I am lol, why the random jab
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Pokémon Presents - Pokémon Day 2025 - Pokemon ZA Info & Pokemon Champions Announced
- Thread starter DHR-107
- Start date
Sorry was a joke, didn’t mean for it to sound so pointed
It's okay I was just confused haha. I watched it again and gun to my head I think it's 30FPS with some animations dynamically going lower. Not an uncommon technique at a distance, games will lower the framerate of characters that are barely within view, but this game seems to be pretty aggressive with it.
Some general notes but not in-depth:
From "An Extended Look at Pokemon Legends: ZA" on Youtube
1:04 is either actual stutter or animation lowered, can't fully tell. because the only other motion is camera.
1:30 the Pokemon animations seem to be lower FPS than the camera to me, but also again could be that dynamic. Definitely higher FPS than other shots like the Bunnelby which IMO points to it.
1:35 is the biggest tell, the Fletchling and Bunnelby both go lower FPS. Not a stutter, to be clear, the animation seems to be playing at full speed but cutting frames. This is something I feel pretty confident on because the grass does not seem to stutter or slowdown, just the Pokemon, likely to accommodate the heavier load of the area fully loading.
1:50 when Chikorita attacks, there seems to be this kind of thing again, however I actually believe this is normal stuttering because the camera also seems to stutter. But more notably, the shadows under the tables are pretty low FPS as a seeming constant. This isn't that big of a loss because it's just smaller shadows, but in SV this was more noticable because this happened with much large shadow surfaces.
2:07 The trainer does the command and the texture on the ground has a pretty low framerate, the game might have a tiny stutter with the Rollout but I think that is just the intentional framerate of the texture movement.
2:13 is a good clip to see the animation framerate culling being aggressive as well, though I wouldn't be entirely surprised if there was a bit of normal stutter as well it's a bit hard to tell with not many other moving objects here. If the attack animations aren't dynamic, then it's likely normal stutter, as they seem to be slower as well.
2:17 the Flamethrower clip has normal stutter, the player character also has a bit of chug.
I lean towards battle attack animations having dynamic frames as well because it happens with almost every attack in this entire video. Could just be bad optimization, but I kinda doubt it.
That’s very fair, I get what you’re saying, and the last point is especially true.
My thing with VGC is there have been times when I’ve tuned in and watched tournaments where every team had the same Pokemon on it, and even looking at worlds top finishers, there aren’t that many different Pokemon.
Idk, I understand that there are many subtleties in the strategy, ie with Flutter Mane there are quite a few builds, but it’s disappointing how in a game with 600-700 potential options, at any given moment there are only 20-30 viable ones, especially in a format such as doubles where it feels like there should be a lot more creativity and unorthodox strategy.
The banlists make it kinda fresh every now and then. That reg with no paradoxes/legendaries was great.
My issue with VGC is that the presentation is fucking abysmal.
I'll post an example.
Peep the match timestamps
There's so much wrong here, it's actually hard to unpack.
Assuming sets are 30-ish minutes long, that's still a LOT of talking between sets. Besides that, only one match per round? Only ONE stream setup for a tournament with 1400 people?
The logistics are just laughable, and I've unironically seen small fighting game tournaments do better. They're spending too much on pointless fluff and not getting their product enough on stream.
Nah. Meganium will be getting its own signature move. All the starters have been recently
Oh I understand, but give it Flower Trick anyways.
And (I took some copium don't mind me,) hopefully it'll be a spread move that has increased bp under sun for doubles but is still good without it in singles normal play (I.E maybe 100 -> 200 BP under sun).
this is reaching levels of copium I didn't think was possible. this just isn't a reasonable assumption anymore with how much they're pushing lumiose as the setting of the game, it just doesn't make any sense for them to make such a big deal out of it if we are going to be able to go elsewhere, the idea of catching pokemon to bring to lumiose doesn't line up with how catching pokemon was presented in the trailer either
you need to stop clinging onto baseless presumptions and accept what you have been presented with
That would be super busted. Glacial Lance is 120 with no drawbacks, Eruption is 225 in Sun if you’re a full HP. Being slightly weaker than Glacial Lance out of Sun and slightly weaker than full power Eruption in Sun is over the top.
A more realistic broken signature move would be a Fairy type move that sets Leech Seed. Even by chance, setting Leech Seed while attacking would be massive for Meganium.
