SwSh Dynamax: Thoughts, Feelings, or Concerns

[Esserise]

I think I kinda get what they were trying to do with how Gigantamax forms are implemented. Their catch rate in an online Max Raid is akin to that of Legendary Pokémon, and well... there's the clue. Think of them as this game's Mirage Spot/Ultra Wormhole Legendaries. A repeatable element meant to provide post-game content that produces rare Pokémon, which in this case are themed around the regional transformation mechanic. In a certain sense, they even have the lore aspect down, since Dynamax Pokémon were said to have overrun the region on the Darkest Day and are represented by the geoglyph in Turffield. However, at the same time, it avoids cluttering up the new Pokémon slots with exceptional, Legendary-tier things like the tapu and the Ultra Beasts, because these are just forms of existing Pokémon. Eternatus is the only Legendary that even has a G-Max form, and even that one only exists for story purposes.

From this perspective, I do like how the approach tries to change up the typical "find the Legendary, weaken it, inflict status, throw balls until it works" routine. Instead of having to whittle the target down to a precarious amount of HP while hoping that they don't have some bullshit like Recover or that you don't score a crit, you and three others are encouraged to just go to town on the Pokémon - once it's defeated, it is automatically treated as though it has 1 HP. So you don't have to worry about accidentally knocking it out, because knocking it out is now the goal. But as a trade-off, you only get one chance to throw a ball at it. Now, I totally get how that can be frustrating, especially if you are a solo player and/or don't want to pay for Switch Online. I'm definitely not saying that it is a perfect system - for one thing, I certainly think that the AI partners need to be better, and I also think the difficulty could be toned down a bit for solo players. But I'm saying that I can kinda see where they might have been coming from in designing it. And personally, as someone who does enjoy group Max Raids quite a lot; they're a lot more fun to me than struggling against a single Legendary Pokémon on my own ever was. Between the higher spectacle, the coordination and teamwork, and the new battle format, I don't mind having to do a lot of them. And I've been trying lately to just take any failed G-Max captures in stride - yeah, it's disappointing, but I'll get another chance. Fortunately, resetting for good stats is now far less of a concern as well, thanks to the nature mints and bottle caps (and sure there's the Lv100 requirement, but the machine feeds itself - do lots of high-level Max Raids, amass lots of XL Exp. Candy) and such.

That being said... I still think the fact that the Gigantamax Factor can't be inherited is a baffling design choice. Again, I could understand it if you had to first get one through a Max Raid in order to "unlock" it for your other Pokémon. But with the way it is, what everyone has said about it flying right in the face of what they were trying to do with the numerous other quality of life improvements really is completely accurate. My wife managed to catch a 3-star Gigantamax Corviknight the other day, while still having three Gyms to complete. That's plenty of time even within the main story to make use of this cool new element. But she's never going to use it, because she already has a regular Corviknight raised up from a Rookidee that she's more attached to by now. Making G-Max inheritable would solve this so easily. And as I've mentioned before, it's a completely artificial restriction anyway. Leon gives us a Charmander to raise into a Gigantamaxable Charizard. Hop's G-Max Corviknight started out as a Rookidee. Rose has a Cufant in the opening video, and a G-Max Copperajah in his battle. Bede has a Hatenna early on, and a G-Max Hatterene at the end. Oleana says she was skilled at using Garbodor's G-Max move "even before she changed her image" which to me suggests that she's had Garbodor for a long while, likely as a Trubbish at first. Just about everyone else seems to be able to access Gigantamax with Pokémon that they raised, not that they merely caught in their final stage. It makes no sense for it to work differently for us.

 

[The Outrage]

Most set up sweepers become almost impossible to revenge kill because of Dynamax. Take Hydreigon for example. It can now suddenly take a quad Fairy type attack thanks to the HP increase, and probably OHKO back with + 2 Max Steelspike. Check Smogon for more info. There’s currently a suspect test going on Dynamax due to how centralizing it is.

So Game Freak tried to balance the game by removing Mega Evolutions and giving everyone Dynamax...and it turns out the entire feature might be broken. Lol.

 

[RK9]

I find it ironic that the 'step-up gimmick' this gen seems to be weaker than the 'generic gimmick' in its entirety.

Removing Megas was a mistake btw. Thanks for coming to my TEDtalk.

