>>26538943Not him, but I have been a Pokemon fan since day 1 (western release at least). To my knowledge - and truthfully, I had the same opinion back in the day - Ruby and Sapphire came out during a period where so-called "Pokemania" was dying down due to the downturn of quality in the merchandise among other things (such as the fanbase hitting their edgy 13-year old phase). This combined with lack of backwards compatibility, plus the fact that Ruby/Sapphire were the first games in the series to remove major features (day and night being one of the highly cited examples) created a general air of discontent among "original fans" where Hoenn is concerned.
Personally I've gotten over it now, I love Emerald, I've loved every gen since (bar 6) and I realize as an adult (and a gamedev myself) that it was never realistic for them to keep adding features without trimming away the fat. Still, for many people, Generation 3 represented their first major disappointment with the Pokemon brand, which is something that will stick with them for a long time
