Unpopular opinions

[ant4456]

I mean just because cases like Brady can afford the multiple games without issue doesn't mean that isn't a concern for other people playing: in TPC's world, you wouldn't see the player for whom this is an issue because they don't get to build the teams that let them participate at a visible level. What if some people can only afford to participate because of the time save on Genning. Being able to Gen a team and play it on a simulator saves on 2 things

• Money spent on acquiring the old games that several Pokemon are exclusive to (for the sake of argument I am including emulating and trading the old Pokemon up because this still entails external resources even if the Pokemon aren't "generated" outright)
• Time to iterate on the team, in the form of playing matches, making adjustments, and playing more matches. Resources are available within SV but they're not bottomless, and things like Tera Raids to restock on them is a time sink if your expense exceeds your supply.

Time spent playing for resources and THEN testing the team as opposed to jumping straight to the latter is still an expense, whether that's time they'd prefer to spend on other hobbies/family, or perhaps they need to work a job that doesn't spare them enough attention to do grind busywork simultaneously.

Yes, Pokemon fans who play VGC do not have accessibility issues, but I think the causal relationship is being reversed here: the inaccessibility without Genning is why the playerbase is mostly middle-class people who can buy multiple games and spare that time.

Imagine an in-person Fighting Game Tournament in which each competitor had to unlock the character they wanted to play on their copy before participating, or had to complete Arcade move to change something like an assist character or Super Move choices. Individual iteration isn't a large time expense, but the amount of times one would have to do that to experiment and then practice before arriving at their choice would add up to untenable amounts of time for a hobby even with a prize pool, much less something played mostly as a large-scale hobby like Pokemon.

I will make my take clear so there is no confusion, and it will be slightly harsher considering this is a hot takes thread anyways, so whatever. I know this will probably catch some flak.

I do not care about financial accessibility to VGC, nor will I. Because it's not a real esport. There are no stakes. Play on Showdown or gen, I don't care, but I also don't care if Game Freak makes it so you need an old game to get Pokemon in the new game, or doesn't pay for tickets to go to Worlds, or makes it time consuming to get into the game. I don't care. The next season could require a $20,000 entry fee, and I would not care. Why? Because competitive Pokemon is decentralized, and not serious. Any day someone else could just start a new competitive Pokemon tournament with a prize pool and get probably about the same results.

It's not that serious, and never will be. VGC is a marketing expense.

For the record, if you had to grind for characters in a fighting game? I don't care, that's cool if the developers want it and make it a fun game.

The end point of this whole accessibility take is that everything should be free as to remove all barriers to players, but who cares. VGC is not real. The official solution is only accessible via a product, and to participate you have to buy the products.

Out of all competitive videogames, Pokemon is one of the least serious, like period. By the way, if you think TPC/Game Freak do not deliberately allow Pokemon Showdown to exist, you are being fooled.

To get slightly political, I am anti-capitalist. But I do not hate on the players. I hate on the game. I think that what TPC is doing is bad, but I just do not care, and neither should you, it is a waste of energy. Competitive scenes should do everything in their power to ignore and separate themselves from what companies who only see them as a marketing expense want them to do. The official solution does not matter.

Something that isn't a waste of energy is talking about the thing that the actual game developers have more agency over, and that is how they design the game. Because even if VGC spontaneously combusted tomorrow, in-game tournaments would still have a genning debate.

My dog in this fight is not the accessibility argument, but the game design argument. It is not bad game design to require grinding for PVP. Period. Pokemon Sword and Shield's PVP, for instance, is not badly designed. There are minor errors such as no 0IV item, but overall the PVP gameplay loop is in my opinion well designed. Having to explore the game world and mechanics outside of just the battles, is not bad game design. Having to breed is not bad game design.

These games are more cohesive by telling players that if they want to get the best Pokemon, they interact with different systems. Go breed, go do Raids, go do Battle Dungeon or whatever the fuck it is called except in SV, an unfinished game. Go get some money by doing X, Y, Z. Figure out the best odds of this and assess your strategy of how to efficiently get your things done, go actually collect them.

It can be immensely satisfying and rewarding, and make it more enjoyable all around to use your party. That is why my problem with genning is not that it exists or makes the game more accessible, it's that the people who advocate for it actively deny the fact that other ways to play the game, and design the game other than straight up doing Pokemon Showdown officially, is bad game design. It is not.

