Dexit discussion thread

[DrPumpkinz]

I just deleted a whole bunch of posts that were both off topic and strayed far outside the accepted limits of civility.

This thread is for discussing Dexit itself, not for discussing fan reactions to it, the behaviour of the community or anything like that. Tell us your reactions to the thing itself, not your reaction to other people's reactions. Don't be upset about other people being upset, because that'll upset more people and everything becomes too meta to be worth reading.

We good? Good. Move on.

Sorry about that. Toxicity is one of the few things that gets me very mad very quickly.

Anyway, something that I was saying in response to a now-deleted post is that while I was originally outraged by Dexit, and while I still don't think it should have happened in the first place, my opinion has cooled dramatically over the five or so months since its announcement, and that's partly because the prospect of a radically different competitive metagame is exciting. It'll be like exploring an alien planet.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Sorry about that. Toxicity is one of the few things that gets me very mad very quickly.

Anyway, something that I was saying in response to a now-deleted post is that while I was originally outraged by Dexit, and while I still don't think it should have happened in the first place, my opinion has cooled dramatically over the five or so months since its announcement, and that's partly because the prospect of a radically different competitive metagame is exciting. It'll be like exploring an alien planet.

Ehhhh. Didn't we have metas like 212 on RS and Pre-Bank XY?

If a meta reset was what they were aiming for (Likely not), then all they needed to say is: "VGC only supports the current regional dex."

It's not like they're even remotely interested in balance because *that* would be a lot of work and they absolutely don't want that smoke. They added a couple janky gimmicks too.
(G-Max Butterfree is the Hero of SnS. How lucky are you?)

 

[DrPumpkinz]

Ehhhh. Didn't we have metas like 212 on RS and Pre-Bank XY?

True, but the only limited meta I was around for was pre-bank SM, and that didn't get THAT much time to develop before bank dropped.

If a meta reset was what they were aiming for (Likely not), then all they needed to say is: "VGC only supports the current regional dex."

It's not like they're even remotely interested in balance because *that* would be a lot of work and they absolutely don't want that smoke. They added a couple janky gimmicks too.
(G-Max Butterfree is the Hero of SnS. How lucky are you?)

Absolutely. Dexit makes no sense for any of the balance Game Freak should care about. Nonetheless, it has a huge impact on the balance I care about.

Also, I thought of a better analogy than "alien planet". It's more like exploring a post-apocalyptic Earth. Familar, yet at the same time unrecognizable. A world born of tragedy and full of new possibilities.

 

[Siggu]

IMO the problem here lies in one thing, one word: Time.

Three years to develop a game on an entirely new console, with around 1000 characters plus everything else that comes with a Pokémon game, and splitting some workforce with both USUM and LGPE, is not enough time IMO.

Most important of all, though, is that they mentioned they had some difficulties adding all Pokémon in Sun and Moon. That should have been a warning that 3 years wasn't going to be enough - hiring more people wasn't going to fix anything. The game grows, but the development cycle doesn't. That's the problem.

Of course, this raises another question: CAN they have more time? Or is all the merchandise thing preventing them?

That being said...

If they went with their original intention of bringing USUM to the Switch instead of the 3DS, who knows how things could have unfolded?

 

[The Manifold Curiosity]

Assuming the 400 Pokemon dex from the leak is real, then Dexit is far worse than I thought it would be. On a normal game 400 mons in a regional dex is great as it gives solid replayability for the game. However, once you get to post game and realise almost every past legendary and starter is gone, that's when you will really feel the impact of Dexit. There are also plently of normal pokemon missing to ensure that everyone is missing some of their favourites.

