Pokémon Thread XXIX: Sword, Shield, and Spoilers

[OracleofWuffing]

I'm still getting the game, I just hope that we eventually get a national dex either as post-launch DLC or as the 2nd wave of gen 8, the platinum to the diamond/pearl, if you will. If the big N can basically add Windows Movie Maker as free Smash Bros DLC, I'm hoping for something similar with Pokemon.

According to Serebii.net, Masuda and Ohmori told Famitsu that they have zero plans to add non-native-pokedex pokemon to Sword and Shield as a post-release patch. They promised that such pokemon will have "an active role" in Pokemon Home, which really doesn't mean a whole lot right now but question marks.

I wish they'd stop saying it's for battle balance, though. They really shouldn't hide behind that point when Noctowl is one of their confirmed picks. Sure, they did well splitting physical and special, splitting physical and special, and introducing Steel/Dark/Fairy Types, but when it comes to individual pokemon, they ain't too hot on this "competitive balance" idea. That said, since we don't know Sword and Shield's list, it could still wind up being 6 or 7 hundred pokemon long, just matters to me how the list is curated and what Pokemon Home does with the ones not included.

Spoiler: Personal snark that has been rolling around my head lately utilizing new pokemon stuff

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Clearly, the reason why they needed to create Yamper's Ball Fetch ability is because they dropped the ball on making certain "everyone's here" after Smash Ultimate showed off how to do it.

[oxybe]

Yeah, but I'll counter in that Nintendo also didn't seem to have any plans to add friend-based online multiplayer option to Super Mario Maker 2 (by this i mean on release you can play multiplayer with couch coop and a bunch of randoms online, but you can't invite Jim or Jeannie from a province over that's on your friends list to play coop with you and the excuse given was "something, something leaderboards"), but people raised a stink and they confirmed on treehouse and on twitter later that this feature is going to be added at a later update.

Modern Nintendo at the very least is open to listening to what it's paying fanbase has to say, now whether they'll compromise or not is still in the air.I'll say that just because they didn't plan on it, doesn't mean it's impossible or that plans don't change. Now while this is technically Pokemon Company's decision with Gamefreak helming the project, I wouldn't put it past Nintendo to have a bit of push when it comes to potential updates or features on this console exclusive.

For now all we can do is support them because we want the game to be the very best but also make our voices heard on quality of life and future features we'd like to see. I'm sure that fans playing and discussing the game and changes they'd like to see helped motivate some of the bigger changes, like special/physical split, additional typing to cover general imbalances between types, easier EV training, easier IV passing, reuseable HMs in addition to TMs, etc...

I'm willing to be pessimistically optimistic about it. Yeah it sucks and i'm not going to expect them to do anything about it, and I'm definitely buying the game, but there's probably no harm in making our voices heard, and if enough of the playerbase sounds off on it to where it's not just a loud minority, they might do something.

[Razade]

I think that's the biggest issue, especially going to /vp and other places. The general argument that "Pokemon is over 4ever" is that they seem to think they know what the full dex is for Galar and we just don't. Not only could it be 600 or more pokemon long (and there's no reason to think it is or isn't at this point), but we don't even know how many of those pokemon are going to be new. At least not from what I've seen. Just like the people complaining about the graphics from a small number of test demos. The battle with Nessa looks pretty slick though I have to wonder...why does it matter how good the overworld looks.

The community is toxic in general.

[MCerberus]

Spoiler: Personal snark that has been rolling around my head lately utilizing new pokemon stuff

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Clearly, the reason why they needed to create Yamper's Ball Fetch ability is because they dropped the ball on making certain "everyone's here" after Smash Ultimate showed off how to do it.

Spoiler: Response to snark spoiler

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I get the joke, but using Smash Ultimate as an example is ammunition for people accepting the lack of national dex. Ultimate nearly killed Sakurai, and there are a lot of people from the top to hourly QA positions whose life become endless hell during crunch. For the health of the industry, and especially the people in it, maybe we need to start accepting smaller but tighter focus. Hell, the original idea for catching them all they couldn't imagine a world where that goes past gen2 numbers, with gold/silver being a grand sequel and finale.

