Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield

The intentional limiting of the Pokemon roster is an interesting experiment, especially since the only difference is that Galar-approved Pokemon from the past generations can now be used for the new games, unlike back in Generation 3 where it initially only allowed a pool of 200 Pokemon to be used. I have a feeling that legendaries are going to be affected the most by this decision, since quite a number of them are super useful, such as Heatran, Landorus (both formes) and all the Tapus (Koko, Lele, Bulu and Fini). Starters might be affected as well, and I am partial on this. On one hand, Serperior is very amazing, but on the other hand, I dislike Greninja.

Quite a lot of Pokemon required Mega Evolutions to be effective, so they may not be attractive after this change. I mean for example, Mega Pinsir is at a whole new level over its regular counterpart it's not funny. Z-Moves could grant superb effects to certain moves or transform any attack (even the unusable ones like Dream Eater) into reliable and powerful attacks, so Pokemon like Porygon-Z (Its Z-Conversion boosts its 5 stats by 1 stage each, in addition to changing its type) will be affected.

Thank you for reading.
 
Now that I think about it, this limited selection could turn out to be a good thing.

Then again, I am some kind of weirdo who actually really liked the "new mons only" thing they did that one time in gen5 and wouldn't have minded if it stayed like that the whole game.
 
I get the impression GameFreak knew what they were doing when they made the decision to cut Pokemon, and that it was stupid, but they went forward with it anyway. Supporting every Pokemon has become harder and harder for them, but oh no, poor multimillion dollar company with a fanbase for each of their little creations.

I will say they really backed themselves into a corner these past few gens by introducing a fuck-ton of "special items" for each legendary, mega stones, Z crystals, type plates, Silvally's fucking CDs, what have you. And then, in order to be forward compatible, they have to add in NPCs that gift you all of the items in later games, bloating your item bag completely. It's pretty fucking hilarious how an item with such plot relevance as the Red Orb, the mcguffin Maxie went to great lengths to obtain in OR/AS, is suddenly in the hands of some random rock collector in Alola who then just pawns it off to a kid for some cash. Not to mention the recent trend for enhanced versions to have a roster of legendary Pokemon to shit at you through wormholes and other nonsense.

I feel like they finally realised how dumb that shit was, and how limiting it is to their ability to make a game and story that takes itself seriously and is well balanced in itself.

But anyway, this decision sucks mega balls because having to include every Pokemon has never stopped their creative freedom in the past. They even acted on it previously and decided not to include a national dex in Sun/Moon, which I think is understandable since there's now 800+ of these fuckers running around, and not everyone has the legacy games to support catching them all on their own without the hackers on the GTS or including every Legendary in some rerelease like US/UM. In recent games they've specifically picked each Pokemon for the region dex, and make sure they're obtainable in the games they're required to be caught in for the story. They even went so far as to delay past game compatibility for the sake of balance. Both of these things were fine, and now I feel like they've taken a step too far.

People will be mega upset that their favourites aren't in and not buy the game, myself included. GameFreak knows this and will try to pick a selection of Pokemon that appeal to everyone (you just KNOW there'll always be room for the whole of Gen I however). There's no pleasing everyone, even if you add every Pokemon, a small minority will still complain about there being too many. And honestly the "too many models excuse" is poor, as their optimisation has historically been very bad (just look at the Gold/Silver Kanto/Johto example for instance). With how they managed to squeeze every single HD model into something like the 3DS there really should be no excuse for them not to include everything on something as powerful as the Switch.

My personal opinion is that forward compatibility shouldn't be considered for Pokemon who are meant to be legendary, because I feel that magic has been lost over the years given how commercialised the games have become, and that they churn out a new game once a year. But, not including every regular Pokemon is a very poor decision, and I can't understand why they'd do it while not also making the game formula far far better to compensate for it. It's still the same models, same back and forth generic attack animation coupled with attack particle effects, same shitty game balance, same overhyped legendary nonsense, heck even the new Dynamax gimmick just reeks of "we need to try something else" in the same way Z-Moves and Mega Evos before them were.

