Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield

[Des Teto]

19 hours ago, Vinnie said:

Also I haven't really kept up on the news on what's happening with showdown. When the national dex issue was first announced, there was a lot of discussion about not moving showdown forward into Gen 8. From what I hear, now the discussion is more towards hosting multiple formats of Gen 8 battle sets. Basically, there would a format for Gen 8 battles as they are, and then a format for Gen 8 battles including every single Pokemon. Normally I wouldn't worry because we have so many different formats on Showdown already, but this has already brought up the point: "What about a Gen 8 format without dyna/gigamax with Z-moves and Megas instead?" or "How are you going to manage all the Pokemon that are left out. They'll be left behind update wise when it comes to new moves, abilities, and stat updates." To make matters worse, there's the potential of a completely separate tiering on Smogon itself which almost makes it official.

Wow. I didn't know all these issues about Smogon but it's quite understandable. After spending 3 years shaping the Gen 7 meta, it will be hard to say goodbye to all these mechanics one learned to appreciate.

 

For those who didn't know, Z-moves ended up being really healthy. And megas gave a second life to a lot of pokemons. There are even megas less useful than the actual pokemons such as Garchomp and Tyranitar. It's like a brand new pokemon in the competitive point of view.

 

The question that remains is how many? How many pokemons out of the thousands will we have? Does anyone saw a glimpse of a clue about that?

 

A restricted meta could be fine. For instance, Let's Go mechanics were fun but there were only 150 beasts. There was an Aerodactyl with SR in every viable team. It just needed more things to work with.

 

So, if Smogon ends up with 400-500 pokemons available, I think Gen 8 6v6 will work just fine. In any case, it will be a challenge.

[Vinnie]

15 hours ago, ShogokiX said:

Yeah well....the community being split up is a natural result of what is going to happen with Sword/Shield. Anyone of you playing the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game? The physical cards, not the digital games. The Yu-Gi-Oh! community was split up as well when the 6th gen brought new rules to the table that force you to use the new cards if you want to play your old ones properly. Of course a lot of players were not amused by this and either quit playing the game or stopped buying the new cards and keep playing by the old rules of gen 5.

What i want to say is that we might get a similar situation with the Pokémon community. Those people who don't like what Nintendo and Game Freak are doing with Sword/Shield will just stop buying the new games and either quit Pokémon entirely or stick to playing the 7th gen games or fan games that do a better job than the official games.

And then there is also the fact that Pokémon might be getting a strong competition from an upcoming game called Temtem. I'll be checking that out once the game will be in early access in September on Steam.

  

As for the Switch Lite i am not sure if that would be for me. They clearly said that the Switch Lite will only support games that can be played in handheld mode. Any game that requires the console mode to be played will not run on the Switch Lite. The idea itself is nice though.

It's not really that the community is splitting apart, it was never truly whole to begin with. There's always going to be people who don't like new generations and stay behind with the old. 

 

It's more like this is a fracture of a fracture. There's already a split between Gen 8 and everything that is not Gen 8, and then within Gen 8 it'd be like having major divides. It's harmful to that branch of the community, and for a competitive scene, it can really slow down queue times if there's too many variants. 

 

13 hours ago, Des Teto said:

Wow. I didn't know all these issues about Smogon but it's quite understandable. After spending 3 years shaping the Gen 7 meta, it will be hard to say goodbye to all these mechanics one learned to appreciate.

 

For those who didn't know, Z-moves ended up being really healthy. And megas gave a second life to a lot of pokemons. There are even megas less useful than the actual pokemons such as Garchomp and Tyranitar. It's like a brand new pokemon in the competitive point of view.

 

The question that remains is how many? How many pokemons out of the thousands will we have? Does anyone saw a glimpse of a clue about that?

  

A restricted meta could be fine. For instance, Let's Go mechanics were fun but there were only 150 beasts. There was an Aerodactyl with SR in every viable team. It just needed more things to work with.

  

 So, if Smogon ends up with 400-500 pokemons available, I think Gen 8 6v6 will work just fine. In any case, it will be a challenge.

Aside from rules, restrictions, and tierings, not much else is shaped by Smogon which is the issue here. The meta shapes itself naturally, and it's tiered and monitored slightly accordingly. 

