Pokémon Thread XXIX: Sword, Shield, and Spoilers

[enderlord99]

I'm not on your side or theirs. I'm neutral for taking either side because this whole argument is ridiculous.

I feel the same way.

[Lord Raziere]

How many of us actually know anything about animating? I don't know that much about it, but from what I've seen it's a lot more work to make a 3D model that looks at all like a living creature than one might guess, so I wonder how much work it actually takes to translate some 900 creatures like that into a game, each with distinct body types, skeletons, etc. Like, I wonder if making all of them even slightly better would add a year to the animation time.

Doesn't matter. we've gotten their response, there is nothing more to debate about as far as I'm concerned.

they're not planning on fixing it, and that is all.

I'll be looking at fan pokemon games, while if I find any game on steam or something more worth having than Sword, I know what I'm going to do. I'll simply have to figure out how to express how I'm a pokemon fan in a different way that doesn't involve giving money to the people that don't care about the things I care about. they are simply not selling what I want anymore, plain and simple.

[Bartmanhomer]

I feel the same way.

I'm glad that you'll feel the same way.

[deuterio12]

How many of us actually know anything about animating? I don't know that much about it, but from what I've seen it's a lot more work to make a 3D model that looks at all like a living creature than one might guess, so I wonder how much work it actually takes to translate some 900 creatures like that into a game, each with distinct body types, skeletons, etc. Like, I wonder if making all of them even slightly better would add a year to the animation time.

This is not a defense, just something I think about when thinking about Pokemon, which is mostly unique in this realm. Like, they're making the models anyways, they exist, but I wonder, how much time and effort would it take to increase the fidelity on every single one of them? Probably a long time, which is why they've kept the style for so long.

Just as an example, Rex from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was considered for Smash Ultimate since the game turned hugely popular, but in the end the team declared it was too late in the development proccess to include him. Despite Smash Ultimate not even being announced when Xenoblade Chronicles 2 released, and that DLC characters would be released over a period of over a year after Smash's own release (which happened over 1 year after Xenoblade Chronicle's 2 own release). And Smash is actually produced directly by Nintendo.

That's one character we're talking about, with only one model, that was already fully animated at 3D for the Switch no less, and even then 2+years was simply not enough to convert that one character to Smash along everything else.

Yes. I do use all three Eevee evolutions at the same with the Dragon Type Pokemon and Legendary Birds. I also used Mega Blastoise, Mega Aerodactyl and Mega Gyarados.

Don't you end up with quite a bit of type overlap then? Like Flameon/Moltres/Charizard would be half your team being fire. Although I guess Charizard X does loses his weakness to water.

[OracleofWuffing]

I will reiterate: graphics alone do not a game make. And you only showed me just a short video. Not even all the animations.

There are significant copyright concerns in reproducing a comprehensive commentary-less review of entire games, the likes of which are not to be discussed here. The point you were making and the point I was addressing at the time was specifically related to graphics: "Just because somebody has time to upgrade a few animations doesn't mean Game Freaks has the time to upgrade all the animations before the release date." It sounds like you did not intend to make that argument now, am I to understand you are dropping this statement?

A short video certainly suffices for the point I'm making, especially when the point contrary is "A man on the internet said a thing." You're not even saying there's anything in the video to lead you to a different conclusion, and you're free to browse the related videos or search for other videos of high-resolution pokemon. I see no need to put forth the effort to record a full playthrough for a single person on the internet when this is a feature that has been in use for years, and I don't see you providing any video evidence that what you just saw is impossible.

And great that those dudes are willing to waste their free time for no profit, but Game Freak employees expect actually be paid for their work time. You can't just expect Game Freak to overwork their employees for no pay.

If Game Freaks gets paid for their time, they have more "limited resources" than these dudes that are "wasting" their time. Sounds like you're dropping this "Limited resources" concept altogether now, too. So, you leave me with only "Whatnot," again.

