Official Pokémon Sword and Shield speculation thread (Updated June 5th, 2019)

[TechSkylander1518]

Here you go guys 『ポケットモンスター ソード・シールド』の“いま聞きたいこと”について増田順一氏、大森滋氏を直撃。「連れて来られるポケモンの話」にも言及！【E32019】 - ファミ通.com

Kinda seems like this only further confirms the restriction, if Google Translate is anything to go by.

This decision is personally sad and sad. Of course, I wanted to be able to bring all Pokemon if I could do it, but it was also a decision that I had to make some day. In the end, I had no choice but to choose the quality.

Is Pokemon that does not appear in the Galal illustrated book be added in subsequent updates?

Masuda　future updates, etc. are undecided.

There is the nice mention of Home possibilities, though.

However, even if it can not be made to appear in "Pokemon Sword Shield", we intend to play an active role in the future title through "Pokemon Home".

Also Google is translating part of that response as "I will never do anything wrong" which is very funny. (Not as in like "Haha Masuda you screw up all the time", just that it's funny to imagine anyone making such a bold claim)

 

[Knightwolf09]

Also I just realized something we all ignored. Grookey learn Knock Off naturally....He'll definitely be the Incineroar and be the star starter

 

[El_]

Curious as to how many coding assets Dynamaxed Pokemon are consuming. I'd hardly call that "quality" but meh. Quantity is its own kind of quality in my view.

 

[Pax Unda]

I think the best possible scenario, excluding GF patching in all the new mons into SwSh, is that he means they're making Home its own "game." In addition to storing your Pokemon, maybe we can trade (already confirmed) and battle with all the Pokemon you have in storage - basically a Pokemon game but stripped to its barest, mechanical level.

 

[Knightwolf09]

New news on max moves. Flying type Max Airstream, boosts speed, and Steel type, Max Steelspike raises defense

 

[BackSet]

I think the best possible scenario, excluding GF patching in all the new mons into SwSh, is that he means they're making Home its own "game." In addition to storing your Pokemon, maybe we can trade (already confirmed) and battle with all the Pokemon you have in storage - basically a Pokemon game but stripped to its barest, mechanical level.

So in other words, a game tailored specifically to the competitive community.

 

[Joker901]

I think the best possible scenario, excluding GF patching in all the new mons into SwSh, is that he means they're making Home its own "game." In addition to storing your Pokemon, maybe we can trade (already confirmed) and battle with all the Pokemon you have in storage - basically a Pokemon game but stripped to its barest, mechanical level.

Yeah...why not? How many games did 200 people worked on in the last three years? 5? Why not 6 then?

 

[Zeta]

I think the best possible scenario, excluding GF patching in all the new mons into SwSh, is that he means they're making Home its own "game." In addition to storing your Pokemon, maybe we can trade (already confirmed) and battle with all the Pokemon you have in storage - basically a Pokemon game but stripped to its barest, mechanical level.

Yeah that's basically what I've been discussing in the Pokemon Home thread. If it has Breeding, Capture, Battle. and Leveling features there's basically no real problem.

If it's bouncing Pokemon sprites that collect berries to send into Sword and Shield and that's the extent of the interactivity then it's basically highway robbery.

 

[Cresselia92]

Aww, I would have wished for the Max Airstream to summon a Tailwind. Well, a speed boost is still nice.

 

[Cute Charm]

So in other words, a game tailored specifically to the competitive community.

Also for people who rather play more phone games than console games.

 

[9tiefly]

From Pokéxperto's Twitter:

"According to Masuda, there is still no decision taken on bringing non-Galar Pokémon to Pokémon Sword & Shield via updates. All Pokémon will still have an active role in Pokémon Home".

The outrage might just work, then.

 

[Joker901]

View: https://twitter.com/JoeMerrick/status/1138908334856294400

 

[Knightwolf09]

Copy pasted from a reddit post I made

With the demo, people have gotten a chance to get a hands on approach at Dynmaxing. We do know it significantly increases stats of a pokemon if not by 50%. It also doesn't require a held item. And the max moves that come them act like z-moves in which they seem to change the pokemon's original moves to the corresponding type max moves. However we are not too sure how much more powerful these moves become.

A good example would a small clip from Gamexplain, who Dynamaxed a Wooloo at the start of the gym battle. Despite the max move, Max Strike which has Normal stab and replaces the move Take Down, it at best can 2 shots a Goldeen.
Another mystery is something that was found in the pokemon's summary, a small bracket called "Dynamx Level" Nobody knows what exactly that means or what it entails, but that's why it's a mystery.

Now onto the other big element of Dynamax, the Max Moves. Each of them seem to have a different effect, whether altering weather, adding terrain, or buffing and debuffing. All while doing damage.

