Official Pre-Pokémon Sword & Pokémon Shield Speculation & Leaks thread

[Virbank Video]

I’ve been a fan of Pokémon since the late 90’s but I only started to look into IV’s, EV training and natures around the time of Black & White. After a lot of playing around and breeding in those games I started to get to grips with it but even now I have only just scratched the surface with other things such as abilities and battle items. I was never really that interested before but developed a desire to learn more about it because I was interested in finding ways to make my favourite Pokémon as strong as possible in battle. To this day I’ve never battled competitively and I can count all online battles I’ve had on one hand. I have however become a hell of a lot better at the post game battle facilities, recently reaching the 50-streak at the Battle Tree Super Singles with a team of Stoutland, Dragonite and Venusaur, then again with Dragonite, Komala and Lycanroc. I was really proud of those achievements, getting the nice ribbon for some of my favourite Pokémon.

The reason I’m saying all this is that while over time I’ve developed an interest for the mechanics and finer details of breeding Pokémon and building competent and fun teams, I have absolutely no desire to attempt competitive battling. While the game makes it quite difficult to really succeed with purely your favourites, I would argue that the competitive scene makes it downright impossible. Which in turn, takes away all the fun for me. What use is a video game if it isn’t fun? I think a lot of people are on the same boat as me. I even started watching some videos on YouTube on competitve battles but stopped before too long because, let’s face it... there are only so many times you can watch everyone use the same dozen or so Pokémon (out of over 800 available, remember) over and over again. There’s also the matter of the fairly well documented evidence of foul-play within the competitive scene... which is just so anti-Pokémon and anti-everything the franchise is supposed to be about.

So while we wait for genuine information on the new games, I find myself in a strange limbo with regards to the rumours of a change in the battle system. On one hand, I’m reluctant for them to mess around too much with something which has been a constant in my 20 year experience of Pokémon. It’s familiar and comfortable. On the other hand, if a change to the battle system means that perhaps competitive battling would be overhauled to the point of allowing more people to feel like they could take part and have fun with their favourite Pokémon... I think that would be great. I think it would inject so much life into the franchise as a whole.

Either way, I’m going to buy the new game and I’m sure I’ll love it, like I have every game since Blue. Interesting times ahead, I’m sure.

 

[WallflowerCanyon]

View: https://youtu.be/VJKdopLhRtw

Pokemon is a Japanese franchise first and foremost. So it would only make sense that the information originally came from somebody in Japan, not in China. Not trying to get in the soapbox here, but I'm wondering if the whole Chinese-hacking-the-US government controversy had any influence on the English Pokemon community thinking these leaks originally came from the Chinese Riddler.

 

[Silktree]

Or maybe it's because no one even mentioned the Japanese Riddler until a few months ago.

 

[SGD]

So while we wait for genuine information on the new games, I find myself in a strange limbo with regards to the rumours of a change in the battle system. On one hand, I’m reluctant for them to mess around too much with something which has been a constant in my 20 year experience of Pokémon. It’s familiar and comfortable. On the other hand, if a change to the battle system means that perhaps competitive battling would be overhauled to the point of allowing more people to feel like they could take part and have fun with their favourite Pokémon... I think that would be great. I think it would inject so much life into the franchise as a whole.

I'm stumped as to how they'd change the battle system at all, if the rumours are true I imagine it would be significant, but it may not be a single change like turning PP into a shared pool (I think PP is pretty fine as it is though) as you think the rumours would be just a little more clear.

But I suppose the best thing for individuals, such as myself, to do is wait and see how this goes, I trust Gamefreak to do what they think is best, not nessisarily the right thing, but what they want to do.

Interesting times ahead, I’m sure.

No doubt.

 

[multiingbe]

While the game makes it quite difficult to really succeed with purely your favourites, I would argue that the competitive scene makes it downright impossible. Which in turn, takes away all the fun for me. What use is a video game if it isn’t fun? I think a lot of people are on the same boat as me. I even started watching some videos on YouTube on competitve battles but stopped before too long because, let’s face it... there are only so many times you can watch everyone use the same dozen or so Pokémon (out of over 800 available, remember) over and over again. There’s also the matter of the fairly well documented evidence of foul-play within the competitive scene... which is just so anti-Pokémon and anti-everything the franchise is supposed to be about.

I think that you might really enjoy and appreciate the OU and Doubles OU format matches on Pokemon Showdown!
If you use a creative team like you are describing, you will go up and down within a certain range of the ladders that tends to be filled with other creative and unpredictable teams! The graphics are a bit simple compared to the current day actual games, but the visual style that results feels very good.

I have heard that higher on the ladder, there is some greate similarity to the official competitive scene. But, between 1000 and 1300 rank, it almost always feels like unique and fascinating Elite Four battles!!

To keep this on topic, it could be very interesting if either the first new games, or the ones after these, have the equivalent of a battle simulation game, maybe accessible at the main menu, built into it. I'm not sure how much more space that would take up, as far as, all of the Pokemon data and graphics are already used in the main game!

