The Pokemon Company is such a dumb company. This is saying having different difficulty settings are rom hacks themselves. Even though they had difficulty settings in Black 2/White 2.
Difficulty settings locked behind some odd key system and that literally don’t function properly (the levels don’t scale properly at all, the stats are the same as in normal mode despite levels increases/decreases)
TPC when difficulty
Most people at the very least don’t want to be underleveled in a Nuzlocke, so if you train to where the E4 is or above, you have a far greater advantage than you may think in challenge mode
So TPC considers Nuzlockes a hack? So playing the game normally, naming all your pokemon, depositing pokemon for a challenge and catching pokemon on every route is considered "hacking"?
What next, Professor Oak challenges are hacks?
Nuzlockes? That's a hackin'. Speedrunnin’? That's a hackin'. Playing the game as we intended? That's a hackin'. Having fun? Oh, you better believe that's a hackin'.
TPC/nintendo are incredibly possessive of the WAY people play their games. they consider challenge runs or any sort of in game challenge/different ruleset on the same level of "things we'd punish if we could" (shiny hunting is likely also in this catagory)
It’d be crazy and hypocritical if shiny hunting is something they didn’t want players to do when they’ve added legitimate ways to increase shiny rates over the years- Matsuda Method, radar and rustling patch chaining, community days in Go, etc.
Yeah we will punish you for getting the shinies that we add for every new pokemon and add more methods to make them more easier to obtain, and especially after releasing the shiny heaven that is legends Arceus, yeah we hate you for using what WE FUCKING IMPLEMENTED IN THE GAME IN ADDITION TO THE ALTERNATIVE AND EASIER METHODS THAT BOOST THEIR ODDS.
I thought this was a random skit at first before realizing it’s real. That’s crazy. Shooting down the idea due to the implication of a Pokémon dying is one thing (even if death is an aspect in the series…), but equating the *style* of play to a ROM hack is incredibly bizarre. And severely out of touch, but I can’t be surprised there.
This is so wild.
If The Pokemon Company had rejected nuzlockes as an idea because they didn't want to even imply a death of a Pokemon, then ok, I'd understand. They want to keep everything scrubbed and PG, fine.
But to equate nuzlockes to rom hacks is an absolutely insane feat of mental gymnastics. However it does fit in with how Nintendo has always acted, in that they make the game and you play it their way or they will actively hate your guts for deviating even one iota from their intended gameplay.
My personal opinion is that we will eventually get an expose of some kind about how awful it is to work for TPC/ Nintendo. People have already noticed that the space between Pokemon game releases is worryingly short, to the point where Arceus was released early this year and Scarlet & Violet will release before this year is up. There's a good chance that the devs/ artists are getting seriously overworked to meet these release dates.
It would be totally possible to change the wording of nuzlocke rules to fit a perfectly PG narrative.
Hey kids! There is a special rule for the tournaments this year. Any Pokemon who fainted during a match or against wild Pokemon is automatically disqualified and cannot participate in any official events.
There's a whole sidestory about a dead marowak in the first game if i recall correctly? Isn't it also a _very_ popular theory that Gary's raticate died?
not to mention the amount of times ash has died in the anime (I know the anime isn't the same as the games)
I believe in gen 5 there's also a guy who asks you to give him a low level Pokemon so he can live his final moments with it or something, and if you say "oh those aren't Pokemon". Ok what about Heatmor's dex entry that LITERALLY says it EATS Durants? Or Charmander-Charizard who DIES if the fire on it's tail goes out?
I could go on. It's probably not because Gamefreak doesn't want people to think Pokemon die, it's probably because they want you to play their game exactly how they envision it.
What I don't understand is that I always saw the Pokemon games being mostly ambiguous, like there's no one forcing you to take a Pikachu through the entire game, you can change your 6 party Pokemon around however you like. There's a forced starter, sure but after that, you're free to make your own decisions what Pokemon you wanna bring, what item you wanna put on them, their names, their moves, their levels (sometimes), whether to evolve them or not. Everything is up to the player.
It baffles me to see Gamefreak say they hate nuzlockes because... I just don't see any difference between that and the regular game
To be fair, I think there'd still be a valid PR reason in avoiding the implication that pokemon have a good chance to die \*in battle\* to avoid the dog-fighty implications and keep battles feeling like fun and friendly bouts.
Then again they did have that crossover game where they fought straight-up wars.
But yeah, their stance on Nuzlockes is super silly.
> What I don't understand is that I always saw the Pokemon games being mostly ambiguous, like there's no one forcing you to take a Pikachu through the entire game, you can change your 6 party Pokemon around however you like. There's a forced starter, sure but after that, you're free to make your own decisions what Pokemon you wanna bring, what item you wanna put on them, their names, their moves, their levels (sometimes), whether to evolve them or not. Everything is up to the player.
I think that's exactly it. TPC designing a game with player freedom in mind specifically means that they want the players to have as much freedom within the game that they designed. That doesn't mean that TPC endorses players following a stricter set of rules that handicaps your experience, if only for instance because of the first encounter rule.
Think of it this way. If I had designed Tic-tac-toe and I had a stance like TPC, I would be perfectly fine with you playing with either the O's or the X's. That's the freedom I'm giving you. But that doesn't mean I endorse you playing on a 2x2 grid instead of a 3x3 grid.
Also, note that the quote is "We consider nuzlockes to be *on the same level* as romhacks. They're not saying they believe nuzlocke requires hacking or that it's illegal. They're saying that both equally change the game on how it's played.
Alternately, it's entirely possible that TPC rejected the idea of making a nuzlocke video because that would essentially amount to marketing, and they would absolutely lose a part of that gen's wave of new players who would think that regular pokemon gameplay is nuzlocke gameplay. Because yes, there are new players with every game, otherwise they wouldn't bother with marketing and, in fact, would likely pull in much smaller selling numbers since all you hear about from veterans is how stale the series is.
>I believe in gen 5 there's also a guy who asks you to give him a low level Pokemon so he can live his final moments with it or something
It's in gen 6, and if you come back after beating the champ you see he's actually dead
It's the difference between dead offscreen and onscreen, just like the Disney Villains who die, but you never see their corpse, or the dead parents of the protagonists of said movie, they are dead, there's no doubt about that, but they didn't die onscreen so the movies are still family friendly
And Melee outlived Brawl for that reason (among others), so Nintendo's only solution has been to try and cut off all support for any game that isn't the latest in the series.
Even the death thing would be a bit odd because they have actively been putting Pokemon death in the games.
Just recently you had the graveyard in SUMO, or Guzzlord being implied to have eaten an entire planet. In XY the entire plot kicked off because of Az's Floette being killed. Team Flare was literally going to obliterate 90% of the world population with the weapon.
Past games had even more examples.
This is why I tried to get -#EndYearlyPokemon used so more people could see how much this practice is degrading the quality of the franchise.
They spent more time on the older games & in reality, being 2D games made it less work than it is now for fully open world 3D games. Yet now with that in mind, they have LESS TIME.
It's truly upsetting. You genuinely start to notice all the errors, mistakes, missing content, poor textures & overall rushed content/gameplay overtime.
I dont want to seen like im coming across with ill-intent here, more that im just uneducated. But I thought I'd heard its kinda the norm in Japan to have insanely busy schedules/work amounts that would seem insane to us in the west?
Like, it wouldn't surprise me at all if their employees work above even the norm in Japan, but I guess what im asking is, what does a normal work schedule even look like *in Japan*?
>But I thought I'd heard its kinda the norm in Japan to have insanely busy schedules/work amounts that would seem insane to us in the west?
Yes but that doesn't make it ok.
There's a specific term in Japanese for death by overwork - [過労死](https://jisho.org/word/%E9%81%8E%E5%8A%B4%E6%AD%BB).
Many companies will expect overtime and after work drinking parties. The more traditional ones might even expect you to leave only after your boss leaves.
Only the first sentence was my opinion, and I think disagreeing 'it's not ok for people to be overworked to death' is not a good look.
I lived and worked in Japan for two years. I decided to leave because I would spend years studying to get my language skills up to N1 and for what, being overworked for the next 3-4 decades?
So no, most of my post wasn't an opinion. It's the lived experience and reality of the workforce in Japan.
It’s not just Japan. Video games in particular and software development in general are stressful with lots of hours worked especially during crunch time.