[NatureKing]

I think that's the biggest issue, especially going to /vp and other places. The general argument that "Pokemon is over 4ever" is that they seem to think they know what the full dex is for Galar and we just don't. Not only could it be 600 or more pokemon long (and there's no reason to think it is or isn't at this point), but we don't even know how many of those pokemon are going to be new. At least not from what I've seen. Just like the people complaining about the graphics from a small number of test demos. The battle with Nessa looks pretty slick though I have to wonder...why does it matter how good the overworld looks.

The community is toxic in general.

X pokemon you want cannot be played for Y years until Z game is released.

Going to wait until Pokémon Shotgun or whatever Galar v2 is now, I think. Got burned a bit by s/m and then us/um, and already not that fussed by what I'm hearing. Will watch the Competitive scene, and maybe play a bit of the gen viii meta on showdown, but I've got better things to spend money on now than release gen8.

[Requizen]

X pokemon you want cannot be played for Y years until Z game is released.

Going to wait until Pokémon Shotgun or whatever Galar v2 is now, I think. Got burned a bit by s/m and then us/um, and already not that fussed by what I'm hearing. Will watch the Competitive scene, and maybe play a bit of the gen viii meta on showdown, but I've got better things to spend money on now than release gen8.

I guess I just never got attached to one line or Pokemon enough to need it in a game otherwise I'm unhappy. Generally I can find enough enjoyment in the team I catch along the way to not even think about bringing in stuff from other generations, though perhaps I would be more fussed if I cared about online at all. Even then, top players are just going to use what's best regardless of their favorites, so it doesn't even affect the truly competitive people, does it?

None of this dampens my excitement for open world (outside of cities, fair), raids, or new species, personally.

[Emmerlaus]

The community is toxic in general.

You met a fanboy/fangirl community of something mainstream that wasn't toxic ?!

I dont know why people are being pessimistic about a game that didnt come out yet. Sure their is a few disappointing stuff (like I heard that there wont be any mega-evolution in this game) but at least the game is bringing something new while remaining true to its root. We cant ask for more then that before having playing the game.

I dont care if not all Pokemons are put in the game, personnaly. I have my favorite in mind anyway and will gladly play the game.

And I want to be positive bout Pokemon Home.

[NatureKing]

I tend to play in a competitive scene, but only where pokemon I like are in it. I tend to like pokemon design wise, and hopefully match then up with similar mon I enjoy playing.

Some people enjoy pure mechanics rather than aesthetics. See the comments about using mon like Smeargle or Klefki in a meta about God beings, and my dislike of them. I want to see Yveltal battling Mewtwo, not Yveltal getting dunked by a set of keys.

If it is all new Pokémon, fine. Excellent. Bit sad that previous mon can't be brought forward. But an arguably arbitrary decision has been made to not include certain previous gen pokemon. Let's say 400 mon are cut. Why were they cut? Balance? Nope. The game balances around what is present in the meta. 'The world didn't fit': who cares? There are planes and pokemon home to transfer. Plus handwavium previously introduced to let this happen and forgotten about now.

It's just the arbitrariness that has pissed off a lot of people, regardless of what the end result is. Combined with a unique mechanic that is 'Scale models XYZ axis x4, zoom out, add swirly things, big stats', the requirement of a switch rather than a handheld...

Combined with flat out 'we will not give our purchaser what they want to purchase' commentary, I've gone from excite to, well, the opposite.

Nintendo won't get my money until the nonpaid Beta gets released in like a year later anyway.

[OracleofWuffing]

Spoiler: Response to snark spoiler

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I get the joke, but using Smash Ultimate as an example is ammunition for people accepting the lack of national dex. Ultimate nearly killed Sakurai, and there are a lot of people from the top to hourly QA positions whose life become endless hell during crunch. For the health of the industry, and especially the people in it, maybe we need to start accepting smaller but tighter focus. Hell, the original idea for catching them all they couldn't imagine a world where that goes past gen2 numbers, with gold/silver being a grand sequel and finale.

