Technical performance in SV

[TheCapsFan]

Their games look great and really don't have any technical hiccups, at least not major. Honestly Scarlet and Violet don't really look any better than the remaster of Xenoblade 1 (i'd argue the latter looks better, specially in lighting) and the latter never had any perfomance issue with me playing on the Switch Lite.

Hm, that’s an interesting argument because I agree that Xenoblade DE looks better than S/V, but disagree that it’s anywhere close. I can kind of see where you’re coming from wrt resolution - i know the dynamic resolution in Xeno can result in something that looks as blurry as a 3DS game at time, ESPECIALLY in handheld/on the Lite - but aside from lighting, which you mentioned (The S/V lighting engine as well as PLA’s, because I think they’re the same, look like they’re BARELY an initial development engine. Even SwSh was better.), Xeno also knocks it out of the park in terms of the vistas. I mean, think of the lighthouse scene and compare that to the first scene when you step out on Gaur Plain. It’s not even close. Xeno does such a good job of making the world seem large and the player feel small because the details in the backgrounds of the vistas tell you exactly where you are at any given time. It gives off a sense of scale that, in my opinion, more than makes up for the shoddy resolution and somewhat basic texture work in the closer-up environments.

 

[Aulos]

Yeah... S/V have some technical issues. Most noticeable to me was when I went back to the cave where the introduction of the box legendary scenes took place, my character somehow fell through the floor. Lol. However, the game bounced me back. I didn't know what was going to happen - if it was going to be infinite or crash the game or whatever, but it bounced my character back up, so... just a blip in my gameplay so far.

I only see issues with the frame rate with the animation of people in some scenes. The school classroom scene has really choppy movements for the kids and people on the map in a short distance also have the same issues. Certainly, we shouldn't be having this issue in a game from a franchise as HUGE as Pokemon. I don't know what the deal is. HOWEVER, it hasn't ruined my enjoyment of the game so far. Listen, I spent many, many years trying to play The Sims 2 and 3 on low spec PCs because I just didn't have the money to get otherwise. These complaints about framerate in Pokemon SV are laughably minor compared to what I dealt with in those games, where any movement of the camera at all required loading. And by that, I mean, the games froze, constantly. I just can't be bothered by Pokemon SV's frame issues. SURE, they shouldn't be there, but it isn't ruining the game for me. I've been through far worse than this. This isn't actually impacting my experience with the game much at all.

 

[Ryoma Maser]

From everything I’ve seen and heard, it seems like The Pokémon Company is pushing Game Freak to its limits in terms of development time. I’m afraid that all these technical issues mean that Game Freak’s next game release is going to be almost unplayable and damage the franchise’s reputation even more than Dexit did (to the point of making severe dents in profits and expenses to fix them) if TPC keeps insisting on their yearly release schedule. At the very least they should demand that Game Freak not split their staff into two.

This statement is factually incorrect. The Pokémon Company cannot push GameFreak in anyway, why? GameFreak owns The Pokémon Company, it is one of three major shareholders alongside Nintendo and Creatures, with GameFreak having the most shares to my knowledge (last I check, it was GameFreak 33%, Nintendo and Creatures 32%, I don't know if that's changed since the information has been lost to me). I hate that this assumption is still being passed around as fact, Joe Merrick literally pointed this out yesterday on social media this fact and yet most ignore him despite reporting on the Pokémon franchise being his job.

Part of the blame is that Pokémon is a multimedia franchise, but we see other multimedia franchises do perfectly fine even if delays are necessary. Why is this? GameFreak mostly likes having a game out every year, but we already had Legends Arceus which everyone had expected DLC for which we never got. Instead we Scarlet and Violet, in mix probably due to pandemic delays and companies playing catch up. By all means, Scarlet and Violet should've been delayed even if the problems aren't as severed as we think they are (I haven't gotten the game yet, so I cannot confirmed on my part other than videos on the subject), at this point since it was not delayed to 2023, the game needs a patch as soon as possible preferably before Christmas when more people will get the game.