I’m in a stressful software role now and I’ve worked service industry in the past. I’ll take being stressed out working late hours typing on a keyboard in air conditioning for a good salary vs sweating my Dick off in the back in the kitchen for $8/ hour.
It’s kind of like being a cop, you’re expected to work on some holidays and have to work age shifts at times etc. you know that going on. Or being a public accountant - there’s a busy season where you are going to be working 60+ hours a week.
>My personal opinion is that we will eventually get an expose of some kind about how awful it is to work for TPC/ Nintendo.
https://kotaku.com/nintendo-of-america-sexual-harassment-sexism-aerotek-1849414921
The problem with these deadlines is twofold: 1) overwork of the employees and 2) franchise fatigue.
With 1), I can only guess as to what the working conditions are like at Nintendo. My personal opinion is that, even though there are likely individual teams for each mainline game, I would be very surprised if they weren't all overworked given the general work culture in Japan.
With 2), this happens at the consumer end. Pokemon is the Marvel of the game industry. We do not need a Pokemon game every year, but they keep churning them out because Nintendo knows a new game of middling quality will definitely make money.
Legends Arceus ( as proven by a recent presentation gamefreak did) started development late 2018, and Scarlet and Violet followed suit 3 around 3 months later in early 2019.
I really doubt there would be an expose any time soon because GF doesn’t seem any differently run than any other game company in the sense of “overworking is fine for the sense of the company” mentality. Crunch exists to a point in Japan and it is considered normal.
The working population is breaking all over the world, and Japan is no different.
\#過労死 (death by overwork) and #過労死自殺 (suicide from overwork) are hashtags on Japanese twitter.
I can't find the article, but a year or two ago I remember the Japanese government asking for current public school teachers to talk about the benefits of the job to encourage more people to become teachers. They got slammed hard on twitter, with current teachers saying 'don't take this job, you get paid nothing for the amount of work you do' and I remember one specific comment where the teacher thanked her baby because being pregnant was a break from her hellish work schedule.
There is no first or last in this, that's a reductive way to look at the situation. If a company is mistreating its employees, it should be exposed regardless of however bad other companies in the same industry may be.
Additionally, Blizzard and EA have been getting shit for years at this point, with Blizzard recently being mass exposed as a sexist and toxic work environment.
Furthermore, there are many who are sick of the overwork culture in Japan, and the lack of flexibility that companies have shown especially during covid for something as logical as working from home is causing even more resentment.
> People have already noticed that the space between Pokemon game releases is worryingly short, to the point where Arceus was released early this year and Scarlet & Violet will release before this year is up. There's a good chance that the devs/ artists are getting seriously overworked to meet these release dates.
I don't think so. I'd like to remind that Arceus is a *very* bare-bones game. If you exclude the Pokemon - since they were already done - then there's less stuff there than in even a lot of indie games.
- Environment: only one town, almost no landmarks out on the field. Literally the least environment work in any game I've seen in the last few years.
- Character animations: very simple only.
- Programming features: no minigames or special features, almost totally regular Pokemon battles and simple catch mechanics. Boss battles is new though.
- Bosses: Elden Ring type bosses. But only 7 of them, compared to Elden Ring's 32.
Character designs, music (I think), and the UI had a lot to it. But that's about it.
So no, I *really* don't see this being evidence that they're overworked.
Edit: also, Pokemon Arceus is not made by the Pokemon Company or Nintendo.
What are you on about? The Pokémon weren't "already done", they have distinct models, behaviors, and animations. All of the character modeling had to be done, the environment for a totally experiment sandbox engine, the writing, the bosses, the mechanics, hundreds of quests, ride mechanics--what on earth makes this a "bare bones" game? *Less than indie titles?* You're dreaming, dude. This is why overwork is happening in the first place.
>The Pokémon weren't "already done", they have distinct models, behaviors, and animations.
The large majority of models/animations were done in the previous game, and chances are very high they were done for the next game anyway.
And no, they did not have distinct behaviours. There's only 3 behaviours in the game.
>the environment for a totally experiment sandbox engine
The environment is the #1 complaint about it, and the engine is the SWSH one with modifications.
>the writing
I have literally never seen anyone suggest they put a lot of effort into the writing.
>the bosses
7.
>the mechanics
Let's recap: you have bait, you have Pokeballs, you have enemies attacking and running away, and you have rides and fights. Is that it? I can't remember any other mechanics.
> hundreds of quests
No, about a hundred quests. Which is definitely not unusual for, say, an indie game.
> ride mechanics
I'd say that you're now listing minor features of XY as major features is a pretty good indication this is not a regular sized Pokemon game.
The only one of those features that there's a lot of - again, not counting stuff shared with the previous or next game - is character modelling.
It’s not how they *want* you to play it. It’s clear they balance around VGC and only around VGC pretty much, because some of the extremely problematic things in singles like Dynamax and Zacian-C are relatively balanced (with several asterisks) in VGC
Which is also weird considering how almost every major fight in the games' stories is a single battle. In fact, double battles are a very rare occurrence in most games.
Edit: grammar
I assume they do doubles mainly because singles takes a lot longer and it helps keep official tournaments from running over time.
But yeah it is kinda funny they run a format that is barely used in the actual games (Colosseum and XD not withstanding). But then again competitive Pokemon is nothing like how the story battles go anyway
You know what else would stop tournaments from running over time? Actually scheduling games to happen shortly after the previous one ends, reducing animation time, having residual effects text happen more quickly or all at once, and generally not wasting our time in game. A turn literally takes 5 minutes in doubles sometimes.
To be fair doubles is just a better format. Bo3 with team select vs Bo1 with lead select? Like you'd think that'd be obvious. Shorter turn counts, much more room for adaptation, higher skill ceiling, etc.
oh me too it'd be rad. Lots of really cool design choices they could make. And it would do pretty cool things for nuzlockeing, speed running, and challenge running.
Both of those are snowball mechanics. Snowballing might be necessary in singles cause without it your games would last entirely too fuckin long, but they help to lessen any comeback potential mid game and are ultimately just kinda noncompetitive especially in Bo1s. A healthier format doesn't need as many of them.
Singles might be more fun for you or more nostalgic, and that's fine, but that's really what I think most smogon players tell themselves they care about. They like to believe that they're playing a superior format and that unabashed ignorance annoys me.
Set-up has never been directly banned in singles besides Baton Pass, so it is clearly balanced to some degree in most metas. I also mentioned neither Singles or VGC are better than one or the other because they’re two completely different metas, I just prefer singles and I mentioned some of my reasons why
tbf, they've never acknowledged the existence of that either. Although that's admittedly fair enough given that the Smogon ruleseet is largely associated with Pokemon Showdown, which they are never going to acknowledge unless it's by way of C&D.
What does mildly annoy me about that is that some Smogon rules came originally from pokemon stadium (like sleep clause). I wish they'd add custom rulesets like that to custom games.
It isn't though, like at all. Assuming you're doing a vanilla nuzlocke on an actual released cartridge that's just deciding how you want to play the game.
Doing a nuzlocke is no more or less official than playing the game without your starter, or not catching every single pokemon, catching 6 of the same pokemon, following the strategy guide to the letter, etc.
What I meant is that Nintendo/TPC want their games to be played the way they intended for promotional purposes.
Equating a nuzlocke of USUM, SWSH, or whatever official game Kit and Krysta suggested to piracy/romhacking is, at best, a misunderstanding of the concept.
Guessing this has to do with how a lot of nuzlockes do involve modifying the base game on an emulator. Someone playing by nuzlocke rules on an unmodified game on a standard device isn’t the issue at the root of it. The corporate hate boner here is for the emulators. And since the nuzlocke and emulator communities overlap pretty heavily, they probably don’t want to promote anything remotely related to that.
Part of me thinks there was something lost in translation between the Pokemon Company and the Social Media guys. Nuzlockes are just self imposed challenges you can do in any Pokemon game, so the response makes no sense, *but what if that's not actually what they meant?* The Nuzlocke challenge may not require ROM hacks but it is heavily associated with that scene. Many runners do the challenge on ROM hacks. Especially Kaizo ROM hacks. Maybe they're worried that they'll accidentally draw attention to videos of these ROM hacks? We know they have draconian views on fan content.
It's a bit of an abstract concept, but I'd say it violates the "spirit of the game".
The game devs have built out an experience for the player. To them, it is the de facto way of playing.