That's already wrong right there because I already showed how moves get changed between games in a non-standardized way so you can't just throw an alghorhytm at it and hope for the best.
--- QUOTE COMBINER 3000 INATOR! ---
They haven't.
--- QUOTE COMBINER 3000 INATOR! ---
For previous games, not the new ones.
--- QUOTE COMBINER 3000 INATOR! ---
Nice try, but their one moves did get their stats changed.
--- QUOTE COMBINER 3000 INATOR! ---

Did I say "Moves" anywhere in that post? "Attack?" I mean, outside my signature? You're making up words and putting them in my internet-mouth. These concerns have no bearing at all with how easy it is to update all the existing pokemon to be brought into the game.

With the single exception of Hyperspace Fury, moves do not care which pokemon executes them (Yes, even the Special Moves that Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee has unique to their starters can be executed by other pokemon). We have known this since the first generation, even if you didn't use a Game Genie, Game Shark, Code Breaker, PokeSav, PokeGen, PokeHex, or countless other tools, you could find this out by utilizing MissingNo. to teach a Kangaskahn Fly. While there may be side effects from encountering MissingNo., the resulting Kangaskahn can execute the attack with no issues.

This is because the Move, as it appears on a pokemon's status screen or battle menu, is a pointer. Instead of repeating the same animation, attack type, power, accuracy, category, targetting options, and special functions every single time for every pokemon that learns an attack, the game is programmed to say, "At Level Blah this pokemon Learns the 33th attack, so if you need to know anything about that attack, go to Attack Street and look at house number 33." Attack Street is a metaphor for a Map that stores every attack in the game and all of their unchanging information, sorted by an Index Number. What we see is a pokemon using Tackle, what the game does- skipping a few steps for animation settings and accuracy calculation- is recognizes that it is time to execute the script associated with attack 33, which consists of increasing "Graphic Entity A's" position value to make it appear to jump right, drawing "Particle Effect #3" at a position in the upper-right quadrant of the screen (which coincidentally happens to be roughly where we can expect "Graphic Entity B's" position to reasonably be at), and returning "Graphic Entity A's" position to it's original value. Damage calculation is then performed, by reading the (applicable) values of the current pokemon and its target, which were stored as variables when those pokemon were sent out on the field, if you want the details on that it's here.

The way the "3D" games change up this process, is that each pokemon has a number of animations associated with it, usually two or three total. Usually, it's two, and they consist of something that looks like a direct attack, and something that looks like a ranged attack. The Map containing attack information then also has a value for which animation a pokemon should use before it executes its own animation directly. When Garchomp uses Dragon Dance, the game's going, "It's time to execute attack number 14. Attack number 14 says that 'Model A' should perform its animation #1, then execute the script that draws 6 models of swords at positions relative to 'Model A', rotate them around, draw a couple of particles, fade out the swords, and increase the 'Attack Modifier' of the pokemon stored in Variable 'A' by two. This is unrelated enough, but in the event of a move calling animation #3 on a pokemon that does not have an animation #3, the game assumes no animation needs to be played and continues as expected.

None of this changes anything you need to import a pokemon species from a past game to a new game. If a pokemon knows Move #24 in one generation, it knows Move #24 in all generations. The only "Changes" to the Indexes of the Attack Information Map is that they did not incorporate Shadow attacks that were introduced by Genius Sonority, and they did not incorporate Mystery Dungeon attacks introduced by Chunsoft. A Pokemon that knows Shadow Blitz would hypothetically know gravity instead upon being transferred to Gen IV, but since Colosseum isn't compatible with Gen IV and doesn't allow Shadow Pokemon to be sent to Gen III that's of no concern. When they changed Transform, they did not change Ditto, Mew, Smeargle, and every pokemon that can learn Mimic. They changed Transform. A Move is not a Pokemon Species. To pre-empt any further unrelated concerns that there may be too many moves for the Map to handle, it currently holds 742 entries so it at the very minimum could handle over 65,000 more entries before refactoring should be considered.