So I've been doing a dex tracker of Pokemon that are confirmed or likely to appear in the Lumiose City Pokedex. In case you're curious, here are the Kalos Pokemon families we have yet to see any sign of across both trailers:
-The starters
-Barbaracle
-Heliolisk
-The fossils
-Carbink
-Trevenant & Gourgeist
-Avalugg
-Xerneas & Yveltal
-The Mythicals
-The starters
-Barbaracle
-Heliolisk
-The fossils
-Carbink
-Trevenant & Gourgeist
-Avalugg
-Xerneas & Yveltal
-The Mythicals
Heliolisk seems like it'll be in similar areas as Krookodile and its evolutionary relatives. We already saw Sandile and Krokorok in sand areas so we know they have those, and Helioptile shares the same habitat as them. Barbaracle is a bit interesting because it's a coastal Pokemon that doesn't quite live in the water, but maybe it'll be in some aquatic zones in some way.
Tyrunt and Amaura are interesting though. Arceus had space-time distortions to pull Cranidos and Shieldon in from another time to justify their inclusion. With the context here though, they already have the tech to bring Amaura and Tyrunt back to life from Jaw/Sail fossils, on the other hand Crown Tundra and Indigo Disk from SwSh and SV just made fossil Pokemon run about in the wild. Maybe in this case that'll be the case: we'll just see numerous Tyrunt and Amaura running about in the wild because the population of revived Tyrantrum and Aurorus proliferated so now they're just part of the world. There should definitely be an icy biome for Amaura to thrive in considering we need one for Bergmite and Snover to show up in (Snover because Mega Abomasnow), so Amaura would be a natural inclusion for such a place.
Phantump and Pumpkaboo, alongside their evos, will probably be in, but a big question I have is if the Linking Cord from Arceus will return in this game. Since this is also a single player ARPG like Arceus was, trading won't be a major aspect of this game even if it's possible. Arceus introduced the Linking Cord for Machamp, Alakazam, Golem, and Gengar to be able to evolve them without the need to trade, so I do hope the item returns in Z-A, or at least a variant of it, that allows Phantump and Pumpkaboo to evolve into Trevenant and Gourgeist directly without the need to trade. Adding them to the tally of trade evos who can now have a game where they can evolve without the need of trading is gonna be icing on the cake (Spritzee and Swirlix I'm not worried about, I think it'll just be use Satchet and Whipped Cream on them directly here).
The starters and Xerneas+Yveltal will most certainly show up somehow. Chespin, Fennekin, and Froakie will either be mildly uncommon wild encounters or a special gift, but I am still betting on the prospect that Chesnaught, Delphox, and Greninja will get Mega Evolutions of their own in this game. Xerneas and Yveltal I can see being like Dialga and Palkia where they're not in any pre-release material but they show up in the story climax in sequence: maybe on top of Prism Tower, and in this case they're not only the beings of life and destruction but the harbingers of Mega Evolution energy, so I can see their powers being used to cause Mega Evolution to become unstable or something like that in the city.
The mythicals I imagine will be save file bonuses for previous games. Though I wonder who will be who. One for SV, one for SwSh, and one for LA.
Just a rundown of my thoughts on those we have yet to see.
Tyrunt and Amaura are interesting though. Arceus had space-time distortions to pull Cranidos and Shieldon in from another time to justify their inclusion. With the context here though, they already have the tech to bring Amaura and Tyrunt back to life from Jaw/Sail fossils, on the other hand Crown Tundra and Indigo Disk from SwSh and SV just made fossil Pokemon run about in the wild. Maybe in this case that'll be the case: we'll just see numerous Tyrunt and Amaura running about in the wild because the population of revived Tyrantrum and Aurorus proliferated so now they're just part of the world. There should definitely be an icy biome for Amaura to thrive in considering we need one for Bergmite and Snover to show up in (Snover because Mega Abomasnow), so Amaura would be a natural inclusion for such a place.
Phantump and Pumpkaboo, alongside their evos, will probably be in, but a big question I have is if the Linking Cord from Arceus will return in this game. Since this is also a single player ARPG like Arceus was, trading won't be a major aspect of this game even if it's possible. Arceus introduced the Linking Cord for Machamp, Alakazam, Golem, and Gengar to be able to evolve them without the need to trade, so I do hope the item returns in Z-A, or at least a variant of it, that allows Phantump and Pumpkaboo to evolve into Trevenant and Gourgeist directly without the need to trade. Adding them to the tally of trade evos who can now have a game where they can evolve without the need of trading is gonna be icing on the cake (Spritzee and Swirlix I'm not worried about, I think it'll just be use Satchet and Whipped Cream on them directly here).
