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Kotaku: The Way to Improve Pokemon Is To Make It An Entirely Different Game!

Mirai Mirai

rabid kitten
The guy starts out with a good, but old suggestion of being able to customize the player character. I do admit that it would be really cool to have the ability to change the hair color, hair style, skin color, and outfit to fit the needs of the player while also having the option of sticking with the default character. Personally I would just be happy if I could change the player character's outfits. For example, there could be coats for the fall and winter months.

After the first one, he loses me completely.

No one is forcing anyone to pay attention to EVs, IVs, natures, etc. when they are playing the games. There are also a lot of people who competitively battle without taking the time to breed for good IVs, train for EVs, and hoping that the nature is beneficial to the said Pokemon. It is silly that he makes it sound like that people HAVE to pay attention to EVs or IVs or that they should not bother playing the game. Again, no one is forcing casual or non-casual players to pay attention to these game mechanics. It is the player's own personal choice.

As for new Pokemon; while I can see why people would be against the idea of Gamefreak making new Pokemon, because having 649 can be pretty overwhelming at times, I can also see the benefits. More Pokemon allows for more variety and choices; and it also gives the fandom something to talk about, even if some of these discussions may be negative. With Black and White I saw some old fans come back to the fandom simply because they saw the new Pokemon and wanted to know what was happening. Although I may be stretching that benefit a little too far.

I am not even so sure this guy understands the point of breeding. He's mad at it for devaluing non-Legendary Pokemon, but has he even stepped foot into the trading community? People go crazy over event Pokemon, starters, shinies, Pokemon with good IVs, good-natured Pokemon, baby Pokemon, etc. I often see threads where the user trades off a bunch of ordinary Pokemon, such as a bunch of Litwicks or Eevees, to be pretty popular within the fandom. I'm not so sure where he is getting the idea that only Legendary Pokemon are the "only ones of significant value."

Breeding does serve its purpose such as allowing the player to get Pokemon with egg moves, as well as breed for baby Pokemon. There's also Phione which you get by breeding a Manaphy. There's also the fact that baby Pokemon can inherit stuff like IVs from their partners, but considering this guy's stances on IVs and EVs, I am not so sure that reason would go over well for him.

He doesn't like the breeding because it "robs you of the thrill of the hunt." The problem with that statement is not everyone is going to enjoy catching Pokemon in the wild or hoping for a good trade. For some people there is a thrill from breeding Pokemon with good natures, moves, and IVs. You also have people who like breeding until they get a shiny. Making a statement like that completely ignores that not everyone is going to share the same exact opinion.

No one has to breed Pokemon. It is completely optional. People who do not like breeding can always get the baby Pokemon by other means, such as trading.

How exactly would the gym idea work? Would random in-game trainers come in to battle, or would it be based on Wi-Fi where real people would actually challenge you?

And why Animal Crossing?

Pokemon is already known for its lackluster story lines, and this guy wants to dumb it down more? This is actually the first time I have ever seen someone wanting to have less story. A common complaint I see is that players want their to be more story, and more background behind the plot.

Why does Pokemon have to be believable? We are talking about a world where catching magical monsters is popular. Pokemon isn't exactly known for being realistic or believable.

There was the option of being able to customize Pokeballs in the Fourth Generation, but I'm not so sure how popular it was. I didn't use it because there were better things I could do then throw a bunch of stickers onto a Pokeball. Maybe the lack of interest in the feature is why Gamefreak didn't keep it around.

It would be nice to have a reward of catching them all. I wouldn't mind an item, such as a TM.

There's really not that much backstory to any of the player character beyond "You are starting your journey, you are from this town, and here's your friend/rival!" There may be minor differences to that, such as in RSE where you just moved to a new region and your father is one of the Gym Leaders there.

The backstories are incredible simple. I'm not even sure how you would dumb down "I'm a character from [this town], and I will be starting a journey with my rival!" That background is pretty simple as it is. It isn't complex by any means.

How did we "develop" our rival in GSC? It was pretty obvious that Red-Haired Kid/Silver was our rival from the first battle. I don't see how it was natural if the player doesn't have any choice who his/her rival is.
 

Bulletproof

Self explanatory.
Kotaku posted an article titled "10 ways to Make Pokemon Super awesome" or something like that.

