Topic: Disappointed by the lack of new exclusives

@Bolt_Strike Ehhh.. I'd rather them keep what they're doing in Legends. Big areas that aren't interconnected. Better for the leveling curve, and better for the games themselves, due to bugs not cropping up as heavily. Going full open world seems unrealistic for a team of Gamefreak's stature, given how they're forced to work on a tight schedule.. plus open world rpg's don't usually do well, at least not in the style of BotW anyways.

What I want is just this:

An animal crossing game that has all of it's content on launch, and tons of things to sink time into, including bells. I liked the grind in New Leaf, since it gave me more to do, so I'd enjoy it more if they made a game like that again.

A new 2D Zelda would be great. It's been years since the last new one, and A Link Between Worlds is probably the one I enjoyed the most. It would make it easier to wait on BotW 2, and be another game to look forwards to.

@VoidofLight Genshin Impact handles open world RPG gameplay pretty well. And if their team isn't big enough to handle it... then freaking expand their team. No excuse for the developer of the largest IP in the world to be the size of an indie studio.

@Bolt_Strike Thats what all indie devs do if there having a hard time, Guess there to good for that LMAO.

@Snatcher The difference is that Game Freak has more than enough money to expand, they just choose not to to be cheap/lazy. Indie devs often don't because they don't have the money to do so.

@Bolt_Strike And thats the crazy thing, they some how figure it out some how, Like Indie devs be Trying more then any of these guys do.

@Bolt_Strike The thing isn't that the team can't handle it. It could also be budgetary reasons, or just the strict time frame TPC imposes to get merch and the anime rolling out. Also, saying to expand their budget won't work either, given that Gamefreak has no control over that. TPC dictates the budget of the games, and chooses to put more attention on the anime and merch than they do the games.

Personally, I don't really want an open world pokemon, or think it's necessary. I'm fine with them just doing what they're doing with legends, and leaving it at that. Tons of people think that every game needs to be this huge open world game, when that's not the case at all. Tons of games wouldn't really even benefit from being open world, and at times it makes stories of games suffer for it. For example, take BotW. Zelda games are generally alright story-wise, but BotW legit has nothing in terms of story, due to the open nature of the world.

Sure, Genshin exists, but I'd much rather not have pokemon go down that path.

@Bolt_Strike GameFreak are hiring, just in a sustainable fashion. They expanded their staffing by 16% last year.

https://www.pocketgamer.biz/asia/news/73699/game-freak-staffi...

They could probably use a lot more than that, but new staff need time to become fully productive as well as mentoring from the existing employees, so they're presumably not want to take on too many people too quickly.

Similarly, Nintendo's staff has grown from around 4000 a decade ago to over 6000 now. They're not all going to be involved in making games - as they also make hardware and have a large global sales and marketing operation - but they've also been continually hiring new talent throughout that period.

@Matt_Barber It's really not enough. Game Freak needs like... a 200-300% increase in staff. That 16% increase probably isn't going to make a dent. By the time they have that much, Nintendo's probably going to be in full VR and they're going to still be behind the 8 ball.

I am happy with most Switch sequels.
As I told earlier, for me there is quite a number of "best in the series" already.
Super Mario Odyssey is as close to Super Mario 64 as it gets, and so are Metroid Dread and Yoshi's Crafted World when compared to Super Metroid and Yoshi's Island & Yoshi's Woolly World.

BotW, Smash, Luigi's Mansion 3, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons made decade-old fan wishing come true. You don't need to like them, but the sales figures show that tens of millions wanted the games to go in that direction, myself being one of them.

Then there are Wii U ports like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, DKC: Tropical Freeze, and semi-sequels like Splatoon 2 and Super Mario Maker 2 that are easily the best in their series as well.

Though there's still room to catch up on other series.

Paper Mario: The Origami King is good on its own, but not as good as either of the first 3 Paper Mario games.

Similarly Xenoblade 2 and Pikmin 3/Deluxe, great but not as epic and mature and technically advanced as Xenoblade X and Pikmin 2.

Maybe Fire Emblem: Three Houses can count here as well, but that's the only big Nintendo game for Switch I haven't played (yet).

And then there's Kirby, on its way to blow away its competition, so I'm excited for that.

I'm a big fan of EarthBound, Chibi-Robo, Sin and Punishment, Excite Truck, and F-ZERO. All of them have at least two 10/10 games in my book, and I'd love the Switch to have a new representative in the series that is on par with the old 10/10's.

@VoidofLight Why not Genshin? I don't see the problem with the way Genshin handles its story or EXP with the open world, which is the main point of contention with fans that don't want Pokemon to go full open world. The only negative I'd say is that Genshin is a bit needlessly complex in its EXP system (because you don't just have character levels, but also weapon levels, talent levels, adventure levels, and world levels), but they can trim the fat to make it work for Pokemon. I would bring in the world level system, but other than that just keep it simple with Pokemon levels.

I think sometimes the idea of "open world" is over-rated. What I think people really want is non-linear and adaptive to an individual's playing style. BoTW was open world but it was the fact that everyone came away from the game with their own unique story that made it special. Hollow Knight was definitely not an open world game but it was non-linear and had much of the same effect.

There's no reason why a Pokemon game has to be open world if they can find flexibility and non-linearity in other ways (personally I'd like to see the games allow you to specialise in training a particular Pokemon type and have this then lock you in and out of other routes, have it affect how NPCs in the game treat you etc.).

@StuTwo The idea of openworld isn't overrated, it's specific.

If someone likes both types, he'll ask for just a genre, like action-adventure/metroidvania or (J)RPG.

But if someone likes openworld games more or wants to experience/buy a real openworld game, he asks the obvious and adds "openworld" to the genre. It's a minor but practical additional word that describes a specific type of game experience.