Removing Pokemon for the sake of #balance is always going to be a zero-sum game because some other fucker will move into the position of broken-ass shit, so why bother? Restricting forward transfer temporarily and preventing you from trading national dex Pokemon until you beat the elite 4 has historically been a good solution, so why change it? Even with all those restrictions in place, GameFreak you stupid fuckers, you've never been able to balance a Pokemon game ever! Even Gen I was busted and nothing you're doing, not even removing support for some Pokemon is gonna fix that.

Like basically, what I'm saying is for Gamefreak to put their hordes of money where their mouth is and deliver the best Pokemon game they've ever made, bursting with personality for the Pokemon they want to support in it and the game balance to match, otherwise I'm not gonna be buying their games in the future.
 
Oh, also while you're busy doing all that, give me the option to dye my goddamn hair.
 
Kazooie said:
As long as people can still put Stealth Rock on things and limit their team choices to a few pre-approved mons with everything else being completely useless, I'm sure the competitive scene will not be that drastically impacted.
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It doesn't help that Game Freak pays more attention to VGC (a doubles format) and the Japanese scene more than the popular formats from Smogon. It's why we have things like Stealth Rock remaining the way it is while Darkrai's signature move gets worse accuracy than Hypnosis.

That being said, I think the "preselected" part is a bit simplistic as there are several lower tier Pokémon that fill useful niches like Gastrodon's utility as a special defense wall and Amoongus having a nice typing and Regenerator and Avalugg, iirc having a niche. But I wouldn't be lying to say that the balance is pretty bad and there remains way too many Pokémon getting outclassed or have a too tiny niche to justify using regularly. And since Game Freak likes farting out gimmick after gimmick demonstrating, alongside what they base their balancing on (doubles format!), That they have no freaking clue what they're doing. I mean, they won't stop crapping out defensive ice types despite them never working

But in the end, imo, PvP Pokémon is a mistake.

Gilgamesh said:
Like basically, what I'm saying is for Gamefreak to put their hordes of money where their mouth is and deliver the best Pokemon game they've ever made, bursting with personality for the Pokemon they want to support in it and the game balance to match, otherwise I'm not gonna be buying their games in the future.
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Believe me, I had those expectations and hopefulness for several games straight, but jumped ship years ago back in Generation 5, because of Game Freak bullshittery in awful story that takes itself seriously, gimmick piled after gimmick that create new problems (Mega, Z moves, Dynamax, form changes), old problems taking forever to address and fix (only last gen we finally trashed on HMs, dependence on trading shit making Pokémon eventually unobtainable in older games, event exclusive Pokémon, random encounters, lack of trainer customization, no difficulty, IV, EV counting being a pain in the ass), new bullshit (third game split into two, Rotom Dex so I heard, no shiny Legendaries), cool new shit that is removed or discontinued the next game (secret bases, Pokémon following you).

There is a constant feeling that Game Freak is trying to pander to both the competitive and casual and end up bloating the game to the detriment to both. Competitive play gets compromised for IVs, lack of transferable Pokémon, Megas, Z Moves, new broken formes, the fairy type, eugenics. Casual play gets compromised for never having side features return, boring visuals and animations, stupid stories, convoluted game mechanics that barely get explained in the game (how will players know how much "one stage" is for a boost, how will players know that watering berries once per form change yields maximum berries). Despite all that job babying players, they don't bother with the important things being EV and nature, switching Pokémon (and battle is shift instead of set) for matchup reasons, what kind of convoluted method is required for evolution, and so on. You know this because the Battle Whatever in the end throws out all you learned after beating the Elite Four out the window, as I had the displeasure of experiencing. I don't see how cartridge Pokémon is feasible at all for competitive play as the scene morphs all the time, so that nature you picked for that one off legendary a while ago is now obsolete.

So anyway, I'm just gonna wait for mystery dungeon since I don't have to worry about all that stupid shit and laugh at Magikarp tackles boosted by tons of protein generating cracks on Excadrill.

Kazooie said:
Now that I think about it, this limited selection could turn out to be a good thing.