 

Creating a separate set of tierings creatures it's own challenge though, especially when you inject Pokemon that were not updated and included in the meta into that tiering, or even items that weren't included. It puts the burden of actually choosing to update, and "balance" Pokemon within that meta game on smogon, where previously, the Smogon tiering was just that, a monitored tiering system. 

 

And yeah, Z-moves were a wonderful addition. On reddit most people seem to hate them and only care about megas, but at least on the competitive forums there's a lot of love and concern for both. They work well side by side. 

 

I think best case scenario is to add Gen 8 to Showdown as if it was taken naturally from the games, tier that and leave it. It's rough, but trying to do anything else would over complicate the situation.

[J-Awesome_One]

Thought I'd just copy and paste this from Serebii since it'd be pointless to go to the website and read it. So here's what they said:

 

"It has been confirmed that the July 21st episode of the Japanese Variety Show, Pokénchi, will contain "the latest information" on Pokémon Sword & Shield. At present, it is not clear if this will be brand new information or if it will be a repeat of recently revealed information but we'll provide full details as and when they come"

 

So hopefully on July 21st we'll get some kind of new information about these games.

[Samtale]

Looks like sword and shield might be blowing it's loads like it did in previous gens, showing off almost all of the pokemon in a short period. *sigh

Sadly I don't see there being hole lot of new pokemon so this is conserning.

[ShogokiX]

Hmm....i just don't know what to make out of Pokémon Sword/Shield any more. Most of the upcoming "features" that were revealed up to now don't fit my taste at all and the fact that there will be a lot of Pokémon be cut from the game just topped it off for me. That was just the one thing that was an absolute no-go for me, no matter what kind of excuse they may have for it.

 

Maybe i could have lived with "features" like Max Raid Battles that (at least in my opinion) will clearly be a problematic feature due to the nature of how people tend to behave online...

Yes, there may be games like Splatoon, where it somehow managed to work out in a good way for most of the times, but looking at online gaming in general the usual behavior of people that i see whenever playing with completly random people is either

a) trolling,

b) egoism all the way, or

c) just plain rude people who think flaming and insulting everybody for no reason will solve all problems.

 

I'm not saying that this applies to EVERYONE you randomly encounter, but chances are high that you will get at least one of those on a quite lot of your Teams for Max Raid Battles...

 

Then again.....maybe that's just how i see it because i have too much experience playing MMOs and MOBAs....or i'm just getting too old and this kind of behavior is considered "normal" these days....

 

But hey, there is a good side to Gen 8: The internet is overflowing with fan arts and memes^^ And everyone loves memes XD

Edited July 14, 2019 by ShogokiX

[Vinnie]

2 hours ago, ShogokiX said:

Hmm....i just don't know what to make out of Pokémon Sword/Shield any more. Most of the upcoming "features" that were revealed up to now don't fit my taste at all and the fact that there will be a lot of Pokémon be cut from the game just topped it off for me. That was just the one thing that was an absolute no-go for me, no matter what kind of excuse they may have for it.

 

Maybe i could have lived with "features" like Max Raid Battles that (at least in my opinion) will clearly be a problematic feature due to the nature of how people tend to behave online...

Yes, there may be games like Splatoon, where it somehow managed to work out in a good way for most of the times, but looking at online gaming in general the usual behavior of people that i see whenever playing with completly random people is either

 a) trolling,

 b) egoism all the way, or

 c) just plain rude people who think flaming and insulting everybody for no reason will solve all problems.

 

I'm not saying that this applies to EVERYONE you randomly encounter, but chances are high that you will get at least one of those on a quite lot of your Teams for Max Raid Battles...

  

Then again.....maybe that's just how i see it because i have too much experience playing MMOs and MOBAs....or i'm just getting too old and this kind of behavior is considered "normal" these days....

 

But hey, there is a good side to Gen 8: The internet is overflowing with fan arts and memes^^ And everyone loves memes XD

Well, if you take the GTS for example, and look at all the troll offers there, that doesn't give me a lot of hope. I know it's not exactly the same situation, but the attitudes kinda transfer over. 

[ShogokiX]

11 hours ago, Vinnie said:

Well, if you take the GTS for example, and look at all the troll offers there, that doesn't give me a lot of hope. I know it's not exactly the same situation, but the attitudes kinda transfer over. 