I do not think that people who do not want to gen and people who want to gen should be forced to compete with each other. I think that preparation is in fact a skill that effects the game, even inside of the actual match. Time to learn matchups, pilot, make tweaks is something that matters much less when you have way more time. I do not think that one philosophy is simply superior. I do not think Pokemon is stronger as an overall package when you can just skip everything and play the game with spontaneously created Pokemon. I do think that Pokemon should have options to support both playstyles.

 

[Ironmage]

You know, this is fair and all, but you speak as if people playing the various TCGs don't have to spend significant money to keep their collection up to date, on top of having to deal with banlists suddently invalidating cards you may have spent several hundred bucks on.

Like, I get that most other videogames don't require monetary investment other than "buy the current videogame", but having to invest money to keep up with collectible competitive games isn't *exactly* a new concept and Pokemon isn't isolated in it.

To extend the tangent a little further, I find the high emphasis on card pricing is the main thing keeping me out of TCGs as a hobby. When I'm trying to relax by making weird gimmick sets, real-world money is the last thing I want to think about.

 

[A_Wild_Noob_Appeared!]

There is one of the pro-genning arguments that I don't like, though, because I find it to be disingenuous: "genning offers no competitive advantage." I find it disingenuous because it is only true insofar as all players show up to event with optimized spreads or all the mons they want. But events like Regulation D worlds demonstrate explicitly that in some events you cannot reasonably guarantee you will be able to get all of the mons you need with the exact IVs you want by only 'legitimate' play. Players without PLA or SwSh may have a hard time getting Legendaries like Urshifu, Glastrier, Enamorus, etc., and they may also be unable to guarantee they get the right IV spread. And that's the crux: genning or using custom firmware allows you to eliminate pre-game variance that doing things legitimately cannot always guarantee you to do, and that's where possible advantages for genning can arise.

The thing is, the existing rules don't actually require you to put in any work. You're allowed to have friends just trade you everything; genning doesn't really offer a competitive advantage over that. It's perfectly justifiable to be upset when you're punished for doing something that is functionally basically the same as something which is explicitly allowed.

 

[Worldie]

What's really ironic is that 90% of this genning issue is doing to 0 IVs.

They've gone so far to make obtaining legitimate competitive pokemon quick (currently it takes uuuh 5 mins to make a competitive team if you've got an advanced SV save), but we're *still* missing 0 IV bottle caps...

 

[ant4456]

What's really ironic is that 90% of this genning issue is doing to 0 IVs.

They've gone so far to make obtaining legitimate competitive pokemon quick (currently it takes uuuh 5 mins to make a competitive team if you've got an advanced SV save), but we're *still* missing 0 IV bottle caps...

Either remove 0IV or make it easier to obtain, I'd genuinely rather start with 0x6IV and use bottle caps than start with 6IVs for some Pokemon under the current system

 

[Bakugames]

They've gone so far to make obtaining legitimate competitive pokemon quick (currently it takes uuuh 5 mins to make a competitive team if you've got an advanced SV save), but we're *still* missing 0 IV bottle caps...

I don't know how attuned they are to meta specifics such as 0ivs. Maybe? But also I wonder if the devs think all pokémon are better as 6iv. Evs are limited so it makes more sense to make resetting items for them, but if you aren't super attentive, you might miss 0iv plays.

 

[Ransei]

Illusio isn't that bad of a map. Sure it does feel like you have to rely on the warps to be the right color to get your way but in all my years playing Conquest I don't think I've ever had any real issue with it. Never really had a game where I nearly lost due to wasting enough turns waiting on warps to be the right color. On another note, there are many alternative pathways you can take if you don't want to rely on the warps, just so you'd be able to get to the destination you want in an appropriate amount of turns anyway. I honestly believe this is the 2nd best and 2nd most competitive banner map in Pokemon Conquest, behind Viperia.

Terrera on the other hand is a much worse map because the game is strongly determined by wind gust RNG and against NPCs it becomes the freest win ever. Wind gusts activate the first time a Pokemon gets on a Lift to the top of a tower. You can exploit that by simply getting near every lift and waiting for the opposing team to hop on a lift first. They get knocked down, and any 3 of your Pokemon near the lifts can immediately lunge in and win.

