Pokemon, Part 2

[Well]

So, we arrived to the point of cutting Pokemon to re-sell them later as a "new" feature.

I am trying to piece words together. This is absolutely disgusting. If this was some company that needed the money to survive and did this to support its infastructure, it would perhaps be acceptable. But Gamefreak? Nitendo? Are we fucking serious?

Instead of putting down the damn effort to make a modern, polished game, use the biggest budget a company can literally have in the entire world, they re-sell the pokemon of ours that they've held hostage in S&M. And not only are they doing it now, but they will do it again in the next couple of expansions and AGAIN with the next games, because they've already said that no pokemon game will feature every pokemon again.

The lying they've done is inexcusable, petty and frankly, unbelievable. I cannot seriously yet believe what is going on, nevermind me understanding it. They lied about being able to have all mons, they lied about the reasons about it and they come back to force you to buy your already owned mons from your previous versions, not once with the release of S&S, not twice with the release of this expansion pack, but thrice with the next expansion release, that will most likely cover the remaining cut pokemon.

And the best part? They will continue to keep forcing you to buy your owned Pokemon three times over with the next games after the S&S cycle is done.

This is infuriating and honestly vile. They should be seriously ashamed of themselves and their tactics.

- - - Updated - - -

That doesnt take away from the fact that they clearly lied to us at this point about why pokemon were omitted in the first place now. Theres no denying it seeing how much they could already show us of the new stuff. Im tempted to buy it now cuz the main technical point of me not getting it is now changed but i just feel extra betrayed on the other side

I felt the same urge, but hold up. Remember how trash the actual game is. I reminded myself of the playthrough I watched. How would I even enjoy that gameplay with the constant interruptions, the non-existent story and the incredibly short (11h max) duration of the game?

The terrible connectivity, the horrible animations, the inexcusable textures? I want to play Pokemon as much as anyone and possibly even more, but this? THIS?

[Zantos]

So, we arrived to the point of cutting Pokemon to re-sell them later as a "new" feature.

Im just as annoyed by all this as you, but they aren't reselling the old pokemon. You can get them without paying a single dime. The ability to obtain them will be available regardless of if you bought the pass.

[Ðemonhuntr]

Well the one thing is. You dont NEED the DLC to have your old pokemon now. you do have to wait for the patch tho. They said in the direct and sources state the base game will get a free update allwowi g the "new" old pokemon to be traded from people with the dlc or through home

[Well]

Im just as annoyed by all this as you, but they aren't reselling the old pokemon. You can get them without paying a single dime. The ability to obtain them will be available regardless of if you bought the pass.

From what I know, to transfer your Pokemon, you need Pokemon Home. To actually play with your Pokemon, you need them to exist in the game.

If the game's had the mons existing from the start and Pokebank (what they promised back then would be used to store and transfer your pokemon) was active after some months, then upon its release, we would transfer our pokemon with no added cost. But now:

you need to maintain your sub for Home. You need to maintain your sub to whatever the online service is to play online and you need to maintain both for until they deem you've suffered enough without your treasure babies that they've locked up in jail for what will be years at the time.

Do NOT tell me that they are not reselling our own mons. Forcing us to pay extra to maintain them in a service until they arbitrarily push a button to allow them in the Switch is NOT free or respectable to the long-term fans of this franchise.

Sorry for perhaps coming off snarky, if I did, but I am sure you're understanding how upset we both are over this.

[Zantos]

From what I know, to transfer your Pokemon, you need Pokemon Home. To actually play with your Pokemon, you need them to exist in the game.

If the game's had the mons existing from the start and Pokebank (what they promised back then would be used to store and transfer your pokemon) was active after some months, then upon its release, we would transfer our pokemon with no added cost. But now:

you need to maintain your sub for Home. You need to maintain your sub to whatever the online service is to play online and you need to maintain both for until they deem you've suffered enough without your treasure babies that they've locked up in jail for what will be years at the time.

Do NOT tell me that they are not reselling our own mons. Forcing us to pay extra to maintain them in a service until they arbitrarily push a button to allow them in the Switch is NOT free or respectable to the long-term fans of this franchise.

