Pokémon Sun And Moon's Second Global Mission Ends In Failure

I'm just going o say it, the new pokemon game is a mess.

Well, the Festival Plaza is pretty easily ignored all together. I'm not really surprised.

I still don't fully understand how to use Festival Plaza as intended. Apparently you can use it to get rare items and level up/EV train Pokémon but I don't understand how you get to that point.

Love the rest of S/M though.

Island Scan isn't a widely known feature for much of the userbase, and neither is Game Sync. Worse, the whole Festival Plaza is a mess in general.

Great game with some great ideas. Online functionality (like for a lot of Nintendo games, shops, etc.) is a pain and slow to deal with. Some things (such as only being able to watch battle videos through the hidden menus within the game if you have wifi) just don't make sense.

1 , I wasn't aware there was a new global mission.
2 What the heck is island scan?

Since clearing out the story and filling the Alola Pokedex I haven't been playing. At this point, at least as far as Sun is concerned, I'm waiting for the Box update so that I can start working on filling up the National Pokedex.

This is payback for Nintendo.

You caused them to fail by not buying WiiU. Now you get to fail in Pokemon. Over and over and over.

@YouSeemFRAZZLED Haha yeah, I knew someone was going to point that out.

The trading and battling are handled with a simple to understand menu that doesn't require the user to take a single step in the plaza. But it is accessed through the festival plaza option, so yeah.

I am genuinely surprised that the total ended up that high.
The way I see it, there's not much point in using Island Scan once you've got all of the available Pokemon, and the games have been out for long enough now that most people who were going to do that would have already done so by now.

I'm guessing that they're just using these missions as a way to draw attention to some of the features that are often overlooked, and are probably not expecting them to be successful... in which case I'd guess that we might see one involving something like the Vs. Recorder or PokePelago next.

I'm an Alolan trainer, and that's a fact, but I'll join a Global Mission whenever Game Freak or Nintendo bothers setting an achievable goal, thank you very much.

Well I did my part, even if I only had 4.

At least it went way better than the first one with around 66% complete compared to 16% of the last one. Kind of weird with the limitations set on the mission and the meh interest for island scan compared to the natural catching that many do.

@DragonEleven
For a split second I saw "Vs. Seeker" in your comment and almost rejoiced, only to go back to non-re-challenge-able-trainers-related disappointment. Your comment kind of gave me metaphorical...

If you catch - pun not intended - my drift.

You see, this is the trouble for me. I really enjoy Pokemon Moon. But the additional features of Festival Plaza, whatever they're caling Pokemon Amie these days, the Global Link, The Pokepelago thing, it's just all so much that I feel I need to do at once, it really puts me off playing.

I didn't even bother, the UI for festival plaza is a mess

The reason it failed is probably due from the following: shiny breeding, shiny chain battles, wondertrades, shiny giveaways from streams, & perfect 6iv Pokémon from Ditto breeding. I'm sure there are other reasons as well.

Is that even surprising? There was no way we could made it from 500k to 1m in two days. I was surprised we even managed 100k on the two last days lol. The timing was bad as well, most people were still spending their holidays or really busy returning to work/school. They need to advertise those missions better. Period.

By the way, I must be the oly one who actually likes the Festival Plaza and Island Scan feature lol, plus getting the "coins" or whatever is it called is really easy.

@AlexSora89 Can I kindly ask from what exact game is that gif? I haven't played Sonic games much in my life so I can't really tell thanks in advance :3

@DragonEleven Pretty much was thinking that too.
Would ace the PokePelago if they have (one of my favorite add-ons).

If it was the first mission, I would put in a lot more effort. During the event I completed most of the Alola Pokedex (now all) and caught the island scan Pokemon I wanted. My heart wasn't in it as much as it should.

I have not really play this pokemon version. So différent for start. People who play this game don't know this global thing is happening. They should have send a spotpass message

@Aerona This doesn't have anything to do with the Festival.

Festival Plaza is a mess that only serves to hinder any fun to be had with online interactions. Taking the PSS and throwing it out the window was not a good decision.