Mind you, this entire thing is ignoring what Masuda said. Masuda has no problem with the over 700 different attacks, except for the Z-Moves and assumedly the Special moves from Let's Go. Given status quo, it is safe to assume all regular attacks are already in Sword and Shield.

And because it got caught up in the flurry there, the text of old pokemon, in new games, is a non-issue, because of points 3, 4, and 5. The text have been taken care of. There is no new text to write for new games when it comes to old pokemon. If there is new text to write, it is "Whatnot." That is seven characters. Since, apparently, copying and pasting things is wrong and Game Freaks consist of a single employee despite the credits screens claiming otherwise, if there's 1,000 pokemon, that's three hours at a (somewhat insultingly given the Computer-centric environment) leisurely 40 WPM. That's not even delaying the game a day.

How do you know? Do you work for Game Freaks by chance and have direct access to the source code?

Because I have eyes and watched their videos, then looked up what languages are native to the 3DS and Nintendo Switch.

Eventually a level would be reached where they simply don't have the resources to properly update every pokemon at the same time, stats and graphics and all. That level has been reached. But they still leave the door open to patching the pokemon left behind later. It's the best of both worlds really. The game still gets released whitout delays (and remember they have the anime/TCG companies and whatnot are breathing down GF's necks to deliver it in time) and the other pokemons may be become playable someday still. The alternative being a bugggy mess where nobody is playable because the game is constantly crashing from unforeseen bugs or delayed for Arceus knows how many years.

We have known, since even before Lord Raziere's link, that there are no plans to patch the missing pokemon in, no door presently left open. A user named deuterio12 even posted an article clarifying as such upthread. They haven't told us we'll be able to play with them later, or trade them in from other sources. They've told us that we will be able to enjoy them while playing Pokemon Home instead. They haven't clarified what that exactly encompasses.

How many of us actually know anything about animating? I don't know that much about it, but from what I've seen it's a lot more work to make a 3D model that looks at all like a living creature than one might guess, so I wonder how much work it actually takes to translate some 900 creatures like that into a game, each with distinct body types, skeletons, etc. Like, I wonder if making all of them even slightly better would add a year to the animation time.

*Points at Art, Art Theory, and Computer Science degree on the wall*
Do you want fries with that?

In short, upscaling models (which Pokemon Let's Go graphics are typically accused of looking like) is merely a decision you make at the start, and all your models just reference those settings and stretch out the textures accordingly. If you want to make it a little better, you can resize the textures to match the upscale- as mentioned previously, this can be done automatically very easy, though it's probably not the "right" way to do it: the current art direction has pokemon consisting of a lot of flat colors, so there's not much to gain from adjusting the textures, even if you wanted to do everything delicately by hand it would be better to adjust lighting and compositing filters. If you want to make it a lot better, you're looking at redoing the material values and bump mapping, and that will add hours per pokemon to the project. The amount of hours will depend on how well you put together the original model you're working with: 3D Modeling and Sculpting tools still have Layers like Photoshop/GIMP/Inkscape have, so if they're already neatly divided in to sections and limbs that make sense with what you want to update, it'll take much less time. Worst case, yes, you rebuild the whole thing from scratch, so a year or a year and a half could very well be reasonable in the best case.

That's a little bit why I brought up the conceptual stage at the start. Some workflows would prefer to make a high-resolution, intricate model that doesn't actually make it into the final product. Maya, Rhino, and ZBrush okay, fine, Blender, too can then form a lower detailed, more optimized model (Butterfree's wings, for example, could consist of billions of tiny polygons if you want to go full crazy, but since they're treated as flat surfaces, when it comes to the game's model, you basically want a few huge polygons to make up most of the wings and thousands of tiny polygons to make the rounded bits) from the original. You tweak that lower detailed model to make certain no verticies match up in weird ways- that, and skeleton rigging, are where lots of human hours and frustration comes in- and export that into the product for compiling. In one way, it's a waste of time, because that huge model doesn't get used. In another way, it is a time saver, because when you want to make a better model, you just go back to your original and tweak it down less. There is totally a point where this flow is not applicable to video games, and it is hell to implement if you didn't think of that from the start. But it is the biggest strength of that flow. What's the saying from the Reset Bag? Something like, "Sometimes you have to go backwards to go forwards?"

