I played Pokemon Unite on my Switch and I’ve to say I like this game too, but not as much as Hots. Both games are very similar:
Pros:
No itemshop, but players choose between talents
Even though makro is important I would consider Pokemon Unite a team brawler like Hots.
Unique hero design, Lucario feels like a melee version of Genji.
Short matches around 5 and 10 minutes
Cons:
No map diversity, but only some different maps in different modes with different player count (5v5, 4v4, 3v3)
Obviously enhancing items through money, even if the impact isn’t great, but the idea is just bad for competitive games. Note: this power-ups can be earned by playing the game, so the buyer technically only buys time.
Neutral:
Summoner spells like in LoL
Equipment items that can enhance your hero, which can be upgraded by ingame currencys for playing the game
Overall a nice game and similar to Hots, but I like Hots more, because it has map diversity and also is more complex, but I understand that Pokemon Unite can’t be too complex, because it’s for the Switch and later for mobile. But I have the feeling that a more simple version of Hots would work for Switch/mobile too, because Pokemon Unite works well in that environment.
Actually it’s a soft p2w, because you can earn this currency ingame for just playing the game, so basically the buyer buys time. And the impact of this enhanced items is there yes, but it’s not too much, but I agree with you I dislike the idea, but people overstimating this items.
I mean… there’s really nothing to it. They’re selling player power. If you want to have the best items sometime this century, you gotta cough up money.
Doesn’t matter how soft it is, P2W has no place in a Moba. League had it for years with their runes, but people hated it so much that they eventually had to drop it. HotS tried implementing a similar system in the beta, but outcry was so strong that it didn’t get past one patch (TotalBiscuit, rest his soul, did a whole like 30 minute video about how it was a terrible idea).
I love Pokemon, I’m willing to give this a try whenever I’m not doing anything else on my Switch, but their current system is abysmal and a fine example of predatory microtransactions.
I even watched Crikital’s video where he played the same Pokemon with no items, and with items he maxed out by spending like 100 bucks, and it was a massive and absolute shift in his gameplay with no change in his skill level. He got to do better and win more solely because he paid money.
I know what you mean and I agree with you, but I didn’t paid anything and also have this boosted items, you can get them really fast, if you know what you’re doing without spending money. Money in this game just buys you time, you could basically say that’s their way to make casuals competitve as someone, who plays a lot. Even though I don’t like it, but the idea is interesting, because a casual will usually never beat a hardcore player.
You play it on a Switch with a Switch controller. No mouse or keyboard.
Instant deal-breaker for me. Watching RossBoomsocks play it makes it painfully clear just how hard it can be to target your abilities correctly when all you have is a thumbstick.
Pair that with the P2W upgrades, the rather simplistic playstyle, and the overall childish aesthetics (as in designed to appeal mainly to younger kids), and I have no expectations for this game ever becoming seriously competitive.
That’s not to say people won’t find it fun, but I highly doubt most teenage and adult gamers will take the game seriously enough. If it actually becomes a successful Esport, I will lose the last of my confidence in the gaming community’s tastes and intellectual capacity.
Im surprised ppl still say PokeUnite is a soft p2w game. My opinion is, that it’s not really.
At the start, it’s hard P2W, since players who buy 30/30/30 items for theit Main poke they will have advantage over players who play legit and only has like 20/20/20 items at best (probably lower).
As time passes, nature will balance this out cause no$ players can grind their own 30/30/30 and be even match with players who payed.
However…it’s gona be cross platform, so mobile, consol, Pc (and more if i missed any) will play togeather with different release dates.
What’s bad about this?
Players who start first (mobile) will have an item level advantage over the next platform players who get access, and it repeats for each release. So the players who get added last will be way behind in item level, and they will need to grind for months to get the 30/30/30 items for a main char.
So it’s eiter they pay to start on even foot with mobile, and consol players, or just suffer for months of gameplay.
So my opinion on PokeUnite: It’s gona be a casual time waster game…and honestly, i think it’s a really low quality game, aka cashgrab game.
I would expect a huge and wealthy company like the PokemonCompany to make something way, way WAAAAYYYYY better in quality.
For someone, who didn’t paid a dime I am pretty successful for just starting the game. Your talk is just theoretical mess without any evidence, sorry. It is indeed soft p2w and you don’t have to like it, but saying that isn’t true just proves my point how biased you are.
Actually it is pretty easy to target skillshots, just check out how FanHots is playing it.
Gameplay is more simplyfied and it works quite well, even if you’re playing with controller and not mouse and keyboard.
u have different lock on options in ur settings, but u can still miss skills that have a set distance. but jeah it s hard to miss anyhting that s not moving too fast.
i played it for 2 days now and i m thinking of uninstalling already mainly because upgrading items takes way too long unless u pay a lot and because this game features mostly highspeed physical attackers which can only be taken down with well coordinated teammates nad i m more of a mage fan but their dmg cant compare at all to those absurd crits.
i had to laugh at the comments of the streamer in lucifers video when he played absol. well fyi absol even without full items has insane crits already and those maxed items make him a great “noobstomper”
Yeah but people distort what pay to win actually means. It’s still free to play and you can win while never paying a cent. It’ll just take months or years to make up the advantage when the game is already generous enough.
Example: it’ll take a year to unlock all the hots heroes. It’s still not pay to win by any stretch unless you pigeonhole and say within a month limitation
There is a difference between hero unlocks and item upgrades in the way they they are handled.
In hots, a heroes power level has nothing to do with what it takes to unlock them. There are a handful of heroes who are overturned (and shouldn’t be) but for the most part, the hots roster is on a fairly even playing field. Even currently, some of the strongest heroes can be unlocked with in the your first 30 min of playing. Even the heroes the game gives you for free are still very completive. Additionally, you cant even play hots’s most competive mode until you’ve unlocked a certain number of heroes.
I will say that I wish that it was faster to unlock heroes but its not a hard no for me.
Now, if you could pay for something like having your quests start at 10% of their stacks when you pick them, that would be really lame. Even fi it was something that you could unlock through a long progression.
In unite, a Rocky Helmet with +18hp +0 def and reflects 3% damage is objectively worse then a rocky helmet that gives +240 hp, +28 defense, and 5% damage reflect. The time it takes to grind out the 2587 Item Enhancers to reach level 30 (max level) on your rocky helmet is very long.
Its not just the objective power boosting that I dislike about unite tho. How they go about it is pretty scummy. Menus are intentionally convoluted, layered, and complex. There are also serval currencies that can only get specific things and some of them are used to but other currencies which just makes it needlessly tedious to not spend money. There also soooooo many things to buy on their store that range form skins which are neat to tiny cosmetics for your trainer that you barely even see to items for your pokemon that boost their power.
Heres a panel where a CEO goes in to detail on who they want to manipulate how these kind of games manipulate those people.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like that hots has loot boxes and 3 different currencies. Its not ok games in the future to have more micro transactions because the games we have now have some.
It is a real slippery slope.
