The 1.2 update for Pokémon: Scarlet and Violet is set to be released later this month. Naturally, most of the changes have already been added to the game files or are at least prepared. That means any suggestions at this point are likely moot.
Nevertheless, there are a few big things that (hopefully) Nintendo is going to add. If not, they will need to add them eventually as these are integral to the success of the game.
What Scarlet and Violet needs in 1.2 Update:
Four notable additions and pain points that need fixing are yet to materialize in-game. Let’s go over some of the changes we’d like to see soon.
Shiny cues
The first thing Pokémon has to do is add some sort of cue to let players know they’ve encountered a shiny in the wild. Since battle encounters aren’t required to see shinies, there’s no way to tell without looking closely. For starters, there’s no reason to make it so that players can miss out on shinies they see. That rare spawn has a 1/4096 chance of occurring, so why bother making it impossible to tell?
Moreover, there are other reasons to change this. Players may be colorblind and literally cannot tell whether or not that Eevee is white or tan. They may just have poor eyesight and/or be playing on a poorly lit television. Not everyone has a Switch OLED and a nice TV to pair it with.
There are two options to fix this and they both come from Legends: Arceus. Either they can have the shiny stars show up when the Pokémon is first on-screen or they can play the shiny jingle the same way. The latter option would make it the most obvious. Since Pokémon is interested in making it difficult, they may opt for the former. Either way, it’s not exactly fair to a lot of players to make shinies so hard to see.
This also doesn’t help new players, of which there are a lot for Scarlet and Violet. If a player isn’t that experienced, how are they supposed to know that a shiny Starly is every-s0-slightly more red? This needs to be remedied.
Better lighting
Dynamic lighting, meaning shadows and even some ray-tracing effects, have been huge for the overall graphic quality of the game, but it’s far from perfect. Poor lighting in certain areas makes it hard to see if something is shiny or not. In postgame, when there’s far less to do overall, this is something most players are looking for. A Mimikyu that’s slightly in the shade looks shiny and that’s not fair.
It also makes it even more difficult to see all of the Pokémon. If they’re in the shadows and the camera is at a certain angle, players might not see something spawn at all.
Stop spawning in walls
The inclusion of vast, explorable caves is a nice touch to add to the vast open world map that is the Paldea region. Unfortunately, it’s not coded all that well. If players are ever doing a mass outbreak in any location with a mountain, cave or even a hill, there’s an almost 100% chance most of the Pokémon will spawn in the wall. Not only does that make it impossible to clear them with the Auto Battle feature, it’s impossible to see a shiny in there without moving and angling the camera exactly perfectly.
Pokémon often spawn in the walls during outbreaks
This is a persistent glitch, so it’s shocking it lasted past the 1.1 update. The 1.2 update has to fix this as it’s one of the biggest remaining glitches in the game.
Pokémon HOME
Pokémon HOME is one of the best aspects of the long-running franchise. For the last few years, any Pokémon caught in any of the games can be transferred into HOME and kept there. It can then be put into a later game, provided the Pokédex has it. Scarlet and Violet doesn’t have access yet, but it will. Since it’s been out since November, it would be a shock if the 1.2 update didn’t introduce accessibility.
Some of these are more likely than others, but everything will be known by the end of the month when the update should be made available.
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