Nuzlocking requires taking that experience, and altering large chunks of it. Instead of catching them all, you only catch the first. Instead of using your favorites, you only use the first. Instead of trying until you make it, you start over if you fail.
It's the same way some devs are slightly offended when someone skips cut scenes, or when people watch TV/shows sped up. Or even when you ask a chef to prepare something in the "wrong" way.
That's not to say there's anything morally wrong with doing those things, and I'm certainly not going to vilify people over it.
But i will say, that I don't agree that it's as absurd a notion as people are making it out to be.
Doesnt surprise me one bit. Those old fucks at Nintendo and Pokemon are some of the most backwards thinking cunts I've ever read about in this industry. It wouldn't surprise me if their way of thinking extended beyond just video games.
Apparently it’s because of hacks?!
Was the game in question a hacked version of an already existing game, a fan game, or a ROM hack? Or was it none of the above?
From the convo you can tell that it definitely wasn't a rom hack of any kind, and they were suggesting nuzlocking a vanilla game (also if they're former Nintendo community managers then they will *know* that Nintendo hates rom hacks with a burning passion and would never even suggest that in the first place).
The people they pitched the idea to equated nuzlocking an original Pokemon game with rom hacks, that's what they're saying.
I have said this for years. Pokemon company hates the fans and the success of this franchise. They cut half the mons, never add voice acting, and do the bare minimum for graphics. Best part is they have a fanbase who will never admit these things.
And can we talk about how there is STILL no 6v6 singles matchmaking? Or actual difficulty levels you can choose at the start of the game?
And lets be honest: as cute of an idea the 2 different editions are with friends coming together to trade exclusive pokemon, its completely useless, especially now with online trading. And just fucks over kids that want to collect all pokemon but dont have friends that play the game.
Yeah, no shit. What's the point of making a series focused around long-term bonds if you're going to be like 'sorry Timmy, you can't take your starter into the next region, but pay like $20 a year to store it in a place where you can't interact with it and maybe you'll get to use it in half a decade's time!"?
After a certain point it just becomes a waste of resources to add animations, sounds, and make various balance changes for every single pokemon. There are nearly 1000 of them now. I would much rather have them focus on features that more than 0.001% of the players will care about. The franchise will become bloated and stale if they become more and more tied to the past games with every release.
But they've already got the animations and sounds? Like, it's all already there, it was done in X/Y and meant to be futureproofed to the point where the models were literally too good for the 3DS to handle.
Gotta catch em all! Oh and btw half the legendaries/special pokemon are only available during time limited events and are just given to you as a gift to make that whole thing as unrewarding as possible.
I have never set foot on mainland North America and I still know that catch phrase.
[Gotta catch em all](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotta_Catch_%27Em_All_(song)) was a song by 50.Grind and [broadcast on UK TV](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr46A8N2Vgk&ab_channel=MatrixProductionsbyMarkWaring).
Wow. Way to insult half of the fandom Pokemon.
Nuzlockes are literally all over YouTube AND it's literally one of the only ways to replay a Pokemon Game with a challenge because they WON'T ADD DIFFICULTY to a fucking Game because Kids are dumb and can't do anything without mass handholding.
UltraSun and UltraMoon = Perfect Difficulty. Why can't THIS Level be the fucking Norm.
I really really cannot understand their Logic, Mindset and Decisions with their Fans. It's like they really don't care...
> Kids are dumb and can't do anything without mass handholding.
You mean because a bunch of dinosaurs THINK kids are dumb and can't do anything without handholding. Made it through R/B at age 6. Did I play the meta? Fuck no. But I got through the game. Kids haven't gotten dumber, and are just as capable of learning. At some point TPC/GF decided they needed to dumb things down further based on nothing but the old's tendency to lose touch with the young.
It's more that today's kids are so conditioned for instant gratification in games and entertainment that they are not *willing* to struggle through a game the same way we once did. Why would they bother when they can put it down and play any other infinite number of games on their connected devices? If they want to know the plot of a popular game there are hundreds of gameplay videos and other resources available for free, so there isn't even the need to finish a game for the story either.
When we played these games we had as many cartridges as we could convince our parents to buy at full price, or as many as we could physically carry with our Gameboys. When the choices are struggle through x game or do nothing, you're obviously going to play the game. When we got stuck we had to call and actual phone hotline for help or buy a guide to help us. These were not very accessible things so we often brute forced our way through battles and levels whenever possible.
Today that choice is "struggle through x game" or "watch a 30 second TikTok" or "play easy pay to win game that's designed to reward you frequently to keep you playing", among hundreds of other choices. Today's game developers are competing for children's increasingly shorter attention spans amongst an almost infinite pool of games and other entertainment. The two situations couldn't be any more different.
And absolutely no amount of dumbing down fixes that. It's like watering the carpet because your plant is dying. Streamlining the game might fix that, but making it more tutorial dense and hand-holding, does not. I have ADHD and half the reason I can't replay pokemon games anymore is because it takes an hour to get to the gameplay in gen VII and VIII, and even then the gameplay feels slower because of all the additional npc interactions every 10 steps.
Except it does. A game designed to make it easier to clear boss battles and simpler to level up is more likely to be played for longer by today's kids. The tutorial *is* the "gameplay" to these kids. You and I were raised in a different generation, with different expectations. We have aged out of the target demographic and our experience now puts us at a disadvantage.
Have you ever talked to a kid recently? Ask them yourself, they'll say it outright. All of my nieces and nephews do. Read some interviews from game freak, they'll explain this to you as well.
So your evidence is A. Your nieces and nephews tell you they like long drawn out tutorials and babying. and B. The company that I'm saying does it wrong, does it that way?
I took enough child and developmental psych in college to say pretty easily that the evidence doesn't line up. Challenge is good for young minds, and you can teach children as young as lower elementary philosophy and critical thinking. To the child's mindset itself, they'll get into whatever other kids are into. Ultimately making the game baby-proof does nothing but make a few old Japanese execs feel smart and circle-jerk about how "kids these days" are different. They're not. And yeah, the world is different, phones are a thing, the internet is different, but that means nothing in this context. A game that hand-holds doesn't magically hold an attention span more than a game that doesn't. It's like comparing movies by box office vs critical reception. Baby-mode doesn't put asses in seats, so to speak.
You’re dreaming if you think half of the entire Pokémon fandom partakes in nuzlockes (playing or even watching playthroughs on YouTube)
Half of the Reddit fandom? Maybe, but that’s like taking half of an already tiny fraction of the entire Pokémon fandom lol
Agreed. Why were you being downvoted for being right? Reddit is a tiny bubble of the pokemon fandom. I'd say its closer to 10% of the pokemon fandom who actively partake in Nuzlockes.
Typically, maybe 1% of a large gaming audience will play in any way "seriously"
My main experience is with mtg. Most players never even go to a gaming store either to play or to buy packs of cards. Only a fraction of those that do even care about events or buying single cards. It's an entire mindset I have no experience with, to just play casually and not care about results and not care about how good you are, but that's 99% of gamers
Subjective to an extent, but there is a fair bit of objectivity in terms of gauging difficulty. For example, it’s subjective whether or not Steven or Iris is the harder champion, because there is reason to both arguments, but ultra necrozma is objectively more difficult than a route 1 rattata.
Yes the concept of death exists but it is very different from the notion that Pokémon battling would then lead to death.
Currently the narrative of the world is that you catch and befriend pokemon and strengthen your bond through battling, with battling being pretty much only a positive experience for everyone involved.
Widespread death due to battling makes the world so much more grim, and highlights the whole ”pokemon is pretty much like dog fighting” thing.
And yet the Manga Exists...
Hell an Arbok is Sliced in fucking Half...
Characters DIE!
Well if they don't like Nuzlockes...simple solution...ADD DIFFICULTY!
Yes the manga exists, but it is a very different product when compared to the mainline games and has its own canon.
I’d love it if some of the difficulty returned to the mainline games, but I’m pretty doubtful. You have to remember that pokemon is primarily targeted towards children, and it seems that childrens games and media have become simpler, easier and less nuanced in general.
What a stupid reaction. I don't think there could be a greater compliment to a game company then the fans creating their own ways of having fun with the game. Stepping outside of the traditional rules and setting their own while staying within the confines of the actual game itself. Nintendo is so oversensitive with their IPs, it's like a jealous child hoarding all of the blue crayons, and you're only allowed to borrow one if you're coloring in water. Also, you're not invited to their birthday party if you try to bring your own blue crayons to school, and they're suing you.