Spoiler: At this point, it's not really a spoiler, but just me getting ranty about something not-pokemon

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Yeah, I got a small violin somewhere with Sakurai's name on it, but I dropped it somewhere and the LHC hasn't got back to me on where it's at. Getting shut in an undersized cubicle to focus twelve hour days on a thankless endeavor with short lunches (if any) and no communication to my loved ones for months- even years- until the project's done sounds like paradise to me, maybe he should talk to the game's director about not working on the project anymore if it troubles him so. Yes, crunch is horrible for any industry, no, I have no pity for someone that works triple-A international entertainment and cries about it.

The bottom line is that Ultimate pulled it off and made it a major selling point, where Pokemon didn't and made it a footnote. Either Pokemon's gonna have something else in it that blows me away, or I'm gonna walk away from this thinking that there Pokemon team clearly doesn't work as hard as that Smash team.

That said, I kinda wanna tie this all back earlier to what I said about not knowing everything, and maybe they got something in mind that'll really work out. Like, if they made it so you could battle with pokemon in Pokemon Home? That'd be perfect for my opinion. Like, Pokemon Home battles would be "Unlimited" and then the actual games would be "Standard" battles, whatever those Magic terms mean. You would hypothetically still need to buy/play an actual pokemon game to get the pokemon into Pokemon Home and raise it or breed it whatever, but it also gives you a reason to start up Home more often than once a year to pay your non-automatic subscription fee. Of course, since they aren't announcing anything substantial about Pokemon Home, I'm not holding my breath and am just going to be surprised if they do anything more than be a profile picture.

On the other hand, they could have just made it so bred pokemon only get the origin marking if both of their parents have the same marking. But I guess that would make them too powerful.

I just fear that the best way to get Nintendo's attention to tell them what I want is gonna be to get some sort of meme getting popular on social media. Like, Professor Oak Face on a Striped Background: "It's your bond you share with your pokemon that make you a true champion! ... By the way, you're not allowed to use your pokemon ever again." Or, "Remember when Game Freaks put a hexagon on your pokemon to prevent power creep? Pepperidge Farm remembers." As toxic as the internet is, the message is gonna get mangled in translation and it'll embarrass us all two years down the road, if not sooner. Otherwise, we're stuck filling out surveys that we can only get if we buy and register the game, and I just find that sketchy.

[Lord Raziere]

I myself am not happy about no national dex and Pokemon Home will have to prove itself to be worth it. if its just a second Pokemon Bank, its not going to fly with me. I don't really care about the reasons why behind it, and don't care make judgments based on those,maybe they have their good reasons for it, maybe they don't, all I know is that I don't like it when they have so consistently delivered on it before. its expectation of quality, and that quality is no longer being delivered.

I mean I'm not super angry about it, and its good that we got this information early to temper our expectations I guess, but I'm still disappointed as its a feature I used in the past and was looking forward to using it again. like this is nintendo the expectation of them is that you get almost basically the same thing over time and it works because they hone that same thing very well. they perfect it. sure there is gimmicks to mix things up, but the expectation is that they play basically the same. not being able to deliver on something they did in the past even for good reason is still pretty disappointing and not what I expect from them. I sure hope its not going to become a trend.

mostly because I don't want the main pokemon games to become like a trading card game where old pokemon get forgotten and left in the dust while everyone plays the latest generations pokemon until they get cycled out as well to make way for the next gen after them. because then it just becomes another form of fashion or standard meta that everyone has to follow.

so yeah. I'm going to have to wait and see how the situation shapes out, no national dex and no patch is pretty harsh and odd for something they normally delivered upon and maybe there is some behind the scenes strain that they've been keeping quiet on to deliver that, I don't know, but I don't see my opinion of pokemon as a franchise remaining positive if this continues or if they starting getting worse by getting lazier and lazier and implementing less and less pokemon per game as time goes by.