In it, they suggest adding a Gym Leader element where you become a Gym Leader and...sit there and wait for challengers, and sometimes fight people? I don't know.

They also propose getting rid of EVs and IVs altogether. I guess there's too much variety in Pokemon for Kotaku, and they want every Pokemon of the same species to have the exact same stats....

Wait, this sounds pretty horrible.

It gets worse.

The writer of the article goes on to advocate for removing breeding, complaining about "scarcity" or some such and that throwing off the "trade community" rarity and "value" of Pokemon.

And then they go on to say "too much story" , even though Pokemon (and a LOT of video games) have fairly paper thin plots as it is...

Oh, and the writer wants a co-op...because Pokemon is really, really hard, guys.

what?

And then they want some super awesome reward for "Catching them all", even though that's never been a main goal of an actual Pokemon game since the beginning of time.

The only non-horrible suggestion is a customasizeable trainer sprite. But considering how small your trainer sprite is for most of the game, it'd barely be noticeable.

So discuss the following:

  1. This sounds horrible, right?
  2. Do you think this guy has ever played a Pokemon game, ever?
  3. Really, has he ever actually played a Pokemon game?

I cant say I'm against the idea of trainer customization, but I definitely have my doubts as to whether this is even necessary, considering most of what you'll see of it is a very small pixel. It's a nice option to make your trainer card look nice, but this is Pokemon, not project runway.

As for the suggestions about EV's & IV's, as well as the breeding system, I believe that he needs too just avoid aspects of the game he doesn't like. Gamefreak isn't forcing anyone to play competitively, that's why competitive aspects are completely optional anyway. The comment about robbing the thrill of the hunt makes me doubt that he has even played around with the breeding system at all.

Quit adding new Pokemon? does he even know that the whole reason they add new Pokemon is to please fans of all kinds. Overestimating the graphical capabilities of the Nintendo DSi is generally a bad idea. it appears he doesn't even know how many Pokemon there are now, & he's got nostalgia goggles strapped tightly to his face.

I'm not even sure what to think of the gym suggestion & where animal crossing comes into things.

Reducing the plotline to be even more paper thin & ridiculous is a horrible idea, Pokemon is known for mediocre plots at best, & Black & White's more fleshed out backstory was met with positive reception.

I'm neutral towards all his other points.
Who knows, maybe he wrote this while drunk.
 
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NimhShambler

Some Broke Machine
I couldn't even get through it. My God, that person is a moron.

My summary of the article:


"Pogeymanz is too hard ta pway! It hurts mah bwain! No EVs or IVs! No more new pogeymen! I onwy wike da furst onez! Me cant remembwer all dewm noo pogeymen!"

Did you all see all the doofuses agreeing with him? Have they every played pokemon, ever? Seriously?

=HEAD FLOOR=
 

RDSchley

The Anti-Hero
...i dislike the majority of these ideas.

IVs are down right ****ing stupid. Lets just face it. EVs on the other hand are a more advanced way of raising pokemon. IVs are entirely random and impossible to truly find out without some outsourced calculator.

Get rid of Gym leaders all together. It's still a stupid concept. Just make actual 'bosses' either by being super uniquely difficult trainer battles that aren't based on something as one-dimensional as typing or make unique boss battles out of non-catchable pokemon. Such as a hay-wired robot that your pokemon have to fight off or something.
 

Nessea

Johto trainer
Oh he thinks 600+ is bad but look at us in the real world with 1000s of creatures. I disagree with everything he said including the customizable character nonsense.

I have heard a rumor loooong ago that gf's goal was to hit 1000 pokemon.
 

Excitable Boy

is a metaphor
Most of these seem like fairly crappy ideas. I do like a couple of them, though I'm probably thinking of an entirely different implementation.

Custom Gyms seems kind of pointless, but I like the idea of being able to upload the Gym over WiFi that someone suggested. Perhaps each Gym could have a theme like the in-game Gyms, but you don't know that theme when you select your team and download the Gym. All of the opponents would be fought gauntlet-style, without healing except whatever you brought in (which would have to be restricted somehow).
 

Akwakwak

I'm hungry
KOTAKU, ALL YOUR IGNORANCE ARE BELONG TO US!!!!!!!!!!!

I will gladly answer your three questions randomspot555.

