Feature: 30 Changes We'd Like To See In The Next Pokémon Scarlet & Violet Update

What's really annoying about the uniform thing is that Penny waltzes right into classrooms out of her uniform, but we're still forced to wear them.

Leaving aside the obvious complaints about glitches and technical jank, there are a number of little things that can be updated here and there.
Being able to just throw Pokeballs like in Legends Arceus would be a real boon. Materials needed to build TMs could stand to be more plentiful, as this would make it easier to teach moves for competitive play. And, my goodness, faster and better traversal options would be wonderful.

Me? I just want more outfits. Sword/Shield had more customization options than this, and I miss the options already.

There are 2 features I'd like to see that directly come to my mind:

1. Let us choose between set/switch during battle again. Removing that feature is especially pointless since people can just choose to not switch Pokemon when the opponent sends in a new Pokemon. The only difference it makes is that it is more inconvenient and that's it

2. Only start a battle against a wild Pokemon if you throw your Pokemon at it (like in Legends Arceus). It's annoying when you are running through the open world and keep running into small Pokemon you didn't see and start a battle

Clothing is useless in general, there is no need for any update.
However, fix the slow motion on the water surface, that is really annoying. And also those fps drops.
Adding difficulty settngs and level scaling should be the content focus.

Yeah, customization would definitely feel welcomed given how the pervious gens had it.

Would've preferred that than the abundance amount of restaurants everywhere, my god.

I'm surprised that so many features are missing/need tweaking/got much worse.
Makes me wonder how much shorter the playtesting period for ScarVio was.

I'm willing to bet other then bug fixes none of those things will happen.

Another thing: league rematches, competitive battle facility, (battle frontier, tower, tree etc) daily gym rematches, more battle options for the tournament (i want to use tatsugiri's ability so bad) there are so many design choices that DO NOT MAKE SENSE

An acceptable framerate is really all I'm after.

Turning off EXP share will definitely not be in any update. We have had automatic EXP sharing since Sword and Shield and in BDSP remake so I can't see them changing that. Shinies making a sound or sparkling in the overworld is also most likely not happening. A Pokémon when using let's go auto battle feature won't attack a shiny and I feel they did that for you to know if it's a shiny in the overworld.

It's Game Freak we are talking about. They'll fix nothing.

I like the idea of gym challenges but maybe try making them FUN? Why is nobody else talking about how weak every single "challenge" is? I swear my friends in high school programmed more competent Pokemon minigames in their free time that would have been 1,000,000x more entertaining than the "you have 10 seconds to press X and smile with me! Now you have 10 seconds to press B and RAWR with me!" or the embarrassing attempt at a slope run, etc etc etc. I can't believe nobody else feels patronized.

Just fix the game.

I'm sorry, but what's this rubbish about skirts? The game doesn't include gendered character customisation, which is a good thing. The school uniform that you wear simply doesn't include skirts. I'm pretty certain that if skirts were an option then any players would be able to wear them. The game is totally gender neutral.

I just started playing Violet last night after picking it up day 1 and waiting a week or so. Im actually having alot of fun with it. I havent even made it up to the school yet. Ive been running around catching every different pokemon i see. Ill be on the forced pokedex screen after catching and ill be like, is that a Pichu in the background?!? And try to get out of the bs screens quickly to catch it. I did see some clipping and weird things. Im 30 years old, i grew up in the 2d to 3d transition. This is the game ive been waiting for, for over 20 years. It looks fine to me. Yea its no where close to on par with even low end pc but it reminds me of the fun i had on n64 and first 3d games in the mid 90s. Like i remind my friends, alot of devs had problems when moving to 3d in the 90s and comparing this game to like earthworm jim 3d. Its actually very good for their first full 3d open world game. I see things that can be improved on and things learned from watching other open world devs for years. Everything i see wrong can be simply fixed. But there is alot so it may be some updates and the switch running on a tablet gpu is not helping. Zelda BoTW didnt even look good either but its the way it played. Now if the next Zelda looks better than Violet and a larger game of course then there is still some life in the Switch in my opinion. Nintendo was never big into tech since the 64bit era but im sure the next switch would only be a little bit better. I doubt it will come close to the ps5 in gpu performance. But thats nintendo. Its about the game and story more than the tech.

