What it needs to make a better Pokémon game nowadays?

[sundin13]

burninmylight said:

sundin13 said:

That really isn't the impression I get whenever people complain about cut features, but if that is what you believe, I won't necessarily argue with you. Some of the gimmicks are a lot of fun and add to the gameplay and I don't think there should be any complaints about a game specific feature in that regard. On the other hand, some gimmicks suck. For example, Gigantimax was a garbage gimmick (and generally Sword/Shield was a garbage game).

From the sounds of it, Terstallize is a much better gameplay gimmick. From what I gather from the presentation, the Pokemon keeps their original moveset (switching to the simpler Dynamax moveset always sucked, because it removed what makes each of the different moves interesting) and being able to gain new typings and STAB bonus modifications does significantly change how certain pokemon can be used. Visually it isn't the most interesting gimmick (Gigantimax generally sucked, but some of the Dynamaxes were cool (if only they didn't suck to obtain)), but it seems like it will actually make battling more interesting, which probably puts it below Mega Evolutions but above the other game specific gimmicks in my book.

As for the Dex, one of the best things about the core Black/White game was that every time you ran into a pokemon in the main game, it was something you had never seen before in previous games. You aren't running into 1000 Zubats and Digletts every time you enter a cave, you are seeing something new (although the designs weren't always the most interesting for these new Pokemon). That gave the games a very distinct feel that truly made you feel like you were seeing something new instead of just a rehashing of the same old thing. I get nothing out of seeing a Ratata again and again and again, but I do get excited about seeing new Pokemon.

A more limited Dex also allows the games to do more with what they have (while GF often doesn't capitalize on that ability, they also have never really leaned into that, including about 650 Pokemon in S/S+DLC). I see people complaining about Pokemon battle animations and field animations all the time. As such, I would much rather a game focus on making 100 Pokemon's animations unique and interesting than a game which focuses on putting in 900 Pokemon with the same old cookie cutter animations. Again, this isn't something that the games always capitalize on even when they utilize a more limited set of Pokemon, but if I could choose that trade, I would pick a more limited Dex every day. 

The size of the Dex is a huge limiting factor to what you can do with the games, and throwing in the same Pokemon we've seen a million times before makes the experience feel like something I've experienced dozens of times already. I want a game which focuses on giving me the most polished, most fresh experience with a limited number of Pokemon rather than a game which carries around the bloat of almost a thousand Pokemon.

Sports games kind of highlight this problem of bloat by giving you big rosters stuck into cookie cutter games, that sell you on little more than a roster update every year. I don't want Pokemon to be the kind of game that sells you on a roster update every year. Pokemon games aren't quite at that point, but they also aren't at the point where they are providing a focused but polished experience. They are full of bloat so I won't really begrudge them for paring some of that back.

Funny that you mention Black/White, the generation that technically had the most "new" mon, but the majority of them were blatant ripoffs of Gen 1 mon. Timburr line = discount Machop line, Trubbish = discount Grimer, Sawk & Throh = uglier Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee, and so on. To each their own, but to me and many others, Gen 5 felt very uninspired.

Like I said, nothing wrong with limiting the Regional Dex. I feel like Gen 7 handled this better than any other game. The majority of new mon (regional forms count as new mon in this case) really felt like they belonged in Alola and helped tell the story of that land, like the Alolan Raticate/Gumshoos rivalry, and the fairy mon that looks like a lei but I can't remember the name. But at the same time, those games didn't limit your access to any other Pokemon. If you really wanted to collect them all, either as a completionist or for battling purposes, you could collect them all. That is more content that is completely optional. Why wouldn't you want more optional content available to the people who want it?

More Pokemon doesn't mean more bloat and less polish. Pokemon isn't Smash Bros., where Sakurai meticulously fine tunes each fighter for balancing purposes. I guarantee you that GameFreak don't give a shit about that kind of balance. If you want a polished, fresh experience (lol, why are you playing Pokemon then?), then you look for that in the story mode. Then after the story mode, why can't the rest of us have more? The latter doesn't hurt your experience in ANY way. Again, we have proof of that already in previous games.

My argument has never been that a limited 'mon game couldn't be done better. I admitted in my last post that the designs in B/W weren't always the best, even. My argument is just that a full Dex isn't inherently better and there is a trade-off at hand. There are plenty of reasons to think that the game could be better if it was more limited, some of which I detailed previously. 

The core of it is that every Pokemon in the game takes some amount of dev time. Having more Pokemon does hurt my experience by sacrificing dev time that I feel could be better used elsewhere (and with this effort I am asking for, the amount of effort balloons as more Pokemon are added). I would personally rather a game that focused on other means of providing a fuller, more polished experience than a game which spent that time making sure that 1k Pokemon are all jammed in.

Sure, it isn't as detailed as Smash Bros, but it isn't hard to imagine a Pokemon game which put more effort into polishing the Pokemon's battle animations, because that game already exists in Pokemon Stadium (which has much more limited movesets and a smaller roster and was heavily limited in scope). Compare the animations in that game to the animations and S/S and they have way more personality and individuality. When a Pokemon does a kick, it looks like they are doing a kick. Again, they aren't perfect, but I don't think the level of animations you are getting from Pokemon Stadium is something you can really expect when there are 1000 Pokemon each with a total movepool around 50 moves. 

In my opinion, the "right direction" for Pokemon is the one which focuses on polish and details, not the one that focuses on numbers. 

EDIT: I also just want to note real quick, S/S had little excuse to not include more Pokemon. While it likely did save them some time and allowed them to use resources elsewhere, it really didn't show as that game did not look or play very well. So just to clarify, there are three options imo:
1) Less pokemon with a lot of polish
2) More pokemon with little polish
3) Less pokemon with little polish

Obviously 2 is going to be preferable to three. I wouldn't argue that. However, if we are talking about the direction we want Pokemon to go, I'd take 1 over 2 personally.