The starters and Xerneas+Yveltal will most certainly show up somehow. Chespin, Fennekin, and Froakie will either be mildly uncommon wild encounters or a special gift, but I am still betting on the prospect that Chesnaught, Delphox, and Greninja will get Mega Evolutions of their own in this game. Xerneas and Yveltal I can see being like Dialga and Palkia where they're not in any pre-release material but they show up in the story climax in sequence: maybe on top of Prism Tower, and in this case they're not only the beings of life and destruction but the harbingers of Mega Evolution energy, so I can see their powers being used to cause Mega Evolution to become unstable or something like that in the city.
The mythicals I imagine will be save file bonuses for previous games. Though I wonder who will be who. One for SV, one for SwSh, and one for LA.
Just a rundown of my thoughts on those we have yet to see.
My bets:
Diancie - SV (crystals!)
Hoopa - L:A (portals seems to relate to distortion, though that could be closer to dynamax adventure type stuff too)
Volcanion - SwSh (steam gives off such a British industrial revolution kind of vibe. Steampunk anyone? But could also be L:A since it was set in the past and steam is an older technology)
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Good Point
Yes. My high spirits have returned. I’m excited for Z:A. The Pokemon look better.
You can’t tell me Pokemon should move on from Fire/Water/Grass when people are upset about a pattern extrapolated from one example not holding true (choosing two Gen 2 starters for a Legends game).
It’s also interesting to think about this: when was the last game people were like “this starter sucks and doesn’t match up well in the region.” I’d say Gen 5 but Delphox in Gen 6 gets brought up frequently. Other than that, post Gen 5 ppl usually just bring up how a starter is broken in competitive.
Also re Fire/Fighting a lot of that premise was built around not wanting a Fire starter to struggle against rock types imo.
Pretty much every game, and it usually is the grass starter lol.
It kinda died down when the regional dexes started having 400+ mons with the broken Exp. All that you can't turn off (Now with Exp. Charm for DLC players!), and Gyms that straight up suck.
Seriously, there's pretty much zero friction in these games nowadays.
Chiming in quickly, the issue is with how they organize the tournaments pretty much.
Since they go by *rounds*, every round cannot start before the previous one is finished. So es, if the streamed match is a quick 2-0 that goes in 5 mins, but there's that one Dondozo mirror still being played for 20 mins, next match cannot become until that one is over, as who you face is generally determined by your score (you usually have to match players with same score or 1 w/l difference).
(Plus the time it takes for the players to actually go register the score to the dedicated staff members)
Second, the players who will be on stream have to get notified, get to the stream, give their switches for the usual checks, then I believe nowadays they actually make QR codes and use those on staff's switches, then a bunch of other burocratic/settings bullshit that wastes even more time.
The wait time between matches is actually not that big if you look at other major online tournaments, es MOBAs or Heartstone or similar things. Es, League often has 15-20 mins pauses between two matches during major tournaments, between which analysts do analyst thing, they run sponsors, etc.
The reason they feel *that* big in VGC specifically is that often matches juts go by in mere minutes due to how fast paced VGC is, so the "time played vs time spend waiting" is very disproportionate. 5 min match then 30 min wait then 5 min match then 30 min wait does get frustrating for the viewer.
While I do agree the tournament organization (and honestly the format itself) could really use improvements, I am not sure how they could fix this issue without a major format overhaul in first place.
*Looks at Evo and other fighting game events*
I'm 100% sure there's a way to make this better, TPCI just needs to get their act together.
The fact there's only one stream channel for VGC events is already a very grim sign of poor organization.
Its a starter so it's fairly popular by default, but it's the least popular of all 27.
EVO doesn't have this issue because a fighting game match will be over in 5 minutes max, because even if someone manages to drag out every round to the timer it's still only 99 seconds 3 times.
Fighting games don't and can't have stall players.
Trying to speed this shit up is literally why every recovery move got its PP nerfed into the ground this gen.
This is why I mentioned a "format change".
It really is just a problem of the "having to wait until matches are over", since in day 2 when they are down to ro8 and later finals, they actually don't have those pause issues and matches go by one by one quickly.
"Here let's put 500+ people in same room and tell them every 30 mins who to fight against and where" is indeed a pretty outdated system and changing platform to Champions isn't going to fix that imo.
It really is just a problem of the "having to wait until matches are over", since in day 2 when they are down to ro8 and later finals, they actually don't have those pause issues and matches go by one by one quickly.
"Here let's put 500+ people in same room and tell them every 30 mins who to fight against and where" is indeed a pretty outdated system and changing platform to Champions isn't going to fix that imo.
Okay, I will try to lay out the argument a bit better. Because I think it is reasonable to expect the game to be more than Lumiose.
