To the person who sent me 4 nice messages about why I’m reacting like this let me explain it
“how much experience would you say you have in terms of game development? i get that you’re upset + i’m really not trying to doubt the validity of that! but when I hear stuff like “just give the games more dev time” it just comes off as being kinda childish? :/ [¼]”
1) I actually work for a video game company at the moment as a development tester, I won’t name it though because I’m under NDA for our project and I have too much of a social media presence on tumblr to want to open that can of worms or have to navigate around that. (so don’t ask I’m not gonna say anything) I’m just a playtester mind you but still
“Like, in terms of general game balance alone, adding new characters to a game’s roster can increase balance challenges exponentially with each new character added. + even if they were willing to put in the time to add all the other pokemon, that doesn’t mean they necessarily have the budget to do so. so @ this point, it’s basically entirely too late for them to switch things up now [2/4]”
2) I am very upset, and I understand how all caps expression of that can come off as childish, but the reality of the situation is Gamefreak is the one who said they didn’t have enough development time to do the things that they wanted to. They said that piece, so my response to that *Then give it more time* as the preferable solution then cutting content (Content we care about anyway, no one cares about Dynamax)
“more personally, i think it’s good for pokemon to experiment with new things + new ideas with their games, yes there will be mistakes but imo that’s far far better than just releasing the same things over and over without ever taking any risks. + it sounds like your only real reason for saying that there won’t be a patch/update/dlc/some way to preserve non-SnS-compatible pokemon is “theyve never done it before” ? (man, sorry for ranting, I started typing and somehow it just kept happening) [¾]”
3) Wanting to give focus to new pokemon was never the issue. No one plays through new games with their lv 100 Charizard from Red. One, because you can’t. The badges system specifically prevents this. Powerful pokemon at the start of the game won’t listen to you and are useless. The most people do Is transfer over an egg of the pokemon species that they want as a starter, which is harmless
Plus, Pokemon Home is not going to finished anyway until Months after SWSH’s release, so it’s literally impossible to play through the story with your old favorites. That’s not the issue either
the entire issue is all about Post Game Content. Once you’ve completed the main story and caught the legendary what do you do? Casual players just leave. They drop it and never look back. Non Casual players play with the mechanics of the game, Breeding, Egg Moves, IVS, Training, Battling, Maximizing a roster, REPLAYING the game with their favorites, putting themed teams together, catching shinies, building up the pokedex. ALL of that RELIES on the Pokemon itself just existing. That’s all that’s needed for people to actually fully enjoy the game
Third, Gamefreak as a company is a terrible developer. They have insanely terrible development practices and straight up LIE to fans about things they did and will do.
There’s gonna be some techie stuff I’m gonna try to explain but hopefully this will give you an idea of what I mean
Way back when Pokemon Silver/Gold were being created, they were struggling to put everything into the game, just the basics and new pokemon. But apparently all it took was one Man, Iwata, to look at the way they made their game’s code, REDO EVERYTHING, and that gave up SO MUCH SPACE that they then decided to include the ENTIRE FIRST REGION OF KANTO INSIDE THE GAME, LITERALLY 2 FOR 1 DEAL.
Now, however much of a god you think Iwata he isn’t he’s one man with actual programming experience. It is sad that he could do what a whole team of people could not. and this is just one example.
They complained about SWSH specifically not having the time to develop all of the models they needed for the game, alright so let’s go into that
This Dynamax phenomenon, where the Pokemon gets bigger, gets a red shade, and has some storm clouds in the background in the environment signifying the change. How would you *THINK* a game developer would handle this issue?
If you answered “Use the same regular Pokemon model they already have, make it bigger slightly, add a red tinge overlay to the texture that can be reused for all pokemon, and add a second environment background with the clouds that can switch out as needed, again, able to be reused for all pokemon” You’d be correct!
Guess what Gamefreak DIDN”T DO. THAT.
You know what they did? They made seperate unique models for the dynamax pokemon that are bigger, red tinged, and have the clouds attached to them. Every single pokemon now that has double the models needed and the only difference in those models is big red and clouds.
