Watch Live: 'Pokemon Direct' Stream for 'Pokemon Sword' and 'Shield!'

We HAVE to get them in a raid? That's so stupid! Raids are pretty much designed to screw people over, because only 1 Pokémon can Dynamax at a time and the Raid Pokémon can't be caught more than once. Not like the Switch has speakers either, so you can't communicate with anyone outside of a phone or a computer and even THEN you need their contact details.
The reason why GO works is because you literally travel to locations with other people IRL and one raid Pokémon can be caught more than once.

First off, it has already been stated that you can do Dynamax Raid Battles by yourself with three filler NPCs, so you don't have to worry about having to coordinate with other people.

Secondly, after reading some more, I've become confused as to the matter of Gigantamax Pokemon. I can't tell if it is that only the Pokemon caught in Dynamax Raid Battles that will be able to Gigantamax or that you can only catch Pokemon that can Gigantamax such as Alcremie, Corviknight and Drednaw through Max Raid Battles and not through normal wild Pokemon encounters? Until Pokemon clarifies, I'm now stumped as to which one it is...

Edit: Nope, nevermind, it's the former thats correct. On the Pokemon website it states "Regular Drednaw and Corviknight can Dynamax, but there are some special members of these species that can Gigantamax. You can catch Gigantamax Pokémon for your team by participating in Max Raid Battles, but it seems they’re very rare—finding one won’t be easy!" This means that, unless Hyper Training comes back, Gigantamax Pokemon may very well be competitively useless.
 
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Okay, I love the information that they dropped today which is very unexpected. Gigantamax is good just to compensate us from the NatDex cut. Yes, NatDex cut happened in RS before. Just only from this game, fellas.

One thing I wonder is what happened if the Dynamaxed/Gigamaxed Pokemon switched out by some means like Roar or Dragon Tail or being switched manually?
 
Not being able to have egg moves on gigantamax pokemon sounds bad at first, but we'll see how it turns out. It might actually add a bit of variety to battles, since you can have your dynamax/regular form of a pokemon with certain egg moves for one build, and then the gigantamax version of the same pokemon with their upgraded regular moves for a different build. Could potentially be interesting.

The three new pokemon designs look kind of bland though - Alcremie is a waifu version of Swirlix, Rolycoly is Roggenrola v2.0 and that dragon is just kind of...meh? I still like Yamper and Impidimp the most. That new ability on Rolycoly is nice though.

I'm fan a fan of the designs of the new characters, esp. Rose and Oleana. Not a fan of the double pack-exclusive items though - it's basically "pay more for cheat codes".
 
Rolycoly is my favorite Sword & Shield mon so far. I can see it evolving into a train.

Gigantamax makes me sad because they are basically making designs that will almost certainly be "left behind."
 
So, Gigantamaxing is basically what Mega Evolution was, mixed with someones fetish for deviant art. I would much rather keep Mega Evolution since no one hated it. I have no idea what this whole thing about making Pokemon bigger is about. It feels really random.
I would have also liked if they kept Gigantamaxing secret a bit longer or held it off until the games release. Huge birds are of interest but I would much rather have my Mega Pidgeot.

On the other hand, Gigantamax Mega Pidgeot could also be 46 feet tall. All you'd have to do is build a custom chassis for it and you can replace all your planes since Pidgey are extremely cheap to get.
 
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Hmm, I do like the Ability of having "version exclusive" Gyms. It's sort of like Black and White and the Gym featuring Cilan, Chili and Cress. While not a version exclusive in the way here, who you face can differ from each playthrough, depending on your choice of starter.
There was also the dragon gym in gen 5 where you challenge Iris or Drayden! Typing wasnt different, but the gym leader and their pokemon were!
 
So, Gigantamaxing is basically what Mega Evolution was, mixed with someones fetish for deviant art. I would much rather keep Mega Evolution since no one hated it. I have no idea what this whole thing about making Pokemon bigger is about. It feels really random.
I would have also liked if they kept Gigantamaxing secret a bit longer or held it off until the games release. Huge birds are of interest but I would much rather have my Mega Pidgeot.

