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Sonictrainer

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I've never been a fan of all the extra Amie/Refresh whatever just because of the implications it has on the main game. Refresh essentially removed the penalty of status conditions caring on in between battles, by being a free heal. Both Amie and Refresh also awarded absolutely broken and ridiculous buffs to pokemon, such as increased evasion rates, higher critical hit chances, the ability to shrug off status conditions mid-battle and even endure some potential fatal blows. My biggest gripe with the games over the years has been its lack of difficulty curve and they keep introducing mechanics to take away what little bite it has.

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11 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

Both Amie and Refresh also awarded absolutely broken and ridiculous buffs to pokemon, such as increased evasion rates, higher critical hit chances, the ability to shrug off status conditions mid-battle and even endure some potential fatal blows.

The intention was there, but stuff like that should be a lot less influential to main game mechanics.

Higher evasion and crits would be an occasional bonus (5%) rather than something guaranteed to happen from do the optional stuff.

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47 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

@Pawn Camping? Has that been officially revealed yet, or is it just a rumour from one of the leaks? Cause I'm avoiding the leaks and haven't heard anything about it...

It's been unofficially revealed.

tumblr_psmy20F02P1whn70mo1_540.gif

In the last trailer, there's a quick shot of Sobble looking happy with a camping tent behind it.

Also, in the Treehouse Live, they showed the trainer picking up items that seem to be ingredients.

tumblr_pt5jmsorey1sojdvio1_1280.png

 

Quote

THIS LOOKS LIKE A GREAT SPOT TO FIND SOME INGREDIENTS

 

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3 hours ago, Diogenes said:

I haven't played pokemon in several generations so I can't comment on the specific executions, but I feel like interacting with your pokemon as more than just sets of moves and stats is actually a good thing and could probably stand to get more focus. Part of the reason I lost interest in the series is that it got hard to see them as anything more than that (combined with the mechanical side of training pokemon just being a huge tedious nightmare). The whole spectacle of finding, catching, and training fantastic monsters kinda falls apart when they just feel like a list of numbers with a face drawn on.

I do get that it's probably pretty costly to develop, though, and could easily cut into fleshing out other parts of the game.

All the more reason to reboot and refocus, IMO.

The thing is, Pokémon Amie (or whatever it's being called this generation) is incredibly shallow for how many new assets it requires. Everyone Pokémon requires specific animations for eating, for petting, for being happy or unhappy or angry, they need sweet spots and bad spots programmes etc etc... All that for what is an optional part is the game actually offers fairly broken payoffs as @Sega DogTagz pointed out. The depth of Pokémon Anime is none existent; all you do is scratch your Pokémon with the touchscreen after every battle (you can skip it or open it up whenever you like though). It's so much for so little gain.

I can totally see why people would like something along the lines of a virtual pet side to Pokémon, but it actually offers the absolute minimum that it could. I believe that XY even featured Amie minigames that were removed from SuMo. It just, to me, feels like a serious case of misplaced priorities to include a shallow and optional minigame at the cost of the main game.

I don't have a solution for such an issue though. There's obviously a reason why Amie exists, and that's because some of the audience want it. My first thought was to make a secondary title or expansion for SwSh that was purely Pokémon Amie. Charge extra money for it, make it worthwhile. But you'd lose a huge chunk of the audience that way; people who don't care or know enough to buy a costly accessory game/DLC (although that hasn't stopped them making accessories ala Pokémon Go). So I really don't have a solution. Maybe if it was a worthwhile, deep part of the game I'd be less inclined to say cut it.

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If they got rid of Amie/Refresh/this new camping thing, Sylveon would become unavailable. Unless you can think of a new way to get it?

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1 hour ago, Splash the Otter said:

If they got rid of Amie/Refresh/this new camping thing, Sylveon would become unavailable. Unless you can think of a new way to get it?

They've changed evolution methods before when the original mechanic wasn't carried forwards; with Feebas and Milotic, for instance.  Inkay and Malamar will probably have to change at some point, too.  Frankly, I think there are a lot of evolution methods which are over-complicated, usually because they were introduced cross-generation, and which I think could stand to be retconned and smoothed out.