Pugilis is pretty nasty because it's either extremely overcentralized around Flying-types (a lot of maps in this game kinda are tbh) or it comes down to who can knock everyone's Pokemon off the ring and create a blockade first. You can just knock everyone's Pokemon out of the ring and collect all the banners. The win condition is to hold each banner for 5 turns straight. There are two entrances to the ring you can block if you have a stackload of healthy Pokemon available. Against AIs in the game you really just need to block one of them with a Pokemon or three and you automatically win the game.

Greenleaf is one of the worst maps of the game because it's either extremely overcentralized around Flying-types or is the much worse alternative of being incredibly volatile. You can straight up lose games due to trap hax if you are that unfortunate, since the map gives 15 turns at most, there are multiple traps placed near banners at random spots, and falling into one of them locks you in place for a full 3 turns each.

Spectra can be annoying but worked around with Oichi + Jigglypuff Charm, held items given to warriors prior to battle, and many other warriors capable of curing allies of various status ailments. You can also just have a Pokemon serve as fodder to take every wisp if you aren't using the Jigglypuff, and it's usually not that big of the deal. Spectra is often regarded as being among the worst maps in the game but I don't think it falls under this in the long run since there's a lot you can do to play around those wisps. The status however, are still pretty annoying.

Valora sucks. Worst map of the game. Map is way too big so if you have a high range Pokemon (especially Flying-type), you can easily stall the game out of maximum turns and win off that alone. Otherwise, there are robots placed on several locations of this map that activate a crane when it detects someone's Pokemon, then moves said Pokemon to a completely random spot in the game. There are times where it can easily put that Pokemon in a spot where it cannot do anything for the rest of the game and you can just automatically lose because of that. Flying-types are the only Pokemon who can fully avoid this. The rest are screwed.

Avia is also not a good map since it's probably the biggest map in the game. A map noticeably too big for its own good here. Pokemon of high range (especially Flying-types) have no issue stalling the game out of maximum turns, since many other Pokemon are unlikely to reach them.

 

[ant4456]

Illusio isn't that bad of a map. Sure it does feel like you have to rely on the warps to be the right color to get your way but in all my years playing Conquest I don't think I've ever had any real issue with it. Never really had a game where I nearly lost due to wasting enough turns waiting on warps to be the right color. On another note, there are many alternative pathways you can take if you don't want to rely on the warps, just so you'd be able to get to the destination you want in an appropriate amount of turns anyway. I honestly believe this is the 2nd best and 2nd most competitive banner map in Pokemon Conquest, behind Viperia.

Terrera on the other hand is a much worse map because the game is strongly determined by wind gust RNG and against NPCs it becomes the freest win ever. Wind gusts activate the first time a Pokemon gets on a Lift to the top of a tower. You can exploit that by simply getting near every lift and waiting for the opposing team to hop on a lift first. They get knocked down, and any 3 of your Pokemon near the lifts can immediately lunge in and win.

Pugilis is pretty nasty because it's either extremely overcentralized around Flying-types (a lot of maps in this game kinda are tbh) or it comes down to who can knock everyone's Pokemon off the ring and create a blockade first. You can just knock everyone's Pokemon out of the ring and collect all the banners. The win condition is to hold each banner for 5 turns straight. There are two entrances to the ring you can block if you have a stackload of healthy Pokemon available. Against AIs in the game you really just need to block one of them with a Pokemon or three and you automatically win the game.

Greenleaf is one of the worst maps of the game because it's either extremely overcentralized around Flying-types or is the much worse alternative of being incredibly volatile. You can straight up lose games due to trap hax if you are that unfortunate, since the map gives 15 turns at most, there are multiple traps placed near banners at random spots, and falling into one of them locks you in place for a full 3 turns each.

Spectra can be annoying but worked around with Oichi + Jigglypuff Charm, held items given to warriors prior to battle, and many other warriors capable of curing allies of various status ailments. You can also just have a Pokemon serve as fodder to take every wisp if you aren't using the Jigglypuff, and it's usually not that big of the deal. Spectra is often regarded as being among the worst maps in the game but I don't think it falls under this in the long run since there's a lot you can do to play around those wisps. The status however, are still pretty annoying.