First, the space. Does the city, as shown, have enough room to include a natural habitat for all the Pokémon in the game? For instance, we've seen a sand pit where Sandile roam, but there are dozens of Pokémon that thrive in desert habitats, and there isn't room for them all in that sand pit. Nor is the park large enough to house a sand pit for each of them. There's a reason why previous deserts in Pokémon games have been quite a bit bigger than a city park. What we have space for here is essentially an enclosure for a couple of specimens for each Pokémon native to a habitat, but not a range where they can plausibly roam freely. Not to mention that the city also contains streetscapes outside of the Wild Zones, containing locals wandering around, cafés, shops, battle arenas, what have you. The buildings themselves take up a lot of space too. That leaves very little space for the Wild Zones and all the Pokémon in them.
And the Wild Zones appear to be tiny too. In the "extended look" trailer, we get to see Wild Zones 1 and 2 almost in their entirety. Wild Zone 1 appears to comprise a section of the outer ring road, maybe a hundred meters long - you see the gates on both ends, and the fence on the hubward side. It is approximately the size of a football field, and contains Bunnelby, Fletchling, and Scatterbug. Wild Zone 2 seems to comprise only the circular Vert Plaza, likewise, Wild Zone 8 is Jaune Plaza. Looking at the map, we can reasonably expect another Wild Zone in the green district of the city, but it can't be substantially bigger than the others. That is very little space to explore, even if there are 15-20 such Wild Zones in total. The Obsidian Fieldlands, the starter map for Legends Arceus, is larger than all of Lumiose City put together, and it is devoted entirely to nature.
Secondly, the lack of distinctive habitats. The cityscape is nice, but it lacks variety. You have parks, boulevards, streets, and rooftops, all in the same climate. It is repetitive, even if the architecture and the colours of the roofs varies slightly from district to district. Will the entire game be about going from park to samey park and catch Pokémon in football-field-sized areas? Will Pokémon that naturally belong in volcanoes, deserts, and icy caves all just be found among the bushes and street furniture, and that's it? Even the Legendary Pokémon?
Third, in combination of the above, it doesn't seem reasonable that they would willingly throw away the grand vistas and diverse environments that have defined previous Pokémon games, just for the sake of making a game in a rather monotonous urban setting. Lumiose City is not that big or that exciting on its own. It is also worth noting that both the development team and the console have proven themselves capable of handling games and map areas that were much larger in scope than this. Again, Legends Arceus had five huge maps, each with distinct and varied environments, each easily bigger than Lumiose City, plus the central hub area of Jubilife Village. So why skimp on the game features this time? Why make a game that's all about one city, instead of a game that plays to all the strengths of the Pokémon brand?
Fourth, the existence of a rather prominent gateway to the city. The ticket booths is the first thing we see in the trailer as the camera pans out of the train station (a shot that was omitted from the trailer on YouTube, for some reason - it's there in the Pokémon Presents stream, but the separate trailer upload begins with the next shot). The building is clearly a landmark too, as it is one of very few buildings in the city with a spire. That means you are meant to find it again. It doubt it is just meant to be the game's starting point, equivalent to that beach where you wake up in Legends Arceus, which you visit once and then forget. This is a place you revisit, and the only reason to do so is to leave the city. The official site even includes a shot of the main character at a train station, indicating an element of travel - granted, this could just be from the intro cutscene. It is also worth noting that Hotel Z, your base of operations while staying in Lumiose, is located only a block away from this train station. It is behind the Fletchinder and Fletchling on the map.
All in all, the game needs more than streets and parks to captivate players. There isn't quite enough room in the city to provide content for an entire game, and there seems to be incidations about going elsewhere.
That being said, I do see the counter-argument to all of this. Kanto as seen in the Let's Go games was also very small by modern game standards, populated entirely by the original 151 Pokémon, and very monotonous as far as environmental diversity goes. Its scope was very limited. But that was also a recreation of a game designed for the Game Boy, and heavily marketed as a throwback to that simpler time.
So yeah, I think Lumiose City will be the primary focus of the game, probably very important to the gameplay, but that there are other locations, which mostly consist of natural environments in the same vein as Legends Arceus. Like Jubilife Village of that game, Lumiose City will contain most of the story beats, the Pokémon storage, and also the catching tutorial (Wild Zone 1), but I'm fairly certain we will see the world outside as well. Probably not other cities, though.
The actual duration of the matches has no effect on this. It might even make things a bit easier since there's more time to communicate. It's a 3-Day event already, there aren't any real delays.
I can kinda see it.
