Jjs Goodman

Be careful jjs, giving even the slightest defense against dexit could get you billed as a corporate shill for Game Freak.

But seriously, this whole debacle is especially bad once you glimpse at the kind of behavior that a chunk of the Pokemon fanbase has been inhibiting where some would go as far as to harass/insult other people in the same clique they represent who defend GF, and accusing GF of being lazy, not caring about their fans,  etc. to boycott a game.

I've seen people rag on GF before, and this shouldn't be something new to be, but this is a much more special kind of hostility. These kind of people should know better than this and should really think about their actions while they have classified themselves as Pokemon fans...but given my experiences with other fandoms, some fans like these most of the time will think that what they are doing is better anyways.

Even I think the removal of a select variety of Pokemon from Sword and Shield was a disagreeable move on GF's part, but still...

Here's my juicy breakdown on my thoughts surrounding this whole controversy and why I'm sick of it:

At its core, I'm personally ultimately indifferent to the National Dex's removal and the unhealthy rage over it has made me even more apathetic. It does not affect me because as you know by now from my gameplay style, I only use the region's new mons on my team to see how the generation stands on its own. Plus, I don't have Bank nor do I plan to get Home anyways, and most of my good teams are stuck on roms (oops), so whatever. For those who did want to use their favorite mons, I get the disappointment. But as I'm going to say below, a lot of the backlash feels like it's going in circles because neither side is really helping anything one way or the other.

In some regards, the backlash was a longtime coming and brewing, because I've been seeing the fandom become much more critical of GameFreak ever since gen 7. Problem is, people aren't really going about it in any healthy ways in the slightest and it's just been making the whole fandom look awful. I do think many people have gotten way too angry and borderline lunatic over it. You don't have to make a long melodramatic reddit rant about how GameFreak ruined your childhood or whatever the hell. It's all just morphed into one boring, repetitive blob of "haha modern pokemon is bad!" circlejerk. Plus, they're just yelling at literal statues anyways because GameFreak never really looks at criticism from the west and they only care about what the Japan audience thinks when making these games (they literally made the region layouts more linear because too many japanese kids got lost in Sinnoh, showing who they care most about). If Japan doesn't give two shits about no National Dex, then GameFreak is gonna keep it gone. Sorry fam.

One of my biggest problems with the controversy is the godforsaken "#BringBacktheNationalDex" hashtag on twitter. Good lord, do I hate that hashtag so much. Why? Because...

News Flash: The National Dex has been gone for almost half a decade now! Yeah! Some may be shocked and confused by that, as the outrage would imply it was only just removed. Yes, the National Dex has not been in a game since ORAS. It was not in SM. It was not in USUM. It was not in LGPE. Another fun fact a lot of people also seem to overlook: The National Dex "replacement" was locked behind a paywall with Bank for gen 7, because you had to use Bank to see the updated dex descriptions for mons not in the Alola dex. The only reason people didn't complain as much as they are now is because all of the mons were still coded into the games and available throughout the generation or by using Bank. You may be asking yourself "so why are people complaining about it being "gone" now" which is a valid question in this instance. We literally went a whole generation with no National Dex and the alternative was locked behind a paywall, but we did not have this large scale protest before, so what the hell. It shows a lot of people don't really know what they are talking about, as usual. People are focusing too much on the National Dex itself when the issue is that lots of old mons can't be transferred this time. So when the Dexit crowd has that very misleading hashtag as their campaign, it doesn't help them and only blurs what the actual problem people are trying to convey is (missing mons) further to outsiders. 

However, my other biggest and more pressing problem with this backlash is GameFreak has done many things over the recent years that are arguably much worse than the National Dex removal but a lot of people mostly turned a blind eye to them. Literally all of the following I'd say are worse boneheaded decisions on GameFreak's part as of recent...

• Omitting the Battle Frontier and most of Emerald's additions in ORAS
• Their revolving door of many features that disappear from one generation to the next, never to return
• Giving us essentially unfinished games with XY and Sun and Moon (I don't personally hate them, but I'll throw them in here because a lot of their criticism is justified)
• Releasing DLC in 2017 as $60 games with Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon 
• Literally not having 6 generations of Pokemon available in Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee

...why is it that THIS was what finally broke the Camerupt's back to the fandom and none of anything above??? And to be fair, yes, a lot of the more hardcore players and longtime fans did complain about the BF and USUM but a lot of the more casual players and newcomers didn't care about those or would justify them. This is the first time in a long time though where it seems where everyone, no matter how ingrained in the fanbase they are, is angry. I don't even think Let's Go or the infamous "all new pokemon campaign" in Black and White (which I love btw) got as much vitriol as this decision. I wanted the fandom to start being more vocal about GameFreak's issues, but this backlash isn't what I really had in mind either. Maybe I'm just very cynical but a lot of the NatDex backlash feels like it's for purely selfish reasons. People lose their goddamns minds when they find out their favorite mons aren't going to be in the game, but when numerous other features get gutted over the years or GameFreak does another shitty practice, it's okay. I dunno, man. There's fair criticism from the people who just don't want more features removed, which I agree with and has been one of my biggest issues with GF as of late, or if you just feel locking mons off is incompetent programming on GF's end, fair enough. But if your biggest issue worth dying on a hill for is that your favorite fictional (!) video game creatures aren't going to be available, then you may need to reevaluate your life. 

I have my issues with SWSH too, and criticisms over stuff like the graphics is justified, even though I wasn't expecting BOTW level graphics and they told us not to. But this Dexit shit ain't it anymore. I hate to reuse this old cliche but as the old saying goes: If you think you're going to hate the game, then don't buy it and move on. Or, you know, play a game that will have your mons in them. Or just do literally anything else. It's that simple. People have just long prolonged this controversy and it's tiring.  

2019 yeah!

P.S. Also, no people, they aren't going to "patch the missing mons" into the game. I thought people would've learned their lesson about expecting that by now from GF.

P.S.S. also most of the people who say they are gonna boycott the franchise will probably just end up buying it anyways or pirating the games whenever the switch emulator works fully lmao

One Pokemon fan to another, THANK YOU.

Yeah it sucks it's being removed but the whole thing is just being completely overblown. This is by far not the biggest blunder of Game Freak's; I do think Dynamax is a cool idea but I'm tired of ideas being introduced and then scrapped/forgotten about almost immediately after (Megas/Z-Moves). I think a lot of the criticisms are valid but when it's blown to this degree, please just don't buy it. It's that simple, and it saves you all money and energy. It's just really frustrating how overblown this has gotten.