Sorry for perhaps coming off snarky, if I did, but I am sure you're understanding how upset we both are over this.

To be fair, you don't have to maintain any subs. I usually only paid once for the pokebank and then was done. I don't trust it enough to keep my pokemon there to begin with.

I just hate how they now have paid dlcs that are over priced for basically no content. The new islands isn't anything to be excited about. The wild area sucks and is broken. Unless they plan to actually Fix multiplayer somehow, the new islands is just more, broken garbage.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

So, we arrived to the point of cutting Pokemon to re-sell them later as a "new" feature.

I am trying to piece words together. This is absolutely disgusting. If this was some company that needed the money to survive and did this to support its infastructure, it would perhaps be acceptable. But Gamefreak? Nitendo? Are we fucking serious?

Instead of putting down the damn effort to make a modern, polished game, use the biggest budget a company can literally have in the entire world, they re-sell the pokemon of ours that they've held hostage in S&M. And not only are they doing it now, but they will do it again in the next couple of expansions and AGAIN with the next games, because they've already said that no pokemon game will feature every pokemon again.

The lying they've done is inexcusable, petty and frankly, unbelievable. I cannot seriously yet believe what is going on, nevermind me understanding it. They lied about being able to have all mons, they lied about the reasons about it and they come back to force you to buy your already owned mons from your previous versions, not once with the release of S&S, not twice with the release of this expansion pack, but thrice with the next expansion release, that will most likely cover the remaining cut pokemon.

And the best part? They will continue to keep forcing you to buy your owned Pokemon three times over with the next games after the S&S cycle is done.

This is infuriating and honestly vile. They should be seriously ashamed of themselves and their tactics.

- - - Updated - - -



I felt the same urge, but hold up. Remember how trash the actual game is. I reminded myself of the playthrough I watched. How would I even enjoy that gameplay with the constant interruptions, the non-existent story and the incredibly short (11h max) duration of the game?

The terrible connectivity, the horrible animations, the inexcusable textures? I want to play Pokemon as much as anyone and possibly even more, but this? THIS?

^^^^

What aggravates me the most is that Game Freak has no incentive to actually try anymore. They will make hundreds of millions just off of the brand name alone.

Pokemon's dead folks. We had a good run.

Truly.

[Dorp]

From what I know, to transfer your Pokemon, you need Pokemon Home. To actually play with your Pokemon, you need them to exist in the game.

If the game's had the mons existing from the start and Pokebank (what they promised back then would be used to store and transfer your pokemon) was active after some months, then upon its release, we would transfer our pokemon with no added cost. But now:

you need to maintain your sub for Home. You need to maintain your sub to whatever the online service is to play online and you need to maintain both for until they deem you've suffered enough without your treasure babies that they've locked up in jail for what will be years at the time.

Do NOT tell me that they are not reselling our own mons. Forcing us to pay extra to maintain them in a service until they arbitrarily push a button to allow them in the Switch is NOT free or respectable to the long-term fans of this franchise.

Sorry for perhaps coming off snarky, if I did, but I am sure you're understanding how upset we both are over this.

I don't believe they have mentioned if home will have a fee or not, unless you can provide a link of them saying that.
There is currently little-no info on pokemon home, only that it will integrate with pokebank.

Honestly, the smaller dex size has been super great for battling. The meta is still changing practically every week.
I'm still really enjoying sword and shield. Def my 2nd favourite gen!

[Darththeo]

I don't believe they have mentioned if home will have a fee or not, unless you can provide a link of them saying that.
There is currently little-no info on pokemon home, only that it will integrate with pokebank.

Honestly, the smaller dex size has been super great for battling. The meta is still changing practically every week.
I'm still really enjoying sword and shield. Def my 2nd favourite gen!

Did you not see the Pokemon Direct? They literally stated Pokemon Home is a paid service.

It is at 17:47

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5afasEAiN0

[Dorp]

Did you not see the Pokemon Direct? They literally stated Pokemon Home is a paid service.

It is at 17:47

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5afasEAiN0

I missed the first 20 mins or so of it, and never went back to watch it.
Thanks, I'll go back and check out what I missed.

[Darththeo]

My stance on Sword and Shield went through a lot.

