The Pokémon Company Threatens To "Permanently Ban" Players Who Deliberately Disconnect From Battles

Yeesh, not even smash is this upset when it comes to disconnects lmao

@Doofenshmirtz That's because disconnecting in Smash, much like Perry the Platypus, is inevitable.

It’s annoying when you’re whooping someone @$$ and they can’t take the loss because they’re sore losers and just disconnect.

As long as this only happens to people doing it repeatedly, this is fine while they hopefully find a fix to it. There's always a chance people could be falsely banned, but as long as their internet is decent, it shouldn't form a pattern.

So that means the devs still can't fix such an easy exploit after they somehow led it happen in the first place.

Where was this when I was 16 and wrecking shop online in OR/AS?

@ReWane Actually I believe they just wanted to be fair to those who disconnect due to poor wifi or other out of control circumstances. After they said they would specifically punish those who "Are Deliberately" disconnecting. So they must want to be as fair as they can for thouse who can't help the matter, but also punish those who continue to disconnect on purpose.

Didn't they cut cloud save to prevent cheating?
They've been doing a poor job at it so far.

Nintendo doesnt care about pokemon at all lmao they left the game broken hacked and cheated since day 1..never once acknowledged the cheating offline that tied into online.
Meanwhile they send a patch for animal crossing..mess up other things with that patch..then come back for another patch the next day!!!!! But pokemon is STILL BROKEN IN ALL MANNERS!!!! Never thought id see the day nintendo neglect pokemon .

Huhh... Why not just give them a LOSS and the other player a WIN?

If I live in a place with poor Internet I may be banned, this is getting ridiculous.

As is usual on this site, the Pokemon haters love to hate. But I fully expect there isn't much GF can really do about this issue directly aside from this. You can't really stop people from disconnecting, so you have to punish those who abuse it. And I think the threat of a ban is much better than a simple loss. I imagine the perma ban will only happen to players who repeatedly abuse the system.

Pokemon SwSh is easily the best Pokemon game we've had in years. An absolute blast with some of the best multiplayer the series has had. So I am quite glad they're dropping the ban hammer on people ruining ladder. Recently aDrive and Wolfy hosted what is believe to be the biggest unofficial VGC tournament ever with a cash price pool. And they even stream the finals (top 32 and up).

I watch a lot of major VGC players like aDrive, WolfyVGC and CybertronVGC and none of them have reported this being that common. And considering the amounts they play, I have to imagine they would be commenting on it a lot if it were really prevalent.

A proper fix would be to cause disconnectors to automatically lose the battles. I suppose that could theoretically also be exploited if people hack into their opponents' internet connections and force them to disconnect, but what are the odds of that happening?

Does this really even matter outside of the competitive scene? Buying the Sword/Shield double pack was my biggest regret of 2019

I haven’t even played an online match before in SW/SH. And since I have some pretty slow internet where I live, I don’t think I’ll be playing an online match anytime soon. Well, at least I can go to the Battle Tower if I feel like doing a Pokémon Battle.

Nice. Glad it's finally happening that you're doing about 2% effort to stop cheating instead of the zero they've always done. Now if only they would get their act together and prevent people from utilizing obviously cheated Pokemon, perhaps they can start making the game actually worthwhile to play.

Won't change a thing for me though, I still refuse to buy just came because of their blatant disregard for the Pokemon community.

I think my question is, how will The Pokémon Company know whether a user was disconnected deliberately or due to poor Internet? Is there some sort of device telling them the reason for the disconnect?

Where I live, I have pretty decent Internet and Wi-Fi, so it's not really a problem for me. But if, for some reason, my Internet goes down while I'm playing online, what is stopping The Pokémon Company from banning me, even for a short time?

@Xaessya How are cloud saves (or lack thereof) supposed to stop people from manually disconnecting from matches? That's its own type of problem.

@Mambitos If you live in a place with bad internet, why are you playing online?

