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Why is Game Freak so incompetent?

Gamefreak on the tech side of things are simply not up to snuff. Period. Hell, they're barely creative anymore. Every game is the same game with marginal improvements, and things fans liked in past games stripped from it for nonsensical reasons. Plus, they've pretty much jacked digimon with the mega stuff.

You know what's really fucked.. I know all this and I'm still gonna buy it. I'm fucking addicted and these people, who are in over their heads on the tech side of things, have me by the balls because of my god Damn nostalgia and love of cute monsters beating the shit out of each other.

I'm pretty much in the same boat. If this were any other series I would've dropped it a long time ago.

Level 5 and dozens of other developers can manage fine.

Have to agree, I'm playing Youkai Watch right now and not only does it run at a stable framerate it looks way prettier than XY. Level 5 has always been good at making their games look well polished, however.
 

Forceatowulf

G***n S**n*bi
I'd still argue it's 99% because the 3DS' hardware is shitty and awful. Game Freaks is a small, but talented group... but they aren't necessarily miracle workers when it comes to underpowered kit.
I hear this same excuse every single time new hardware comes out...

It's getting old. No, as a matter of fact, it's gotten old.

I don't know why it's so difficult for people to just call Gamefreak out on the fact that they're simply not very good on the tech side of things.

Something needs to change over there on the tech front (creative front too Damn it). Bring in some new blood that are hungry or something.
 

Zero²

Member
Its all about n3DS now bitches, deal with it lol
I know the stronger cpu probably wont affect how games run
 

Fbh

Member
Well it should run better.

But you say the game runs at 15fps and than that it runs the same as X/Y... which didn't run that badly. It has some slowdowns during battle (if you didn't use 3D) but otherwise run decently IMO
 

Veldin

Member
They only put in as much effort as they really need to, which is not much when it comes to a functioning Pokemon game. It sells tons, tech issues or not.
 

Daingurse

Member
Seriously? That's not acceptable . . .

I guess Game Freak are struggling possibly to adapt? I don't know man.

Edit: Oh, that's with the 3D on? Thought that was with the 3D off, whew. Still, that 3D performance is also pretty unacceptable.
 
I agree with you OP. Having 3-D only in certain sections ruined the game for me....I like me some 3d with a solid frame rate. The entire package felt half-baked.
 

Speedwagon

Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel. Yabuki turned off voice chat in Mario Kart races. True artists of their time.
Nintendo should send Sakurai to help.
 

Keyouta

Junior Member
I don't know why. It's crazy how much money they make developing the games, and yet they can't make a nice running engine for Pokemon. It's inexcusable. You still can't turn 3D on in the over-world either.
 
Seriously? That's not acceptable . . .

I guess Game Freak are struggling possibly to adapt? I don't know man.

Edit: Oh, that's with the 3D on? Thought that was with the 3D off, whew. Still, that 3D performance is also pretty unacceptable.
Even with 3d off, the framerate will shit the bed occasionally whenever the camera pans around or it does that cutaway thing with both pokemon having closeups, also during mega evolution transformation sequence, screen wide attacks, double, triple, rotation and horde battles

It's a real mess
 

Daingurse

Member
Even with 3d off, the framerate will shit the bed occasionally whenever the camera pans around or it does that cutaway thing with both pokemon having closeups, also during mega evolution transformation sequence, screen wide attacks, double, triple, rotation and horde battles

It's a real mess

Yeah, I experienced this in Pokemon Y. I liked the game a lot aesthetically, but it was a technical mess. I expected performance to be improved in these new games, guess I assumed wrong.
 
Didn't we have a bunch of threads a while back about how it's ridiculous to call any dev lazy or cheapasses? That we don't really have an insight into their development processes and probably they are giving it their all, which might not be good enough for some, but it's kind of unlikely that they're lazy?
 

Raonak

Banned
For such a huge franchise, a YEARLY FRANCHISE, it's mind boggling how small gamefreak are. They need to expand, and get more talent. There's absolutely no excuse considering how much money pokemon prints.
 

Currygan

at last, for christ's sake
Nintendo should probably lend a hand, yeah, but I don't think they could, with both of them busy counting the £££
 
That's basically the reason I'm skipping out on OR/AS. That and GameFreak doing the "one step forward, two steps back" in terms of features.

I pretty much had to force myself to finish X/Y since I had completed the previous games in the series (and had fun doing so). X/Y felt empty to me.
 
I imagine there's not a lot of priority for them to, well, bother. Pokemon is Pokemon, and will sell no matter what. It's a shame that it prevents them from doing basic things like maintaining 30 fps or patching in new Megas to XY, but there it is.

I can't help but feel that any size issues within their team could be resolved with trivial effort and haven't been because it's making the peeps up top get even more cash from their high sales.
 

SoulUnison

Banned
The ORAS demo ran at a solid 30 with 3D off for me.

Talk about damning with faint praise.

This is the same system that does 60FPS 4 player Smash battles with the 3D *ON.*
And that's made by the parent company of the Pokemon series, so manpower and budget shouldn't be even *close* to being issues.
 