Somewhere that's simultaneously between, worse, and better than materials and bump mapping is throwing more polygons at it. This should require rebuilding the whole thing from scratch- again, if you thought ahead, you could keep the animation bones and textures- for best results. It is possible to automate this, the aforementioned programs literally have a button that just does this, but the resulting model will look, well, rounded, soft, no sharp edges, plastic-y, cheap, and lazy. It'd be great for pokemon like Duosion because it just makes things more round, anything with flat surfaces will want a human touch to match the art direction.

That said, it's a year your artists are spending on just one thing (well, okay, 1000 little things), and while it's the most looked-at part of the game, there is still, indeed, an entire rest of the continent to fill out. If you add corporate meddling into the mix, I wouldn't be surprised if it results in four years. I can only imagine how much the Law of Triviality runs rampant in Pokemon's development.

[Bartmanhomer]

Just as an example, Rex from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was considered for Smash Ultimate since the game turned hugely popular, but in the end the team declared it was too late in the development proccess to include him. Despite Smash Ultimate not even being announced when Xenoblade Chronicles 2 released, and that DLC characters would be released over a period of over a year after Smash's own release (which happened over 1 year after Xenoblade Chronicle's 2 own release). And Smash is actually produced directly by Nintendo.

That's one character we're talking about, with only one model, that was already fully animated at 3D for the Switch no less, and even then 2+years was simply not enough to convert that one character to Smash along everything else.



Don't you end up with quite a bit of type overlap then? Like Flameon/Moltres/Charizard would be half your team being fire. Although I guess Charizard X does loses his weakness to water.

What do you mean by that? I used a mixture of different types of Pokemon.

[Lord Raziere]

It is possible to automate this, the aforementioned programs literally have a button that just does this, but the resulting model will look, well, rounded, soft, no sharp edges, plastic-y, cheap, and lazy. It'd be great for pokemon like Duosion because it just makes things more round, anything with flat surfaces will want a human touch to match the art direction.

......but pokemon already look like soft plastic, what would be the difference? (I'm only half joking here).

[deuterio12]

“With the transition to the Nintendo Switch hardware, being much more powerful [and] allowing us to be much more expressive with each of the individual Pokemon … at Game Freak we really spent a lot of time thinking about what the best way to move forward was, really preserving the quality of all the different Pokemon while also taking into account the battle balance, having so many different Pokemon available, all within a limited development time so we don’t keep fans waiting too long for every new entry in the series. And after a lot of discussions, we decided to come to a new direction.”

“Just like all of you, we are passionate about Pokémon and each and every one of them is very important to us. After so many years of developing the Pokémon video games, this was a very difficult decision for me. I’d like to make one thing clear: even if a specific Pokémon is not available in Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield, that does not mean it will not appear in future games.”

From the man himself. We look forward to another great entry in the ever evolving pokémon series!

What do you mean by that? I used a mixture of different types of Pokemon.

Ah, my bad. I read it as you using the three evee evolutions along the legendary birds at the same time, but yeah you don't need to overlap them in the same team.

[Bartmanhomer]

From the man himself. We look forward to another great entry in the ever evolving pokémon series!



Ah, my bad. I read it as you using the three evee evolutions along the legendary birds at the same time, but yeah you don't need to overlap them in the same team.

I don't used the same Pokemon in my team. I used a whole variety of Pokemon.

[deuterio12]

I don't used the same Pokemon in my team. I used a whole variety of Pokemon.

