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Do you still feel upset about Pokemon as it currently is?

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Alexander Dusk Lycanroc

Trainer determined to protect friends
Honestly I'd be fine if they stopped creating new gimmicks that'll be dropped by the next generation. Mega Evolution was fine for what it was in Gen 6 but honestly most of the designs are forgettable. Z-Moves were fun since it was something culturally unique to Alola. Dynamax and Gigantimax are my least favorite since it's the most generic idea they could have thought of, let's just make the Pokemon bigger!

Honestly I'd prefer they focus on creating a great story rather than a new gimmick.
I Agree Storm, Plus, I think they have a lot of people in the company right? If so, why don't they have one half focus on a great story, and the other half work on new gimmicks?
 

Captain Jigglypuff

Leader of Jigglypuff Army
I don’t mind gimmicks if they play a role in the main story and are an important part of said story. Inverse and Sky battles were interesting but what purpose did they truly serve to the games? And Triple/Rotation battles were used so rarely outside of multiplayer that the casual player could never fully understand the true potential of using teamwork to win a battle and how moves targeted Pokémon. Megas, Z-Moves, Primal Reversion, And Dynamax/Gigantamax played major roles to their respective games that it didn’t necessarily feel forced or something added in at the last minute.
 

Storm the Lycanroc

Oshawott Squad
Will admit that Sword and Shield are the first games in the series I've had the least desire to replay. Suppose it has to do with a combination of things: boring story, annoying characters, etc...

Strangely throughout the past year I've been more interested in replaying Gen 4 to Gen 6 games. Suppose I find those games more entertaining due to nostalgia, simpler gameplay, and graphics.
 

SerebieNi

Active Member
To me, Pokémon Sword and Shield highlight the possibilities of what modern video games — with all our technological advancements — can be, bringing what were once childhood dreams to interactive life. It is not the best game I've played (WoW Classic is absolutely my favorite), but it's the best Pokémon game!
 

Teravolt

cilan lives forever in my heart
I was really disappointed in base SwSh, because there was nothing to do after you get your box legendary. I wanted a storyline like gen 7 had, which was incredibly gripping and had great villains. Gen 8 didn’t really have a villain, and I agree with the poster who said the “legendary threatens region” is overdone. I mean, Eternatus is awesome; the story didn’t do him justice. The DLC actually added more things to do and a storyline, so I appreciated that.
 

TheotherLati

Ace Trainer Brendan
Really my only issue is with Rose as a villain he doesn't really feel like one, it feels like Swordward and Shieldbert should've been the main villains.
Swordward and Shieldberts' character designs, and the way they were shoehorned into the post-game are so bad I don't even know where to start. Them being an after thought is being generous, at best.
 

spurs2021

Member
I haven't played since Gen 4 before SwSh, but can't they just merge Megas & Dynamax?

I struggle to think of what they can change in a Gen 9 to replace raids as an online and social experience.

Also, I actually agree with not needing to have all the Pokemon ever made in the base game, but all of them should return within the generation. Raids make a great way to reintroduce them without needing to program them in to begin with. But this only holds up if they actually create more new designs, imo there are still too few new Pokemon designed for the last 3 generations.

What do the designers do between the time they finish the generation's designs and the new generation? Feels like they have loads of time and don't do anything with it - and let's be real, as much as I love regional variants, how long did it take to design Galarian Slowpoke and have that be the only one line besides the birds? Fan artists can come up with designs as hobbies so what are these permanent Game Freak staff doing?
 

BCVM22

Well-Known Member
What do the designers do between the time they finish the generation's designs and the new generation? Feels like they have loads of time and don't do anything with it - and let's be real, as much as I love regional variants, how long did it take to design Galarian Slowpoke and have that be the only one line besides the birds? Fan artists can come up with designs as hobbies so what are these permanent Game Freak staff doing?

"Feels like they have loads of time and don't do anything with it" grossly oversimplifies the process and the time. What fan artists do isn't remotely comparable to what Game Freak's artists do. Actual Pokémon have to be designed, re-designed, tweaked, approved, finalized, modeled, and everything else that goes into the process, and that has to be finished collectively part way through the development of a game. Fan artists can draw a dolphin with a turbine engine on its back in an hour, publish it on their Fakemon Twitter account, complain "why isn't Game Freak using my designs?", and call it a day.
 

spurs2021

Member
"Feels like they have loads of time and don't do anything with it" grossly oversimplifies the process and the time. What fan artists do isn't remotely comparable to what Game Freak's artists do. Actual Pokémon have to be designed, re-designed, tweaked, approved, finalized, modeled, and everything else that goes into the process, and that has to be finished collectively part way through the development of a game. Fan artists can draw a dolphin with a turbine engine on its back in an hour, publish it on their Fakemon Twitter account, complain "why isn't Game Freak using my designs?", and call it a day.

