>>58661314This is the shit I was talking about, the optics game. You view DLC as just being part of the game, and as a player, that's fair. You boot up the game and the DLC is just there. You don't care about the distinction because it's invisible.
That's not how the product is planned, designed or budgeted. The DLC is a separate product, it has a separate budget, the team structure can be wildly different from the base game. They can have different producers, different leads, different writers, different programmers building different systems.
Mega Dimension isn't Z-A. In the past, it would have been a physical expansion pack, a new SKU, a new item for retailers to order. For Pokemon, that meant selling a third version that was largely the same. We all understood what those products were because we could see them. Now, the DLC no longer has a bespoke launcher. There's no new icon on your screen. It "vanishes" after you buy it, for the sake of convenience. But dumb fucks like you have the object permanence of an infant, you think mommy disappears when you play peekaboo.
Z-A is a finished product, despite any misgivings you or I have about it. Mega Dimensions isn't a missing piece of that product. You can argue that ZA wasn't worth the price, or that you were left unsatisfied, and I'd agree with you. But then you make this leap to claim a separate product with a separate budget and projected revenue, with its own schedule designed to be part of a bespoke promotional rollout should "just be in the game". You don't understand how any of this works. You don't care about the logistics, you don't want to understand why things are the way they are. You just want to vent frustration.
If MD was part of ZA, you would still be mad. You'd still be mad if ZA included all the stuff that was cut from the beta builds. You'd still be mad if the game had twice as much polish, released as originally planned in 2024, and was priced $10 cheaper than other Switch 2 games.