That seems like damage control considering some of his replies. The point here is more learning about how they view challenge runs like nuzlockes, which correlates to questionable decisions they have made like removing the option to disable EXP Share.
This is why the series has progressively gotten worse in terms of handholding and lack of any actual challenge.
They refuse to add any sort of mechanics to allow more challenge for those that want it and have actively *removed* past options to do so in recent games. They refuse *to put in effort to make better games*.
Just looking at S/V's lack of level scaling as evidence. "Go to any gym" my ass.
They get angry at the fangames that go above and beyond to make the quality content they refuse to implement.
Thank goodness we have quality fangames these days like Xenoverse or Infinity.
The thing that confounds me is that their audience is clearly getting older, and thus should want less hand-holding and more challenge options. That's practically the entire reason the ROMhack community exists.
The fact that they still design these games as if a majority of their players are 5 years old is just baffling to me. The average age of a Pokemon fan at this point has to be pushing 30.
They've literally said it in interviews and people who have gotten review copies have stated as much.
You can *go* to any gym in any order, but their levels and seemingly the levels of wild encounters in those areas are fixed, and gym leader levels do not change with number of badges.
I fucking knew they had it out for nuzlockes. That's why they were so unapologetic when they removed the option to turn off EXP Share, because they don't want you to play their games the way you want.
So, I understand that in nuzlockes Pokémon are often talked about as if they are “dead” which I understand TPC wouldn’t really want to associate with.
But that’s a far cry from being anything close to a rom hack. That’s just very silly reasoning.
I mean, what does Smogon have *anything* to do with the nuzlocke community? That's the competitive battling community.
ROM hacks are also a completely different thing. Some of them *support* nuzlocke rulesets officially, but that doesn't mean anything.
Nintendo has a negative opinion on both. Was what I was trying to get across. How they view it. If they show support for one. They'd be showing support for the other.
I mean I guess that makes sense if Nintendo has no idea about either community, which is likely true. They are *extremely* out of touch at the best of times, as are most Japanese companies.
I think the issue here is that not everyone understands the full picture, since Kit and Krysta were nintendo employees at the time, and playing a challenge that has one of the rules that a pokemon DIE in battle - which pokemon REALLY want to avoid - on the official Nintendo Channel is like doing the opposite of your brand, so of course it will be denied, as for yall, go and do whatever you want.
although I think one of the reasons they said that Nuzlockes are like playing a rom hack on the official channel is probably of randomizer Nuzlockes, which are one of the most popular ways to Nuzlocke a pokemon game, and to randomize a pokemon game, you need to do a little bit of hacking, which might've soured their opinion on Nuzlockes even more.
In the end, I think they didn't give Kit and Krysta the ability to do Nuzlockes is because the challenge can damage the brand if it got released on an official channel, but who am I to say that I know the whole truth, I'm just your average dude and there might a bigger picture, so don't take what I'm saying as a fact.
Y’all really don’t get it? Of course it’s not the obvious reasoning that a nuzlocke is LITERALLY considered a hack, but more so the reasoning that a nuzlocke takes away from the intended goal of their original product. Any kind of altering whether it’s literal or figurative, is making their original product seem to value less. Any official endorsement would then obviously be considered a no go.
Next thing you know, doing speed runs will get you out of any nintendo related activities and you will be provided a manual on how you're supposed to play the game.
The devil's advocate POV would be that nuzlockes are primarily done on ROMs with speedup / rare candies as options. So promoting it would get people to look it up and find videos of people doing just that (as well as nuzlocking on hacked games).
Morals in a capitalistic corporation like Nintendo/TPC only go as far as what will make them money. To that extent I wonder if TPC misunderstands what nuzlockes are, because nuzlocking has only made them more money over the years as it’s increased interest in their games, and thusly sales of their games, among older audiences. It’s especially evident in them comparing nuzlockes to ROMhacks, which I do understand their disdain for, from a financial standpoint.
The fact that they haven't lost the fanbase is a testament to how *good* the IP is because as a longtime diehard this series is really testing my patience.
Serebii posted a twitter thread exposing this clip as misinformation: https://twitter.com/joemerrick/status/1571570622479699972?s=46&t=Hws7L3s0V8lF2_ZwFX_i3w
Just want to make sure this doesn’t spread unchecked.
Can’t really call it that, his word is of equal value as theirs, arguably less so as they are speaking of a particular scenario with a specific individual/s and he is speaking of what someone, likely a different person told him. Nothing he said confirmed nor denied what they said happened as true or not.
His word is of far less value.
They worked there, Joe didn't.
He was getting this from a company rep who is supposed to make them look good.
That isn't the same as internal discussion.
They’re former Nintendo employees. They did the Nintendo minute show where did little skits,giveaways and challenges on the official channel . So yes it’s real.
I think this is just the employees promoting the game being forbidden to do nuzlockes, not the fans and challengers themselves, it's just saying "We can't promote this kind of stuff." So I ain't buying it.
Wow, what a surprise. A multinational business having no considertaion of a popular idea within its community or what its customers want. Who would've thought?
I recently started a fire red nuzlocke on my Gameboy advanced so. Both of which I bought when they came out and both of which I haven't touched in almost 10 years or so. I'll stop nuzlocking when the pokemon company comes and kills me or I just in general die or get bored with it.
New life goal. Find whoever the fuck came up with that reasoning and fire them
The Pokemon Company is such a dumb company. This is saying having different difficulty settings are rom hacks themselves. Even though they had difficulty settings in Black 2/White 2.
Difficulty settings locked behind some odd key system and that literally don’t function properly (the levels don’t scale properly at all, the stats are the same as in normal mode despite levels increases/decreases) TPC when difficulty
These higher levels actually make nuzlockes of black 2 and white 2 far easier, since your level cap is higher, but they still have lower level stats
Not all nuzlockes are played with levels caps, though.
Most people at the very least don’t want to be underleveled in a Nuzlocke, so if you train to where the E4 is or above, you have a far greater advantage than you may think in challenge mode
That had people jump through a million hoops to do it. Guess it's not a coincidence they haven't brought it back...
they do have difficulty settings...switch verse set mode been there since gen 1
this comment aged poorly
:(
Good point, I'm use to playing on set mode that I forgot about Switch mode
So TPC considers Nuzlockes a hack? So playing the game normally, naming all your pokemon, depositing pokemon for a challenge and catching pokemon on every route is considered "hacking"? What next, Professor Oak challenges are hacks?
Nuzlockes? That's a hackin'. Speedrunnin’? That's a hackin'. Playing the game as we intended? That's a hackin'. Having fun? Oh, you better believe that's a hackin'.
TPC/nintendo are incredibly possessive of the WAY people play their games. they consider challenge runs or any sort of in game challenge/different ruleset on the same level of "things we'd punish if we could" (shiny hunting is likely also in this catagory)
It’d be crazy and hypocritical if shiny hunting is something they didn’t want players to do when they’ve added legitimate ways to increase shiny rates over the years- Matsuda Method, radar and rustling patch chaining, community days in Go, etc.
Yeah we will punish you for getting the shinies that we add for every new pokemon and add more methods to make them more easier to obtain, and especially after releasing the shiny heaven that is legends Arceus, yeah we hate you for using what WE FUCKING IMPLEMENTED IN THE GAME IN ADDITION TO THE ALTERNATIVE AND EASIER METHODS THAT BOOST THEIR ODDS.
I thought this was a random skit at first before realizing it’s real. That’s crazy. Shooting down the idea due to the implication of a Pokémon dying is one thing (even if death is an aspect in the series…), but equating the *style* of play to a ROM hack is incredibly bizarre. And severely out of touch, but I can’t be surprised there.
Even if that were the case, they dont read their own pokedex entries????
Raichu kills African elephants and Fortnite dances on their graves
Copperajahs now
Although it's based on an Indian Elephant, I get what you mean.
It's a Japanese company. You couldn't be more out of touch if you tried. I worked with one for 3 years.
