Your controversial opinions

[Esserise]

(most notably in relation to Zygarde)

Part of me wonders if that whole fiasco is why SwSh turned the tables and had the box art Legendaries be the ones to get the super-duper powered-up forms while Eternatus is just kind of a weird unrelated creature from outer space (which admittedly does still have a crazy overpowered form of its own, but this one is just for show), and then the "third version" equivalent simply moved on to developing new Legendaries altogether. Was this them finally deciding to stop shackling themselves with an extra Pokémon that they'd have to get around to fully developing later but might not be able to deliver on in the way that they want, or is it just a natural shake-up after so many years of repeating the same pattern?

 

[swiftgallade46]

Since I see lot's of "Dexit Gooooooooooooooooooood" posts, my take:

Dexit should have been announced just after USUM were released. That way, there wouldn't have been so much incitement over it, and people wouldn't polarize over the situation. In addition, more people would then have actually scrutinize the actual gameplay of these games, rather than use Dexit as a mask for liking/disliking the games. Thus, fans could actually give clearer criticism about the games, and game freak would more likely listen to it and improve the quality of their games.

Agreed with this. The timing was awful. However, I would say that most people aren’t “pro-Dexit” as much as they are reacting to the overly negative backlash which probably was indeed contributed to by the timing of the announcement.

Announcing dexit the way they did was horrible, as now they made a fanbase that will both dismiss dexit and conform to whatever low standards gamefreak sets up - and the company now will most likely only listen to that echochamber now. Thus, I doubt gamefreak will ever listen to actual valid criticism of their games, as the people who more often did were either in the dissenting side of the dexit, or those that were okay with it if it really meant the quality and content of the games improved to the levels of HGSS/Platinum/BW/2.

This I don’t see much evidence for. In fact, it kind of sounds like the typical over-the-top reaction to Dexit as a whole. GameFreak’s decision to cut Pokémon somehow leads people into the mindset that they are now in an “echo chamber” with “low standards” who will never “listen to valid criticism of their games”, despite very little objective evidence that this is case.

But now that they masked out those factions of the fanbase, Dexit in hindsight seems too much a political-like ruse to keep their standards as mediocre as they are now.

Im not even really sure what this means. If you’re suggesting that the whole point of Dexit was to cultivate a faction of Pokémon fans that will mindlessly consume their products no matter what then, respectfully, I feel that is more than a bit much.

 

[Puddle]

I wasn't actually much into Pokémon during the Gen II to III transition period, but I've heard from other sources that the disconnection between the two Generations was hard to accept for many at first.

I was there. There was backlash but it was clear they were eventually coming back. If I recall correctly they were all still in the game's data, just not captureable. Colosseum and XD were made partly to help get them back into circulation, and that was probably at least part of why FR/LG were made as well.

When I first starting playing Ruby at the age of nine, I actually thought that the missing Pokemon had been removed from the series for good! The terms "National Pokedex" and "regional Pokedex" hadn't been introduced yet, so when I saw the Hoenn Pokedex numbers, I just assumed that the series had been completely rebooted and that this was the new Pokedex. I wasn't really upset about it or anything, just a bit concerned. I remember going through one of my older Pokemon annuals and pointing out some of the Pokemon that had been "removed" from the new game. I wasn't using the internet yet, so had no way of finding out that the rest of the Pokemon were, in fact, in the game. I did have a copy of Pokemon World magazine which claimed that "All the others are available, but so far, only in cheats", but I was probably too young to fully understand what that meant.

While we're on the subject of Gen III, this seems like a good time for me to add my two cents (or "two-penneth", as we say in Britain) to this earlier discussion about Pokemon Emerald...

Pokemon Emerald is worse than Ruby/Sapphire in some aspects. I think a focus on one evil team makes for a better pacing (highlighted by having to take out Magma/Aqua bases back to back at some point in Emerald), adding the annoying phone calls back was a mistake. And, making Wallace the champion.... yeah, no. Steven was infinitely cooler. While still the overall better game, I dont think the game had nearly enough enhancements to buy it at full price again.

