No Pokemon Z?

[Bolt Strike]

First off, why go through all these lengths of trying to make us believe your way is right? Honestly, it's not. It's an opinion yes, but stop trying to force it upon us.

Being open minded about different people's playstyles is forcing my opinion down people's throats? LOL okay.

If you don't like it, there are other games that can give you what you're looking for.

Funny, because I'm sure not seeing a lot of them.

Being linear is nothing I've heard before until I've come upon your posts anyways.

How? There's a lot of people in this fanbase, and especially this forum, that have had similar complaints. I mean, no offense, but IDK how that's possible.

They have to be with the times. They can't make games the way they used to if they want to make things work.

They can be with the times without needing to scale down on content.

Also, what seemed as "linear, lengthy and challenging" to us in the past... we were children. The formula hasn't changed, but we've gotten older. Things that were complicated in the past aren't now.

I pointed out exactly why this isn't true a while back. But if you want to ignore concrete evidence, go ahead.

Also, challenges are fun if you want them to be. I don't think they're "beneath our abilities" so to speak. It's a twist on making the game more fun, and what's wrong with that? nothing.

I prefer twists that add things to the gameplay, not take them away.

The difficulty option was a fail honestly. They tried in b2W2 and it was a major flop. I don't want to have to go to extreme lengths like that just to get a key for an option to be available. Chances are with children, that's not going to happen.

It's a failure of execution, not concept. They can easily try it again and just have a difficulty selection at the start of the game. You know, like every other game in existence does?

I mean, I think they're going to pull a Gen II and let us go back to Kalos. That in it's own would be a lot of post game material and would be more challenging and intriguing.

Whether or not that's "post game" is debatable. I consider them to be Part 2 of the main game.

 

[zoroarctic]

We aren't being doomsday prophets, we are talking about the lack of Z which inevitably lead to the discussion of whether there was a need for Z or not...
Which admittedly slightly digressed to a discussion of the franchise in general, but this all matters. The lack of Z follows perfectly with the trend the franchise seems to be going to. It's more looking at evidence then it is "prophesizing".
jus sayin

One example a trend does not make.

 

[PinkIceFox]

For all we know, they could have announced sun and moon to coincide with the 20th anniversary, but still plan to make a pokemon Z afterwards. It probably looks nicer to have a new generation released on the 20th anniversary year than a third version, after all.

 

[Bolt Strike]

One example a trend does not make.

It's not just one example though. Pretty much every game since 5th gen except for BW2 has fit this trend. BW with its linearity and lack of difficulty, XY with its lack of plot and post game content, ORAS with its lack of Emerald content, and now the likelihood that Z is completely being skipped in favor of a new generation that will inevitably provide less content than Z would have. There's a definite trend going on here.

 

[Johtohfiller]

What I'm talking about is comments like this:

Interview with Masuda on ORAS and why there is no battle frontier • /r/Games



Game Freak has been making the games shorter, easier, more linear, and with less content specifically to appeal to the mobile audience and to create a similar experience where you can just blow through them quickly and easily. This kind of mentality is seriously hampering the quality of their recent games. I don't mind if they want the series to be more accessible for that kind of audience, but for the love of God, don't shove it down everyone's throats if they don't like that style of game.

IIRC Masuda did another interview shortly after XY came out where he said basically the same thing, that he made the game easier because people don't have as much time to play games these days. I hope GO will give him a reason to relent on that.

One thing I'm wondering is whether they actually cut content from Gen 6 in order to use it in Gen 7 to make it bigger for the 20th anniversary.

 

[Phoenixon]

One thing I'm wondering is whether they actually cut content from Gen 6 in order to use it in Gen 7 to make it bigger for the 20th anniversary.

This is a very interesting thought.
I think this might definitely be true for the Pokemon themselves... It's a good explanation to why there were so few new Pokemon this gen.. Perhaps they want to have 151 new ones in Gen 7 for the anniversary?

 

[DCM]

As a reminder, how you communicate matters as much as what you say. If conversation keeps teetering away from discussion of the games (or lack thereof) and towards other people's personal history of gaming, we will start cracking heads.

FURTHERMORE, even if someone was new to the series, saying their points were invalid because they were too new is a real good way to alienate rookies. This is obviously not ok. We will be keeping an eye on this thread to make sure people are playing nice.

 

[Midorikawa]

For all we know, they could have announced sun and moon to coincide with the 20th anniversary, but still plan to make a pokemon Z afterwards. It probably looks nicer to have a new generation released on the 20th anniversary year than a third version, after all.

Yay another person thinks almost the same thing as me. I'm still hoping for an Emerald Z game because the hints and connections in ORAS and XY was just too much.

 

[godiego]

It's not just one example though. Pretty much every game since 5th gen except for BW2 has fit this trend. BW with its linearity and lack of difficulty, XY with its lack of plot and post game content, ORAS with its lack of Emerald content, and now the likelihood that Z is completely being skipped in favor of a new generation that will inevitably provide less content than Z would have. There's a definite trend going on here.

well i'd argue that your commentary on BW is irrelevant since my irrelevant anecdotal experience is that most people said BW was harder than previous generations. at any rate, how can you argue this now when Gen III pre-Emerald was just as bad as Gen VI?

 

[Almonds]

The easiest solution to create a game without making it overly difficult for newbies/casuals is to add challenge mode. Seeing how they did it before, it shouldn't be too hard to add the extra feature and make it available from the beginning.