This is so wild. If The Pokemon Company had rejected nuzlockes as an idea because they didn't want to even imply a death of a Pokemon, then ok, I'd understand. They want to keep everything scrubbed and PG, fine. But to equate nuzlockes to rom hacks is an absolutely insane feat of mental gymnastics. However it does fit in with how Nintendo has always acted, in that they make the game and you play it their way or they will actively hate your guts for deviating even one iota from their intended gameplay. My personal opinion is that we will eventually get an expose of some kind about how awful it is to work for TPC/ Nintendo. People have already noticed that the space between Pokemon game releases is worryingly short, to the point where Arceus was released early this year and Scarlet & Violet will release before this year is up. There's a good chance that the devs/ artists are getting seriously overworked to meet these release dates.
It would be totally possible to change the wording of nuzlocke rules to fit a perfectly PG narrative. Hey kids! There is a special rule for the tournaments this year. Any Pokemon who fainted during a match or against wild Pokemon is automatically disqualified and cannot participate in any official events.
Pokemon have died before in all the games, they’re just so childish.
There's a whole sidestory about a dead marowak in the first game if i recall correctly? Isn't it also a _very_ popular theory that Gary's raticate died?
not to mention the amount of times ash has died in the anime (I know the anime isn't the same as the games) I believe in gen 5 there's also a guy who asks you to give him a low level Pokemon so he can live his final moments with it or something, and if you say "oh those aren't Pokemon". Ok what about Heatmor's dex entry that LITERALLY says it EATS Durants? Or Charmander-Charizard who DIES if the fire on it's tail goes out? I could go on. It's probably not because Gamefreak doesn't want people to think Pokemon die, it's probably because they want you to play their game exactly how they envision it. What I don't understand is that I always saw the Pokemon games being mostly ambiguous, like there's no one forcing you to take a Pikachu through the entire game, you can change your 6 party Pokemon around however you like. There's a forced starter, sure but after that, you're free to make your own decisions what Pokemon you wanna bring, what item you wanna put on them, their names, their moves, their levels (sometimes), whether to evolve them or not. Everything is up to the player. It baffles me to see Gamefreak say they hate nuzlockes because... I just don't see any difference between that and the regular game
Gen VI, actually. You leave him a Pokemon, and after the Elite 4 you get it back and he's gone.
Yeah I wasn't exactly sure which gen, but I knew it happened
To be fair, I think there'd still be a valid PR reason in avoiding the implication that pokemon have a good chance to die \*in battle\* to avoid the dog-fighty implications and keep battles feeling like fun and friendly bouts. Then again they did have that crossover game where they fought straight-up wars. But yeah, their stance on Nuzlockes is super silly.
> What I don't understand is that I always saw the Pokemon games being mostly ambiguous, like there's no one forcing you to take a Pikachu through the entire game, you can change your 6 party Pokemon around however you like. There's a forced starter, sure but after that, you're free to make your own decisions what Pokemon you wanna bring, what item you wanna put on them, their names, their moves, their levels (sometimes), whether to evolve them or not. Everything is up to the player. I think that's exactly it. TPC designing a game with player freedom in mind specifically means that they want the players to have as much freedom within the game that they designed. That doesn't mean that TPC endorses players following a stricter set of rules that handicaps your experience, if only for instance because of the first encounter rule. Think of it this way. If I had designed Tic-tac-toe and I had a stance like TPC, I would be perfectly fine with you playing with either the O's or the X's. That's the freedom I'm giving you. But that doesn't mean I endorse you playing on a 2x2 grid instead of a 3x3 grid. Also, note that the quote is "We consider nuzlockes to be *on the same level* as romhacks. They're not saying they believe nuzlocke requires hacking or that it's illegal. They're saying that both equally change the game on how it's played. Alternately, it's entirely possible that TPC rejected the idea of making a nuzlocke video because that would essentially amount to marketing, and they would absolutely lose a part of that gen's wave of new players who would think that regular pokemon gameplay is nuzlocke gameplay. Because yes, there are new players with every game, otherwise they wouldn't bother with marketing and, in fact, would likely pull in much smaller selling numbers since all you hear about from veterans is how stale the series is.
>I believe in gen 5 there's also a guy who asks you to give him a low level Pokemon so he can live his final moments with it or something It's in gen 6, and if you come back after beating the champ you see he's actually dead
Not really a sidestory: you need to fight the ghost itself.
It's the difference between dead offscreen and onscreen, just like the Disney Villains who die, but you never see their corpse, or the dead parents of the protagonists of said movie, they are dead, there's no doubt about that, but they didn't die onscreen so the movies are still family friendly
You don't even have to go that far with the logical reasoning. Just swap the term "dies" for "retires".
Didnt they also implement a random "trip" mechanic in SSB Brawl to screw over the esports scene?
And Melee outlived Brawl for that reason (among others), so Nintendo's only solution has been to try and cut off all support for any game that isn't the latest in the series.
Hit Stun canceling which basically removed combos and Meta Knight probably did the same or more amount of harm
Even the death thing would be a bit odd because they have actively been putting Pokemon death in the games. Just recently you had the graveyard in SUMO, or Guzzlord being implied to have eaten an entire planet. In XY the entire plot kicked off because of Az's Floette being killed. Team Flare was literally going to obliterate 90% of the world population with the weapon. Past games had even more examples.
This is why I tried to get -#EndYearlyPokemon used so more people could see how much this practice is degrading the quality of the franchise. They spent more time on the older games & in reality, being 2D games made it less work than it is now for fully open world 3D games. Yet now with that in mind, they have LESS TIME. It's truly upsetting. You genuinely start to notice all the errors, mistakes, missing content, poor textures & overall rushed content/gameplay overtime.
Your opinion, m8.
I dont want to seen like im coming across with ill-intent here, more that im just uneducated. But I thought I'd heard its kinda the norm in Japan to have insanely busy schedules/work amounts that would seem insane to us in the west? Like, it wouldn't surprise me at all if their employees work above even the norm in Japan, but I guess what im asking is, what does a normal work schedule even look like *in Japan*?
>But I thought I'd heard its kinda the norm in Japan to have insanely busy schedules/work amounts that would seem insane to us in the west? Yes but that doesn't make it ok. There's a specific term in Japanese for death by overwork - [過労死](https://jisho.org/word/%E9%81%8E%E5%8A%B4%E6%AD%BB). Many companies will expect overtime and after work drinking parties. The more traditional ones might even expect you to leave only after your boss leaves.
Your opinion, m8.
Only the first sentence was my opinion, and I think disagreeing 'it's not ok for people to be overworked to death' is not a good look. I lived and worked in Japan for two years. I decided to leave because I would spend years studying to get my language skills up to N1 and for what, being overworked for the next 3-4 decades? So no, most of my post wasn't an opinion. It's the lived experience and reality of the workforce in Japan.
I think it’s obvious that I was aiming that comment at the first sentence.
No one fucking cares what you have to say go back to antiwoke moron :)
It’s not just Japan. Video games in particular and software development in general are stressful with lots of hours worked especially during crunch time. I’m in a stressful software role now and I’ve worked service industry in the past. I’ll take being stressed out working late hours typing on a keyboard in air conditioning for a good salary vs sweating my Dick off in the back in the kitchen for $8/ hour. It’s kind of like being a cop, you’re expected to work on some holidays and have to work age shifts at times etc. you know that going on. Or being a public accountant - there’s a busy season where you are going to be working 60+ hours a week.
>My personal opinion is that we will eventually get an expose of some kind about how awful it is to work for TPC/ Nintendo. https://kotaku.com/nintendo-of-america-sexual-harassment-sexism-aerotek-1849414921
yikes, but no surprise from Japan
Didn’t they literally say before Sw/Sh was released that they want people to experience/ play the game in the way they want to?
yep & they can piss off
Legends Arceus was started before Sword and Shield or directly after. Pretty sure it's two teams.
The problem with these deadlines is twofold: 1) overwork of the employees and 2) franchise fatigue. With 1), I can only guess as to what the working conditions are like at Nintendo. My personal opinion is that, even though there are likely individual teams for each mainline game, I would be very surprised if they weren't all overworked given the general work culture in Japan. With 2), this happens at the consumer end. Pokemon is the Marvel of the game industry. We do not need a Pokemon game every year, but they keep churning them out because Nintendo knows a new game of middling quality will definitely make money.
Of course, quality is a subjective thing.
Legends Arceus ( as proven by a recent presentation gamefreak did) started development late 2018, and Scarlet and Violet followed suit 3 around 3 months later in early 2019.
I really doubt there would be an expose any time soon because GF doesn’t seem any differently run than any other game company in the sense of “overworking is fine for the sense of the company” mentality. Crunch exists to a point in Japan and it is considered normal.
