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June 24th Pokemon Presents Discussion

What do you think the new project will be?

  • Sinnoh Remakes

    Votes: 11 21.2%
  • Let's Go Johto

    Votes: 12 23.1%
  • Something else

    Votes: 29 55.8%

  • Total voters
    52
  • Poll closed .
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So I've heard that Tencent gives user data to the PRC's government. Is there any reliable source(s) verifying this? Thanks.
I have seen people say this, but I'm not sure whether it's true or not. If it's true, then this would be yet another reason why I'm not even going to download Pokemon Unite. My Switch user data should just be between me and Nintendo only.
 
I think we read a little too much into them. One of the latest plushie lines just happens to be entirely Johto-themed, so they were probably just showing off their newest stuff.



By playing any of the numerous Pokémon games that are available right now? The Isle of Armor just came out, there's always GO, there's the newly released Café Mix, there's Masters, there's Rescue Team DX, there's the TCG, and players can always replay old games from Pokémon's gargantuan back-catalog... all of the above are games that players of all ages enjoy, and even all that's assuming that a person's only resource for keeping them occupied is Pokémon, which in 99% of cases, it won't be. Passing the time until the Crown Tundra comes out should not be an issue regardless of age.

completely with you on this, but then I’ve almost always got at least one older Pokémon game on the go at any given time - currently I’m SRing VC Crystal to try to get a shiny Celebi and about halfway through an UltraSun file. Personally I find it strange when people display an attitude that suggest new stuff somehow erases all the older stuff - and I’m not saying that just in regards to Pokémon.

I also find it funny that anyone might feel like no new mainline game announcement might have any bearing on anything prior to Crown Tundra anyway - has they announced Let’s Go2 or Gen IV remakes they wouldn’t be out until after CT anyway!

Maybe I'm just atypical, but I'm still enjoying my experience in the main games.

Same, while I completely agree with a lot of criticisms of Sword and Shield to a degree, none of the issues stopped me enjoying the game - just meant it could have been better.

I mean, when I play pokemon I usually play through the story and don't do post game if it's something like a battle facility because those usually are not fun to me. What other content am I missing?

I generally play the post game story stuff but I’m similar. Battle facilities/contest type stuff just isn’t my bag, and while I get that people who like those things are disappointed when they aren’t included, as I’ve never really enjoyed those features I personally don’t feel like they are missing when they aren’t included.
 
Sword/Shield do deserve some of the criticism. The no-real-difficulty shtick is tiresome.

Kids do like challenges. So, yeah, the older folks at Gamefreak really have a wrong idea about the market, it seems.

Also, people are saying the Dexit discussion is basically over because of the expansions, but we don't even know if the rest will appear in the future.

The new mobile games are fine for the franchise as a whole. Undeserving of an 11 minutes-long video, yes. I understand the dislikes, as well. But, we all know here on this forum that swearing/threatening and the like is not-done. This place is still constructive, unlike Twitter, parts of Reddit, etc. Let's keep it that way.

It's a bit of a shame we already know most of the things about the Crown Tundra. We probably need to wait until early next year to receive news on a new major title. Which hopefully goes into the right direction, again. Say what you want about the mobile industry, its mentality has seeped into the older developers.
 
Since when did this forum turn from genuine criticism of yesterday's presentation into a flame war in regards to the Mobile VS. Handheld debate that's raged on for years?
 
Since when did this forum turn from genuine criticism of yesterday's presentation into a flame war in regards to the Mobile VS. Handheld debate that's raged on for years?
It's not as bad as you picture it.

Both sides bring very good points here and there's a sizable and reasonable middleground, as well. The latter is lacking on other platforms.
 
The main problem I have with mobile games is the whole in-app-purchases matter. Frankly, I do not care how many people will argue "You can just play it for free!" - no, that's definitely not how they designed the game. The game is designed to make you spend money on in-app-purchases eventually. Some people can get around that if they play casually enough, sure, but s good number of other players spend enough to make up for that.