With that said, while I personally don't care for it, I think some version of Amie/Refresh is a reasonable addition to the series that complements GameFreak's aim of making each Pokemon feel more individual and alive.  I wouldn't get rid of it... though I would combine friendship and affection.

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7 hours ago, Splash the Otter said:

If they got rid of Amie/Refresh/this new camping thing, Sylveon would become unavailable. Unless you can think of a new way to get it?

The plethora of arbitrary evolution and breeding mechanics are a bit of an issue for the series as is - without online guides, how would you know how to get Pokémon like Sylveon, Malamar or any of the babies that require specific incenses? There's absolutely nothing stopping them replacing the Sylveon evolution mechanic with literally anything else. Special stones were introduced to get Espeon and Umbreon in XD due to the lack of of time mechanic, Feebas can evolve via Prism Scale in games without contest stats... Pokémon could do with some streamlining and fat trimming. 

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I think most of the Eeveelutions should have optional methods to evolve via Stones like the original 3 anyway

  • Espeon - Sun Stone
  • Umbreon - Moon Stone
  • Leafeon - Leaf Stone
  • Glaceon - Ice Stone
  • Sylveon - Shiny Stone

Also, the exclusive moves Eevee gets in Let's Go should be Eeveelution exclusive moves in Sword/Shield.

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1 hour ago, Blue Blood said:

The plethora of arbitrary evolution and breeding mechanics are a bit of an issue for the series as is - without online guides, how would you know how to get Pokémon like Sylveon, Malamar or any of the babies that require specific incenses? 

Speaking of, Inkay is in Sword and Shield. Are they going to expect us to turn our Switches, joycons, or pro controllers upside down? That crap was dumb.

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In Black and White (or B2W2, I forget), you could get hints on how to evolve certain Pokemon from Professor Juniper when you talk to her on the Xtransceiver. They should put something like that in the games again.

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I've always wished the Pokedex would include method/level of evolution, even if you had to do it once to get it entered.  The incenses should never have made it out of that particular generation; subsequent Generations should simply have had Munchlax hatch automatically from Snorlax eggs, etc.  No explanation would even have been needed.

Not sure why trade evolutions would be behind a paywall; can you not trade directly between Sword and Shield?

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37 minutes ago, Pawn said:

There's also trade evolutions, which will now be locked behind a paywall if nothing's changed...

They’ll probably keep those with the excuse that you can still locally trade for free. How many people are like me and have both a brother and neighbor that will play locally though?

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32 minutes ago, Thrippa said:

Not sure why trade evolutions would be behind a paywall; can you not trade directly between Sword and Shield?

Because you’ll likely need to rely on the GTS. Which requires online. Which is behind a paywall.

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I've never really cared for trade evolutions anyway; the premise of having a potentially good Pokemon which won't evolve unless you give it away, and you never see the benefit, seems wildly flawed.  They should either rejig it into a general online/multiplayer interaction, or provide an in-game service which lets you loan out your Pokemon for a while to get it back later.

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2 hours ago, FFWF said:

I've never really cared for trade evolutions anyway; the premise of having a potentially good Pokemon which won't evolve unless you give it away, and you never see the benefit, seems wildly flawed.  They should either rejig it into a general online/multiplayer interaction, or provide an in-game service which lets you loan out your Pokemon for a while to get it back later.

...wut. when has anybody ever willingly given away a trade Evolution? You trade to evolve, then trade back. And the main purpose was to promote socialization with your peers back when communication wasn't as easy as simply turning on your phone.

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1 hour ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

...wut. when has anybody ever willingly given away a trade Evolution? You trade to evolve, then trade back.

It's very obvious that what you're meant to do, in GameFreak's ideal world, is to give your friend your Pokemon and feel happy that you're sharing parts of each other's playthrough and that your Pokemon will grow with your friend; hence their nicknames being fixed, getting bonus experience - the mechanics and the flavouring of whole process, including in-game trades, which are of course one-way only.  The fact that nobody would ever do this makes a mockery of the theme and reveals it for the meaningless busy-work it is.

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On 6/17/2019 at 11:28 AM, Diogenes said:

You think people wouldn't riot just the same if they did that?