Haven't tried it, but that sounds pretty bad. It's especially weird since nintendo games usually put a high emphasis on having a solid framerate. I guess we just have to hope the final game will be better.
 
This is pretty disappointing to hear. I thought the game engine would have been improved since X/Y.

It won't prevent me from buying though.
 

Dryk

Member
Let me clarify.

You can move Pokemon between your games in blocks of n x 30 at a time. You cannot trade them in blocks, you cannot store items in the Pokemon Bank. If you want to move your items to another game (say Mega Stones where ORAS comes out) you need to do it one at a time. If you want to give a bunch of Pokemon to a friend, you need to do it one at a time.
 

levyjl1988

Banned
It's very difficult for the industry to meet high consumer expectations.

3D for 3DS for everything at a solid 30-60fps.
1080p and 60fps for consoles.
 

Pizza

Member
I dont feel like gamefreak is incompetent as a dev team, i think they just make bad choices. Ive gotten through like, half of Y. It doesnt do it for me, for some reason. Neither did B/W, I didnt even touch B2/W2.

Then I picked up the copy of Crystal I bought but never played after loving Gold way back when, and that absolutely did it for me. Now im backlighting a GBC and im gonna blast through yellow too.

Something happened along the way that I cant put my finger on, R/B/Y were new cool games, G/S/C ruled as a direct sequel, R/S/E lost the day/night system, but looked rad visually. D/P/P had a cool polygon/sprite mashup thing going on in the overworld, but something didnt quite click (platinum was great though, for some reason)

Everything past that just feels sort of same-y. Actually, x/y was a step back in my head. I love sprites! The 3D battle models didnt do much for me. They were pretty cool, they wouldve been twice as cool if the overworld wasnt poopy butts. Actually, the overworld makes it hard for me to like it at all. It feels too zoomed in and gross. Like, the characters still move like you would expect sprites to i guess.

I wouldve rather seen a spritey overworld with 3D model battles (since they wanted that real bad) and the spritey overworld should have been able to get 3D'd, making for a much better game. And maybe one with more original pokemon.

Speaking of that, i feel like the designs of pokemon have gotten way too busy (like, the first two gens and some of gen 3 were good. The rest of gen 3 and a lot onwards look silly.)

Also please stop with crotch spikes, gamefreak.

Apparently I feel passionately about this. Tldr: i feel like the series has stagnated, or even started moving in reverse. I dislike the low-quality polygons and would have rather seen more sprites and less crotch spikes
 

neoflcl

Member
Actually, I have no qualms with how the game runs. And believe me, I can be a real stickler about performance! Just a random example: although I LOVE the Mario series, I initially had a really tough time getting into Super Mario 3D Land because it "only" ran at 30fps.

As for the 3DS Pokemon games, however, the performance quirks don't bother me a bit, as they rarely affect the game's actual playability. If the game relied on reflexes (like if it were an action game or something), I'd complain about the performance issues a lot more. Since it's a turn-based game however, I don't mind a bit. Despite frame rate drops, the game still runs at a decent pace and looks quite serviceable enough.

While we're on the subject, I can't help but reflect on past Pokemon entries... If I'm being honest with myself, the series has always been sort of a hot mess in terms of visuals/performance!

-The original outings could look very garish even by Gameboy standards, and were riddled with bugs.
-The GBA games weren't graphical showcases in the least, and shared the static sprites and barebones presentation of their predecessors despite their more powerful host platform.
-The DS titles were plagued with a slow engine and battles ran at half he speed of previous entries (though the Black and White games ran a lot better).

Similar to its predecessors, I feel the 3DS outings continue the series' steady pedigree of decent-but-by-no-means-impressive technical performance. :p And thankfully, any cosmetic quirks do very little to affect the core gameplay. So I'm still happy!

Though, to a certain extent so can still understand if it bugs anyone else. (Why are the Pokemon 3DS games seemingly the only 3DS titles without texture filtering?! So strange.)
 

-Horizon-

Member
Talk about damning with faint praise.

This is the same system that does 60FPS 4 player Smash battles with the 3D *ON.*
And that's made by the parent company of the Pokemon series, so manpower and budget shouldn't be even *close* to being issues.
I don't think that's a fair comparison. Even if they are both under the Nintendo brand, they're both made by different developers with different experience in these kinds of things.
I'm not giving a free pass to Game Freak who really need to step up their game but Namco is a whole different beast when it comes to fighting game experience and they are all lead by SakuGod.
Game Freak is only recently putting their foot into more 3D games.
 

xk0sm0sx

Member
I can overlook how Game Freak badly programmed the graphics.
What I can't stand is when they choose to remove features from the previous iteration of the game.

RS's pokemon contests, DP's pointless yet fun little touchscreen gear, HGSS's pokemon following us, and the pokewalker, BW's pokemon musical.
I swear pokemon training will be next thing to disappear from ORAS... I don't understand why they choose to spend money on one-off things, especially the pokewalker, if they don't intend to make it permanent.
And we're getting secret bases in ORAS, these will probably be gone in the next iteration as well, pointless one-off features.
 

