Just seems like enraged impotence engaged more than anything. I’d be more concerned about Pokemon Go players behind the wheel, if they’re still out there.
Pokémon hasn’t pushed the envelope at all. I think this game really shows what you can do with battle pets in an open world and Nintendo should take notes. Not necessarily breaking their format or making a survival crafter, but there’s a lot of potential they ignore.
Pokémon hasn’t tried anything new in decades because they don’t need to, Nintendo rakes in money from fans buying the same shit every year regardless so why out extra cost in to the product
If a game copies what another game does but does it better and/or gives it own spin on things (which PalWorld arguably does, considering that you can have your Pokemon Pals fight with machine weaponry and also enslave capture people as Pals), I don’t see how that can be a bad thing. Otherwise, people should be up in arms about every roguelike Metroidvania or Soulslike game.
Yeah this is more of the pokemon fandom being deranged. Closest thing in memory was a few people complaining Bleak Faith stole some animations or something from Dark Souls.
The whole thing was resolved without incident and nobody threatened to kill anyone either. Most people didnt even care.
It’d say that exactly what most of the haters are not getting. This is not supposed to be a Pokemon game. It’s a survival crafting and basebuilding game, that uses Pokemon for a great effect and neatly integrates some of the aspects of Pokemon games to fit into the genre.
I’m not saying this is a Pokémon game, but those are Pokémons, they even have Pokeballs. They are so similar to Pokémons that everyone is talking about it.
Anyways, I really don’t care, I don’t play Pokémon and won’t play this game… but those are Pokémon.
Exactly! The game is pretty great case study on how to combine different genres together and make them work, while also being a prime example of how really important theming is.
I haven’t actually played their previous game, Craftopia, but it looks like that both the “using animals in bases” and “catching animals into spheres” was there too, to the point where Palworlds are getting really close to just being mostly a reskin.
But that illustrates really well how much does different theming works wonders for game feel. The mechanic while in Craftopia, with normal animals, wasn’t really much of note. But just by simply reskinning them to a colorful monster collecting game, instead of regular animals, the game feel entirely different, the mechanic is way much more fun to interact with, and it completely changes the game.
Sure, they did build some changes on top of how it worked in Craftopia, and switched the game around to be mostly build around it, but a lot of the elements remain the same, only in a different skin.
And that’s a really good case study in game and themic design, and I really love it.
For that, I really like what they have done, and the game has been so far really fun, even while being only EA. Sure, they still have a long way to go, but I’m really interrested in what direction will they take the game, and I’m really glad they choose the mix of genres they did, and that they mixed and matched elements from other games in a clever fashion, where nothing feels like it was just slapped into the game just because it’s popular. It’s taking the best ideas from other games, and uses them to a great effect together.
I also don’t mind them choosing the traditional Pokemon visual style, because it’s just the best fit for this kind of game. There is a reason why almost every Souls-like game looks like Dark Souls, because the atmosphere just fits into the mood and gameplay the genre is going for. The same can be said about monster collection games.
However, I’m a little bit worried about some red flags raised about the studio - namely that their history with supporting and finishing EA projects is a little bit wonky (although, it can be explained by them coming up with Palworlds concept, and liking it so much that they just immediately switched over to obviously way, way better concept for a game), and also the fact that one of the developers was tweeting about how AI can be used to circumvent copyright by just letting it generate designs similar to other existing products, while making an example on Pokemon. That’s not really a good look, when you’re working on a game that is also a monster collecting game and you don’t want to be accused of stealing design without making it yourself. And that, especially combined with the fact that Palwords is mostly just a re-skin of Craftopia that has been polished a little bit, may be a red flag that indicates that this may have indeed be just a quick attempt at low-effort cash-grab, where they threw Pokemons to AI to change them a little bit without taking any effort at designing original monsters.
But none of that is a concrete proof, and I still believe and hope that instead of a cheap cash-grab, they really do love the game idea and are excited to work and iterate on it, and will not abandon the game for next project once the hype dies down. Time will tell, but I really hope that it’s the latter.
Yeah, people seem all over the place about whether a copied mechanic is “ripping off” or just a genre.
These pokemon-likes have no more in common with Pokemon than Street Fighter with Virtua Fighter, Tekken, MK, KI, Fatal Fury, Guilty Gear, DBZ, or even Super Smash Bros… and about 2 dozen other games
People keep saying that Nintendo is going to sue them or something, but remember digimon?
Pokemon isn’t even an original idea - they just took one aspect of the jrpg and took it further. There’s been countless games that played with the same concept - they’re very litigious, but they don’t have any standing against a game that doesn’t use their IP - and the concept is not their IP, the Pokemon are
I’d pick I up if there was an actual storyline/something that needs to be accomplished and not just an open sandbox where the point is to just build and upgrade.
Yeah. It’s so crazy what ends up going viral sometimes. Over 5 million in a weekend for an early access from a no name company (essentially) is just nuts. Who knew a pokemon rip off with guns was going to cause such a big haul.
Yeah, I played a decent amount and quit when I realized the first boss isn’t the lead-in to the story. I’ll come back when there’s more to it (especially since the Game Pass version is out of date).
I literally can’t fathom sending a death threat. It would take an effort to come up with the content of the threat. And that assuming I’d be so angry that I’d decide to threaten someone. It’s just so much effort, first to get angry enough and then express that anger in the form of a threat and then find a way to send that threat to the outlet person.
It actually makes me sad for the people who send those threats, because their lives must be so incomprehensibly shit to actually go through with it. They’re still bags of dicks though.
I think you’re overestimating the amount of effort that it takes to find someone’s email or Twitter account and send them a message. And I pretty much guarantee that the kind of person that sends them has already been spewing that kind of hatred verbally, at a drop of a hat, for quite some time. It’s not a creative process, it’s just anger given a voice.