At first when announced, I was hyped for the game because I have played since the days of Generation 1. I have played ever Generation when it was current ... barely with Generation V, because I missed that generation until B2W2, but I have beaten it before XY release. I was disappointed at the cut national dex and was annoyed when I found out it only had 401 pokemon (400 in game, plus Mew).

These DLC have me interested and hoping that we could get all Pokemon. Right now we can say they are almost 900 pokemon (not including forms), we know we are getting at least 5 new pokemon in the DLC. Kubfu, Urshifu, Calyrex and the two unknown "Regi's" ... which I swear it if is Regivolt and Regidrake, I am going to be annoyed. It is possible we could get more galarian forms of older pokemon besides the 6 we know (Slowpoke*, Slowbro, Slowking, Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres). And it will be 200 returning pokemon so that will increase the number of available pokemon from 401 to 606. So that would be 606 of 895 or about 2/3rds of Pokemon available.

My opinion on SwSh is they are a good game ... I just wish they were better.

[Zantos]

I don't believe they have mentioned if home will have a fee or not, unless you can provide a link of them saying that.
There is currently little-no info on pokemon home, only that it will integrate with pokebank.

Honestly, the smaller dex size has been super great for battling. The meta is still changing practically every week.
I'm still really enjoying sword and shield. Def my 2nd favourite gen!

It will have a fee. You said it yourself, it will integrate with pokebank. Pokebank has a fee, therefore, so will home.

Second, smaller dex size sucks for battling. Less available options for abilities or type coverage. I can't even manage to get good type coverage if I was using only new pokemon. I hate small pokedex additions.

I do think that the bigger dex entry games had far more to offer in terms of creativity of design as well. But that is just my opinion.

[Well]

I don't believe they have mentioned if home will have a fee or not, unless you can provide a link of them saying that.
There is currently little-no info on pokemon home, only that it will integrate with pokebank.

Honestly, the smaller dex size has been super great for battling. The meta is still changing practically every week.
I'm still really enjoying sword and shield. Def my 2nd favourite gen!

If it integrates with Pokebank, the latter was always available only by paying a fee for it. Also, I clearly remember them saying it's a paid for service.

The meta is changing only because Smogon has banned this gen's feature in dynamaxing. Else, you would be stuck with Excadrill and Hawlucha dynamaxing. I don't see how you can claim that this is your favourite gen in a competitive level, when its prime competitive feature is banned from competitive community play. Objectively, it simply makes no sense.

If you're not playing by Smogon, let's not open the issue of Smogon's rules and influence please. Your enjoyment does not reflect game quality as does no-one's.

- - - Updated - - -

And like, what you're saying does not make sense anyway. You can restrict Pokemon that are legit for competitive play by simply banning them.

They did this with every previous VGC season (legendaries and events), and they went further down by restricting the rules to Pokemon that can be found or bred within the region (think first season of VGC in Alola). I do not understand WHY we cannot have our pokemon in the new games and just not allow them to be in VGC. It does not make sense. Stop using that nonsensical argument, for real.

[therealbowser]

I played trough the game and i must say there are some positives to the game, but some things just feel off;

- (obviously dexit) playing without my favorites is a huge turnoff

- wild area is pretty dull; once you've spent an hour inthere you will probably have seen it all.
-- the weather changes every day in every area being the only dynamic thing gets pretty dull pretty quick
-- fully evolved pokemon running around just ruins it at times

- max raids are fun for the 1st 10 times and get pretty boring very quickly...
-- the NPCs that join you are horrible in 50% of the cases; not sure about levels but even those that are useful to some degree die off very quickly (not even speaking about solrock, clefairy, evee and wobufett here)
-- the multiplayer experience isn't much better. you can only join them via cards sent out by others, with them running out in 3 minutes. additionally people just lock them for the sake of it.