On the other hand, Gigantamax Mega Pidgeot could also be 46 feet tall. All you'd have to do is build a custom chassis for it and you can replace all your planes since Pidgey are extremely cheap to get.
I kind of see it as a mix of mega evolution and z-moves, but I can see what you mean about deviant art haha.
 
I'm very excited for Sword and Shield, but there's so many confusing things about it. Looks great though!!
 
First off, it has already been stated that you can do Dynamax Raid Battles by yourself with three filler NPCs, so you don't have to worry about having to coordinate with other people.

Secondly, after reading some more, I've become confused as to the matter of Gigantamax Pokemon. I can't tell if it is that only the Pokemon caught in Dynamax Raid Battles that will be able to Gigantamax or that you can only catch Pokemon that can Gigantamax such as Alcremie, Corviknight and Drednaw through Max Raid Battles and not through normal wild Pokemon encounters? Until Pokemon clarifies, I'm now stumped as to which one it is...

Edit: Nope, nevermind, it's the former thats correct. On the Pokemon website it states "Regular Drednaw and Corviknight can Dynamax, but there are some special members of these species that can Gigantamax. You can catch Gigantamax Pokémon for your team by participating in Max Raid Battles, but it seems they’re very rare—finding one won’t be easy!" This means that, unless Hyper Training comes back, Gigantamax Pokemon may very well be competitively useless.
I wouldn't be surprised if hyper training returns, because even the let's go games had it.
 
This is getting worse and worse with every announcement. Version exclusive gym leaders? Cutting out Megas, then essentially returning them like it's a new mechanic? Cutting out Z-Moves and doing exactly the same?

It almost feels like pandering to TCG (which I... like?). EX and GX Pokemon are selling packs, now they don't even have to rework the "GX move" mechanic.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if hyper training returns, because even the let's go games had it.

Here's hoping. Hyper Training was awesome as it meant that as long as the Pokemon had the correct nature and you had leveled it up to lv100, you could make any Pokemon that, because of the natural IVs, would have been considered unusable in competitive, have competitive value. This especially was usual for Legendary Pokemon, Event Pokemon and most importantly, in my opinion, Shiny Pokemon that had the right nature but lacked the necessary IVs.

If Gen 8 lacks Hyper Training, it would definitely be a major step back on Pokemon's part. And an unnecessary one at that.
 
So we cut megas and Z moves to give you a Mega Z move gimmick... I really think this the gimmick is a huge mistake. Megas for the most part worked because they gave a needed buff to a pokemon that couldn't evolve without becoming broken. If they made Mega Sableye as an actual evolution, then regular Sableye could abuse Evolite. The idea that they'd make a gimmick that would essentially add a mega to a new mon is ridiculous, they're new mons they are the powercreep why would they already need that mega as appose to just balancing them and pushing them in as actual evolutions. I feel like this gen is going to be worse than SM when it comes to incomplete feeling evolution lines as we seem to be favoring the GigaMaxing gimmick over the traditional evolution method.
Plus unless Charizard gets ANOTHER new form, it's just going to be a worthless addition to the Champion.
 
So I stumbled across this recent revelation in regards to Nintendo / Game Freak's recent handling with Pokémon Sword & Shield as it explains everything that's wrong with the games thus far:

GAMEFREAK ADMITS POKÉMON ISN'T PRIORITY (Sword and Shield No National Dex Controversy Explanation)

Pokémon's Game Freak 'prioritizing' original game projects
SilphSpectre said:
This is something I never wanted to see and honestly something I thought I never would see. Game Freak has actually come out and openly admitted that Pokémon has become less of a priority within the company. The reason why we're seeing this is because Game Freak is becoming less important to the Pokémon Company and therefore Game Freak is focusing on other projects instead of Pokémon. Game Freak obviously like many other game developers perhaps more than most keeps it's inner workings in a tight wrap. Not many people know how the company works and what's currently going on inside it since of course that would spoil game elements and might expose trade secrets for other competing developers to take advantage of. That makes it very hard to understand exactly what's going on within the company itself.