Yes, apologies again, you used different team compositions.

Any specific combination that was particularly memorable for you?

[Bartmanhomer]

Yes, apologies again, you used different team compositions.

Any specific combination that was particularly memorable for you?

Mono-Fire, Mono-Water, Mono-Flying, Mono-Ground, Mono-Dragon, Eevee Evolution/Legendary Birds, Legendary/Mythical Team and that about it.

[NatureKing]

From the man himself. We look forward to another great entry in the ever evolving pokémon series!

{Scrubbed}

[Fable Wright]

2. You are comparing one of the single most complicated moves in the game to the majority of Moves which are X Power, Y Accuracy, Z Type, with A Rider, B% Chance to inflict on C Target. Not a strong argument.

True. Let's say it costs around 40 hours to recode Transform, at least an hour to verify each of the other moves in QA, and 50% of said other moves have a minor issue that takes 2 hours to fix and test. That's a baseline of 1524 hours for a part of the game that Masuda didn't deem expensive.

3. Legacy Code/Bad Code: Which costs money to correct. Which pokemon has plenty of. Which game freak has plenty of.

Game Freak had 143 employees as of last year. Bethesda Game Studios (the studio itself, not Bethesda Softworks) has 400. Obsidian Entertainment has 170, and relies upon being given engines to make games on. From Software, who makes popular if niche titles, has 283.

Game Freak is clearly rolling in the pokemon franchise cash and can afford to roll out a new engine.

4. No, they do not need to change. They are happy enough turning out the the previously linked animations video, Battle mechanic of '3 turns of big pokemon', poor overworld models and textures, cut content games, become some poor sap will be happy enough to suck their dusty teat and try to defend them.

Am I miffed? Yes. Will I buy Sword or Shield? Probably not; I'm happy with Sun and Moon capping off the series for me. Will I defend their decision? Also yes. They were willing to bend over backwards for fans for decades. I'm glad that they're willing to experiment now and look forward to what will happen a few games down the line.

5. Changing systems is the perfect opportunity to turn out a polished capable game showing off the best of your product and a fantastic baseline, and not use the 'oh, we are stuck with what what we are doing because we have 20 year legacy code we wrote on a 4mb flash cart in a garage somewhere'

I 100% agree. If they want the best flagship product, were given a deadline, and wanted to show off the best they could do on the new hardware, they should absolutely do it.

Which is why putting a huge chunk of development into updating pokemon that weren't even in the game had to go entirely.

Sun and Moon, before Pokebank was up to date, was a unique and fun environment. I'm curious how well they'll cultivate Galar's environment, and if it can persuade me to pick up a copy, and look forward to them reintroducing the National Dex in 1-2 generations.

[NatureKing]

[QUOTE=Fable Wright;24004080]True. Let's say it costs around 40 hours to recode Transform, at least an hour to verify each of the other moves in QA, and 50% of said other moves have a minor issue that takes 2 hours to fix and test. That's a baseline of 1524 hours for a part of the game that Masuda didn't deem expensive.[QUOTE]
1600 hours on a 40 hour work week is a 2 month project for an 8 man team, with entry level wages as the expenditure.

That's £30K-40k out of a budget for staffing for that full 1600hour dev time. If you cut half the moves, then that's 800 hours and 15-20K saved, so the cost is what, 15-20K? Not expensive for a team with Pomemon's Wealth behind it.

Game Freak had 143 employees as of last year. Bethesda Game Studios (the studio itself, not Bethesda Softworks) has 400. Obsidian Entertainment has 170, and relies upon being given engines to make games on. From Software, who makes popular if niche titles, has 283.

Game Freak is clearly rolling in the pokemon franchise cash and can afford to roll out a new engine.

They have around another 15-20% sales on one single platform that Bethesda did with skyrim across multiple platforms despite having less focused teams. Despite lower returns, and less profit per head involved in the dev of the game, Bethesda can afford twice the staff.

