(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

[Hugin]

iirc the only physical Water moves it learns are Waterfall and Aqua Tail? (Aqua Jet is an egg move so that couldn’t just be asspulled)

Waterfall isn’t found until Ice Path - plus c’mon it’d be even stronger than it already is than the others at that point. I mean c’mon Crunch/Ice Fang/Thrash at level 32 off 100+ base attack is good enough.

Honestly, Surf would have been the right move. The rival should have it by that point in the story, but it balances the higher power by coming off the base 79 SPA. Water Gun at that point in the game makes the rival look incompetent, even if it's basically irrelevant for Gatr to have a dead moveslot.

But of course, GF's approach to movesets and specifically TMs/HMs has always been weird.

 

[pika pal]

I find it kind of funny how much better Koraidon and Miraidon are than almost every other available Uber (so barring AG Calyrex-S), and they kind of show two forms of min-maxing: Koraidon being given so many traits it can play competently that you can't prepare for everything it does, while Miraidon specs so hard into the Electric Typing advantages that the response is narrow but REALLY needed.

Gen 9 seems to have quite a bit of that sort of building: Gholdengo is another case of "I can do whatever I want," Flutter Mane just has every advantage you could ask for a Pokemon in its role, and Iron Hands in VGC similarly goes "I do one thing but do it so well you can't disrespect it"

 

[Hugin]

The focus for evil teams on Dark/Poison mons. It made sense for Team Rocket in Gen 1/2 as basically corrupt businessmen, so pollution and evil were normal. But every gen since that has given the evil grunts a bunch of Grimer and Zubat clones alongside a generic dark-type, even when it doesn't make sense. Flare, Magma, Aqua, and Galactic all should focus on other types almost exclusively, but nope, it's Poocheynas and Croagunks as far as the eye can see.

 

[R_N]

I think the most baffling Galactic Pokemon remains the wurmple line

Like okay 2/5ths of that line is poison type but also...you have so many poison types as it is. And you're still throwing out coccoons and Beautifly.

At least when these teams pick up the early "rodent" there's only 2 stages and the final stage is usually on the annoying half of mediocre, or kind of has an aesthetic niche.

Wurmple just feels considerably lesser than Rattata or Poochyena

 

[Eriorguez]

And Mightyena was annoying in RSE because of that Intimidate, so it wasn't too bad.

Still, Sturdy 'mons in antagonist teams are a chore.

 

[AztecCroc]

Zacian should had been the Fighting one, Zamazenta should had been the Fairy one.

And, speaking of mascot typings, Miraidon should have had a different secondary type. Dragon/Psychic could have worked nicely, as now we have 2 Dragon/Electric version mascots, AND 2 Dragon/Electric paradoxes.

Dragon/Psychic would have given it a type advantage over Koraidon, which they probably wanted to avoid. Also that would have meant the Future paradoxes would have used Psychic Terrain instead of Electric.

Galactic

Galactic's entire thing was not focusing on a specific type. Also Crogunk is prevalent in Galactic because it's the lower stage of Saturn's ace, not because it's a Poison-type. 90% of the Pokémon used by Galactic Grunts are the lower forms of the bosses' aces (Glameow, Stunky, Croagunk) or Bronzor and Zubat/Golbat who are used by all the Admins (and Cyrus has a Crobat, but not Bronzong). Platinum adds Murkrow and Houndour to some Grunts, but Cyrus has always had Honchkrow and Platinum gave him Houndoom. The only line used by the Grunts that isn't by one of the Admins is the Wurmple line.

 

[Worldie]

Since i'm feeling very polemic today, I want to complain less about Pokemon and more of how obnoxious Pokemon communities (no i'm not talking of smogon for once) have become over the years.

The latest episode with Palworld's release is slowly getting on my nerves to the point I've been avoiding anything that remotely mentions Pokemon in last days.