Already existing anger issues and lack of consequences for spreading vitriol online. Couple that with marketing that pushes products, entertainment etc. as a life style and some people fall very deep into the hole.
Damn, I guess the monster designs aren’t a ripoff, now that they’ve received death threats and clarified that the game isn’t a copy of the Pokémon gameplay loop.
That’s stupid imo, and we should push back against that nonsense. I strongly oppose the format, “I agree with {majority opinion}, but {nuanced opinion}.” Just lead with the nuanced opinion. Don’t make me sift through this appeal to the majority nonsense every time.
I get why people do it, it’s just a lot of noise just because people knee-jerk downvote. I wish Lemmy (or something else) would weight votes based on some kind of merit so we don’t need to play that game.
Yeah I agree generally but for me it was more like this is very sensitive issue and if I say anything controversial I also have to make sure people don’t’ randomly think I’m fine with the death threats in general. I think this death threat stuff is nonsense, I got death threats just playing games, I see people complaining about it all the time, it just seems like a non issue and I don’t know why devs even talk about it.
I recall the dev claims that the monster are inspired by Dragon Quest.
…and Pokemon itself has a lot of monster that basically inspired by Dragon Quest as well.
Also, huge chunks of design are basically based of common monster design in Japan or Chinese mythology. Unfortunately, Western fans don’t know the reference, and claims it was ripped-off from Pokemon.
I have yet to see anything in that game that’s not ripped from somewhere else. It’s an incredibly derivative collection of successful concepts. Other studios doing the same thing, to a lesser extent, doesn’t make it worthy of praise and other games have been called out for the same shit. Getting death threats unfortunately works like some kind of get ouf of jail free card for game studios, because social media is more obsessed with defending a company over the original criticism than any threats they received over it. Exactly like what’s happening in this thread.
Just taking random assets from the Unreal store and jamming them together to make a quick buck or releasing a game with different-colored models is “ripping”.
After playing Palworld for about 15 hours, I can confidently say that it has gameplay elements from a lot of different games, but they are integrated together seamlessly (at least for an Early Access title) and expanded upon. Pals aren’t just something you capture and sit in a PC forever. They have different stats that actually help you while exploring (running/mining faster) or help keep your base running (water your garden better). You are also incentivized to keep catching more to level up your character and level up your party.
It also has elements from Zelda with the climbing, exploring, and gliding. It has elements from ARK with leveling to get new crafting recipes and upgrading stats. It has elements from Elden Ring, like you can roll to dodge. Wait, that’s a simple mechanic…
Just like every game I’ve mentioned so far, they have elements from other games or simple mechanics that other genres have. They’ve used them cohesively and expanded upon to build a better game. Palworld is no different. Is it game of the year? Probably not. But it’s a fun game that isn’t as derivative as people are trying to make it seem.
Gamefreak has absolutely 0 drive or desire to make an actual improved pokemon game, they have been carried by the IP for the past 20 years. Now if they get some competition… Maybe they will start dreaming
Radical Red is a Fire Red romhack that brings the new Pokemon and mechanics to the old GBA art style. It’s the standard gen 1 story for the most part, but there are a ton of new features and a little story deviation at some points.
I definitely recommend it for old Pokemon fans that are disappointed in the newer entries.
Does it require a flash cart with clock or on any old flash cart? Got a link to the project? I’m paranoid for fishing sites when searching for romhack projects on the search engines
Only tangentially related, but I just realised that now when I read “X got death threats”, the assumption I jump to is that X is a terrible person/company trying to deflect from their terrible decisions/actions.
Not seemingly the case here, but Im left pondering how often this claim has been misused as an easy cop-out. WoTC, <insert politician here>, etc.
Yeah, it should be the opposite. If X is getting death threats, that means X is successful. FOSS projects get that nonsense all the time, it’s just a symptom of getting large enough for crazy people to notice.
There’s no real correlation between getting death threats and being “good/bad,” if you make something that gets popular, you’ll get death threats. There’s no further meaning behind it.
Lots of controversy around this game. Gotta say, no one really cares. Well no one who doesn’t find something to complain about each day on social media anyway. Dunno about you all, though I am fucking tired. So much shit just wrong nowadays and while I do my part where I can, when it comes to games I honestly just want to sit down and have fun. Palworld is fun. Lots of potential that is likely to be built upon and just enough depth right now that I can hop into the world and actually feel just a bit of that original wonder from so many years ago. Something our old pals Game Freak and Nintendo have, much like Nvidia did years ago, purposefully opted to barely refresh the concept as time has gone on.
There have been plenty of fanmade Pokemon games that have done it better than the devs of the actual, official, licensed main games. Hell, there have been sideloaded Pokemon titles better than the cash grabs of the last few years. I for one hope Palworld lights a positive “better-than-thou” fire under Nintendo. The literal best move they could make now, imho, is run with the larger community response and release something truly mildblowing.
it’s also working counter productive to their cause. I originally wasn’t going to play, I came across the game soley from the posts on imitating pokemon, I tried it via gamepass and fell in love with the game so I bought it on steam. I originally was just going to skip it, the publicity on the game is what pushed me over. The saying “No PR is Bad PR” can be true at times.
Found a list of pal and Pokémon comparisons. And frankly, I think it just shows how lazy Pokémon has always been. Sure the two sheep monsters and the two stingray monsters look similar, but that’s because stingrays and sheep actually exist!
Should we start in on gamefreak for ripping off reality?
People comparing Piplup and the penguin pal and I’m like: they’re PENGUINS. They’re small PENGUINS, how the hell do you want them to not to look like each other!?
At least people are coming to defend Nintendo, a 10 trillion dollar multinational company, I would feel bad if the only people defending Nintendo were their army of famously aggressive lawyers.
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