You HAD to remind me about GTS, do you? I went through a full year of therapy because of that.... *GTS flashbacks incoming, screaming in pain*

 

Nah, jokes aside, i agree on the fact that GTS is about the best example of what i am trying to say here.... "Hey, i have a 6 times 0 IV Magicarp! Trade me! I want your Solgaleo you spent 20 hours soft resetting to get decent IV and nature on it!"

And well....if official Pokémon games had ingame chat during trades and battles.....let's just say it would be similar to what tends to happen A LOT on Pokémon Showdown.....

[Vinnie]

7 hours ago, ShogokiX said:

You HAD to remind me about GTS, do you? I went through a full year of therapy because of that.... *GTS flashbacks incoming, screaming in pain*

  

Nah, jokes aside, i agree on the fact that GTS is about the best example of what i am trying to say here.... "Hey, i have a 6 times 0 IV Magicarp! Trade me! I want your Solgaleo you spent 20 hours soft resetting to get decent IV and nature on it!"

And well....if official Pokémon games had ingame chat during trades and battles.....let's just say it would be similar to what tends to happen A LOT on Pokémon Showdown.....

Back at you :^ But yeah, I forgot how salty people could get on showdown, even in the higher elos. 

 

And it's not like I'm trying to demonize any portion of the Pokemon community. I do think we have one of the best communities out there. It's just that online interactions don't always go as smoothly as game developers would like, or even imagine. 

 

Sometimes game devs try to create features for more unique interactions that end up being used by one part of the player base to troll, agitate or grief the other part, and well, that's just how it is. That's part of the role of a game dev, you have to think about these issues before you release your finished product.

[ShogokiX]

12 minutes ago, Vinnie said:

Back at you :^ But yeah, I forgot how salty people could get on showdown, even in the higher elos. 

ESPECIALLY in the higher Elos.....never underestimate the sheer amount of players on ANY given game that are on the higher elos for some reason, even if they don't belong there for many reasons....

 

14 minutes ago, Vinnie said:

And it's not like I'm trying to demonize any portion of the Pokemon community. I do think we have one of the best communities out there. It's just that online interactions don't always go as smoothly as game developers would like, or even imagine. 

 

Sometimes game devs try to create features for more unique interactions that end up being used by one part of the player base to troll, agitate or grief the other part, and well, that's just how it is. That's part of the role of a game dev, you have to think about these issues before you release your finished product.

Yeah well.....it might be normal behavior for japanese people to treat others with respect, but this mentality seems to be limited to japan alone....

[CURIE]

Spoiler

 

Apparently in a Famitsu interview, Oomori stated the Pokemon models were made from scratch when they brought the series to the switch.  It just a coincidence that they're all frame-perfect copies of the 3ds models/animations right down to the tiniest details.  Refer to my earlier comment about these people thinking you're stupid.

 

A bit of good news though, look at the last part I included in my screenshot.  They're already backpedalling.  It went from "no, we're NOT patching them in after launch" to "we haven't DECIDED whether to patch them in after launch"

[Candy]

1 hour ago, Eagleby18 said:

Pokemon models were made from scratch when they brought the series to the switch.

Scratch doesn't mean they have to make them different to SM models, I think. Even if they based off of SM models, if they had to make them anew so they go into the switch, that is still from scratch, no? It's like seeing an object and drawing a copy of it, imo. 

If they claimed they were going to change the animation and poses though, then it'd be fake news.

[CURIE]

41 minutes ago, Candy said:

Scratch doesn't mean they have to make them different to SM models, I think. Even if they based off of SM models, if they had to make them anew so they go into the switch, that is still from scratch, no? It's like seeing an object and drawing a copy of it, imo. 

If they claimed they were going to change the animation and poses though, then it'd be fake news.

Except it's a 1:1 right down to the last vector.  Look at the wiskers, it's a dead giveaway.  To say all these models were """recreated""" with this level of complete, exact sameness, is laughable.  They copy-pasted it.  They're lying, it's obvious, they know it's obvious, and they don't care.

[ShogokiX]

To add insult to injury....if you feel like having a good laugh, you might wanna watch this one....

 

Spoiler

 

 

There you have it^^ So much for Nintendo lying to us, because why bother.... We are all just gullible idiots who WILL buy their game anyway....

