Pokemon Unite: A fun game ruined by it practices

Sorry I've not been active as of late. 3 days ago was my birthday (25 years old now), and work has kept me occupied from writing my fics. But I won't lie, I've been playing Video games a lot, generally speaking, Smite and their Stranger Things battle pass, Minecraft with a few friends in a realm we all play in, and Hades for being a visually stunning Roguelite with great writing to boot. But as of late, for the last 2 weeks, I've been playing Pokemon Unite, and oh boy, I'm VERY crossed with it.

Before we get into why I'm crossed, in case any of you don't know what the game is, it's a MOBA with a sport twist where you select one of the playable pokemon you have. Generally speaking, two teams of five leave their base and head to the top, middle, or bottom lanes, the former and latter having the score towers where you score points. The way to score is to get energy by defeating wild pokemon sprinkled across the map, and head into the enemy tower, and holding the score button to get points; the more energy you have, the longer it takes for you to score, which can be interrupted by enemy pokemon. Of course, if you defeat, or are defeated by, enemy pokemon, half of the energy held is dropped, which can be picked up and used to score. But overall, all of this is also the way for your pokemon to level up ingame, which will help you unlock more powerful abilities, soon unlocking your ultimate ability, which deals more damage. There are some special pokemon at the top and bottom that, when defeated, help your team in special ways, give you a bit of an edge. 

Overall, this sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Each match is 10 minutes long, so you can easily play a match or two and not worry that you're going to lose too much valuable time. But… there's some minor problems, but one SERIOUS issue. I'll make it easy with the minor problems, mainly nitpicks that don't break the game, but can be fixed in the future. This is a small top 5, because the game is still relatively new, so I'm giving them some leeway that it can be fixed in the future.

#5 The Time Zone reset: Logging in to get rewards is always fun, but the annoying thing, at least to me, is learning that the game operates in it's own timezone, which is UTC, 7 hours ahead of me. The daily rewards reset at midnight over there, which is 5 pm in my area. 

#4 Besides Pikachu, none of the pokemon have their own distinct calls: It's a gripe I had with Pokemon Go as well, and I get it, Pikachu IS basically the face of Pokemon, but does it hurt to have the pokemon have their voices instead of garbled 8-bit roars?

#3 Customizing your Pokemon Trainer card is dumb: Besides putting on new outfits for your personal trainer, you can have them pose for your character card… which is generally them in one of three poses, having one of four facial features, and in one of three backgrounds with barriers each. The other thing you can add are stickers, a single pokemon and one of any others, but the only unique thing is that you can move your trainer around in the frame, turning and panning them around to not face the camera or be nearly out of frame.

#2 Lack of maps. I forgot to mention this earlier, but there's besides the main game, there's a few other "quick games", named because they're half the time of a standard game, 5 minutes instead of 10. I say this because the Quick games are more diverse with their own themes, one being a snow map and another being more of an open field with conveyor belts around, though one is just a smaller version of the main game map. Unless they're planning to keep altering the main game map, alas, Fortnite, they should have more game maps available. Hell, Ranked games don't change in looks at all.

#1 Lack of Messaging and voice chat: I played this game with a friend last night, and though we know each other on Discord, I noticed that messaging in a party has to be less than 50 characters and we can't talk to each other ingame. I know we could voice chat on Discord, I won't deny that, but he invited a friend who I never met, and would love to talk to him about how they met my friend, and if we had shared interests. But alas, I had to play in silence and rage without anyone to laugh with.

But like I said, that stuff isn't game breaking, and could be fixed/added in the future… what isn't good, however, is the greedy handling that turns this game from a free to play into a Pay to win game!

Generally speaking, most MOBAs get their money from ingame purchases, usually for cosmetics. This is a practice I, and many others, are aware of, and it's generally alright. No, what Pokemon Unite (calling it P.U. for short now) does is basically the same debacle from EA's Battlefront 2, where spending money will make your pokemon perform much better over the others. "What do you mean?", I hear most of you asking. In most MOBAs, when you spawn ingame, you start with nothing on your character, but instead, some form of currency (usually gold) to buy gear that will enhance your character's performance, from standard protection to dealing more damage, sometimes with added side effects. What P.U. does, instead, is before starting the match, in the character selection screen, you can choose not only your pokemon, but also a tool, and up to 3 items of their choosing. The tools are mainly emergency equipment that have a cooldown, and can do various things like heal a bit, deal more damage for a few seconds, have a short teleportation range, ECT. The items, however, are actual upgrades to your pokemon, but the real problem is that you can upgrade these items before beginning any match, and they're permanent! Or in other words, if you're a new player, or it's a game that you and a few friends pop on every now and then to play for fun, unless you spend money to buy item enhancing gems, there's a high chance you're going to be steamrolled by a player who spent a lot of money to get the items at max level, and will casually beat all of you, no real skill required. I know this because I've been both the player that easily kills new players, and also been owned by others. The only money I truly spent on P.U. was to get started on the battle pass, and have been using the item enhancement gems I've received in said battle pass. But every time I own someone, I don't feel like I deserved it, instead, feeling dirty for paying to make myself stronger. And every time I get owned, I rarely think it's someone with actual skill against me, just someone who bought the upgrades needed to beat me.

But I can hear some of you ask "can you do any better?"... well… I think I can. This is just an idea, so bear with me. If P.U. wants to streamline the items and get rid of an ingame shop during a match to keep the flow going, I can totally get behind it. What I would've done, instead, is for your pokemon to have the items on them, but the items level up with your pokemon in the match. This way, anyone can have fun and experiment with different builds with their item combos, instead of focusing on leveling up with a set of items using real money that works best with a particular pokemon, but getting screwed over when someone else selects it and having max items with a pokemon that doesn't work with said items. Now that's a P.U. I can totally get behind, where they can make their money from selling cosmetics and new Pokemon additions to their roster. But the company that made this game, Tencent, is in China, and won't listen to anyone, unless we all stop playing it. I plan to get rid of P.U. as soon as I finish the battle pass, so it'll take a while. I'm not mad persay, just disappointed because P.U. is actually fun, but the predatory marketing that forces players to pay to win is appalling. If you wanna try it, go right ahead, but just know that there's going to be people that spent a lot of money to become stronger than you, and will decimate you with no mercy.