Am I miffed? Yes. Will I buy Sword or Shield? Probably not; I'm happy with Sun and Moon capping off the series for me. Will I defend their decision? Also yes. They were willing to bend over backwards for fans for decades. I'm glad that they're willing to experiment now and look forward to what will happen a few games down the line.

What is the line that they need to cross then that will make you upset?

I 100% agree. If they want the best flagship product, were given a deadline, and wanted to show off the best they could do on the new hardware, they should absolutely do it.

Which is why putting a huge chunk of development into updating pokemon that weren't even in the game had to go entirely.

As opposed to taking additional time on development? Already shown how garbage some of these high quality animation memes are.

Sun and Moon, before Pokebank was up to date, was a unique and fun environment. I'm curious how well they'll cultivate Galar's environment, and if it can persuade me to pick up a copy, and look forward to them reintroducing the National Dex in 1-2 generations.

PreBank, Sun/Moon is largely forgettable as an environment. And if the meta is desired for that, funnily enough, VGC can enforce a Galar Dex only clause.

[Lord Raziere]

{Scrubbed}

pretty much.

"and here have side of high quality animation of static models doing short hops and graphics ripped straight from 3DS, so your not even getting what we claim we're sacrificing the national dex for anyways."

[Fable Wright]

That's £30K-40k out of a budget for staffing for that full 1600hour dev time. If you cut half the moves, then that's 800 hours and 15-20K saved, so the cost is what, 15-20K? Not expensive for a team with Pomemon's Wealth behind it.

... In America, at least, after you factor in things like paid time off, sick days, 401k benefits, and such; plus the cost to get people with degrees making your games and various people at higher-than-entry-level salary, that averages closer to £40 per man-hour than your proposed £25. Puts it to around £65K, which is admittedly a small portion of the budget—but a lot more expensive than what you were calling basically free.

What is the line that they need to cross then that will make you upset?

Why would I get upset over Pokemon?

I've skipped several generations when they don't appeal, have some fond memories of the game, and enjoyed jumping back into Sun and Moon to see creative tweaks to the formula. When it's good, it's great; when it's not, it's not. Another 'meh' generation is nothing new, but if this experimentation pays off in ways that we haven't yet foreseen, then I'm happy to be wrong.

The only thing that irks me is people far removed from development dismissing the hard efforts and hard calls that a development team has to do, like that team hasn't literally devoted years of their life to making the game the best it can be. You're assuming they have essentially unlimited funds behind them, which they clearly don't, that they can set their own deadlines, which they probably can't, and that they get most of the money from their game sales, which they probably don't after the pokemon company and Nintendo take their cuts.

It's fine if you don't like it. Not every effort pays off.

But insulting the team that dedicates their life to it and has to deal with realities that you can't even guess at, from half a world away? That's just something that bothers me. Please don't assign malignance or corruption where there is none.

[NatureKing]

... In America, at least, after you factor in things like paid time off, sick days, 401k benefits, and such; plus the cost to get people with degrees making your games and various people at higher-than-entry-level salary, that averages closer to £40 per man-hour than your proposed £25. Puts it to around £65K, which is admittedly a small portion of the budget—but a lot more expensive than what you were calling basically free.

20K Basic Entry Salary for a 12 month contract (scaled to live outside of London) includes Pension, and assumes that you are paid regardless of taking time off sick. If you are signed off, the govt provide a minimum sick pay which the company can choose to subsidise if they wish. And if you are hiring higher than entry level to do data entry, thank hell you are not in charge of business.

Why would I get upset over Pokemon?

Why would you not get upset over something you like getting basically gutted to allow some fat men in suits to make money from turning out less for cheaper?

Unless you mean to imply that you think you are superior because you are so cool, calm and collected and that 'its only pokemon lol'. Protip: people get upset when things people enjoy get ruined.

