoddy as ever.
   There's extremely lazy animation all over the game, from normal attacks to key moments in the game, such as the encounter with the box legendaries.
   Most of the animations are also completely copy pasted from older games, one example seen here with Hau(the entire character of hop is basically a copy paste of hau.)
   Pokemon battle animations are just as bad as before, if not worse, pictured here is a pokemon headbutting with its feet.
   Another example found here, THE MAIN BOX ART POKEMON CINEMATIC, THIS IS THE GAME CLIMAX, another example on the other version found here
   In fact, it could be considered way worse if compared to the last gen, example of upscaled USUM cutscenes. (Notice the graphical change isn't that big, the only difference here is increasing the resolution)
7. Cutscenes and restrictions, like previous Pokemon games the cutscene and story forcing and restrictions are insane this time around, seems to be even more intrusive and in your face than before at times, while keeping the same level of cutscene intrusion than past gen.
   The video for this point was taken down, but if you wish to see this you should be able to find it by searching the gameplay clips/streams online
8. The difficulty, just like the cut scene problem, this carries over from earlier games and it's even worse.There were constant heals, to the point where in the first routes you're not able to go beyond 3 trainer fights without getting a full heal.
   The first streamer avoided fights and didn't train at all, it still was one shotting gym leader dynamaxed ace pokemon.This can be seen here.
9. Post-Game is almost non-existant, as usual since masuda-Ohmori started directing, there's no frontier, there's also no frontier like facility.
   The post game consists of battle tower and a very short sequence of missions where you beat some dynamax pokemon for your rival to catch the other legendary
   Not only this, but the battle tower is also an inferior version of past towers, it doesn't have super single nor super double battles, it has no triple battles and there's no "tower bosses", it's just random trainer npcs after another.
10. Problems with game design and behavior, beyond difficulty and progression, there's other problems in the overall game design.
    Examples of this is not being able to catch Pokemon in the wild areas until you got a badge allowing you to do so, which usually covers your current level.
    Meaning if you find a level 31 shiny or a level 31 pokemon you really want, you won't be able to catch it until you go and beat the next gym.
    For shiny hunters, this one is gonna be really important, you cannot see if your Pokemon is gonna be shiny or not in the overworld, this means that on top of the badge limit, you also got this potential problem.
    Evidenced here.
11. Removed past features with virtually no new additions, seems like this is a mainstay in Pokemon, removing older features so they become one of a time gimmicks, but unlike earlier titles this new game doesn't adds anything new except dynamaxing, which is limited to gyms only.
    This particular gen removes Mega Evolutions and Z moves, mega evolutions in particular were a huge deal and seeing them suddenly removed means that there's little reason to get involved with any new addition, no matter how mainstay or how much GF forces it when it will very soon be gone.
    A list of these removed features can be found here.
12. No scaling whatsoever, models are the same sizes of XY (giving more plausibility to them not really redoing the models).Any argument against this is thrown out of the window when dynamaxing exists, since the models seem to be edited XY models then the problem remains.
    Here's the non scaled model in sword and shield.
    Here's an scaled model, released in a game that came out 15 years ago for a the Nintendo Gamecube, something way less powerful than the switch.
13. No GTS, retera thread on the discovery found here, the only strings that refer to the GTS are leftovers from Let's Go code, as seen here and here.
    This is most likely due to Home(this means that you will have to pay for switch online+home for services older games already included)
    Thanks to /u/c_will for pointing this one out and gathering the info.
14. A 20 dollar price increase for less content than earlier 3DS games, with subpar graphics and removal of features, an overall shoddy release for a higher price point.
15. Performance, game is locked to 30 fps, and while that's not a big issue by itself, this is coupled with slowdown at certain moments such as dynamaxing, it can drop fps to the floor and turn the game into a slideshow for a while.
    Evidenced here.
    Still gathering more info on this one, as it's a relatively new occurrence that hasn't happened to all users, take this one with a grain of salt
16. The overall lack of quality, polish and effort put into the game, this is all the minor/somewhat minor but still very telling problems with the game.
    This is apparent in many ways all throughout the game, things like the wrong backgrounds or just voids for pokemon battles.
    Two example of the wrong backgrounds seen here and [here] (https://clips.twitch.tv/FriendlyCleanOstrichArsonNoSexy) One example of the void background seen here (these happen on indoor fights and some non indoor but scripted battles)Examples of backgrounds on indoor and everywhere else in both LGPE and colosseum, seen here and here.
    Then there's complete lack of music in the game story most important moments, seen here.
    Starters are also shiny locked.
    The entire world freezes when using certain objects, as seen here.
    To this, you add up the emptiness of the wild area and the badly implemented weather changes that don't make much sense, both seen here
    No animation for flying, no elite 4, no victory road, etc, this is added to all the other problems that show the lack of effort put into them.