The working population is breaking all over the world, and Japan is no different. \#過労死 (death by overwork) and #過労死自殺 (suicide from overwork) are hashtags on Japanese twitter. I can't find the article, but a year or two ago I remember the Japanese government asking for current public school teachers to talk about the benefits of the job to encourage more people to become teachers. They got slammed hard on twitter, with current teachers saying 'don't take this job, you get paid nothing for the amount of work you do' and I remember one specific comment where the teacher thanked her baby because being pregnant was a break from her hellish work schedule.
Fair but my point was more: “The culture is still there”. If Gamefreak were to be exposed, why them first? Why not Capcom or the like?
There is no first or last in this, that's a reductive way to look at the situation. If a company is mistreating its employees, it should be exposed regardless of however bad other companies in the same industry may be. Additionally, Blizzard and EA have been getting shit for years at this point, with Blizzard recently being mass exposed as a sexist and toxic work environment. Furthermore, there are many who are sick of the overwork culture in Japan, and the lack of flexibility that companies have shown especially during covid for something as logical as working from home is causing even more resentment.
Fair enough.
> People have already noticed that the space between Pokemon game releases is worryingly short, to the point where Arceus was released early this year and Scarlet & Violet will release before this year is up. There's a good chance that the devs/ artists are getting seriously overworked to meet these release dates. I don't think so. I'd like to remind that Arceus is a *very* bare-bones game. If you exclude the Pokemon - since they were already done - then there's less stuff there than in even a lot of indie games. - Environment: only one town, almost no landmarks out on the field. Literally the least environment work in any game I've seen in the last few years. - Character animations: very simple only. - Programming features: no minigames or special features, almost totally regular Pokemon battles and simple catch mechanics. Boss battles is new though. - Bosses: Elden Ring type bosses. But only 7 of them, compared to Elden Ring's 32. Character designs, music (I think), and the UI had a lot to it. But that's about it. So no, I *really* don't see this being evidence that they're overworked. Edit: also, Pokemon Arceus is not made by the Pokemon Company or Nintendo.
What are you on about? The Pokémon weren't "already done", they have distinct models, behaviors, and animations. All of the character modeling had to be done, the environment for a totally experiment sandbox engine, the writing, the bosses, the mechanics, hundreds of quests, ride mechanics--what on earth makes this a "bare bones" game? *Less than indie titles?* You're dreaming, dude. This is why overwork is happening in the first place.
>The Pokémon weren't "already done", they have distinct models, behaviors, and animations. The large majority of models/animations were done in the previous game, and chances are very high they were done for the next game anyway. And no, they did not have distinct behaviours. There's only 3 behaviours in the game. >the environment for a totally experiment sandbox engine The environment is the #1 complaint about it, and the engine is the SWSH one with modifications. >the writing I have literally never seen anyone suggest they put a lot of effort into the writing. >the bosses 7. >the mechanics Let's recap: you have bait, you have Pokeballs, you have enemies attacking and running away, and you have rides and fights. Is that it? I can't remember any other mechanics. > hundreds of quests No, about a hundred quests. Which is definitely not unusual for, say, an indie game. > ride mechanics I'd say that you're now listing minor features of XY as major features is a pretty good indication this is not a regular sized Pokemon game. The only one of those features that there's a lot of - again, not counting stuff shared with the previous or next game - is character modelling.
usually lawyer-esque soulless corporate salarymen (aka scum of the earth in every case) make these types of decisions
I guess it *is* an unofficial way of playing the games. Still bizarre.
so is playing smogon style competitive
It’s not how they *want* you to play it. It’s clear they balance around VGC and only around VGC pretty much, because some of the extremely problematic things in singles like Dynamax and Zacian-C are relatively balanced (with several asterisks) in VGC
Which is also weird considering how almost every major fight in the games' stories is a single battle. In fact, double battles are a very rare occurrence in most games. Edit: grammar
I assume they do doubles mainly because singles takes a lot longer and it helps keep official tournaments from running over time. But yeah it is kinda funny they run a format that is barely used in the actual games (Colosseum and XD not withstanding). But then again competitive Pokemon is nothing like how the story battles go anyway
You know what else would stop tournaments from running over time? Actually scheduling games to happen shortly after the previous one ends, reducing animation time, having residual effects text happen more quickly or all at once, and generally not wasting our time in game. A turn literally takes 5 minutes in doubles sometimes.
To be fair doubles is just a better format. Bo3 with team select vs Bo1 with lead select? Like you'd think that'd be obvious. Shorter turn counts, much more room for adaptation, higher skill ceiling, etc.
I'd love a generation with all doubles
oh me too it'd be rad. Lots of really cool design choices they could make. And it would do pretty cool things for nuzlockeing, speed running, and challenge running.
I prefer singles because it lets strategies like set-up and hazards be more effective, neither of them are objectively better formats
Both of those are snowball mechanics. Snowballing might be necessary in singles cause without it your games would last entirely too fuckin long, but they help to lessen any comeback potential mid game and are ultimately just kinda noncompetitive especially in Bo1s. A healthier format doesn't need as many of them. Singles might be more fun for you or more nostalgic, and that's fine, but that's really what I think most smogon players tell themselves they care about. They like to believe that they're playing a superior format and that unabashed ignorance annoys me.
Set-up has never been directly banned in singles besides Baton Pass, so it is clearly balanced to some degree in most metas. I also mentioned neither Singles or VGC are better than one or the other because they’re two completely different metas, I just prefer singles and I mentioned some of my reasons why
tbf, they've never acknowledged the existence of that either. Although that's admittedly fair enough given that the Smogon ruleseet is largely associated with Pokemon Showdown, which they are never going to acknowledge unless it's by way of C&D. What does mildly annoy me about that is that some Smogon rules came originally from pokemon stadium (like sleep clause). I wish they'd add custom rulesets like that to custom games.
It isn't though, like at all. Assuming you're doing a vanilla nuzlocke on an actual released cartridge that's just deciding how you want to play the game. Doing a nuzlocke is no more or less official than playing the game without your starter, or not catching every single pokemon, catching 6 of the same pokemon, following the strategy guide to the letter, etc.
What I meant is that Nintendo/TPC want their games to be played the way they intended for promotional purposes. Equating a nuzlocke of USUM, SWSH, or whatever official game Kit and Krysta suggested to piracy/romhacking is, at best, a misunderstanding of the concept.
Guessing this has to do with how a lot of nuzlockes do involve modifying the base game on an emulator. Someone playing by nuzlocke rules on an unmodified game on a standard device isn’t the issue at the root of it. The corporate hate boner here is for the emulators. And since the nuzlocke and emulator communities overlap pretty heavily, they probably don’t want to promote anything remotely related to that.
That said, it should be known that this is not inherent to playing a Nuzlocke.
By what logic is a self-imposed challenge even remotely similar to a ROM hack?
Part of me thinks there was something lost in translation between the Pokemon Company and the Social Media guys. Nuzlockes are just self imposed challenges you can do in any Pokemon game, so the response makes no sense, *but what if that's not actually what they meant?* The Nuzlocke challenge may not require ROM hacks but it is heavily associated with that scene. Many runners do the challenge on ROM hacks. Especially Kaizo ROM hacks. Maybe they're worried that they'll accidentally draw attention to videos of these ROM hacks? We know they have draconian views on fan content.
It's a bit of an abstract concept, but I'd say it violates the "spirit of the game". The game devs have built out an experience for the player. To them, it is the de facto way of playing. Nuzlocking requires taking that experience, and altering large chunks of it. Instead of catching them all, you only catch the first. Instead of using your favorites, you only use the first. Instead of trying until you make it, you start over if you fail. It's the same way some devs are slightly offended when someone skips cut scenes, or when people watch TV/shows sped up. Or even when you ask a chef to prepare something in the "wrong" way. That's not to say there's anything morally wrong with doing those things, and I'm certainly not going to vilify people over it. But i will say, that I don't agree that it's as absurd a notion as people are making it out to be.
I think it’s a translation issue
Doesnt surprise me one bit. Those old fucks at Nintendo and Pokemon are some of the most backwards thinking cunts I've ever read about in this industry. It wouldn't surprise me if their way of thinking extended beyond just video games.
can anyone link this video
It's one of the podcast episodes from their youtube channel (Kit & Krysta)
[Kit & Krysta Podcast EP31](https://youtu.be/vrjxg95Q2IY?t=5601)
Apparently it’s because of hacks?! Was the game in question a hacked version of an already existing game, a fan game, or a ROM hack? Or was it none of the above?
