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A year ago Nintendo apologized for the state of Pokemon Scarlet & Violet and promised that they were working on improvements. Did they lie?
- Thread starter Truno
- Start date
Got this Smallant short recommended to me and I had to laugh
View: https://youtube.com/shorts/4kb5QXQ3Zek?si=DXoypOnsfZ5x8PlE
View: https://youtube.com/shorts/4kb5QXQ3Zek?si=DXoypOnsfZ5x8PlE
Tbf what we used to get were games that never really got fixed with bugs addressed in v1.1 versions, this is probably the inevitably consequence of making increasingly complex software.
It's demonstrably better than launch. Whether or not that's good enough for you is a subjective question but they did make improvements. It's still pretty terrible but also super fun so feel free to decide which of those is more important. I dropped it in less than an hour at launch but went back to it anew a couple weeks ago and am really enjoying it, despite the many issues.
OP
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Xenoblade 3 and the Zelda Duology are on Switch and run much better than S and V. Its not the platform, its the developer
Also Gamefreak isnt Nintendo, Nintendo cant force them to do anything becuase GF owns 1/3rd of the series. They dont own them.
Granted, neither xenoblade or zelda are 4 player coop games; it was the wrong choice by the studio but I don't doubt it's the crux of their issues.
In my personal experience, many bugs were patched. Though the game's performance remains… beneath what I consider acceptable, I don't believe Nintendo lied. I think there's only so much that can be done given the circumstances (the limitations of the hardware, and the demands of the fiscal calendar, predominantly-) and what the series seems to need is either an installment that gets an extra year or two in the oven for polish, or to be on hardware that can strong-arm their engine into doing what they are trying to do with it. Let's hope for a better future?
Gamefreak has to know that if they gonna be ambitious (and have coop) they gonna need to spend more time on these games. They cant keep growing the series and put these games out every 2 years. Its untenable now
They want their cake- 4 player coop, and eat it too- releasing at their desired cadence and this is what we get. Sorta like Obsidian choosing the large scope of New Vegas despite them openly accepting an 18 month turnaround time. I don't think S/V is "technical incompetence" like "oh they're not swapping data out of memory efficiently"; it's more of a "you chose to add features to this that completely fucked over the ability to make this run well."
S/V for as flawed as it is, is pretty transformative for the series; I would just suggest the studio probably take smaller iterative steps between games because trying to throw the whole kitchen sink at it clearly wasn't the way to go.
They worked on improvements for the games, they just weren't enough to turn it into an acceptably performing game. SV really shows the best and worst of Gamefreak, and while I can say that I ultimately have had a lot of fun and appreciation for what they did right, it is also the first time I have felt...taken advantage of as a customer. They prioritized a fully unnecessary early release to releasing stable games - even more egregious considering they could have release LA in that time slot instead of 2 months after the last set of games.
Maybe it is better that they didn't fully fix it and devoted their resources to the next thing(s). But the question is, do they recognize the mistake of maintaining an unsustainable release cadence and releasing a game in a broken state, or are they going to try and keep making suckers out of their customers? Whatever the case, there will be no mistaking their intentions with the next release likely coming out for the Switch 2.
Maybe it is better that they didn't fully fix it and devoted their resources to the next thing(s). But the question is, do they recognize the mistake of maintaining an unsustainable release cadence and releasing a game in a broken state, or are they going to try and keep making suckers out of their customers? Whatever the case, there will be no mistaking their intentions with the next release likely coming out for the Switch 2.
Quoting sales is not the own you think it is lmao.
By that logic everything that sells well is ethically ok. What a joke.
I was hungry at the time I posted that. My reasoning was to try and understand the difference between "adjacent" and those in direct competition. First/second party or third parties that might not even be releasing on the console at all?
There's little to no reason others in-house would necessarily be too unhappy, and if we are talking about other studios in the market I should be able to point at how charmed and easy-breezy the Baldurs's Gate 3 devs had it leading up to release by comparison to something like the Gollum game.