CmdBash

Member
gamefreak does with pokemon exactly like how IW,Treyarch etc. do with the CoD series; put in minimal effort for maximum returns. Why bother improving when you are comfortably sitting at the top of the genre.
 

PKrockin

Member
There's really no excuse. They've been playing with 3D since at least Diamond and Pearl. Even if you don't want to count that, it's 2014. "Not having experience with 3D" is an excuse you would make in the late 90s. And don't blame the hardware either, look at Fire Emblem Awakening, Kid Icarus, Monster Hunter and Revelations.

They know it will sell like hotcakes so they just don't give a fuck. It's so unlike Nintendo franchises when it comes to polish.
 
I can overlook how Game Freak badly programmed the graphics.
What I can't stand is when they choose to remove features from the previous iteration of the game.

RS's pokemon contests, DP's pointless yet fun little touchscreen gear, HGSS's pokemon following us, and the pokewalker, BW's pokemon musical.
I swear pokemon training will be next thing to disappear from ORAS... I don't understand why they choose to spend money on one-off things, especially the pokewalker, if they don't intend to make it permanent.
And we're getting secret bases in ORAS, these will probably be gone in the next iteration as well, pointless one-off features.
They removed player customisation that was in XY

Their reasoning? Every region should have a unique identity and clothing and skin tones makes Kalos unique.
 
nah man I think they're smart

they spend the minimum to make games that sell truckloads.

should totally be the MO for every games company; if we know our games will sell, why pour in more money than we need to?

Are you saying that it's ok to release games with bad framerate to save more money on a game as long as it sells? That is the stupidest thing I've read on this forum since I've been here.
EDIT:This is also Pokemon we're talking about, this game without doubt makes the most profit for any game(maybe Call of Duty), yet they can't hire more people to get a steady framerate?
 
Are you saying that it's ok to release games with bad framerate to save more money on a game as long as it sells? That is the stupidest thing I've read on this forum since I've been here.
EDIT:This is also Pokemon we're talking about, this game without doubt makes the most profit for any game, yet they can't hire more people to get a steady framerate?
He's saying it's a smart business decision

Cause they know their audience are suckers

It doesn't mean it's right for the players
 
Yeah, ORAS is going to be on my back burner. The demo was more of the same of X/Y. Might wait to see if it gets Black Friday discount.
 

KHlover

Banned
I'm willing to wait to find out the performance of the physical cartridge before passing judgment. The digital copies of X/Y has extreme frame drops during battles in 2D (on a great class 10 SD card), whereas the physical copies ran at a solid frame rate in 2D.
Ahahahaha, not at all. Framerate is janky as shit in 2D battles on cartridge as well.
 

xk0sm0sx

Member
They removed player customisation that was in XY

Their reasoning? Every region should have a unique identity and clothing and skin tones makes Kalos unique.

Oh man I've already forgotten... yeah that and I'm going to guess, back to bicycles, no more land based pokemon riding as well.
 

JoeM86

Member
Wow, such an insulting topic to the developers.

Hell, the reason it has framerate issues is because their models are so detailed. The stuff they created is too much for the 3DS.

To say they are incompetent is a huge stretch and a massive insult to the developers. For shame.

The demo was running at 15fps? Is that accurate, or just speculation/exaggeration?

If it is, I completely didn't notice it. It was just...Pokemon.

Hyperbole. It's nowhere near that bad.

Oh man I've already forgotten... yeah that and I'm going to guess, back to bicycles, no more land based pokemon riding as well.

There were three routes where you could ride Pokémon for a very short period. It's not "going back to bicycles", you were on the Bicycle in X & Y.

I can overlook how Game Freak badly programmed the graphics.
What I can't stand is when they choose to remove features from the previous iteration of the game.

RS's pokemon contests, DP's pointless yet fun little touchscreen gear, HGSS's pokemon following us, and the pokewalker, BW's pokemon musical.
I swear pokemon training will be next thing to disappear from ORAS... I don't understand why they choose to spend money on one-off things, especially the pokewalker, if they don't intend to make it permanent.
And we're getting secret bases in ORAS, these will probably be gone in the next iteration as well, pointless one-off features.

If they were to continue to add to these things, the game would get bloated. I think it makes more sense in a contextual sense for each region to have its own things. Hoenn Pokémon Contests, Unova Pokémon Musicals etc.

Also, having Pokémon follow you worked fine as sprites because of the disconnect in size, but in 3D models it just wouldn't work well.
 

Labrys

Member
Didn't notice any slowdown on my 2DS, it seemed fairly smooth. On XY only slowdown I got was when you encountered a horde and sometimes in the overworld (The snowy town I think gave me issues).

Even if it did end up being really shitty... I'd still buy it. Pokemon's pretty much the one series I'll buy consistently. But from what I can tell, to me at least, it's not shitty.
 
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