Pokemon Unite

[Tediz64]

I just started playing this game and have to say, I'm fairly content. I played LoL and a few other Moba(s) style video games but seeing a pokemon skin was actually quite refreshing. It was like when I saw Fire Emblem copy and paste Dynasty Warriors by Koei Tecmo. Fun game play and even better lore/story I can get behind since it is a game universe I like. 

So onto my main point for creating this thread. I'm looking to play with others on teams (and if you want to join a discord so we can real time talk to better sync up even better.)

I want to add people to my team and aim for the top or best. Anybody in? Also if you don't want to chat or are shy, then I hope you don't mind if we can still discord and I can just talk outloud to help coordinate in real time. 

[ciphertul]

The game is an odd thing, but the last team base competitive game I played was the Black Clover game when it came out… as you can guess I’m not much of a competitive player but how is the game?

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I tried it out, and it's not bad. Certainly the least technical MOBA I've played, but not so much that the game feels brain dead. All you have to manage is your health, your cooldowns, and deciding which move upgrades you want. So it's very easy to jump in with a new pokemon, though at the very least I recommend looking up what each move does in the menu before hopping in a game. This game is really snowball-y. Once one team has gained a level advantage and has grouped up, the challenge becomes pretty insurmountable even with coordinated strategies. Nearly every match I play ends in surrender, despite the match length being just ten minutes. The game's netcode is a real drag. Especially since your character physically stops during a lag spike. When I was playing in handheld mode, I thought at first it was joy con drift halting my movement, but it was actually lag which is equally unpredictable. I'm also not a fan of how I have no control over the targeting of auto attacks - even if the algorythm for what target needs to die first tends to be spot on when you break it down. I wish the game would give hard numbers on things. Not telling you damage values is one thing, but saying a move "drops special defense" without telling you by how much makes it hard to gauge how helpful that feature is.

I'm definitely surprised at the negative response to this game, especially pre release. I get it, Tencent and the Pokemon company together is a match made in hell, but when a game is free to play, there's no excuse not to see what's in it before dunking on it. The game has  a gacha/loot box thing - but so did the three other MOBAs I've played (League, Heroes of the Storm, Dawngate). The P2W elements surrounding item upgrades and reward limits are unfortunate, but I think I'll sleep soundly knowing I'll never be Esports competitive at this particular game. Maybe they'll update the game's economy in a way that f2P players will find more preferable. Sorry if I sound dismissive of these topics, but Pokemon is one of the most predatory, low effort franchises out there. It's most recent mainline title has two season passes, one each for the two versions of the game. How does pokemon still have two versions in 2020? I can only speak for myself, but I'd rather spend zero money on this game than spend ninety dollars on a full mainline pokemon experience, especially when there are fan games and pokemon clones that routinely beat what Pokemon is offering anyway. 

Edited August 2, 2021 by Glennstavos

[lenticular]

2 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

I'm definitely surprised at the negative response to this game, especially pre release. I get it, Tencent and the Pokemon company together is a match made in hell, but when a game is free to play, there's no excuse not to see what's in it before dunking on it. The game has  a gacha/loot box thing - but so did the three other MOBAs I've played (League, Heroes of the Storm, Dawngate). The P2W elements surrounding item upgrades and reward limits are unfortunate, but I think I'll sleep soundly knowing I'll never be Esports competitive at this particular game. Maybe they'll update the game's economy in a way that f2P players will find more preferable. Sorry if I sound dismissive of these topics, but Pokemon is one of the most predatory, low effort franchises out there. It's most recent mainline title has two season passes, one each for the two versions of the game. How does pokemon still have two versions in 2020? I can only speak for myself, but I'd rather spend zero money on this game than spend ninety dollars on a full mainline pokemon experience, especially when there are fan games and pokemon clones that routinely beat what Pokemon is offering anyway. 

I think that the existence of all the gacha, lootboxes and microtransactions is the excuse not to try the game before criticising it. I know that I have the type of personality that is susceptible to the sort of psychologically manipulative tricks that go into this sort of game. I've over-spent on them before. Not the sort of crushing over-spending that goes beyond what I could afford, but definitely more than I intended to spend. So these days, I mostly just won't touch any game that I can overspend on (and am extremely careful to always be monitoring myself with the few exceptions). There's certainly no way I'm going anywhere near Pokémon Unite.

That said, I do agree that Pokémon has always been a predatory franchise, and is only growing even more so recently. I'd normally prefer to buy a full priced game that play a "free"-to-play one, since a. there's a maximum upfront  cost that can never be exceeded and b. you know in advance exactly what you're getting for your money. Except that Sword and Shield managed to break both these things (with Pokémon Home and the version exclusive DLC respectively). So overall, yeah, I'm not at all surprised by the nosense in Unite. But I also don't feel that I need to play it to be able to call it out as nonsense.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

11 minutes ago, lenticular said:

I think that the existence of all the gacha, lootboxes and microtransactions is the excuse not to try the game before criticising it. I know that I have the type of personality that is susceptible to the sort of psychologically manipulative tricks that go into this sort of game. I've over-spent on them before. Not the sort of crushing over-spending that goes beyond what I could afford, but definitely more than I intended to spend. So these days, I mostly just won't touch any game that I can overspend on (and am extremely careful to always be monitoring myself with the few exceptions). There's certainly no way I'm going anywhere near Pokémon Unite.

Well then I'll say that the specific journalists/content creator mouthpieces I had in mind with my complaint were not people in your position. They had no personal stake, and typically no experience in the genre in question. They just saw the mechanics, the genre, and out came their hot take before release. And they're also just as welcome to their opinion, misinformed as it is. But I have to ask if we're going to paint with such broad strokes, where was the similar vitriol with Nintendo's last three mobile gacha games - one of which is also a pokemon game? I'll never understand how the internet decides which nintendo games you're allowed to criticize, and why.