Yeah its ridículous have you ver played FIFA online you lose if you disconnect ,gamefreak devs can't fix this? lol , this is way Better for sure then people shouldnt play lool good luck with that dumbs. What if the place I live doesnt provide me Better Connections should I move because of this lolzzzz

@graysoncharles Yeah, I understand that. Ideally, they need to get the penalty system to work right, I'm just saying that it's a decent stop gap until it's fixed.

@Mambitos "What if the place I live doesnt provide me Better Connections should I move because of this lolzzzz"

It's not all about you though, is it? You're not playing alone, you're playing with someone else and making them miserable with your spotty connection. That's why you're not going to get much sympathy.

@Kalmaro So make that person lose if they disconnect it or is it better to ban everyone that may suffer from this problem ? Who live in a demographic area that can't sustain good connections ? Should they move countries is that it ? Should they not play something online using the product to its fullest that they buyed because there is no provider that can possibly fix that ? Its not all about you , you were right about that

@Mambitos You are entitled to do pretty much whatever you want with your purchases, as long as it only affects you. That's my opinion anyway.

The instant you start dragging down the experience of other people, i have a problem. Especially when you are willingly doing so. Knowingly going online to play a game with someone else when you know you have a bad connection is pretty unfair to the other person, isn't it?

I wouldn't say that you need to be banned, I would say that you should have the courtesy not to tarnish other people's fun online. By all means, keep playing online and messing up people with your connection, just don't expect anyone to pity you.

@Kalmaro Even in Smash people living on Japan and USA cant play decently and we are talking about two of the most advanced countries in the World how do I know if I make someone lagg ? Distance and matchmaking also plays a role you are only seeing your perspective because connections can be fine and still the game laggs , so as I previously said it is ridiculous banning people switches Over this make them lose if they dc

@Mambitos If you aren't so sire if you're lagging, then why would you bother bringing up that you have a bad connection?

The truth is that you know you are at a high risk of losing your connection while playing online and choose to play anyway. I absolutely believe that's a ban-worthy offense or some other punishment. It's not the other person's fault that you went online while knowing there would probably be a problem.

@Kalmaro I never Said I had a bad connection you assumed so lollzzz I haver over 200 mbs what I am not is dumb enough to think that there Will not be various persons using McDonald's WiFi or something eles that may suffer a drop in connection even more being a Switch a portable device and may suffer from other conditions that in your opinion people should just not play the game to the fullest that they payed because they couldnt for some reason connect well to the internet or possibly made someone lagg. And there you are, assuming that other people had the choice to not had those kinds of problems even distance alone can make those occur

You specifically said that you are in a place with bad internet, what other conclusion did you expect me to make?

If your connection is so good then I see no reason for you to have any complaints, none of this concerns you.

Also, yes, those people did have a choice. No one made them buy a game with online capabilities that their network can't support.

@Kalmaro Lolzzz yeah they had a choice to not play a game they like because you say só you are só full of yourself loolzzz I specifically Said nothing like that ! Learn how to read first! And is it on Nintendo TOS that you must have Good internet when you buy a game or its system lollzz ? If not they can do whatever they want despite you not liking it, I dont like it also ofc but this is ridículous Banning people switch's over this when there is a simple solution of making someone lose when they dc

@Mambitos Here, allow me to help you. You said HERE that you live in a place with bad internet. I can't help if you forgot what you wrote yourself.

Also, I'm not too interested in what the Nintendo TOS says, that has nothing to do with this. The Pokémon company is banning you from playing their game, not Nintendo. You can still play other games.

You shouldn't be in such a rush to insult people.

@Kalmaro let me help you then when I say If I live I didnt Said that I did, cant you understand English correctly? Só now you dont care loolzz, great arguments you have there, people shouldnt play and if they sligthly may ruin someone experience they should be banned of playing the game they bought instead of simply losing a match when they dc, great.logic you have there take care mate.

@Mambitos Odd, I guess I didn't notice that "if" there. My mistake then, I suppose.