I am astonised that with the exception of the chamander line (favourarism on full display) all of the previous starters are unavaliable. After all, its the starter that we naturally get most attached to and is used to get us though the game. I can imagine the horror on little kids faces once they realise that none of the gen 7 or bulbasaur/squirtle (from Lets Go) can move into sun/shield, and the amount of backlash that will create. If Pokemon Home does not allow for proper battles or a sword/shield dlc is not offered, then I could see an equal or greater level of rage that was shown when Dexit was first announced. Unless GF are very careful with their marketing (which they are generally terrible at), then Dexit could rock the Pokemon franchise to its foundations.

 

[Adamant Zoroark]

I look at Dexit from two different perspectives. As a VGC player, I’m very happy about never having to see Xerneas again for the foreseeable future (at least starting in January, when the format changes). As a lifelong fan of the series, though, Game Freak appears to be banking on the fact that their target audience (probably kids age 8 to 12) aren’t exactly active on social media.

From this point of view, why would GF care about Dexit? The people they’re marketing the games to aren’t using Twitter. This would seem to explain why all of their responses seem to miss the point altogether - they don’t expect their target audience to care and the fans who have been buying the games since the start can just go home.

Also announcing Dexit right after announcing Home, Outstanding Move

 

[Theorymon]

Wowza, Dexit ended up being more severe than I expected, that's over half the dex cut! Not only that, but a LOT of very popular mons got cut too, like Dragonite, Garchomp, Salamence, etc. Not even gen 1 really seems safe from it this time, which I guess means Gamefreak clearly didn't care about the modeling work that was done for Let's Go...

I think its sorta pathetic that the dex is smaller than XY's too. Like, I understand that game development is tough, especially for a studio not used to HD development, but having less catchable Pokemon than a 3DS game from 6 years ago is a really bad look. I was hoping dexit would AT LEAST justify the largest regonal dex in the series.

And of course, that's not even getting into the competitive implications of this (for example, it seems like a lot of stuff that'd check Excadrill are gone now, scarily enough). I'm sure I'll still have plenty of fun with competitive gen 8, but I can't help but feel very disapointed that dexit ended up being this severe.

 

[Codraroll]

I did a bit of back-of-the-envelope math, and it seems like 318 Pokémon from previous generations were retained in a form we've seen before (a few more have received regional variants, such as Weezing or Zigzagoon). 318/807 is just a hair below 40 %, which means that 60 % of all Pokémon, not counting different forms, were Dexited away. Three fifths of the roster as of USUM. That is... kind of disappointing.

 

[earl]

Wowza, Dexit ended up being more severe than I expected, that's over half the dex cut! Not only that, but a LOT of very popular mons got cut too, like Dragonite, Garchomp, Salamence, etc. Not even gen 1 really seems safe from it this time, which I guess means Gamefreak clearly didn't care about the modeling work that was done for Let's Go...

I think its sorta pathetic that the dex is smaller than XY's too. Like, I understand that game development is tough, especially for a studio not used to HD development, but having less catchable Pokemon than a 3DS game from 6 years ago is a really bad look. I was hoping dexit would AT LEAST justify the largest regonal dex in the series.

And of course, that's not even getting into the competitive implications of this (for example, it seems like a lot of stuff that'd check Excadrill are gone now, scarily enough). I'm sure I'll still have plenty of fun with competitive gen 8, but I can't help but feel very disapointed that dexit ended up being this severe.

Given 400 is the max, stuff like Mew and Meltan are still missing despite virtually being confirmed

 

[Dialganet2]

I've already expressed my thoughts about Dexit at lenght in the previous have-it-all topic, I'm here just because if I eventually purchase the game (still on the fence) I need as much technical information as I can get (on which GF is extremely stingy about) while going in as blind as possible. So I have a few answers I think I can get here without spoiling the game content too much (knowing what mons will NOT be in the games is one of the aspects I am basing my "to buy or not to buy" on. It's also a topic that widely interests me as a business developer IRL.

So for a TL:DR:

1. I think it was a bad move;
2. I think it was dictated on time constraints, self-imposed to boot;
3. Development problems to keep all mons is understandable, but not in the face of little-to-no disruptive improvements, only incremental ones;
4. There is no new feature that justifies it nor anything that a whole Dex would be a detriment on (for the time being).

