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Your controversial opinions

A hot take arising from another thread - as much as I miss it, I completely understand why the Emerald-style tough Battle Frontier no longer exists in quite the same way. It was a wonderful new mini-region to explore, but the difficulty was probably a little misjudged; if a typical 12-year old player would significantly struggle to defeat the Brains with only the information provided by the game itself (i.e, no substantive reference to EVs, IVs, STAB and the like), Game Freak do have to seriously consider whether developing such content is time well-spent. It doesn't help that each facility is more than a little grindy before you can make your way to the interesting fights with actual personalities.

I was 11 when Emerald came out, and I couldn't even get past the first few trainers in the Battle Frontier. I didn't like the fact that I couldn't earn money or experience points, and couldn't use Rayquaza. The worst thing of all, though, was that once my team members reached level 51 I could only use them against level 100 opponents. The whole experience left quite a bad taste in my mouth, and I've disliked battle facilities ever since.
 
I had a similar experience with the Battle Tower in Crystal, but didn't dissuade me to actually give it a chance.

To this day i still think they could have made a separate battle facility for cover legendaries, so at least you can use them in a battle facility.
 
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I never heard many complaints from others so I didn't know if I was just weird of what.

I don't know if I'd say they were widespread, but I definitely remember other people making similar complaints about that feature. Complaints which also were resuscitated a year later when USUM rolled around and Ultra Moon players (including yours truly) had to be awake at 5 a.m. in order to evolve Rockruff into Dusk Lycanroc. :eek:

Like you say, I think it was a mildly interesting idea on paper, but I think all that happened in practice was that some people simply didn't mind it, while others were inconvenienced by it. Can't say I've seen any sign that it was an experience-enriching mechanic for anyone.
 
Given that it’s competitive battling they’re pushing, there is such a facility where people can use their Pokémon: the Battle Spot/Stadium.
online costs money now though, and online doesn't last forever (becausr servers eventually get shut down) while single player content does last forever because it doesn't need internet to work. they should implement multiple battle facilities for players who don't want to play online.
 
and online doesn't last forever (becausr servers eventually get shut down) while single player content does last forever because it doesn't need internet to work. they should implement multiple battle facilities for players who don't want to play online.

While it's true that servers will eventually shut down, it's not going to happen for the foreseeable future, so that's a distant concern. It's been 8 years since X & Y came out, but they still have online service. To put it in perspective, a child born in 2010 could just now be picking up one of those games today for their 11th birthday, and could still see peoples' icons scrolling by on the PSS. Features pertaining to the Global Link are gone, and there are no more official competitions, but you can still connect with people and battle over Wi-Fi. I don't think there's any particular reason to think that SwSh's online afterlife will fare any worse. That said, I do think it's unfortunate that the online aspect is a paid feature now.

But beyond that, I don't think Game Freak really care that much about the permanence of their games' content. While it's obviously that thousands (if not millions) of people do replay old Pokémon games, that's never really managed to translate into a compelling reason for Game Freak to future-proof a game's features, or to design them to be played in perpetuity for a decade or more. This isn't to say that future-proofing is a bad or undesirable thing, but it makes sense to me that they'd be far more concerned about getting people to play the current game while it's current rather than making sure they want to play it 'til the end of time.

Of course, the fact that just about every single main series Pokémon game has continued to be replayed by those thousands or millions of people all the way up to today would, in my mind, suggest that there's not really an issue when it comes to the games lacking enough content to retain long-term interest. Would it be nice? Sure, but clearly even the games that are most devoid of beefy extra content like the Frontier have offered enough to keep people coming back to them. So again the question becomes, how necessary is this sort of thing really, from a developer's point of view, when such elements are by all appearances not at all correlated to a game's appeal in either the short or the long term? Single-player content may very well "last forever," but it seems the single-player content on offer is usually pretty sufficient to maintain strong posthumous engagement.

At any rate, "forever" is an odd concept here. As the recent incident involving European ORAS carts breaking down shows, physical media storage has its limits and is vulnerable. Digital media has its own risks, but can be generally expected to last longer. However, just as you might worry about what happens to a game's online multiplayer environment once the servers are shut down, what happens if Nintendo suddenly decides to rebuild their digital storefront without support for the 3DS? Then there would come a point where the only reliable way to play 3DS Pokémon games would be through physical cartridges (which again, have their limits, and are usually discontinued after a certain point and then become very expensive on the second-hand market), digital re-releases (which are never guaranteed to happen), or through pirated digital copies run on emulators, the users of which Nintendo and Game Freak definitely aren't going to go care about catering to. Much as it wounds my archivist heart to say so, trying to make things last "forever" is usually a wild goose chase.
 
I was 11 when Emerald came out, and I couldn't even get past the first few trainers in the Battle Frontier. I didn't like the fact that I couldn't earn money or experience points, and couldn't use Rayquaza. The worst thing of all, though, was that once my team members reached level 51 I could only use them against level 100 opponents. The whole experience left quite a bad taste in my mouth, and I've disliked battle facilities ever since.
Although I love the Battle Frontier concept, I find myself agreeing with this. It's not even the "challenge" of training specific 'mons to be viable for these kinds of battles, but rather the sheer tediousness (I guess that's a word) of actually getting to the Frontier Brains. I love the set-up, the unconventional aspects of battling, and added difficulty, but I loathe just about everything related to the number of battles you had to win in order to face the Frontier Brain. Idk, the sheer receptiveness is certainly a hallmark of the Pokémon franchise in that the games have you repeating similar actions over and over in order to accomplish a goal of sorts, but the need to win 42 battles to face Noland? Never seemed like much fun (and he was one of the easier ones to get to).