 

[Jukain]

There are plenty of people that would want the game to just be a battle simulator.

 

[William-Jdubz]

If only pokemon switch could look this good
http://i.********/vp/1525012933404.jpg

Thing is, they easily could but won't. Gamefreak run the biggest franchise in the world I believe, these days its bigger than LOZ and Mario, but they don't seem to use that to their advantage for some reason, their visuals are always really average, its even way behind the average JRPG in terms of visuals and story. I'm curious why they don't give us the stronger gaming experience we all crave.

 

[nickdt]

Thing is, they easily could but won't. Gamefreak run the biggest franchise in the world I believe, these days its bigger than LOZ and Mario, but they don't seem to use that to their advantage for some reason, their visuals are always really average, its even way behind the average JRPG in terms of visuals and story. I'm curious why they don't give us the stronger gaming experience we all crave.

I think because GF has the mindset that they don't want to make it too difficult for their target audience, which is supported by all the hand-holding in SUMO and USUM.

 

[InfernapeTheWise]

I think because GF has the mindset that they don't want to make it too difficult for their target audience, which is supported by all the hand-holding in SUMO and USUM.

???
pretty=hard?
???

 

[William-Jdubz]

Pokemon is a Japanese franchise first and foremost. So it would only make sense that the information originally came from somebody in Japan, not in China. Not trying to get in the soapbox here, but I'm wondering if the whole Chinese-hacking-the-US government controversy had any influence on the English Pokemon community thinking these leaks originally came from the Chinese Riddler.

With Gen 7 it makes sense in a few regards, I believe Gen 7 had its demo leaked info initially from China when Nintendo / Gamefreak did something and a contract appeared online regarding the possibility of the demo, thats how the rest of the world knew, and Gen 7 was the first time they used a unified variation of Pokemon in their language. It's very possible there was some Chinese people in the translation and concept art field of pokemon. A lot of the info that the Riddler was getting, was clearly concepts of various pokemon, so he likely knew someone or had a contact in that field or the early advertising aspect of the field.

I don't know much about the Riddler, but I know about the concept art field so that's how I would guess we had all that info early lying about like the gen 7 starters and other pokemon from the Chinese community.

 

[SGD]

Thing is, they easily could but won't. Gamefreak run the biggest franchise in the world I believe, these days its bigger than LOZ and Mario, but they don't seem to use that to their advantage for some reason, their visuals are always really average, its even way behind the average JRPG in terms of visuals and story. I'm curious why they don't give us the stronger gaming experience we all crave.

I think graphics wise it may have something to do with Manpower, Gamefreak is a small studio and they've said in interviews they like it that way, as of 2018 they have about 143 Employees and they've said they like to split them into teams (Newer and Older Empolyees) for games after the initial Release of a Generation, not that it really means much in this regard, but you look at the developers of Ni no Kuni, Level-5 Inc. they're last recorded number of employees for 300.

They could easily afford to hire and sustain a larger number of employees as Sun/Moon made $879.4 million, while Final Fantasy XV made $535 million back in 2016 and Square Enix's employee number is 3,924 as of the same year, I know it seems not the best example as Square Enix would make a lot of games at once, I imagine, but I hope you get what I'm trying to say.

But as I said before Gamefreak likes it's small and that's probably why things aren't likely to improve that much in terms of Visuals, but as for Story…yeah they've got no excuse.

 

[Poke Dragon]

Looks like Game Freak have their information on lock-down this time around. They might not even release a demo for the Gen 8 games after the datamining incident with their Sun and Moon Demo.

 

[SGD]

Looks like Game Freak have their information on lock-down this time around. They might not even release a demo for the Gen 8 games after the datamining incident with their Sun and Moon Demo.

While I imagine they could've avoided such an event last time around, you can't blame them if they don't want to risk it again, however they may not even be confident that Gen VIII is ready to have a demo released any time soon.

 

[Poke Dragon]

While I imagine they could've avoided such an event last time around, you can't blame them if they don't want to risk it again, however they may not even be confident that Gen VIII is ready to have a demo released any time soon.

Yeah, this is why I hope the dataminers won't be able to get access to the games early this time around. I was disappointed that Ultra Necrozma was spoiled because of the USUM datamine.

 

[Desdar300]

Zeraora is everywhere.
It's gotten more promotion than the other two mythicals combined

 

[RileyXY1]

Zeraora is everywhere.
It's gotten more promotion than the other two mythicals combined

This is shocking because it has no gimmick. But, mythicals don't need those.

 

[KiranTheWitch]

Zeraora has no gimmick... Yet!

 

[Silktree]

It's even less interesting than the previous two in terms of lore. I don't see that changing.

 

[RileyXY1]

Zeraora has no gimmick... Yet!

It doesn't need one. Not all mythicals need to have some gimmick.

 

[Poke Dragon]

I feel like Zeraora is the Volcanion of this generation, something known for a long time but will only get distributed either close to Pokemon Switch announcement or sometime after it (not in the same day).