For me personally, open worlds can be more immersive and just breathtaking visually, they can be a break from the usual stuff. And I think it's also showing the capabilities of the coders and designers when done well enough.

Yes, it can be arbitrary sometimes. The shrines in BotW all load their own area. 120 shrines is a big chunk of the game that is not openworld and it doesn't matter because no one cares, the perfect balance.

Open-World is a false analogy no games are truly open world that would mean everything in the game you can interact with but that's not possible on a programming game basis. We need to get away from the broken analogy Open-World isn't truly open world because there are limitation to how open and how much programming will be needed to get it open world. BOTW is the closest - I think that gets to it as everything in the game you can interactive with but you can't Dive into the water and swim under it. If that was possible that would be something more interesting to do. But it comes down to the Time and testing of a Truly Open-World feature would take more then 5-10 years to really iron out what is and isn't possible to make a Truly Open-World gaming experience. Even in BOTW there is a World Barrier that you can't breach.

@SKTTR Maybe I worded that badly saying "over-rated".

I think that many people often ask for "Open World" but what they actually want isn't necessarily "Open World" but rather they want some of the freedoms and non-linearity that open world games by necessity must present. These are, however, things that could also be presented to the player by a non-open world game.

@StuTwo That really wouldn't be a good alternative for Pokemon. Designing different routes through the game would be very complicated to design, you'd need major changes to the story and completely different teams. At that point, you may as well just keep the open world and implement level scaling.

Open world is appropriate for Pokemon's core concept. Any game that's an adventure game where the game wants you to explore a great big world is a good fit for an open world game. Additionally the game is meant to give you a very personalized experience, the protagonist is an avatar supposed to represent you, and you can create your own team with whatever Pokemon you want. Allowing you to visit areas in whatever order you want to make the adventure truly feel like yours instead of the adventure Game Freak dictated is a natural extension of this, and you just can't replicate the feel of an open world game without it. The solutions you're proposing wouldn't have that element to it (and if the world is seamless like BotW or Legends Arceus, then open world is really the only way to accomplish that).

@SwitchForce That's taking things a bit too literal. Yes, you technically can't go anywhere anywhere, but does anyone really care? Open world games are so vast and open, far beyond any other genre, that you'll hardly miss it.

@Anti-Matter I don't know if I should bother but why are you comparing Nintendo with Xbox? Nintendo is one of the oldest software companies and they are famous because of their games. Not even Sony comes close to that level of popularity and Xbox came even later than Sony because Microsoft were focused on PC software until then. You should compare Nintendo with Nintendo and don't use the Xbox argument randomly. I mentioned Xbox not as a comparison, just to ask you why don't you have the same attitude that you have here towards the Xbox library (you haven't replied) because all your comments about Xbox complain about the lack of Dance Dance Revolution (we all know this). On this thread, you are telling people to do the opposite of what you do on the others and, on top of that, your main argument is that there are other games that you like on Switch but that's not the topic so every time you reply someone with that answer on this thread it's an off-topic answer that don't make sense.

@Bolt_Strike Then why do Nintendo have the most similar (same-gen) and yet the most expensive ports in the market? Because they're abusing their fans and their fans (including myself) are suckers that buy them because there's no other choice if they want to play on Switch. Nintendo have become customer-unfriendly.

@SwitchForce Right. The Switch was underpowered from the start. The media expected it to have a Tegra X2 and not a Tegra X1 chip. Nintendo sold the idea of customised Tegra X1 but the customisation was to limit its power in order to save energy so it's less powerful and not more. I have seen people on NL claiming that the Doom and Wolfenstein Switch ports look the same and play the same as on the other consoles and those are who claim that the Switch is not underpowered. If they think (I don't think they do but they say so) that Doom and Wolfenstein play and look the same no wonder they think that Switch is as powerful as PS4 and Xbox One, which is something I have read in the comments section of NL. Even a first-party game like Xenoblade Chronicles 2, a Switch exclusive developed by a studio acquired by Nintendo fourteen years ago, suffers from technical limitations severely.

@sixrings Good point, I'd add one more thing to your comment (#341) and it's that for those "new" games, even when they are outsourced because Nintendo, apparently, no longer have time for development, are playing it safer than ever on Switch. That's why we are getting Kirby and Yoshi exclusives that are poor iterations.

@Bolt_Strike Honestly, there was no reason to remove that feature from the Wii U version that was running fine already.

@StuTwo I agree and that was my point when I replied to Sixrings, that Nintendo is playing it too safe because it works commercially, which is similar to what others like NEStalgia and Gcunit said when talking about the scope/content of games like Metroid Dread.

Excellent reasoning. If they don't bring nothing but Mario, Zelda, Kirby and Yoshi back, then how are people going to like the other IPs and support them?

@StuTwo I think that Xenoblade Chronicles X do what you're saying and I love it because there is story that I know that some people didn't like but it's well-written and I liked it because it's intriguing and yet it makes sense. On top of that, you get a lot of little stories that also make sense if you follow them. There is a world but everything is tight and although you feel free the progress is defined and divided in chapters.

Honestly I am probably done with Nintendo after this gen. they are easily one of the most anti customer company out there and frankly I am tired of Nintendo sitting there and do nothing. I think that they should focus more on exclusives that they developing internal, but instead they focus more on full price old ports or outsourcing their ips to make games like Mario Golf or Mario Tennis. I feel they were more creative during WII - WII U era because right now Nintendo is lazy.

Sruff like Mario Golf, Mario Tennis doesn’t cut it anymore imo.

Whew. Just a whiff of this thread and I think Nintendo would be better off without some of you guys lol Enjoy your Halo Infinite season passes. (Not necessarily a knock - I've been playing Infinite and the gameplay is rock solid.)