Maybe that's why I don't shiny hunt very much either lol. My dedication sucks :LOL:
 
But... my "Battle Frontier sucks and I don't mind it gone" take...
Given that some other people here basically claimed the same, not such a hot take. But saying that one of the least liked villains in the series (eight years since XY came out and it's still rare to see any praise for Lysandre, or XY's story for that matter) is the best in the series, or to claim that New Pokemon Snap doesn't look as good as the general population claims it does, now that's spicy.
 
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I was 11 when Emerald came out, and I couldn't even get past the first few trainers in the Battle Frontier. I didn't like the fact that I couldn't earn money or experience points, and couldn't use Rayquaza. The worst thing of all, though, was that once my team members reached level 51 I could only use them against level 100 opponents. The whole experience left quite a bad taste in my mouth, and I've disliked battle facilities ever since.
I want the battle frontier to come back but in a compleatly different form factor than emerald. maybe instead of having 7 facilities it should have 5 facilities with each being totally unique. Have one facility be the battle factory and another facility that focuses on inverse battles, maybe even another on that focuses on using unevolved pokemon and if you lose you don't have to restart your streek, you just keep going from where you left off.
 
Given that some other people here basically claimed the same, not such a hot take. But saying that one of the least liked villains in the series (eight years since XY came out and it's still rare to see any praise for Lysandre, or XY's story for that matter) is the best in the series, or to claim that New Pokemon Snap doesn't look as good as the general population claims it does, now that's spicy.
I think the situation is that I have seen a lot of people that do say that ORAS is bad just because it doesn't have the Battle Frontier. No other reasons said, just that.

I don't mind people not liking ORAS, but I always found confusing why the removal of one feature caused such a strong reaction, specially considering it doesn't affect anything else.

It's not like Lufia's genre shift in the remake which affected everything.
 
and another facility that focuses on inverse battles
I have been waiting for eight years at this point for this. Most likely will never happen but if it does, i'm all over that shit. Making teams of pokemon with poor typings (either offensively or defensively or both) in the normal type chart just to see them wreck pokemon that are carried heavily by their typing in the normal type chart.

Just the change in dynamics in team building makes Inverse Battles tons of fun and it's shame GF never took full advantage of it ingame (i know they made like a season in Gen 7 for online play).
 
I think the situation is that I have seen a lot of people that do say that ORAS is bad just because it doesn't have the Battle Frontier. No other reasons said, just that.

I don't mind people not liking ORAS, but I always found confusing why the removal of one feature caused such a strong reaction, specially considering it doesn't affect anything else.
Saying ORAS sucks because it has no Battle Frontier is ridiculous in my opinion. Me personally, it was just very disappointing for the game to not have it.

I still like it overall, and It was there, so very close to actually being one of my favorite games in the series. But when i saw just the XY Battle Maison and a tease for the Battle Frontier my heart dropped. I didn't even need a complete clone of the Emerald Battle Frontier, i just wanted more than just a by the numbers Battle Tower. Anything else, just two or three more facilities with fun, unique gimmicks (which hopefully would make unorthodox teams better suited for them than just stacking your team with the usual suspects).
 
For my part, I don't think having no BF made OR/AS bad, but I found it just clearly inferior to Emerald overall with that just being a major part of it. First time I regretted buying a Pokémon game.
 
The sooner Pokemon reaches the 1000 Pokemon mark the better because it seems there is a paranoia about that number that isn't helping. I don't like regional forms I'd rather have just more pokemon and if a Pokemon's type and movepoll is different and it can't switch between the forms its forms are effectively different pokemon anyway. Also I don't think they actually make that much sense lorewise. Why would Zigzagoon in Kalos be closer to Hoenn Zigzagoon than Galarian Zigzagoon? Why wouldn't Medicham from the tropical Hoenn have to adapt to Snowpoint City's surroundings?
 
The sooner Pokemon reaches the 1000 Pokemon mark the better because it seems there is a paranoia about that number that isn't helping.

I can understand worrying about character bloat in general and what that means for the series going forward (and basically what it means is Dexit), but I do think the fixation on that particular number is strange. For a lot of the general public, there may as well already be 1,000 Pokémon. Pick random people off the street and ask them how many Pokémon exist by now and you'll probably get all sorts of answers; the reality is, only dedicated fans keep track of that sort of thing, and I think for most of us it's not really an issue. If I've managed to memorize 898 Pokémon up to this point, another 102 isn't going to make my brain explode. And even for fans who do struggle with memorization*, there are countless auxiliary resources that can help serve as a reference point.

* I'm not trying to imply that memorization is a requirement or an expectation of being a fan, of course; I'm just saying, a lot of us are that sort of curative, cataloguing fan who makes it a point to do that.
 
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The sooner Pokemon reaches the 1000 Pokemon mark the better because it seems there is a paranoia about that number that isn't helping.
MFW there's 1409 Digimon...

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