Cosmic Pikachu
- Joined
- Sep 1, 2016
- Messages
- 301
- Reaction score
- 501
See, I guess I’m coming from a different place - I started with Gen 1 back when they first came to the US, Gen 3 being the last games I purchased for years - almost a decade. I bought a 3DS and ORAS/XY only a few months before SM came out. I found ORAS great but XY lackluster. And that’s okay. SM has me excited again for the series and I had a blast playing them.Exactly. That's the problem.
Fair; I'm inclined to agree.
GameFreak is a business selling a product that we pay for. This isn't a gift. The entire concept of entitlement is completely irrelevant to this topic. The fanbase has every right to be highly disappointed in the continuance of a practice which is highly outdated and kinda sleazy, especially in the time of free updates and paid DLC. Add this to another two facts:
1) GameFreak already set a bar higher than this: Black 2 and White 2. They've already shown they are capable of developing a proper sequel with plenty of fresh content - a "third version" worth buying.Not to mention the 3rd version staple of having a high-quality, high replay-value, varied battle facility (Battle Frontier/PWT).
2) Not only is the amount of new content in USUM no beefier than a typical $10 DLC ($30 cheaper than a full game release), but USUM is being released only 1 year after its predecessors, whereas Emerald and Platinum at least had the excuse of waiting a solid 2 years.
I hope you enjoy USUM, just as I hope I will do the same - but to ignore the fact that GameFreak has been pushing out games with relatively minimal effort is staggeringly disappointing. This is not just evident in the games and how little they have evolved (must I bring up the fact that they are the only developer incompetent enough to introduce good new features only to take them away in the next entry?), but even in interviews they admit this. Masuda has stated multiple times that they have opted to include less content in their games based on the ridiculous reason that smartphones and their content are popular and they don't think people care about content anymore. Another Pokemon executive stated that they are aware that a third version release like USUM is an outdated practice, but that they thought it would still be successful. Being the developers of Pokemon, they are one of the wealthiest game developers in the world, and they have every capability needed to improve Pokemon games. They didn't even fix the basic QOL issues that many people complained about in SM.
Please. This kind of argument is nothing but fallacy. The people you're telling to make their own games (us, and such people in the fanbase) are not one of the wealthiest and most influential groups of videogame developers with 20+ years of experience, like GameFreak is.
I assure you, I'm not hating. I love Pokemon, I'm looking forward to USUM just as you are (though maybe not as much as I'd like to be able to). But accepting products of such lazy quality when their potential is so much greater will just encourage GameFreak to do nothing to critically improve.
I haven’t been with the series with every iteration of the games over the years, so I don’t have nostalgia goggles or anything for two gens I didn’t play and one that I did but wasn’t around for the hype. So to me, compared to Gens 1-3, SM were a huge improvement and I enjoyed the story...
There’s also a few things we need to keep in mind. 1) at the end of the day, these games are geared towards children. Young children. Us older players are not and will not be their target demographic for features/content. And 2) while the games have been highly successful here in the West, we are not the home market for these games nor are our wants going to be the first GameFreak hears. Also, there is a precedent in the gaming community-at-large where fans complain, publishers change something, and it isn’t good. There are many changes or decisions I’d make if I were making Pokémon games, but I’m not.
And I’m sorry, the fan base does come off as entitled and pathetic when they complain about a game and say they’re not going to buy it when they haven’t played it. Yes, GameFreak is a company and in the interest of turning a profit, however, that doesn’t mean some fans don’t take ownership of the franchise and think their opinion is the only one that matters. That’s obnoxious.