Valora sucks. Worst map of the game. Map is way too big so if you have a high range Pokemon (especially Flying-type), you can easily stall the game out of maximum turns and win off that alone. Otherwise, there are robots placed on several locations of this map that activate a crane when it detects someone's Pokemon, then moves said Pokemon to a completely random spot in the game. There are times where it can easily put that Pokemon in a spot where it cannot do anything for the rest of the game and you can just automatically lose because of that. Flying-types are the only Pokemon who can fully avoid this. The rest are screwed.

Avia is also not a good map since it's probably the biggest map in the game. A map noticeably too big for its own good here. Pokemon of high range (especially Flying-types) have no issue stalling the game out of maximum turns, since many other Pokemon are unlikely to reach them.

I've never played Pokemon Conquest but because it's a hot takes thread I'm just gonna say GRRR you're wrong, what a stupid fucking take, how dare you. God, the nerve. Real Pokemon Conquesters know how stupid this is.

 

[RocketSurgery]

The thing is, the existing rules don't actually require you to put in any work. You're allowed to have friends just trade you everything; genning doesn't really offer a competitive advantage over that. It's perfectly justifiable to be upset when you're punished for doing something that is functionally basically the same as something which is explicitly allowed.

Being allowed to outsource getting legitimate mons doesn't make it functionally equivalent to genning, it just adds more steps to the process and adds uncertainty about whether your source actually obtained the mons legitimately. If the mon is legit somebody still had to do the grind to get it, which means they are not guaranteed to be able to deliver.

So, in terms of getting optimal mons that are purely legitimate, the old sources of variance are still all there but now you've added on new sources of variance through the dependability of your source. (Case in point, at least one of the players who got DQ'd claims they tried to get legit PLA/SwSh mons from a reputable source and those mons failed the hack check. Apparently this particular player's version of events is not very trustworthy (see doipy hooves' clarification below)) In most cases I would guess that this outsourcing is more used as a means of getting illegal mons that offer a plausible deniability that the mons are not legit.

In contrast, if you gen it all yourself you don't have to worry about that variance.

If you get someone else to gen it for you then you have some variance in whether or not they made the mon correctly, but you still know that in principle they are guaranteed to get you the optimal mons.

Also, just in case anyone wants to argue that clones of legitimately obtained mons count as legit mons, if two players have clones they can in principle be detected and would be counted as illegitimate (though that would require actually cross-checking teams at events, so less likely to be detected in practice I would guess.)

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1563979762548150273

 

[ant4456]

Just wanted to apologize for some pretty hasty things I said on the topic of genning, I agree with a lot of points you guys made I just think that my priorities in the conversation are different. If you want, feel free to DM me and I can explain what I meant in more detail.

I probably will not talk much more on this subject myself, but what do you guys think about this?

(2) Brady Smith - VGC Corner on Twitter: "Anyone else down to go on strike this upcoming season? If numbers of competitions go down, they might try to come up with a solution to increase player attendance. What we want is genning to be legal. We know that Pokémon can’t do this with the primary genning method being a…" / X

 

[Bakugames]

I probably will not talk much more on this subject myself, but what do you guys think about this?

(2) Brady Smith - VGC Corner on Twitter: "Anyone else down to go on strike this upcoming season? If numbers of competitions go down, they might try to come up with a solution to increase player attendance. What we want is genning to be legal. We know that Pokémon can’t do this with the primary genning method being a…" / X

I think striking for genning to be legal won't work, no sane company would have a clause that allows cheating and likes, and I'm saying this as someone wh thinks genning is a neutral act and more nuanced than ppl argue about.

HOWEVER they should absolutely strike for the recent awful treatment the circuits have been giving players, and that only now they have started to strike down genning while not offering more accessible features. Also lower the costs of entry if your service is just gonna be bad LOL

 

[ant4456]

I think striking for genning to be legal won't work, no sane company would have a clause that allows cheating and likes, and I'm saying this as someone wh thinks genning is a neutral act and more nuanced than ppl argue about.