I've skipped several generations when they don't appeal, have some fond memories of the game, and enjoyed jumping back into Sun and Moon to see creative tweaks to the formula. When it's good, it's great; when it's not, it's not. Another 'meh' generation is nothing new, but if this experimentation pays off in ways that we haven't yet foreseen, then I'm happy to be wrong.

The only thing that irks me is people far removed from development dismissing the hard efforts and hard calls that a development team has to do, like that team hasn't literally devoted years of their life to making the game the best it can be. You're assuming they have essentially unlimited funds behind them, which they clearly don't, that they can set their own deadlines, which they probably can't, and that they get most of the money from their game sales, which they probably don't after the pokemon company and Nintendo take their cuts.

Why would you be irked over pokemon?

You are saying that the largest media franchise of all time doesn't have money to throw at a flagship game?

It's fine if you don't like it. Not every effort pays off.

But insulting the team that dedicates their life to it and has to deal with realities that you can't even guess at, from half a world away? That's just something that bothers me. Please don't assign malignance or corruption where there is none.

Let me be perfectly clear. I don't give a toss that some fatcat in an office in japan is taking home less of a hundreds of thousands of pounds equivalent paycheck, if not millions of pounds, because they decided to hire another 20-30 people during development to turn out a better game.

You however seem okay to give free pass for Masuda to add a few zeroes because this small under funded, undersized indie dev studio handle the game, and play a game lacking hundreds of pokemon, as well as dozens of other mechanics. Honestly mate, your arguments over poor misunderstood Game Freak are getting tiresome and verging on strawman.

[Fable Wright]

You however seem okay to give free pass for Masuda to add a few zeroes because this small under funded, undersized indie dev studio handle the game, and play a game lacking hundreds of pokemon, as well as dozens of other mechanics. Honestly mate, your arguments over poor misunderstood Game Freak are getting tiresome and verging on strawman.

*shrug*

Masuda's net worth is listed as estimated to between $100,000 and $5 million, with a strong case for just over $1 million. Net worth, not income. I know patent office examiners worth more than him. Todd Howard makes Masuda's entire net wealth annually.

Game Freak's nowhere near an indie studio, but I honestly think that you're misassigning the blame. At this point, it's pretty clear that I won't convince you, regardless. Do I disagree with the change? Again, yes, and I'll vote against the shift by not buying the game. If it flops and the Pokemon franchise suffers, maybe it will get the funding of triple-A titles in the future.

Your arguments over how Game Freak has poorly spent its infinite money and talent pool due to Masuda's sheer executive greed is likewise tiresome and verging on strawman. We have fundamentally different axioms that we're arguing from. My claim is, given the studio's size, that Masuda's argument is not an unrealistic claim for a studio. Your claim is that they have the full backing of the Pokemon Company, and therefore are richer than God.

I can agree that the Pokemon Company should have scaled up funding for a full-sized console release to bring it in line with other triple A titles, and that the game could and should have been improved beyond the unfortunate thing that we've seen. I disagree with the assertion that Game Freak and Masuda are to blame, and counterclaim that given the restrictions placed on them, this was a reasonable call. That's all.

[NatureKing]

If I had said that the had infinite money, you'd have a point. I haven't.

[Bartmanhomer]

I notice that Shuckle got very high defense and special defense and many Pokemon have a very hard time damaging this Pokemon.

[tgva8889]

*Points at Art, Art Theory, and Computer Science degree on the wall*
Do you want fries with that?

Thanks for the detailed description of the process. I figured that if they decided "hey we want to add an animation to every Pokemon!" it would represent a lot of development time. Plus all the other animations and assets the team has to make, I can totally see the priorities shifting in such a way that they just decide that they don't want to keep having to put every Pokemon in every main series game.

I still think their announcement was pretty terrible and they could just explain better reasons than whatever "balance" means, but I am still willing to give them their shot and see if they can make a better experience without being beholden to the "every Pokemon must be in every main series title" paradigm.

