Official Pre-Pokémon Sword & Pokémon Shield Speculation & Leaks thread

[William-Jdubz]

Doesn't help that Genius Sonority apparently downsized years ago and currently only has around 20 people on staff, so they don't have the manpower to remake those games even if they wanted to.

Yeah pretty much. Its a shame because those games were beautiful. I think James Turner worked on a gew Genius Sonority games as well.

 

[multiingbe]

Maybe it would turn out that Gen 8 will have a built-in battle simulation mode, or eventually (to keep the new Pokemon more mysterious rather than being able to essentially play with and learn about the details of all of them right away) one would be added via free DLC?

It sort of both would and wouldn't make sense. Many times it is discussed that the competitive aspect of the games from wifi battles to official competitions is compromised by game hacking.
To have a simulator where the players' teams could be specified to maybe the same level of detail as Showdown, that would result in all levels of competitive play being able to proceed fairly.
In essence the in-game teams could be copied over into this simulator when desired! Then, even some changes could be made there without affecting the actual in-game team.

And, what would be amazing is it might allow for the first time, competitive play with traditional items; specifics about how many of each item would be allowed, what types of items would be allowed, could be set, and before each match, players would choose items from a list. Then there could even be a setting that items could carry over, or be reset, between matches where multiple victories are required.
(I have always thought that competitive matches with items were not included because some players would have more items than others. But this would allow the arbitrary existence of items!)

 

[prog rocker]

Nah thats not true honestly. I did a playthrough a while back and without any DS support. After you do the first round of battles, you unlock to have every other pokemon by rental by beating trainiers in the rotation colosseum, you beat someone and you can claim that pokemon as yours. Best thing about this game is that it had a good AI, something Pokemon Stadium and the core series dont have at all.

Really, that change is permanent?

 

[William-Jdubz]

Really, that change is permanent?

Yes. After every battle for that circuit, you can give your opponent any pokemon and take any pokemon from their team. You can use that rental team in all battle facilities. You can get some really good mons this way and you also dont need to worry about balancing levels unlike with DS parties, so its a really good set up. The other good thing unlike with Pokemon stadium where potential rental mons only had 1 set up, you can run into multiple this way.

 

[CyberKnight1994]

This makes me wonder, sure we like gyms, and Trials as a concept was OK for Sun and Moon, but would people like to see a return of the Stadium/Colosseum style system in place of gyms in Gen 8? Like I mentioned, they could do a lot for it, and would be both fresh and interesting. A friend of mine also pointed out that maybe we could also see the return of the Battle Frontier but its now part of the region and you collect symbols to become the Frontier Brain. Conceptually it sounds interesting, and would be interesting.

 

[William-Jdubz]

This makes me wonder, sure we like gyms, and Trials as a concept was OK for Sun and Moon, but would people like to see a return of the Stadium/Colosseum style system in place of gyms in Gen 8? Like I mentioned, they could do a lot for it, and would be both fresh and interesting. A friend of mine also pointed out that maybe we could also see the return of the Battle Frontier but its now part of the region and you collect symbols to become the Frontier Brain. Conceptually it sounds interesting, and would be interesting.

Someone a few pages back posted Masuda's notes on why there wasnt a Battle Frontier in ORAS, Im really doubtful the concept will return especially for Gen 8 where the first game in each Generation typically has had no postgame or real battle facility outside of the Battle Tower clone.

I personally want gyms to return but them to have a more zelda like approach with puzzles so they feel more significant and worthy of the stature they represent.

 

[prog rocker]

Someone a few pages back posted Masuda's notes on why there wasnt a Battle Frontier in ORAS, Im really doubtful the concept will return especially for Gen 8 where the first game in each Generation typically has had no postgame or real battle facility outside of the Battle Tower clone.

I personally want gyms to return but them to have a more zelda like approach with puzzles so they feel more significant and worthy of the stature they represent.

Which is a shame, since I actually liked the Battle Dome and its concept. The Battle Pyramid and the Battle Pike on the other hand won't be missed by me.