I don't know if the format itself is a problem since I'd need to be in the venue to know because this thing is a black box for all we know. It does seem to be running on time for the most part though, so I don't know if there would need to be a format change.
Apparently, pools are in a round-robin format, and pretty much every sports fan can tell you these matches can be run parallel to each other.
With that said, it really isn't a stretch to want more stream setups so the different pools and matches can be streamed concurrently, and it would definitely help with all the downtime in the earlier rounds. By now, we're way off-topic though, since Champions itself isn't going to fix this.
You've missed my point a bit, fighting game round-robins don't have a different setup it's just that the difference in length between the minimum and maximum length of the matches is so much smaller that it's not noticeable.
As for the stream setup? Remember that SwSh allowed you to spectate other people's battles directly in-game. They didn't need more than one stream setup cause they could just have the streaming Switch start spectating someone else. Then SV removed that feature, and there's no point for them to fix it now when they can just bring spectator mode back in Champions.
One thing that struck me that I'm quite curious about is the boss fights.
This game is once again a single player Action RPG, but unlike Arceus where the player (our human character) was the one performing ARPG elements such as dodging and throwing and whatnot and moving around, in this case the Pokemon is the one performing action stunts during a given battle, such as dodging and whatnot.
In Arceus, while there were wardens who were boss fights in the Pokemon vs Pokemon aspect of Trainer battles playing to Arceus's battle system, the player's ARPG capabilities were put to use in boss fights against Noble Pokemon, where the player had to dodge the Noble Pokemon's pattern of attacks and throw balms at them, and occasionally battle them with a Pokemon when their guard was down, triggering them into a down state where you could throw Balms and deal more damage.
This time around, aside from the contrast in setting, the ARPG elements are more applied to the Pokemon themselves, who are the ones doing the dodging and action and whatnot. While this will apply to both wild encounters and Trainer battles, I'm curious as to how this will ultimately translate to unique boss battles for Z-A. Will the major boss fights akin to Nobles this time be special Trainers who are talented at Mega Evolution? And maybe battling a Mega will test our skills against roughly five of them at least (one for each Plaza)? If that's the case, how will the ARPG elements of this game's battle system be put to special use in the boss fights? Nobles took very special advantage of the ARPG elements we could use with the player character in Arceus, and since this time we're doing it with our own Pokemon, how will the boss fights of this game take special advantage of that?
It'll be interesting to find out what the boss fights are like, from both a flavor perspective and a gameplay perspective.
This game is once again a single player Action RPG, but unlike Arceus where the player (our human character) was the one performing ARPG elements such as dodging and throwing and whatnot and moving around, in this case the Pokemon is the one performing action stunts during a given battle, such as dodging and whatnot.
In Arceus, while there were wardens who were boss fights in the Pokemon vs Pokemon aspect of Trainer battles playing to Arceus's battle system, the player's ARPG capabilities were put to use in boss fights against Noble Pokemon, where the player had to dodge the Noble Pokemon's pattern of attacks and throw balms at them, and occasionally battle them with a Pokemon when their guard was down, triggering them into a down state where you could throw Balms and deal more damage.
This time around, aside from the contrast in setting, the ARPG elements are more applied to the Pokemon themselves, who are the ones doing the dodging and action and whatnot. While this will apply to both wild encounters and Trainer battles, I'm curious as to how this will ultimately translate to unique boss battles for Z-A. Will the major boss fights akin to Nobles this time be special Trainers who are talented at Mega Evolution? And maybe battling a Mega will test our skills against roughly five of them at least (one for each Plaza)? If that's the case, how will the ARPG elements of this game's battle system be put to special use in the boss fights? Nobles took very special advantage of the ARPG elements we could use with the player character in Arceus, and since this time we're doing it with our own Pokemon, how will the boss fights of this game take special advantage of that?
It'll be interesting to find out what the boss fights are like, from both a flavor perspective and a gameplay perspective.
Chikorita is absolutely not the least popular starter ever, lots of people like it, even before Z-A it got marketed a fair amount and iirc it's even super popular in Korea (it got first place in a favorite pokemon poll they did!). Tepig and Chespin are by far the least popular starters of their respective types (which makes me sad because I love them), being the only two not to make their regions' top 30 in the 2020 Pokemon of the Year poll. Least popular Water starter is more tricky: If you just consider the west it's probably Sobble, but not unlike Chikorita I think Japan likes it a lot. Quaxly or Popplio perhaps if you're looking overall?
People forgetting that they literally just used Meganium on the boxart of a spinoff like 4 years ago lol
Yeah, the line isn't the most popular, but it's popular outside of Reddit Frankly