History YMMV / PokemonMasters

** Ash received this label over time due to measures [=DeNA=] had been taking that appeared to [[UnPerson erase Ash off the face of the game]]. Not only has he never rerun since his sole appearance, but his battle theme was removed from the game, and the medals from his event no longer show up in the medal list if you did not obtain them. It is worth noting however, that there is a very real rationale for [=DeNA=] to do so.[[note]]Pokémon as a whole is appearing to retire previous mechanics related to Ash, such as the retconning and removal of Ash-Greninja in Gen IX, likely since he is not the face of the anime anymore. That aside, Ash's status was already dubious, as the desire to use him was likely limited by copyright issues in relations to the Pokémon anime.[[/note]]

** While Wally wasn't an expected pick for Trainer Lodge, the few people who expected a Lodge Wally correctly guessed he would be paired with a Delcatty, since it was the only Pokemon in Wally's final team that was considered weaker and also was the only other Pokemon that had yet to be assigned to another pair in some form.

** April Fools Days ususally go for more humourous event ideas. April Fools Day 2024 however chooses a far [[DarkerAndEdgier darker]] idea for the April Fools Day event.
*** The Pokemon Center's theme has been changed to the ''Lavender Town'' theme.
*** Ghosts are now everywhere, cinluding many of the more morbid ones such as Chandelure, Dusknoir, and Runerigus.

*** Acerola shows up in front of one of the side doors. She's facing with her back to the player. Her dialogue will seem very disturbingly familar to anyone who's played ''Sun and Moon''.

** Looker from the "Looker's Tenacity" Extreme Battle Event released in August 2022 is a prime example. Firstly, mechanics make sure that only Sync Pairs from the Hoenn region could be viably used, making much of the game's roster out of the question for battling. Secondly, Looker's team will apply massive numbers of debuffs to your Pokemon (most notably accuracy) that made battling them a nightmare if the RNG was not in your favour. The battle essentially forced players to use Sygna Suit Steven & Deoxys in order to beat the round (as they have a passive skill that counters stat drops, and as a Psychic-type sync pair, they are able to take advantage of Looker's team's weakness to Psychic type) and ''even then, there are players who still struggled to beat the event.''

* NintendoHard: Getting all the badges in the game requires beating all Legendary Arena opponents on Level 2 using 5 or less teams and Level 3 using 4 or less, as well as beating most of the Battle Villa with no deaths and all of it with no recoveries. These feats are all but impossible without the best luck in the omniverse helping you out

** Volo's {{Leitmotif}}, "A Friendly Merchant", frames him as ''anything'' but that, being a sinister, violin+accordion remix of Cynthia's battle theme. A few fans have likened it to the theme of a horror movie villain.

--->'''Volo:''' (''with a hint of anger in his voice'') Satisfied?\\

** Fans have started making memes about [=DeNA=]'s tendency to sideline male protagonists of the mainline games in favor of the female, both in general and in a few specific cases. A number of these (especially in the case of Victor) have since become DiscreditedMemes after the characters in question received more and more alts.

** Basically any character from ''VideoGame/PokemonLetsGoPikachuAndLetsGoEevee'' receives this label since ''Let's Go'' was the mainline game whose characters took the longest time to debut. [[note]]If you don't count the Team Rocket trio and instead list them as being anime characters, snce that's where they're originally from before they were placed in ''Let's Go''.[[/note]] Even characters from ''Scarlet and Violet'' debuted first before any ''Let's Go'' characters debuted beforehand, which was seen especially memetically for Elaine (since she is a female protagonist, which [=DeNA=] is more likely to debut compared to male characters). It took until November 2023 for Elaine to make her debut in ''Masters'' and until Febuary 2024 for Chase to make his debut, which caused the community to meme that [=DeNA=] was not interested in them, and even extended the meme into joking that they were not placed into the game because of concerns that they wouldn't sell well due to the [[BrokenBase divisive nature nature]] of the ''Let's Go'' games.

* AndYouThoughtItWouldFail: 5/5 grids were ''very'' controversial in the community when they were first announced back in October 2022. Many believed that this would result in many sync pairs to become unviable even at 3/5 (the previous limit to where a sync pair would need to be considered at their full potential) and forcing players to spend more and more candies. As it was later revealed via subsequent updates, 5/5 grids often had the ''opposite'' effect on older sync pairs, with their 5/5 grids making them [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap viable]], and they are now celebrated as an essential for older pairs to be rendered viable again. It helps that the few units that started off with a 5/5 grid have since been powercrept to the point where having a 5/5 grid on them isn't a huge issue.

