Topic: Pokemon Sword & Shield

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I dunno if this was linked here already but I fell upon this and I'm.... cautiously optimistic:

(also, apologies for the upcoming wall of text)

https://gonintendo.com/stories/337863-game-freak-expands-on-t...

Not by what's in there mind you specifically, but the way they feel they have to respond at greater lenght than before with multiple points to sort of try to... reassure players about this "change"?

It's weird it makes me cautiously optimistic. Not about the change, but the fact they're finally taking notice of the scope of the backlash they're getting on it. I think to a degree Sword and Shield might become a "growing pains" moment for Pokemon, in a good way. That is, specifically to help them define for themselves what is important to the community... and thus plan ahead in the future the ways to satisfy these demands with what they've seen the community is okay with even if for the devs it might require a noticeable shift in their way of doing things(such as the frequent suggestion actually including stuff like true content updates post-release that could lead to the inclusion of the full national dex since many players have stated being okay with delayed support as long as support is coming).

To a degree that's the thing. If you take out timed-events, ALL pokemon games in the games could be seen as "You release it and it's done". Post-release content update as seen in Splatoon new maps and weapons aren't a thing they even had to consider in the past. That's a lot of a tradition to overcome for a studio with habits as set as Pokemon and just realizing they might not be able to get a full national dex at release must have been a symptom that they're getting to that point where they need to figure how to go forward.

They've mentioned balance worries and I think they are honest with it, though perhaps only looking at it at a surface level. The backlash might lead them to realize to realize that ultimately it's the entirety of the roster that's always been the most important for the larger part of the community well beyond what is or isn't a "trash" or "overpower" pokemon. A lot of the fans really love their less "essential" oddball pokemons.

I think they wanted to Home to really become this alternative to the full pokedex support and want it to be something that'll feature mechanics that would make it worthwhile(I wouldn't even be surprise if it included a non-balanced battling mode using sprite graphics for pokemons old and new to actually function as something that can fit on a smartphone). But at the same time I very well believe it 'won't suffice' in the eyes of the fans.

Which is what make me cautiously optimistic a full pokedex will eventually come. They always felt it would be important it be featured in some ways(hence their hopes for Home) but now the backlash confirmed their guts feeling that indeed the national dex IS indeed important in some form. So they'll try with Home... and it probably won't cut it.
That's when they'll go back to the drawing boards and try to figure it how to bring it to the core games or at least through something like a resurected pokemon stadium side-franchise. Which is what I mean by growing pains. Not for the community but for the devs having to figure out how to please the community that made this franchise such a phenomenon in the first place.

So my guess is we'll get a national dex post-release, though not until they've had initial reactions to Home to further gauge how to go forward with this.
Recall when I said pokemons game were "they make it, release it and that's it beyond timed-events for special shinies and mythicals"? That'll probably be one of the outcome of the growing pains; that just "releasing" the game and calling it a day won't cut it anymore. Thus the way forward for them might be to realize that the path forward might be the limited regional dex at release and then a regimen of post-release content update to fill out the national dex either gradually("Jotho pokemons migration phenomenon!" update) or all at once in an update much later.

It'll be a rough ride, but in a way perhaps that's the "growing pain" event the franchise need for the devs to figure out how they can continue catering to this massive phenomenon of a game.

I mean, seriously, I wouldn't want to be part of the team who even just have to write the mere code/database entries for everyone of these 800-1000 pokemons. So I understand their realization that "all at release" is increasingly just impossible.
But I hope they realize from the rocky road leading to this it doesn't have to be the only option.

There's definitely a couple of people who could be ready to wait for a Sinnoh remakes release for the full pokedex to be added to Sword and Shield as long as the full national dex does come to the game as a result.

But the sad thing though is I think it's such a process they're still in the process of trying to evaluate and gauge it'll still be months after release before we know exactly what form that will all take.

Which is again to say... it'll definitely be the growing pains moment of the franchise and I figure a lot of plans will be made, then remade, then ditched back to the drawing board. Some enacted but then clearly shown as half-compromise before something new is drafted in adittion that would finally take shape into something that will satisfy all and it might change a lot of how the devs may realizes they have to approach this whole thing from then on.

Heck, I wouldn't even be surprised if Gen 8(through either Sword&Shield or later game) was the first pokemon game to include "new regions DLCs" allowing trips to limited locations of past regions or such. Perhaps "safari tour to that Galar-owned island bordering the Jotho-region" or that kind of things as a later result next year or later.

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Edit: apologies for all the bolded words. I always forget just how damn thick the bolding is on this website. Probably should have gone for italics or just forego trying to emphasise some of these words in the first place. It's way more aggressive than I wanted this to look like.