That aside, I think we're done here, I admit to misreading your first comment and you seem unwilling to properly interpret what I'm saying. Since I misunderstood you first, I'll allow you to have the last comment, if you like. Otherwise, farewell.

@AstroTheGamosian It will almost certainly only be people who do it over and over. I know everyone on this site likes to think that Game Freak is staffed with a bunch of foaming at the mouth morons, but they're not remotely so incompetent. I'm sure they understand that people have occasional connection issues.

I've had people DC on me before when they were winning or the match was still clearly undecided. I have to assume those were legit.

Rage quitters are scrubs.

@Mambitos Watch the language, please.

@TheAwesomeBowser report then couldnt care less.

Judge Drednaw?

That would suck, I've had multiple times it did disconnect on it's own (and it is the game it's issue, this is the only game I play that does this that often on any system)

As much as I loathe this kind of people, The Pokémon Company's tendency to treat cheating as some kind of actual felony never ceases to amuse me.
Street Fighter IV knew how to deal with ragequitters back in the day. You rage quit more than a certain amount of times? Have fun playing against nobody but your fellow ragequitters for the rest of your (account's) life. Why can't Pokémon have fun with cheaters rather than give their accounts some kind of death penalty?
I mean, it's not even like the online features are free anyway.

@Zuljaras
The Pokémon Company. That's your difference right there.

Man, online gaming has to be such serious business these days. No wonder I have no interest in it anymore.

@AstroTheGamosian @graysoncharles Well they said they’d ban people who are disconnecting on purpose. A single disconnect is unlikely to draw that conclusion. Remaining connected for the duration of a play session and then repeatedly disconnecting just before a player loses should be pretty conclusive evidence that they’re doing it on purpose.

If you have crappy internet then what are the chances that it’s actually really good most of the time and ONLY decides to be crappy just before you lose a a Pokemon battle? Ten times in a row?

It’s fairly easy for GF to suss out the offenders when you think about it logically.

@RodSD64 Let's not go that far...

@Octane
Haha it's just an expression, but they definitely ruin the experience for everyone else.

Disconnecting should just default to a loss to begin with

@Xiovanni
Desert loner uses boycott. Pokemon company feints

Good that will help butt hurt people to stop disconnecting o btw if you have lagging inter due to slow speed you shouldn't be online ruining other players games with all the lagging anyway

That's been done since... diamond and pearl?

@BenAV I couldnt disagree more. I found sword/shield to be the best pokemon games since gold/silver/crystal. For me ultra sun/ultra moon were by far the worst.

Honestly I like most things about the game, although I have a couple of minor issues with it (ridiculous things like their inconsistencies with english - American/British). I've been playing since red/blue and played most games, including all spin offs. What didn't you like about the game?

@Poloscen89 it took months of building fan uproar before Nintendo issued their Mario Kart 7 patch.

And anyways 'poor wifi' along with hacking has been a staple tactic of all the top 100 leaderboard (not proper tournament players) Mario Kart and Smash bros players since the Wii.

And here I thought it was already insane that Nintendo issued temporary bans in Splatoon for disconnecting, considering NO OTHER SHOOTER GAME DOES THAT.

@Poloscen89 Nintendo owns Animal Crossing and Splatoon (=first-party games), so they can do patches fairly quickly. Nintendo does NOT own Pokemon though, more like Game Freak and the Pokemon Company (=second-party). Game Freak will be the one releasing patches and they are obviously not as efficient, so don't blame Nintendo for that.

@Mambitos You type lolzz a lot. Does that mean that laughing triggers your narcolepsy?

What if you just have spotty internet though, this could set a poor precedence for people who get disconnected by accident.