I stumbled upon something that I did not expect to find, a rather hidden interview with Game Freak detailing many previously unknown things about the company's current operations. The interview was posted about a month ago by Video Games Chronicle, a site that I never personally visited until now and haven't seen or heard anyone else discussing this anywhere. There aren't even any comments on the actual article itself. The reason this interview flew under the radar is likely that it features a relatively unknown member of Game Freak or at least compared to those like Junichi Masuda and Shigeru Ohmori named Masayuki Onoue. A programmer whose worked on the Pokémon games since Black & White who also worked on some side games for Game Freak. The interview was likely overshadowed by the Pokémon Direct at E3 that happened immediately after it was posted.

In the interview, Onoue talks about the organizational structure of Game Freak, it's current focus, and priorities while discussing a secret project called, "The Gear Project". There's one part about the interview that will blow your mind and shock you just as it did to me. The article starts off by saying that "Pokémon developer Game Freak is increasingly prioritizing original game creation, in order to grow the experience of it's staff." Apparently that's the Gear Project's aim. Now growing experience of newer staff has been a focal point of Game Freak's policies for a little while now since the company is growing older after being around for 30 years. We saw this for instance when Game Freak assigned it's junior development team to create Ultra Sun & Moon shortly after Sun & Moon were released while the senior development team was tasked with starting to develop Sword & Shield.

Onoue in the interview goes onto say that "by taking breaks from its flagship Pokémon series, Game Freak's creators can return to the franchise "refreshed" and improve the series with experience gained." Now this is something that isn't entirely new to us. We know that Game Freak has worked on a few other games in the past since Pokémon has been around with a few examples being HarmoKnight, Pocket Card Jockey, and Giga Wrecker. Given that new main series Pokémon games come out pretty much every year and especially recently, I've always found this to be a little bit weird since you'd likely want to invest all your resources into what's touching the lives of most people and what is most profitable. Taking several breaks just to work on other things just doesn't seem to make sense with such rapidly released series of games, but hey burnout is a real thing.

I can understand the odd diversion to try to get the creative juices flowing so as long as it doesn't substantially impact or harm Pokémon. The keyword here though is that he said Game Freak is increasingly prioritizing original game creation. Now If we look at each 5 year period since the creation of Pokémon in 1995, we can see that the number of non-Pokémon main series games they've created has steadily increased to an unreasonable level. From 1995 to 1999 they created 3 side games (spinoffs) with two in 1996 and 1997, mainly because Pokémon wasn't a huge thing during their development yet. Of course from 2000 to 2004 they created zero other side games (spinoffs), from 2005 to 2009 they created one, from 2010 to 2014 they created two, and from 2015 to 2019 they created five. So basically in each 5 year period since Pokémon blew up and became incredibly popular it's been 0, 1, 2, and 5 official side games (spinoffs).

Interestingly right as the side games (spinoffs) started really sprouting, that's when many fans started reaching a general consensus with regard to a general decrease in the quality of the main series games right around X & Y in 2013 then with Sun & Moon, Ultra Sun & Moon, and of course Let's Go Pikachu / Eevee (LGPE). But in addition to all of this listen to the next thing that Onoue says which absolutely shocked and infuriated me personally: "There are two different production teams here, simply named Production Team 1 and Production Team 2," Onoue explained. "Team 1 is fully dedicated to Gear Project, while Team 2 is for the Pokémon operation." "What this means is that Game Freak as a company is prioritizing Gear Project, which is production team number one, more than Pokémon in general. We are always trying to create something that's equally exciting, or more exciting than Pokémon."