** The Full-Powered Hau Extreme Battle Event can only be described in three words: Pain and Suffering. Imagine the "Looker's Tenacity" event covered above, but it is on a roster that has even fewer powerful pairs than Hoenn (Alola), an enemy team that not only applies debuffs of all kinds, but also inflicts confusion AND paralysis, every turn! Many players reported having trouble clearing it even with various overpowered sync pairs with even the signature overpwoered combination of SST Red, Ash and NC Blue unable to lcear it without some tweaking. The only way to truly make the battle easier was to pull for SS Gladion (who has a passive that makes him immune to status and reflects stat drops.)

** The game's Fourth Anniversary pairs were revealed to be Kanto Neo Champions, with the Neo Champions being Blue, Red and Leaf. This either is a fitting role as the three of them do indeed live up to what a Neo Champion was supposed to be [[note]]A Trainer who acts as an example of what everyone should measure up to [[/note]], or it completely contradicts one of the core aspects of the Neo Champion role [[note]]The fact that the Neo Champion role applies to new trainers who are not already a champions, and some of the Kanto Neo Champions are ''already champions to begin with'', being Red and Blue[[/note]]. The latter group also saw the choices as being the lazy and safe route and wished that more outlandish pairs would obtain the Neo Champion position of Kanto. In addition, the fourth anniversary pairs being forced to be Neo Champions was becoing controversial with the abundance of Neo Champion events over the past few years (there had already been two such events in the past month), and many fans despised the inclusion of yet another Red anniversary pair (this was the ''third'' Red pair had debuted around an anniversary).

* AndYouThoughtItWouldFail: 5/5 grids were ''very'' controversial in the community when they were first announced back in October 2022. Many believed that this would result in many sync pairs to become unviable even at 3/5 (the previous limit to where a sync pair would need to be considered at their full potential) and forcing players to spend more and more candies. As it was later revealed via subsequent updates, 5/5 grids often had the ''opposite'' effect on older sync pairs, with their 5/5 grids making them [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap viable]], and they are now celebrated as an essential for odler pairs to be rendered viable again. It helps that the few units that started off with a 5/5 grid have since been powercrept to the point where having a 5/5 grid on them isn't a huge issue.

* UnintentionallySympathetic: Paulo's decision to [[spoiler: use the power of Hoopa to "eliminate all evil" is meant to be seen as Paulo falling victim to HeWhoFightsMonster and becoming DrunkOnTheDarkSide. However, given most of the villains in the series have no remorse for their actions and have [[KarmaHoudini evaded any punishment no matter the police's efforts]], many argue Paulo's desire to enact vigilante justice is both understandable and rather responsible. The latter point is bolstered by Lear and everybody else seemingly content to allow the villains to roam Pasio freely and continue their plans to their heart's content.

* UnintentionallySympathetic: Paulo's decision to [[spoiler: use the power of Hoopa to "eliminate all evil" is meant to be seen as Paulo falling victim to HeWhoFightsMonster and becoming DrunkOnTheDarkSide. However, given most of the villains in the series have no remorse for their actions and have [[KarmaHoudini evaded any punishment no matter the police's efforts]], many argue Paulo's desire to enact vigilante justice is not only understandable, but far more responsible than Lear allowing the villains to be left to roam Pasio and continue their plans to their heart's content.]]

* AndYouThoughtItWouldFail: 5/5 grids were ''very'' controversial in the community when they were first announced back in October 2022. Many believed that this would result in many sync pairs to become unviable even at 3/5 (the previous limit to where a sync pair would need to be considered at their full potential) and forcing players to spend more and more candies. As it was later revealed via subsequent updates, 5/5 grids often had the ''opposite'' effect on older sync pairs, with their 5/5 grids making them [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap viable]], and they are now celebrated as an essential for odler pairs to be rendered viable again. It helps that the few untis that started off with a 5/5 grid have since been powercrept to the point where having a 5/5 grid on them isn't a huge issue.

** 5-star sync pairs obtained from the PML story arc (Rosa and Serperior, Acerola and Palossand, Cheren and Stoutland, and Calem and Meowstic) get hit with this, due to there being no dedicated ways of raising their move level [[note]]barring either a type of event that hasn't happened in ''years'', or via a free pair obtainable every Pokémon Day, of which only happens once a month and gives the buff to a random pair selected for the month,[[/note]]. The only other option is to use move candies, which are always better saved for powerful sync pairs obtained from the gacha in order to save on gems, which are best used for obtaining different gacha sync pairs instead of multiple copies of the same sync pair just to raise their move level. Cheren and Stoutland are hit the hardest with this, as the other 3 still see some niche use for free-to-play strategies, even when only at move level 1, while Cheren and Stoutland's viability barely gets improved even after receiving their sync grid expansion in November 2022.