- what they have done to multiplayer functionalities borders on crime, if i might exaterate a bit
-- no GTS; yes it was flawed, but instead on improving on it by setting some additional rules they outright removed it. Heck i've played ORAS the other day and it still fulfills it's role in completing the pokedex; you just have to have a brain when dealing on it
-- max raids and recruitment is just a random mess

- overall the game feels way more like a mobile-game, which is in no way meant positive
-- they moved away from "raising" pokemon towards just replacing them with stronger ones or ones with a gygantmax instead (much like the gacha recruitment you see in some mobile titles)

- graphics and customization are nice, but not the kind of step up one would expect

- the world itself is beautiful, but it feels like they just cut too many corners.
-- there are fully empty routes/tunnels there just to speed along your journey
-- i honestly expected more from the map that was initially released... and by that i mean a more connected world... not one that is divided into 3 parts, which are connected by a train-ride (loading screen)
-- "fly"... well it feels like they just ran out of time and had to put in a loading screen.

I'd rate it a 4/10.

While extremely sever and more than a little biased (4/10 is above and beyond ludicrous), the individual points you provided have merit and I can agree with some of this.

While not having all 900+ Pokemon they have now is unfortunate, I have always wondered how they would keep doing games like this with an increasing number of Pokemon. Sure, some of the ones I really liked are missing now (including Dragonite) but I typically build new teams every game so this doesn't impact me heavily. It does, however, mean that I can't do things like a living Pokedex anymore and I feel bad about moving half of my Pokemon forward, since the other half will get left behind. That's just disappointing.

Were it me, I would have just patched them in over time. Having them all updated on launch is a huge undertaking, but that's not required. Just being able to have them eventually would be enough. I wouldn't be surprised if the updated version of Sword Shield has all of them as a selling point... and that's not really a good thing...

A big one for me is the GTS missing. This was how I completed my Pokedex. There is a wide, large world of players who want to trade pokemon, but that doesn't mean I'll be able to find the specific person with the specific Pokemon/version that I need and is conveniently able and willing to trade and still need its counterpart or whatever. Before GTS I didn't even attempt the pokedex because it was literally an effort in futility for me, so it being a thing changed my world. I literally had every Pokemon except for the mythicals in a living dex and it wasn't even that hard. Now I've gone back to giving up on it because of this and the above reason.

It's not enough for me to give this game a 4/10 but it definitely makes me enjoy the game less.

I don't like Gigantamax. I would like it if all Pokemon of that type could use it, or if you could 'upgrade' them to be able to use it. Mega Evolutions were better because you could unlock the ones you wanted with items instead of replacing Pokemon. So I feel strongly on this, in addition to the fact that it's kind of boring and since Mega Evolutions are gone, it has literally replaced them.

I kind of agree that the world didn't feel as big as I hoped. Some of the routes were extremely short... to the extent that I was going "What? it's over already?" Not a lot of sense of exploration.

Multiplayer is the worst it's been in a while in the sense of connecting with other players, but it is doable. I haven't gotten Max Raids to work with other players but I haven't really tried. Yeah, the NPCs are morons, but 9 times out of 10 it doesn't matter. The real problem is that the max raids are kind of boring, and unless you need the specific type of pokemon (or it's gigantamaxing or whatever) then there isn't much benefit. I just stopped doing them after the 3rd magikarp max raid I ran into because I don't really care anymore.

I do however like that in the Wild area, you can see other players in the open world. Even if it's mostly cosmetic, it's an interesting touch and bring out the game for me.

I was expecting the story to be boring, and even though the threats were not, well.. exaggerated like they usually are, the story felt good. I haven't felt impacted by a Pokemon game's story in some time, the characters were likeable and the progression of the story felt good. The gym leaders had more personality than I am used to as well, which I liked.

My main complaints are:
1. the removal of GTS.
2. the fact that they didn't try to bridge the gap between feasible game design and pissing off players that wanted a full pokedex/their old pokemon in this game.
3. the world felt a lot smaller and shorter than it should (especially in how little of the world you can explore while seeing so much more in the background).

I am sure I could spend an hour looking up all the little petty things I dislike (like the lack of a cutscene for flying, or how the bike replaced surfing which was iconic for me), but the game was not bad. Not even remotely. All the same, it could have been better, and most of the core problems are things that could have been relatively easily fixed.

TBH, I didn't jump into the game at first because of how much people were complaining and doomsaying this game, but it wasn't even a tenth as bad as people are making it out to be. Sure, the changes suck but they didn't ruin the game for me. They just held back its potential. It's disappointing, but it didn't kill the game for me.