HOWEVER they should absolutely strike for the recent awful treatment the circuits have been giving players, and that only now they have started to strike down genning while not offering more accessible features. Also lower the costs of entry if your service is just gonna be bad LOL

My take is pretty simple, I think genning is fine but I think it is totally fair to not want people to gen. Yeah there are other things that tbh make boycotting make sense

 

[Magcargo]

Just wanted to apologize for some pretty hasty things I said on the topic of genning, I agree with a lot of points you guys made I just think that my priorities in the conversation are different. If you want, feel free to DM me and I can explain what I meant in more detail.

I probably will not talk much more on this subject myself, but what do you guys think about this?

(2) Brady Smith - VGC Corner on Twitter: "Anyone else down to go on strike this upcoming season? If numbers of competitions go down, they might try to come up with a solution to increase player attendance. What we want is genning to be legal. We know that Pokémon can’t do this with the primary genning method being a…" / X

As someone who doesn't go to VGC tournaments, I will do my part in this protest and not compete like I've never not competed before.

Overall, this protest might have some merit if it was initiated by someone else who doesn't gen, but because its being done by someone caught with their pants down, it comes off as really petty. I do agree with the goal, but I doubt this protest will gain much, if any traction. There have been a number of other issues that players are protesting against too iirc, so another one would mumble the conversation a bit.

If a mon is able to be legally obtained in-game, then idgaf if it's genn'd or not. Genning is 10x more efficient in terms of time, resource management, and actually spending time competing in a tournament instead of doing a 20h+ grind that will require more hours spent on tweaking parameters like Tera type, EVs, building new Pokemon, applying PP Ups if possible (though tbf PP doesn't really matter in a 3v3 or 4v4 env all that much barring some fringe cases), etc.

I think the TPC will probably introduce an easy to earn currency in the DLC to make it easier to build mons, which likely won't be as efficient as genning, but will still make it more efficient to build teams on the fly with random mons you catch. Players will complain they are paywalling this feature, which is fair, but a one time purchase of 30$ for a game competitive players will be spending 100s hours isn't that big of a cost imo. Then again, for me, the value of money isn't that high in my current position so I am 100% in the minority here.

 

[Bakugames]

For people to understand why I talk about the price a lot:

 

[Karxrida]

You know, this is fair and all, but you speak as if people playing the various TCGs don't have to spend significant money to keep their collection up to date, on top of having to deal with banlists suddently invalidating cards you may have spent several hundred bucks on.

Like, I get that most other videogames don't require monetary investment other than "buy the current videogame", but having to invest money to keep up with collectible competitive games isn't *exactly* a new concept and Pokemon isn't isolated in it.

Not that the system for TCGs is justified or should be, but at least getting cards efficiently just involves a quick trip to TCG Player to buy them all and waiting on the mail. You can still do your life or practice on sims or with proxies until then.

 

[ant4456]

"SS" is a fucking terrible acronym for sword and shield that is literally deadass only used by smogon players


everywhere else I see people use SWSH, especially because "SS" means "Soulsilver" to 99% of people who play shit outside of Smogon

"I'm playing SS" "oh cool did you pick cyndaquil" is how I see people talk about soulsilver

speaking of, four letter acronyms are already used by smogon

"ORAS", when technically "OA" is a unique acronym for the games and therefore is also a valid two letter version. You'd just never see someone use that ever, just like SS outside of Smogon.

SWSH has no possible other meaning, no ambiguity, four letter acronyms are clearly acceptable, SWSH > SS and I will not be taking questions

 

[Blue glass]

Hide

For people to understand why I talk about the price a lot:

View attachment 542116
View attachment 542117

And?

One dollar is about 4,90 reais so base game is about 61 dollars and DLC is about 36 dollars. Pretty much the same price. It could be argued that comparatively it's more money because in general people in US earn more money than Brazilians but being able to maintain a specific hobby isn't a human right, if it's too expensive do something cheaper. Capitalism is bad and DLC should be free but this is a poor argument to justify genning.

 

[Bakugames]

One dollar is about 4,90 reais so base game is about 61 dollars and DLC is about 36 dollars. Pretty much the same price. It could be argued that comparatively it's more money because in general people in US earn more money than Brazilians but being able to maintain a specific hobby isn't a human right, if it's too expensive do something cheaper. Capitalism is bad and DLC should be free but this is a poor argument to justify genning.