Sucks that overworld shinies are for whatever reason not a thing anymore. Let's Go made shiny hunting really fun and I had hope they'd carry that over to the new games. Gives me less reason to want to buy it even as used.

Yeah this really is shaping up to be a disaster lmao.

 

[ducktales4gameboy]

Last night I was passively watching someone playing the leak for the first 3 or so hours and my biggest impression is that it’s a massive lost opportunity since it looks like they came really close to a really good rework of the formula and then backed down at the last minute.

If the game was absolutely nothing but the open-world field segments and had the complete dex plus towns scattered randomly with gyms in them i’d have a blast with it as a game where I could just zone out and listen to audiobooks and catch mons, but instead there’s so much SUMO style railroading that it just looks offputting. Dynamax encounters look like a slog too since they involve half a dozen unskippable 10-second animations.

Man, all I want is a single one of the old reliable franchises to have a proper modern entry this year but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.

 

[HiddenFist]

Man, all I want is a single one of the old reliable franchises to have a proper modern entry this year but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.

Unless they allow a 5 year development cycle and/or give it to a better studio that is superior coding wise, I just don't see Pokemon becoming that amazing entry that many people want it to bee. I wish GameFreak would just shut up because the more they talk about it the more they piss off their fans.

 

[OddEyes]

I mean I would wait a year so I could get a second switch at a cheeper price so I could use this one for hacking. even with Emunand Gen 8 isnt worth getting a ban from online and the e shop

Going for lite or regular?

Man, all I want is a single one of the old reliable franchises to have a proper modern entry this year but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.

I mean... DMC5 was really good. Digimon's solid.

And if you wanna count remakes - Resident Evil 2.

 

[Jetpack Himmler]

Some dude compiled a handy dandy list of all known biggest issues that've been noted so far in the game.

I'll throw the list under a spoiler for ease.