Fair enough (with the comparison to fan artists), but if it takes that long, they iterated to get Slowpoke with some yellow lines?

However, my point still stands about what they actually do on a day-to-day basis. How long do the games take to develop? At what point are Game Freak developing the new generation?

The programmers and other departments have to do work on a remake, what do the designers do then given there are close to no new designs. Are they seasonal staff?

I thought the modelling is also done by Creatures, not Game Freak, so literally all the designers need to would be the design no?

So with all that, their actual output is pretty poor. I suppose it might be more to do with the game director or the suits than the designers themselves though, but for the amount of time between generations there should be a lot more designs and high quality ones too.

I know everyone has their own preferences, but imagine years pass and they designed things like Mega Latias/Latios and thought it was good. Or when Sugimori said he had artist's block for Mega Flygon and yet they thought things like Mega Aerodactyl, Tyranitar, Gardevoir were good enough.
 
D

Deleted member 384931

Guest
They really underestimate the level of understanding of 10 year-old these days. They still think in the mindset of 1996,but childeren want to have a deep story. Pokemon cant really deliver that.
 

The Admiral

the star of the masquerade
I mean, it'll do.

Pokemon games, in retrospect, aren't often that great. They rarely have much story worth writing home about, they're unbalanced, they're buggy, and due to the overall playstyle being reasonably quick (i.e. mons are usually out only for a few turns total per fight -- you're probably not going to be in a situation where you take full advantage of that Grip Claw), the difficulty level is highly polarized -- i.e. it's usually either too easy or it's Misty's Starmie the first time you play R/B. What they have is raw fun factor, and they've never really lost that. I've never played a Pokemon game and thought "Wow, I'd really rather be playing almost anything else right now. Lemme just boot up DKC3 and go for a no-holds-barred 105% marathon instead!" -- because even at their lowest, punching Snorlax in the face and hoping it doesn't use Rest resetting all of your progress AGAIN, Pokemon games are just delightful in a strangely difficult-to-describe way.

The story of Sword/Shield was a major backslide compared to Sun/Moon... but so was Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon, really. The gen 5 games and sunmoon were outliers, in my opinion. In some respects, Rose is not dissimilar to Maxie and Archie (dupes who, in an effort to solve a crisis the world doesn't have to truly deal with for a very long time, engage in and succeed at a dumb-as-hell plan to awaken a god-level pokemon that then goes on a world-wrecking rampage -- except this time with an anti-nuclear-power subtext! (NOTE: This is fairly understandable, it's a Japanese property)), but retreading through old plots is not unusual in Pokemon. The story is kind of spare compared to recent games, though -- hitting that sour spot between little enough story to feel like you're not being dragged along on a leash, and enough story to have a lot of meat on its bones. That's my biggest problem with SwSh, I think.

I'm hoping next Gen (jeez Gen NINE!) will have a smoother transition and GF will drop the paid DLC approach. They can release big patches, but this is the biggest franchise on the planet that already has a cash cow. Be kind to your fanbase and let the patches be free.

Considering the Expansion Pass basically seems to have taken the place of "third versions" (unless GF does something stupid in 2021), this is fine.
 
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Vini310

Well-Known Member
I don't have a Switch, and thus haven't played SwSh, but based on my previous experiences with Pokémon games, I say that:

- ORAS, USUM and maybe even SwSh are exactly what I WANT from a Pokémon game.

To me, a good postgame is nothing more than "transform all the Trainers in punching bags", and because of how stramlined new games are, it makes grinding my reserves much easier, I can even do "Can you beat Elite 4 with a full Fire team?" type of challenges. This is far better than the crap known as Battle Frontier, at least now my Pokémon gain EXP!

And sure, a new region MAY sound like a good idea, but what's left after THAT new region is completed? Yes, exactly...
The thing about RPGs is that, at some point, you WILL run out of things to do, and there are two ways of solving that (assuming you won't just jump into a new game):
1) Create a new save file
2) Make your own challenges (like, say, S-Rank all the bosses, try new strategies against certain bosses, train your weaker members etc).