X was the menu in Sword and Shield too. It's been the menu in Pokémon games since the DS. This is just moaning for moanings sake.

my main problem with the fact that you don't technically choose a gender in this game is that even if youre non-binary and choose an appearance that you think looks the most like you, the game will still just use either she/her or he/him pronouns depending on how masculine or feminine you look, defeating the entire purpose of genderless options (also i'm 90% sure that you cant change your "gender" after picking it at the beginning of the game just like past installments did, so that sucks)
i appreciate how in splatoon 3 the game will go out of its way to use gender-neutral pronouns and terms for the player, c'mon gamefreak it's 2022, representation and inclusivity matters

This is NEVER going to happen, but I will die on the hill of National Dex. That is all. Make it up to us, Game Freak!

Remove sandwich construction mini game - it’s not finished anyway and it’s not fun.

Add previews to all items in shops.

Allow me to search my Pokédex.

Allow me to re-map buttons. It’s insane that it’s easier to open my clothes menu (where I can’t change my clothes) than it is to hop on Miraidon or open the Pokédex.

Fix the weird thing where the outbreak symbols on the minimap change location as you rotate.

Allow me to mark trainers and things I’ve found on the minimap

Give the lady at the Pokestops a keyboard so she doesn’t have to pretend anymore.

Let me change my clothes.

Remove Gholdengo, burn all evidence of it existing. Before Cheese Strings sue.

Do…something to make the Star Camps fun.

I think the biggest things I want are clothing options, more Pokemon (preferably including more regional / Paradox forms than the bare minimum the SwSh DLC added), and Elite Four rematches.

Oh and gym battles! Instead of the final Pokémon being not of the gym type but instead being a different type with a Tera type to match the gym, meaning I can just smash it with the exact same Pokémon I smashed the previous two with. Change it to be a Pokémon of the gym type but with a Tera type that is resistant to that type’s weakness.

For example Grass type gym. Instead of the last Pokémon being say a Jigglypuff with grass Tera type. Make it a Venusaur with a water Tera type to combat the fire type I destroyed everyone else with.

Y’know, fun and a challenge.

I just want the game's glitches fixed and the game to run at a locked 30fps without any stutters. Anything outside of that would be a bonus.

I’m having fun but….
Egg hatching is terrible.
Actually seeing small Pokémon is hard, good luck spotting a shiny.
The elite four gym is a joke, like, I was expecting an in story reason why it’s so bad.
Online raid lobby is still a mess, probably worse than SwSh if that’s possible.
Having to wear the school uniform sucks.
Speaking of, the creepy school nurse can do one.
Sandwiches can also do one.

People saying we won’t get a patch, we will get DLC, so there is hope. 🤞🏻

I want the ability to rename traded mons.

Pokemon never made stability updates in their 3d games. I have zero hopes for GF to fix SV and I don’t see Nintendo making them do that

@BlueBCA "The game is totally gender neutral."

It is, unfortunately, not. The game still pigeonholes characters into being addressed with binary pronouns, when other Nintendo games have successfully bucked this trend for years now.

I won't be buying this game until they are done making it!!!

I held off on Sword as week and got the expansion packs plus the patches on the cart and it was well worth waiting for the game to be fixed!!

@CharlieGirl yeah, like i said in my comment it really sucks and defeats the purpose of "genderless" options

Synchronize no longer affects wild Pokémon natures either. You either have to catch a Pokémon with the nature you want, get it through breeding, or use a nature mint to imitate the nature. I learned that AFTER spending an hour or two breeding and hatching Ralts eggs. 😅

A lot was removed, but a lot was also added. Perhaps they’ll strike the right balance someday. I’m not so sure it’ll be in the form of updates for these particular games, aside from technical and/or “stability” fixes.

Basically just give us a good game.

@pnott On about two or three different times, my lead Pokemon hasn't attacked a wild one but I ignored it and carried on.

Now I know...

And unfinished games like this are why I emulate the Nintendo games I want to get now. Heck, I just got Ryujinx set up so I can play Kirby & The Forgotten Land.

Aren’t the Pokémon sized as they are supposed to be in the Pokémon world? If not, yes, please make them bigger, 😌

And please update any localization errors…there are some wrong colors names in the clothings shops making it hard to shop considering previews aren’t load a lot of times.