For confirmed Max Moves and their effects, here's a list

Normal-Max Strike: Lowers opponent's speed

Grass-Max Overgrowth: Creates Grassy Terrain

Fire-Max Flare: Creates Drought

Water-Max Geyser: Creates Rain

Electric-Max Lightning: Creates Electric Terrain

Rock-Max Rockfall: Creates Sandstorm

Dark-Max Darkness: Lowers opponent's Sp.Def

Fairy-Max Starfall: Creates Misty Terrain

Flying-Max Airstream: Boosts Speed

Steel-Max Steelspike: Boosts Defense


And that is all the info known so far.

 

[Pax Unda]

Maybe Gigantamaxing requires certain mons to reach a certain Dynamax level?

 

[MineFreak18]

The interview mentions that the total number of pokemon has exceeded 1000 (including form changes and new pokemon in gen 8)? Is this true or a mistranslation? Because of it is true then i'm really excited.

 

[Cainhxrst]

The interview mentions that the total number of pokemon has exceeded 1000 (including form changes and new pokemon in gen 8)? Is this true or a mistranslation? Because of it is true then i'm really excited.

that's apparently including forms. We don't know what "forms" entails exactly so 1000 is really vague

 

[Juizel]

One thing that bothers me about these things is that thing with the Dynamax level. I have this strong, weird feeling of déjà-vu; like I've seen the exact summary with that exact design and that exact "Dynamax level" bar before.

Reaaaaally strange. Couldn't really think of a game where I saw this yet, though. Maybe it was just some sort of vision of the future I had but forgot and now that it happens I remember it, like the most useless fortune teller ever

 

[Myth]

so i think there's a couple of things that can be unpacked here:

as a starting point, there is no series, no franchise, no game-- not even MMOs-- that have nearly as many models as Pokemon does. the amount of individual modeling work they have to do is essentially unprecedented.

There is, actually, as someone have mentioned. Also, if we take into account the kind of game that Pokémon games are, in the case of "rough graphic work" (let's use that, lacking of a better term), even with its 800+ individual models, it should still be less work to be done (speaking of "rough graphically work") than with games like Red Dead Redemption (that has many animations), Dragon Quest (that also has a huge amount of monsters and uses advanced textures) and so many others. The difference here is that the developers' staff behind these titles have unparalleled sizes, as we all know.

so it's not really appropriate for us, as consumers and not developers at Game Freak, to simply give it a hand-wave as "well they have been doing it" considering we don't really have a good grasp of the underlying work that is being put in.

But that's not an excuse when in fact they have been doing it. Actually, at the most, Game Freak would be responsible for the animations only. The models will still have to be made anyway, as they have always been by Creatures, because they use those models in other medias too. And even so, Creatures helps not only with the models, but also with animations.

In fact, Creatures has already delivered to Game Freak all the "skeletons" models of the 800+ Pokémon walking, running and doing various other things (sleeping) in the past generation. So...they already have a great load of the work done for them here. In addition, all these models were made with a much larger number of polygons than needed, precisely serving for many generations to come.

And in fact, we can have a "good grasp of the underlying work that's being put in", actually! For them, making the 70~100 new models of the new Pokémon would not be as that hard (and even so we would be ignoring the fact that they would not, but Creatures instead). A model isn't that hard to do, at least not how you try to make it look like.

So at the very least, that "policies change" would not be such an urgent thing to do.

And taking into account that Creatures will have to continue to make advanced models of all Pokémon (or at least of most of them) anyway, the only problem I see is Game Freak having to deal with the animations and with tweaks to the textures etc. (that is, animations that Creatures won't do for them). But well, Sword and Shield doesn't seem to have so many advances regarding animations.

And if someday any of these things really were a big problem for Game Freak or Creatures, they would only have to do what every developer in the industry do when they realize that their staff isn't being able to afford their projects: they just increase it. Of course, taking into consideration that the project will give the due financial return to them. And well, regarding Pokémon, I have to say that it would be a great investment to make. Look around the internet how many fans are disappointed with this. I think it's better for them to be aware of what their consumer looks for n their products.

as for the hiring aspect, i've already commented on that before in this thread: few people on the "gaming" spectrum of the internet understand how businesses hire. it's not a function of having not enough money, it's a function of the hired employee bringing in enough money. this is exactly why giving companies tax breaks rarely results in them hiring; because it's not a lack of money causing companies not to hire, it's a lack of value being brought in by an individual or group of employees. and the other aspect of that is that hiring an employee takes time. it especially takes time if the job market is healthy and they can just find the offer they're most satisfied with. and of course, what if people just don't want to work at Game Freak because it's kind of a sucky job? all of that can impact hiring too, which is why the notion of "just hire more people then" is so very oversimplified and unrealistic.