If you're not familiar with what Palworld is, it's a game that recently released in Early Access, it's basically Ark but with with ""Pokemon"" instead. A survival game where instead of dinosaurs you can capture, enslave and butcher creatures inspired by pokemon (and in fact, some are clearly parodies of Pokemon). It has hit some record sales on Steam so it's about all over the gaming news.

Why am I annoyed? Regardless of if the game is good or not (I think it is, but like all Alpha games, it may or may not ever be finished), wherever you go you expecially on Twitch or most gaming-related news feed will find one or more people/articles talking about
- How comes Nintendo havent sued them?
- This is better than Pokemon!
- The competitor pokemon needed that will kill them!
etc etc

Now, the level of entitledness of Pokemon "fans" is really something. Not only Nintendo does not own "monster collector" genre copyright, but Nintendo only ever sued or took action on games blatantly using the actual Pokemon mark like Pokemon Uranium. Other monster collectors like TemTem or Nexomon never had any issue, for obvious reasons.
It's also a completely different genre aimed at a completely different playerbase, unless someone wants to make me believe that you'll have a 7 years old play a game where you capture, murder and eat humans and "pokemon" alike and then make them work as slaves in your base.

And yet, every 3 sentences anywhere in any gaming feed I go, there's the same threads. The same articles. Because "Pokemon" must be the only monster collector franchise. You cannot have other games that do it. Burn Digimon. Burn Yokai Watch. Burn Palworld. Burn YuGiOh while at it. Only Pokemon must exist, it's the law.

However, Pokemon is at same time apparently a trash company that can't produce good games, but also the only company allowed to make monster collector games. The Duality of the Pokemon fan. GameFreaks makes shit games and they should have someone else do them, but as soon as someone else does it, they need to be marked as heretics and killed on the spot for tainting the genre.

 

[R_N]

Seems weird that 2/3rds of the things you list are people hoping for this to be the Pokemon killer and then immediately pivot to how the Entitled Fans are wanting to kill Palworld

It also like...it seems like they are using some of the models of Pokemon Like there's not "salazzle, but EDGEY" its "i am prett ysure that's explicitly the salazzle model being modified". The box art has what looks like a modified Mewtwo model. There's face textures that seem 1:1 taken from other games rather than just inspired by them.
There's enough of a stink made that I do wonder if Nintendo might actually look into it deeper, even if nothing comes out of it . Pretty sure the dumbass creator is a big AI guy so wouldn't surprise me if that just funnels more into what stuff gets shoved into an AI copyright lawsuits rather than the game specifically.

Also like....yeah of course all the articles are going to make Pokemon comparisons. It's absolutely leaning into Pokemon But Edgey. Pokemon is by far & away the most notable monster collecting franchise. It's comparisons that are going to be drawn, regardless of how much you care about the franchises involved.

 

[Worldie]

Also like....yeah of course all the articles are going to make Pokemon comparisons. It's absolutely leaning into Pokemon But Edgey. Pokemon is by far & away the most notable monster collecting franchise. It's comparisons that are going to be drawn, regardless of how much you care about the franchises involved.

I don't mind the comparisons per se. I am annoyed by them, but I am used to them.
Kinda like nowadays every time a JRPG with either a calendar or some kind of social link comes out, there's the Persona 5 comparison, or when a Moba comes out, suddently it has to be compared to Dota2 or League.

The game is *clearly* a Pokemon parody, one of the thumbnail images is basically a bunch of not-Wooloos with machineguns, and a lot of the designs are clearly Pokemon inspired.

What does annoy me the most is how people quickly demand that it's taken out (it won't, if there was even the slight chance it would be, Microsoft would not have let it on gamepass, Microsoft may be greedy but not stupid) because it dared make fun of Pokemon.
How dare they touch our beloved franchise (that we also apparently hate?)

 

[Just A Seaking]

However, Pokemon is at same time apparently a trash company that can't produce good games, but also the only company allowed to make monster collector games. The Duality of the Pokemon fan. GameFreaks makes shit games and they should have someone else do them, but as soon as someone else does it, they need to be marked as heretics and killed on the spot for tainting the genre.