I'm not going to pretend I subscribe to that theory, but it's no coincidence we've seen such an extensive look at a successful game's pre-release.
I do think the reception Pokemon has currently isn't as great as some people like to admit. Last week we had a Christmas party with people working in Japan. When Pokemon got brought up the first thing someone said was "Pokemon, isn't it absolutely terrible". Even people in Japan who don't follow gaming news that closely all basically knew how terrible Scarlet/Violet are from a technical standpoint.
This isn't a case of a reset era bubble. That the games are selling well is also a terrible excuse. Some of the worst movies ever made are amongst the most popular ones
This isn't a case of a reset era bubble. That the games are selling well is also a terrible excuse. Some of the worst movies ever made are amongst the most popular ones
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Apparently the new DLC somehow runs even worse than the base game. So yeah, they absolutely lied
Even if they were co-op they would've still ensured the performance was better. Each of those are orders of magnitude most complex than SV. Not to mention, it's not like the performance issues aren't there when played solo.
I dunno what the ultimate solution is, but IMO it might make sense for them to use someone else's engine. Obviously build whatever tools they need to support their workflows and other modifications they need, but shit, maybe work with Nintendo to license Monolithsoft's engine and synchronous online multiplayer functionality to it.
I think the impact of both technology and tools is generally overrated, though this is a criticism I have of how games are looked at in general. Like, any game with 4 player coop is more complex than large apes in Xenoblade 3 or floating castles. Like switching to another engine won't do anything if they shove in drop in/out 4 player coop and try to force the game to run as closely as possible to a native resolution. Gamefreak is more than capable of simply just making better choices with the stack they have now.
One person at an obscure party making a comment is carrying a lot of weight with this one. Pokemon S/V has technical issues for sure, but this is hyperbole of a different color.
It was a counter argument against the narrative that the only people complaining about Scarlet/violet are a small part of the fandom (mostly people on social media/era). The horrible technical state the games are in is well known
Technology isn't the only issue, but it is a fundamental issue and I don't think better "choices" will change the fact that they don't have the technical skills or leadership to make the games they keep trying to.
You mention Xenoblade isn't a multiplayer game. So what? You realize if the game is made to scale to 4 players online, it should be near flawless when played with a single player offline, but it isn't even in that situation.
The stack they have now is a dead end. This isn't something that can be fixed or updated IMO. It's fundamental architected poorly and as they keep building on it and their games keep growing in scope, these issues are only going to be compounded.
Is this how long we may have to wait for the next generation of Pokemon games? I was honestly hoping they'd come around the end of 2024.
Didn't they say they are gonna slow down with the releases and try not to rush it after how SV went?
God I hope not. I totally called SV's problems when it was revealed they were really coming out with an open world mainline game just three years after the much more conventional game (SwSh) that they couldn't even finish half of. They need more time.
The game performance didn't improve fuck all. So, yes, they lied.
And Pokemon fans are such fanboys that "skipping a generation" isn't in their vocabulary andd is the reason why the franchise still sells bunkers and has still to flop. If a single pokemon generation were to flop, that would be the sing for Game Freak to, finally, learn a thing or two. But, nope.
FAKE EDIT:
And GF was more focused on their bottom line than actually making the base game better.
And Pokemon fans are such fanboys that "skipping a generation" isn't in their vocabulary andd is the reason why the franchise still sells bunkers and has still to flop. If a single pokemon generation were to flop, that would be the sing for Game Freak to, finally, learn a thing or two. But, nope.
FAKE EDIT:
And GF was more focused on their bottom line than actually making the base game better.
since the Switch released it's gone:
2018 - remake
2019 - Gen 8
2020 - Gen 8 DLC
2021 - remake
2022 - Gen 9
2023 - Gen 9 DLC
2024 seems like a remake year, unless they do a new Legends game instead. 2025 is likely Gen 10.
I'm saying there are no technical skills anyone can offer them to make the games meaningfully different given what they want the games to be. Monolith isn't making a meaningfully better 4 player drop-in-drop-out coop game.
