You really wanna sacrifice how good trainer customization is for 2D sprites????
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Pokemon Direct Announced for January 9th
- Thread starter MondoMega
- Start date
You really wanna sacrifice how good trainer customization is for 2D sprites????
I'd really be interested in reading this thread, if you ever did do it you could do it as a positive celebration of Gen 2 rather than a negative tear down of Sw/Sh. I know it'd be impossible to ignore those shortcomings if you were doing a comparison, but making it a positive thread might make it enjoyable to write. And it's certainly be awesome to read.
I love trainer customization too but all things considered, it's not as if they couldn't include it in a 2D game either, just look at the likes of Stardew
I'd prefer they stick to models though, I'd even be fine with them cutting the Pokédex even more if it meant making the Pokémon more lifelike
omg trainer customization would be so far down the list of things i would miss if we could go back to charming 2D sprites. how anyone could prefer the ass-ugly 3D visuals of the 3DS games over the sprites beforehand is beyond me.
They already mentioned why. They're afraid that kids will drop the games for mobile games if they get lost or if it's too difficult for them.
I believe they use the engine based on Let's Go. Which doesn't really seem any different from Sun/Moon outside of more expressive trainers. They still have that weird ass scaling they implement in battles. Even on the Switch it's as if certain Pokemon were still confined to a 3DS screen. Wailord, Eternatus, etc. Giant Pokemon smaller than a trainer outside of cutscenes and Dynamax.
Masuda's direction lives on in Ohmori sadly.
Gamefreak has changed its philosophy for designing Pokemon games. It's not because of laziness or a lack of skill. They just no longer wish to follow the pre-Gen 6 style of developing games.
This is pretty much what FF said. For better or worse, the aspects of the games that are being criticised are very clearly design choices. Although I'd say it's impossible to dismiss the tight turn around times for Pokemon games as a factor in some of these decisions.
I'd feel much better if I knew they were just lazy or incompetent rather than they chose to make the games bad on purpose.
That's what makes the Masuda quotes about phones so worrying, because it sounds like you're right.
Shit like this is so ridiculous lol, it's like "so... You don't want me to dedicate a lot of time into Pokemon???"Morimoto, pls save us. Masuda and Ohmori have gone mad with power and they're ruining Pokemon
My framing was that the battle, training, and breeding mechanics are stronger than ever but the character, map, and quest designs are weaker than ever. The goal was just to illustrate how dramatically those aspects of the games have simplified. I wanted to examine the shifting priorities over the last few years and just discuss what the consequences of those shifts have been.
It was a pretty downer thread (matching my mood at the time) though so that's why I didn't bother posting. Quite frankly our community has enough takes on Pokémon. I'm emotionally indulgent plenty enough without needing to make my own massive thread for it.
Maybe in another few months when people are more in the mindset to look forward to the future rather than litigate the present. I think there's still too much tension over the game people are actively playing.
The thing is: that's not true. I have to agree I was actually surprised they kept the level of non-linearity the originals had, but they did gut the dungeon design. This is Cerulean Cave in the original:
This is Cerulean Cave in Let's Go (part of it, but you get the picture)
They straight up removed the maze.
Nah I totally agree this is an emotional response and understandable emotional response, but the degree to which people are attacking others over it is gross. I'd also have hoped people went through the stages a bit further for something like this a lot faster. I think communication of it was poor and Game Freak miscalculated the emotional attachment because to them, like to a lot of us, this was an inevitability.
The people I know were either confused as to how they hadn't already started doing this two generations ago or don't play every single Pokémon game that ever comes out so the overwhelmingly negative opinion is very much an internet bubble thing to me.
I'll admit I never did Cerulean Cave. in the original or the remake. I had my fill by the time I beat the E4. but Silph Co was bad design then and bad design now, so just keeping it was a surprise to meThe thing is: that's not true. I have to agree I was actually surprised they kept the level of non-linearity the originals had, but they did gut the dungeon design. This is Cerulean Cave in the original:
This is Cerulean Cave in Let's Go (part of it, but you get the picture)
They straight up removed the maze.
I'm fine with not every pokemon being in here. It's a lot of work to program and do animations for hundreds of mon.
