Pokemon Sword & Shield GENERAL DISCUSSION Thread [Spoilers]

[Dragalge]

That's what bothers me too. Gen 6 and 7 repeat the mistake of gen 2 by having the species regular Pokemon being so damn rare. In fact it's the same exact pattern! Gen 2 and 7 in the beginning are fine but when you want the cooler mons they're like 2-5% in their native region. If anything Pokemon NOT from the region should be rare. Because they don't come from that region.

What I'm trying to say is that I hate going into the first route of a game and encountering a Pidgey or Caterpie. It's so disheartening.

That forced Pidgey encounter in XY was dumb. No Masuda I won’t be nostalgic over this false-pigeon bird!

 

[Orphalesion]

Right now we have over 800 Pokemon. What happens when it gets to 1000? It'll be hard to keep track of them all.

Yeah, see that's an argument I will never agree with. There is no such thing as "too many" Pokemon. Nothing will happen when it gets to 1000. It just means that there'll be 1000 Pokemon.
And as to it being "hard" to keep track of them all...well, is it really necessary to keep track of them all? I sure don't

 

[Creyk]

They took away contests. They took away horde battles. I could go on and on. I don't know why people act like there is even a chance of them keeping this "pokemon appear in the overworld" mechanic in these games. No they won't, they always do it the 1 step forward 2 steps back way. It will of course not be included and if someone asks them why they will say "we wanted the let's go games to have something special about them..." and leave it at that. I am doubtful about pokemon walking with you, too.

 

[ReneEnjolras]

is it really necessary to keep track of them all?

It is if you are one of the people who like to complete the dex. I don't care how many Pokemon there are myself. I just don't see large amounts being made at the same time this gen.

 

[DSDark]

I never said it was a problem. It's the way I like to play. I want to play underleveled because the games are very easy otherwise. If they introduce level scaling my way of playing would be ruined because it would be impossible to be underleveled, I don't want that. It currently scales with story progression essentially, levels depending on when in the story you can first reach the area, and that's fine because I'm underleveled in the story battles too. If they scale it based on my party (regardless of whether that is the current party or the party I used at the gym) they'd all be turned way down for me, removing any kind of tension or danger from wild pokémon battles.

In other words, I think the games are already easy enough. I don't need the games babying me in the "Oh dear, your party levels are quite low, we'll lower the enemy levels accordingly so you won't have as much trouble anymore, we can't have our players lose a battle even once after all" way.

The point of the scaling I'm thinking about would be to make the game harder not easier. The games have always been very very underleveled for most players. If the game scales with your progress then the game would be at your level, or on challenge mode, above your level to start the next "chapter".

 

[lolipiece]

Gen 2 and 7 in the beginning are fine but when you want the cooler mons they're like 2-5% in their native region. If anything Pokemon NOT from the region should be rare. Because they don't come from that region.

What I'm trying to say is that I hate going into the first route of a game and encountering a Pidgey or Caterpie. It's so disheartening.

And who said that? Caterpillars exist all over the world. Same with birds. Pokemon aren't as varied as their real world counterparts (at least until Alola Forms were introduced, and I wouldn't expect Game Freak to explore that concept again), so reusing old Pokemon helps to simulate how diverse animal species are.

Second, just because some old Pokemon are said to have been introduced to a new region (see a lot of Pre-Gen VII Pokemon in Alola) doesn't mean all old Pokemon are. Heck, Exeggutor, Corphish, Gible, and Yungoos aren't from the region they were introduced in, so what does that make them?

 

[shoz999]

Yeah, see that's an argument I will never agree with. There is no such thing as "too many" Pokemon. Nothing will happen when it gets to 1000. It just means that there'll be 1000 Pokemon.
And as to it being "hard" to keep track of them all...well, is it really necessary to keep track of them all? I sure don't

Honestly I don't think it's that hard to keep track of them as long as you remember them by generations.

 

[Mega Altaria]

Contests would be great if it were to be made easier to get Milotic. But then if the GTS is free to access then I wouldn’t mind trading off a trade evolution for one.

 

[Ducolamia]

And who said that? Caterpillars exist all over the world. Same with birds. Pokemon aren't as varied as their real world counterparts (at least until Alola Forms were introduced, and I wouldn't expect Game Freak to explore that concept again), so reusing old Pokemon helps to simulate how diverse animal species are.