Staying in Pokémon...
Masters is free to play, and you have a somewhat decent chance at rolling the rare trainers. You get a good amount of gems as free player, too. But oh no, Cynthia finally has a banner and all you got were some Karens and a lot of 4*? Just spend 5 bucks and try again, she'll surely come. ....or another 5. Or, you know, 10, since you will spend more anyway. No real game you're anticipating right now anyway, and hey, you'll get your fav in Masters!
Go is another nice example and yes, you can play it for free. But even disregarding how you have to pay to participate in the current community days (coins won't do), a lot of stuff need coins. If you live even just somewhat rural, it's already troublesome to put a Pokémon into a gym in the first place - not to mention keep it there long enough to make coins. And there's a daily limit to how many coins you can earn, too. But gym battles drain your Pokémon's health, so you need to hit up a couple Pokestops regularly to get Potions. And Pokeballs to be able to keep on catching Pokémon to get the required candy to power them up to even keep up with the gym Pokémon. And to get Pokémon to spawn - if you live anywhere that's not a big city and don't have all day to walk around the town - you'd use an Incense. How do you get them (besides the ones from level ups)? In the shop, for coins. But using them constantly will run you out of Pokeballs and if there aren't enough Pokestops around...where else do you get them? Right, in the shop, for coins. Participating in raids from home is cool, guess what - that needs a special raid pass you can buy in the shop....for coins! And to make sure you really run out of your coins, there are also customization options for your character purchasable for coins.

The games can be played for free, but that's not the intent. They're developed to try and lure you into spending money on them. If it works, you will easily spend a lot more than the current full price of a real game on it - for less gameplay.

I despise the mobile game market specifically because it could be better if actual games were developed for it, even ones you'd have to pay to play without microtransactions. (The game I do play on my phone is Cytus - a rhythm game which is free but I paid for the full version to not have to wait 30sec to play another song.)

Games not on mobile who try to cater to the audience of mobile games (Let's Go, or even cross platform releases for Switch & mobile) show the same dumbed down lack of gameplay mobile games do. And it's definitely not a "mobile hardware is soooo limiting!" problem since you can emulate NDS games on most smartphones and they generally beat your standard mobile game in terms of gameplay and content.

I'm not sure if the mainline Pokémon wants to cater more and more to the mobile audience - I am worried about it, but I don't exactly see all the signs (yet). I did enjoy Sword/Shield and the only issues I personally have with them are things I see praised by a lot of people. (I feel like Wild Areas are perfect for postgame areas, but in the maingame I'd rather not have them, but normal routes instead. I DESPISE overworld encounters because since they became a thing, with their encounter tables differing from those for the random !-encounters, I have a harder time seeing all Pokémon a route has to offer because there aren't just all the encounters by running through the grass...and so on and so forth.)
I do think Sword/Shield are still on a good way when it comes to mainline Pokémon games and they alleviated my worries for the series that I had thanks to gen 7.

As a final conclusion - remember that (almost) no game is really completely free. You always pay. Either right away to play, or later on to have fun. If you personally want to support the latter, that's cool, but, people, don't defend that business practise as "you don't have to spend money!" - if they didn't want me to, it wouldn't be an option in the first place and they'd make their profit from ads or let people BUY the game to begin with.
 
It’s completely subjective. Saying “Sword and Shield are worth $60” and saying “Sword and Shield are not worth $60” is subjective. It depends entirely on what you value about the games and if they keep you interested and playing. I have logged nearly 300 hours in Sword alone (actually it’s more like 700 but shiny hunting doesn’t really count lol). I clearly found enough content to keep me busy.

On the price side, yes indeed. And I would agree that I do think $60 is a touch steep; frankly for any of the big AAA titles these days, especially since that's usually the price regardless of whether you buy physical or digital (which is going to require significantly fewer production costs). But it's not so much that I find it a total dealbreaker, though I acknowledge I am fortunate to be in a position where I can afford such a compromise.

But content is more nuanced. In a general sense, sure, more content is inherently better because it has a better chance of appealing to more people, so more people can find something to enjoy in the game. But on an individual level - the only level I care about when I'm thinking about buying a game for my own enjoyment - if it's content I'll never use, it doesn't really make any difference to me whether it's there or not. There are plenty of games out there with more content than the games I play, but I don't care about those other games. Their content doesn't interest me. Besides that, I'm not here to protest Pokémon games on anyone else's behalf. If that makes you feel like I'm ripping you off then, uh, sorry mate? But I'm coming up on a 400th hour of fun thanks to the game, and I don't really feel bad for saying I value that more than I value appeasing dissatisfied forumgoers. :wynaut:

Whether or not you enjoy the content is subjective, yes. But how much content there actually is is not, and that's the issue at hand here. The main games have less content now than they used to thanks to features constantly getting stripped from the game, Pokemon being cut over Dexit, and areas being emptier and more simplistic (although SwSh is starting to mitigate this by making the areas more open). And mobile games are typically very low on content with the game design being cheap and simplistic. Things like the size of areas, the amount of characters in a game, the length of the story, and the amount of quests and tasks to do can be quantitatively measured. It'd be somewhat complex to do, but you can do it and there's no two ways to do it. So that much is very much objective.