Even if you have no experience developing games, you can understand how making 2000+ models and animating them is twice the work of making 1000+ models. And if they are complaining about how making all the models was too much work, they dug this hole themselves, I have no sympathy. They prioritized the gimmick of dynamaxing OVER having all of the Pokemon in the game.
Worse, this was entirely unnecessary. Because something they promised us way back when 3D Pokemon first became a thing with X and Y is that they specifically made huge fully detailed models of all the pokemon that runs slow on the 3ds hardware because it was meant for later hardwares that would be more powerful, aka the switch. So we put up with XY and USUM and ORAS being laggy and slow, because of the future promise that they would look great on later hardware.
Today we learn that apparently everytime they’ve been making a new game. Not only have they been coding the exact same systems and battling and breeding from the ground up from square 1 each time for every game instead of reusing their previous work to save time, they also (Apparently) remade the models for entirely for SWSH. and Remade the animations. even though they look IDENTICAL to the ones theyve been using this whole time.
and this is straight up because THEY DON’T KNOW HOW TO IMPORT AND USE THEIR PREVIOUS WORK. They don’t know how to use their *OWN* stuff. That is straight up RIDICULOUS.
As a developer of the one of the most lucrative franchises on the Planet (90 Billion, thats more than Mario, more than the MCU, more than so many things) Treating them like they don’t have the tech or the resources to do this properly is laughable.
The Switch is perfectly capable of making a Pokemon game on the scale of something like Xenoblade, you know how we know that? Because modern JRPGS like Dragon Quest and Xenoblade ALREADY EXIST ON THE SWITCH JUST FINE.
If those games can make hundreds and thousands of fully detailed enemie monsters with a handful of unique animations ON TOP OF every other complicated system in Battle JRPGS, from lesser and even INDIE development companies. Gamefreak has no excuse, they just do not. If their team is too small, they need to make it bigger, if their tech is outdated, they need to get updated tech, if they need more development time, they need to scrap the yearly release schedule and focus on polishing the games. There is no reason why they can’t do any of those things, they are hardly impossible for a franchise on this scale.
The Switch can ruin dark souls and the witcher. Saying it can’t run a pokemon game the way they are making it, is entirely the dev studio’s fault and I have no sympathy.
Made even worse for the fact that Masuda and Gamefreak have clearly stated in in past years that they are SICK of making Pokemon over and over and just want to do different things. which, fine, I get it, doing the same thing over and over is tedious but also THIER OWN FAULT. If theyre going to ruin the game out of incompetence and spite and they don’t want to do it? Then give it to someone who does. That’s the only solution at this point.
Pokemon is overdue for a ground up reboot by a different developer. One who can actually create a reasonable workload and handle it themselves. Straight up.
“anyways, i guess all i was really trying to say was “please calm down and be a bit more patient”, maybe that’s rude of me (honestly idk) hopefully things will turn out better than they seem like they will at the moment! [4/4]”
I understand, and thankyou for your concern, but it wasn’t just about this, this has been a long time coming. Fans have been putting up with terrible decisions from Gamefreak for years, putting up with false promises and lies (Remember the controversy over Let’s Go being so casual and meant for little kids? Gamefreak’s response to that was literally “Don’t worry guys, the main game will be for the veteran players, Let’s Go is for the kiddies”
and it’s finally popped the cork. It’s not just about SWSH it’s about the future of the series.
About the thing about the models of Dynamax being seperate models and wanting proof: here’s a video of Dyna Steelix popping into the game, look closely when it pops up in the screen:
https://imgtc.ws/i/WoktNNM.webm
You know what pops in with the Pokemon model at the exact same time? That swirly death vortex and the three clouds. That’s ridonkulous for anyone who knows anything about modelling. They made a unique seperate Model for the Pokemon itself + Background effects instead of just reusing the same Pokemon models and making a seperate background effect. Literally doubling their animation and modelling workload.
