Why raids are underrated and how they can be better
There's just something about teaming up with other players from around the world and beating up on an absolute tank of a pokemon that, despite the many flaws in the game mode, keeps me coming back.
In the absence of a proper battle facility (no, the School Battle Brawl doesn't count), many players were left yearning for more meaninful experiences to bridge the gap between casual and competitive play. Enter raids. Raids help fill the void left behind by this omission, providing an alternative outlet for utilizing the pokemon you took so much time to collect and train while offering valuable resources as rewards.
Of course, this is not without its fair share of problems. Let's not sugarcoat it, the queueing up system is horrendous. If Raids are to return in future installments, Gamefreak needs to figure out a way to make it so that simply joining isn't the most difficult part of the raid. That's just the bare minimum, though.
One change I would recommend is to lean into the aspect of testing the player's preparedness by allowing us to freely choose what moves and items to equip on whatever pokemon we decide to bring into battle right from the queueing screen. Most pokemon are capable of running more than one moveset, however currently we can only use whatever your pokemon had before you queued up and this is a missed opportunity.
Comments
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Hello, Trainer,
Thank you for your feedback! Please let us know if you have any other suggestions.
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@RiqMoran Fair points you make, but I have to say the way that Scarlet and Violet handled raids was not great. Honestly I have to wonder how the developers thought a battle system built on turns was suddenly going to work in real time. Sword and Shield did it better- it's the Shield mechanics and the poor AI of the NPC trainers that I have issues with, but the system itself is fine.
Also, largely unrelated, but I'm peeved that in S/V, they had several of the starters available in extremely difficult raids before Pokemon Home was finally updated.
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@RiqMoran I completely agree with the complaints about the queuing system and it seems like only the 7 star event raids are reliable to get into.
@D-ManBlue Personally I'm the exact opposite way. I actually really like the raid battles of SV for letting you move on your own terms, and how the AI can actually be supportive, and if you understand all the mechanics and timings you can do things like solo Chesnaught with an Azurill or Delphox with a Marill which I have personally made videos of, though they don't really make these mechanics obvious to how it all syncs up so I feel like the depth goes over most of the playerbase.
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Online play stability is a reoccurring problem with Pokémon games. I am not sure how much can be attributed to Nintendo's online system and how much is GF's matchmaking and netcode, but it was terrible in SwSh too while other Switch games seem much more stable.
The whole process of finding a raid, attempting to join, failing to join, trying another raid, failing to join, refreshing the list, trying to join, failing, etc. can sometimes take 20 minutes between consciously deciding to join a raid and actually getting to play one.
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