What isnt ok is the awful story, zero challenge, bad framerate when connected online, bad overworld routes, and poor post game. There is plenty wrong here other than the dex issues.
What isnt ok is the awful story, zero challenge, bad framerate when connected online, bad overworld routes, and poor post game. There is plenty wrong here other than the dex issues.
"Lazy dev" is a bad argument, but I don't like the attitude that Game Freak's shit don't stink, exactly because of comments like this.Morimoto, pls save us. Masuda and Ohmori have gone mad with power and they're ruining Pokemon
It really bums me out that I'm not buying the latest entries in a series I really love. But I just can't build enough interest in SwSh. It's such a shame, the new Pokemon designs even look interesting.
I'd love it if it meant sacrificing the third game model. For me the third game model means not buying the game when it first comes out. And that sucks.
I don't post often, but I read this and just had to say that you've really hit the nail on the head. Such a great post.
I miss old school quest and world design in Pokémon so much.
I recall that in Silph Co you get to a point where they give you a key that allows you to open every door and essentially skip to the end if you so please. I don't think that was in the original? At least I don't have any memory of it, maybe someone can clarify it for me. I don't have a particular problem with that one, in any case. Absolutely destroying the level design of the optional post-game dungeon in the game, though? That hurt a lot. I remember being confused because I couldn't find the maze just to realize that... there was no maze. The weird big hall with lots of stairs and items spread around was supposed to be the maze.
You know what? No. I prefer the linearity of Sword/Shield than the garbage dungeon design of gen 1/2. Shitty dungeon design is not interesting to me and I'd rather zoom past a level than get stuck doing repetitive things. The fact that we're pretending that the Strength puzzles, Flash HMs, or Ice sliding puzzles are somehow good is idiotic.
you got the card key in the original too.
I mean they could work on continuing improving dungeon design rather than throw it out the window. The dungeon design of the old games isn't so much shitty as it is simple and 20 or more years old now.
You don't need HMs to have good level design, Gen 5 seemed to manage just fine with HM usage being almost completely non-compulsory
My thing is that I prefer things be improved upon than removed. There's lots of things in Pokémon that I thought would be improved and iterated upon and instead they have been left out. This is especially the case over the course of the 3D games, culminating in Sword & Shield.
I liked the dungeons and mazes and towers in the Game Boy games but I'd never want modern games to have those sort of dungeons. Those are a relic of a black and white portable device. But 20 years later instead of having innovative dungeon designs that explore different types of puzzles, atmospheres, and story beats, we have literally nothing. I don't prefer that at all. It's a very "where's the beef?" sort of feeling. It's an empty sandwich.
Edit: Obviously if you're only in it for the battle simulation then none of this would matter to you anyway.
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Or, you know, people could just like dungeons and puzzles without pretending to feel that way. Like, at most, aside from rock tunnel without flash I'm struggling to think of a dungeon throughout gens 1 or 2, let alone the whole series, that are straight up annoying or needlessly repetitive to go through from a design perspective (not including random encounters). The way flash works in gen 3 is pretty ass, but the dungeons that require it aren't overly/needlessly complex. In gens 3 through 5, it feels like the critical path is always pretty apparent but there was still plenty to seek out. Now, it just feels like there isn't anything beyond points A and B besides some tiny branches that lead off to an item or something. Despite what it did to Sky Pillar, ORAS at least has Sea Mauville as a cool area to explore, and not all of the dungeons were completely ruined. That just feels completely absent in X/Y and the gen 7/8 games, and it kinda sucks.
I disagree with the lack of atmosphere in any of the modern gens though. I also greatly prefer the story beats of the 3D generations over the overlauded junk that was V's story. So yeah, I disagree that there's nothing there.
Could you imagine a direct where they talk about patching the performance? I think the internet would be in tears.
any sort of non-gamebreaking bug fixing patch would be a revelation
It's PKMN so it's most likely gonna be a lot of fluff with one announcement. Expecting a lot of talk of that storage bullshit.
Thanks for telling me!