 

[Poke Dragon]

In my honest opinion, I think Game Freak should just stop making clones of Megas/Z-Moves with different names because they have been doing that since ORAS with Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre, then they did it with Complete Zygarde with Ultra Necrozma being next and now here we are with Dynamax and Gigantamax. That's literately 5 Mega Evolution clones in the span of 2 generations. Now yes, while Primal Groudon, Primal Kyogre and Complete Zygarde's mechanics vary from Mega Evolution, the transformation itself still feels like it after battle, which is not a good thing in my eyes. And because of Dynamax and Gigantamax replacing both Megas and Z-Moves, Necrozma can't use Ultra Burst in Sword and Shield.

Imagine the generation gimmick being the reason for a plot-important legendary losing its form because said form is tied to a previous gimmick, that's when things are taken too far with the whole introducing gimmicks every generation.

 

[Phosphene]

So here's my Gmax form tier list:

Spoiler

S: Charizard, Drednaw
A: Corviknight
B: Butterfree
C+: Laprus
C: Pikachu, Eevee, Snorlax, Melmetal, Orbeetle, Alcremie, Toxtricity, Centiskorch, Hatterene, Grimmsnarl
D: Meowth, Machamp, Gengar, Kingler, Garbodor, Sandaconda, Coalossal
F: Appltun/Flapple, Copperajah, Duraludon

Favorites: Charizard and Drednaw
Least favorite: Copperajah

Overall, I rank roughly 80% of the designs at grade C (C = neutral) or lower. Most of the forms are either ugly, or are Pokemon I am neutral towards anyways and don't improve on the base design. The ones that are ranked B or higher either improve on the base form or at the very least don't look worse.

I'm not surprised at the rankings considering I hold similar feelings towards Mega evolutions. I prefer Megas as a whole, but design-wise I think the percentage of good and bad designs are about the same across both gimmicks.

 

[IncineROAR]

Gigantamax / Dynamax and Max Raids are all really lame in terms of game mechanics. I only even bother with Max Raids due to the different candies you can get. Thank you GF for continuously finding new and easy ways for me to level up my Pokemon.

 

[BlueWaves]

In my honest opinion, I think Game Freak should just stop making clones of Megas/Z-Moves with different names because they have been doing that since ORAS with Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre, then they did it with Complete Zygarde with Ultra Necrozma being next and now here we are with Dynamax and Gigantamax. That's literately 5 Mega Evolution clones in the span of 2 generations. Now yes, while Primal Groudon, Primal Kyogre and Complete Zygarde's mechanics vary from Mega Evolution, the transformation itself still feels like it after battle, which is not a good thing in my eyes. And because of Dynamax and Gigantamax replacing both Megas and Z-Moves, Necrozma can't use Ultra Burst in Sword and Shield.

Imagine the generation gimmick being the reason for a plot-important legendary losing its form because said form is tied to a previous gimmick, that's when things are taken too far with the whole introducing gimmicks every generation.

I honestly think Dynamaxing exists because GF wanted to showoff how big the Switch Engine is in comparison to 3DS by using Gigantic Models. Ohmori said in his interview that he wanted the impression to be like a mother to a child, “ Wow, you are doing something cool! “ when utilizing Dynamax.

The other problem is that ever since Gen 6 with Megas, they have been trying to create super mechanics, with the intent of making all Pokémon on the same level, which is presents a big problem: A stronger Pokémon can use it to greater affect. Dynamax/Z-Move Magmortar might use a really strong Fire move, but Dynamax/Z-move Blaziken will do it better. At least with Megas they could have buffed underdogs without buffing powerful Pokémon, but then they gave Salamence, Metagross, Tyranitar and Gengar Megas, and everyone forgot Altaria, Audino, Bannette, and Glalie existed.

I’ve already said enough, this is only the tip of the iceberg.

 

[PkmnTrainerV]

GF wanted to showoff how big the Switch Engine is in comparison to 3DS by using Gigantic Models.

...messing up the regular scaling to be worse than LGPE in the process...

 

[Esserise]

...messing up the regular scaling to be worse than LGPE in the process...

But was that Dynamax's fault? They'd already been doing that in every 3D game aside from LGPE. To me that seems like they have a routine implementation system that they use for the mainline games and that LGPE were developed a little differently from the ground-up.

 

[Matthew Clerkin]

But was that Dynamax's fault? They'd already been doing that in every 3D game aside from LGPE. To me that seems like they have a routine implementation system that they use for the mainline games and that LGPE were developed a little differently from the ground-up.