[Alisae]

3d ruined pokemon

[Autumn Zephyr]

8 hours ago, Alisae said:

The 3ds ruined pokemon

Fixed it.

 

Seriously, though, most of Pokemon's forays into the third dimension, especially those headed by Genius Sonority, had been pretty solid prior to handhelds getting access to the capability. It's once that happened that things started plummeting- anyone remember the Pokedex 3D Pro? Sure, it had solid model animations (including a decent number that are still unique to the app) and voiceover work of all things, but it was still $15 for a glorified pokedex! And let's not forget that the first Mystery Dungeon game on the console is widely considered to be the worst one by a substantial margin, and that the only other two spin-offs to survive the transition wound up getting demoted to freeware. It's just so weird to look back on at this point.

 

Perhaps the biggest disappointment of all is that we know these games can be of higher quality than they are. It's been common knowledge on the internet that every pokemon has had walking and running animations made for them for a long while, even in forms that have no business having those animations- there's not much need to tread those waters again. But there's another animation that goes semi-unused in the games- Ultra Necrozma has a deliciously PBR-esque fainting animation that is clearly meant to be used at the end of the showdown at the Ultra Megalopolis that doesn't get shown because another part of the team decided to have it use the standard wild fainting effect instead. Like, what was even the point of trying to make the end of that fight satisfying if you're not even gonna use the end result in the first place? Just seems like a bit of a waste.

 

The worrisome part for me, though, is that Gen. 7 broke a critical pattern: every Generation prior to it gave GameFreak a break year between main series releases. There was a year between RB/G and Y, one between GS and C, another between RS and FRLG, a fourth between DP and Pt, a fifth between BW and BW2, and a last one between XY and ORAS. No such break happened this time, though- USUM came right after SM did, and I started to get a little worried when LGPE dropped in immediately after that. If this sort of annual release schedule is supposed to become the new norm, then it's only inevitable that GameFreak's gonna start having some burnout issues, if they aren't dealing with them already- it's no longer an especially healthy work environment, and then tends to cause problems throughout the whole process chain. 

 

This is a garbage situation for all parties at this point, to put it simply. 

 

That said, while the technical side of the games are in a dumpster fire, Gen. 7 showed that the creative side, such as the worldbuilding and the monsters themselves, can still work its magic as a somewhat separate entity. Even if the graphics aren't the best by a long shot, there is still a chance that the bit that makes Pokemon so magical in the first place can still pull through- we'll just have to wait and see what else Galar has in store for us!

[The Swordsman]

I disagree with both notions, as the only problem I see that ruins Pokemon is this game. Gen 6 while initially lackluster with its plot and characters, (ORAS would mostly fix this) still gave the best type in Pokemon, buffed several older pokemon stat wise and gave us Mega Evolution. I also personally loved the upgraded graphics and use of cinematic angles. Gen 7 went back to the more serious plots of the beloved Gen 5, improved on everything before, introduced sidequests, introduced Z moves and finally introduced a very interesting postgame plot. I do agree with this section though,

Quote

The worrisome part for me, though, is that Gen. 7 broke a critical pattern: every Generation prior to it gave GameFreak a break year between main series releases. There was a year between RB/G and Y, one between GS and C, another between RS and FRLG, a fourth between DP and Pt, a fifth between BW and BW2, and a last one between XY and ORAS. No such break happened this time, though- USUM came right after SM did, and I started to get a little worried when LGPE dropped in immediately after that. If this sort of annual release schedule is supposed to become the new norm, then it's only inevitable that GameFreak's gonna start having some burnout issues, if they aren't dealing with them already- it's no longer an especially healthy work environment, and then tends to cause problems throughout the whole process chain. 

That said, while the technical side of the games are in a dumpster fire, Gen. 7 showed that the creative side, such as the worldbuilding and the monsters themselves, can still work its magic as a somewhat separate entity. Even if the graphics aren't the best by a long shot, there is still a chance that the bit that makes Pokemon so magical in the first place can still pull through- we'll just have to wait and see what else Galar has in store for us!

 

[Vinnie]

11 hours ago, Alisae said:

3d ruined pokemon

There was a lot wrong with the 3DS generation of Pokemon. We lost endgames, and lots of added events were scrapped for mystery gifts that straight up gave us the Pokemon that we should've had events for.