[Bartmanhomer]

No Pokedex in Generation 8?! No it can't be.

[Lord Raziere]

as for #bring back national dex memes....

there already is one:

Spoiler

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there are more, just google it, but this one was the first that came up. so yeah. internet already memed that. out of your hands now Wuffing.

[NatureKing]

'Fifa 2020 has now announced that due to Balance, Messi will not be included in its roster' is about as ridiculous us as it sounds to me.

[Bartmanhomer]

'Fifa 2020 has now announced that due to Balance, Messi will not be included in its roster' is about as ridiculous us as it sounds to me.

How is this even related to Pokemon?

[OracleofWuffing]

How is this even related to Pokemon?

In short, the primary reason stated for not allowing every pokemon to be transferred to Sword and Shield is because there's so many pokemon, and it makes it hard to make certain they're all balanced to the point where they all can shine if they include everyone.

Fifa, is a video game series about... Hockey, I think? And sportsball games have lots of new players to add as each year comes out, but still have some facade of balance regardless of adding many new people every year, so it would be silly if Fifa didn't include a sportsballer because of balance reasons. It is a metaphor. (Granted, people stop playing sportsball games eventually and leave, but semantics.)

[Lord Raziere]

In short, the primary reason stated for not allowing every pokemon to be transferred to Sword and Shield is because there's so many pokemon, and it makes it hard to make certain they're all balanced to the point where they all can shine if they include everyone.

Fifa, is a video game series about... Hockey, I think? And sportsball games have lots of new players to add as each year comes out, but still have some facade of balance regardless of adding many new people every year, so it would be silly if Fifa didn't include a sportsballer because of balance reasons. It is a metaphor. (Granted, people stop playing sportsball games eventually and leave, but semantics.)

hoooo boy. Game Freak.....they have a LOT to learn about optimizers. it won't matter if they limit the pokemon available, they will find the new most optimal teams and discard new pokemon that aren't them anyways. all they're doing is making them find different parts to achieve victory, and there is no guarantee that the most optimal pokemon will be the new ones unless its nothing but new ones. sure it might scramble the meta for a couple weeks, a month at most, but they'll just have the same problem all over again in miniature by February 2020. TCG players do it all the time. shine is relative and optimizers are good at finding the differing shades. shifting meta just keeps optimizers on their toes.

worse: pokemon HAS a TCG, they should KNOW that this doesn't actually work. so either they're ignorant or they're using it as an excuse for something else. and I don't know which one is worse.

[DeTess]

Based on what I'm reading here I'm clearly wrong, but I thought the reason for not including the whole roster was that every pokemon needed to get an entire new model and animations and stuff for this game? That seems like it makes far more sense to me, at least. The last two generations basically ran on the same hardware so models could just be moved over mostly as-is, but for this one they'd have to make an enormous amount of new models if they included all the pokemon.

[Lord Raziere]

yeah, but HD models has been going on for like 13 years now and will be holding for the foreseeable future, and Game Freak has done this before....when they weren't working on some stupid side-project game like TOWN. a generically named side game that nobody cares about. great decision-making there, Gamefreak

also apparently the old pokemon they're going to port over are going to be fan favorites and popular pokemon so.....imagine it going like this:

Gamefreak: attention pokemon! not all of you will be in the next game!
Charizard, Greninja, Pikachu, Lucario, Gardevoir, Eevee and other such pokemon: GASP!!
Gamefreak: oh no no, you guys have nothing to worry about.
*points at other pokemon*
Gamefreak: you on the other hand? your all screwed
Garbodor, Basculin, Vanilluxe, and so on: NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!
Muk: what about me?
Gamefreak: your gen 1, you still get in.
Muk: but I'm horrible! trash!
Gamefreak: but your gen 1 horrible, which isn't the same as gen 5 horrible!
Muk: dammit Gamefreak! I protest this injustice, I'll stand up for my fellow trash pokemon! #Trashpokemonrepresent

unless Game Freak is really inaccurate on whats popular in pokemon fandom.