And please don’t make things needlessly personal lol. I’m not “ripping anyone off” by stating my opinion. I’m simply hoping someone else gets the same enjoyment out of it that I do.

Stating your opinion is harmless, yes. Actually going out and buying the game though, that just encourages TPC to continue these kinds of practices, depriving the entire fanbase out of a better game. If you happen to like these kinds of games, good for you. But even if you do, the value (and by value I mean amount of content per cost, not your enjoyment of the game) is so poor that it's just not worth buying, and you should be pushing them to either include more content in the game for free, or pushing for them to make the game cheaper and avoid consumer unfriendly business models such as gacha and microtransactions. After all, how could you argue with having more content in a game you like or at a cheaper cost?
 
The fact is you can compare the price and features with previous games of the same genre and that is objective. I could justify the 60 dollars or euros was the Nintendo Online included in the 60 dollars or euros. But no, and why do you suddenly have to pay to play online, unlike all the previous Nintendo installments?
 
It's just sad that all TPC seems to care about these days is quick cash, and not the long-term legacy of the franchise. The more time goes by, the more I wish Pokémon was owned by Nintendo only. Criticise them all you want (and there's a lot to criticise), but the quality standard is just a different one.
 
Whether or not you enjoy the content is subjective, yes. But how much content there actually is is not, and that's the issue at hand here. The main games have less content now than they used to thanks to features constantly getting stripped from the game, Pokemon being cut over Dexit, and areas being emptier and more simplistic (although SwSh is starting to mitigate this by making the areas more open). And mobile games are typically very low on content with the game design being cheap and simplistic. Things like the size of areas, the amount of characters in a game, the length of the story, and the amount of quests and tasks to do can be quantitatively measured. It'd be somewhat complex to do, but you can do it and there's no two ways to do it. So that much is very much objective.
All right for the sake of it, let's actually compare some objective things here. I'll take the Sinnoh games as point of comparison to Sword/Shield here for the simple reason that people don't agree when exactly Pokémon started becoming bad and I've seen gen 5 (due to BW only featuring new Pokémon until postgame), gen 6 and gen 7 mentioned often enough, so we'll assume before those things were still good.
I'll compare the Sword/Shield base game content with the Diamond/Pearl content - extras from Platinum I'll compare to the DLC content.

Sinnoh has 18 towns (counting the Pokémon League), while Galar has 11. Clearly, Sinnoh has more towns.
Sinnoh has 30 routes, while Galar has 10. Sinnoh has 3x as many routes by name as Galar does.
If you factor in things that do not officially count as routes, the Wild Area has 18 areas - added to the 10 routes, that would make it 28. Still less areas than Sinnoh.
What Bulbapedia claims landmarks could be added, too, though.
Which brings our count to 74 overall for Sinnoh, including Platinum content. For Galar, we would add the Isle of Armor and come to 47. If we are generous and assume Crown Tundra will add about 20 more to it, the count would come up to 67 - even that is still below Sinnoh!
In conclusion, Sinnoh (74) is a bigger region than Galar (67) by count of areas.
(We cannot measure the actual size of the region, though. Even if I had any idea how to, Sinnoh being on NDS and not a full 3D environment.)

