This wasn't something I was hoping for, but I think it's a welcome change and something I hope continues in future games. Having a different selection of pokemon in each game makes each one unique, with it's own meta. Not to mention weeding out trash-tier mons like qwilfish and sunflora.
All the backlash seems, in a word, childish. After the wild area gave fans exactly what they were hoping for, to be unsatisfied with 500 returning pokemon is comically immature. It's not like catching them all was very glamorous in the first place. Can you really call it catching them all when you're just transferring mons you've already caught?
Even though I'm disappointed, I really liked your approach in the first paragraph and was about to hit that thumbs-up…
But then the second paragraph labels other fans of this thing we like together as "childish" and "comically immature" for having a different perspective, and I just couldn't do it.
Love that first paragraph, though. It didn't change
my experience, but it did make me understand why someone would think this is not a big deal. And why Game Freak would want to use this console jump as a feasible opportunity to do it. Thank you for that.
Alright, since nobody else is going to ask the question that truly matters, I'll ask it.
After learning this news, is anybody here not going to buy this game?
If you buy this game despite hating these new features, then why should Gamefreak change any of these decisions, when you're going to give them your money anyways?
You're absolutely right, and I've gone from near-certainty that I was buying a Switch primarily for this game to now being uncertain. I've been curious about Switch since launch, but even
Super Mario Odyssey and
Breath of the Wild didn't convince me to spend money and commit my time to playing video games.
So much about Gen 8 is still tempting, but this announcement is a PR disaster. They need to better articulate what the vision
is, rather than the current impression they've made which is coming across like:
After convincing you to pay for Bank for two generations, we're going to try to convince you to pay for Home, too, but you're not guaranteed to bring your favorite or most personal mons over. After two decades of handheld, you get a National Dex and Diploma for every other game except the swan song. We're just hard shoving to the future, as we decide it, with no regard for your personal past with this series. But at the same time, 'Nostalgia, nostalgia!' Pay for Bank! Pay for Home! Carry our device (and your "beloved Pokémon") on your body all day, every day. Literally put our newest device in bed with you and dream about your dear virtual pets. …But don't be upset when they're not included in the latest game. Just wait patiently until someday when it might happen. Like AZ's Floette. Just wait and see.
And if that frustrates someone who's invested time and money in this franchise and its world, and all prior and even current "love
your Pokémon" marketing, we're "childish"? I strongly disagree. Besides being very bad for a significant number of fans' personal experiences, this is just not how branding works. They really need to find a positive way to clearly articulate this vision, soon. From a purely business/marketing perspective, this is a "comically immature" gaffe from one of the most powerful IPs on earth. The way this was presented was shockingly amateur to the point of astonishing disbelief.
After a lot of skepticism, there was near-universal excitement and anticipation after February's announcement trailer. That had just amped way up after the Direct. People were excited with the E3 morning trailer. Everyone was talking about Nessa, and all of it was good. This extremely and bewilderingly clumsy announcement was handled so poorly and unprofessionally that it instantly changed the conversation. It torpedoed the momentum and if smart effort is not made, yes, some fans like myself may be so turned off that it affects whether we spend money or not.
Personally, I'm still on the fence in part because it was handled so carelessly that I think there must actually be more to their vision than they communicated. They need to tell us more about Home, and more about this new approach. They need to patch USUM with a National Dex, even if they just recycle all the text entries. Every Pokémon is coded and available already anyway; I don't understand why this hasn't already happened. It would make people feel better. They need to take these steps as soon as possible.
I'm not holding my breath, though, especially for that last one.
EDIT:
https://www.gamesradar.com/pokemon-home-transfer-policy-game-freak-sword-shield-national-dex/
This is the thing. If USUM was the last time we could catch 'em all in one game, then USUM's National Dex is arguably the
most important. If the 3DS marked the end of not only the handheld era, but the "Catch 'em all!" era, then updating the Pokédex 3D Pro becomes imperative.
With all they did to promote the 20th Anniversary in Gen 7, all the event mons they released, all the shinies they made available, all the simpler mechanics for hunting and breeding…
If that had been presented as a celebration of the past and the
last National Dex, I think it could work. The groundwork was actually even there, but no announcement was made. It's clumsy, but forgivable.
Ending that era with
no National Dex in Gen 7 and the Pokédex 3D Pro unfinished just leaves a tarnish on the entire handheld history; which again, is the entire history of the core games.
The right way to round this corner was so clear. They even kind of did it. The ingredients were all there: 20th Anniversary monthly Mythicals, Year of Legendaries, easier Shiny Charm, smoother breeding and stat-editing, etc, etc. In hindsight, Gen 7 actually
looks like the right approach to "Catch 'em ALL now, 'cause we're about to switch things up." It really is just hard to understand how this was handled so badly. Don't they pay someone for market strategy and communications?
EDIT 2:
https://www.usgamer.net/articles/pokemon-sword-and-shield-interview
New insights from Masuda and Ohmori make it even more nonsensical that USUM's National Dex was not presented as a Very Big Deal. It is incomprehensible and unforgivable that, instead, it's nonexistent. At some point Bank will almost certainly be completely replaced with Home, creating Gen 7 as the only game (including LGPE) to omit the National Dex, thus having a
majority of Pokémon with no Dex entry for the
only Gen to contain ALL of the Pokémon of the handheld era.
This is truly hard to believe. It would seem to take a great deal of effort to be this wrong-headed.