Festival Plaza is a mess and although I signed up and caught 10 or 11 within the time limit, I scored 0 to add to the total because I never went back into the plaza and connected to submit my catches which I had assumed would be uploaded automatically but nope and I don't see why I had to, its not like my 3DS isn't connected to the internet at home and Festival Plaza is basically a convoluted series of disguised menus. Anyhow, back to my post game legend hunt.

Well, registration escapades aside, the game has been out for two months, and the mission is based on something only unlockable by finishing the main story.

@nhSnork

Actually you could use Island Scan before finishing the story, but it is recommended that you do it after the story so you could have access to all the areas.

Maybe if they didn't require people to activate Game Sync on the web and then require you to register for the event without telling people IN-GAME then it wouldn't have failed.

I accidentally clicked on Festival Plaza when I was trying to save my game. It seemed like a lot of stuff going on there and I really didn't feel like bothering with it.

@Whopper744 The funny thing is that a lot of the online features on DS games used to be handled quite well, considering the limitations of the time period. (With the exception of Mario Kart DS, it was too easy to exploit.) I never had any problems with Phantasy Star Zero or Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, in particular.

@AlexSora89 Metaphorical motion sickness?

I hate Festival Plaza, I really do. It's probably the only thing I don't like in this game. All I want is using the trade and battle options and the PSS or whatever it was called last gen did all that while I could play the main game. I may look into the different shops of the plaza once I'm done with the main game and post game but right now, there's zero incentive to participate in these challenges for me, Islsnd Scan or not.

I don't even know what half of this stuff is.

I feel like the only hope we have of completing one of these challenges is if they either majorly reduce the amount required or they do an egg hatching one. I bet that would go well with all the competitive breeding going on.

The next one should be breed 10,000,000 Pokémon. That'd be over in an hour, tops.

After two failures, I'm sure that the next one they do (if they even bother) will have even less participation.

@SirQuincealot

I agree, and i feel like i fell for it for the last time. The weird online plaza, the NPC's with barely anything to say, the empty buildings with nothing to do, i could go on for a while. Also; game changing features that are dropped in the next installment. Where is dexnav? It was PERFECT. Its baffling, the ridiculous choices a big team with a big budget can make.

Then i play Stardew Valley, developed by one person, and feel like Gamefreak should be ashamed of itself.

Gen 1 was way better

Registration for the game sync thing (which isn't even mentioned in-game) and the silly "report your work back at festival plaza"-thing make it all pretty cumbersome, and the rewards aren't really cool enough to bother with it TBH...

How does this work I have moon didn't know anything about it

I never really used Island Scan, I did use a couple of QR codes to hunt Pokemon though.

The worst part is that I'm stuck at 98% on my Alolan 'Dex because I can't trade my Porygon to upgrade it! so annoying and I have all the parts too.

@AlternateButtons I like that the Kahuna's are more a part of the story as well as opposed to some random gym leader. Malo, Lana, etc have a lot of personality.

@LemonSlice
No, the same reason the minigame's name had to be changed in Western countries.

@ROBLOGNICK Pokepelago is heaven sent for getting those pesky evolution rocks that are not thunder, leaf, water or fire. It is really easy to use and it also helps for getting tons of berries.

But Festival Plaza is a damn mess, no clear instructions, not intuitive and really more of a bother than something to use. I love my Sun version and I love this gen but it is not without a fault, O-Powers need to return as well as battling cafes post game, it is a hassle to level up pokemon in this games.

Both the Island Scan and Global Missions are convoluted to use, and they're not explained very well in the game or the manual. It's no surprise that we failed to reach the target.

@samuelvictor Thank you so much for the answer, and very detailed one (which is only good). I will try it ^^

No surprise. These new features in Sun and Moon are crappy gimmicks that most players couldn't care less about.

I really like the game but I only use Festival Plaza to open features that were in the PSS. I just click past the Global Mission message... I haven't used the Pelago thing either.

Seems a lot of the comments are "the game sucks because the internet doesn't work like PSS"... uhm, the game couldn't run PSS this generation because the main game took up so much of the 3DS' power. Gamefreak was already being limited HARD by the hardware in XY/ORAS that it surprises me people rag on Sun/Moon so hard.

