The Future of Online Battling

[Devalue]

Teased Pokemon Champions in the recent Pokemon Presents, as you may know. Focused completely on online battles. Reaches across generations with Pokemon and mechanics. Foresees this to be the main hub of online Pokemon battles, much like Pokemon Home is the hub of Pokemon trading and storage. Do you think this will become the main format for official Pokemon tournaments going forward?

Thinks so. Why would it exist otherwise? Showcased a doubles format. Might manage better graphics/animations by confining Pokemon to a fixed environment. Potentially saves Game Freak time by leaving all the online features to other apps, rather than re-doing it every game.

Came up with two counter-arguments against it:

1. Trading mechanics in Scarlet/Violet. Kept them largely untouched, despite being in Home. Could be due to reduced features in the Switch version of Home, however. Cannot trade at all without a mobile device. Potentially changes that disparity in Champions.
2. Balancing Megas, Teras, and whatever else. Sounds like a nightmare to make equal. Only grows if they add things like Dynamax, Z-moves, and/or whatever Generation 10 has in store.

What do you think?

 

[PoryKid575]

I think Champions will be the main / official platform for tournaments and the like going forward, GF seems to want competitive battling to be an esport; and having a centralized app on both mobile and Switch (likely for free / a low cost) would make the scene far easier to get into compared to the current setup where you need a $300 Switch + $60 game to even start competing (officially). It could also alleviate some of the complaints around graphics, since the devs would be able to put nearly all their resources into the models / animations. On balancing, I anticipate that the matches will be divided into rulesets based around the generations (eg: the SwSh ruleset would allow dynamaxing and only Pokemon that were in that game, the SV ruleset would allow teras and only Pokemon that were included in them, etc), with possible customization around which mechanics to allow in a free-battling mode. I still think the mainline games will have online battling for casual players who just want to battle their teams, but they won't be what official events / tourneys are hosted on anymore.