Your conclusion here is really just fundamentally flawed. You're assuming that A. Pokemon fans are all one monolith, which is not true; B. that you can't like something and be critical of it at the same time, which is not true; and C. that having issues with Palword means that you deny the right of other monster collectors to exist outright, which is not true.

I want to focus on that last part in particular, because frankly I think you're distorting what the discourse over Palworld is about. Palworld absolutely is heavily derivative of Pokemon, and there's no way around that fact. Other monster collectors like Digimon or Yokai-Watch don't face accusations of plagiarism because they aren't so visibly similar to Pokemon designs. Here's a few examples (images not made by me, and I don't know the source for the first two; if someone does know, please let me know!):

(That IGN image is also really crappy journalism, btw; describing any criticism or pointing out any similarities is not "coming with a vengeance". come on.)

And yes, R_N is correct that the CEO of Craftopia, Takuro Mizoba, is not only a big advocate for AI, but is on the public record as having said he's interested in its usage specifically for avoiding copyright:

I do want to be 100% clear: I am not accusing Palworld of using AI art, because we do not have any evidence that this is the case. However, it's also undeniable that Craftopia as a company is highly invested in the usage of AI art, and that Palworld's designs are very similar to Pokemon's. Surely it's reasonable to at least raise an eyebrow at this, and even setting aside the AI usage, Palworld is absolutely worth of critique for using monster designs with such strong similarities to established work. Acting as if criticisms towards Palworld are just puritanism on the part of Pokemon fans is just not accurate to what people are actually talking about.

 

[Worldie]

Just A Seaking first and foremost I appreciate the in-depth post, I wish more of the "big pokemon communities" did their homeworks instead of just peperaging on the internet.

That said, as you probably figured, with "community" i'm just speaking about the big echo chambers that are the big reddits, the big twitch chats, the various clickbait big sites, etc. It's pretty obvious that people with more than 3 braincells won't just go throwing death threats to GameFreaks for not including their favourite in a game, but as you know, that happened, and this is a similar situation, where the big angry pointless noise is so big that it covers the few voices of reasons.

My opinion of "Using AI art" is that I don't care. I know that the CEO of the company is a big advocate of AI art (incidentally learned it from one of the articles about Palworld) and I'm like "so?". What if they used AI art to generate some of their creatures? We're talking of a 20 bucks game that isn't pretending to be the next Skyrim and that somehow managed to even have more quality than the real Pokemon games or certain recent AAA 70 € releases of last year.
Many of their creations are blatantly and intentionally pokemon parodies, it's the whole point. As I said, one of their thumbnails is literally a bunch of "not-wooloos" with machineguns.

What annoys me is the entitlement that "only Pokemon can do monster collection".
Using inspired or even """stolen""" (with a lot of commas cause they arent, they're still different enough, your typical "copy the homeworks but make them a bit different" meme) isn't exactly uncommon in indies and minor companies, and in worst case they get asked to change some of the designs (es; Vampire Survivors, one of the biggest indie sellers of last year, had assets blatantly stolen by Castlevania, they got demanded to change them by the copyright owners, and they changed them and that was it).
The entitlement that "hah anyone could do a better Pokemon game" and then as soon as someone does another game that features pokemon-looking creatures, suddently they must be set on fire and *pokemon fans seek vengeance*. But I thought Pokemon design sucked and were uninspired? That the design of last 5 gens were lazy and boring and even a five year old would do better?
Even this very thread is full of people complaining of designs and how anyone can do better, and of how people wish other companies tackled the monster collecting genre. Why is it suddently a heresy that someone else does?

AND the entitlement that apparently this game must exist specifically to kill Pokemon.
Why exactly? It's not a competitor, it's not even same genre. TemTem if anything is a direct competitor since it's literally same game type, turn based monster collector battle game mainly focused on PvP battles.