Hence:

From this point of view, why would GF care about Dexit? The people they’re marketing the games to aren’t using Twitter. This would seem to explain why all of their responses seem to miss the point altogether - they don’t expect their target audience to care and the fans who have been buying the games since the start can just go home.

Also announcing Dexit right after announcing Home, Outstanding Move

Starting from last: a lot of AAA companies gets announcements completely wrong (see: Bethesda, EA, Bungie...), so that's not too surprising to me. A "push" based business approach (necessary in industries such as videogames with, comparatively, long product development cycles), combined with some boards having grown complacent with delivering okay-ish content (some of it is to blame on us gamers, myself first, who sometimes are okay with half-baked products and PR) has created in recent years a well-documented "try to get the slope as slippery as possible" attitude.

The first bit is a little more troubling, if we think about it. While is it true that the majority of the audience is not us dedicated fans who know the ins and outs of every single game, it is also true that we are the most passionate part of the playerbase, the most vocal, and the ones who have stuck with the franchise most. Why does this matter? Because the most loyal fans of some IPs are the ones more likely to influence outsiders whether to become new customers or not: gamers wondering "should I try this?" are likely to look to peer players that know the franchise well to base their decision on. Moreover, a bad impression by an informed player is far more likely to widespread than a good one (a 10:1 proven ratio). In the most remarkably similar case I can think of, the transition between Bungie's Destiny 1 and the launch of Destiny 2, Bungie ignored the most loyal fans in an effort to cater the game to literally everybody, and resulted in a 78% playerbase drop (as far as documented sources go), a half-assed game with no structure (my opinion, but a shared one), and a year worth of being the joke of the industry (very well documented). To get back on track (and never on the same level of success as Destiny 1), the game had to basically be rebooted. I just have the feeling that we are floating on similar waters as I type.
And it's not like having a 1:4 like to dislike ratio on your main E3 gameplay video is helping.

they don’t expect their target audience to care and the fans who have been buying the games since the start can just go home.

Watch out then, because the rest of the audience is more volatile. And a volatile audience is... well, volatile. Good luck with that.

Of course, this raises another question: CAN they have more time? Or is all the merchandise thing preventing them?

I'm misinformed, what is the "whole merchandise thing"? Just out of curiosity.

I am astonised that with the exception of the chamander line (favourarism on full display) all of the previous starters are unavaliable. After all, its the starter that we naturally get most attached to and is used to get us though the game. I can imagine the horror on little kids faces once they realise that none of the gen 7 or bulbasaur/squirtle (from Lets Go) can move into sun/shield, and the amount of backlash that will create. If Pokemon Home does not allow for proper battles or a sword/shield dlc is not offered, then I could see an equal or greater level of rage that was shown when Dexit was first announced. Unless GF are very careful with their marketing (which they are generally terrible at), then Dexit could rock the Pokemon franchise to its foundations.

Goodbye to all Apricorn Ball HA Starters I've bred en masse in Gen VII, I guess. And I'm not alone.

So, I don't know if any of these questions are out of place (if they are, just delete the post and I'm good), but I would like to know, if possible:
1) from the leaks,do we have any idea about how large the dex is (simply, how many mons are in the game)?
2) Do we have any idea, even a broad estimate, about how many of those are new?
Thanks and feel free to delete if off topic.

 

[Rarycaris]

So, I don't know if any of these questions are out of place (if they are, just delete the post and I'm good), but I would like to know, if possible:
1) from the leaks,do we have any idea about how large the dex is (simply, how many mons are in the game)?
2) Do we have any idea, even a broad estimate, about how many of those are new?
Thanks and feel free to delete if off topic.

Yes to both. I won't post details here, but pretty much the full dex has leaked.

 

[Codraroll]

1) from the leaks,do we have any idea about how large the dex is (simply, how many mons are in the game)?
2) Do we have any idea, even a broad estimate, about how many of those are new?

