>>47340049"raid battles" or whatever the pokemon GO tie in thing was
It feels like it was originally designed to be the endgame loop, and it also feels like it was designed to sell nintendo plus memberships and then be dropped completely when they stop supporting the switch
Even BW2 with its shitty dream world thing has an amazing endgame gameplay loop (by pokemon standards, anyways)on its own, even now that the service is shut down.
I get that you can't keep online features running for eternity. But I think it's bad design to make them such a significant part of the game because it dates the game HARD.
SwSh is the first pokemon game I didn't even bother to get a physical copy of. Previous games tend to hold their value because they functioned on their own and can still be played by collectors and fans a decade after release. The same cannot be said for SwSh, it needs patches, nintendo network, a subscription, 3 different accounts, and DLC to feel complete.
This generation felt like the tipping point into GaaS.
The other big thing is mostly that they cut content under the guise of "improving other aspects of the game" and then they didn't. The games are still mediocre but now with cut content.