What's strange is that The Pokémon Company isn't following suit on the Scarlet & Violet hype. They haven't promoted a new anime yet despite Journeys looks to be ending (and even stranger, how fast this Pokémon anime went) and still looks like it could continue (I don't follow the anime, but they haven't seem to conclude Project Mew yet) which has happen with the infamous Declores Island arc in the Black & White anime. The trading card game as been promoting another Sword & Shield/Legends Arceus set as of late. So why is The Pokémon Company behind GameFreak? Contrary to what people claim about their company relationship.

What I can conclude and this is obviously not concrete, GameFreak is churning out games faster than companies can promote them. This becomes a problem when you look at GameFreak's staff, which is a small amount in the 200-300 range, which is not a problem per say but a problem in the span of the timeframe their releasing games since they can't further attention into certain stuff like these glitches. What's even more of a problem is that there is two teams at GameFreak, which splits the small team even further to work on two different games (Legends and LGPE was done like this by separate teams while the "main" games SwSh & SV were worked on by another). If GameFreak had longer development cycles, these smaller teams would not be a problem (XY benefited from being worked on before Black & White was even in development, one the longest development cycles for GameFreak in recent memory. XenoBlade Chronicles 2 had mostly a team of 40 Monolith Soft Employees most of development due staff being on BOTW but still looks better than SwSh and SV due to being worked on longer despite its own graphical issues as well as being released in the Switch's debut year of 2017). There is also that GameFreak starts from scratch every game outside of few things like Pokémon models that are updated every so often.

Now, stuff like this wouldn't be a problem if GameFreak outsource some of the work, but they do and they don't. Most spinoffs are outsourced to outside companies, BDSP was famously the first outsourced main game despite being a one-one remake and Legends had Monolith Soft support on it. So it begs the question why SV didn't have outsource work on it, like the aforementioned Monolith Soft (and it wouldn't be a problem for them if you think they were busy with XC3 or BOTW2, since they have multiple studios focused on their own games and supporting other Nintendo games) but I cannot really come up with a hypothetical conclusion for that.

Pokémon is the most profitable franchise in the world and yet there is still problems like this (even Mickey Mouse doesn't get new stuff this quickly). I started high school with ORAS (Gen 6) coming out, now I'm a college senior and we're on Gen 9 already and yet Gen 9 looks like a early Wii U game when Wii U and Switch games have surpassed that (bringing back up XenoBlade, as XCX is a 2015 Wii U game is better looking than this). Nintendo as a fellow shareholder should step in.

GameFreak's problem isn't the Switch not being powerful enough, not The Pokémon Company forcing them to make yearly games, or any other excuse; as far as I can tell, their problem is themselves.

 

[Dizzard]

I just had a funny bug. You know the animation that plays when you jump from a height on Miraidon? It was that but I hit the ground but the landing animation never played so Miraidon was running around on it's front legs.

It at least reset my character after a few seconds so it wasn't game breaking.

 

[MrMeowPuss]

I think another reason why this seems so bad is Pokémon games are usually bug free (in my experience anyways) so for a franchise that’s rarely had any issues to all of a sudden to be filled with them it’s even more shocking.

 

[Neo Blaze]

I think another reason why this seems so bad is Pokémon games are usually bug free (in my experience anyways) so for a franchise that’s rarely had any issues to all of a sudden to be filled with them it’s even more shocking.

This is very true from my experience. I have played every Generation and prior to PLA I had never come across any notable glitches from what I remember. Not even in SwSh. In PLA I have come across a couple of glitches but only after many hours of playing. I started Violet yesterday and I'm not exeggerating when I say I've had 3 major glitches happen to me after only an hour of playing. I wasn't even doing anything special or glitch-provoking, just following along the story.

 

[Cute Charm]

So soon do people forget how much X and Y lagged (and the game breaking Lumiose City glitch) and Sun and Moon was literally unplayable on anything but a New 3DS despite not being an exclusive.

3D Pokémon games have always had issues. It doesn't help that ever since X and Y, there hasn't been a buffer time to take care of the game breaking bugs anymore due to the worldwide releases. I mean just look at the list of glitches that were patched out of the localized versions.

 

[Aulos]

and Sun and Moon was literally unplayable on anything but a New 3DS despite not being an exclusive.

That was not my experience at all. I played Sun (and Ultra Sun) on my original 3DS (the only 3DS I have ever had) and didn't find them "unplayable" at all.