Those are the things I do, at least.

Story? Gens 5 and 7 were intentionally made to break conventions from Pokémon, which is why they have deeper stories: THEY ARE THE EXCEPTION, NOT THE STATUS QUO!

While the story of Gen 7 was great, I would be lying if I said I play Pokémon for the story, I play because I want to catch some monsters and put them to fight each other, nothing more, nothing less. Besides, I skipped the story of most Pokémon games because the screen is too small and I couldn't read the text.

Dex cut? You mean, the thing that's the STANDARD in the monster collecting genre? Yeah, it doesn't bother me in the slightest. A Mon game doesn't need to have the entire roster in order to be good, just look at Digimon (Cyber Sleuth only has 341 Digimon, there are currently over 1000 Digimon in the franchise). And in the case of Pokémon, when the alternative is just dump the Pokémon in the games' database and lock it behind transferring, the Dex cut is a BLESSING.
 

janejane6178

Kaleido Star FOREVER in my heart <3
In EVERY generation, when I think of it - I want to replay the games. EXCEPT for gen 8 .
When I think about Swsh i dont want to replay it, and I dont think I will want to do it..... that says it all
When I think about Galar I see in my mind a big wild area and a few empty cities around it. Dont feel the advnture in that
 

BCVM22

Well-Known Member
No, the aim of every game of the franchise has been to make money. It is a product, produced for purposes of selling that product for money. Whatever your favorite game is and whatever your least favorite game is, doesn't matter.
 

Ultra Beast Lover

Well-Known Member
It should be both, though. A labor of love and a labor of money. Because while doing something you love is great, if you don't make money you aren't going to be able to pay bills or take care of yourself. But if you only do it for the money that's when you get the early Disney Sequels.

Love and money aren't the issue here though. Three years was fine when we were in the gameboy era but nowadays that's what we call severe crunch time. Looking through datamines for this game there's way too much cut content specifically in the battles department, possibly more. Sonia, her grandmother, Rose, Ball Guy, they all had multiple planned battles. I don't know much about game design and I know content is bound to get cut but I'm pretty certain that when a lot of things are cut that's a sign that they either ran out of time or the system couldn't handle it.
 

WishIhadaManafi5

To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before.
Staff member
Moderator
To me, it feels like there's been some loss of love there (not quite the phrase that I want to use, but it's the closest one that I can think of). Just something that I've noticed in the more recent games. They're ok, but they aren't to be lacking something. I'm thinking that there's some burn out (in terms of the developers).
 
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BCVM22

Well-Known Member
What’s missing is that you’re twenty-some years older than you were when you played Red and Blue, or whatever your first game was.

If you took you at whatever age you were when you played your first Pokémon game and showed yourself either of the Switch core titles, you would be completely blown away.
 

WishIhadaManafi5

To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before.
Staff member
Moderator
What’s missing is that you’re twenty-some years older than you were when you played Red and Blue, or whatever your first game was.

If you took you at whatever age you were when you played your first Pokémon game and showed yourself either of the Switch core titles, you would be completely blown away.
Maybe.

But I was talking about the developers here, not the people playing the game.
 

Det. Viper

That’s Detective Viper to you
In EVERY generation, when I think of it - I want to replay the games. EXCEPT for gen 8 .
When I think about Swsh i dont want to replay it, and I dont think I will want to do it..... that says it all
When I think about Galar I see in my mind a big wild area and a few empty cities around it. Dont feel the advnture in that

I would disagree with you on this. I enjoyed Galar and believe it does have decent replay value. It’s not RE4 or FFX good but that’s comparing bananas and tomatoes—both are fruits but are totally different. For me XY had the least replay value and I had to really will myself to get to the point of Xerneas on that play through. Galar is very linear but has just enough to keep you engaged and taking breaks at the wild area helps. But your experience with these games is different so who am I to judge?

What’s missing is that you’re twenty-some years older than you were when you played Red and Blue, or whatever your first game was.

If you took you at whatever age you were when you played your first Pokémon game and showed yourself either of the Switch core titles, you would be completely blown away.
If anybody in 1996 was shown Sword/Shield next to RBY then they would be blown away, doesn’t matter who it is. Technology advanced quite a bit between then and now.
 
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