Second, just because some old Pokemon are said to have been introduced to a new region (see a lot of Pre-Gen VII Pokemon in Alola) doesn't mean all old Pokemon are. Heck, Exeggutor, Corphish, Gible, and Yungoos aren't from the region they were introduced in, so what does that make them?

That wasn't my point at all. My point was that if I'm going into a new region the newer Pokemon should be just as available as the older one. Not have a 5% encounter rate. You want to know how long it took me to find an alolan pichu? Almost 30 minutes. The thing has a 5% encounter rate. I'll admit right now I hate it. It makes finding newer Pokemon even more tedious than before and they don't have to make it this way. All I'm saying is for them to make the encounters more common.

This isn't an debate about the diveristy of the Pokemon. I don't have a problem that Caterpie exists. I care that in a region full of newer Pokemon the first thing they decided to show us instead of the newer Pokemon like Pikipek or Yungoos was to add Pokemon we've seen so many times before already such as Pidgey or Caterpie. I just find the newer Pokemon more interesting is what I'm saying.

 

[Dragalge]

I think Gen VII handled it slightly better compared to Gen VI anyway since at least the routes in the former weren’t clogged with a bunch of familiar faces being present over the new one.

That Geothermal Plant was good for one as you could encounter Charjabug, Togademaru, and Turtonator all in one place iirc. Don’t think I found Ula Ula to be bad with Pokémon distribution actually.

 

[lolipiece]

That wasn't my point at all. My point was that if I'm going into a new region the newer Pokemon should be just as available as the older one. Not have a 5% encounter rate. You want to know how long it took me to find an alolan pichu? Almost 30 minutes. The thing has a 5% encounter rate. I'll admit right now I hate it. It makes finding newer Pokemon even more tedious than before and they don't have to make it this way. All I'm saying is for them to make the encounters more common.

This isn't an debate about the diveristy of the Pokemon. I don't have a problem that Caterpie exists. I care that in a region full of newer Pokemon the first thing they decided to show us instead of the newer Pokemon like Pikipek or Yungoos was to add Pokemon we've seen so many times before already such as Pidgey or Caterpie. I just find the newer Pokemon more interesting is what I'm saying.

Ah, my mistake.

That being said, I have to agree. It was goddamn infuriating trying to capture certain Pokemon like Mareanie or Dhelmise.

I have yet to encounter either in the wild because spending 30 minutes trying to fish one up find wild Corsola isn't fun. Had to GTS them.

 

[Nockturne]

What’s important for me is not necessaryily the number of new Pokémon but moreso the proportion of Pokémon in the regional dex that are new. Gen 6 and 7 utterly failed on this front so I hope Gen 8 makes it more like 50% again. I mean, it could do a BW and I’d definitely prefer that over having more gen 1 Pokémon than actually native Pokémon in the regional dex for the 3rd generation running. For this to be possible without having an abysmally small dex with not enough variety, we definitely need 100+ Pokémon, however. It’s more of a consequence than an innate want for me.

I feel like this an inevitability as the generations roll on, the National Dex is so big now the newcomers should (in my opinion) always be out numbered, otherwise they have to limit the regional dex too much. Hypothetically if they introduce 150 in Gen 8 and add 150 oldies that gives us a grand total of 300 Pokemon, when the total number would be closer 950. That's less than a third, we should be getting more total Pokemon in games not less. I get wanting the newbies to have a higher encounter rate and I want that too, even in G/S/C its reeeal easy to end up with a team full of Kanto mons, but I still want the routes to have significant diversity, which means padding them out with some familiar faces.

One thing I do want is for them to stop being so reliant on the usual suspects, this is something I though USUM (and even LGPE) did ok, with Pokemon like Buneary/Mime.Jr/Zorua/Noibat all appearing pretty early. Teddiursa has been MIA since HG/SS, gimme a Route 1 Carnivine, let me catch a Spheal before the first gym, have Maractus appear early enough so that I don't already have a dedicated grass type. We're zeroing in on 1000 Pokemon now, we don't need to still be tripping over Caterpie and Pidgey.