I mean, this is mostly just an invented fiction though right? They are no other peer games that are dumb enough to attempt 4 player coop in an open world game to compare to.
It's meaningful for the game to be coop because the game has to be designed for relatively seamless integration of players to be in and out without much if any change to the game world; it's honestly a more ambitious and interesting and challenging thing to implement versus anything really Xenoblade and Zelda does, but like, there's a reason they don't and it's probably because it's extremely difficult to do. Multiplayer games almost universally are more complex and ambitious projects than single player ones ever are.
Pokemon shouldn't chase this but they insist on it and this is what happens. Aonuma or Monolith aren't going to just make their stack put out a better multiplayer RPG project.
edit: Pokemon Legends being hot ass without multiplayer is better example to litigate the studio's tools than this really because there aren't many (any?) other multiplayer RPGs to compare against.
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Also why the fuck are they still using their proprietary engine when it's ALWAYS sucked lol. It's crazy that we're in a world now where CD Red doesn't make their own engines anymore but Pokemon still does
Umm actually the tools and engine you use make a massive difference. Instead of spending so much time tacking on features to their 3DS dinosaur of an engine they could use a middleware engine that has them built in. They could have non ass lighting and world streaming
Oh, please go into detail about how the engine and tools were constructed, and how level streaming were designed to operate!
Maybe people need to stop coping with the idea there isn't a solution without the studio changing their creative vision.
I'm confused as what you're getting at? You can't tell that the world streaming solution they currently have absolutely sucks?
You have no idea what the actual problem is or whether it would persist based on actual choices they've made. Using a different engine doesn't make things any different if the design they implemented in the first place is what caused the problem
I mean unless they strip the systems out of these middleware engines and replace them with Their own solutions lol. All we know is the game absolutely fails at basic features that middleware engines have had since 360/PS3. The LOD system is an abomination
As soon as they showed off coop it was over IMO.
I mean you're wrong, though I'd love to see these better 360/PS3 multiplayer RPGS. this is why it's tiring not talking to senior engineers; people think they can throw a different tool or "code" at something and the pixie dust will fix things.
It was over as soon as they showed off an open world game three years after they failed to complete their last traditional linear game lol I'm pretty sure I said so in the announcement trailer. it's crazy that people still were caught off guard
Do you want me to compile a list of games from that area with better streaming and LOD systems? I don't know what being a senior engineer has to do with it, a toddler can look at the end results. They would save significant time by employing middleware rather than constructing their own solutions from scratch on an engine which doesn't support them. Same reason why CD Projekt Red did it and they actually produce games people find technically impressive
No one's implying that. You're twisting people's words and not understanding they've shown absolutely no ability to design a performant engine for large open worlds. You can bring up how it's seemingly impossible, as if MMOs haven't existed and tackled the problem for years, or how Legends Arceus which didn't have online co-op still looked like shit.
Their foundation is trash. Building on top of it will only make things worse. You choose to narrowly focus on online multiplayer/co-op as if that alone is causing all the issues when it isn't remotely close to being the only technical shortcoming. Even if it wasn't a feature the game would still look poor, only with slightly better performance.
They couldn't even get the Wild Area to run well. You going to pretend there are no other games that have done 4 player online co-op in an area that small either?
Same here. I experienced a ton of slowdown, crashes and straight up bugs but I did complete the base game - vowed not to buy the DLC and glad I didn't.
I mean, the games had several patches throughout the year and definitely a lot was fixed. They're not going to completely overhaul the game and that's not what was promised. That ship had sailed, so I don't think they lied.
The game remains a technicall mess, it's just less of a technical mess now than it was at launch. I'm far more interested if Nintendo is taking a closer look at Pokémon games development altogether for future titles. Game Freak's current cadence of games isn't sustainable.
The game remains a technicall mess, it's just less of a technical mess now than it was at launch. I'm far more interested if Nintendo is taking a closer look at Pokémon games development altogether for future titles. Game Freak's current cadence of games isn't sustainable.
Don't forget that the wild area also had to drop res to very minimum