Ah yes, I too am not very fond of many of the changes in Emerald. I agree that having one evil team is better for the pacing (also, I find it strange that people will sometimes object to Team Magma's hideout being in Lilycove after Emerald gave them their own base at Mt. Chimney, saying that the Lilycove base "doesn't make sense," when Team Magma's whole schtick is about reducing the sea level to accommodate more infrastructural development), and I also think that having Rayquaza swoop in to solve the crisis by using Roar is such a boring anticlimax that pales in comparison to you having to stride deep into a primordial cave to confront a raging titan while that awesome drum arrangement plays in the background.

However, I personally think that neither Steven nor Wallace acquit themselves very well in Gen 3. Steven has a much more interesting team, but his role throughout the story leaves... a lot to be desired. ("I'm that guy who likes rocks!" - It was very savvy of ORAS to retcon this into an interest in Mega Stones.) Meanwhile, having a Water-type Champion after having a Water-type Gym Leader and a huge swath of the game set on the ocean feels incredibly repetitive, and Wallace himself really does feel shoehorned into the role just for the sake of having a twist, since it's still Steven that you have the sporadic encounters with.

Another thing that I dislike is the replacement of the Contest Halls with the Battle Tents. I always thought it was very cool how the Contest Halls were kind of like Gyms, in that they rose in rank in parallel with your adventure. This, to me, made them feel more like a real alternative path to the Gym Challenge. Shoving them all into Lilycove kind of hurt that.

I completely agree about the Contest Halls. In RS they're a proper sidequest, but in Emerald they feel a bit inconsequential. Having to wait as late as Lilycove before you can participate is really annoying, as well. To me, the Battle Tents were a really boring replacement - I think I tried one out once, and then never bothered with them again. I've never liked battle facilities that much.

Another thing that bothers me about Emerald is that they kept Rayquaza at level 70, despite the fact that you can encounter it before the Elite Four. At this stage of the game, the only way you can realistically catch a level 70 legendary is by using the Master Ball, and then if you do, it makes the Elite Four much too easy. The main legendary encounter in RS is much more memorable and rewarding - I never grew as attached to Rayquaza in Emerald as I did to Groudon in Ruby. And I never grew attached to the level 70 Groudon and Kyogre in Emerald, either. Level 70 legendaries never feel as special to me as the lower-level ones (with the exception of Mewtwo, maybe, because it always comes at that high level), because you don't have as much time to train them and bond with them.

I actually really liked the story in Emerald, and thought it worked better with both Team Aqua and Team Magma as antagonists - bearing in mind that it's been a while since I played it, so I don't remember it that well. But Ruby is probably my preferred Gen III game due to the better handling of Contests and the legendaries, and also just for nostalgia's sake.

 

[Daren]

When I first starting playing Ruby at the age of nine, I actually thought that the missing Pokemon had been removed from the series for good! The terms "National Pokedex" and "regional Pokedex" hadn't been introduced yet, so when I saw the Hoenn Pokedex numbers, I just assumed that the series had been completely rebooted and that this was the new Pokedex. I wasn't really upset about it or anything, just a bit concerned. I remember going through one of my older Pokemon annuals and pointing out some of the Pokemon that had been "removed" from the new game. I wasn't using the internet yet, so had no way of finding out that the rest of the Pokemon were, in fact, in the game. I did have a copy of Pokemon World magazine which claimed that "All the others are available, but so far, only in cheats", but I was probably too young to fully understand what that meant.

Thanks for providing an alternate viewpoint! I was already pretty internet heavy when GS came out (I recall going online to read about what was going to happen in upcoming episodes of the anime that hadn't been localized yet) and overlooked people who didn't use the internet wouldn't know about that.

 

[prog rocker]

Maybe it's just because FRLG were about to be released, but I wasn't that bothered. I was fascinated by the new things I found because the anime was still in Johto (IIRC, it was before Pryce's battle when I got Sapphire), I still thought I was missing something.

 

[Lanstar]

This I don’t see much evidence for. In fact, it kind of sounds like the typical over-the-top reaction to Dexit as a whole. GameFreak’s decision to cut Pokémon somehow leads people into the mindset that they are now in an “echo chamber” with “low standards” who will never “listen to valid criticism of their games”, despite very little objective evidence that this is case.

The evidence is in the actual timing of the announcement showing that they weren't going to be transparent about dexit. That is, in that treehouse play, they did not mean to actually announce it there in the first place - It was an unintentional leak. What they did afterwards was incredibly telling: They gave corporate speak about the dexit, and brushed all the dissenters off by assuming that none of the criticism about their trailers existed. They lied about building the models from scratch, and made it completely ambiguous about what on earth they were having to deal with in making the games.

