Topic: Pokemon Sword & Shield

Yeah, post game is truly missing a battle frontier on the level of the one in Emerald. You could spend hours on that one trying to get the gold symbols, and trying new strategies when facing each frontier brain.

Summon Necron (FF IX final Boss) to do his best job.

I think they need to take a break right now and delay it maybe to 2020 or 2021 to make it better

Yeah, Team Flare really got messed over by the bare ness of XY. The transition to 3D really showed in those aspects. They didn’t even reach the minimum (which is quite low) for Pokémon villain teams. They could’ve done more with the whole fashion/rich wannabes.

Since they’re so sparse (except for that gauntlet at their base) they really don’t interrupt as much.

@Heavyarms55 I tend to think this about most games TBH. Once you've seen the credits roll, it's way less exciting to do the rest than it was to play the main game. In Pokemon is often feels like fluff. You're often way over-leveled for it to be challenging, or it's so little that it's hard to care for.

I definitely think any post-game content should be there day-one, and not patched in later. Because doing post-game content with a level 100 team just isn't fun. That's why the Battle Frontier, or something similar could be very interesting.

@Octane I agree that it can feel too easy. Especially if your team is way over leveled. But you always have the option to use other Pokemon. I always wind up with secondary team members personally. From a story stand point, it always felt more natural to have things happen after becoming champion. To me it feels wrong to think "and you became champion, the strongest trainer, the end" like nothing happens beyond that. To me, the way gen 7 handled you becoming the champion was so much better than previous entries in the series. Having to defend your title makes so much more sense and I hope that becomes the new standard. You don't have to be the first champion of course, but defending your title and dealing with things as the champion is what I want to see of post-game content from here out.

@Octane I tend to have the opposite problem. I'm way underleveled for the post game, especially in B/W/B2/W2. I used to have Pokémon that were 10 levels lower than the Pokémon that E4 used in the older games but nowadays I usually have one or two Pokémon that are at equal level thanks to the way experience points work now.

I can't even imagine how high leveled other people's Pokémon are at the end of the game if they use just 6 Pokémon. Even more so if they have Exp. Share on. I miss the old Exp. Share. I've never used the new one. Seems like an overkill.

@Heavyarms55 Battle frontier and competitive play are my answers.

@Late I'm definitely underleveled as well, but they always manage to make the post-game way easier than anything before it

@Yorumi I mainly care about the battles and the mechanics behind them. That's what I play the games for, not the story or any of that. So I'd prefer something like a Battle Frontier, just a ton of challenging battles, maybe with different rules to keep it interesting (like rotation battles, double battles, etc.). Contests in gen 3 were alright when I started to treat them like specialised battles.

I think an expansion pass model can work in Pokemon...in a sense that the expansion pass introduces the content that would've otherwise been in a 3rd version. I really wouldn't like it to go past that though (e.g. adding regions, too many new pokemon, turning into "games as a service") - it would make the games too cluttered in my eyes. I prefer my Pokemon games as discrete adventures.

In terms of post-game content...personally I think the golden age for this was gen 4 and I'd love to see that level of content again.

@Octane I really enjoyed Kanto in Gen II. I know it was simplified, but really I already thought that the Johto part of G/S/C was really well done so getting to revisit Kanto was just the icing on top of the cake. I really loved it, and especially the music tracks. The music was so good.

TBH, battle frontiers and the like don't do anything for me. It's not that I don't think they should be there, but they don't really extend the journey, they're just for people who like to battle with the set rules. Having a battle frontier/tower/etc. as the post-game equates to no post-game for my playstyle. I want adventure-extending and new areas to catch more Pokemon.

What if they would move all the multiplayer postgame like online battles to Pokémon Home in the future?
Would that be something people would accept?

I had this idea recently that new main line games would be self contained single player games that all link up to Pokémon Home for multiplayer. So you have to play the new games to get the new Mons and then transfer them to Home to use them in online battles. That way players could have a unified multiplayer system for all future generations that could be expanded over time with new ideas.

The secondary focus of pokemon is to be social and trade/battle with your friends.

Remove multiplayer from the main games and you get an agry mob, and lose sales from all the competitive crowd.

This is overrated.

Ok let me phrase it differently, if you remove the multiplayer element, there's no reason for them to sell you two diferent versions of each game.

And replacing multiplayer in-game with a generic mobile phone app would make fans mad, because "mobil phone evul".

You have international tournaments based on Pokemon’s multiplayer. Even ignoring the social component, the battle and trading are core points of the franchise. While for most people who do not have an easy access to someone to trade with it would be great to have simply one game, the amount of people who like the two releases model is ridiculous (reflected in that people do buy both versions for their own consoles!)

@DarthNocturnal That sounds like Pokemon Hell. Do you really want Pokemon Hell? Because you're asking for Pokemon Hell.

I really hate competitive Pokémon for being such relentless grind. Like it takes several several several hours to create a single viable and optimized Pokémon team.

This is precisely one of the reasons why I don't play competitive Pokemon.

Don’t most of the competitive players just hack their perfect teams?

I'm honestly surprised you can manage a whole optimized team in just 2 to 3 hours. It would usually take me atleast 2 hours for one. For Huge Power Bunnelby and Super Size Pumpkaboo, it took me like half a day to get them both with everything right.