You don't see any other franchise being THIS anal when it comes to parodies or clones. At least, I don't recall having ever seen other fanbases manage to be at same time super possessive and derogative of the franchise, which as I said, at same time both sucks and is also the very best for some reason.

 

[okispokis]

It also like...it seems like they are using some of the models of Pokemon Like there's not "salazzle, but EDGEY" its "i am prett ysure that's explicitly the salazzle model being modified". The box art has what looks like a modified Mewtwo model. There's face textures that seem 1:1 taken from other games rather than just inspired by them.
There's enough of a stink made that I do wonder if Nintendo might actually look into it deeper, even if nothing comes out of it . Pretty sure the dumbass creator is a big AI guy so wouldn't surprise me if that just funnels more into what stuff gets shoved into an AI copyright lawsuits rather than the game specifically.

Exactly. I would not have a problem with PalWorld if it wasn't just blatantly stealing some of its designs from Pokemon. Sure, it might be legal, but legal is not the same thing as okay. There are already multiple other monster collection franchises out there, and they manage to do their thing WITHOUT ripping off someone else for their designs.

Honestly, I have been really disgusted with how flippant some people seem to be about these copied designs, and how it "doesn't matter". Despite how corporate TPC is nowadays, Pokemon designs don't just spontaneously appear in a corporate lab. Individual artists have to spend hours, days of their life coming up with each design, individual artists who are not exactly seeing the lion share of those billions Pokemon rakes in. So to say that their work being blatantly copied like this "doesn't matter" is really disrespectful to those artists, and something that I, as an aspiring creative myself, cannot tolerate.

"But Gen 1 copied Monster Quest!" So what? One, that does not somehow make this instance of copying morally sound. Two, a lot of Pokemon's design team, even going back to the Sinnoh and Unova mons that have been most blatantly copied by PalWorld, were not the same team who made Kanto's PokeDex; even if the original games were stealing (a claim I question given a bunch of the examples I've seen are either basic enemy ideas that would naturally overlap or laughably flimsy), why do the newer Pokemon artists "deserve" to be punished for that by having their designs plagiarized? This line especially rings that this whole debate is really about people getting carried away with how much they hate modern Pokemon and the way the franchise has been run, very much an Enemy of my Enemy Fallacy. Just feels like there's this undercurrent of "I hate modern Pokemon, so it's good that they're getting ripped off".

As someone who's trying to make art, it's honestly unsettling to think that someone else could rip off my work for a quick buck, and the Internet would actively applaud them for doing so. It's not morally wrong for you to play or support PalWorld, but to brush off these examples of copying, no matter how they came about, has the potential to actively hurt people. PalWorld's success could easily spawn imitators of its own if it does get big, and if they get the signal that plagiarism won't be met with backlash, what's to stop them from ripping off someone a lot smaller than Pokemon? Someone not well-known enough for most people to catch onto the plagiarism? Someone who doesn't have the resources to even mount legal action?

Plagiarism is bad, actually. Stop using your personal grievances with Pokemon to try justifying it.

 

[DrrT]

The fact that people can't apparently both think "GF needs to make better games" and "plagiarism is bad and unnecessary" just shows to me how ridiculous and extreme people are, unsurprisingly.

Craftopia's previous game is a blantant copy of BOTW and they didn't even try to hide it. That's somehow different from copying Pokemon because GF bad. It's honestly sad that they got such a success just because people took the criticisms as some type of weird fandom war. The game is a different genre but still has ripped off Pokemon designs that get captured in a ball. It even starts with you waking up to see three little monsters on a beach and finding a phone...and they said thenselves it isn't a parody. Just look at the white Neesa from early trailers. It's even the first game they create models for rather than buying them. People are finding excuses for them even contradicting actual statements.

DQM released a new game recently and it sucks it or other similar games that don't have shady stuff like that will never make such a hit. If I was working on any of them I would be devastated tbh, why even bother designing anything if anyone can just copy other work?

