Context: Pocket Pair is spreading their devs thin on three unfinished early access games (Craftopia, Palworld, Never Grave) and capital G Gamers are crying
Palworld is $30 on steam. Itās a litttle expensive for an indie game but Iāve gotten my moneyās worth already. Itās not perfect but I wasnāt expecting a AAA title. Honestly Iām just impressed multiplayer works as well as it does. I also appreciate that they didnāt shoehorn any awful cutscenes in. No story > bad story. It also runs pretty great, even though my computer is older and Iām using proton/linux.
Compare PokĆ©mon scarlet, $70. Laggy. Unpolished. Missing features from previous games. Unskippable cutscenes with characters just standing around talking to each other. Boring basic story. Nothing to do at the end of the game (no battle tower). No new fun features (the open world feels empty and ugly, compare BotW/TotK). Itās too open, there is no Mt Moon to get lost in.
Even if the team makes no further improvements Iām still having fun with palworld. I donāt see myself ever replaying scarlet.
Right, and is OP saying buying another Pokemon game will make gamefreak actually put effort in? Like why would it work the 10th time when it failed the first 9 times.
Gamefreak doesnāt put effort in because they donāt have to. Fans will continue to buy them regardless of quality.
Are you assuming Iām buying pokĆ©mon games?
Iām playing stuff I actually enjoy like Cassette Beasts. Iām hyped for the upcoming Beastieball too. I tried TemTem but it felt too much āMobileā for me for a lack of better terms.
Iām pointing out that itās funny to me that fans of Palworld got angry at the very thing PokĆ©mon fans got angry at Gamefreak for (Namely, spreading their team thin on Little Town Hero)
Ahhh I misunderstood. in the palworld fansā defense, I imagine gamefreak seeing a game that uses elements of their games but in an innovative way get a huge game l fanbase might convince them to change their strategy a little bit.
Fewer people buying Pokemon games would help as well, obviously, but if sales went down at the same time a game they see as a competitor gets real big, that might actually kick their butts in gear.
Yea Iām with sheeple
I donāt think my buying habbits are going to communicate anything to a company. I buy what looks fun to play. āRealā pokemon games look like a worse and worse buy, and thatās just how it is. I donāt expect them to change their development cycle at all.
At best, I hope Palworldās (and cassette beastās) success attracts better companies to make their own version. If this lights a fire under gamefreakās butt I will be extremely (and happily) surprised.
I really hope Pocket Pair is in it for the long run and carefully manage their success to create new popular series. However, the cynic in me thinks theyāre going to release as many titles in early access as they can before people realize none of them are ever being finished by the devs who are now multimillionaires and have no financial incentive to continue.
Unless they continue to make blunder for years to come, at this point i doubt they will fold. They already becoming one of the highest selling indie game within one month and made millions to last several years, they can just hire more.
And if they running out of money they can just fire everyone down to the core team and cancel the other game and focus on Palworld, write an āiām sorryā essay, and continue their day.
Iām like 99.9999% sure that craftopia was an initial attempt at something similar to palworld, it has all the catching mechanics, the skills the pets use, the crafting machines, and their last major update was to add a āseamlessā open world. I think they eventually decided that theyād be better served to jump from unity to unreal and just make a whole new game instead of improving craftopia.
I just wish they were more honest about it. I think theyāre still afraid to call it what it was and so they are pretending to care about craftopias future.
Toxic fans find new straws to grasp at, majority of gaming population donāt care and keep having fun with new game. More news at 11
Iām 60 hours deep on Palworld less than two weeks in while maintaining a full-time job. I donāt buy games to make statements, I buy them because theyāre fun to play. And this particular one really is a ton of fun to play. Yes, theyāre clearly ripping off pokĆ©mon and breath of the wild and elden ring, and Iām sure a few other games. But itās a lot of fun nonetheless.
modern games have been underwhelmimg and too expensive for too long. my switch just sits unused in a corner, while i happily play games from my favourite franchises on my (hacked btw) 3DS.
although i imagine games like tears of the kingdom being great fun to play, iām not paying 50ā¬ for a physical copy.
Iāve also recently regressed to older games. Itās been FFVIII and PokĆ©mon Heartgold for the past several months.
itās impressive how bad pokemon games have gotten. i played sun/moon on 3DS (which isnāt even the best one on that system), and later sword/shield on switch. itās just the exact same game with slightly better character customization and worse story.
iām in the process of playing all ace attorney games because iām just obsessed with that franchise. 3 of the 6 original games and a spinoff are on switch. the rest of the 11 games are playable on the 3DS, partly through emulation.