** Fans have started making memes about [=DeNA=]'s tendency to sideline male protagonists of the mainline games in favor of the female, both in general and in a few specific cases.

*** First of all, if you thought the 100,000 or so HP of maxinum HP Champion Stadium opponents wasn't tough enough, Anabel's Entei has a whopping '''''924,000''''' HP! And her side partners have nearly ''two hundred thousand HP as well''. And it also is immune to any excess damage if it is inititally knocked below 60% HP.

** Because of her punk rock atheistic and her Poison-Type specialization, many people expected Roxie to get an alt with a Toxtricity before the reveal of her Sygna Suit with a Toxtricity in November 2023.

** Early chapters in the game’s story mode set up a mystery of Team Break’s masks having the ability to mind control their hosts leading to the question as to who’s making them and for what purpose. After Leer is introduced however, this plot thread is dropped with the mind control aspect of Team Break being quietly ignored by the rest of the story. All subsequent appearances of Team Break depict them as nothing more than a leaderless group of thugs who cause mischief [[ForTheEvulz just because]], much to the disappointment of fans.

* UnintentionallySympathetic: Paulo's decision to [[spoiler: use the power of Hoopa to "eliminate all evil" is meant to be seen as Paulo falling victim to HeWhoFightsMonster and becoming DrunkOnTheDarkSide. However, given most of the villains in the series have no remorse for their actions and have [[KarmaHoudini evaded any punishment no matter the police's efforts]], many argue Paulo's desire to enact vigilante justice is not only understandable, but far more responsible than Leer allowing the villains to be left to roam Pasio and continue their plans to their heart's content.]]

** Chase's introduction into the game was a bit surprising, since the only previous indication to his potential appearance (Elaine being introduced the previous November) was assumed to be a one-off thing to celebrate Eevee Day. However, once again, the community was surprised to receive another free pair in the form of the Pikachu themed Poké Kid Petey.
** The idea of a Palentines alt given to a male character was seen as implausible, as every prior Palentines event introduced alts for only female characters, which logically fit with how Valentine's Day in Japan is celebrated by women giving gifts to men. So it was a huge shock when for Palentines 2024, a male alt was introduced, and it was also an alt for [[MemeticLoser Victor]] of all characters!

** The idea of a Palentines alt given to a male character was seen as implausible, as every prior Palentines event introduced alts for only female characters. So it was a huge shock when for Palentines 2024, a male alt was introduced, and it was also an alt for [[MemeticLoser Victor]] of all characters!

** The datamine, a monthly occurance where [[ContentLeak information for what events and new pairs will come the next month is datamined from new updates]], is heavily treated with a memetic fervor by much of the community. It actually reached the point where if you were to search up "datamine" on Discord's GIF search and even on Google, GIFs created by members of the ''Masters EX'' community are almost certain to appear in the top few results.

** Basically any character from the ''Let's Go'' games receives this label since ''Let's Go'' was the mainline game whose characters took the longest time to debut. [[note]]If you don't count the Team Rocket trio and instead list them as being anime characters, snce that's where they're originally from before they were placed in ''Let's Go''.[[/note]] Even characters from ''Scarlet and Violet'' debuted first before any ''Let's Go'' characters debuted beforehand, which was seen especially memetically for Elaine (since she is a female protagonist, which [=DeNA=] is more likely to debut compared to male characters). It took until November 2023 for Elaine to make her debut in ''Masters'' and until Febuary 2024 for Chase to make his debut, which caused the community to meme that [=DeNA=] was not interested in them, and even extended the meme into joking that they were not placed into the game because of concerns that they wouldn;t sell well due to the [[BrokenBase divisive nature nature]] of the ''Let's Go'' games.

* UnintentionallySympathetic: Paulo's decision to [[spoiler: use the power of Hoopa to "eliminate all evil" is meant to be seen as Paulo falling victim to HeWhoFightsMonster and becoming DrunkOnTheDarkSide. However, given most of the villains in the series have no remorse for their actions and have [[KarmaHoudini evaded any punishment no matter the police's efforts]], many argue Paulo's desire to enact vigilante justice is not only understandable but far more responsible and justified than Leer allowing the villains to be left to roam Pasio and continue their plans to their heart's content.]]

* UnintentionallySympathetic: Paulo's decision to [[spoiler: use the power of Hoopa to "eliminate all evil" is meant to be seen as Paulo falling victim to HeWhoFightsMonster and becoming DrunkOnTheDarkSide. However, given most of the villains in the series have no remorse for their actions and have [[KarmaHoundini evaded any punishment no matter the police's efforts]], many argue Paulo's desire to enact vigilante justice is not only understandable but far more responsible and justified than Leer allowing the villains to be left to roam Pasio and continue their plans to their heart's content.]]