Spoiler

1. The number of usable Pokemon has been cut, only less than half are now usable, known as Dexit, it means that you won't be able to use these pokemon in the new games, you won't be able to transfer them in, and you won't be able to do anything with them sans sticking them in home for the foreseeable future (Home will probably be a paid only subscription based service just like its predecessor), for all intents and purposes, these Pokemon are basically removed from the main games franchise and they will take probably years to come back, if ever.
   An image with the cut/not cut pokemon can be found here, pokemon in green are confirmed to be in, pokemon in purple have galar forms, pokemon in yellow are in the data, but there's nothing for them, they could be leftover data like the items and other things, could be giveaway/event only, could only come from other games, etc, there's no way to know what's the plans for them at the moment, if any, pokemon in red are cut.
   The excuse GF used for this culling was that it let's them work on delivering better animations and a more carefully crafted game, since they don't have to put more time and effort into redoing the models.
   This is complete BS as the game polish is worse than ever, and the models seem to just be somewhat edited XY models.
2. Just like the Pokemon cut, about 144 moves were removed, 99 moves excluding the let's go and other outlier moves, this includes extremely important and used mainstay moves like Hidden Power, return/frustration and Pursuit, on top of extremely old moves that have been there since gen 1, some of these moves were important for the viability of several Pokemon, which may cause them to be way less effective if not way worse when it comes to battles, on top of this, it also removed some SIGNATURE MOVES of certain Pokemon.
   The full list for deleted mainstay pokemon moves can be found here
   Attempts at transferring Pokemon with these moves will apparently get this message: "This move can’t be used. It’s recommended that this move is forgotten. Once forgotten, this move can’t be remembered."
3. Short game, the first streamer beat the champion at around the 14 hour mark, while he did this by skipping a fair amount of trainer battles, other streamers are clocking in about 16-20 hours, seems like the average will be about 18 hours to beat the game.
   Here's one of the many streamers, he's right before champion and clocking in at 14:34.
4. The graphics are extremely mediocre, it constantly looks worse and less polished than LGPE, the textures are often inexcusable.
   Examples of the bad graphics seen here
   1
   2
   3
   4
   5
   6
   A comparison with LGPE can be seen here and here
   Here's a game recently released for switch, another picture found here, the difference is unreal.
5. There's constant graphical issues, not just low quality graphics, pop in is present at all points of the game due to bad coding, trainer models will also disappear mid battle when an attack with a high number of particles is used, this also happened in SM, however, SM moved the camera away to avoid people seeing it, they didn't even try this time.
   This means it's either a carry over from SM and they just copy pasted most of the code, or they somehow have to remove the trainers to avoid a switch from somehow getting fps drops.
   The pop-ins can be evidenced here and here
   Trainers dissapearing mid battle can be evidenced here
6. Animations, one of the main reasons why GF cut pokemon, at least in the interviews, are as shoddy as ever.
   There's extremely lazy animation all over the game, from normal attacks to key moments in the game, such as the encounter with the box legendaries.
   Most of the animations are also completely copy pasted from older games, one example seen here with Hau(the entire character of hop is basically a copy paste of hau.)
   Pokemon battle animations are just as bad as before, if not worse, pictured here is a pokemon headbutting with its feet.
   Another example found here, THE MAIN BOX ART POKEMON CINEMATIC, THIS IS THE GAME CLIMAX, another example on the other version found here
   In fact, it could be considered way worse if compared to the last gen, example of upscaled USUM cutscenes. (Notice the graphical change isn't that big, the only difference here is increasing the resolution)
7. Cutscenes and restrictions, like previous Pokemon games the cutscene and story forcing and restrictions are insane this time around, seems to be even more intrusive and in your face than before at times, while keeping the same level of cutscene intrusion than past gen.
   The video for this point was taken down, but if you wish to see this you should be able to find it by searching the gameplay clips/streams online
8. The difficulty, just like the cut scene problem, this carries over from earlier games and it's even worse.There were constant heals, to the point where in the first routes you're not able to go beyond 3 trainer fights without getting a full heal.
   The first streamer avoided fights and didn't train at all, it still was one shotting gym leader dynamaxed ace pokemon.This can be seen here.
9. Post-Game is almost non-existant, as usual since masuda-Ohmori started directing, there's no frontier, there's also no frontier like facility.
   The post game consists of battle tower and a very short sequence of missions where you beat some dynamax pokemon for your rival to catch the other legendary
   Not only this, but the battle tower is also an inferior version of past towers, it doesn't have super single nor super double battles, it has no triple battles and there's no "tower bosses", it's just random trainer npcs after another.
10. Problems with game design and behavior, beyond difficulty and progression, there's other problems in the overall game design.
    Examples of this is not being able to catch Pokemon in the wild areas until you got a badge allowing you to do so, which usually covers your current level.
    Meaning if you find a level 31 shiny or a level 31 pokemon you really want, you won't be able to catch it until you go and beat the next gym.
    For shiny hunters, this one is gonna be really important, you cannot see if your Pokemon is gonna be shiny or not in the overworld, this means that on top of the badge limit, you also got this potential problem.
    Evidenced here.
11. Removed past features with virtually no new additions, seems like this is a mainstay in Pokemon, removing older features so they become one of a time gimmicks, but unlike earlier titles this new game doesn't adds anything new except dynamaxing, which is limited to gyms only.
    This particular gen removes Mega Evolutions and Z moves, mega evolutions in particular were a huge deal and seeing them suddenly removed means that there's little reason to get involved with any new addition, no matter how mainstay or how much GF forces it when it will very soon be gone.
    A list of these removed features can be found here.
12. No scaling whatsoever, models are the same sizes of XY (giving more plausibility to them not really redoing the models).Any argument against this is thrown out of the window when dynamaxing exists, since the models seem to be edited XY models then the problem remains.
    Here's the non scaled model in sword and shield.
    Here's an scaled model, released in a game that came out 15 years ago for a the Nintendo Gamecube, something way less powerful than the switch.
13. No GTS, retera thread on the discovery found here, the only strings that refer to the GTS are leftovers from Let's Go code, as seen here and here.
    This is most likely due to Home(this means that you will have to pay for switch online+home for services older games already included)
    Thanks to /u/c_will for pointing this one out and gathering the info.
14. A 20 dollar price increase for less content than earlier 3DS games, with subpar graphics and removal of features, an overall shoddy release for a higher price point.
15. Performance, game is locked to 30 fps, and while that's not a big issue by itself, this is coupled with slowdown at certain moments such as dynamaxing, it can drop fps to the floor and turn the game into a slideshow for a while.
    Evidenced here.
    Still gathering more info on this one, as it's a relatively new occurrence that hasn't happened to all users, take this one with a grain of salt
16. The overall lack of quality, polish and effort put into the game, this is all the minor/somewhat minor but still very telling problems with the game.
    This is apparent in many ways all throughout the game, things like the wrong backgrounds or just voids for pokemon battles.
    Two example of the wrong backgrounds seen here and [here] (https://clips.twitch.tv/FriendlyCleanOstrichArsonNoSexy) One example of the void background seen here (these happen on indoor fights and some non indoor but scripted battles)Examples of backgrounds on indoor and everywhere else in both LGPE and colosseum, seen here and here.
    Then there's complete lack of music in the game story most important moments, seen here.
    Starters are also shiny locked.
    The entire world freezes when using certain objects, as seen here.
    To this, you add up the emptiness of the wild area and the badly implemented weather changes that don't make much sense, both seen here
    No animation for flying, no elite 4, no victory road, etc, this is added to all the other problems that show the lack of effort put into them.