I am absolutely dumbfounded that a Game Freak employee actually came out and straight-up said that the company prioritizes side games (spinoffs) / other intellectual properties (IP's) more than Pokémon itself which is what the company is known for. It just so happens that Game Freak announced it's biggest side game project of all time in about eight months before this interview was posted. How interesting. This is especially ridiculous If you consider how much more of an impact the Pokémon games have made on people's lives and how much people love it than any other game that Game Freak has ever made even in their early days before Pokémon. In fact Game Freak's best selling side game ever has been Yoshi for the Game Boy which has sold 3.1 million copies worldwide and was released five years before Pokémon Red & Green (Pokémon Red & Blue) came out in Japan and the United States.

Comparatively Game Freak's worst selling main series Pokémon game of all time was Pokémon Crystal which sold more than double that at $6.4 million. In total main series Pokémon games have sold over 250 million copies worldwide, meaning that Pokémon accounts for over 97% of Game Freak's all-time sales. Even though they were in business making games six years before Pokémon even came out, not only has Game Freak been apparently prioritizing the Gear Project and it's side games but it's also working on it's most massive side game to date concurrently with Sword & Shield, "Town". A fully developed JRPG for the Nintendo Switch that in my opinion looks better graphically than Sword & Shield and that I think we can all agree looks to be Game Freak's biggest side game project to date. A lot of people were arguing with me saying that Town development wasn't affecting Sword & Shield but it turns out not only was this correct but I was actually underestimating the effect that it's having.

In reality it turns out it's actually a priority here and If Game Freak allocated the time, resources, and people that's investing into Town onto Pokémon Sword & Shield, we wouldn't have things like the graphical problems, lack of Mega Evolutions, lack of National Dex, etc. These things would be easily possible to complete with the full power of Game Freak's 150 or so employees or at least way more than what are currently being used for Pokémon Sword & Shield. The weird thing is we all knew Pokémon was going to be way more profitable and have a greater impact on the lives of millions of people than any other side game they create. Not to mention the fact that this is exactly when they should be focusing on Pokémon the most: A new generation on the home console for the first time. Something which fans have been desperately waiting to experience for years If not decades.

So in light of this new information what in the world could be the reason for the super enhanced focus on the side games (spinoffs)? After all there can no longer be any debate that this is the problem that Sword & Shield is having. Game Freak is simply diverting it's resources away and into side games purposefully and with the utmost priority as said by an employee of Game Freak himself. Without this diversion there would be no lack of quality or content in the new Pokémon games because there would be enough resources to fix the problems that fans are overtly pointing out with the games or better yet these problems wouldn't have existed in the first place. In terms of answering this question, Game Freak is losing influence on the Pokémon Company because of the success of Pokémon GO as well as the company's newfound focus on mobile gaming.

Game Freak needs a safety net. I think they realized that so long as they get a new generation and a new Pokémon game out there every couple of years it will sell enough to at least be profitable. But now they wish to branch out and make something new, and in the words of Onoue himself, "Create something that's equally exciting, or more exciting than Pokémon." It seems to be a combination of these two factors a bit of complacency knowing that Pokémon will sell even If all of Game Freak's efforts aren't put into it and having a Plan B series of games in case Game Freak continues to lose importance within the Pokémon Company. Anyway there you have it, proof that Pokémon is in the back seat in terms of Game Freak's priorities.
 
Here's hoping. Hyper Training was awesome as it meant that as long as the Pokemon had the correct nature and you had leveled it up to lv100, you could make any Pokemon that, because of the natural IVs, would have been considered unusable in competitive, have competitive value. This especially was usual for Legendary Pokemon, Event Pokemon and most importantly, in my opinion, Shiny Pokemon that had the right nature but lacked the necessary IVs.

If Gen 8 lacks Hyper Training, it would definitely be a major step back on Pokemon's part. And an unnecessary one at that.
Right, especially since Masuda has been emphasizing that the competitive scene is something they used to make their decisions on what pokemon make it into swsh and that megas and z-moves won't be included.
 
So, about that article on Game Freak wanting to put priority on other games....