@graysoncharles what the guy is saying is if his internet disconnects by accident, and it's not his fault, he may be banned because of it. If a storm causes a mass disconnection everywhere, is it now everyone's fault that the internet disconnected. Should they have been better prepared for a storm? Are there ways to keep your internet connection from ever disconnecting in any event? Curious to know so I can keep mine from ever losing connection

@Kalmaro what kind of toxic mentality is that?
So players with a bad connection should just suck it up and avoid playing online?
I have an extremely good connection, symmetrical 1000mbps upload and download with 1 figure ping, but I'm astounded by you thinking that every player should feel a responsibility to have a good connection.

You say nobody will show sympathy to someone who is ruining others' games.
Why should I care about the experience had by other players?
If I play a game it's for my own enjoyment.
You seem to encourage banning but I'd bet you wouldn't say the same if you were the one being banned.

Bans for bad (unintentional) connection issues are absolutely unjustified and tyrannical.
You seem to believe that as long as a player suffers alone you don't care. I say if I suffer, you better believe I'm gonna share that suffering with as many other players as possible.
Why, according to you, is that a selfish attitude?
I bet you wouldn't mind if it was the opposite (my good connection having a sort of improving effect on other people's connections and actively helping them, which unfortunately doesn't happen). Your hipocrisy is blatant.

Cheating or intentionally disconnecting is different, but it says a lot when you being a (presumably) good connection haver just as I am, you alienate the bad connection havers and turn a blind eye to their suffering. As I said, toxicity at its finest.

@BenAV
I get that, but is it any better for a player to go AFK if they absolutely have to go do something? (I mean, they still get XP, but others players are gonna hate them)

@zekepliskin are you gonna debate over the arguments I made or are u just trolling being butthurt ?

@ZweiBlume "You say nobody will show sympathy to someone who is ruining others' games.
Why should I care about the experience had by other players?"

So... you agree with me then? My entire point is that no one would pity him and you're saying the same thing so I'm not sure what your point is.

"You seem to encourage banning but I'd bet you wouldn't say the same if you were the one being banned."

Then I guess you don't know me as well as you thought, because I'd support it as I knew I was running a risk of ruining other's experiences with my bad connection.

You seem to be suggesting that gamers are owed something when they are not. No one owes you or them anything. That's just an entitled position.

My point has, and has always been, that if you are purposefully doing something that you know could be harming or making someone else's life difficult, that makes you a bit of a jerk and I have no sympathy for that person.

I never said they can't play anything online, I just don't agree that they have some 'right' to drag down everyone else and thus, should be immune to bans. By all means, if a company wants to let them play, that's their decision.

@AlexSora89 Because you agree to a ToU before you even connect to the internet for the first time. They can absolutely tell who was disconnected by a force of nature and who intentionally disconnected, so a ban is the right way to go. Pitting rage quitters against their own kind still allows them to play, and in my opinion if you cheat/break the ToU, you don't deserve to ever play again. As for paying for online, that only furthers that you should be banned since you paid for the privilege to play online and you were inconsiderate enough to go out of your way and ruin the experience for those around you.

It's really not that hard. Players that disconnect should ALWAYS get a loss. The remaining player(s) should ALWAYS get the win. And frequent disconnects should result in a temporary ban from online play.

This is not hard. This is not even new.

Commenters complaining about not being able to play online with bad internet, please note there are multiple options to battle online.
Some modes, particularly Casual, tracks no records of any kind and even provides you an option to leave mid-battle. Players with bad internet are not without options.

Ranked mode is for the super competitive. It makes sense that rules are enforced to ensure the integrity of the win-loss records.

@Mambitos I love that you assume I'm trolling and/or butthurt (2008 called they want the word butthurt back by the way) rather than what I was actually doing, which was making a snarky little joke for my own amusement. Sense of humour failure on your part perhaps? Either way lighten up 👍😁

I'm continually shocked and disheartened by the lack of empathy people display online. I hope you all are more considerate of other people in real life than you are here. If someone is walking slowly in front of you, do you attack them for daring to walk there?? Yes, it may be an annoyance, but that's part of life. Given that Pokemon is turn-based, it's not even like you're going to lose the match because of lag. I think that if you are so impatient you can't handle the possibility of dealing with some lag, it's you who shouldn't be online. You think all people in rural areas, college students whose campuses don't have good internet, and people who can't afford better connections should be punished and not allowed online, just because YOU can't deal with having to be patient with a minor annoyance (it's a video game, so yes, it's minor)? How in the world does that not make you the self-absorbed ones?