Sucks that overworld shinies are for whatever reason not a thing anymore. Let's Go made shiny hunting really fun and I had hope they'd carry that over to the new games. Gives me less reason to want to buy it even as used.

Yeah this really is shaping up to be a disaster lmao.

Yikes! What a clusterfuck. It really makes me wonder if all this bad publicity will affect sales and Nintendo will have to have a serious talk with GF. I seriously doubt it.

 

[Love Machine]

Yea guys, I'm thinking kino is back on the menu.

 

[Eekum Bokum]

83 is fair...i expect the user scores to be a mix of "best game ever 10/10" and "absolute dogshite 0/10" as is the case with pretty much every high profile game these days.

 

[Nauseated Courgi]

Yikes! What a clusterfuck. It really makes me wonder if all this bad publicity will affect sales and Nintendo will have to have a serious talk with GF. I seriously doubt it.

Maybe if they screwed up like this a second time Nintendo will give them a talking to.

Although, given everything here, I blame the fact that they're gave themselves so little time to develop a new pokemon game. I think everyone here agrees that if they moved away from shipping out a game once a year and gave themselves more time to develop their games, this wouldn't be happening. It would improve the overall quality of them and it gives them more opportunities to develop and ship out spin-off games to let the fan base warm up to the recent generation pokemon.

 

[Love Machine]

83 is fair...i expect the user scores to be a mix of "best game ever 10/10" and "absolute dogshite 0/10" as is the case with pretty much every high profile game these days.

its a joke, though the fact that its believable probably isnt a good sign for gamefreak actually learning from this.

 

[X-Shaped Weeaboo]

I love the sect of Twitter defending the game's shitty graphics by throwing Fire Emblem 3 Houses under the bus.

3 Houses didn't gut every traditional Fire Emblem mechanic or character and pretended it was doing it "for better balance and graphics" so the comparison is rancid at best and willfully dishonest at worst.