[Requizen]

Petition to change this thread title to "Pokemon Thread XXIX: Literally just complaining"

[Kantaki]

I think Game Freak's biggest mistake with the „Regio-Dex only”-thing is that they didn't do it from day one.

Sure, Gen 2. including all the Gen 1. mons made sense, Jotho and Kanto were basically one Region anyway.
But afterwards? The jump to Gen 3. would have been a good point to implement this system, considering transferring your collection wasn't an option anyway, but no, the games got the full dex.

Alternatively, they could just have left the transfer option out/ not introduced it at all.
I mean even dropping it for Gen 8. would have been better than the current solution*.


*Not that I care that much, even if not having all my favorites available for the post-game might be a minor let-down.
Unless it turns out you have to transfer certain mons to complete the Galar-Dex.
That would be annoying.

[Emmerlaus]

Petition to change this thread title to "Pokemon Thread XXIX: Literally just complaining"

Ironic since this is a complain in itself.

Whatever. Yes the new game is not to our expectations and we feel like ranting about it. I understand how people feel about it.

I think they wanna add a new gimmick in every game, one that is temporary to each game. Thats why they retro Mega Evolution to be one such gimmick. Dynamax is also something exclusive to THAt Pokemon region.

I think they did so because they want the Pokemon games to not be overly repetitive... But whatever.

Just go play on Pokemon Showdown website if you miss it lol!

[Bartmanhomer]

I'm not going to buy the new Pokemon Sword and Shield game anyway. Just playing my Pokemon Let's Go Overused Format game and that's it.

[deuterio12]

Sure, Gen 2. including all the Gen 1. mons made sense, Jotho and Kanto were basically one Region anyway.
But afterwards? The jump to Gen 3. would have been a good point to implement this system, considering transferring your collection wasn't an option anyway, but no, the games got the full dex.

Ruby/Saphire did not have the full dex. Lots of pokemon from red/blue/silver/gold did get left behind, and nobody complained much, although that was before the internet exploded. Goes to show how the web's development allows for a tiny minority to make quite a lot of noise.

[Lord Raziere]

Ruby/Saphire did not have the full dex. Lots of pokemon from red/blue/silver/gold did get left behind, and nobody complained much, although that was before the internet exploded. Goes to show how the web's development allows for a tiny minority to make quite a lot of noise.

that was also before we were old enough to realize it was a problem. and you mean "allows for people to hold other people accountable for their actions."

personally if a lot of noise is made over it, I wouldn't call it a minority you can dismiss. if said "tiny minority" narrative is even true.

[Kantaki]

Ruby/Saphire did not have the full dex. Lots of pokemon from red/blue/silver/gold did get left behind, and nobody complained much, although that was before the internet exploded. Goes to show how the web's development allows for a tiny minority to make quite a lot of noise.

You couldn't get all of them (until the remakes of Gen. 1 and Emerald anyway, discounting Events.), but the games did have a national dex and Pokėmon not in the Regio-Dex.
So you could trade (National-Dex) mons not available in one game from another one (FR/LG).

[Bartmanhomer]

The complaining is understandable and the creator and development are to blame for this huge mistake. I just going to wait for Gen 8 Overused Format Games for PokemonShowdown.com.

[deuterio12]

You couldn't get all of them (until the remakes of Gen. 1 and Emerald anyway, discounting Events.), but the games did have a national dex and Pokėmon not in the Regio-Dex.
So you could trade (National-Dex) mons not available in one game from another one (FR/LG).

But you had no way of knowing that back when Ruby/Saphire actually came out. You couldn't predict that Game Freak would remake the first games and make them compatible. The national pokedex couldn't even be seen until you traded with post-Ruby/Saphire games.

Every new pokemon game there's a tiny minority going "pokémon is now ruined forever because of this and that!", yet the series kept going strong.

Now for something positive, here's some scottish trainer and new sheep mon fanart.