And really, if you don't see a problem with the monsters being generated by AI instead of hiring actual designers from the industry...you know it isn't even worth trying anymore. And I would think the same even if it wasn't Pokemon. This stuff is just not okay for a lot of us morally.

 

[Worldie]

...snipped for quote brevity..

You see, I do understand your point about Plagiarism, and that part I can understand.
However I disagree there's plagiarism at work. As I said, this intentional parody, and last I checked parodies are not considered plagiarism. If anything, they're basically free advertising.
Usually when there's plagiarism at play, they at least *try* to make them look a bit different. If you want plagiarism when it comes to pokemon, you can just look at any of the million chinese bootleg pokemon products that are available on the internet.

They don't straight up make a meme of what they're ""copying"" as flagship.

Remember when people called Genshin Impact "botw plagiarms" for using same artstyle and movement/combat system? See where that went?

 

[DrrT]

You see, I do understand your point about Plagiarism, and that part I can understand.
However I disagree there's plagiarism at work. As I said, this intentional parody, and last I checked parodies are not considered plagiarism. If anything, they're basically free advertising.
Usually when there's plagiarism at play, they at least *try* to make them look a bit different. If you want plagiarism when it comes to pokemon, you can just look at any of the million chinese bootleg pokemon products that are available on the internet.

They don't straight up make a meme of what they're ""copying"" as flagship.

Remember when people called Genshin Impact "botw plagiarms" for using same artstyle and movement/combat system? See where that went?

The thing is that you keep claiming it's parody when it's not. Again they have stated it themselves when asked if Palworld was like their other previous games, which btw I recommend checking out. The previous one was not a parody of BOTW either.

They literally said "our game is not like Pokemon at all, but rather like ARK." Which is not false but again, not a parody.

They have just embraced the "Pokemon with guns" as marketing, despite you spending the first few hours without one ironically enough. Them being bad at hiding the plagiarism just shows they were not hoping people would notice as much.

 

[Worldie]

They have just embraced the "Pokemon with guns" as marketing

That does sound like a parody to me.

Regardless, my annoyance post wasn't about the plagiarism or the design or whatever. Simply the fact that this comes out any time another game attempts the monster collector genre.
It came out when TemTem happend. It came out when Nexomon happened. And to this day you still see every now and then people fighting over "Digimon copied Pokemon". It's really tiresome, and Pokemon is the only franchise for which i see the "big fanbase" so morbidly attached to the franchise, while at same time hating the company that makes the franchise, and at same time so morbidly hating anyone and anything who attempts to do other games with somewhat similar gameplay and/or design.

Palworld is just the current fotm. As much as I like it, it'll be forgotten in a month or less. Then another game who attempts the "monster collection", we'll see the same scene again. It always happens.

 

[DrrT]

That does sound like a parody to me.

Regardless, my annoyance post wasn't about the plagiarism or the design or whatever. Simply the fact that this comes out any time another game attempts the monster collector genre.
It came out when TemTem happend. It came out when Nexomon happened. And to this day you still see every now and then people fighting over "Digimon copied Pokemon". It's really tiresome, and Pokemon is the only franchise for which i see the "big fanbase" so morbidly attached to the franchise, while at same time hating the company that makes the franchise, and at same time so morbidly hating anyone and anything who attempts to do other games with somewhat similar gameplay and/or design.

Palmon is just the current fotm. As much as I like it, it'll be forgotten in a month or less. Then another game who attempts the "monster collection", we'll see the same scene again. It always happens.

How is it a parody if they have said themselves it isn't like Pokemon at all? You claim it was intended, they don't. Why should I trust you over the creators themselves? Don't you realize you are seeing what you want to see?

Again you are not seeing the problem here. There is obviously part of the fandom that will always act like that to other monster collectable games. That doesn't mean other people can't rightfully call out plagiarism. Temtem, Yokai Watch, Nexomon, DQM, Casette Monsters, lots of games try to imitate Pokemon without having to resort to it.

