Topic: Pokemon Sword & Shield

It doesn't matter if it's cheaper or not, these are games that are meant to be big in scope in terms of world and cast of Pokémon. There shouldn't be a need to nickel-and-dime an AAA franchise that sells tens of millions. Imagine if they decided Breath Of The Wild was too big and kept it the same size as Ocarina Of Time instead.

Witcher 3 used a 32GB card, I think NBA is the biggest game on the Switch.

@jump
I predict the National Pokedex + Galar will be more than 400 Pokemons.

So you're predicting there's gonna 800+ Pokémon in the game? That would mean they have only cut less than 90 Pokes from the game, there wouldn't be so many annoyed fans if that was the case.

@jump
Well, 10 more days and we will figure it out.
My prediction can be wrong but i guess it will have more than 400 Pokemons.

Sorry I don't buy this. There are far too many people involved in the making of these games not to have good optimization done and it's not like Nintendo is gonna hesitate to absorb any of the bigger cart cost for one of their biggest IPs.

@Arcamenel It has probably more to do with TPC wanting to keep the budget as low as possible.

There's no need to wait. The game has been leaked and multiple people are all saying the same thing, it's 400.

Shield by far has the better exclusives imo, it's annoying as I pre-order Sword on a deal so if I cancel it and buy Shield now it will cost an extra £6.

I want to restate my point about the Pokedex. I am reasonably confident that the choice to limit the Pokedex is a balancing issue. Not due to space on game cards or laziness of the developers. We had, honestly, already reached a point of over saturation and many redundant Pokemon that were, purely from a typing and stats point of view, strictly better than one another. We have many many Pokemon that fill the same rolls and do the same things. Further, we had many abilities and gimmicks that simply were not designed to exist in the same game. Pokemon were being introduced that were weaker versions of Pokemon we already had, or stronger versions of Pokemon we already had. Causing power-creep or being outclassed right out the door.

Pokemon had 3 choices.

1. Let these problem continue to grow indefinitely.

2. Spend more and more time each game trying to rework balancing issues by buffing, nerfing and reworking hundreds and hundreds of Pokemon each release.

3. Make cuts and take the Pokemon series in the direction that many long running card games have gone - rotating out old Pokemon and having a mixture of new and old each "season" or release.

From a design perspective, Pokemon is not that different than a card game with thousands of cards. From which you build a deck of 6. Making for thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of potential combinations! Even with the smaller size dex in Sw/Sh you'll still have thousands of possible combinations!

They choose the third option and I am happy with it. Card games like Magic the Gathering and Hearthstone have survived years and years of new releases because of this design choice. Heck, MTG is 26 years old at this point! It's a proven strategy. And when you look at the alternative, look at long running games with continually added new content - they are forced into power creep hell, like Yugioh or Hearthstone before it introduced rotations, or forced to constantly update balancing like in DOTA, Overwatch or League of Legends. Only with Pokemon, that re-balancing is around hundreds of creatures!

I also want to mention that Pokemon confirmed Pokemon not appearing in Sw/Sh aren't removed from the canon. They are still part of the Pokemon world and will return in future games.

Also as early as Gold and Silver people were saying there were too many Pokemon and it was hard to keep track of them all. And Sword and Shield will have more than even the national dex in Ruby and Sapphire had.

Just be honest, not every Pokemon i want to catch and or use.
Some of them has ugly design in my opinion that i will not consider to catch them and i don't mind if they get cut from Pokedex.

Also, in other games like Monster Rancher 4, i have to say goodbye to Gali and Monol due to their absensence on Monster Rancher 4.

i have a theory about the galar dex, the did not just include the most popular pokemon, but rather they put in some of the most popular ones and some of the least popular ones. it seems the pokemon in the middle tier of popularity got cut the most. another theory is they included only the most iconic and unique pokemon.

@BlackTalon2 It's not about popularity. From everything I have seen it's about balancing and Pokemon that seem to be appropriate to the region. Pidove is not a very popular Pokemon but made it in because, as I've been told anyway, it's very similar to birds that are extremely common in the real world UK. For example.

Also Pidove isn't a spoiler, it's been in a bunch of the official art.

I don't know specifics about the leaks, but so help me god if they touch my boys Ampharos, and Tropius

@Heavyarms55 ok, well thats good. that means more unpopular pokemon have a chance in future games. pheasants are a common game bird in the UK.

hey Gravitron, you should read the leaks, you would know if your favorites are in or not.

@BlackTalon2 I would guess that it's because balancing issues. Staraptor is normal flying, which they have, Talonflame is fire flying, which they have. And while popular in the UK, I understand that falcons far from common. Also they have Brivary, (I might have misspelled that) which might be fill that role.

@Heavyarms55 Braviary is an eagle though. You'd think with how much Gen V they have, they'd have picked Staraptor's line instead of Braviary's, considering which one is native to the UK and their similar place in the metagame.

@link3710 That's certainly a reasonable argument. If I am right about the rotations going forward, we ought to get used to this kind of discussion. Personally I'd have preferred Staraptor too.

#BringBackNationalDex

ok boomers i'm ready come git me.

Real boomers don't care about these Pokey-Man things.

You say it's a balancing issue but everything you mentioned in your very long post doesn't address how it actually balances the game, besides they already have infamously stated they cut Poke for development reasons.

@Heavyarms55 They had balancing issues when they had 151 Pokemons. I doubt that they will have less when they cut the pokedex.

For me the reason is that they just did not have enough time to implement everything they wanted. I guess from a business point of view the release date is more important.