The Pokemon Home Bugaboo :(

[Battista]

So according to Serebii…

Pokémon sent to Pokémon Legends: Z-A will no longer be able to be used in prior Pokémon games. Pokémon from Legends Z-A will also not be able to be deposited in other current Pokémon games.

This is disheartening but not necessarily deal breaking for me, because I have a feeling we’ll still be able to use our Z-A mons in Champions. It also means though that I’ll have to give significant thought as to which Pokemon I’m willing to transfer in. I’m currently making a box in Home of mons to send over.

 

[Mothmallow]

Yeah, this has definitely put a damper on some of my prep for this game. I had a lineup of mega-able shinies I planned on making my team for my playthrough, including abra and gastly. But between linking cord not seeming to be coming back and not being able to be sent back to Arceus to use one, I probably wouldn't be able to evolve them fully. Granted I have both a shiny slowpoke and starmie I was considering transfering up anyway and have been on and off sos chaining shuppet and sableye, but it still kind of sucks.
It's also surely going to make your storage space feel a lot more limiting. I already have a problem with that in other games, even with being able to distribute my collection between them.

 

[Battista]

So in my box so far I have some shinies that never made it onto a competitive team in Violet - Dragonite, Hawlucha, Gogoat, and Steelix. Not sure if I want to bring shiny Beedrill and Pidgeot in from my Let’s Go file.

Also there are a couple special ones that I want to send back to Kalos for purely sentimental reasons. I have the special Chesnaught (Chester) and Greninja (Froabble) that were traded by Shauna in XY.

 

[ninazrdl]

I don't use pokemon home until I cleared the game for 1st time, so that I can actually experience the collecting and raising bit. So far I feel like they could have done better, but it is not a big deal to me.
If I like the game, I can transfer some of my best XY mates there. Show them the future of their hometown. If I don't like it, I can just dump some of my non-shiny pokemons from SV raids there.

 

[Nicolas721]

I'm not too much of a Home person but wow, this sucks, I'm surprised people are still hyped after all that, this feels like an step back. At least it seems it is still two-ways compatible with Home? But still, my favorite part of this was to use Shield to train some PLA mons for their respective challenges and it's sad that can't be replicated here. Also, you must have a lot of care of where you put your legendaries and shinies.

 

[colours]

i think this is... an interesting decision. i wonder if it has something to do with the fact that pokemon don't have abilities/are coded in a different way in ZA than in the version games? wouldn't surprise me if that's the case. at any rate, i'm ok holding most of my pokemon in my pc in s/v until gen 10, it doesn't bother me much.

 

[Electrocast]

i had no idea about this, thanks for the heads up.

thread title didn't really indicate this to me though, it just seemed like it'd be about the wait for home compatibility in general. so opening the thread up to this was a shock to say the least

 

[Juliyet]

I could see the possibility of ZA's Switch 2 version and being designed with a new console in mind may have made things impossible irt compatibility. Though I've also seen speculation this might be something to do with language origin compatibility with prior games, as Z-A added an additional language option (Latin American Spanish) so mon coded with that might not be compatible with prior games that don't feature it?

Still definitely a departure from the prior modern games. I had fun swapping around my mon to and from Arceus and SV, so it is a little bit of a bummer, though I'd understand if it's compatibility issues in someway. We'll see if Gen 10 is fully compatible with Z-A at least. Backwards compatibility wasn't even a norm in the past, so I'm happy it was even feasible for a fleeting moment.

 

[Silvally]

i really wish that pokemon stored in pokemon home were able to have separate sets of game data associated with them. so lets say i have a pikachu i caught in scvi and i deposit it in pokemon home. whatever state that pikachu was in when it was deposited into home should be stored somewhere as its "scvi data". if that pikachu is then withdrawn into za a completely new set of data is created. as i play with that pikachu it's "za data" is updated and the "scvi data" is untouched. when the pikachu is deposited back in pokemon home it could be withdrawn into scvi and load the old "scvi data" which was untouched. maybe this would cause the pikachu to be a lower level in scvi than it is in za. but i wouldnt mind that! it would basically be a slightly different pokemon in each game. i think that would be better than being completely unable to use that pikachu ever again in scvi i think.

i mostly want this just because i have a load of gen 1 shiny pokemon id love to be able to use in lgpe. but i cant! i dont really care about what state that pokemon is in in the later games. i just want access particular shiny pokemon in my older games without having to shiny hunt a brand new one! honestly it kind of kills my enthusiasm for the newer pokemon games when my old pokemon become "locked" into only being useable in that game...