Then again, I am some kind of weirdo who actually really liked the "new mons only" thing they did that one time in gen5 and wouldn't have minded if it stayed like that the whole game.
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I don't hate that idea either but they really should've nipped that shit in the bud before letting it Doom Bloom into the mess it is. They could've halted adding Pokémon and instead make closed generations, but they dug their own hole by letting the pot spill over. But they have to make money, and this stupid game will sell regardless, even if they let their Innards Out get to them and include loot boxes.
 
tbf we don't even know how big the galar dex is going to be

for all we know it could consist of all 900+ pokemon, who knows

or maybe they mispoke or something idk

i'm remaining optimistic on this one chaps
 
I heard that the developers commented (when asked) regarding Moody being considered rebalancing to be less powerful, since it's an outright powerful ability for the few Pokemon it is given to. In case you don't know what it does, it boosts one stat by 2 stages and reduces another by 1 stage, essentially allowing a Pokemon passive stat boosts for as long as they survive. The best Pokemon with this ability is Glalie due to having the best stats and some key moves (Frost Breath to bypass the opponent's strategy of buffing their defences because it guarantees a critical hit, and Sheer Cold for OHKO potential), which was a menace in online battles.

Kazooie said:
As long as people can still put Stealth Rock on things and limit their team choices to a few pre-approved mons with everything else being completely useless, I'm sure the competitive scene will not be that drastically impacted.
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I also get the feeling that the competitive scene would not be fazed if clearly unviable Pokemon like Farfetch'd or Furret were to be excluded, because to them they are worthless and not worth consideration. On the other hand, Legendary Pokemon are most definitely going to be severely affected by this (unless the game is going to be filled with a lot of them) and some of the most impactful Pokemon in that scene happens to be legendaries (example: Heatran, Landorus).

Princess Mario said:
It doesn't help that Game Freak pays more attention to VGC (a doubles format) and the Japanese scene more than the popular formats from Smogon. It's why we have things like Stealth Rock remaining the way it is while Darkrai's signature move gets worse accuracy than Hypnosis.
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Princess Mario said:
So anyway, I'm just gonna wait for mystery dungeon since I don't have to worry about all that stupid *bleep* and laugh at Magikarp tackles boosted by tons of protein generating cracks on Excadrill.
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This is the first time I've heard that Smogon is considered popular to be worth serious consideration. I know that they have done very extensive practice on what's viable, what's broken and what has unique roles, which is why they are who a lot of people turn to for the definitive competitive resource. But, unless it's also who the Japanese turns to (I don't recall Smogon having site-wide Japanese translations) I can see why Masuda don't really check on them. Lest we forget, their formats have Sleep Clause which basically outright causes Sleep moves to fail (if one of the opposing team members is already asleep) despite this feature not being found in the main games (meaning, this is a modded rule).

I understand the feeling regarding a spin-off game being a preferred format for team availability, because this is my reason for preferring Yu-Gi-Oh video games over the actual card game, since it provides a nice card catalogue without being bound to the trouble of card-collecting and changing trends. Besides, the video games know the technicalities of each card.

Thank you for reading.
 
And so the bad news continues even further. According to Serebii, Mega Evolutions and Z-Moves are NOT coming back; the removal of Mega Evolutions definitely hurt the Pokemon who are just flat out bad without that mechanic; Beedrill, Pidgeot, and Mawile are a few notable examples. Likewise, Charizard and Blastoise become much more viable when they're Mega Evolved.

Of course, the removal of Mega Evolutions doesn't affect Alakazam, Gyarados, Aerodactyl, or Scizor all that much. For an example, standard Alakazam is typically better than Mega Alakazam, since the latter needs to Trace Sheer Force if it expects to hit harder than standard Alakazam's Life Orb boosts. In the case of Scizor, the Choice Band enables it to hit harder than Mega Scizor.

As for Heracross, Mega Heracross is decently viable, since Skill Link enables Pin Missile (along with Bullet Seed and Rock Blast) to always hit 5 times (and it's more accurate than Megahorn). However, Mega Heracross isn't necessarily stronger than standard Heracross with Guts activated, and the slower base speed can also be a hindrance.
 
Back when Generation 6 was the now of Pokemon, I was disappointed that Generation 5 Pokemon didn't have any Pokemon to get a Mega Evolution, except Audino who I felt didn't really work since Healer is too situational for it. Now that Mega Evolution is more or less retired, I am not envious of the treatment that older Gens got. On the other hand, I would love to see how older Pokemon get improved naturally, compared to the need for a temporary evolution.