1. This sounds worse than Lana del rey's SNL performance.
* SAY WHAT?????????
*Become a gym leader? The main objective of all the Pokemon games is to become THE POKEMON CHAMPION, not a gym leader.
* No EV/IV'S? Kotaku must not know the way of the EV trainer. People have the choice to EV train that's what make these games great.
* Breeding throws off the trade community? Breeding is the trade community.
* The Pokemon games have too much story? Kotaku should stay away from Pokemon Ranger then.
* CO-OP,CO-OP? He should CO-OP on these POKEBALLS.
* Super AWESOME reward? What else is there to get once you capture all Pokemon.
*Customize a pixel? Yeeeeeaaaaaaahhhh, NO!

2. No, there is no way this guy has played Pokemon, and if he has then he is probably an UBER NOOB.
Unless he did this for the LULZ, but I highly doubt it because he is more idiot than savant.

3. Noooooo!!!!! This guy has never played Pokemon and for that MUDKIPZ should FALCON PUNCH his *****. Excuse my language. The nerve of some people.
 
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Simipour

<('.'<) (>'.')>
"Pogeymanz is too hard ta pway! It hurts mah bwain! No EVs or IVs! No more new pogeymen! I onwy wike da furst onez! Me cant remembwer all dewm noo pogeymen!"

Did you all see all the doofuses agreeing with him? Have they every played pokemon, ever? Seriously?

=HEAD FLOOR=

I scrolled down expecting to see the guy to be crucified, only to see people agreeing with him. Things like this cannot be defended by "it's a matter of opinion". He's wrong, plain and simple. For one, if these changes were made, the idiots that call pokemon a kiddies game will have something to go on.
 

Skegs

Well-Known Member
I have to agree a bit on the 3rd one. I hate EV Training and IVs...without them, the game would be so simple...
 

Serebii

And, as if by magic, the webmaster appeared...
Staff member
Admin
I have dealt with quite a lot of stupid in my time, but this...wow...just wow...

EVs, IVs etc. have been in it since the beginning and are HIDDEN values. It's not the developer's fault that we abuse the crap out of them and most casual players don't actually give a crap. I've recently turned into quite a competitive player (never really cared for it to the extent of a lot), but even I don't breed for perfect IVs. Variation is the whole point of Pokémon. Without them, then every team would be the same damn thing and it's just complete chance over who wins.

Customisation, sure...but the trainer is not you, it shouldn't really be that customisable. You don't ask to customise Link or Mario, so why this? Because you name him? You can name Link too.

Gym idea. Awful. Just awful. Every idea...just awful
 

Crystal

The Pokemon Observer
Well, I agree the fact that Pokemon games need improvements, but unfortunately not very much to KOTAKU's suggestions.

There is only two things I agree in his suggestion: Character customization and Removal of Pokemon Give-away and/or Wi-Fi Events.

Character customization is a good feature, you can make your own character according to your choice. I don't think this is a difficult feature. Just look at the Mii in Wii, or may be User ID in Pokemon Daisuki Club website, or any other "make your own anime character" designing website. I don't object against this idea, but to tell the truth, I can still play the game with or without this feature, so I rather say I'm neutral to this idea.

Pokemon is already a world-wide known franchaise, not only Japan, America or Europe, there is also many different language versions such as Russian, Spanish, Italian, Korean, Chinese, ... etc. However, not all the countries are technologically well-developed, some countries still uses ADSL line for internet, so they only have very scarce amount of Wi-Fi hotspots, and not yet to mention about the speed. Some countries don't have official Pokemon Centre, so the Event Pokemon are give away at large toy store franchaises such as Toy'rus. But still, this means only the ones that lives in a technologically advanced environment can receive the Event Pokemon, the ones that are not would never receive at least once in their life. Also, Event Pokemon are time-limited, they only appear at a time for once, no second chance. So if you missed it, you loss it. That's the thing I don't like about it.
Truely, I would rather agree that those legendary/rare/shiny Pokemon to be obtained through great amount of effort during the game, but not give away through events. Another method I will accept will be something like the codes in PMD series.

I could give a list of all the things that the Main series Pokemon games should improve, but it will definitely not 95% of what KOTAKU suggested.
 

randomspot555

Well-Known Member
I have to agree a bit on the 3rd one. I hate EV Training and IVs...without them, the game would be so simple...

So you want every single Grotle to be the exact same?