Now let's compare the "meaningful characters". For this I will count every character with their own name, own sprite/model that isn't just a generic one and ones that are memorable enough.
Sinnoh has 8 gym leaders + 4 elite four members + 1 champion. Galar has 10 gym leaders (of which you battle 8 per game) + 1 champion. For now it's 13 for Sinnoh, 11 for Galar.
In Sinnoh you have one rival, while in Galar you have 3. Bringing the count to 14 for Sinnoh, 14 for Galar. (a draw.)
Sinnoh has 5 frontier brains (one of them is made of two people) which brings Sinnoh to 20, Galar gets 5 more characters (Mustard, Honey, Hyde, Klara, Avery) on the Isle of Armor. One character for the Crown Tundra was in the trailer - let's assume Crown Tundra will overall add 3 characters, adding 8 characters to Galar to bring it to the count of Sinnoh = 20, Galar = 22.
But that's not all for Sinnoh - some areas have you partner up with another trainer temporary, so we'll add Cheryl, Riley, Mira, Buck and Marley to the Sinnoh count, coming to 25. Galar stays at 22.
Now let's go count the antagonists. Sinnoh has Cyrus and his 3 admins (4 in Platinum), bringing Sinnoh to a count of 30. Galar has Rose, Oleana, Sordward, Shielbert - bringing Galar's count to 26.
Sinnoh has Rowan and Lucas/Dawn (I only count them once because I don't count the protagonist as character.) for the professor role, while Galar has Magnolia and Sonia. 32 for Sinnoh, 26 for Galar.
In conclusion, Sinnoh (32) has more meaningful characters than Galar (26).

Now let's look at the meat - the Pokémon.
The Sinnoh Dex in Platinum count 210 Pokémon - Galar's regional dex on the other hand, counts 400. Meaning, Galar's regional dex (without DLC) is almost twice the number as Sinnoh's.
Overall 493 Pokémon are programmed into the Sinnoh games. For Galar, as of the Isle of Armor, that's 510. We can assume Crown Tundra adds roughly 100 more, bringing it to about 600.
Ironically enough, Galar (510) wins over Sinnoh (493) in Pokémon count.
(Additionally, Galar added 86 new Pokémon and 16 regional variants to the game - overall 102 new designs. Sinnoh added 107. Sinnoh wins in this regard, although it is a close call.)

Overall whether the games objectively have more or less content with each installment is still hard to say, now that I ran through some numbers. We do have a few less areas and characters (apparently), which hurts the playthrough somewhat. But on the other hand we'll never really have less types, moves or abilities than in the game before. Another point for added contents would be items - just think of the exp candies or mints. League cards are added content (that flesh out characters a bit more and you can customise your own.)

Unless you just walk through the game until the end and then put it aside for forever (which, I want to point out, is very fair), I wouldn't say we get "less content objectively" but rather different content. Whether you prefer the content of older games that got cut, or the content of newer games that got just added, that's subjective again.

When it comes to a justified price, I use a very decent rule of thumb for myself - for every € I (have to) spend on the game, I want 1 hour of enjoyable game time out of it. If I buy a game for 60€ (Switch games full price), I want them to entertain me for at least 60 hours. Sword and Shield both justified their price for me, and the DLC is on a good way for that, too. If you wonder how I can tell for games I haven't played yet, I often check howlongtobeat if I'm not sure.

The fact is you can compare the price and features with previous games of the same genre and that is objective. I could justify the 60 dollars or euros was the Nintendo Online included in the 60 dollars or euros. But no, and why do you suddenly have to pay to play online, unlike all the previous Nintendo installments?
Simple answer? Because people are willing to pay for an online service. Also about this I'm not sure if this is on Pokémon or rather on Nintendo deciding to make Nintendo Online a paid service and forcing games like Pokémon to use that instead of, I don't know, own servers or the likes. Again personally I don't mind paying for the subscription, as I'm sharing a family subscription with 3 other people so each of us pays 8.75€ a year to get the NES & SNES collection, that Tetris game and the online service. In my opinion, justified.
 
When it comes to a justified price, I use a very decent rule of thumb for myself - for every € I (have to) spend on the game, I want 1 hour of enjoyable game time out of it. If I buy a game for 60€ (Switch games full price), I want them to entertain me for at least 60 hours. Sword and Shield both justified their price for me, and the DLC is on a good way for that, too. If you wonder how I can tell for games I haven't played yet, I often check howlongtobeat if I'm not sure.

I like this, I don’t use such a strict metric myself but I’ve always compared games to films - if I’m prepared to pay £10 to see a film which will be approx 2 hours then to my mind a £50 game needs to have me playing for a bare minimum of 10 hours - and realistically I’d be disappointed if that was as much as I got out of it.

But for Shield I spent £25.50 (plus some loyalty points) and the expansion pass I got for £19. Last I checked I think I was near 300 hours on Shield and I’ve only had half the content from the expansion pass. I hitch means at current tally I’ve spent about 15p per hour.
 
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