With the items gone, I hope Knock Off gets a slight power reduction since both Mega and Z-Move don't increase its power.

Thank you for reading.
 
Gilgamesh said:
With how they managed to squeeze every single HD model into something like the 3DS there really should be no excuse for them not to include everything on something as powerful as the Switch.
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It's the fact that it's on the switch at all that they are doing this. HD development is FAR more expensive than the shit they were doing on the 3DS.

And before you say "but multi billion dollar company" my response is they have to make a profit or else there is no reason for them to make the game in the first place.
 
It's freaking Pokémon. It'll sell. Even the infamous Battlefront II sold millions of copies. And if it's expensive, maybe they should cut down on the marketing and focus making a good game first? But, it's not about simple profit. It's about making all the money ever. And they have rich shareholders to please first. They'll listen when shareholders don't get money they expect (like 9 million instead of 11 million). The 3DS games still require a huge team to pull off. I imagine you say it'll be more astronomical, but you seem to be downplaying the 3DS development to try to say it'll be far more expensive on the Switch.
 
I'm not downplaying the 3DS at all. I'm simply stating that HD development is FAR more costly than that 3DS. Switch games to purchase are at least an extra $30 on average in the states (it's worse here but our economy and taxes suck) and considering how the average 3ds game costs about $40 that's almost twice the amount. And while money grubbing does absolutely exist, that doesn't automatically mean that they are being cheap, it especially ignores the scope of the game itself, which is far larger than anything they've done prior to this.
 
Obviously, HD models are going to take up a greater amount of memory than 2D sprites; we're basically talking about the models themselves, along with the textures that they use, which adds to the amount of memory required. The Nintendo Switch may be a strong system, but even its game cards have storage limits that you need to keep in mind.
 
well what typically happens in the modeling process is that you make a high poly and then a low poly for the game. high poly for rendering and projecting onto the low poly, so ambient occulsion maps, normal maps, etc are made for the low poly. and additionally, it's not that difficult to upscale models anyway, just smooth and/or bevel edges that need them. dyanmax looks like they either upscale models or they just screwed around with the root bone of the pokemon's model. i don't know how pokemon makes their textures though.

i really feel like it's not a power and storage thing. the switch already has games like the witcher 3, skyrim, and doom 2016 on it, which have more detailed environments and character models. i think it's more of a time thing. that could be easily solved with patches.
 
https://streamable.com/frva6

https://imgur.com/cc8CppW

qualityanimation.gif
 
Ray Trace said:
well what typically happens in the modeling process is that you make a high poly and then a low poly for the game. high poly for rendering and projecting onto the low poly, so ambient occulsion maps, normal maps, etc are made for the low poly. and additionally, it's not that difficult to upscale models anyway, just smooth and/or bevel edges that need them. dyanmax looks like they either upscale models or they just screwed around with the root bone of the pokemon's model. i don't know how pokemon makes their textures though.

i really feel like it's not a power and storage thing. the switch already has games like the witcher 3, skyrim, and doom 2016 on it, which have more detailed environments and character models. i think it's more of a time thing. that could be easily solved with patches.
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Funny enough Doom 2016 required a big ass patch to smooth out some of it's issues.
 
Pheromosa said:
Oh my, the Pokemon Treehouse Direct has 46 K dislikes
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Going forward with the news announcements, I can't help but feel that any new announcements will be tainted by the announcement that not every Pokemon will make it in the newest games. I mean, I can foresee that every new video announcement will have a lot of comments decrying the decision to include only a selection of older Pokemon, as well as a larger percentage of dislikes. It would also sour quite a large crowd that they may be deflated with new Pokemon (and in fact, any justification has been, and will be picked apart), which is something that's never quite happen with official game announcement. I don't think this ever happened with Sun and Moon! Don't get me wrong, the games will most likely sell well, but the excitement is most evidently deflated.

As for me, I am holding off with the new games for an entirely different reason, since this is already my decision even before Sword and Shield were announced. After what happened to Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, namely that they are games with exclusive content that prior versions didn't get to enjoy (remember, 3DS games can be updated online, unlike the DS), I am waiting to see how Game Freak handles a generational refresh, and if they were to release an upgraded version and not bother to update their previous version (in this case, Sword and Shield), I will get the new game instead.