Let's Go wasn't developed from the ground up. It is an offshoot of the gen 7 games that retains partial information of the Pokemon from Gen 2 thru 7 and even has information on all of the Pokemon's level up moves, egg moves, Evs and abilities including Meltan and Melmetal (Meltan has Clear Body while Melmetal has Iron Fist).


Sources:
View: https://youtu.be/T0oNg3GfogQ



View: https://mobile.twitter.com/mattyoukhana_/status/1141404511883472896

 

[Esserise]

Let's Go wasn't developed from the ground up. It is an offshoot of the gen 7 games that retains partial information of the Pokemon from Gen 2 thru 7 and even has information on all of the Pokemon's Evs and abilities including Meltan and Melmetal (Meltan has Clear Body while Melmetal has Iron Fist).

I worded it poorly, but I didn't mean to suggest all of the code was literally brand-new or anything like that. I'm aware that LGPE recycles plenty of old data. I just meant that it seems like a little more of LGPE was newly developed stuff than usual, and maybe, speculating here, that included some elements of the battle system or graphics system or whatever it is that gets into how they decide to scale the models. Maybe since there were only ~150 Pokémon here they decided to throw Onix a bone, since it's one of only a couple big Pokémon in the original bunch and it's at least not as egregious as the likes of Wailord and Eternatus. Whereas in SwoShi, there are a lot more Pokémon, and maybe it's easier to just use one consistent flat rate for all those Pokémon and then one consistent rate for all Dynamax forms.

Or hell, maybe GF just genuinely think that having a realistically sized Wailord in battle would look absurd and chose what they saw as the lesser of two evils.

 

[Cresselia92]

Or hell, maybe GF just genuinely think that having a realistically sized Wailord in battle would look absurd and chose what they saw as the lesser of two evils.

All this focus on Wailord and Eternatus, but what do you think would happen if you had a battle against something very small, like a Joltik? We would be talking about a 14.5m beast facing a 0.1m critter. If we had realistic proportions, either we would have a yellow dot facing a whale, or a spider facing a white underbelly.

As ridiculous as a tiny Wailord can be, this solution seemed indeed the lesser of two devils. I mean, even back during the sprites eras there was more focus on details and artistic license than proportions.

 

[Matthew Clerkin]

I worded it poorly, but I didn't mean to suggest all of the code was literally brand-new or anything like that. I'm aware that LGPE recycles plenty of old data. I just meant that it seems like a little more of LGPE was newly developed stuff than usual, and maybe, speculating here, that included some elements of the battle system or graphics system or whatever it is that gets into how they decide to scale the models. Maybe since there were only ~150 Pokémon here they decided to throw Onix a bone, since it's one of only a couple big Pokémon in the original bunch and it's at least not as egregious as the likes of Wailord and Eternatus. Whereas in SwoShi, there are a lot more Pokémon, and maybe it's easier to just use one consistent flat rate for all those Pokémon and then one consistent rate for all Dynamax forms.

Or hell, maybe GF just genuinely think that having a realistically sized Wailord in battle would look absurd and chose what they saw as the lesser of two evils.

I mean the Coliseum games and Battle Revolution were able to make the Pokemon properly scaled in battle with much better animations and all of the Overworld models are scaled properly so they could have done it. 400 pokemon being properly scaled is more than reasonable

 

[Matthew Clerkin]

All this focus on Wailord and Eternatus, but what do you think would happen if you had a battle against something very small, like a Joltik? We would be talking about a 14.5m beast facing a 0.1m critter. If we had realistic proportions, either we would have a yellow dot facing a whale, or a spider facing a white underbelly.

As ridiculous as a tiny Wailord can be, this solution seemed indeed the lesser of two devils. I mean, even back during the sprites eras there was more focus on details and artistic license than proportions.

Isn't that what it's like when a dynamax Pokemon fights a non dynamaxed Pokemon. That sounds like proper scaling with extra steps

 

[Cresselia92]

Isn't that what it's like when a dynamax Pokemon fights a non dynamaxed Pokemon. That sounds like proper scaling with extra steps

That may work on a 1v1 scenario, but if things were to be brought into a 2v2 scene — which is GF’s preferred format, as VGC can prove — then they would become a bit trickier. One Dynamax has already an awkward angle at times, imagine two “Dynamax” at the same time. And then, if they add Dynamax to two giant Pokémon at the same time… yeah, well, I hope you get where I’m going.