I'm not going to pull an arbitrary number to 'rate' this game, but it was good. Not necessarily the worst Pokemon gen for me (and even if it were the worst one, it was still good and fun and well worth playing, and had strong points, as all the games have had), but it's again disappointing that it's on the lower side of things simply because of a few bad decisions.

My two cents.

[Zmagoslav]

While extremely sever and more than a little biased (4/10 is above and beyond ludicrous), the individual points you provided have merit and I can agree with some of this.

Imagine a personal opinion being biased.

The Y-comm itself is one of the worst multiplayer implementations i've seen in a while.

Especially after what the DLCs panned out to be it's pretty clear they intended the wild-area to be an end-game zone and raids to be the main end-game content; but they somehow failed to deliver anything meaningful, while at the same time pretty much destroying what it was before (breeding, completing the dex).

I simply cannot say that something with a 12 hour story and nothing meaningful after, at a 60eur price-tag, deserves to be called anything above average. Heck, it's not even average, thus it's the arbitrary 4/10.

As for the GTS; it's pretty clear they ran out of time and just outsourced the lobby/servers to online forums.

[Dorp]

If it integrates with Pokebank, the latter was always available only by paying a fee for it. Also, I clearly remember them saying it's a paid for service.

The meta is changing only because Smogon has banned this gen's feature in dynamaxing. Else, you would be stuck with Excadrill and Hawlucha dynamaxing. I don't see how you can claim that this is your favourite gen in a competitive level, when its prime competitive feature is banned from competitive community play. Objectively, it simply makes no sense.

If you're not playing by Smogon, let's not open the issue of Smogon's rules and influence please. Your enjoyment does not reflect game quality as does no-one's.

- - - Updated - - -

And like, what you're saying does not make sense anyway. You can restrict Pokemon that are legit for competitive play by simply banning them.

They did this with every previous VGC season (legendaries and events), and they went further down by restricting the rules to Pokemon that can be found or bred within the region (think first season of VGC in Alola). I do not understand WHY we cannot have our pokemon in the new games and just not allow them to be in VGC. It does not make sense. Stop using that nonsensical argument, for real.

Ahh, you're a smogon player? D:
Smogon is always gungho about banning things really quickly, even when it has many counters.
I typically play official VGC rules, which is doubles, the meta game is still changing super frequently, and the only things not allowed is certain gmax mons and Zem and Zac. In doubles, the quality of battling is really great.

But, what would be the point in having them in the game, if they can't be used in online battles? most people tend to gravitate to online battling, so it's kinda pointless. Even if they didn't add the older ones in with the DLC pass, Pokemon you've had for years will eventually be able to be used in other titles, if it's not available in sword / shield.

- - - Updated - - -

It will have a fee. You said it yourself, it will integrate with pokebank. Pokebank has a fee, therefore, so will home.

Second, smaller dex size sucks for battling. Less available options for abilities or type coverage. I can't even manage to get good type coverage if I was using only new pokemon. I hate small pokedex additions.

I do think that the bigger dex entry games had far more to offer in terms of creativity of design as well. But that is just my opinion.

If you are restricting yourself to only the new pokemon, of course you won't get good coverage just from them.
However, there are lots of new pokemon that are competitively viable, and a lot of old pokemon are as well. Hell, butterfree is starting to see lots of usage in the competitive scene, and that's not normally a pokemon you'd see.

The problem that allowing the national dex has, is actually lowers the amount of creativity that can go into teams. People will go straight back to Lando, thundurus, then 4 others, then everyone will end up running that. That's what has happened every single year when you have use of all - most of the pokemon. And it gets stale and boring super quickly.

[Omnoms]

No. Game Freak never does content updates. Inco plete dex is all we will ever get.

.

Well this aged finely.

[therealbowser]

Imagine a personal opinion being biased.

The Y-comm itself is one of the worst multiplayer implementations i've seen in a while.

Especially after what the DLCs panned out to be it's pretty clear they intended the wild-area to be an end-game zone and raids to be the main end-game content; but they somehow failed to deliver anything meaningful, while at the same time pretty much destroying what it was before (breeding, completing the dex).