Of course, it takes time, and hiring a lot of people at once is unrealistic, and I would even say that it could hurt the creative process of the company. Then it sure would not be a good thing to do. But it doesn't change the fact that in so many years the developer has grown so little.

Also, "businesses hire policies" will be different for each area. When it comes to creative processes, it isn't really how you describe that it works. In fact it's impossible to determine how much the employee will return to the company at many cases, and Game Freak deals with creative processes. And yet, as we've already seen from the fanbase reaction, it's clear that hiring more people so we don't have to leave any Pokémon behind later will be worth every penny spent.

re: "it still affects the majority of the fans" [citation needed]
The games sell in the double-digit million. r/pokemon is likely at this point the largest pokemon "fan site" and it only has some 1.5 million subscribers (with a fairly low ratio of active users to users). even if you were generous and cut the sales of the games in half-- because that would be everyone buying two copies of the game-- you still end up with the internet being, at best, not even 20% of the entire fanbase. and on top of that? the internet isn't even in agreement.

Now, I don't even know if the internet counts as 20% of potential buyers (maybe it's less, maybe it's more). But do you really think they would not care about losing 20% of sales? That is an unrealistic thinking, of course they care. We would be talking about million dollars.

And you make a mistake if you think that it extends to games only. Fans of any of the many franchise's media departments are potential buyers of any product of any of the many franchise's media departments. This means that a fan dissatisfied with the games can not only stop to buy the games, but also stop buying physical products and everything else. It's a huge loss. It matters.

Question: is there any news about Grookey’s move, Branch Poke? Is it the new Leafage or does it have some other effect?

Aside from that, it gives me obvious pre-Wood Hammer vibes. I would hope Grookey gets something like Leech Seed to replenish HP, if it were to learn that move.

We didn't have any new information about it.

 

[PartTimePokemonMaster]

I'm upset. I hope they patch the games.

Spoiler: Rage rant

I'm not a game designer but If I was able to do anything I'd patch them in at least quarterly per generation. Obviously starting with Gen I because they're done with let's go. Then go from there.

I think balancing is a lame excuse. Modeling is a better excuse though they have models for the previous 807 pokemon and forms and their data (data was in Let's Go). Plus we have up to Gen 4 mons in PoGo. (Meaning only SOME Gen 5, 6, 7 mons don't have updated textures). The textures and shading needed to be updated. We can see from the gameplay at e3 that they are using Let's Go style icons so that's their choice (I didn't mind the 3ds style but maybe more people will prefer the new style for the larger displays).

Then what's more frustrating it's that this is their plan moving forward, but that doesn't make sense because once they have the models and textures and stats developed they should be able to move them forward one would assume. At least for other Gen 8 games. If the switch goes 4k at some point 720p textures won't look as bad as 240p textures so I doubt get not being too transfer all those mons form HOME post Swsh.

Furthermore, why market home if we won't be able to fully use it. Hopefully they'll be a game where we could send and use all those mons. I don't think they'll do battle simulator home. Mostly due to the fact that if they have battle models for that they may as well send them to Swsh.

Then in terms of previous games that have had disconnects, at least they had the pokemon in the games. Charizard was in Ruby's data. You couldn't catch one, but you could trade one. It's not completely removed from the game.

Then there is the point if how do they determine a fan favorite or which ones to remove? What does that do to balance when there are 18 types with the possibility of two type combinations. Not to mention the different roles for each type combo. Gyrados is a bully physical attacker. Swanna is a Fast-ish special attacker. How can they (potentially) decide Gyrados is enough. Maybe more people use them, but what if you want to use them?

Also let me be clear I'm not opposed to limiting the in game mons in a similar fashion to USUM, but not having them in at all is what is frustrating to me.

I won't disparage the staff. I hope they are listening but I hope they don't become I'll due to backlash.

I'll still probably get Sword actually eventually because Pokemon is life?! Whatever changes may be I'll deal with them, but I won't say I'll be happy about them.

I just want fire/fairy or electric Scorbunny. I like Impidimp. I wish for better physical fire, fairy, flying, electric moves this Gen. Hopefully they haven't removed any attacks. I'm trying to be positive I promise!

 

[swiftgallade46]

Genuinely curious, but what were the reasons given that they would never consider DLC/large patches? I know I remember them being against it and stating they would never do it, but I can’t remember why. I’m thinking that if it’s not a very strong reason, then maybe we could hold out hope that they would reconsider that policy in favor of patching in old Pokémon little by little with [free] DLC.