[deuterio12]

Hey, Muk's at least intended to be trash, it's literally an animated pile of sewage, and so it's actually pretty cool.

[Lord Raziere]

Hey, Muk's at least intended to be trash, it's literally an animated pile of sewage, and so it's actually pretty cool.

thats the joke.

garbodor is also literally trash though, and gen 5 is often said to be bad copies of gen 1 designs, and since Gamefreak has pandered to Gen 1 in the past, the worry is that the Gen 5 and other unpopular pokemon will be taking the brunt.

[Manticoran]

thats the joke.

garbodor is also literally trash though, and gen 5 is often said to be bad copies of gen 1 designs, and since Gamefreak has pandered to Gen 1 in the past, the worry is that the Gen 5 and other unpopular pokemon will be taking the brunt.

... Good! Personally as someone who never plays past the story in new Pokemon games, I love that they're just going to include the Pokemon people actually like. That seems like an obvious decision to make to me.

For the people unhappy about the lack of transferring Pokemon in, would you be happy if they let you do so, but you didn't get the new fancy models?

[Grif]

I don't mind that GF isn't including all the Pokemons (I always suspected something had to give with all the new 'mons that had been added over the generations), but I find their reasoning to be really suspect.

Game balance? Really? Will Farfetch'd ever be competitive then? Pokemon was never about balance in the conventional sense anyway.

[enderlord99]

For the people unhappy about the lack of transferring Pokemon in, would you be happy if they let you do so, but you didn't get the new fancy models?

Yes. Come one, that was WAY more than 10 cahracters! Links are LONG! Wait, does markup not count?

[Bartmanhomer]

In short, the primary reason stated for not allowing every pokemon to be transferred to Sword and Shield is because there's so many pokemon, and it makes it hard to make certain they're all balanced to the point where they all can shine if they include everyone.

Fifa, is a video game series about... Hockey, I think? And sportsball games have lots of new players to add as each year comes out, but still have some facade of balance regardless of adding many new people every year, so it would be silly if Fifa didn't include a sportsballer because of balance reasons. It is a metaphor. (Granted, people stop playing sportsball games eventually and leave, but semantics.)

Ok. It's sad that they won't include all Pokemon.

[Silfir]

Why is there both a Sword and a Shield version of this game? The entire point behind having two mainline games was to encourage players to complete their collections by trading between games. Now that they've abandoned the entire concept of a complete collection, why even bother making two versions?

Are they going to change the byline? "Gotta Catch 'Em All" would equate to false advertisement at this rate.

It's never a good sign when developers decide that abandoning core tenets of the game's design philosophy is an acceptable means to an end. I can't help but wonder: what other corners were they forced to cut? Where else have they tried to look for the fun and failed to find it?

Paradox's Imperator: Rome was an example of this. The moment I read that they'd decided to limit the Roman republic to one consul at a time I suspected the game would be a major disappointment on release, and from what I can tell, it was. It's just not a decision you make if you're doing well in development; it's one you make when nothing is working as it should and something's got to give.

I'm going to sit on the sidelines on this one. I don't own a Switch yet anyway. I expect some backpedalling - the social media outcry is considerable and someone's going to communicate it upwards.

[Bartmanhomer]

Why is there both a Sword and a Shield version of this game? The entire point behind having two mainline games was to encourage players to complete their collections by trading between games. Now that they've abandoned the entire concept of a complete collection, why even bother making two versions?

Are they going to change the byline? "Gotta Catch 'Em All" would equate to false advertisement at this rate.

It's never a good sign when developers decide that abandoning core tenets of the game's design philosophy is an acceptable means to an end. I can't help but wonder: what other corners were they forced to cut? Where else have they tried to look for the fun and failed to find it?

Paradox's Imperator: Rome was an example of this. The moment I read that they'd decided to limit the Roman republic to one consul at a time I suspected the game would be a major disappointment on release, and from what I can tell, it was. It's just not a decision you make if you're doing well in development; it's one you make when nothing is working as it should and something's got to give.