To be honest if GF wants to sit out from making these games for a few years I would welcome it. Every once in a while we get these great features like Hyper Training, Battle Frontier, new types of Evolution. Then you have features some people love and others ignore, like the following Pokemon, Contests, Secret Bases and the like. All of these cool features with GFs current attitude are either gone or going, and in my opinion the last few games we've gotten have either been weak or straight up take advantage of the Pokemon fans strong feelings for this series to make a sale, the ones who will look at the latest games and feel they're making a bad purchase but they do it anyways because they love this series and they want to support a developer that they know is capable of doing much better. I don't want to support a company that treats it's fans like that, and for the last couple years I haven't.

I'd like to believe that with TPCi wanting to push a Pokemon game out the door every single year really messes GFs ability to think things over better. If you look around you can see exactly how stressful being a game dev is, doesn't seem like much fun from what I've read. If they think that leaving this series behind will benefit everyone and that they can come back to it (maybe within 5 or so years) and make impressive Pokemon games again (HG/SS, BW2, Emerald sort of thing) then I personally say go for it. I would rather they take the time to make games that we all can love rather than have them continue to spew out games which are mediocre at best and then have the fan uproar eventually reach (or perhaps surpass) the ridiculous levels it has with the upcoming games.

People will be angry with waiting but if they can actually put it off it'll be worth it. If they don't, then get angry.
 
Right, especially since Masuda has been emphasizing that the competitive scene is something they used to make their decisions on what pokemon make it into swsh and that megas and z-moves won't be included.
Which is why Smogon has a much better understanding of the VGC competitive scene than Game Freak does. Whose to say they won't bring back in broken Pokémon like Landorus-T or Intimidate Incineroar in Gen 9 If they end up getting cut in Gen 8 for Sword & Shield? It's already bad enough that you can't battle / trade online through Pokémon HOME by making the cloud based service completely useless.
So, about that article on Game Freak wanting to put priority on other games....

To be honest if GF wants to sit out from making these games for a few years I would welcome it. Every once in a while we get these great features like Hyper Training, Battle Frontier, new types of Evolution. Then you have features some people love and others ignore, like the following Pokemon, Contests, Secret Bases and the like. All of these cool features with GFs current attitude are either gone or going, and in my opinion the last few games we've gotten have either been weak or straight up take advantage of the Pokemon fans strong feelings for this series to make a sale, the ones who will look at the latest games and feel they're making a bad purchase but they do it anyways because they love this series and they want to support a developer that they know is capable of doing much better. I don't want to support a company that treats it's fans like that, and for the last couple years I haven't.

I'd like to believe that with TPCi wanting to push a Pokemon game out the door every single year really messes GFs ability to think things over better. If you look around you can see exactly how stressful being a game dev is, doesn't seem like much fun from what I've read. If they think that leaving this series behind will benefit everyone and that they can come back to it (maybe within 5 or so years) and make impressive Pokemon games again (HG/SS, BW2, Emerald sort of thing) then I personally say go for it. I would rather they take the time to make games that we all can love rather than have them continue to spew out games which are mediocre at best and then have the fan uproar eventually reach (or perhaps surpass) the ridiculous levels it has with the upcoming games.

People will be angry with waiting but if they can actually put it off it'll be worth it. If they don't, then get angry.
Except that Game Freak knows they're in a losing position with TPCi due to the success of Pokémon GO which explains why TPCi wants Game Freak to be more than just Pokémon when the reality is that it's the ONLY intellectual property they've ever been good at. There's a good chance that If Sword & Shield had met everyone's expectations that it could potentially result in a net loss financially for Game Freak due to TPCi's newfound focus on Pokémon GO and mobile games which is why they developed "Town" for the Nintendo Switch as a fail safe from potentially going out of business.

I would argue that it may not have been the wisest business decision they've made but much like with new intellectual properties it's a rather ambitious one. When was the last time Nintendo succeeded with a new intellectual property since Pikmin and Splatoon? If anything older IP's have longer staying power due to the nostalgia factor that the company's always been known for. Nowadays with everyone's short-attention spans they're too afraid to allow the novelty of a franchise to set in before it becomes nostalgic which takes a very long time as everyone is more focused on instant gratification.
 
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