 

[Worldie]

Again you are not seeing the problem here.

I am indeed not seeing it.
If it's really plagiarism, Nintendo will take action. Nothing from the fans will change it.
Nintendo nuked Pokemon Uranium out of the planet because of copyright infringment. Other Pokemon-adjacent games like a certain Pokemon MMO game that one could say is a "Revolution" are allowed to exist usually as long as they never "release", similarly to showdown existing since it's not really a pokemon game.

My problem is the morbidity of the fans. I can't care less if the game is good, if it's a parody or plagiarism or the next best game on the planet.
They've done exactly the same for other "pokemon-like" games before this if you missed it. They will again. No matter what the game is or who made the game, or even how good it is.
Only Nintendo is allowed to do the monster collector genre. Also they suck at it, but only they are allowed to.

 

[DrrT]

I am indeed not seeing it.
If it's really plagiarism, Nintendo will take action. Nothing from the fans will change it.
Nintendo nuked Pokemon Uranium out of the planet because of copyright infringment. Other Pokemon-adjacent games like a certain Pokemon MMO game that one could say is a "Revolution" are allowed to exist usually as long as they never "release", similarly to showdown existing since it's not really a pokemon game.

My problem is the morbidity of the fans. I can't care less if the game is good, if it's a parody or plagiarism or the next best game on the planet.
They've done exactly the same for other "pokemon-like" games before this if you missed it. They will again. No matter what the game is or who made the game, or even how good it is.
Only Nintendo is allowed to do the monster collector genre. Also they suck at it, but only they are allowed to.

So? Nothing from this means people can't complain or callout for it. Ignoring that legal=/= morally good (and legally they can't even do anything with this, which is the issue), giving money to IA stuff and plagiarized designs is again something we are uncomfortable with. Nothing stops this to be reprated with small artists. Why should we not complain about something we deem unfair to artists in the industry?

There is a big difference legally with fangames and this, including the word "Pokemon". It should be obvious, even trough I believe what they did to Uranium was shitty.

Your last sentence is again what you want to see. If you really can't see the problem is a whole different thing, you do you. You clearly have set your mind and are going to pretent the opposite. It isn't a coincidence the last times you mention didn't have such obvious clues, with even the company saying they want to use IA to dodge stuff legally but you pretending this time is no different because you like the game. There are people like us who worry about something else, we couldn't care if this is another "Pokemon killer" or not.

 

[Worldie]

Your last sentence is again what you want to see. If you really can't see the problem is a whole different thing, you do you. You clearly have set your mind and are going to pretent the opposite. It isn't a coincidence the last times you mention didn't have such obvious clues, with even the company saying they want to use IA to dodge stuff legally but you pretending this time is no different because you like the game.

I will repeat my statement if it wasnt clear.

I don't care if Palworld is plagiarism or AI generated. That's not my problem, it's Nintendo's.

All I care is how morbid the pokemon "big fanbase" is toward their franchise, and how they will aggressively attack any other company that attempts to tackle the genre, regardless of how they do it, demanding that only Pokemon does.
As I said, they've done it for TemTem. They've done it for Nexomon. They still fight people over Digimon being "a pokemon clone". Because only Nintendo is allowed to make a monster collector game. Everyone else is denied from it forever. (And also at same time Nintendo sucks at it)

 

[DrrT]

And I would rather not repeat myself, but you not caring about it doesn't mean it isn't a problem that doesn't affect the industry and that people are not just going after Palworld because it's like Temtem and others. Pretending a fandom as big as Pokemon is a humongous mass that just wants to see any competition die is just nonsensical, specially since as you say they are not even the same genre. There's a legit issue here for artist integrity.

Zacian and Zamazenta seem like they're supposed to be equals in concept, unstoppable force/immoveable object or just the sword and shield duality. So why do their primary types give advantage to Zacian? What does Fighting have to do with the Shield motif?