 

But something else has been bothering me a lot with them as well.

 

I watched a video called out of bounds for X&Y. For the most part, the guy in the video is just messing around, but you also started to notice certain details.

Spoiler

 

 

A lot of the areas in X&Y aren't actually full rendered in 3D. They're only partly rendered so that they look that way from the camera angle that you're forced into viewing them from. This is why there isn't a movable camera in the 3DS Pokemon games I imagine. 

 

I can't say if it's pure laziness and cutting corners because I'm sure this could potentially save a lot of space on the 3DS games cartridge but it's been bugging me lately.

[Alisae]

Here's the thing

if Gamefreak is continuing to fuck up 3d, why are they continuing to do it?
If they went back to their roots in pixel art, they could probably make good games again.
Its significantly less work and 2D games can still look good. Just look at Enter the Gungeon, Hyper Light Drifter, or Crosscode.

 

I mean aside from the obvious answer that no one called them out about animations untill, well now

 

either way, I really think the series should go back to 2D.

[Autumn Zephyr]

On 7/16/2019 at 2:56 PM, The Swordsman said:

I disagree with both notions, as the only problem I see that ruins Pokemon is this game. Gen 6 while initially lackluster with its plot and characters, (ORAS would mostly fix this) still gave the best type in Pokemon, buffed several older pokemon stat wise and gave us Mega Evolution. I also personally loved the upgraded graphics and use of cinematic angles. Gen 7 went back to the more serious plots of the beloved Gen 5, improved on everything before, introduced sidequests, introduced Z moves and finally introduced a very interesting postgame plot. I do agree with this section though,

 

Did you intend to also quote the note on break years? I'm not exactly seeing any further mention of it in your response, so I'm not quite sure about that.

 

Anyway, I realize in retrospect that I didn't exactly use the best choice of words in part of that closing paragraph doohicky- 'technical' implies either something to do with the coding (which admittedly hasn't really been GameFreak's strong suite, but isn't what I was going for) or the battle system itself (which, outside of the weird interaction between Sky Drop and Gravity in Gen. 5 and Blue-Striped Basculin accidentally getting an incorrect Ability, hasn't really had any major issues in Gen. 2), neither of which are really what I was going for. Rather, I meant the in-game graphical presentation itself is less than stellar, with the models of older pokemon coming off as stiff, a few of the revealed attack animations being far from inspiring, and the games still clinging to that obsolete grid-based movement system like they haven't caught wind that they aren't a Mystery Dungeon or Turn-Based Tactical RPG yet. For those of us who had played the Genius Sonority games, especially those on the GameCube that had an overworld similar to the main games', the comparative quality we got when Pokemon officially moved to the 3DS was a major disappointment.

 

It's the difference between blastoise using its cannons and Hydro Pump just appearing out of nowhere.

 

It's the difference between electabuzz winding up its arm to charge power before slugging the enemy and it just halfheartedly sideswiping.

 

It's the difference between honchkrow tipping its hat to its foe upon defeat and it just crumpling on the ground like any other bird.

 

It's the difference between the models actually trying to interact with each other during all contact attacks and just the particularly powerful ones.

 

Umbreon's rings don't pulse, togepi now just topples over on defeat rather than try and run to the safety of its trainer's side, roselia no longer angrily stomps back into position with its roses on its hips when attacked, ninjask doesn't constantly flit about the battlefield while attacks are still being chosen, the initial particle effects of attacks no longer follow the corresponding limb throughout the user's own animation outside of a few signature moves... These are the sorts of seemingly minor details that go a long way to fleshing out the characters, their capabilities, and the ease of becoming immersed in the world that were, unfortunately, lost.

 

Of course, it was easy to give GameFreak the benefit of the doubt at the time, despite XY coming out immediately after one of the most highly polished entries in the series- because they chose to make all-new models and animations rather than build off the ones that were already present in the Pokedex 3D Pro, in addition to adapting the system in its entirety to the new device and adding the new pokemon to the world, it was only natural that there'd be some material shelved to be added later when the workload was smaller. And yet, nothing changed in ORAS, and Sun and Moon didn't do anything new to the older pokemon animation-wise, either. And now here we have Sword and Shield looking like they're about to be more of the same despite official claims to the contrary, and yeah, of course those of us who knew of the past potential are gonna be upset. Heck, there people who didn't even know the Genius Sonority games even existed that were starting to grumble a bit when the saw that SuMo were reusing Gen. 6's salamence model! 

