5th Gen The Dream World

I was thinking about this the other day, and an entire generation had technically come and passed and I still had never accessed the Dream World, not even once. Did you ever access the Dream World?

Also, why do you think that some hidden abilities are still unreleased? Since Gen 5 has passed, it's likely that they won't release them on the DW now. Why didn't they release them all before Gen 6's release? I honestly am quite baffled, so I was wondering if anyone had a theory they'd like to share :)

I accessed the Dream World a few times, but not frequently enough to get all of the DW Pokémon or get the medals in BW2 for using it enough times. Frankly, I thought the Dream World was kind of a hassle, and the games and activities were repetitive and frankly not enjoyable. Add that to the frustration of playing them on a less-than-perfectly-responsive laptop touchpad (rather than with a mouse), and they were mainly just a chore. Overall, it seemed like the generational gimmick and an excuse to use the games' internet capabilities. I'm particularly annoyed that the Dream World was up for so short a time after the BW2 release--I would have had to be very on top of things to get all of the Dream World medals. Moreover, it's annoying that the game sells the whole Dream World thing during gameplay as much as it does, especially now that it is useless (and wifi is useless too, but that's another complaint). I was recently playing a Black file for a challenge, and the Dream World thing comes up a lot at the beginning of the game, and wastes a lot of time to activate something that's now essentially useless.

As for unreleased hidden abilities, I think Game Freak just likes to leave options for more events, special releases, etc. They tend to avoid giving us everything at once, and that is an extension of this. Plus (though this may be an unintentional consequence), it keeps us guessing and discussing the games (as we are here), building hype for newer releases in the process.

A random comment: I feel like Game Freak has been looking back at random lines of dialogue from NPCs and basing new features off of them. Munna was a pink Pokémon with a floral print, as mentioned as one NPC's desire in an earlier game, and when I was playing through an older game the other day (I think Ruby?) a researcher made a comment about trying to understand Pokémon's dreams (and that it wasn't going very well at that point). So I think some of the gimmicky features may be a combination of what works well with the newest technology (e.g., internet connectivity for Pokémon) and what subtly references comments made in previous games.

I used to access the DW every few days after I got Pokémon Black and White versions. However, I slowly stopped using it as time went on, except for when special event Pokémon or C-Gear skins came out. Even then, I only got a handful of Pokémon with their HAs and certainly not ones I actually wanted; I had to obtain those through trade instead. Trait for trait, the DW really was not worth spending a lot of time on, especially after Black/White 2 introduced Hidden Grottos where you had a good chance of obtaining Pokémon with their hidden abilities.

Other than HA Pokémon, the only viable use was for growing berries, which was rather pointless after a while since you could obtain a significant amount of them between BW and BW2. Furthermore, you were only allowed to take twenty different kinds of items out of the DW at any given time, and could only take a quantity of twenty of said items out too... Additionally, twenty-four (and, at one point supposedly, twenty) hour waiting period between uses really killed it. It made sense when they were trying to prevent the server from getting overloaded with so many people using it simultaneously, but it crippled it when you were actually trying to getting multiple berries out from your DW crops.

I've used the Dream World a lot for the duration of the Fifth Gen. I guess I really liked hanging around and playing those mini games.

I agree with Imperator on the unreleased Hidden Abilities part.

I don't think you've missed much if you haven't used it while it was up. It's only really been useful to me when trying to get more visitors for the Join Avenue in BW2. But then again, there are other ways to get more visitors there. It was fun while it lasted, I guess.

you never know they may not of been "unreleased abilities" but brand new abilities they had made for the release of Pokemon X/Y + I have also never accessed The Pokemon Dream World.

The whole Dream World thing was, to put it frankly, a failure. The games got really repetitive, the randomness was annoying, the site went down way too frequently, it bugged out a lot, and plenty of more problems. I went on a couple of times, to get the HA Pokemon and Berries, but my computer was and is slowing down, so the flash animation slowed it to a snail's pace if it could run at all. Plus, I have a touchpad, so games that required swift and precise mouse movement. After a while, I just stopped, and only went back for the events.

On the topic of unreleased HA Pokemon, I think that Game Freak would have expanded on the Dream World had it gone better, while also releasing more HA Pokemon. It's not like Game Freak or Pokemon to leave things unobtainable. I also think that Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire were supposed to be released in the 5th gen, but with the 3DS being a stronger system, they wanted to do more for the remakes.

One thing that kept this feature down is accessibility; Dream World sort of lacked it. If it were utilizable from more places than just computers (and perhaps tablets), I'm sure it would've been a lot more successful.

I thought it was okay while it was up, albeit not ideal. The mini games you could play there were enjoyable, although it was unfortunate that it was also the only way to obtain Berries in Gen V, save getting them from Rangers and wild Pokémon.

Endless said:

One thing that kept this feature down is accessibility; Dream World sort of lacked it. If it were utilizable from more places than just computer (and perhaps tablet), I'm sure it would've been a lot more successful.

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Do tablets and smartphones support Flash media? Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I thought that Flash was restricted predominantly to computers... >.< I recall hearing some time ago that it was actually starting to be phased out because it wasn't adequate for most online games anymore. There was supposed to be something else that was starting to replace it, but I can't remember what it was called (I'm not a software expert, so I don't know).

I used to visit it everyday to maximize my daily gains. The minigames were boring after the 50th time, so if it had other options to collect more Pokemon, I would have kept playing. The only one I liked was the Pelipper one. The unreleased abilities are just like the unreleased event tickets - planned in advance, but never executed. Some of them were changed, such as for Chandelure and Zapdos.

I tried it out once out of curiosity but never really went back as I felt the feature was forgettable bar hidden abilities. There wasn't much reason for me to poke around as I didn't really need berries and hidden abilities didn't matter to me much back then as I didn't have a proper WiFi connection. Ya!

I don't think I ever used the Dream World even once. Course since it got closed down, one effect was making certain berries and certain male-only Pokemon with hidden abilities become lost forever.