 

[Cute Charm]

That was not my experience at all. I played Sun (and Ultra Sun) on my original 3DS (the only 3DS I have ever had) and didn't find them "unplayable" at all.

For me, and especially on an original 3DS XL, they lagged a lot more than X, Y, and ORAS did.

 

[MrMeowPuss]

This is very true from my experience. I have played every Generation and prior to PLA I had never come across any notable glitches from what I remember. Not even in SwSh. In PLA I have come across a couple of glitches but only after many hours of playing. I started Violet yesterday and I'm not exeggerating when I say I've had 3 major glitches happen to me after only an hour of playing. I wasn't even doing anything special or glitch-provoking, just following along the story.

Yeah for me I can only remember that bug with X and Y that effected your save but that was quickly patched, aside from that I’ve never seen issues like this but a lot of the cry online is like this is the typical thing from GF and people are sick of it.
My main issue has just been the choppy frame rate, like one area near water it must have dropped to at least 10fps as I hadn’t ever seen a Pokémon game that bad.

 

[Arylett Charnoa]

I've been playing for a few hours, and the performance is godawful. The frame rate got worse the longer I played, which I read is due to a memory leak issue and that the game has to be periodically reset in order to maintain performance. What is this? This is probably one of the most broken games Game Freak has put out in recent times. I thought Legends Arceus was bad with its looks and odd bouts of frame rate issues, but this game makes it look perfectly polished in comparison. It's definitely impacting my enjoyment. All the weird hiccups are giving me headaches.

The world is so vast, but traversing it just feels more and more sluggish as performance starts to drop. It's like trodding through molasses. Honestly, this is inexcusable. They shouldn't have released it the same year as Legends Arceus. That game was good enough to tide us over for a while. But then again, this is modern day Game Freak. I should've expected it to get this awful.

 

[nickdt]

From everything I’ve seen and heard, it seems like The Pokémon Company is pushing Game Freak to its limits in terms of development time. I’m afraid that all these technical issues mean that Game Freak’s next game release is going to be almost unplayable and damage the franchise’s reputation even more than Dexit did (to the point of making severe dents in profits and expenses to fix them) if TPC keeps insisting on their yearly release schedule. At the very least they should demand that Game Freak not split their staff into two.

This is a false statement.

If all... the one thing that forces Gamefreak to come out with a new generation every 3 years, is the competitive scene/VGC, since they become stale after 2 years, because everyone and their mothers use the same Pokemon... meaning Gamefreak needs to come out with new material the 2 years, which is its 3rd year.

The reason there could be a gap of 4 between Hoenn/Sinnoh and Sinnoh/Unova, was that the competitive scene wasn't as big then as it is now.

 

[Norzan]

If all... the one thing that forces Gamefreak to come out with a new generation every 3 years, is the competitive scene/VGC, since they become stale after 2 years, because everyone and their mothers use the same Pokemon... meaning Gamefreak needs to come out with new material the 2 years, which is its 3rd year.

Which with the existence of DLC no longer needs to be a thing. They can just release one game per generation and supplement it with DLC instead of churning out a game each year.

 

[RC821]

I think Game Freak should do a survey.

 

[hanecco]

It seems like Nintendo anticipated the performance issues would upset people; they're going against their eShop policy to issue refunds on this game. I've seen comments saying that GameStop (America) have also introduced a forgiving return policy for the game.

 

[Norzan]

So soon do people forget how much X and Y lagged

It only lagged in Triple Battles and occassionaly on Horde battles, outside of that it ran smooth. And sure, it has the infamous Lumiose glitch that could literally softlock the game, but that's still only one glitch. Plus i can somewhat forgive these given that it was their first fully 3D game, unlike Scarlet and Violet which is like their ninth 3D game or so.

Sun and Moon also ran well, only going to single framerate digits in Totem battles and that free for all battle type (i forget its name). Outside of that it ran well.