And I have no personal bias in the matter, because I have good enough internet connection that I've never lost connection when playing online with people, except with friends who told me they had poor connection and were the likely cause.

@Poloscen89 dude what does the Nintendo have to do with it lmao. It's the Pokemon company that has to fix the issues. That's not the same people. That's like saying I should punish the kids next door.

@yousei The difference between someone walking slowly in front of me and someone going online with lag is that the latter is choosing to go online and interact with others with their lag.

It would be like someone who knows they can't walk and purposely seeks you out, and then decides to walk in front you when they could have gone somewhere elsewhere.

No one is saying they can't walk. We just question why they decided to walk slowly right in a particular spot that will cause trouble when they don't have to.

@Kalmaro I agree with you that companies have the legal right to do whatever they want to your game, what I'm trying to argue here is the morality of their acts, that is, whether they are objectively fair and deserved.

My biggest problem is with the double standard on entitlement. Let me explain.

At the very least, your physical console and the offline features of your cartridge (ie the story mode/postgame/battle tower/whatever in the case of pokemon), are mostly your own domain (with exceptions of course). All good until this point.

But when you enter into the realm of patches and DLCs adding content to your game, paying Nintendo to play online using their servers, and even paying $5 a month or whatever for Pokemon Home as a Pokemon warehouse, things start to get tense.

At what point is "no entitlement" applied? If you're owed absolutely nothing, nothing at all, then what is the incentive for you to make any of the aforementioned purchases, and how is it different from throwing money down a drain? Surely the average player expects a reasonably rational response to his/her purchase in the form of whatever features they get, collectively. Most people won't get banned very often at all.

And if I'm not entitled to my own fun, why are you entitled to the fun I'm stripping from you by having a bad connection? I personally wouldn't use a bad connection for ranked battles, but I can understand the frustration in having to be alone in your suffering.

To me the idea of a game company "not letting them play" [referring to paying customers] seems like a sentence taken right out of a dystopian nightmare.

There must be a reciprocal trust between you and your company that (within a reasonable and rational margin) your expectations are going to be met because you're putting the effort of paying money for them. I guess our disagreement is where the line for "reasonable and rational" ends and where the blurry zone of "ban worthy offenses" starts.

@Poloscen89 Nintendo has no involvement with the development of the Pokémon games including patches. The one you should be blaming is Game Freak.

@ZweiBlume To the best of my knowledge, you don't need nintendo online just to get updates or DLC. I could be wrong though, I'm not sure.

Let's say that, for the sake of the argument, you do need it. You're still getting your content, the only thing you'd be missing out is being able to play with other people, which isn't Nintendo's fault.

As for incentives, incentive for what exactly, buying the game? I'd assume the incentive is that the game is fun.

The entitlement issue is what I'm most interested in. I maintain that no one is entitled to anything. So that would mean that players are not owed a good gaming experience with other people. I don't think I've said otherwise.

The only reason that even came up was because someone else was acting as if they deserved to be able to play online, to which I had to ask "says who?"

Now if we're talking morals. I think it is much worse for someone to purposely make someone else's experience worse when they don't have to. I think that is what tips me, personally, in favor of having no sympathy for people who are going online to play with other people with spotty connections on purpose.

The problem with giving a loss when you disconnect is that if that person lost their internet they get a loss for something that they had no control over that's why the devs leave this system like that. There are ways to show how the person disconnected it's really simple even on a computer you can see where the issue is when you lose internet. So the innocent people have nothing to worry about it's the people taking advantage of a bug to save their record all over a Pokemon game lol it's kinda pathetic if you think about it. To take a Pokemon game that serious to where you have to exploit is really funny

@Yorumi They actually can. Its at a very particular moment that that the disconnect happens that registers the match as null. If it happens once Gamefreak can just ignore it as a mistake or a legitimate disconnect. If it happens multiple times they can figure out what is being done. As someone pointed out earlier any company can perform an audit on their servers and figure out what caused a disconnect.