Thing is they don't have the model. The models might look the same than Sun and Moon but honestly? Speaking as someone who's been a 3D animation student and still have ties to people working in actual game studios now?

I mean recall how we thought Smash Bros Ultimate's graphics were the "same" than Smash Bros WiiU even if we later discovered that, no, everything had been remade under a new engine to boot.

Sun and Moon were played on a tiny 3DS screen so just how much did we really miss about the wireframe mesh, the texture resolution/etc that might have to still be "upscaled". And sincerely this is a studio who originally believe that the Switch was going to fail as l'll get into again later, so chances are there's a lot of preparations they didn't even make but in fact forced them to reset a lot of what they were preparing for.

Just database wise there are adaptations in the code and structure of libraries that have got to be made for a new console. We're looking at 800-1000 different entries for the various pokemons just coding wise and we're not even talking about actually developing the game itself. I'm amazed they actually kept the entire pokedex so long.

Like I dread to imagine the nightmare of text documents or spreadsheet files they must keep just to keep track of the whole thing. That feels like a logistical nightmare right there.

I know a lot of people compared the work of other games but.... honestly? Even franchises such as Dragon Quest with "hundreds of instantly recognizable monster designs" never bothered with featuring any and all of their designs in every single game with hundred constantly getting the "cut".

Just look a the difficulty mentionned even by studios who specializes into porting other people's IPs to new consoles even when the work with the "same" game.

Also to be honest Sword and Shield still remain a massive unknown quantity for Game Freak, just from being on the Switch alone. Recall this is the studio whose president was angry with Nintendo because he initially thought the Switch would be doomed to fail before it's released and was entirely prepared to continue making 3DS exclusives should the Switch have failed as he was predicting(and ultimately proven wrong). That's a lot of ground and prepwork they have had to catch back upon just because they didn't believe the Switch would succeed and it probably forced to literally redraft a lot of the entirety of their original plans whatever they were. Files/database/etc that were originally geared for the 3DS games' engine that have to be retooled to formats that are more Switch-friendly. Just look at all the delays we got on Dragon Quest 11 just because the original game was made on an engine version older than the updated one that would support development for Switch.

Game development is hard.

But honestly I'm not letting them go scot free on this.

They should have noticed the support of the full pokedex would be that essential to so many of the players.

They should have been more clears about what plans they had to answer the worries and desires of this crowd who remains a crucial part of this franchise, and they should have done so much sooner.

They could have simply gone out with the time and, you know, taken a leaf from the Splatoon development team. Can't have all the Pokemons at release because it's increasingly impossible to "devs-up them all" at once for release day? Then get on with the the time, announce that only the Galar dex is available at release but also confirm the National dex being added through a later big update or smaller progressive ones("Johto support", "Hoenn support", whateve name would fit. It could even have tied with stuff like "visit X location with ties to the Hoenn/etc region" adding such location as an even more complete content update to play on these additions to boot). There's a lot that could have been done that could have answered the community even if the wait might have been annoying. But with how massive the dex is I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner even if I know "post-release true content update" wasn't exactly a tradition yet at nintendo when the 3DS first released.

But they didn't and it caught them utterly offguard, this is what we're witnessing here with their attempts to provide stuff to look forward to with Home/etc.

But the backlash is still obvious so that's why I feel it'll auto-resolve itself in time even if not without a bumpy road first.
Especially if they don't want this to become that "well crafted with story/gameplay that pleased the fans but proved to be most's last game ever because that loss of support killed their interest for any games beyond it".

Perhaps they thought that perhaps if it had a "large and well-tailored pokedex with list of pokemons well-liked by the majority of fans", it might make up for their unability to support the full pokedex at release.

Heck, this is a franchise that existed since 24 years now and they never had deal with "not get everything in at release day" since all games prior that's what they were able to. So it probably never occured to them, I can perfectly imagine with such deep-set tradition, that it's okay to add content after release in the age of 20-heckdamn-19.

Perhaps this event is what will make them finally realize that, that they don't have to make release day be that "everything or nothing" kind of thing and that stuff(that were even locked exclusively to the post-endgame in many previous games of the pre-3DS era) like the national dex can become the focus of post-game development in a franchise that sells enough to actually fund a large quantity of development work even after release when the majority of sales have made up initial development cost.

And that's the thing. Development costs money obviously, but also time. They could have the money for the full pokedex but not the time.
But the thing is today you can make the time through post-release content update. And if anything that might simply be a reason to make the national dex(and ability to transfer pokemons from it) something you unlock after beating the Elite Four once the game support it. As they used to in older games.

Like said it's not like there's a lack of things they could later do even with all the reasons that got in the way of including the dex. So I am for keeping them up to task of fixing that later even if I do believe(from my own experience of how much of a logistic mess it must be) that they just couldn't make it for a 2019 release.