On the other point: I could be alright with that, as long that they don't include ice puzzles or even worse, slider puzzles, specially if they are bigger than 9x9 *has Avalon Code flashbacks*

 

[KiranTheWitch]

Yeah pretty much. Its a shame because those games were beautiful. I think James Turner worked on a gew Genius Sonority games as well.

XD001 was actually the first Pokemon that James designed.

 

[Extroth]

He's definitely not the first person to make those points, I've been saying things like that for the last 5 years. Game Freak's problem is that they've become utterly obsessed with the mobile market to the point where they feel the need to strip everything down and simplify to the point where the games have no substance. There was an infamous interview back in 2014 about why the Battle Frontier wasn't in ORAS where they specifically pointed to smartphone gamers not spending time on mobile games and thought no one wanted them.



View: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/2olmtb/interview_with_masuda_on_oras_and_why_there_is_no/


This design philosophy is the root cause of everything that's wrong with Pokemon right now. They think kids have the attention span of a goldfish so they make the games mind numbingly easy, restrict the player into going where they want them to go and doing what they want them to do, force the players to sit through tutorials regardless of whether they know the mechanic or not, remove any semblance of substance, and phase mechanics in and out. For the series to actually improve they have to get past this mindset. Hopefully this year's game will be the one to do it, but it's hard to say since even in transitioning to consoles they've only doubled down with LGPE going even further in the direction of designing the game like a mobile game.

Can I ask people something? Has anyone actually disproven this? People belittle Masuda's point that kids today don't have as big of an attention span. But isn't that true? I hear it all the time on NPR and there are a number of experts in child development who seem to think this is true as well. And I don't know, I'm almost 30 with no kids whatsoever so kids could indeed have a shorter attention span nowadays and I wouldn't know. Pokemon still targets kids so it makes sense that that would be a consideration for the developers. Just because we the older fans of the games want some of these features it doesn't mean that they would be worth GF's time if only a small section of the fan base is going to play them.

 

[SodiumChloride]

I wouldn't be suprised if morimoto is the director of gen 8
They mentioned the people working on gen 8 were old memebers and morimoto has been around since gen 1

 

[William-Jdubz]

XD001 was actually the first Pokemon that James designed.

Thought it was something like that, Recall reading that ages ago.

 

[prog rocker]

Isn't Morimoto the guy that inserted Mew in the games? That's the only thing I remember him for, well, that and the fact he was a "boss" in the Unova games.

 

[William-Jdubz]

Can I ask people something? Has anyone actually disproven this? People belittle Masuda's point that kids today don't have as big of an attention span. But isn't that true? I hear it all the time on NPR and there are a number of experts in child development who seem to think this is true as well. And I don't know, I'm almost 30 with no kids whatsoever so kids could indeed have a shorter attention span nowadays and I wouldn't know. Pokemon still targets kids so it makes sense that that would be a consideration for the developers. Just because we the older fans of the games want some of these features it doesn't mean that they would be worth GF's time if only a small section of the fan base is going to play them.

Doesnt really bother me since I only like the Battle Tower as a facility. I'm nearing 32 and have no kids either so Im not sure. He could be referring to the mobile gaming revolution which is what a lot of children interact with in terms of gaming.

 

[Minya_Nouvelle]

Can I ask people something? Has anyone actually disproven this? People belittle Masuda's point that kids today don't have as big of an attention span. But isn't that true? I hear it all the time on NPR and there are a number of experts in child development who seem to think this is true as well. And I don't know, I'm almost 30 with no kids whatsoever so kids could indeed have a shorter attention span nowadays and I wouldn't know. Pokemon still targets kids so it makes sense that that would be a consideration for the developers. Just because we the older fans of the games want some of these features it doesn't mean that they would be worth GF's time if only a small section of the fan base is going to play them. I mean heck you could make the same argument for contests, not enough people actually play them and so they took them out.