Pokemon while a game that is designed for communication and cooperation is also a competitive game. If a player is manipulating results to make a match null to boost their ranking GF must take action. This isn't backwards as sometimes serious consequences need to put forward for certain parties to get the memo of "don't do this"

@Poloscen89 it isnt nintendo, they simply publish the game. game freak and the pokemon company develop it.

@nesrocks come on now where talking about the Pokémon company. That actually requires work, while banning is just a simple click.

@SteelToeCowboy it happens, if your worried about disconnecting in a match, and are overly concerned about a K/D ratio then yeah crying is the only thing you can do. If you really want to get better just continue to play.

I'd rather have a loss, then A permanent ban thank you.

@Yorumi Bugs are not that simple to fix for an online platform as fixing one thing could break another. For now a ban is more than enough to handle something like this. And also online rankings can help determine who gets invited to what tournaments so rankings are important to those who host tournaments. And this is not for casual matches those you can leave at anytime (if your winning or losing the match) because those are just for fun. But, for Ranked Matches that is where Gamefreak does monitor and if they spot someone breaking the rules like using an exploit to null a match result they get banned. Just like in any sports league where a ref misses a call the league can still suspend said player after the fact. Same would apply here so your analogy kinda... does not work. :?

Just count it as a loss. Don't have a bad internet connection.

@Kalmaro Your being a jerk about this just for the record.

@Tempestryke I respect your opinion.

@ZweiBlume I wish I could like your post a hundred times.

@NotoriousWhiz Its nice to see common sense somewhere

@Tempestryke Again, I respect your opinion. I just don't agree with it.

@Andrew5678 I agree. Someone who has a bad connection and DCs once or twice shouldn't be grouped with the rest.

@ZweiBlume I can confirm that you do not need Nintendo Online for updates. I don't know about DLC but unless it's specific for online play you probably don't need Nintendo Online ether.

@Kalmaro I signed up for an account on this site JUST to like that 'Perry the Platypus' comment...

Help...!!!

@MiGo Happy to be of service.

let them it becomes slanderous and they can be sued (here is the meaning of slander
slander noun
Definition of slander (Entry 2 of 2)
1: the utterance of false charges or misrepresentations which defame and damage another's reputation
2: a false and defamatory oral statement about a person
so they better be able prove someone disconnects on purpose otherwise they are liable

Im 100% onboard with perma banning people who deliberately do this. But on the other hand people are also complaining about being accidentally banned for their internet which all i can say is get better internet!

@oldman98503 That's not how slander works. Nintendo does not make statements when they ban a user and they do have an appeal process through Nintendo Support. That and Nintendo run their own servers now which is probably what Gamefreak is using to host Sword and Shield online matches. They have a record of when a user disconnects from a match if the disconnect was forced, and what was going on in said match before the disconnect.

You can't sue Gamefreak for "slander" for banning an account from online matches if they have probable cause for the ban. As someone who works in IT, you'd be surprised what an audit can show us when we want to see if an end-user is lying to our face. We can't call you out on it, but we can certainly imply that we know your lying.

If and it's a big IF an innocent party ends up being banned due to a bad connection (which is unlikely as this specific bug requires an exact time to perform and is hard to replicate at random). Then GF and Nintendo have a process for you to clear your name. GF can run an audit see it was a mistake and reinstate the account. Which Nintendo and many other companies have done in the past without lawsuits. As all a lawsuit will do will probably at best pay for your lawyer fees and at worst your paying said companies fees which is quite... expensive. Not worth going to court over something as minor as a ban from an online game.