They did nothing to wash the actual flamewars between the consenters and dissenters of the franchise - They did the opposite. They didn't care about the controversy at all, and sided more toward the people who consented, rather than be actually "transparent" about the making of their games.

No matter how hard you try to spin it, the damage is done: Even now, you still get plenty of gamefreak criticism discussions go up all across social media - and they draw out plenty of heated discussions with the heavily polarized fanbase. And the questions might be: Does Game Freak even care about such criticisms and discussions? Did they learn anything about the way they handled the fanbase? Seeing how people just bought Sword/Shield regardless, I doubt it.

 

[Emmy]

I can't say I noticed anything controversial during the jump from Gen 2 to 3. Maybe it's because I was playing a lot of Digimon games at the same time so I was used to the idea of not every 'mon being in every game - plus Pokémon kinda has an excuse where you can say "oh the Pokémon that weren't included just aren't native to that Region".

As for my own controversial takes, I really didn't care for Gens 4 & 5. They bugged me so much that I didn't buy Black 2 and X for years down the line. It was actually playing through Sun on a whim that revived my loved of the franchise.

 

[Esserise]

The evidence is in the actual timing of the announcement showing that they weren't going to be transparent about dexit. That is, in that treehouse play, they did not mean to actually announce it there in the first place - It was an unintentional leak.

I find this claim pretty bewildering, not to mention totally unsubstantiated.

Masuda specifically took a moment to sidebar and talk about Pokémon HOME, which is the context in which he first explained the limitations on what Pokémon could be transferred. You’re telling me that one of the top producers of GF for the last two decades went rogue on camera and revealed that information and threw the whole PR team into a lurch, rather than, you know... them just actually planning to reveal that information at E3?

I have my own questions about why they went about the announcement in the way that they did, but I don’t think what you’re saying holds up at all.

They did nothing to wash the actual flamewars between the consenters and dissenters of the franchise - They did the opposite. They didn't care about the controversy at all, and sided more toward the people who consented, rather than be actually "transparent" about the making of their games.

I don’t think it’s really their responsibility to quell Internet flame wars. That’s the job of forum mods.

Besides that, I find your conclusions kind of at odds with each other. They “didn’t care” about the controversy, but also took a side in it?

 

[Lanstar]

I find this claim pretty bewildering, not to mention totally unsubstantiated.

Masuda specifically took a moment to sidebar and talk about Pokémon HOME, which is the context in which he first explained the limitations on what Pokémon could be transferred. You’re telling me that one of the top producers of GF for the last two decades went rogue on camera and revealed that information and threw the whole PR team into a lurch, rather than, you know... them just actually planning to reveal that information at E3?

I have my own questions about why they went about the announcement in the way that they did, but I don’t think what you’re saying holds up at all.



I don’t think it’s really their responsibility to quell Internet flame wars. That’s the job of forum mods.

Besides that, I find your conclusions kind of at odds with each other. They “didn’t care” about the controversy, but also took a side in it?

Sigh.... I feel like we're reading entirely different history books about the Dexit situation. Would you care to give me a source that cleanly and thoroughly details the complete history of the situation in an unbiased manner? It would help clear up a lot of claims we all have been having. >_>

 

[prog rocker]

Sigh.... I feel like we're reading entirely different history books about the Dexit situation. Would you care to give me a source that cleanly and thoroughly details the complete history of the situation in an unbiased manner? It would help clear up a lot of claims we all have been having. >_>

I think I could help, but I don't want an aneurysm. In hindsight, both sides have used pretty bad arguments.

 

[Esserise]

Sigh.... I feel like we're reading entirely different history books about the Dexit situation. Would you care to give me a source that cleanly and thoroughly details the complete history of the situation in an unbiased manner? It would help clear up a lot of claims we all have been having. >_>

Just watch the Treehouse video from E3...?

Here it is, you’ll want to skip to about 25 minutes in.

That’s when they broke the news, and that’s when everyone got mad (hence the crazy amount of dislikes on the video).