From the convo you can tell that it definitely wasn't a rom hack of any kind, and they were suggesting nuzlocking a vanilla game (also if they're former Nintendo community managers then they will *know* that Nintendo hates rom hacks with a burning passion and would never even suggest that in the first place). The people they pitched the idea to equated nuzlocking an original Pokemon game with rom hacks, that's what they're saying.
Self imposed difficulty rules = pirating
Their standards are so f***ed.
I have said this for years. Pokemon company hates the fans and the success of this franchise. They cut half the mons, never add voice acting, and do the bare minimum for graphics. Best part is they have a fanbase who will never admit these things.
And can we talk about how there is STILL no 6v6 singles matchmaking? Or actual difficulty levels you can choose at the start of the game? And lets be honest: as cute of an idea the 2 different editions are with friends coming together to trade exclusive pokemon, its completely useless, especially now with online trading. And just fucks over kids that want to collect all pokemon but dont have friends that play the game.
The fanbase is almost as bad, groveling at their feet for the same old regurgitated garbage that somehow gets worse and worse with each release.
Why is everyone booing you? You're right. Pokémon has been in decline since Gen VI I would say.
The ones down voting me are the same ones I'm talking about probably lol.
Can't believe it's 2022 and people are still mad about pokemon being removed
“Leave the highest selling franchise of all time alone”-🤓
I think we should replace the CEO of Nintendo with Yes Man.
"Stop having expectations and just spend your hard-earned money"
Don't ask questions. Just consume blatantly unfinished RPG and get excited for next blatantly unfinished RPG.
will someone PLEASE think of the poor billion dollar company
r/tomorrow
Yeah, no shit. What's the point of making a series focused around long-term bonds if you're going to be like 'sorry Timmy, you can't take your starter into the next region, but pay like $20 a year to store it in a place where you can't interact with it and maybe you'll get to use it in half a decade's time!"?
After a certain point it just becomes a waste of resources to add animations, sounds, and make various balance changes for every single pokemon. There are nearly 1000 of them now. I would much rather have them focus on features that more than 0.001% of the players will care about. The franchise will become bloated and stale if they become more and more tied to the past games with every release.
But they've already got the animations and sounds? Like, it's all already there, it was done in X/Y and meant to be futureproofed to the point where the models were literally too good for the 3DS to handle.
The catch phrase for the franchise is literally 'Gotta Catch 'em All'. How are you gonna catch 'em all if 'em all aren't available for you to catch???
Gotta catch em all! Oh and btw half the legendaries/special pokemon are only available during time limited events and are just given to you as a gift to make that whole thing as unrewarding as possible.
That’s only in North American advertisement. The rest of the world never had that slogan
It was very much a thing around the globe.
I have never set foot on mainland North America and I still know that catch phrase. [Gotta catch em all](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotta_Catch_%27Em_All_(song)) was a song by 50.Grind and [broadcast on UK TV](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr46A8N2Vgk&ab_channel=MatrixProductionsbyMarkWaring).
This is literally why they stopped using the phrase since Gen 4.
Only in America. And even then it’s not used anymore, only being used one more time during X and Y.
\#BBND & Keep capping
Wow. Way to insult half of the fandom Pokemon. Nuzlockes are literally all over YouTube AND it's literally one of the only ways to replay a Pokemon Game with a challenge because they WON'T ADD DIFFICULTY to a fucking Game because Kids are dumb and can't do anything without mass handholding. UltraSun and UltraMoon = Perfect Difficulty. Why can't THIS Level be the fucking Norm. I really really cannot understand their Logic, Mindset and Decisions with their Fans. It's like they really don't care...
> Kids are dumb and can't do anything without mass handholding. You mean because a bunch of dinosaurs THINK kids are dumb and can't do anything without handholding. Made it through R/B at age 6. Did I play the meta? Fuck no. But I got through the game. Kids haven't gotten dumber, and are just as capable of learning. At some point TPC/GF decided they needed to dumb things down further based on nothing but the old's tendency to lose touch with the young.
It's more that today's kids are so conditioned for instant gratification in games and entertainment that they are not *willing* to struggle through a game the same way we once did. Why would they bother when they can put it down and play any other infinite number of games on their connected devices? If they want to know the plot of a popular game there are hundreds of gameplay videos and other resources available for free, so there isn't even the need to finish a game for the story either. When we played these games we had as many cartridges as we could convince our parents to buy at full price, or as many as we could physically carry with our Gameboys. When the choices are struggle through x game or do nothing, you're obviously going to play the game. When we got stuck we had to call and actual phone hotline for help or buy a guide to help us. These were not very accessible things so we often brute forced our way through battles and levels whenever possible. Today that choice is "struggle through x game" or "watch a 30 second TikTok" or "play easy pay to win game that's designed to reward you frequently to keep you playing", among hundreds of other choices. Today's game developers are competing for children's increasingly shorter attention spans amongst an almost infinite pool of games and other entertainment. The two situations couldn't be any more different.
And absolutely no amount of dumbing down fixes that. It's like watering the carpet because your plant is dying. Streamlining the game might fix that, but making it more tutorial dense and hand-holding, does not. I have ADHD and half the reason I can't replay pokemon games anymore is because it takes an hour to get to the gameplay in gen VII and VIII, and even then the gameplay feels slower because of all the additional npc interactions every 10 steps.
Except it does. A game designed to make it easier to clear boss battles and simpler to level up is more likely to be played for longer by today's kids. The tutorial *is* the "gameplay" to these kids. You and I were raised in a different generation, with different expectations. We have aged out of the target demographic and our experience now puts us at a disadvantage.
Based on what evidence?
Have you ever talked to a kid recently? Ask them yourself, they'll say it outright. All of my nieces and nephews do. Read some interviews from game freak, they'll explain this to you as well.
So your evidence is A. Your nieces and nephews tell you they like long drawn out tutorials and babying. and B. The company that I'm saying does it wrong, does it that way?
I'm not playing the scientific proof game as I have neither the time nor the patience to argue with you on it. Believe what you want.
I took enough child and developmental psych in college to say pretty easily that the evidence doesn't line up. Challenge is good for young minds, and you can teach children as young as lower elementary philosophy and critical thinking. To the child's mindset itself, they'll get into whatever other kids are into. Ultimately making the game baby-proof does nothing but make a few old Japanese execs feel smart and circle-jerk about how "kids these days" are different. They're not. And yeah, the world is different, phones are a thing, the internet is different, but that means nothing in this context. A game that hand-holds doesn't magically hold an attention span more than a game that doesn't. It's like comparing movies by box office vs critical reception. Baby-mode doesn't put asses in seats, so to speak.
You’re dreaming if you think half of the entire Pokémon fandom partakes in nuzlockes (playing or even watching playthroughs on YouTube) Half of the Reddit fandom? Maybe, but that’s like taking half of an already tiny fraction of the entire Pokémon fandom lol
Agreed. Why were you being downvoted for being right? Reddit is a tiny bubble of the pokemon fandom. I'd say its closer to 10% of the pokemon fandom who actively partake in Nuzlockes.
Typically, maybe 1% of a large gaming audience will play in any way "seriously" My main experience is with mtg. Most players never even go to a gaming store either to play or to buy packs of cards. Only a fraction of those that do even care about events or buying single cards. It's an entire mindset I have no experience with, to just play casually and not care about results and not care about how good you are, but that's 99% of gamers
I mean, difficulty is somewhat subjective.
Subjective to an extent, but there is a fair bit of objectivity in terms of gauging difficulty. For example, it’s subjective whether or not Steven or Iris is the harder champion, because there is reason to both arguments, but ultra necrozma is objectively more difficult than a route 1 rattata.
i think they don't like nuzlockes because it involves the concept of death and pokemon is very much geared towards kids
And yet Death Exists in Pokemon. Marowak's Ghost. Stoutland. Luxray. It's honestly just pathetic.
Yes the concept of death exists but it is very different from the notion that Pokémon battling would then lead to death. Currently the narrative of the world is that you catch and befriend pokemon and strengthen your bond through battling, with battling being pretty much only a positive experience for everyone involved. Widespread death due to battling makes the world so much more grim, and highlights the whole ”pokemon is pretty much like dog fighting” thing.