I genuinely love Sun & Moon & make use of most of new features. However... Island Scan is a little boring to use.

I will point out however that when a topic came out about the next Generation of Pokémon moving to the Switch, people were outraged by the idea and want Pokémon to stay on the 3DS.... these same people want better graphics, more pokémon & more online functionality, something that Sun/Moon proves is not ALL possible on the ancient 3DS platform.

@GinHunter but I thought QR scans themselves were unlocked postgame, and Island Scan chances were earned by scanning enough stuff?

I sold my copy of Pokemon Moon for a quid less than I bought it for. I just couldn't get into this gen no matter how much I tried.

@nhSnork Actually the QR Reader and Island Scan are available fairly early on. However you get zero notification for unlocking it, and for me, &5 unlocked on the second page of the menu, and for weeks I had no idea there was even a second page on the menu. It's there but sometimes people don't even realize they have it. Same happened with me with Plaza - I finished the main story then finally tried asking a friend about it. You can imagine how dumb I felt for not realizing there was a second page on the Menu.

Anyway, for my two cents on this - While I understand that the PSS was hard on 3DS's it was a feature that they should have been sure to implement. I'm sure that nixing the Plaza and a few other hardly-used features would have helped. Plain and simple, I think they should have waited for the Switch and/or a new, more powerful handheld because in a lot of ways, I feel like they went way too big with S/M with all the cinematics and crazy complexity in character detail for both humans and Pokémon.

The Plaza is a terrible feature. It's a mess, it's a pain to deal with, and it's sad that they muddled the multiplayer and online functions within it. Hopefully Stars and/or Gen 8 brings the PSS back

To add on to my previous comment, because multiplayer was so convoluted and messy in SuMo, I got irritated and bored with it way earlier than XYORAS.

Moon, I clocked in only about 50 hours and honestly I don't see myself going back to it. It was a fantastic game! I loved every bit of the single player experience and I do enjoy the Battle Tree but there's not much point in it if I won't be doing online multiplayer. It's just too much of a nuisance, especially with other games like MHGen that go online and connect to players at the touch of the screen.

Between OR and Y versions, I have 1300+ hours in. Massive difference.

@Kmno Good points. The Pokebean thing is much better than playing stupid mini games to get Pokepuffs. I like that it only takes a couple of rainbow beans to max out their happiness too.

The only time I actually USE the plaza is when I want to do the lottery.

The plaza is terrible. I hate it.

Half the time I forget the plaza exists, and besides the island scan feature isn't completely explained to some.

well no wonder, I still haven't managed to make an account on festival plaza.. it keeps saying that i already have an account ._.

@cheonsacz
Whoa there, didn't notice your comment. It's Blue Sphere from Sonic 3 And Knuckles, on the original Sega Genesis (or Mega Drive for us Europeans).

... crud, I just ruined my joke.

@AlexSora89 No need to apologize for something like that. Even if late I still appreciate the answer I should apologize if I contributed to ruining your own joke, they say quite often that where I go, there's a misfortune bound to happen XD

@cheonsacz
My joke was a really risqué one, though (I'm a sucker for "look what I just got past the censors!" humor in kids shows, I can't really help it), so if anything, you don't need to apologize, either.

I only knew there is second mission after reading the news about the failure of the first mission. There is no system notification or in-game broadcast for the event, so it's really easy to get ignore. The goal also set too high. I hope the third mission could be much easier, as I still want lots of free FC.
Btw, registering the game also not easy for me, as I couldn't log in to my account, until custom service telling me that I need to log into another site and change privacy setting forth and back to make my account available again.

This game lacks Lysandre's revolution: the Holo-deck. Unless you check yourself the PGL or other information sources you won't know anything about the game's events (tournaments, distributions, etc)

@MysticX The rewards aren't cool because people don't bother checking the shops they could get and what it has to offer. I struggled even to find a rare kitchen 5* until I met some japanese guy whose plaza was above 150 at the time (201 now) and my hunt for the EV reducing kitchen will probably have no end.
Anyway, the 4xx chips I got from this second failure disappeared too fast but each one of them was useful.

@RadoGoji Filling pokédex lines pokédex you won't even see in the actual game, as it seems?