@Ruler-Of-All-Evil Nintendo is not to blame for this mess its gamefreak.

After reading that list I am now convinced that everything needs a full overhaul

After playing the game though, I think only stable 30fps and maybe some more clothing options are what I would want

I saw threads on Reddit where people were having the same problem as me, that is Online Tera Raid Battles.

Choosing the ones on the screen can go faster, (be taken off, or already filled with 3 other people), than them loading on the screen for me. So I struggle to get into them often. I actually have started to get in a few and the Eevee ones from this Eevee event are also working for me, mostly. But it otherwise is annoying as I can only, for the most part, get into the ones from my own Tera Raids. If that can be fixed a bit it would ve great.

Agreed with all these, especially, customisation for outfits, a way to speed up battles, ginger hair, sparkles for colourblind people as well as everyone else, and a few others.

Edit: More trees from a distance and fixes to upgrade distant graphics and visuals, yes to that too please.

Let us also see on our maps the stars of Tera Raids, so that's before we choose to teleport to them.

@RiasGremory Did I say Nintendo was to blame? No. I just said unfinished games like Scarlet & Violet are responsible for why I’m emulating Switch games.

Also, I think it's The Pokémon Company’s fault, as they’re the ones responsible for the awful three year deadlines being enforced on Game Freak.

@Mauzuri If you think preserving gaming history on the web is illegal unless it’s for education, then that’s screwed up as it is.

@Ruler-Of-All-Evil your comment kind of implied nintendo rushes out their games out in this messy state which they hardly dont.

@RiasGremory Yeah, it implied it, so I guess it’s easy why you’d think I'm talking about Nintendo.

The lack of decent skin color options is a deal breaker for me. I don’t see the point in a character creator if you can’t actually make a realistic character.

Next to none of these lipstick-on-a-pig suggestions will be implemented, and they don't even begin to scratch the surface of what is wrong with these fundamentally-broken titles. A Pokémon game engine written from the ground up with open world in mind would be step one.

"[...] We definitely don't just want to join the pile-on of hate aimed at Game Freak right now" - just stop, the holier-than-thou internet point scoring is insufferable. Views like this are what enable these products to sell ten million plus in a matter of hours. Swapping out the misused millennial-with-a-platform keyword "hate" for the reality-reflecting "justified criticism," there is nowhere near enough of it for meaningful improvements to even be considered for future products.

I like the female nails💅🏻 in this Game 😅😅😅

In 🗡🛡, one character has crazily-long green varnished claws.

I ALWAYS look at characters' nails in games as THIS part of the human anatomy Developers always get wrong or weird.

@Ryu_Niiyama The lighter brown is still too light for my real colour.

I had this same issue with Arceus; I almost looked white.

@novasoup When nearly every first-party Nintendo game manages to avoid addressing players with gendered pronouns both in text, and via character customization (examples: Animal Crossing New Horizons, Splatoon 2 and 3, Mario Golf, Big Brain Academy, etc, etc, etc), it feels like the outdated decision to force gendered pronouns on a player is a conscious decision by Game Freak and/or The Pokemon Company.

Lmao you're actually delusional if you think Gamefreak will add even a fraction of these in an update, let alone over the course of the game.

The uniform restrictions were my biggest complaint.

Imagine performance improvements and quality of life settings being part of a future paid dlc. If I can imagine it, so can they.

Ah yes, forced EXP share.

Honestly, shared EXP among party members is a general quality of life improvement for any RPG. The problem with its implementation in Pokemon since it's introduction gen 6 is that the games still somehow aren't designed with it in mind. This is less forgivable since it has been the only option for years now.

I hate to sound pessimistic but as much as I love this list, I highly doubt they will fix anything for the future of this game. They are likely currently working on the next games and Gen 10.

The only thing getting fixed are SOME of the visual glitches, and MAYBE the framerate, if that. I guarantee it.

National dex needs to be back. I actually do like that not every pokemon is catchable in every game, because I like some being region exclusive, but having them sit in home blows.