90% of my points in thus convo have been about accessibility and pricing out people/that just because something is innacessible doesnt mean it should be made more innacessible and that there should still be attempts to bridge gaps that the company can easily fix. Genning is a product of its environment but also something im not even focusing on.

also it is only the same price if everything in brazil just converted exactly in usd, which is not true of wages, nor electronics themselves. these games are 1/3rd of a minimum wage, and many can spend a long time saving for them and also saving to participate in the community itself.

but also i beleive there are no poor excuses to genning because genning doesnt need an excuse. I treat it exactly like piracy LOL

 

[Blue glass]

SV for sure should have its own teambuilder and more power to everyone that pirate and gen but to do a surprised pikachu face when you get a DQ doing those on a official VGC championship is silly. The price is irrevelant because unless it's free it will always be too expensive to some people in the world.

 

[Sonikku A]

Speaking of accessibility, would be REAL nice if they made a move/ability almanac that goes fully in depth of what each one does, along with a practice sim post game that's customizable (EVs, IVs, items, mons, moves, etc)
You know, like practice mode in fighting games letting you change P1 and 2. Would be neat
Would also cut out a lot of time experimenting

 

[ZB7]

Breaking away from the VGC stuff for a bit, I wanted to voice why I think Raging Bolt is a very well done and clever design. Two things though:

1. Is that I understand why this design isn’t liked, taking Raikou, a generally well liked not just Pokémon but Legendary Pokémon, and making it into this thing isn’t gonna go down people’s throats in one go.

2. Is my own personal complaints with this design: I think the head should’ve been changed. It’s kinda jarring to see this supposed dinosaur Pokémon and it still has the fangs of a saber tooth tiger. I also think the body could’ve been bigger. I also kinda think the feet look like slippers, and not in a good way.

So onto to why I like it:

I believe that the head being above its mane and in the obviously intended to be thunderclouds is just a simple nod to the phrase 'Head in the clouds'.

The neck being so long is meant to invoke the imagery of a thunderbolt coming from those very same thunderclouds (I like this one a lot cause it’s very easily noticeable and charming imo). It also leads into the point which is it’s dinosaur inspiration.

Raging Bolt seems to be just generally based off of sauropods, and in the sauropod group of dinosaurs, there’s that was called the Brontosaurus (key word: was, nowadays it goes under a different name because the dinosaur it was thought to be was actually just a more underdeveloped one compard to what it actually was). Brontosaurus’s etymology comes from Greek, where the words it pull from mean 'thunder lizard'. Raging Bolt seems to just be generally be a sauropod with its long neck, and so if they wanted it to be more directly a Brontosaurus they probably should’ve made its body bigger.

I really like this thing and the more I learned about potential inspirations the more I liked it. It’s a very different take on a beloved mon so to that degree I understand the disappointment/disgust. I just wanted to post in this thread because I’m fairly it’s written somewhere that liking this thing is sacrilege.

One thing is for sure though:

With that neck and body, this guy is never beating the giraffe allegations.

(Re: the VGC stuff though, I think we can agree that the format for worlds including Pokémon that aren’t obtainable in the game the tournament is taking place in is very silly and bad)

 

[doipy hooves]

So, in terms of getting optimal mons that are purely legitimate, the old sources of variance are still all there but now you've added on new sources of variance through the dependability of your source. (Case in point, at least one of the players who got DQ'd claims they tried to get legit PLA/SwSh mons from a reputable source and those mons failed the hack check.)

In contrast, if you gen it all yourself you don't have to worry about that variance.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1689855619187007488

I want to add that the source seemingly did nothing wrong and it was just the hacker's fault for being lazy. This tweet explains what happened in more detail and Brady himself liked the post. He was traded legitimate mons originally, and afterwards he modified them for some reason when his Landorus and Urshifu didn't even need any 0 IVs, and managed to taint perfectly good legit mons to fail a hack check afterwards.

As an aside I also found it strange that he kept saying that buying "Legends of Arceus" was his only option to get a Landorus, a staple of VGC teams for over a decade now and a mon that he himself previously used in SWSH competitions, which would be available from HOME even if he didn't have his SWSH copy anymore.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1689848521296609280

 

[AztecCroc]

(key word: was, nowadays it goes under a different name because the dinosaur it was thought to be was actually just a more underdeveloped one compard to what it actually was).

