"All of GameFreak's decisions can be explained by a philosophy of telling people how they *should* play the games rather than letting them choose."

I know that a lot of the criticism about this game has been discussed to death but I just wanted to take a minute to focus on some of the things that have been revealed about the game, what GameFreak has said about them, and how it all belies a troubling shift in philosophy for GameFreak over the past few years.In my opinion, older Pokemon games gave players a great sense of freedom, even down to the way that many of the areas were designed, with completely optional offshoots and hidden areas. In the early generations, you could even sometimes complete the gyms out of order! Now, the games have frequently come under criticism for essentially being "hallways" you are guided down, with cutscenes every few minutes. Most of the sense of exploration or discovery has been stripped out in favor of guiding the player along the "proper" path.I believe this is due to an odd, paternalistic sensibility that has crept into GameFreak's design decisions. GameFreak has fallen into a trap of thinking that because most or a majority of people like a certain thing, that that must mean that that way is the best and so we'll just make it that way! Rather than give players the option of doing it that way.The XP share is a great example. It's been able to be toggled on/off for generations now, and many players preferred to keep it off in order to give themselves some sense of challenge in a game that has become easier every generation. Now, it's permanently stuck on. When asked about it, here's what GameFreak said: "Those who have it turned off want to train one specific Pokemon. We thought: is there a way to achieve that? There is, simply by putting the rest of your Pokémon in the PC."This is a very silly design philosophy because it of course ignores the players who didn't use it for that reason. I am sure the data suggests that most players do in fact use XP share. That is not a reason to remove the option for others who don't want it. GameFreak's mistake was assuming they knew why people wanted to play another way, and then said "no, you shouldn't do that. Just play this way!" Of course, it's also possible GameFreak 100% realized people used turning off XP share as a kind of difficulty modifier, and removed it, just like they haven't included a "challenging" difficulty since Black/White 2. Again, it's this thought of "you shouldn't want to play that way."Going back to ORAS, Masuda was asked if maybe a difficulty slider will return. His response was: "We created a "balanced" game that was suited for our time and age, where everyone is very busy and young people have various means of entertainment. Using smartphones and other devices they can access a great number of games, so the time they dedicate to a single game is less than in the past."Again, GameFreak makes a general statement about how they feel most people play, and decides catering to that is good enough. Even if a minority of people don't want to play that way, and really appreciate difficulty settings, that doesn't matter. The game isn't made for those people.Same interview, Masuda is asked why there is no Battle Frontier, replaced with a light postgame:"This question is connected with my previous answer. We didn't put the BF in ORAS for this very reason. Interviewer's note: In short he means that they didn't include the BF because only a very small part of the players would have fully appreciated and made use of this feature; nowadays players get bored and frustrated more easily and they aren't interested in things that are so demanding/challenging."The entire experience is for this supposed "smartphone-obsessed" type of player who just wants a short, easy, on-rails game spoonfed to them so they can go back to their phone. To be clear I don't even think GameFreak is right about this. But rather than just include options for people who maybe don't want that, they create their entire experience around a vision of catering to this person.When you start to look at just about every design decision, it comes from that same place. Something like the Wild Area - a pretty great concept that could have injected that sense of freedom. Except, wait, you're locked out of catching Pokemon of a certain level. No, we wouldn't want a player having too much freedom. You must do this gym and this gym and this gym and then maybe you can go to this area and catch a monster you want at the appropriate time we tell you.Even in the comments about Dexit, you can see this attitude. Ohmori said, in response to the controversy "Of course, up to now it has not been possible to encounter every pokémon in every game, so people had to transfer it from old games via Pokémon Bank to the new game, for example... the way of playing is actually not very different from before with Pokémon Bank: until now you have always been able to meet only the pokémon of a certain region." GameFreak essentially says "oh, but you SHOULD just want to play with the regional dex."Why would you want to transfer? You cannot meet those Pokemon anyways.Everything, even down to Pokemon selection, just looks at the most popular, down-the-pipe way to make the game. Even something like including Charizard but not Blastoise and Venasaur or any of the other starters - it's clear they looked at what was the most popular and just went with that.Then there's the weird paternalism that shows up in frankly just dumbfounding decisions. Like tying sound control to a key item. Or locking you out of soft resetting for a shiny starter. "You shouldn't want to play the game that way." GameFreak's control over the player just creeps in through every crack.Here's the thing: Even if GameFreak were right on every single point - a majority of people just focus on regional dex with no transfers. A majority of people don't care about exploration or freedom and are fine with hallways. A majority of people all use XP share. A majority of people will never want a harder difficulty. A majority of people don't make it to or don't care about postgame. A majority of people just want Pikachu, Eevee and Charizard and who really cares about the rest. Even if they were right on every single point. The fact is that each of those decisions, when you remove options, leaves everyone else in the cold. Everyone who has a different preference feels slighted by at least one of those things. For a lot of hardcore players, they may feel slighted by all of them. Someone might be in the majority on four or five or six of those points, but for each one they are not in the majority, that doesn't have an option for them to play it a different way, the game feels compromised.GameFreak needs to realize that people play Pokemon for different reasons. Everyone has different things that they care about. And so the design philosophy should not be "hmm, who is our average Pokemon player?" and then create a game aimed at them. It should be "we should give our players the most freedom possible." The games used to include a lot of that. But somewhere along the way GameFreak became convinced that they know best, and that's how we ended up where we are. via /r/pokemon https://ift.tt/2CI9h9P