@Kalmaro you're being inconsistent to your own position. You maintain that any given player does not deserve a good and fun experience gaming online with other people (who knows while anyone would hold this position, but alas you do), and at the same time you're telling me that if I know I could just "not go online" in order not to screw up other people's experience, I'm the one at fault here.

So what goes? What makes the spotty connection player different from the good connection player? How can a player simultaneously not deserve the good experience AND have a right to bear a grudge against the other player who robbed him of such an experience?

Honestly the whole debate is pretty crazy in my opinion. I don't know how you as a player and not a company could possibly regard as reasonable the option of "just don't play bro". What incentive can an individual player possibly have to hold that position? Do you not like having fun? Do you enjoy being trampled on by big companies? Anyway seeing your other replies to other users one thing is clear and it is that you can clearly explain everything because your thoughts align with your words, so I'm looking forward to a response.

@ZweiBlume I'm staying consistent. Its possible to say that nothing is owed to either person, while also saying the purposely going to ruin someone's experience is worse than just doing it unintentionally.

Another thing that is being overlooked is that, when you play online with someone, the unspoken agreement is that you will be trying to actually play with them and give the best experience. That's an agreement between the players themselves.

Whenever you play online, it would be redundant to check a box first that says "I'm going to try not to disconnect" because the expectation is that we will already try to do that.

Thus, when you get people who purposefully don't make sure that the experience will be enjoyable, I don't see a problem with banning them. There's a difference between "My connection dropped suddenly and I didn't expect it" and "My connection dropped again and I did expect it."

@BenAV
On the bright side, non-intentional disconnections seem to have no consequences. I've probably disconnected five times due to microwave interference and I've gotten no bans.

Here's hoping that The Pokemon Company does the same.

So when they ban you and you sue nintendo, pokemon company and your service provider, which ones do you think the judge is going to dismiss from the claim?

@BenAV Thankyou for responding, I think it's pretty rare for people to say they dislike the game and give their genuine feelings regarding that, instead of taking the route of saying something sucks because they didn't like it (an example for me could be: I loved the voice acting and visuals of XenobladeChronicles 2 but hated the gameplay, I can admit it was probably a pretty good game, but it wasn't for me) so your response was pretty interesting to me.

Pokemon for me is something that is forever changing, but always pretty similar. What I mean by that is there isn't really a unique story, you start out in the same sort of manner, and apart from the main goal of defeating the key rivals (including general rival/s, gyms, the villainous team, elite 4 etc.) to beat the game and become champion, it's really just about exploring and playing your own way.

The region for me was probably the best in a long time, (in my opinion) everything looked fantastic, especially the cities and scenery, although in places they definitely could have (and should have) expanded (the fairy area was a slight let down for me because it lacked size and variety, although I found it very visually interesting).

One of points you made (that I found particularly interesting) was the music, oddly enough I didn't really pay all that much attention to that during playthroughs (I don't think their music has ever reached the heights of their kanto/johto stuff in any other of their games though), but thinking about it now, I found it reminded me a lot of the music in Black and White.

Have to agree with you 100% on the whole dynamaxing thing. Whilst I like how it looks, I don't care for it at all. Dynamaxing is probably a step up from mega evolving, however it's not something I can really appreciate.

As you say, difficulty in pokemon isn't all that high, I set myself restrictions in each game (makes it a lot harder and, for me, a lot more fun). I understand when you talk about playing these games for most of your life, it's the same for me.

I find it incredibly hard to believe that it was the worst game you played all year, as it's so fundamentally similar to most of the other main games that I would hazard a guess that you may have outgrown the games, rather than disliking for this one as much as you do. Having said all this, the world would be an incredibly boring place if everyone liked the same things.

You might like a game called temtem, I wasn't a fan, but I know that a few people that didn't enjoy pokemon much really liked it.

Again thank you for responding, sorry if I've come off as condescending in any way (I don't believe my opinions are in any way more valid than yours), I just really found it fascinating to look at our opposing views and compare them. Take it easy

I'd rather people who frequently quit games get a marker assigned to their profile that says "coward" or something like that because of the instability of the switch's internet connectivity but oh well I don't play pokemon games online as it is.

