Topic: Pokemon Sword & Shield

And they learnt from there their mistake and included him the DS port

Look forward to the Sword and Shield enhanced remake then!

That's just feeding to the complaints tho, people were expecting a full roster already for the Ultra Sword and Alpha Shield editions and calling them out on being lazy for not doing it in the first place.

I think we can safely blame a lot of this on Ishihara at the Pokemon Company. They ultimately direct GameFreak and I recall interviews even stating they determine the Pokemon typings they want and expect designs to be made.

But that man very publicly was clearly looking elsewhere for the future, and has had to backpeddle. Id be stunned if GF have had all that long to make this a Switch game.

@Morpheel Well a thing hinted was basically have Pokemon Home going "X pokemon feels like that region might be a bit too cold for itself" or similar comment if you'd tried transfering to an unsuported region.

I still feel it won't last in the long term or that they'll release something like a Stadium revival specifically for crossover of games' rosters to go the "and now all reunited together" route.

But we'll see.
If anything I don't see full inclusion until Home come out in 2020, and would specifically see it being added to "salvage" Pokemon Home if it proves unpopular enough if there's no transfer for every pokemons toward the Gen 8 games.

If anything they're hinging on Pokemon Home having features that could make it enough of a replacement for those who care about crossgenerational transfer.... if that doesn't pan out, that'll probably be further lead them to be forced into panic mode where they might have to add post-release full national dex transfer just to actually incite enough people to pick up Pokemon Home at all. After all, Yokai Watch is starting to nip at their heels now I hear and if they're not careful that might be the day they might regret not having had more foresights about the alternatives they could have taken that could have both led them to take the load of pre-release development focused on a regional dex and still include national dex in post-release update(s, if they decide it on a gradual region by region basis for exampe).

@iKhan People were eventually okay with that because eventually all Pokemon were available again. It's not just the Pokemon not being transferable, its that they don't exist in the game at all. That is a difference.

But I think @Morpheel is right, even if they aren't in these games, it's not as though they have been removed from the universe entirely. Whether the games get updated in the future to support them, or post SwSh games have different mixes, they still exist.

And I still really like the idea of looking at this like rotations in card games, keeping the games fresh without having to deal with 1000+ creatures every game. I think a roster of 350-450 would be really solid.

That's a really good way of looking at it actually.

@CanisWolfred I can't take credit for it. Someone else mentioned it a few pages back right after we heard about the Pokedex thing. But I really think it makes sense.

@Heavyarms55 A roster of 350-450 only works if the world allows for it.

XY for instance had a dex of...over 450, but that left the game with loads of Pokemon per area, and weirdly the new additions were the rare encounters.

There is a balance between variety and drowning out the new that they need to hit here.

@Knuckles-Fajita I thought XY had a very healthy variety of Pokemon, albeit with too much favoritism shown to gen 1. From the looks of SwSh so far, that shouldn't be an issue.

There's already a very noticeable bias toward Gen I Pokemon showing up in this game, I believe. I haven't actually compiled them and confirmed this, but it's kind of obvious.

It's one thing for X/Y to be too biased toward Gen I Pokemon appearing, it's another thing for Sword/Shield do the same because in S/S those will be the only Pokemon available to us altogether. If the majority of old Pokemon are Gen I, than that's what we're stuck with and that sucks.

300 is plenty IMO.

I hope Charizard isn’t the champions ace, because that would be such a classic Gamefreak move, and it probably implies that Charizard is gonna get some sort of special thing to make him not terrible since he lost his Megas.

Atleast Gen 6 added several Megas to Pokemon across several of the generations, unlike Gen 7 where only Kanto Pokémon got Alolan forms (and gave us the monstrosity that is Alolan Persian).

@-Green- Last gen they introduced Alolan forms and z-moves. So there's a chance that big Pokemon aren't the only new feature in this game. Plenty of time to give Charizard another weird form or whatever.

@Heavyarms55 I hope it's not an issue given we just had a game of nothing but Gen 1. Ideally this game would have no Gen 1 at all.

@Harmonie

Galar: 12
Kanto: 35 (Not including later Gen relatives)
Johto: 19 (Not including later Gen relatives)
Hoenn: 23 (Not including later Gen relatives)
Sinnoh: 24
Unova: 28
Kalos: 18
Alola: 14

Total: 173 thus far

20% of the game's Pokedex thus far, divided across 8 regions mind you, is Kanto. One fifth of the Pokemon we know of in the game.

Ideally, Gen 5 and 6 would get a larger share due to their species being left out of Gen 6/7 respectively.

And with Gen 4 being rumoured for a remake, that would get the least, if they plan to only add in new Pokemon on a per game basis, that would mean a lot of what's in that game would be a repeat of what we can already transfer up, thus not offering much new for the issue of the National Dex being removed.

Then again if they were to remake Gen 4 they'd have to re-add the National Dex given that game has the post-game gated off behind filling the Regional Dex, so unless they cut out the Battle Zone, which I can see them doing with Masuda still breathing, we may end up with a fair few Sinnoh Pokemon here, thus being available for transfer, and then not a lot new in the remakes of DP, should they ever be a thing.

But yeah, 20% of what we know now is Gen 1. Right after a Gen 1 game. No thanks.

@Knuckles-Fajita Wow, you actually sat down and did the numbers! Glad to see it's not quite as bad as I imagined, but, yeah, the bias is still there, and that's annoying. There should be absolutely no bias toward Gen I at all. Especially after all of the Gen I Pokemon being crammed down our throats as of late.

It just doesn't help at all that they show Gen I Pokemon in prominent roles, as well. Like the reveal of Dynamax being Gyrados and Raichu, and even worse, the champion's signature Pokemon being a Charizard. I'm just tired of it.

@Yorumi I mean, with the exception of 2014 with Hoenn and 2015 with no game, they've been doing that since 2013 right down to reusing area layouts ;p

More than plenty, if you ask me...then again, I care more about raising Pokemon rather than just collecting them. As long as whatever they settle with is a healthy mix, I'm sure it'll be fine.

@Knuckles-Fajita But that's all we know so far. We have no idea how many Pokemon would be in the game. If it ends up being between 300 and 400 then that ratio could be dramatically different.

@Octane I actually feels "new forms" will be less likely going forward. If you look about it, there's something to be said about how Dynamax brings both the stats boosts we'd associate with a mega-evolution and the super powered moves we could almost compare to Z-moves from Gen7. And unlike mega-evolution, it can be used with any pokemons(including non-evolved ones) due to not requiring new models to implement.

If anything, it feels like both mega-evolution and Z-moves might be phased out in this generation such that I would be surprise if you can transfer any pokemons that make uses of these mechanics. It may well be that mega-evolution stones may be impossible to transfer in fact, I suspect.

If anything, I get the feeling that(mechanics wise at least), gen8 might become the aknowledgement that the inclusion of "gimmick" mechanics was starting to go too far so it's not a surprise that Dynamaxing's use is even more restricted than previous Z-Moves/Mega-evolution in term of ability to activate it being entirely determined by being in a "compatible" areas(exclusively in Gym battles and dynamax raids.... and no where else in the game as far as we can tell). This mean that the rest of the game might actually carry a much more traditional beat.

Which... is entirely fine with me because once I got mega-evolution stones they became in all but name the literal "current" evolution of my Charizard/etc since they'd never stand long enough in a fight for the mega-evolution to run out.... a result of this being I also had little reasons to ever consider using the regular charizard form as well.

So ultimately it might make the "pokemons" themselves more relevant than the "gimmick" again(and the fact that re: dynamax can affect every pokemons means that even your "weaker" pokemons can see use through it and so on).