Brief answers in spoilers.

1) 400 Pokémon in total, barring Mythicals.
2) 82 new Pokémon, a mix between completely new Pokémon and regional variants of previous-gen Pokémon.

 

[VagueKatti]

My thoughts on Dexit are largely the same as most people who perceive it negatively - I strongly disagree with it, and don’t plan to support Pokemon in the future until Dexit is revoked (meaning I’m not buying Sword and Shield, or likely any more Pokemon games unfortunately).

With that extreme stance said, I would be willing to cut Dexit some more slack if Home was expanded to be more than Pokemon Bank 2. If it had greater functionality and had expanded features to the point that it could almost be considered its own game, I’d probably be more willing to play the games. Some features I’d like to see out of it include:

• Expanded Pokedex functionality. Having the Pokedex in Bank was good, but not sufficient in my opinion. Add in the Pokedex entries and all the functionalities that come with it in the mainline games, and all the common suggestions for additional functionality over the years - add in learnset data, evolution levels, egg moves, so on and so forth. Make it a resource that justifies the price instead of trying to sell paper strategy guides in 2019.
• Idle activities for Pokemon to do while you’re away from the app. Think Poke Pelago essentially, although instead of being rewarded in Beans, you can now be awarded in small increments of BP and various other important in-game items, primarily evolutionary items, Mega Stones, and Z-Crystals.
• Implement the main functions of the GTS here as well. I believe this speaks for itself.
• An online battling system. IIRC Sword and Shield have a ranking system now, so essentially just implement that. The meta on this app would have all Pokemon (with the typical banlist, of course) and all items available to essentially be a free roam. This satisfies both people who want a more restricted, new metagame under Dexit in the actual console game and those who just want the normal battling experience with the new additions made up until this point.
• Perhaps the most unrealistic idea on here, add in a Nature Reserve function. Not only do your own Pokemon inhabit the preserve, but there are also wild Pokemon that you can catch, along with trainers that can be battled. Essentially, this would act to both give your Pokemon a sort of home for them to inhabit to alleviate the guilt of leaving them benched along with providing a miniature main-line game experience to tide over fans of Pokemon currently barred from the most recent release.

While I can’t imagine that GF would actually use any of these ideas (I have very little faith in their direction for the series at the moment), these additions would probably go a long way to satisfying the fanbase and alleviate people’s major issues with Dexit. Pokemon aren’t made temporarily irrelevant under this potential Home, but rather are merely on the sidelines until they’re once again made available in the main series but still have things to do. They’d feel more like living, breathing creatures, rather than inaccessible data.

 

[MrHands]

So Dexit was huge and now the regional dex is only about 400?

Congrats Gamefreak on creating the first Pokemon game in decades with almost zero replay value. We've already been told there was about two hours of post game content so unless we get some ridiculous battle frontier style thing once the credits roll I'll be heading to Gamestop to get that sweet sweet Pokemon game trade in value.

Competitively this is also awful. Not only does it gut our options for fun gimmicks it also all but kills the number of playable tiers. OU, UU, maybe RU. There's like 5 ubers this gen so Ubers, NU, and PU are all in the toilet.

And Dexit aside who knows how problematic Dynamax will be to balance. Gen 8 looks awful.

 

[DreamPrince]

So Dexit was huge and now the regional dex is only about 400?

Congrats Gamefreak on creating the first Pokemon game in decades with almost zero replay value. We've already been told there was about two hours of post game content so unless we get some ridiculous battle frontier style thing once the credits roll I'll be heading to Gamestop get get that sweet Pokemon game trade in value.

Competitively this is also awful. Not only does it gut our options for fun gimmicks it also all but kills the number of playable tiers. OU, UU, maybe RU. There's like 5 ubers this gen so Ubers, NU, and PU are all in the toilet.

And Dexit aside who knows how problematic Dynamax will be to balance. Gen 8 looks awful.