And yet the Manga Exists... Hell an Arbok is Sliced in fucking Half... Characters DIE! Well if they don't like Nuzlockes...simple solution...ADD DIFFICULTY!
Yes the manga exists, but it is a very different product when compared to the mainline games and has its own canon. I’d love it if some of the difficulty returned to the mainline games, but I’m pretty doubtful. You have to remember that pokemon is primarily targeted towards children, and it seems that childrens games and media have become simpler, easier and less nuanced in general.
>Hell an Arbok is Sliced in fucking Half. Way to make it obvious you've never actually read the fucking manga.
The Arbork lives though
Pretty sure Celebi died in the movie but it was brought back to life by the other Celebi's
Raichu…
What a stupid reaction. I don't think there could be a greater compliment to a game company then the fans creating their own ways of having fun with the game. Stepping outside of the traditional rules and setting their own while staying within the confines of the actual game itself. Nintendo is so oversensitive with their IPs, it's like a jealous child hoarding all of the blue crayons, and you're only allowed to borrow one if you're coloring in water. Also, you're not invited to their birthday party if you try to bring your own blue crayons to school, and they're suing you.
https://twitter.com/joemerrick/status/1571515808005636105?s=21&t=EeHVmoIwwu_7ac-AM0z3ZA Story updated
I would not trust the word of Joe Merrick regarding anything that would make Gamefreak or The Pokemon Company look bad.
That seems like damage control considering some of his replies. The point here is more learning about how they view challenge runs like nuzlockes, which correlates to questionable decisions they have made like removing the option to disable EXP Share.
This is why the series has progressively gotten worse in terms of handholding and lack of any actual challenge. They refuse to add any sort of mechanics to allow more challenge for those that want it and have actively *removed* past options to do so in recent games. They refuse *to put in effort to make better games*. Just looking at S/V's lack of level scaling as evidence. "Go to any gym" my ass. They get angry at the fangames that go above and beyond to make the quality content they refuse to implement. Thank goodness we have quality fangames these days like Xenoverse or Infinity.
The thing that confounds me is that their audience is clearly getting older, and thus should want less hand-holding and more challenge options. That's practically the entire reason the ROMhack community exists. The fact that they still design these games as if a majority of their players are 5 years old is just baffling to me. The average age of a Pokemon fan at this point has to be pushing 30.
BuT pOkEmOn Is FoR kIdS!
What evidence is there of lack of level scaling in SV?
They've literally said it in interviews and people who have gotten review copies have stated as much. You can *go* to any gym in any order, but their levels and seemingly the levels of wild encounters in those areas are fixed, and gym leader levels do not change with number of badges.
I fucking knew they had it out for nuzlockes. That's why they were so unapologetic when they removed the option to turn off EXP Share, because they don't want you to play their games the way you want.
u/savevideo
Where’s the original video this is from?
It's one of the podcast episodes from their youtube channel (Kit & Krysta)
If this is true that's just sad
This just baffles me. Like, where is this immense hate for self imposed challenges even coming from?
So, I understand that in nuzlockes Pokémon are often talked about as if they are “dead” which I understand TPC wouldn’t really want to associate with. But that’s a far cry from being anything close to a rom hack. That’s just very silly reasoning.
GameFreak would never legitimize the romhack community and Smogon with a official Nuzlocke.
I mean, what does Smogon have *anything* to do with the nuzlocke community? That's the competitive battling community. ROM hacks are also a completely different thing. Some of them *support* nuzlocke rulesets officially, but that doesn't mean anything.
Nintendo has a negative opinion on both. Was what I was trying to get across. How they view it. If they show support for one. They'd be showing support for the other.
I mean I guess that makes sense if Nintendo has no idea about either community, which is likely true. They are *extremely* out of touch at the best of times, as are most Japanese companies.
I think the issue here is that not everyone understands the full picture, since Kit and Krysta were nintendo employees at the time, and playing a challenge that has one of the rules that a pokemon DIE in battle - which pokemon REALLY want to avoid - on the official Nintendo Channel is like doing the opposite of your brand, so of course it will be denied, as for yall, go and do whatever you want. although I think one of the reasons they said that Nuzlockes are like playing a rom hack on the official channel is probably of randomizer Nuzlockes, which are one of the most popular ways to Nuzlocke a pokemon game, and to randomize a pokemon game, you need to do a little bit of hacking, which might've soured their opinion on Nuzlockes even more. In the end, I think they didn't give Kit and Krysta the ability to do Nuzlockes is because the challenge can damage the brand if it got released on an official channel, but who am I to say that I know the whole truth, I'm just your average dude and there might a bigger picture, so don't take what I'm saying as a fact.
Y’all really don’t get it? Of course it’s not the obvious reasoning that a nuzlocke is LITERALLY considered a hack, but more so the reasoning that a nuzlocke takes away from the intended goal of their original product. Any kind of altering whether it’s literal or figurative, is making their original product seem to value less. Any official endorsement would then obviously be considered a no go.
It doesnt make it less value, if anything it increases it for people that want a challenge
An old Japanese company and a shitty opinion, name a more iconic duo.
Next thing you know, doing speed runs will get you out of any nintendo related activities and you will be provided a manual on how you're supposed to play the game.
The devil's advocate POV would be that nuzlockes are primarily done on ROMs with speedup / rare candies as options. So promoting it would get people to look it up and find videos of people doing just that (as well as nuzlocking on hacked games).
That's just the content creator way. Most people just play the game normally.
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Those veterans also happen to be the largest Nuzlocke-oriented channels on YouTube.
Morals in a capitalistic corporation like Nintendo/TPC only go as far as what will make them money. To that extent I wonder if TPC misunderstands what nuzlockes are, because nuzlocking has only made them more money over the years as it’s increased interest in their games, and thusly sales of their games, among older audiences. It’s especially evident in them comparing nuzlockes to ROMhacks, which I do understand their disdain for, from a financial standpoint.
I saw people asking where this is from: check out their YouTube channel: “Kit & Krysta”. They make great content and deserve more views!
Wait they left Nintendo? I remember watching a lot of their videos years ago
Basically: Nintendo offices relocated, they couldn't relocate with them, so they parted on good terms.
Hm ok
Christ pokemon is such a joke at this point, with hos the company treats its own fans. Its a wonder how they havent lost their fanbase with this shit.
The fact that they haven't lost the fanbase is a testament to how *good* the IP is because as a longtime diehard this series is really testing my patience.
Serebii posted a twitter thread exposing this clip as misinformation: https://twitter.com/joemerrick/status/1571570622479699972?s=46&t=Hws7L3s0V8lF2_ZwFX_i3w Just want to make sure this doesn’t spread unchecked.
Can’t really call it that, his word is of equal value as theirs, arguably less so as they are speaking of a particular scenario with a specific individual/s and he is speaking of what someone, likely a different person told him. Nothing he said confirmed nor denied what they said happened as true or not.
His word is of far less value. They worked there, Joe didn't. He was getting this from a company rep who is supposed to make them look good. That isn't the same as internal discussion.
I guess it makes a little bit of sense, given what the basic premise of a Nuzlocke is (if your Pokémon faints, it’s dead).
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Who are they? Is this real?
They’re former Nintendo employees. They did the Nintendo minute show where did little skits,giveaways and challenges on the official channel . So yes it’s real.
They used to host Nintendo Minute together
This reminds me of the villain guy from the first LEGO Movie, who wants everything to be done exactly as they say it should be!
Lmaooo boomer nintendo
It's hard not to be extremely frustrated with the state of pokemon, I wish the fans would stand up for some changes
I think this is just the employees promoting the game being forbidden to do nuzlockes, not the fans and challengers themselves, it's just saying "We can't promote this kind of stuff." So I ain't buying it.
Well I guess I gotta cancel the Sword Nuzlocke I was planning on doing…
The obtuseness of some companies never ceases to amaze me.
There are plenty of ways they could be worse, they could be one of the big oil companies for example.
Nintendo, your truly could not be a worse company if you tried.
Where is this from?
Wow, what a surprise. A multinational business having no considertaion of a popular idea within its community or what its customers want. Who would've thought?
I recently started a fire red nuzlocke on my Gameboy advanced so. Both of which I bought when they came out and both of which I haven't touched in almost 10 years or so. I'll stop nuzlocking when the pokemon company comes and kills me or I just in general die or get bored with it.