False. Brontosaurus has been a separate thing again since 2015.
Also it (not actually) being the younger version of Apatosaurus wouldn't have affected which name was kept, it matters which name was officially recognized first not which name belongs to the older member of the species.

 

[Worldie]

"SS" is a fucking terrible acronym for sword and shield that is literally deadass only used by smogon players


everywhere else I see people use SWSH, especially because "SS" means "Soulsilver" to 99% of people who play shit outside of Smogon

"I'm playing SS" "oh cool did you pick cyndaquil" is how I see people talk about soulsilver

speaking of, four letter acronyms are already used by smogon

"ORAS", when technically "OA" is a unique acronym for the games and therefore is also a valid two letter version. You'd just never see someone use that ever, just like SS outside of Smogon.

SWSH has no possible other meaning, no ambiguity, four letter acronyms are clearly acceptable, SWSH > SS and I will not be taking questions

Sir dont get me started on how much it tilts me to see people use "ScaVio" instead of SV...


Back on the VGC stuff, I think the main issue people have with hacking specifically in this moment and why there's such a shitshow about it is that GF for first time took a extremely weird and unpopular decision:
They made a Worlds format where you cannot obtain all the available non-breedable pokemon in the games of that generation

This is I believe a *FIRST* as so far non-native Legendaries were generally not allowed until the 2nd games (2nd DLC for SwSh), and they were *catchable in these games* via the various gimmicks (Hyperspace holes in gen 6, Ultrarifts in Gen 7, Dynamax raids in gen 8).
This is also not helped by the fact that several of the actually breedable mons coming from Legends Arceus *cannot evolve in SV*

I am honestly baffled at this decision.
I want to believe this is just a terrible oversight. It's clear that they did receive the complaint that metas were pretty "stale" during previous Worlds, where they've tried to shake it up with progressive introduction of new mons. But allowing a bunch of pokemon not available at same time of Worlds and most importantly with nearly 0 time to prepare for it (Home was released in May, people had barely 2 months to get a idea of the new meta on top of actually getting new mons in first place) was a REALLY REALLY POOR DECISION.
Even more of a horrible decision if it was intentionally made to force people to buy Legend Arceus. Even as GameFreak apologist myself, this is something I would be really disappointed to if it was the case.

 

[pika pal]

Sir dont get me started on how much it tilts me to see people use "ScaVio" instead of SV...


Back on the VGC stuff, I think the main issue people have with hacking specifically in this moment and why there's such a shitshow about it is that GF for first time took a extremely weird and unpopular decision:
They made a Worlds format where you cannot obtain all the available non-breedable pokemon in the games of that generation

This is I believe a *FIRST* as so far non-native Legendaries were generally not allowed until the 2nd games (2nd DLC for SwSh), and they were *catchable in these games* via the various gimmicks (Hyperspace holes in gen 6, Ultrarifts in Gen 7, Dynamax raids in gen 8).
This is also not helped by the fact that several of the actually breedable mons coming from Legends Arceus *cannot evolve in SV*

I am honestly baffled at this decision.
I want to believe this is just a terrible oversight. It's clear that they did receive the complaint that metas were pretty "stale" during previous Worlds, where they've tried to shake it up with progressive introduction of new mons. But allowing a bunch of pokemon not available at same time of Worlds and most importantly with nearly 0 time to prepare for it (Home was released in May, people had barely 2 months to get a idea of the new meta on top of actually getting new mons in first place) was a REALLY REALLY POOR DECISION.
Even more of a horrible decision if it was intentionally made to force people to buy Legend Arceus. Even as GameFreak apologist myself, this is something I would be really disappointed to if it was the case.

I also doubt it helps that this update dropped in the middle of a Worlds Season, as noted on the 0-prep time. Usually if this drops between/early in the season people have time to see the Meta develop casually or experiment with/trade for non-native Pokemon if they matter. Now here it's "Urshifu is a big deal so better find someone willing to part with the one-off pick-one-of-two-forms Legendary from LAST GEN's DLC campaign" while the competition is already underway.

For reference I play Pokemon Go in part because it gives me a way to collect a few Gen 7-8 Pokemon I never got due to dropping USUM/skipping Galar. I imagine there are other players who similarly passed on the other entries and have relied on trading to get their non-native non-breedable Pokemon before. Here though the time table with an active competition to prep for was WAY too short.