 

[Minedreigon]

I feel like this an inevitability as the generations roll on, the National Dex is so big now the newcomers should (in my opinion) always be out numbered, otherwise they have to limit the regional dex too much. Hypothetically if they introduce 150 in Gen 8 and add 150 oldies that gives us a grand total of 300 Pokemon, when the total number would be closer 950. That's less than a third, we should be getting more total Pokemon in games not less. I get wanting the newbies to have a higher encounter rate and I want that too, even in G/S/C its reeeal easy to end up with a team full of Kanto mons, but I still want the routes to have significant diversity, which means padding them out with some familiar faces.

I think this is a little defeatist : [

I don’t get how they limit the regional dex too much now when they never did before. Pt and BW2, which I think have the best regional dexes in the series,(both of which with densities of new Pokémon of around 50%) still have plenty of diversity on repeat playthroughs. An abstract quantity not involved in the games, the total number of existing Pokémon, has no practical impact on this.

There’s really nothing wrong with having “only” a third of all Pokémon available in one Pokémon game’s main story when said third is so many: this is a different case where the raw number is actually more important than proportion. Your whole “problem” of there only being a third is almost entirely fixable by the post game, so I don’t see your point.

 

[Nockturne]

Well post game has been a little hit and miss in recent gens so its not like its a reliable solution if I was interested in having a cray diverse team to go through an interesting story/adventure with. And I'd still rather have as many Pokemon as possible available during the part of the game where I'm building my team, rather than getting access to the lions share once I've completed the story. I just think if we keep having the same number of Pokemon available in a game, but keep increasing the total number of Pokemon, more and more are gonna end up drawing the short straw in terms of inclusion or placement and end up falling by the wayside. The games are just gonna keep being the new mon's surrounded by the fan favourites from old gens. I want regional dexes big enough so you can have newbies, the classics AND those lesser known (remembered may be a better term) lesser used mixed in too.

By all means crank up the newbies encounter rates so they don't get missed, but I'd rather the regional dex sizes didn't plateau where it is now while the national dex keeps growing. 300 is a lot but why settle for that when you can have 500? 600? Why do we need to save the big numbers for a part of the games that often feels like a barely fleshed out after thought?

 

[Mega Altaria]

By all means crank up the newbies encounter rates so they don't get missed, but I'd rather the regional dex sizes didn't plateau where it is now while the national dex keeps growing. 300 is a lot but why settle for that when you can have 500? 600? Why do we need to save the big numbers for a part of the games that often feels like a barely fleshed out after thought?

I waa thinking about Game Freak juggling between high numbers of Pokémon in a regional Pokédex or a good game plot, especially for the later games. It’s starting to seem that’s the case but I would definitely like some balance between these two. I think they could achieve both but it definitely requires more effort.

 

[Ignition]

Something I hope GF will do is give old Pokémon subtle boosts without it overshadowing the newcomers. Things like Pidgeot getting a Speed buff in XY or Poliwrath getting Superpower in LGPE. While Megas and Alola Forms are cool, they kind of took some of the focus from their respective generation (especially Megas)

 

[Mega Altaria]

Something I hope GF will do is give old Pokémon subtle boosts without it overshadowing the newcomers. Things like Pidgeot getting a Speed buff in XY or Poliwrath getting Superpower in LGPE. While Megas and Alola Forms are cool, they kind of took some of the focus from their respective generation (especially Megas)

Definitely would like that to happen. Even that can make a very noticeable impact on the competitive scene. I would like to see some interesting sets pop out.

 

[Dragalge]

Something I hope GF will do is give old Pokémon subtle boosts without it overshadowing the newcomers. Things like Pidgeot getting a Speed buff in XY or Poliwrath getting Superpower in LGPE. While Megas and Alola Forms are cool, they kind of took some of the focus from their respective generation (especially Megas)

I’m less bothered by the Alolan Forms because at least they were given to Kanto Pokémon that didn’t have much popularity going for them.

Megas on the other hand... well why did we already need to make things like Gengar and Salamence even stronger then they were? Why did Charizard and Mewtwo need two Megas each? There are a few exceptions like Mawile and Beedrill but imo Megas ruined the competitive scene for me with how broken some were.

 

[Acer11]

According to a recent post, Game Freak, Nintendo, and Creatures, Inc. Registered "Miracle Twin" as a console category for Pokemon Switch games.

 

[Ducolamia]

According to a recent post, Game Freak, Nintendo, and Creatures, Inc. Registered "Miracle Twin" as a console category for Pokemon Switch games.

Is there a link for this? Maybe it's another spin-off game? I'm curious.