Should GF cater to competitive players?

[OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire]

As I said, the standard for remakes seems to be for them to get whatever battle facility the main games have. HGSS got Platinum's Battle Frontier instead of Crystal's Battle Tower, and similarly, ORAS got XY's Battle Maison instead of Emerald's Battle Frontier. (FRLG probably would've also gotten Emerald's Battle Frontier if they had not been released before Emerald.) Future Gen 1 remakes will probably get Gen 7's facility instead of FRLG's Trainer Tower, and Gen 4 remakes will get Gen 8's facility instead of Platinum's Battle Frontier.

It's more fun to play something than watch something most of the time xD.



I disagree about Sevii's story being strong. The Lorelei "story" served no purpose than to get rid of her and pave the way for the Psychic Clown in HGSS. We learned nothing about her as a person, and she was never seen or heard from again, anyways. (The bar for E4 characterization is low, I admit, but that's still pretty bad.) And, those fetch quests were just tedious and not fun at all. Give me Gen 2's badge rush any day.



Just seeing how Kanto and its characters changed in over the course of three years was more than enough for me. No, it wasn't the deepest thing in the world, but not everything needs to go into full detail about the Pokéverse's lore and worldbuilding. (In fact, I'd prefer they not, especially if Gen 6 is the end result.)

They could've put the RS Battle Tower in FRLG though like the XY Maison being added into ORAS.


When did I say it was the strongest? I said it had the most as in quantity...


Pokémon's characters are rarely deep...most of the time. None of the champions beyond Green/Blue are well developed. Lance is simply the Nice Guy who is from Johto and has a cousin and trained with her in Dragon's Den, Steven is Mr. Cool guy who loves rocks, Wallace is Mr. Peacock who loves water and has fangirls wherever he goes, Cynthia is Mrs. Cool who is into myths, Alder is cool old guy who likes popping up from cliffs and has a grandson, Iris is Cute Dragon girl we know came from somewhere outside of Unova and was raised by Drayden, and Diantha is the nice actress lady who is smarter than Sycamore but other than that we know little about her. Even then Blue's (and to some extent Iris, Alder, and Lance) development is only complimented/ added to by the sequels.

 

[BettyNewbie]

Gen VI's worldbuilding attempts weren't a disaster because they had too much of it. The major problem came from them having a giant region and not having nearly enough detail for all of it. Compare Johto: when we go to a town, there's usually a landmark that gets talked about and it gives the town some depth. Violet City had Sprout Tower, Olivine had the Lighthouse, and Ecruteak had the Tin Tower and Burned Tower, which made each town different and memorable. Even locations that weren't attached to a town like the Ruins of Alph and Lake of Rage had people there talking about them and researching what was going on there. There were puzzles to solve and Pokemon to catch and it felt like you were exploring, not just going from point A to point B.

Going back to Kalos again, there's none of these qualities. Towns look cookie cutter with no distinguishing landmarks or places to explore, and even with the numerous unusual places like the Anistar Sundial or Parfum Palace there's no explanation for what they are, why they're there, and nothing really happens in them. There's no Pokemon to find or puzzle to solve. They're just... there. That's not really worldbuilding; it's just putting random things there in a desperate attempt to make each town stand out because without them you wouldn't even remember the names or locations. It doesn't help that you're rushed through each place, not given any time to really explore each landmark.

If the lore behind Kalos was put first and foremost and the game was slowed down to the pace of your regular Final Fantasy game it might have been a better experience over all. Final Fantasy isn't about whizzing all over the place; you stay put in one spot for a moderate length of time before you're allowed to move forward, and the slower pace would have suit Kalos a lot better than the scrunched up experience we got. It would have also helped if the journey between towns was longer. If you're going for a RPG experience you gotta have long routes; the game suffers for it if you don't.

Basically Gen VI suffers from a critical lack of worldbuilding; not the other way around.

Gen 6's worldbuilding stuff was obviously more focused on "bigger picture" type things like 3000 year old wars and alternate timelines (mostly because of, you guessed it, Megas), so things like characterization and even region design took a backseat. Hoenn got off slightly better due to it being an established region, but Kalos wasn't so lucky--boring region, boring characters, boring story. I wonder how long it'll take most of us to forget about Kalos once Gen 7 rolls around? :rolleyes2:

Pokémon's characters are rarely deep...most of the time. None of the champions beyond Green/Blue are well developed. Lance is simply the Nice Guy who is from Johto and has a cousin and trained with her in Dragon's Den, Steven is Mr. Cool guy who loves rocks, Wallace is Mr. Peacock who loves water and has fangirls wherever he goes, Cynthia is Mrs. Cool who is into myths, Alder is cool old guy who likes popping up from cliffs and has a grandson, Iris is Cute Dragon girl we know came from somewhere outside of Unova and was raised by Drayden, and Diantha is the nice actress lady who is smarter than Sycamore but other than that we know little about her. Even then Blue's (and to some extent Iris, Alder, and Lance) development is only complimented/ added to by the sequels.

But, all of these characters are still far more developed than Lorelei (with the possible exception of Diantha, the most cardboard Champion to date). We know about their interests, as well as (most importantly) their friends and family. They have actual importance to the story and aren't just sent off to some island in the middle of nowhere for eternity.