Sometime after that, they gave an interview about the decision to Famitsu, which was translated and posted to Reddit

And I mean, that's... pretty much the extent of the "history." If it came up in later discussions with media outlets (such as this one), Masuda and Ohmori basically repeated the same points about animation work and game balance being reasons for the cuts, and people unhappy about Dexit continued to generally not believe them. For my personal part, I do believe them, even though I think they haven't been 100% candid about it and I wonder why, since they did have plans to re-add missing Pokémon in later DLC updates, they didn't give people that assurance right away in order to negate some of the backlash, and instead declined to comment on the option of patching old Pokémon in.

Oh yeah, and I guess there was the official statement they posted on Pokemon.com in response to the backlash, but it's a pretty generic nothing statement that again just reiterates the same points, so I'm not sure there's much to take away from it ("this is unfortunate, this was a hard decision, the Pokémon that are cut will be available in future games"). It's not like the blowback was going to make them halt production on a game that was so close to being finished and ready for release, or anything like that.

 

[Lanstar]

Just watch the Treehouse video from E3...?

Here it is, you’ll want to skip to about 25 minutes in.

That’s when they broke the news, and that’s when everyone got mad (hence the crazy amount of dislikes on the video).

Yeah, that's when it was announced.

Maybe it wasn't an unintentional leak - But it was looked very informal in the way it was announced. Look at how the forums reacted to it. It really threw a wrench at everything about the whole situation, where people wondered if it even meant a true culling from the codebase in the first place. Odd lost in translation stuff going on, and quite surreal fanbase reactions... Quite unbelievable shock value that he even announced it in such a situation!

 

[Esserise]

But it was looked very informal in the way it was announced.

Reserving a dedicated moment to directly address the issue, during the first big news drop about the games since their reveal trailer, at the biggest gaming expo of the year, strikes me as pretty formal. I'm not exactly sure what you're expecting to have happened instead.

 

[Lanstar]

Reserving a dedicated moment to directly address the issue, during the first big news drop about the games since their reveal trailer, at the biggest gaming expo of the year, strikes me as pretty formal. I'm not exactly sure what you're expecting to have happened instead.

Read the thread area I linked to you, and see if anyone would have thought, at that moment, that the announcement looked """Formal""" >.<

 

[Esserise]

Read the thread area I linked to you, and see if anyone would have thought, at that moment, that the announcement looked """Formal""" >.<

I’m seeing a bunch of people who’ve just been blindsided with bad news and are understandably overwhelmed with anger.

I don’t think the formality of the announcement is the top thing on their minds.

 

[Lanstar]

I’m seeing a bunch of people who’ve just been blindsided with bad news and are understandably overwhelmed with anger.

I don’t think the formality of the announcement is the top thing on their minds.

Hence why to make an announcement like that truly formal, it should have first been done in writing, as opposed to after a freeform demo of the game, as well as a very loose description of this "Pokemon Home" thing that we still didn't get much info about at the time.

 

[Puddle]

Read the thread area I linked to you, and see if anyone would have thought, at that moment, that the announcement looked """Formal""" >.<

From the fandom's perspective, the announcement came out of nowhere and was a huge shock. But I'm pretty certain that there would have been careful planning going on behind the scenes at Game Freak. Junichi Masuda would have known, going into the interview, that he was going to make that announcement.

Hence why to make an announcement like that truly formal, it should have first been done in writing, as opposed to after a freeform demo of the game, as well as a very loose description of this "Pokemon Home" thing that we still didn't get much info about at the time.

But yes, maybe Game Freak didn't choose the best way to make such an important announcement. An open letter on the official website, or a video akin to a Pokemon Direct, might have worked better.

 

[swiftgallade46]

Regardless of how they made the announcement, I don’t think any of it amounts to this caricature of GameFreak that people have developed where they are out to take our money while ignoring criticisms and pinching pennies. The reaction to Dexit was going to be poor no matter what, but many people are exaggerating how the decision should characterize GameFreak.

 

[Lanstar]

Now that I think about it, the polarizing aspect from the dexit situation was unintentionally created - But please agree on this: Game Freak sure didn't try to help stop the polarization of the fan base as it was happening.

 

[prog rocker]

Now that I think about it, the polarizing aspect from the dexit situation was unintentionally created - But please agree on this: Game Freak sure didn't try to help stop the polarization of the fan base as it was happening.

But what could they do? From what I have seen no matter what they did it would have ended up the same way.