Every Pokémon game seems to be worse than the last, and every single one breaks sales records. I’m very grateful they haven’t gone the same route with their other IPs, but the financial temptation must be immense.
Idk, it sure seems like they have been phoning it in. At least if you compare to their quality 20 years ago.
You don't get the Pokemon community then.
Each generation of Pokemon fixes the meta. The overwhelming Dragon-meta that was in Diamond/Pearl was fixed by Fairy Types by X/Y (which also improved the weakest Diamond/Pearl type: Poison by making Poison strong vs Fairy). The difficult "breeding" mechanics as the community learned to use (and abuse) IVs was fixed by adding in NPCs that helped figure out IVs, and items (Destiny Knot) to figure that out. Then Bottlecaps and Mints were added to make other details easier. Etc. etc.
As Toxic-Spikes/Spikes/Stealth Rock teams grew more powerful in a stall environment, the Pokemon Team added Mega-evolutions and other powerful mechanics to sweep / push the game back into an offensive style, rather than degenerating into a defensive stallfest.
Every generation of Pokemon makes it easier-and-easier to build a competitive team and join the online competitive community. Every generation the Pokemon team demonstrates an understanding of the online competitive meta.
And even recently, the Pokemon Anime has acknowledged what the community has figured out. Gengar / Dragonite are powerful and popular, and in the show are part of Ash's championship team. Ash's opponents used similarly "competitive" Pokemon, showing that the anime-writers are paying attention to the in-game meta and online competitive environments.
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Its a holistic experience. The game designers are responsive to the community, and seem to have leeway into acknowledging the community experience inside of the show.
That's more or less what people want. Game designers that acknowledge the community and tailor the game for the community. Yes, Pokemon isn't too mainstream, its not like Legend of Zelda or Skyrim. Its... its own thing. There is a large amount of children playing who remain happily ignorant to the subtle details of the metagame. But there's also a large amount of adults who have played Pokemon for the last 20+ years, and its kind of awesome that the Pokemon company remains responsive to these subtle metagame issues / high-competitive metagame issues.
Nintendo (and the Pokemon Company) aren't afraid to cater to the needs of the community its built up. They actually cultivate it and help it grow.
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If you're not the type to understand why a few weekends ago the 5x perfect IV Ditto raid-boss was such a big deal, Pokemon probably isn't for you.