To be fair though, GF doesn’t give a dang about Smogon metagames, since there all fan made. They probably only care about VGC and Battlespot ( which is gonna be renamed soon ) I’m also starting to wonder if Dexit was also done for a competitive reason: Blocking certain Pokémon like Landorus-T and Salamence were done because dominating VGC for years, and Dexit was just an easy solution to give other Pokemon the spotlight. Not that it’s the best solution mind you.

I won’t give my full thoughts on Dexit until I’ve played the games, actually.

 

[Siggu]

I'm misinformed, what is the "whole merchandise thing"? Just out of curiosity.

Anime, TCG, toys... that kind of thing. I just couldn't think of a better word.

 

[UninspiredLunch]

I see a lot of people online going into "I told you so" mode but I just find it all depressing. I saw someone say the obligatory Gen 4 remakes could end up having less 'mon available than platinum and I guess it's hitting me that this same thing will happen in every future game too...

 

[Dialganet2]

Brief answers in spoilers.

1) 400 Pokémon in total, barring Mythicals.
2) 82 new Pokémon, a mix between completely new Pokémon and regional variants of previous-gen Pokémon.

Wow, given we will not be able to transfer that is... very depressing. Certainly not buying on Day1, since I would need a brand new Switch as well, I will see if black friday has any golden offers or otherwise I'll wait and send my little message to GF.

Anime, TCG, toys... that kind of thing. I just couldn't think of a better word.

Got it. Even though that raises the question that if the side stuff is pulling the development cycle, they need to reassess how they do things.

 

[earl]

So Dexit was huge and now the regional dex is only about 400?

Congrats Gamefreak on creating the first Pokemon game in decades with almost zero replay value. We've already been told there was about two hours of post game content so unless we get some ridiculous battle frontier style thing once the credits roll I'll be heading to Gamestop to get that sweet sweet Pokemon game trade in value.

Competitively this is also awful. Not only does it gut our options for fun gimmicks it also all but kills the number of playable tiers. OU, UU, maybe RU. There's like 5 ubers this gen so Ubers, NU, and PU are all in the toilet.

And Dexit aside who knows how problematic Dynamax will be to balance. Gen 8 looks awful.

I mean, 400 is still substantial and not fully confirmed to be the total (mew and Melmetal are still MIA), emerald had about that much and has loads of replay value. And that 2 hour statistic is about the postgame episode like Rainbow Rocket Or Delta Episode, there’s other things like wild area expansion and a possible battle facility(ies) to account for.
We will likely get an OU, UU, RU, NU, possibility for more tiers if we tweak the cutoff percentages to make each tier smaller. Plus, even gen 2 technically has a PU so nothing’s impossible on the competitive side lol

 

[Count Bleck]

There was a video that came out a few months ago that has the best analysis on the subject ive seen, while looking at both sides. I highly reccomend everyone give it a lookover now that we have a thread on it. Warning: its quite long

 

[Mega Misdreavus]

The Battle Spot and the Wonder Surprise Trades will suffer with the lack of pokémon diversity.

I'm still in denial. Misdreavus and Phione are gone. :'(

 

[Zneon]

Aight so my opinion on Dexit,

A) So S&M have over 800 Pokemon in their games, now the reason why I don't like how Game Freak handled Dexit is because of the fact that 3ds had over 800 pokemon and they are moving onto the switch, which is objectively a more powerful console, but their reason at the time was fine, they wanted to add more polished and fluid animation.

B) And then you look 4 months from the gameplay footage, and the animation is just reused, more polished models, but the animation is exactly the same, so 4 months later and you see their most "solid" reason why they decided to cut more than half of the original Pokemon became null & void, and it really just looks like Game Freak used that as an excuse if anything.