I simply cannot say that something with a 12 hour story and nothing meaningful after, at a 60eur price-tag, deserves to be called anything above average. Heck, it's not even average, thus it's the arbitrary 4/10.

As for the GTS; it's pretty clear they ran out of time and just outsourced the lobby/servers to online forums.

You can be biased, I am just saying that people exaggerate their ratings. "I disliked this slightly, give it a 2/5." "This was pretty cool, 5/5!" etc. This was a great game. Critics give it around 8/10, and if I absolutely had to give it a number rating, it would be around that area. It's a good game, but it could have been better, and sadly easily so in many cases.

I mean you saw my post.

You are of course welcome to disagree but it feels like "This game didn't have every pokemon, would have been 9/10, now it's 4/10" kind of scenario. You have a lot of points of course but it feels odd to base your opinion on it based off of a price tag and value. But it's your opinion of course.

As for the GTS it was obviously a choice. They could have added it later. Hell, they still could. My theory is that they want people to trade directly and interact more, though it's entirely possible they cut it due to time constraints, etc, and used this kind of logic to justify it. Hard to say for sure... all I know is that it could have, and should have been better.

Pokemon DLC is a whole new can of worms that I don't plan on touching. And for the record, I hate Y-comm. The best multiplayer functionality I've seen was in Gen 6 -- I prefered ORAS, but even XY was pretty good. I disliked Gen 7's version of multiplayer interface more than this one, but I dislike the lack of functionality in this one far more. (Sadly I didn't get to experience gen 5 online, but I heard good things about it.)

Was the game worth $60? I dunno. It's hard to base a game like this on value. I enjoyed it and I'm not regretting the price tag, but I don't normally blow more than $20 on a game on a whim, but then again, I didn't in this case. I sat on it quite a while before buying. One way or another, I haven't regret the purchase.

I do agree wholeheartedly that the multiplayer is the primary problem of this game (even more than half the pokemon missing, it's a huge deal to me), but it's something easily fixed. Adding ~450 pokemon or so is a much bigger problem that's not easily solved, sadly. And given your avatar I can understand your bias... the Dragonite line is one of my favorites too, shame that it was one of the ones that got cut.

Just sayin', friend.

[Lahis]

Ahh, you're a smogon player? D:
Smogon is always gungho about banning things really quickly, even when it has many counters.
I typically play official VGC rules, which is doubles, the meta game is still changing super frequently, and the only things not allowed is certain gmax mons and Zem and Zac. In doubles, the quality of battling is really great.

But, what would be the point in having them in the game, if they can't be used in online battles? most people tend to gravitate to online battling, so it's kinda pointless. Even if they didn't add the older ones in with the DLC pass, Pokemon you've had for years will eventually be able to be used in other titles, if it's not available in sword / shield.

- - - Updated - - -



If you are restricting yourself to only the new pokemon, of course you won't get good coverage just from them.
However, there are lots of new pokemon that are competitively viable, and a lot of old pokemon are as well. Hell, butterfree is starting to see lots of usage in the competitive scene, and that's not normally a pokemon you'd see.

The problem that allowing the national dex has, is actually lowers the amount of creativity that can go into teams. People will go straight back to Lando, thundurus, then 4 others, then everyone will end up running that. That's what has happened every single year when you have use of all - most of the pokemon. And it gets stale and boring super quickly.

Dynamax has no counter. You either Dynamax yourself or get fucked by it.

- - - Updated - - -

Well this aged finely.

Still missing 300.

[Romeothecat]

The problem that allowing the national dex has, is actually lowers the amount of creativity that can go into teams. People will go straight back to Lando, thundurus, then 4 others, then everyone will end up running that. That's what has happened every single year when you have use of all - most of the pokemon. And it gets stale and boring super quickly.

The problem that removing the national dex has is that it actually lowers the amount of creativity that can go into story and postgame teams. The same effect could have been achieved with a simple seasonal ban list.

[Zantos]

If you are restricting yourself to only the new pokemon, of course you won't get good coverage just from them.

If you can't get good coverage from the new pokemon alone, then there simply arn't enough being added. Especially to pull a stun like this