 

Basically, when compared to both its peers on the Switch and its predecessors four console generations ago, it's easy to see that these games can be a fair bit better.

 

Every other aspect of the games, on the other hand, has been fine; the much-needed buffs to old pokemon (mantine's +20 base HP says hi), the Fairy Type as a whole, the settings and characters (okay, this is admittedly more for Gen. 7 than 6, but w/e), and of course, the new pokemon themselves. There's a lot more to the games than just some animations, and even that regard we've got some goods. I mean, everyone's been so busy complaining about the lazy "hop" in Double Kick that's been there for over half a decade, that they're completely overlooking scorbunny's energetic jumps from side to side! And while I'm as skeptical about Dynamaxing as the next guy, I was the same way with Z-Moves in the last hype cycle.

 

Just as much as GameFreak can stand to learn to show, not tell, the fans need to learn how to appreciate what they have in addition to criticizing what they don't. Both sides of the Pacific have made the point clear to GameFreak by now, so maybe lay off on the toxicity a bit? We've still got a ways to go until November, after all.

 

Now, how about we close out with some good ol' fashioned Alakasass?

Spoiler

 

 

 

[The Swordsman]

11 hours ago, Autumn Zephyr said:

Did you intend to also quote the note on break years? I'm not exactly seeing any further mention of it in your response, so I'm not quite sure about that.

No, I just put in the parts I agreed with.

[Autumn Zephyr]

...Oh. I, uh, apparently managed to misread the prior sentence like three separate times over the course of an eight hour period, so, uh... whoops? Guess this is why you're supposed to wait a couple days before proofreading, huh? Sorry about that.

[ShogokiX]

You know, i'm not angry because they just copypasted models and animations straight from the Gen 7 games for Sword an Shield. I wouldn't even be angry at all if we can't catch every Gen 1-7 Pokémon at release, as long as the remaining ones are included with a free update at a later point....

 

The thing that ticks me off is the fact that they are lying to our faces, telling us some BS about higher quality models and animations, while clearly reusing the Gen 7 models and animations, as it has already been proven by different sources. They're telling lies about wanting to be more expressive with each individual Pokémon.....yet the most expressive they ever were was Pokémon Stadium 1 and 2 on the Nintendo 64.....thats 20 years ago! And what do we get for Gen 8? Just look at the video linked in my last post on this topic...it's a joke, and not even a funny one...Pokémon are cut from the game for THAT?

 

But well.....we will see if they finally got the message, or if Pokémon Sword and Shield needs to end as the worst selling game of the main series for them to finally understand.....

[Alisae]

I don't think gamefreak will be learning any lessons anytime soon.

If they intended on doing something, they would have given us a better response already.

If the game does well gamefreak will continue to produce half-assed games

If the game doesn't do well, gamefreak will just continue pushing pokemon in the direction of mobile games.

[Vinnie]

1 hour ago, Alisae said:

I don't think gamefreak will be learning any lessons anytime soon.

If they intended on doing something, they would have given us a better response already.

If the game does well gamefreak will continue to produce half-assed games

If the game doesn't do well, gamefreak will just continue pushing pokemon in the direction of mobile games.

Yeah, it's too little too late for changes towards Sword/Shield. 

 

I have this secret hope that they're ashamed and that while they won't acknowledge their mistakes, maybe, just maybe they'll fix them in the next installment of the core series, but I wouldn't count on it. 

 

It's a shame the rights to Pokemon are in the hands they're in. We've already seen via reddit that we have many talented artists, graphics designers and animators. The game could be made by much better hands, with more love and dedication. 

[ShogokiX]

2 hours ago, Vinnie said:

Yeah, it's too little too late for changes towards Sword/Shield. 

 

I have this secret hope that they're ashamed and that while they won't acknowledge their mistakes, maybe, just maybe they'll fix them in the next installment of the core series, but I wouldn't count on it. 

 

It's a shame the rights to Pokemon are in the hands they're in. We've already seen via reddit that we have many talented artists, graphics designers and animators. The game could be made by much better hands, with more love and dedication. 

That is exactly what fan games are for^^ For proving again and again that fans can make better games than the original developers.