Removal of Pokemon Give-away and/or Wi-Fi Events.


some countries still uses ADSL line for internet, so they only have very scarce amount of Wi-Fi hotspots,

You can always set up your own. A DSL Internet connection does not limit you. I have DSL at home and I have a wireless router.

and not yet to mention about the speed. Some countries don't have official Pokemon Centre, so the Event Pokemon are give away at large toy store franchaises such as Toy'rus.

Yes. So? The point of in-store events is typically to push a Pokemon movie release, DVD, anime promotion, toys, or new side-game. IT's to buy stuff. You can't buy a Pokemon plushie via Nintendo WFC.

But still, this means only the ones that lives in a technologically advanced environment can receive the Event Pokemon, the ones that are not would never receive at least once in their life. Also, Event Pokemon are time-limited, they only appear at a time for once, no second chance. So if you missed it, you loss it. That's the thing I don't like about it.

You can trade.

And even if you can't, so what? There is nothing preventing you f
rom enjoying a Pokemon game right out of the box. All you need is right there.
 

Marbi Z

Cin-Der-Race!
Most of that doesn't sound too good but I'm kinda on the fence with EV's (not IV's) Half of me thinks that they should do away with EV's to make the game more balanced while the other half argues that it takes away customization from the game. I would however be all for a more MATURE version of Pokemon targeted towards the older fans (there are more than you think) with more serious scenarios and the ability to choose between good and evil.
 

jireh the provider

Video Game Designer
He needs to stick this note;

"If it ain't broken, don't fix it."

Seriously, the multiplayer is okay but it seems he only wanted an action like theme. Either the zelda way or just a game that rely on skill than strategy. Maybe that dude is the monotonous style.

The character customization has been already done in PBR. Maybe in the main series, they could apply it aftergame and on online fights and contests only.

quote:
Pokemon is already a world-wide known franchaise, not only Japan, America or Europe, there is also many different language versions such as Russian, Spanish, Italian, Korean, Chinese, ... etc. However, not all the countries are technologically well-developed, some countries still uses ADSL line for internet, so they only have very scarce amount of Wi-Fi hotspots, and not yet to mention about the speed. Some countries don't have official Pokemon Centre, so the Event Pokemon are give away at large toy store franchaises such as Toy'rus. But still, this means only the ones that lives in a technologically advanced environment can receive the Event Pokemon, the ones that are not would never receive at least once in their life. Also, Event Pokemon are time-limited, they only appear at a time for once, no second chance. So if you missed it, you loss it. That's the thing I don't like about it.
Truely, I would rather agree that those legendary/rare/shiny Pokemon to be obtained through great amount of effort during the game, but not give away through events. Another method I will accept will be something like the codes in PMD series.

/quote

I agree. My country, the Philippines is not tech advanced yo, even if we loved the series greatly (well, not that much)! I was disappointed about not being able to get special legendaries. All the more reason I wanted to become a video game designer. Cause getting my fav legendary (see signature) is insane. I was lucky just to have one from a dominican student.

But to possibly remedy this, GF and Nintendo needed to implement their mystery gift events on that lower country's popular spots. Like our Mcdonalds Philippines and Jolibee restaurants(originally filipino). Just like how popular countries use their famous spots to add pokemon's reputation of mystery gifts. Nut if I were them, they should hold the next VGC and TGC on a poor or middle class country like Philippines, Singapore, hog Kong, China, you name them. Other than Europe, Usa, and Japan.
 
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randomspot555

Well-Known Member
Most of that doesn't sound too good but I'm kinda on the fence with EV's (not IV's) Half of me thinks that they should do away with EV's to make the game more balanced while the other half argues that it takes away customization from the game.

I don't see how taking away EVs would make it "more balanced".

I would however be all for a more MATURE version of Pokemon targeted towards the older fans (there are more than you think) with more serious scenarios and the ability to choose between good and evil.

lol

If you want a plot, you're playing the wrong game

If you want a "mature" plot, that's something Pokemon will never be.
 

Masterge77

Floatzel rules!
10 ways to make Pokemon "Super Awesome"? The article seems less like that and more like "10 ways to absolutely destroy the Pokemon franchise and all that it stands for", yeah, it's obvious this guy has never played a Pokemon game at all...
 

Schade

Metallic Wonder
Pokemon sure have lost its magic
 

AmusedMilk

Oh, hey, Big Zam!
This guy should do the research first.
 
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