For that matter, everything about Zamazenta's design is awful. Why does this mon learn no Shield based moves besides its Signature (King's Shield for an obvious) despite building one into its face? Why is it designed just as a bad Attacker instead of a defensive support Mon? Why in the generation that Body Press is introduced does this thing have no DEF scaling attack (not even BP itself, make Behemoth Bash a Steel version)? King Arthur had stuff like a Shield and a Scabbard that gave him borderline invincibility (to the point some interpretations/characters value them more than Excalibur), yet Zamazenta works about as well as trying to kill a guy with a Shield instead of defending yourself with it (Regenerator, Recovery, debuff potential, Damage reduction options, etc).

It hammers in why I hate the Hero duo so much and project an image of laziness onto Galar in turn: they didn't actually think about the themes of the mons they were making, they just made a beatstick, then made it again with a bunch of options changed for random Steel or Defense boosting moves that it has no way to use (despite dedicating so much stat budget to both Defenses it can't raise SpD meaningfully, even on Dauntless Shield). Change a few values, who cares if it works, game ships tomorrow we can't think about anything we made. If they wanted to mirror what they did properly Zacian should have been a mixed Glass Cannon instead of "Slightly less bulky than Zamazenta"

I wanted to bring this up because it annoys me a lot. I wasn't around during the SWSH era so it may just my impression, but it just seems like there were two different approachs to Zacian and Zamazenta for some reason. Zacian not being a mixed attacker just reads as "it must look powerful and able to take down everything so it has a very high Attack" while Zamazenta is "it should be able to defend from everything so it needs both high Defense and SDefense". It's such a basic and weird idea that doesn't seem to take into account a lot of things. Zacian had stats to spare on defenses that its counterpart just didn't.

 

[Worldie]

Pretending a fandom as big as Pokemon is a humongous mass that just wants to see any competition die is just nonsensical, specially since as you say they are not even the same genre.

That is exactly my problem however. As I said, this scenario happened again in the past. And will happen again whenever the next monster collector releases.

Due to internet being as big as is, pretty much every franchise has their "vocal fanbases" on the major medias. Pokemon is no exception. The way people will picture the "average X fan" will always be structured based on what these vocal fanbases are.
You take another huge franchise like League of Legends. Everyone you ask will tell you that "the playerbase is insanely toxic and only insults each other all the time". Are all fans and players like that? Nah, not really. Does large majority do that? Yes, that's why it's a stereotype.

What I see nowadays when it comes with Pokemon fanbase is a bunch of manchilds that morbidly attack everyone who dares to challenge their franchise, while at same time funnily also morbidly attacks everyone who defends GameFreaks (I myself have got my share of insults and even threats, even on this very board, any time I defended GameFreak's decision). Do I think every single Pokemon fan or player is like that? No, not really, there's plenty of reasonable ones. But that is the picture that is projected.

 

[LonelyGaruga]

That just sounds like your takeaway of what the most common opinion of the playerbase is, not an unbiased, accurate account of what is actually commonly expressed on the internet.

 

[spookysocialist]

You don't like palworld because they ripped off nintendo or used ai or whatever

I don't like palworld because it's obviously an early access rugpull cashgrab stoking controversy to get sales

We are not the same

 

[Worldie]

I don't like palworld because it's obviously an early access rugpull cashgrab stoking controversy to get sales

Funnily, this kind of complaint I can actually even agree with. I myself don't trust early access games anymore, almost all of them never really leave Early Access or if they even do they end up being trash.

I do give credit where it's due though, that game is in early access and is more functional than a bunch of fully released 70€ games of the last few months. That's why I can't bring myself to hate it. Regardless of the plagiarism or not, some legit effort went into it, far more than went into Redfall or other similar titles who were also rugpull cashgrabs except they were from major companies
Heck it's even more functional than Pokemon SV were on release.
(but this doesn't really have much to do with Pokemon anyway, that's just a me-thing)