I'm going to sit on the sidelines on this one. I don't own a Switch yet anyway. I expect some backpedalling - the social media outcry is considerable and someone's going to communicate it upwards.

This could possibly be the end of the Pokemon franchise.

[Manticoran]

This could possibly be the end of the Pokemon franchise.

... Unlikely. I'd bet good money the vast majority of Pokemon players are kids and casual players who don't care so much about this stuff, and are just excited for new Pokemon.

Like, they should probably add something to make the collectors happy, but there's no way is a deal breaker for most of the people playing Pokemon.

[Bartmanhomer]

... Unlikely. I'd bet good money the vast majority of Pokemon players are kids and casual players who don't care so much about this stuff, and are just excited for new Pokemon.

Like, they should probably add something to make the collectors happy, but there's no way is a deal breaker for most of the people playing Pokemon.

Well of course kids will be very hyped about the new Pokemon but at the same time they'll be very sad they won't catch'em all!

[Lord Raziere]

Yes. Come one, that was WAY more than 10 cahracters! Links are LONG! Wait, does markup not count?

This, so much this.

graphics are getting good enough that I honestly don't care if the models are brand spanking new anymore. it all looks like the same HD goodness to me. these days I'm getting more concerned about the mechanical and functional side of things, and no matter how good the graphics are, losing the national dex is a major loss of functionality.

like I'd honestly couldn't tell you what the actual visual difference between 8th gen and 7th is from my point of view. and to be honest, I don't think it really matters since if there is a difference its so slight that I'd rather all have pokemon there rather than just shiny popularity mons.

like, I kind of thought games started looking good enough when things like the gamecube were out. anything above that is just gravy.

[OracleofWuffing]

worse: pokemon HAS a TCG, they should KNOW that this doesn't actually work. so either they're ignorant or they're using it as an excuse for something else. and I don't know which one is worse.

Seems you're not familiar with the TCG rules. The game retires cards out every one or two years, and has been doing so since 2001. There's a nonzero chance that the TCG's rotating play inspired the decision for Sword and Shield, but that's speculation. I, uh, also want to say that I remember them mumbling about how there's so many pokemon that it's hard to account for every interaction for two or three generations now, but I just got home and don't want to research that memory.

Based on what I'm reading here I'm clearly wrong, but I thought the reason for not including the whole roster was that every pokemon needed to get an entire new model and animations and stuff for this game? That seems like it makes far more sense to me, at least. The last two generations basically ran on the same hardware so models could just be moved over mostly as-is, but for this one they'd have to make an enormous amount of new models if they included all the pokemon.

Here's an image that will probably communicate better than my words can. You can just take the 3DS's original model on the left, remove the outline filter, and upscale the models to a higher resolution, and you get what's on the right. That's no texture editing, no re-rigging a skeleton, no sculpting, that's just what a 3DS game would look like if it had the screen and hardware to support 720p (the footage I got this from was supposed to be 4K but they messed up their rendering options when taking the video). Here's what a battle looks like in those settings. Yes, there certainly are things that need to be polished from this point, but the work amounts to mostly re-lighting and redrawing eyes. All of the bones and animation keyframes don't need to be touched at all.

... Unlikely. I'd bet good money the vast majority of Pokemon players are kids and casual players who don't care so much about this stuff, and are just excited for new Pokemon.

Like, they should probably add something to make the collectors happy, but there's no way is a deal breaker for most of the people playing Pokemon.

This, too. The Let's Go titles sold incredibly well, and Sword and Shield is going to have more available pokemon and battling opportunities than that. Well, okay, I don't think they confirmed that fact explicitly, but I think that's a safe claim to make. In the end of the day, we're all still in an echo chamber still mostly speculating about a game that's not out, and there's some further games on the horizon. You don't need to like every game in a franchise for it to be a good franchise. Something something Wand of Gamelon something something Hotel Mario something something Pick-a-3D-Sonic-Game something something.