Pokemon Masters dev on lack of PvP, why it uses a real-time combat system
Pokemon Masters does have some multiplayer thanks to co-op, but PvP isn’t included. That means competing against other players isn’t possible.
Explaining the decision, DeNA director of product marketing Derrick Kuan said that the team wants Pokemon Masters to be more “amateur friendly,” and emphasize teamwork. Producer Yu Sasaki also chimed in with the following:
“The core premise for this game Pokemon Masters is that we want people to be working together, to be making friends, to be working with their companions and sort of meeting all these different sync pairs,, and we want people to enjoy that side of the game. So since that was the founding principle for this, we decided that we weren’t going to include something where you’re trying to have players pitted against other players, because that just wouldn’t be compatible with the original concept.”
Pokemon is primarily known as a turn-based series, but Pokemon Masters uses a real-time battle system. Regarding the decision to include this type of gameplay, Sasaki noted:
“The reason for [a real-time combat system] is that we do have a mode in the game where three people will be able to play in co-op,” Sasaki says when I ask about the reasoning behind the real-time battle system. “And so if you have a turn-based setup for that, there’s always going to be that time where maybe one of those people is thinking about what they want to do while everyone else is waiting, and that experience isn’t a good match for something like that turn-based experience. So we, because we had co-op in mind, decided to do real-time play because that was a better fit.”