But I'm not pretending when I say I love ice sliding puzzles. I got stuck in Gold and Silver as a child there and had to get my friend to help me. I am fond of that memory. I also think Strength puzzles helped me develop spatial awareness. I made mental notes of different shapes that I could use to solve puzzles beyond the game, such as "the Mickey shape", as I called it. Not to mention how my friends and I would round up during the break trying to solve the Regi connundrum. That's not to say the puzzles were great or perfect, but they were for sure something that needed to be improved upon, instead of eliminated altogether.
Now I'm older, wiser (I hope!) and have hundreds of games beaten under my belt, so I cannot pretend to speak about how my former self would think about SwSh's level design, but I'm not going to lie: I don't think there's anything in Galar that would strike my fancy. Like, I am legitimately trying to think of anything but the closest I can think of is the openness of the wild area. But that's no dungeon or puzzle, that's an entire thing altogether.
Also, to cover my bases, I don't think weird obscure gimmicky evolution methods are equivalent to the Regi puzzle. There's a big difference between having a bunch of legendaries hidden behind a convoluted mistery that is hinted at in the game and having a Pokémon I want to evolve but no idea how to do it. There should be hints at this point at the very least. Like, Sword and Shield doesn't even keep the QoL they added to the Pokedex in Sun and Moon where you could see whether your Pokémon would evolve or not and I don't get why.
I didn't say any of that that though. I'm specifically talking about dungeons:
Now consider the fact that this same basic gameplay loop has stayed the same since the 90's, and also the fact that the last big swathe of core, permanent changes to the franchise were in Gold and Silver, which came out in 1999/2000 - it's not wonder people are becoming fatigued.
That's where I'm at right now. I enjoyed Shield, but the formula is starting to wear so thin and it really doesn't feel like it's changed much from earlier games. It wouldn't be as much of a problem if Sword and Shield didn't feel so rushed and light on content, which only exacerbates that issue. Regardless, the games will still sell and Game Freak have no real impetous to sit down
Long running, beloved franchises re-invent and evolve themselves for the better all the time, while still staying true to their roots and core DNA. Pokemon can do the same while still being a Pokemon game. Hell, I'd be happy if they killed the hyper linearity they seem to love these days, made the world bigger scale and made it more challenging but even that seems too much to ask.
This nails it. This is the exact thing I mean when I say they need to kill the hyper linearity. No one is asking for Breath of the Wild: Pokemon Edition, but more side quests and distractions along the way would be great. Pokemon Tower, Tin Tower, Power Plants etc. Hell, even the random wild encounters with Legendaries. Boy, I miss all of that.
What story beats does Sword and Shield even have? lmao
"Go beat the gyms while we talk about the vague history of Galar and stuff X10"
"Leon is in a private meeting with the Chairman, so something sinister is clearly afoot. Let's go storm his tower for no reason"
"btw gonna cause armageddon because Leon won't wait a day. plz understand."
Shit is so half-baked its embarrassing, and you're gonna call Gen 5 bad? Seriously?
I can understand that some people like puzzles but honestly, I was very frustrated as a child getting stuck in puzzles in games that were not about puzzles.
That is, if in Zelda I could not complete a puzzle I understood it, it is the point of the game. But in Pokémon I didn't understand that I had to waste so much time.
Therefore, I don't miss the puzzles in Pokémon at all. They were always something frustrating and boring for me in these games.
While I'm in the middle of my own disagreement with him, he did say "3D games" and not just Sword & Shield. He could mean Sun & Moon, in which case I would largely agree with him. I like Sun & Moon's story a lot and think it has great characters.
The trainer customization is great tho 😭😭😭
I just can't see the appeal of running through corridors. Be it in caves or as a city. Even as a kid trial and error through the caves felt rewarding. While I'm glad they ended up ditching the need for HMs, I dislike the lack of exploration we have. There's no excitement of discovering a new location in a cave or surfing to an area you couldn't before. Just feels like an on rails "adventure" nowdays.
I agree with you on that point, but saying "3D games" in this context doesn't make much sense when Sun and Moon ( the OG versions, not Ultra) are the only 3D games with a story that's actually good.
It's a neat feature but the game is so shallow that it's like a skeleton with a mustache. Yeah, it has a neat mustache, but it's dead.