 

[terashards]

i really wish that pokemon stored in pokemon home were able to have separate sets of game data associated with them. so lets say i have a pikachu i caught in scvi and i deposit it in pokemon home. whatever state that pikachu was in when it was deposited into home should be stored somewhere as its "scvi data". if that pikachu is then withdrawn into za a completely new set of data is created. as i play with that pikachu it's "za data" is updated and the "scvi data" is untouched. when the pikachu is deposited back in pokemon home it could be withdrawn into scvi and load the old "scvi data" which was untouched. maybe this would cause the pikachu to be a lower level in scvi than it is in za. but i wouldnt mind that! it would basically be a slightly different pokemon in each game. i think that would be better than being completely unable to use that pikachu ever again in scvi i think.

the thing is this is more or less how home works these days. it's been updated a lot since it first became a thing and pokemon all have game-specific data now; this is how it saves movesets per-game for instance. this breakpoint between Z-A and previous games is almost nonsensical (going to go into that below) because the way HOME works, it should be futureproofed for this sort of situation. i understand that you're talking more in totality here but still worth pointing out.

i wonder if it has something to do with the fact that pokemon don't have abilities/are coded in a different way in ZA than in the version games? wouldn't surprise me if that's the case.

if Z-A not having abilities or the typical battle system was the problem, we wouldn't be able to take pokemon freely in and out of PLA, but we can. LGPE, being the only switch game with different mechanics that doesn't allow for transferring in and out of it freely, is only the way it is because of it being from so long ago before HOME was updated to work the way it does now and i guess they aren't in the mood to overhaul a game from so long ago, plus any pokemon already moved out of LGPE lost its LGPE specific data so it'd be... messy to retroactively fix. it sucks but i can understand why LGPE is a weird fringe case.

anyway, as someone who really enjoys porting her pokemon around and has become accustomed to the convenience of being able to do so between all the switch games, this change feels surprising and bad. i definitely do not like it. but i was even more frustrated because i couldn't think of a possible reason this was necessary other than stomping on people's fun, so i thought about it for a while, and realized that it might actually be because of LATAM spanish being added as a supported language in Z-A and future pokemon titles. anyone playing Z-A in latam spanish is playing with a pokemon with a language tag and language data that does not exist before Z-A. new future content on a pokemon is usually not an issue, like for example with newly introduced moves, you can just do what they already have done: make moves game-specific. but uh, you can't make an entire language game-specific. they also are understandably not going to go back and retroactively localize all the pokemon switch games again with LATAM spanish. so LATAM spanish pokemon are stuck in Z-A by necessity.

so if we assume that this change is because LATAM spanish pokemon cannot go backwards that begs the question of why non-LATAM spanish pokemon cannot go backwards or why pokemon from previous games can't be taken back out of Z-A once they're put in, since obviously none of them are LATAM spanish. my LATAM spanish explanation for the problem is already speculation (though i think it is more of a well-educated guess based on how HOME works on a technical level) but this is even more speculative: i think it's just fairness and simplicity. it would be kind of crummy if people playing in LATAM spanish were the only ones who weren't allowed to transfer their pokemon backwards, and if LATAM spanish is truly the reason for this cut-off point, i agree with that logic. what i personally agree less with is locking pokemon from previous games into Z-A if they're transferred in. i understand that for them this is a much more technically simple option and it's also simpler to explain to people that Z-A is a one-way, instead of "by the way you can take your pokemon out of Z-A but only if that pokemon originates from another game". i also understand that this might also be a fairness thing, though i think with slightly less basis. but selfishly i still wish that i could freely move my gen 1-9 pokemon freely around 8-9 forever since it's been such a nice feature to have lol.

take me with a grain of salt of course, i don't work at gamefreak or ILCA or anything and i am not a TPC executive calling the shots. but TLDR; i really do think this whole issue is likely because of the introduction of LATAM spanish which is a net positive even if it has this unfortunate side effect. we won't ever know for sure unless they outright say it and i doubt TPC is interested in publicly blaming a language or group of people for this technical pitfall so even if this is the reason, which i highly suspect, i don't think they'll ever say it.

as for me, i'm probably going to hold off on transferring any of my cherished pokemon until gen 10 is out. a lot of my favorite pokemon are ribbon masters and Z-A doesn't even have a visible ribbons menu or any new ribbons to collect so i'd rather hold off until they can be put into a game with ribbons/marks in it.

edit: forgot some extra thoughts; yes while they technically could convert any LATAM spanish pokemon to the spanish that already exists in prior games for when they are in prior games, that would be... uh... well i think that would be insensitive and strange, personally. also, LATAM spanish or not, adding a breakpoint like this helps keeps HOME manageable and un-spaghettied for the devs in the future, as much as it sucks. this would be a very convenient and practically necessary time to do so.

 

[Silvally]

the thing is this is more or less how home works these days. it's been updated a lot since it first became a thing and pokemon all have game-specific data now; this is how it saves movesets per-game for instance. this breakpoint between Z-A and previous games is almost nonsensical (going to go into that below) because the way HOME works, it should be futureproofed for this sort of situation. i understand that you're talking more in totality here but still worth pointing out.

oh oops! thanks for correcting me. tbh im pretty ignorant on this topic bc the only switch games i have which are compatiible with home are lgpe swsh and pla im not sure how it completely slipped my mind that i can transfer pokemon freely between swsh and pla despite their different mechanics? i guess ive invested too much brainspace into being sad about being unable to freely move pokemon to/from lgpe ...

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my assumption is that the reason that we cannot freely transfer pokemon to/from lgpe and plza must be due to some sort of software architecture/design issue (whatever that may be). future-proofing and patching things after the fact isnt often a task which is straightforward. i imagine it would be possible in theory? but i guess it was decided that the potential reduction in number of sales would be less costly than the developer time it would take to patch pokemon home and/or all the other switch pokemon games?

like. i do wonder how many people havent bought plza because they cannot freely transfer pokemon to/from it? for me its certainly very offputting but i wouldnt say it was the deciding factor in me not buying the game.