They're in an unwinnable situation here.

They do it to push merchandise sales. There needs to be something new to make it easier to rehash the past.

If they made a AAA-style Pokémon game that didn’t have new Pokémon, I don’t think people would be too upset. I’d honestly prefer that over what we’re currently getting.

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Junichi Masuda responded to the backlash:

This...is not what I wanted to hear at all. You have no idea how upset I am at GameFreak and Masuda right now.

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I feel like I'm better off waiting for the inevitable follow-up title in a year where they miraculously are able to code in the remaining non-Galar Dex Pokémon and Pokémon Home stops looking like a waste of money (and they won't patch up SwSh even when they do that).

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It's difficult to be sure if they'll animate the remaining classic Pokemon for the inevitable enhanced version - and that is thought to be the issue now, it's that there are more new animations than people necessarily notice (although Mega Evolutions they're clearly trying to replace mechanically).  Implementing the remaining Pokemon for the enhanced version would not only set up expectations for future generations that they're specifically trying to avoid now, but it would also open them up to the accusation, already being levelled, that they could have perfectly well included all Pokemon if they'd only delayed the game.  I don't think they'll bother; they'll put their efforts elsewhere.

Honestly, the real problem is the annualisation of the mainline franchise.  We're currently in our longest streak of consecutively-released mainline games since the classic days, and GameFreak are taking fewer and fewer gap years.  With the enhanced versions, GameFreak is simulating the long-term event-based support some major games get, but by literally making additional games rather than delivering it as DLC.  As they move into HD graphics and home consoles, I don't think that approach will continue to be sustainable - not just for consumers, but for their own development teams.  They should really consider slowing down, supporting their releases over a longer period with things like classic Pokemon DLC packs and events and in-game tournaments and all that stuff people go for in other big-deal games; and using that to take more gap years, maybe lean on their neglected spin-off lines more, give new games additional time in development.

Honestly, I literally couldn't care less about bringing old Pokemon forwards, but it's become more and more obvious that GameFreak have been rushing the development of recent games.  I'm hoping the increased scrutiny will bring about a genuine change in their development practices - though in reality, only decreased sales will do that.

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Wow, why did Masuda even bother responding with such a obvious pointless PR stunt reply that can be boiled down to  "Yeah we hear you... and we really don't care!" that reply won't stop anybody from being upset.

Again maybe far more fans could put up with the missing Pokemon better if the rest of the game was honestly getting the extra polish as gamefreak claims it allows them to do... But that clearly isn't what is going on here because Sword & Shield currently has a awful showcase of animations including MANY copied and pasted from previous games, and it has lots of problems spotted in the trailer such as bad pop-in +  lack of textures among other embarrassing stuff. Seriously It is pretty sad when a Wii Pokemon spinoff game from over 10 years ago had far better effort put into it's battle system animations then a modern console game does.

Watch this video below for a good example on what I mean.

The only unknown factor is how the Pokemon camping mini-game will be handled... but considering what we been already seeing, I would bet poke-dollars it too doesn't have much effort put into it either and won't justify anything. This game feels more like a shovelware game with each passing day.

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What did people expect really? They knew putting back in the ND wasn't gonna be feasible no matter how much people complained about it. Matsuda probably just wanted to make the word on that final in case people thought otherwise. 

IT sucks and people are free to keep shitting on the game, but they probably just wanted to rip off the band-aid 

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6 hours ago, Lord-Dreamerz said:

Wow, why did Masuda even bother responding with such a obvious pointless PR stunt reply that can be boiled down to  "Yeah we hear you... and we really don't care!" that reply won't stop anybody from being upset.

No reply was ever going to, besides "we immediately capitulate to all of your demands", which was never going to happen. And I'm sure you wouldn't have been happier if they had said nothing.

And nothing about this reply says "we hear and don't care". He even said it was a hard decision to make himself. If you want to believe he's lying and they're just lazy or whatever, fine, sure, believe what you want. But don't go making up things to get mad about.

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4 hours ago, Soniman said:

What did people expect really? They knew putting back in the ND wasn't gonna be feasible no matter how much people complained about it.

They could have promised to patch the remaining Pokemon in post-launch.

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