@FishyS you can just hit Y button when hovering over that pokemon to send it to the top slot of your party, they already have a shortcut for that

I would really like a return of the Set style battles. They've been there since gen 1 as an option with Shift always being the default, but I prefer using Set and I know a lot of the old school fans like the Set battles. It's honestly not even that hard of a change to make here, Nintendo

I like articles like this, yes, give them ideas to improve the game! I'll jump in once everything is smoother, prettier, faster and more fun in general
Until then, I'll go play something else, like Legends: Arceus.

GameFreak is almost certainly working on DLC for Scarlet/Violet (just like they did for Sword/Shield back in 2020) so I could see them introducing some of these upgrades (particularly with regards to character customization) in that DLC.

Though of course, the most pressing issue with this game is its performance and technical stability, not its lack of clothing options.

It will be miracle on 34th street if even five of those are fixed lol

You really need to learn the difference between "fix" and "change". Some of these "fixes" are changes you want.

How dared they to release this mess ? And to charge the full premium ? This article and comments alone are enough to demand the refund. It’s kinda disrespectful to the customers but also the the series itself, such a shame.

@CharlieGirl yeah it really seems like it, they had to go out of their way to do that in the code

Man... the fact that this is a two page post with a table of contents really discourages me from picking this one up. That's after grabbing Arceus and really enjoying it, my first Pokemon purchase in a very long time..

@mudmask I just finished the game last night and really enjoyed it a lot. One of the best Pokémon games in years for me. There are definitely some small niggles they could do with fixing, but they weren't enough to ruin my experience. This article, whilst entirely justified on some points, feels like the writer decided that there had to arbitrarily be 30 things wrong, and resorted to moaning about nothings to get the count up. It's quite poor in general. Like, there's a great point to be made about game development, proper testing, and stopping yearly releases to be made, but the article wildy over exaggerates some issues, which undermines it's usefulness in discourse about what really needs to be improved.

There is no way, after a global pandemic, that the Pokerus virus is getting added back in.

I'm having a lot of fun with this game despite its issues. Do they detract from the experience? Yes, absolutely. Do they ruin it? No. Besides the technical performance issues, I feel like a lot of the "please fix this!!" is personal opinion. Which is fine; just an observation.

To me, personally, the things I wish were different the most are:
1) options to change clothes (which has been in the games for generations)
2) true gender neutral options (not including even pronouns seems deliberately petty) not for me but for the sake of including everyone who wants to be in the world of pokemon
3) bring back the crosshair from Arceus
4) fix overworld battles so you can't get jumped repeatedly without the chance to get away from the area

As is, tbh, I feel like Arceus is the better game. There's soooo much potential in this, though.

They should try to make the game run better. And add in more customization options.

But other than that NO.

30 changes? Wow what an absolute disgrace of an unfinished game! So glad I'm not interested in Pokémon at all, Nintendo think they can throw a new one out every year and the sheep will buy without question!

You'll get nothing and still buy the next game.

The main thing is UI and streamlining the experience. Forced into unnecessary commands and actions is absurd these days, and especially so in a series like this, and it's a huge turn off for me in any game.

For me my main hope is to fix the technical issues, get it running at a smooth framerate and iron out the bugs.

other than that yeah i agree more customisation options would be nice, added skin tones and outfits outside of the school uniform, things like skirts and dresses etc (that everyone can equip)

Hahaha. This entire article's existence is hilarious. It could be summed up as: what we want from pokemon: don't suck in every way. Lol

Its like having a list of all the things I would change about my cat so its a dog. Just go buy a dog (AKA a game that just doesn't suck). 😆

@FishyS if I remember correctly the y button (I think) on the Pokémon menu automatically sends that Pokémon to be the first one in your party (instead of the whole x button scroll press a shenanigans)

What about quick navigation through the inventory with L and R? That was in a lot of games before this one and seemingly they just forgot this? Shameful really

@Mr_Gamecube Same here, I thought I was never getting rid of those Tauros. Every time I ran from a battle, another one quickly ran into me.

It's weird that a Japanese game that forces the player to wear a school uniform doesn't have skirts. And I wouldn't want them limited to girl characters. Let me air my Pokeballs!
One could argue that they had an opportunity in Galar with kilts and they missed it and I agree.

Honestly love this game, so much to like. For me the 2 biggest things id like to see are a better frame rate and improving the map functionality.