They could work on a very dynamic camera that will keep moving the spotlight constantly from a Pokémon to another, I suppose, but it still would become hard to find the correct angle.

Not saying that they shouldn’t try to fix that in future games (in fact, I’d encourage them to!) and maybe take the LGPE approach, which was a decent middle way. But I can understand the logic behind the “illogical” resizes, from a time- and resources-preserving point of view.

 

[Matthew Clerkin]

That may work on a 1v1 scenario, but if things were to be brought into a 2v2 scene — which is GF’s preferred format, as VGC can prove — then they would become a bit trickier. One Dynamax has already an awkward angle at times, imagine two “Dynamax” at the same time. And then, if they add Dynamax to two giant Pokémon at the same time… yeah, well, I hope you get where I’m going.

They could work on a very dynamic camera that will keep moving the spotlight constantly from a Pokémon to another, I suppose, but it still would become hard to find the correct angle.

Not saying that they shouldn’t try to fix that in future games (in fact, I’d encourage them to!) and maybe take the LGPE approach, which was a decent middle way. But I can understand the logic behind the “illogical” resizes, from a time- and resources-preserving point of view.

Genius Senority got double battles working fine with relatively scaled Pokemon and cool camera angles so it is clearly doable, but I guess it is too much to ask for when it cuts down on the games' massive profit margin.

 

[BlueWaves]

That may work on a 1v1 scenario, but if things were to be brought into a 2v2 scene — which is GF’s preferred format, as VGC can prove — then they would become a bit trickier. One Dynamax has already an awkward angle at times, imagine two “Dynamax” at the same time. And then, if they add Dynamax to two giant Pokémon at the same time… yeah, well, I hope you get where I’m going.

They could work on a very dynamic camera that will keep moving the spotlight constantly from a Pokémon to another, I suppose, but it still would become hard to find the correct angle.

Not saying that they shouldn’t try to fix that in future games (in fact, I’d encourage them to!) and maybe take the LGPE approach, which was a decent middle way. But I can understand the logic behind the “illogical” resizes, from a time- and resources-preserving point of view.

True. When you use Dynamax in-game, you'll notice that the Pokemon are actually put behind the trainers, probably because there would be a collision between the two models if they were put in front.

 

[PkmnTrainerV]

All this focus on Wailord and Eternatus, but what do you think would happen if you had a battle against something very small, like a Joltik? We would be talking about a 14.5m beast facing a 0.1m critter. If we had realistic proportions, either we would have a yellow dot facing a whale, or a spider facing a white underbelly.

As ridiculous as a tiny Wailord can be, this solution seemed indeed the lesser of two devils. I mean, even back during the sprites eras there was more focus on details and artistic license than proportions.

They don’t need to actually do a 1:1 or a 100% accurate scaling: have the Pokémon be a reasonable size- I mean, having Wailord being smaller than the trainer?

Currently it looks like they didn’t even try.

 

[Silktree]

There is no reason not to make the likes of Wailord at least as big as LGPE Onix. As for the point about double battles, I am not sure how it'd be very different than two Dynamax Pokemon being paired with very small Pokemon, which can certainly be done.

Incentive bonus for buying/using Home, and because I figure the data of GO and Let's Go Pokémon will need to be changed up a bit when brought over to Sword & Shield anyway - like I said, giving them a guaranteed G-Max Factor could be just like the virtual console RBY/GSC Pokémon getting their Hidden Abilities when moved to Bank.

And I mean, I imagine we'll get access to G-Max Melmetal at some point, but unless they do a direct distribution (which they certainly could, don't get me wrong), it would have to come from GO or Let's Go. But what would determine whether or not it has the G-Max Factor? To me it would make sense to just have all of them gain it upon being moved to Home.

I can see it applying to Melmetal, and the other Let's Go Pokemon will have hidden abilities like the RGBY case. I can't see them invalidating the Meowth and Snorlax events unless Home is far away. Hell, even Pikachu and Eevee would be weird (you'd get a Gigantamax Eevee from LGP after they required an LGE save file?).

The focus of Home will be the extra 35 Pokemon and whatever features the actual app has. Above all, Game Freak probably don't want to make the non-Galar Gigantamax forms extremely common.

 

[BlueWaves]

Dynamaxing is officially banned from Smogon Metagames.