 

[DarkMeow]

It's really sad to see where the games have ended up. Game Freak used to release polished games with few bugs. Now all that seems to come out are buggy spaghetti code messes that feel like a pre-release version instead of an actual finished game. What is this, generation I? They've probably seen how all these other game companies can get away with slacking on the work they're supposed to be doing in order to release a game early to rake in the profits. At least, that's my take on it. As long as Game Freak makes money, they aren't liable to do anything about the stuff they've been churning out recently. If people buy, nothing will change.

 

[UxieLover1994]

I just had a Litleo Tera Raid (Ground-type) freeze on me as we were about to begin, forcing me to reset and lose access to Random for a few minutes. I suspect it may be another issue with the game, so I've decided to share it here in case anyone else had a Tera Raid freeze on them. On the other hand, South Australia has endured thunderstorms the whole weekend, often leading to poor internet services. Since resetting, I've done over 10 raids as of this post, all without major issues.

I would assume Game Freak are aware of the issues by now and working on a fix, like they did with Lumiose in XY and Cherrim and Cresselia in PLA. A patch may be the only way to protect their reputation (and, as I fear, maybe their lives), if only temporary.

 

[TheCapsFan]

Now, stuff like this wouldn't be a problem if GameFreak outsource some of the work, but they do and they don't. Most spinoffs are outsourced to outside companies, BDSP was famously the first outsourced main game despite being a one-one remake and Legends had Monolith Soft support on it. So it begs the question why SV didn't have outsource work on it, like the aforementioned Monolith Soft (and it wouldn't be a problem for them if you think they were busy with XC3 or BOTW2, since they have multiple studios focused on their own games and supporting other Nintendo games) but I cannot really come up with a hypothetical conclusion for that.

I agree with the majority of your post, but I did want to point out that Monolith Soft was confirmed to NOT have worked on Legends Arceus as they don't appear in the credits of the game. The studio was likely mostly finishing up Xenoblade Chronicles 3, with some devs assisting with Splatoon 3 at the time. I wouldn't be surprised if another set of devs were helping with TLOZ Tears of the Kingdom as well.

Your point about the anime in particular is interesting. Scarlet and Violet aside, especially with Ash winning the league championship or whatever (I don't watch the anime) and getting a ton of attention from video game press, you'd expect them to at least announce SOMETHING about the next stage of the anime. TCG I imagine is only a little bit behind and we'll get the initial Scarlet/Violet set within the next couple months.

I do think there is still a possibility this is a company-wide decision and it's not just GameFreak, but we'll probably never know. Perhaps the Company as a whole had a say, as in, Nintendo and Creatures as well, to release the game before the holiday even if the rest of the Gen 9 marketing was a little behind, in a sole attempt to build on the open-world hype and maximize sales. Maybe Nintendo even internally pushed this when Tears of the Kingdom got delayed to next year, so they'd have a system seller on store shelves for the holiday season. Even if GameFreak has a slight controlling share of TPC, I'd imagine they'd still want to listen to their corporate partner.

Or perhaps GameFreak may have literally just thought the game was ready and put it out, like you argue. Regardless, none of these options leave a positive taste in my mouth.

Also, food for thought: maybe this is part of the reason that Masuda left his position? I dunno.

EDIT: I also want to make another point clear. Having strict release deadlines DOES NOT mean that the game was completed in a few months. Game development is often always a multi-year process and S/V was probably always planned to release sometime between now and the next six months. It likely took GameFreak several years to develop S/V despite it having immense technical issues. This game was probably being developed alongside PLA for much of its life. I don't think this contradicts anything I've already said, since it's likely Nintendo knew they were delaying Tears of the Kingdom even before Scarlet/Violet was announced.

 

[Ryoma Maser]

I agree with the majority of your post, but I did want to point out that Monolith Soft was confirmed to NOT have worked on Legends Arceus as they don't appear in the credits of the game. The studio was likely mostly finishing up Xenoblade Chronicles 3, with some devs assisting with Splatoon 3 at the time. I wouldn't be surprised if another set of devs were helping with TLOZ Tears of the Kingdom as well.

Oh my mistake, I haven't played Legends either sadly due to it interfering with my classes (my Spring semester started right when Legends Arceus came out) as well as holding off on games outside of the aforementioned XenoBlade Chronicles 3 so I didn't know. I thought they did work on the game but I guess they didn't unless they went uncredited which would be rare for Monolith Soft contributions.