Thank you for reading.
 
I think I heard somewhere that Sword & Shield will not support Cloud Saves. Obviously, it's an anti-cheating protocol, since people could potentially abuse the Cloud Save feature to make replicas of their Pokemon party.
 
MnSG said:
I think I heard somewhere that Sword & Shield will not support Cloud Saves. Obviously, it's an anti-cheating protocol, since people could potentially abuse the Cloud Save feature to make replicas of their Pokemon party.
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This is likely the case, just as both Animal Crossing: New Horizon and Splatoon 2 disabled Cloud Saves by default. Both of those games have a luck element that developers don't want players to exploit. Splatoon 1 did allow the player to exploit this, but Animal Crossing: New Leaf made the back-up and restore function pretty complex.

Thank you for reading.
 
MnSG said:
I think I heard somewhere that Sword & Shield will not support Cloud Saves. Obviously, it's an anti-cheating protocol, since people could potentially abuse the Cloud Save feature to make replicas of their Pokemon party.
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Oh so it's like Splatoon 2 where problem wasn't even a problem and they decided to limit a basic feature.
 
The developers mentioned that the limit on the Pokemon roster had to happen sooner or later, based on this interview. Here's the relevant quote:

Junichi Masuda said:
There are a couple of different parts to the thinking behind it, but really the biggest reason for it is just the sheer number of Pokemon. We already have well over 800 Pokemon species, and there's going to be more added in these games. And now that they're on the Nintendo Switch, we're creating it with much higher fidelity with higher quality animations. But even more than that, it's coming down to the battle system. We're making sure we can keep everything balanced and give all the Pokemon that appear in the games a chance to shine.

We knew at some point we weren't going to be able to indefinitely keep supporting all of the Pokemon, and we just found that Sword and Shield would probably be a good point to go back and reevaluate what would be the best selection of Pokemon that appeal to the widest audience while keeping into consideration the balance of the battle system. It isn't just going to be all-new Pokemon in the Galar region Pokedex; there's still going to be a lot of favorites that fans will be able to bring over that they've adventured with previously. But yeah, it was pretty much just balancing and getting this optimal selection of Pokemon for the adventure we wanted to provide.
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The casual player is unlikely to worry about every Pokemon not returning, but a more dedicated player who might also be collectors might feel betrayed by this decision. It just happens that these games are the first to execute this decision, so the anger point is more or less focused on this game. I imagine that in later games fans would more or less be accustomed by this limitation (though best case scenario would be that every Pokemon could eventually join in the fun). I am predicting that the Dex will be at around 600, which is not ideal but hey, the more they could put in, the better.

I know I mentioned that competitive players might not every care about this, but I could foresee a scenario where they would be worked up about this. The way the metagame folds, the size of viable Pokemon more or less stays the same, which meant that as more Pokemon gets introduced, more and more will be considered unviable. As an example of this type of domination, Heatran is a premiere Fire-type, and unless any new competitor could do something it cannot, Heatran is pretty much the go-to pick for a Fire-type. If Heatran were gone, it would be interesting to see some new contenders.

Thank you for reading.
 
Princess Mario said:
MnSG said:
I think I heard somewhere that Sword & Shield will not support Cloud Saves. Obviously, it's an anti-cheating protocol, since people could potentially abuse the Cloud Save feature to make replicas of their Pokemon party.
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Oh so it's like Splatoon 2 where problem wasn't even a problem and they decided to limit a basic feature.
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It's nothing new though, as even older games like Pokemon Colosseum prevent players from copying their game data onto other Memory Cards. Even the Chao Garden data from Sonic Adventure 2 Battle can't be copied.
 
Princess Mario said:
MnSG said:
I think I heard somewhere that Sword & Shield will not support Cloud Saves. Obviously, it's an anti-cheating protocol, since people could potentially abuse the Cloud Save feature to make replicas of their Pokemon party.
Click to expand...
Oh so it's like Splatoon 2 where problem wasn't even a problem and they decided to limit a basic feature.
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iirc they're doing it with the new animal crossing too

"BUY NINTENDO SWITCH FOR CLOUD SAVES btw heres a bunch of cool first party games which dont support it"
 
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