Though, other E4 members are even worse. (With the obvious exceptions of Koga and Caitlin.) Youngster Joey might actually have more characterization and relevance to the games than the likes of Glacia or Siebold.

 

[mew_nani]

Gen 6's worldbuilding stuff was obviously more focused on "bigger picture" type things like 3000 year old wars and alternate timelines (mostly because of, you guessed it, Megas), so things like characterization and even region design took a backseat. Hoenn got off slightly better due to it being an established region, but Kalos wasn't so lucky--boring region, boring characters, boring story. I wonder how long it'll take most of us to forget about Kalos once Gen 7 rolls around? :rolleyes2:

Instantaneously. The only standout thing about Kalos is that it's a pretty region. That's all; everything else is bland at best.

But like I said it's not true worldbuilding. Ever watch The Dark Crystal? It takes place in a totally alien world with totally alien creatures and totally alien landmarks and even a totally alien sky. Even with the movie being only 2 hours long you remember the world even after the movie is over. Why is that? Worldbuilding. It doesn't just present a setting with strange landmarks and strange characters. It establishes the world the movie takes place in; you see the unique fauna and flora, you see the mythos behind the world which is present for the entire movie, and you see very unique locations that are well built and explored. You're presented what could be an actual place, with animals and flying flowers and the weirdest solar system known to man and a crystal spire and a sky with 3 different suns in it, and it is very well done and explored thoroughly.

Worldbuilding is making an entirely unique setting with its own biomes, history, landmarks, and culture, and then presenting it to the viewer, allowing them to see all of it. This is what Gen VI got wrong: sure the world looks different and there's new Pokemon in it and new landmarks, but it's not built well at all. There's no rhyme or reason for landmarks being there, there's no real history or mythos presented throughout the region tying everything together, and the places you can go are much too small to explore. That exploration part is very crucial in worldbuilding: if you don't get to see much of a region, it becomes very static. It doesn't feel like a real place you could go in and explore; it's just a bland setting that isn't alive at all.

Of course a world won't be as memorable without good characters, and as you mentioned Gen VI got this wrong too. There's no characters in X and Y that have any more than 2 dimensions. A flat character is fine if it's just a grunt, but you need your villains and heroes to have more depth than that. The only memorable character in the entire game is AZ, and he was only present for a grand total of 3 scenes, all taking place toward the end of the game.

 

[Mago Luis]

On the poll, I voted yes. Even though I'm not into competitive battling right now, I think it's good that players who are will not have to spend as much time breeding and training their Pokémon as they did before. I would have appreciated the current breeding mechanics in past games.

And I do see a conflict between Pokémon's premise and the actual game mechanics. But instead of making a separate game for competitive players, I think the two aspects should be reconciled.

 

[BettyNewbie]

Instantaneously. The only standout thing about Kalos is that it's a pretty region. That's all; everything else is bland at best.

But like I said it's not true worldbuilding. Ever watch The Dark Crystal? It takes place in a totally alien world with totally alien creatures and totally alien landmarks and even a totally alien sky. Even with the movie being only 2 hours long you remember the world even after the movie is over. Why is that? Worldbuilding. It doesn't just present a setting with strange landmarks and strange characters. It establishes the world the movie takes place in; you see the unique fauna and flora, you see the mythos behind the world which is present for the entire movie, and you see very unique locations that are well built and explored. You're presented what could be an actual place, with animals and flying flowers and the weirdest solar system known to man and a crystal spire and a sky with 3 different suns in it, and it is very well done and explored thoroughly.

Worldbuilding is making an entirely unique setting with its own biomes, history, landmarks, and culture, and then presenting it to the viewer, allowing them to see all of it. This is what Gen VI got wrong: sure the world looks different and there's new Pokemon in it and new landmarks, but it's not built well at all. There's no rhyme or reason for landmarks being there, there's no real history or mythos presented throughout the region tying everything together, and the places you can go are much too small to explore. That exploration part is very crucial in worldbuilding: if you don't get to see much of a region, it becomes very static. It doesn't feel like a real place you could go in and explore; it's just a bland setting that isn't alive at all.

Of course a world won't be as memorable without good characters, and as you mentioned Gen VI got this wrong too. There's no characters in X and Y that have any more than 2 dimensions. A flat character is fine if it's just a grunt, but you need your villains and heroes to have more depth than that. The only memorable character in the entire game is AZ, and he was only present for a grand total of 3 scenes, all taking place toward the end of the game.

I think that one of the core issues with XY's story is that it could've just as easily taken place in another, previously established region (especially since so much of it deals with the Pokéverse at large rather than Kalos, specifically). All you'd need to do is change a few names around, and it could've easily slotted into the likes of Kanto or Sinnoh. (In fact, with the way they blatantly tried to rip off Kanto in certain parts of Kalos, it makes you wonder why they didn't just set XY in Kanto to begin with and made them HGSS sequels.) ORAS, themselves, prove this. GF had no problems stuffing that Mega Evolution stuff into Hoenn because there really wasn't anything tying it to Kalos to begin with (except continuity). Kalos had no identity.