That aside, I do want to use Zydoge, so as long as the forms are included in the next game, I'm not going to be too disappointed with no Z. Even if they're not included, there's nothing I can do about it anyways

 

[Phoenixon]

Yay another person thinks almost the same thing as me. I'm still hoping for an Emerald Z game because the hints and connections in ORAS and XY was just too much.

AHHH you mean Pokemon Zeta Emerald? I'll take it... Zygarde and Rayquaza both green dragons, both protectors in a sort of way... Speaking of protectors... a Legend from Gen VII is also a protector.... Can we please have our first inter-generational trio of Pokemon that are already part of a trio? Instead of grouping legends into simple groups, why not connect groups together more intricately like that... I thought they were leaning towards that with Arceus and the Creation trio and the Lake trio, but no...

AHH This might be a coincidence, but it might NOT be....

Zeta is the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 7.

And we're on the SEVENTH GENERATION? Ahhhh

Anyway, at the very least, I do see the connections between Hoenn and Kalos as something akin to the connections between Johto and Sinnoh, so I definitely think something can be done with that.... (we at least got the Sinjoh ruins..... They can take that a few steps further....)

 

[Master Cyrus]

I recently dug up some of my old cartridges and examined the average level of all my pokemon when I first entered the hall of fame.

Emerald: 48
Diamond: 54
Platinum: 53
Heartgold: 45
Black:45
Black 2:55
Y:......74
Omega Ruby: 63

Yeah the games have definitely gotten a lot easier.

 

[Phoenixon]

Using @Magiana's stats, now we have a literal trend.
Admittedly, this doesn't tell us much with a single sample and the R squared value isn't that high (R measures how correlated the two variables seem to be), but I could get more conclusive results if other people sent me data like this.
Again, I'll admit one possible bias in the data might result from people getting older as the play... Still trying to think of a way of taking that into account or eliminating it....
This could be very interesting IF I get a lot of data...

 

[Dorothy]

It'd be interesting to replay my old games and see what data points I end up with.

 

[godiego]

Yeah the games have definitely gotten a lot easier.

level wouldn't be able to capture the full picture: i was able to handily beat the elite four in DP with a team ranging from 40~45. if anything it shows that Gen VI had inflated levels and Game Freak tried their best (though likely failed) to compensate.

 

[Phoenixon]

level wouldn't be able to capture the full picture: i was able to handily beat the elite four in DP with a team ranging from 40~45. if anything it shows that Gen VI had inflated levels and Game Freak tried their best (though likely failed) to compensate.

Again, I'll admit, this is a fair criticism of our model so far. We should also take into account the amount of time that has passed up to the Elite Four.
That should help.

 

[Mitchman]

For all we know, they could have announced sun and moon to coincide with the 20th anniversary, but still plan to make a pokemon Z afterwards. It probably looks nicer to have a new generation released on the 20th anniversary year than a third version, after all.

Ι was pondering that possibility. XY/SM might be two sides to the same coin after all. If not Kalos in SM, what if they do a sequel game afterwards to tie up and together the two regions.

 

[Midorikawa]

I recently dug up some of my old cartridges and examined the average level of all my pokemon when I first entered the hall of fame.

Emerald: 48
Diamond: 54
Platinum: 53
Heartgold: 45
Black:45
Black 2:55
Y:......74
Omega Ruby: 63

Yeah the games have definitely gotten a lot easier.

Actually that mostly looks pretty averaged out. XY your pokemon did end up OP because those first three gyms alone were so far apart.

Platinum:52
Heart Gold:50
White:47
White 2:57
Y:79
Alpha Sapphire:53

Those are mine. See pretty average. XY is so sad...admittedly I used the exp share in Y , but still....wow.

And while levels don't always tell much, They can give us an idea of how people generally do in the games. I had tough battles in Platinum and W2. Y was easy, HG was difficult-but then again I may have not evolved my totodile... I don't remember white or AS, though in white the first record is after you beat ghetsis and I think he was easy.

They do for sure tell you that either A) They changed the amount of EXP your pokemon get, or B) How much you dealt with along the way. And just noting now that I don't think Amie effects that much because I did it in AS and look at that average.

 

[godiego]

Again, I'll admit, this is a fair criticism of our model so far. We should also take into account the amount of time that has passed up to the Elite Four.
That should help.

that won't necessarily help either. for me at least, DPPt was around 20-30 hours while XY were at around 60-70. short of having a full roster listed, levels and time aren't going to help objectively gauge something so subjective.

 

[WallflowerCanyon]

I'd like to remind y'all folks that they gave Zygarde's Formes height and weight stats when they were first revealed. Those stats are completely useless in the anime and most of the other side-stuff it has appeared in. They clearly have something planned for it in the core games, it's only a matter of how and what exactly.

I would've wanted to see it all done right from the start if there were never plans for a follow-up game or post-launch support/extensions.

This is why I'm both excited and nervous about SM. If they are no longer doing 3rd versions, then I honestly hope that SM is made in such a manner that a 3rd version will not be necessary. Out of all the paired games that we've had in the past 20 years, I think X and Y deserved a 3rd version the most.

I really like the idea of SM being the "GCS/HGSS" to Kalos. Like what if this new region was the one that AZ fought against in the Kalos War?