Most of the points in this article have been recurring problems for many years now. It's good that there's finally starting to be a bit of 'mainstream' pushback, but this is exactly what everyone was warning you about when Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl released, as well as when Sword and Shield released, as well as when Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon released, as well as when Sun and Moon released, as well as when Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire released, as well as when X and Y released, but you didn't listen. If you'd pushed back earlier and harder, we wouldn't have had to endure continuously deteriorating performance, features, etc. The fact that, in Scarlet and Violet, there's flavour text on every little thing in your house and then no more flavour text ever again almost feels like a cry for help from the developers, saying "hey, we want to add flavour text to everything, but they aren't giving us the time".

Not all is bad - each new game brings some very welcome quality of life improvements (like in this case the small pop-ups telling you your prize money, Pokémon at last being true to scale, etc), but as long as they keep being paired with regressions like features that were watered down or removed, they never truly make you feel like the series is taking a step forward.

What I currently find most insulting, is the utter silence from both Nintendo and Game Freak!

No apology, no acknowledgement of the unacceptable performance issues and glitches and what they plan to do about it.

Any credible developer would have come out by now, to assure their customers and given them a timeframe/roadmap on how they going to address the issues.

Customized my little dude with purple hair and makeup, the first thing I did with travel freedom was ran around the whole map looking for skirts and dresses, was massively disappointed, went back to Ragnarok.

I know it probably won't happen, but the ability to customize controls would be nice. For some reason, whenever I want to hop on my legendary, I push in the left stick. I think the start button is just such a weird choice for doing this, and my brain is automatically defaulting to where I think it should be mapped.

Literally it's remake the whole game again and dismiss half of Game Freak

@KayFiOS You can do that with the Switch's built-in button remapping, no real need to have it in the game itself.

Aside from the technical stuff this is more of a bunch of demand that would happen in a big upgrade that comes alongside DLC, rather than what could be expected from the first patch if we're being honest. Like, the priority are the glitches and lag, everything else is secondary, and clothing options especially is something we're sure to see down the line (on a side note, it's kind of weird they didn't go the same route as sword and shield and make the uniform mandatory for gym battles, on school ground, and the likes, and let us dress other ways elsewhere), but I'd rather they made the games be what they're supposed to be before trying to make quality of life adjustments that are more of a cherry on top.

Also National Dew just isn't going to happen folks. In Sword and Shield it was already a stretch despite the models not changing much, but Scarlet and Violet (and Arceus) actually reworked a bunch of stuff when it comes to models. We're past 1000 mons, they won't take the time and money to adapt every single existing pokémon to the new gameplay, with the new required rigs and animations, and add the new textures and materials to them.
They're barely able to make these games as it is, don't add unnecessary workload to them even if I do get how it's annoying not to use your faves.

Our best hope at this point would be for Home on switch to get a battle mode, or for a new Stadium game that connects to Home and actually has all the models in a streamlined art style. But mainline pokémon games just can't keep including everything.

@Ruler-Of-All-Evil Kirby and The Forgotten Land is not an unfinished game.

@Ogbert I know it isn’t - that’s why I’m emulating it because Nintendo (like TPC) doesn’t pay much attention to fan input.

@Jeronan Apparently, Nintendo has given out refunds for Scarlet & Violet due to it being an utter mess.

@Ruler-Of-All-Evil Not in Europe at least, even though they obligated to do so.

After I answered the last train of questions, it went total silent for 5 days now. Haven't heard a peep anymore.

@RainbowGazelle that's good to know. I was hoping someone would chime in with some input like this. Thank you!

@Jeronan Huh. Weird. I know Nintendo of America has given out refunds for Scarlet & Violet though.

@FishyS Good to know - thank you! Even Arceus had it's share of graphic issues (every game on every console seems to have issues these days) - maybe I'll give it a try after all.

@Tainaru I don’t agree that clothing is useless. I think being able to customise your character is one of my favourite things about the evolution of Pokémon games. It gives you unity with your character and helps you immense your own self into the game. The whole experience is enhanced by having choices that make you feel unique. That’s just my opinion x

@FishyS You can do the lock-on thing. ZL. It tells you the name, level, and catch status (unless it’s an entirely new Pokémon to your dex)

@Jeronan Nintendo acknowledged it.

@NTDO89 Yeah after two weeks of complaints, they finally came out and acknowledged it. :-/