C) The first thing I thought about in terms of how Game Freak can fix this problem is by doing patches, perhaps each patch cut Pokemon get restored in SW&SH, idk I feel like cutting mons were completely unnecessary, especially when they can reuse old models from the 3ds games, and build from there, I'm no Game Creator or any kind of that shit, but if they are going to reuse animation, then they can reuse models as well.

 

[Magcargo]

I don't care about dexit too much, but it frankly just comes across as a cop-out. From an early interviews I read, the idea I got for the decision behind dexit specifically being implemented in gen 8 wasn't because it was a highly time-consuming process to model and create new textures for all the Pokemon, but because this just seemed like a good time to move forward with the decision before it actually became impossible to bring over new Pokemon. This just comes across as lazy, especially since subsequent PR messages basically boiled down to the developers saying "sorry, but we feel this is the best decision for our game" which comes off more as a non-answer.

The sad thing is, dexit could have been a way to fix many of Pokemon's glaring design issues for the past 20 years. So many Pokemon have arbitrary evolution requirements. Bisharp and Hydreigon evolve at such absurdly high levels, they are practically unusable in the main campaign. Electivire and Magmortar have evolutionary requirements that no kid in their right mind would figure out without reading a guide. Magnezone and Glaceon have evolutionary requirements that necessitates certain locations in EVERY GAME! Retconning these evolution requirements (i.e. using a Thunderstone on Electivire) would have helped keep these Pokemon sustainable for both the developer (doesn't need to waste data on worthless items or locations) and the consumer (easier to figure out how to evolve Pokemon w/o guide and has more options). Tons of Pokemon have crappy movepools too, so taking time to give them more coverage / support options to fulfill their niche would be have been great. Mega evolution being retconned to be tied towards happiness would be a great way to keep it as a mechanic and tie it to the lore instead of shoehorning in a shop that just gives you the stones without any fanfare like Sun and Moon did. Its looking line none of these things will be fixed, which is a shame.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

I don't care about dexit too much, but it frankly just comes across as a cop-out. From an early interviews I read, the idea I got for the decision behind dexit specifically being implemented in gen 8 wasn't because it was a highly time-consuming process to model and create new textures for all the Pokemon, but because this just seemed like a good time to move forward with the decision before it actually became impossible to bring over new Pokemon. This just comes across as lazy, especially since subsequent PR messages basically boiled down to the developers saying "sorry, but we feel this is the best decision for our game" which comes off more as a non-answer.

The sad thing is, dexit could have been a way to fix many of Pokemon's glaring design issues for the past 20 years. So many Pokemon have arbitrary evolution requirements. Bisharp and Hydreigon evolve at such absurdly high levels, they are practically unusable in the main campaign. Electivire and Magmortar have evolutionary requirements that no kid in their right mind would figure out without reading a guide. Magnezone and Glaceon have evolutionary requirements that necessitates certain locations in EVERY GAME! Retconning these evolution requirements (i.e. using a Thunderstone on Electivire) would have helped keep these Pokemon sustainable for both the developer (doesn't need to waste data on worthless items or locations) and the consumer (easier to figure out how to evolve Pokemon w/o guide and has more options). Tons of Pokemon have crappy movepools too, so taking time to give them more coverage / support options to fulfill their niche would be have been great. Mega evolution being retconned to be tied towards happiness would be a great way to keep it as a mechanic and tie it to the lore instead of shoehorning in a shop that just gives you the stones without any fanfare like Sun and Moon did. Its looking line none of these things will be fixed, which is a shame.

Shoutouts to USUM Rufflet and Noibat.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

So.. in light of new events lemme list my top 10 pokemon and see who made it

​

Its pretty even for me. I really expected the list to be completely reversed. Starmie, chansey and azumarill are classics while staraptor is a fan favourite

Surprisingly all the gen 5 mons made it in. and azu chansey and raptor didnt. As for klefki i expected it to be cut so not surprised

I wonder how did your lists go guys? Id love to see how it ended up

I'd put an asterisk on Corsola. It got in. But at what cost? What did it experience?