@Andrew5678,

It would be a hell of a coincidence if people's internet just gave up when they just lost.

@RareGames
Totally agree with that comment.
+1

Some of y'all make some wack ass comments. Especially the people saying if you have bad internet, you should just not play online. Yeah, I get the consideration and whatever, but seriously? What if their internet isn't as good as yours but they still wanna play? It's not fair that they should just stop playing simply because they have bad internet. And who cares how it effects other players in game? They don't care! They're playing for themselves! Grant it, if there is a way for you to give people a heads up that your internet is bad, try doing so. (But you definitely don't have to). If you're so worked up over an online game that you feel the need to tell people with bad internet to just not play, maybe you're the one who shouldn't be playing.

@yousei PREACHHHH

@ReWane there's literally no other way around this 🤫🤫🤫

@BenAV In typical Game Freak fashion, the one time they added difficulty settings (in the most ridiculous way imagineable), they took the feature out again in the following games.

@RareGames I agree with everything BenAV wrote, and I'd like to add that the game runs embarrassingly poorly - the performance is worse than any other game in the series (it even runs worse than Let's Go!), other than some nice lighting effects the game genuinely looks like it belongs on the Wii, it can't even run at a native 1080p/720p, the battle animations are worse than those in Pokémon Stadium 1, trainer and Pokémon models pop in all over the place, random houses are still identical copies of each other, and so on. There's also barely any flavour text anymore. Ultra Sun/Moon were really bad games, but Sword and Shield dial it up to 11. It's as if ever since Game Freak saw how many copies they could still sell of Ultra Sun/Moon, a game that was 99% identical to the previous game, they've been trying to see how many more things they can keep getting away with. Sword and Shield objectively speaking have far fewer things to do than any other game in the series and yet people bought it in droves. At this rate, one of the next games will just be Pikachu and Charizard doing the Hau animations and it still won't be able to run at 1080p nor at 30fps.
I played Sword until I'd completed the Pokédex and collected all of the Dynamax Pokémon, as well as all of the items, and I think I ended up at about 80 hours of playtime (which is apparently already on the higher end). In the other games in the series I usually have about twice that amount, and there I imported all of the Pokémon from the previous games, whereas with Sword I did everything from scratch.

By the way, this Temtem stuff is just the umpteenth Pokémon ripoff, this time with some viral marketing thrown in the mix. People who complain about Pokémon generally just want better Pokémon games because they like the creatures and have usually been following the series in some form for a long time, they don't want ripoffs or other monster collecting games. Recommending Temtem to people who want to play Pokémon but are disappointed by the newer games is like recommending NBA to someone who's disappointed in the newer FIFA games - yeah, it's also a sports game where you play against other teams and you 'collect' players out of a large roster, but I think you may be missing the point.

Crap, I'm caught!

@nintendoknife temtem?

I’ve been there, people who disconnect right before you’re about to win suck. Own the loss, and get better from it.

you can retire and give your rival the victory instead of dc. But sore losers don't want to do that hate them.

I can't believe anyone has to be told not to do this, even more so I can't believe anyone would want to do this. It very much makes no sense and is even self defeating in a way. Someone ties so much importance to a good record so they disconnect to keep their record from gaining a loss right? It's fairly easy to do and ppl who do this are aware that people are doing this. So they know their record is false, they know other ppls records are false, they know that other ppl know his/her records are false...so why would anyone even care enough to do this in the first place? Or is this a chicken or the egg type situation?

A bit late to the party, but this is why I don't support The Pokémon Company and their games anymore. This behavior (and threatening the community) is the complete opposite of how you should act in a case like that.

So let them win by default, jesus Gamefreak is so dramatic.

Hey if you wanna cheat the W/L system, get banned. That's a fair response. You're cheating the other players at playing.

lol rede nintendo me desconecta!