The way I see, there are more kids with shorter attention spans, but there are still plenty of kids who have long attention spans, but the kind of kid who is likely to be interested in Pokemon is the latter not the former anyway. There's also the issue of handhelds being more of a niche thing now that we have tablets. A parent seems way more likely to hand their kid the tablet, because the parent probably uses it as well and bought it for themselves. It's cheaper than buying your kid their own console + games. I don't know if anything I just said made any sense. Basically, I think it has more to do with the parents than the kids. It's just a theory though. I think there's also the possibility that tablets and phones offer easy accessibility to other choices; most of which can be downloaded for free. If I didn't play Pokemon Blue when I was a kid, that was tough. I didn't have much other choices for entertainment. There wasn't much to distract me from playing the game, either. It's such a convoluted topic. I do know that there are at least three parents in the office where I work who have kids who play the card game though, so that's a thing.

That being said, I wasn't really a fan of most of the facilities in gen 3. They relied too heavily on RNG and streaks. The facilities we got in gen 7 were much better. When I was a kid, I bought a Gameshark and used cheats to unlock the gold emblems and give myself tons of BP. I also used cheats to steal pokemon from the battle factory. That's how I got my first Umbreon. That's all of my memories of the Emerald battle frontier. I still have that Umbreon; I traded it to someone who made it shiny for me just for the lolz.

edit: clarification

 

[Oriden]

Can I ask people something? Has anyone actually disproven this? People belittle Masuda's point that kids today don't have as big of an attention span. But isn't that true? I hear it all the time on NPR and there are a number of experts in child development who seem to think this is true as well. And I don't know, I'm almost 30 with no kids whatsoever so kids could indeed have a shorter attention span nowadays and I wouldn't know. Pokemon still targets kids so it makes sense that that would be a consideration for the developers. Just because we the older fans of the games want some of these features it doesn't mean that they would be worth GF's time if only a small section of the fan base is going to play them.

I don't think he is referring to kids there... he says "young people on smartphones." I get that some young children do have them, but I would assume that the majority of those "young people" are teens and young adults, including yourself. Which I do recall it being mentioned that studies have shown that our attention spans have gotten shorter due to phones and social media, but we are also developing a higher capacity for multi-tasking- we check Twitter and Facebook while we play our games.

I think a better way to handle the shortening attention spans would be to adapt the Battle Frontier to appeal to attention spans that are used to switching between tasks rapidly, rather than to give up on the feature entirely. That's just making no effort to engage attention at all.

 

[Minya_Nouvelle]

I don't think he is referring to kids there... he says "young people on smartphones." I get that some young children do have them, but I would assume that the majority of those "young people" are teens and young adults, including yourself. Which I do recall it being mentioned that studies have shown that our attention spans have gotten shorter due to phones and social media, but we are also developing a higher capacity for multi-tasking- we check Twitter and Facebook while we play our games.

I think a better way to handle the shortening attention spans would be to adapt the Battle Frontier to appeal to attention spans that are used to switching between tasks rapidly, rather than to give up on the feature entirely. That's just making no effort to engage attention at all.

That actually makes a lot of sense. I wholeheartedly agree with the second part. Like I said, the old battle facilities relied heavily on streaks, which is kind of boring. I think this is why I really like Pokeathalon; because you switch between a handful of short mini-games. I don't know how to adapt something similar to a battle facility, though.

 

[Poke Dragon]

I am fine with Battle Facilities being removed, but in return, just let me have a place in which I can keep battling trainers over and over again for free and no limiting Pokemon. This is why I liked the Nimbasa Stadiums in the first place, great time killer in my opinion.

 

[prog rocker]

I am fine with Battle Facilities being removed, but in return, just let me have a place in which I can keep battling trainers over and over again for free and no limiting Pokemon. This is why I liked the Nimbasa Stadiums in the first place, great time killer in my opinion.

You mean something like the Battle Chateau from X/Y?

 

[Poke Dragon]

You mean something like the Battle Chateau from X/Y?

Yeah, something like that, but many more trainers to battle and all of them being in one area.

 

[prog rocker]

Yeah, something like that, but many more trainers and less waiting for a trainer to appear.

True. The 6 minute wait without using writs was kinda annoying.

EDIT: Another thing to do to make it better. Make the Leaders and Elite Four stronger and with 6 Pokémon each. Same with the Champion.