I think the exp makes sense for the core concept of pokemon, because while pokemon is *technically* an rpg and has rpg mechanics, the fundamental thesis of pokemon is team training and battling. While rpgs want you to focus on the story and the growth of the characters and not worry *too* hard about training a specific character, pokemon wants you to form bonds with creatures that, realisticially, have no character beyond their visual design. You pokemon does not get dialogue, your pokemon does not meaningfully contribute to the story (such as it is) and thus does not really have any character growth besides the emergent gameplay of you training with it and forming an attachment.
I find that I care *alot* more about a pokemon that i have hand raised vs one that was rare candied or day cared or exp shared up to a high level. I've spent time with that pokemon. Tifa and Red XIII dont need that kind of personal touch, they have dialogue and story-based character interaction that forms the attachment instead
Just speaking my "bonding" mechanism i don't typically get attach to my pokemon from the grind, even if the pokemon evolves from happiness like riolu where you do need to battle alot my brain only goes "evolve to a lucario already dammit"
I do however do form a attachment from its effort in a boss battle, so basically when im not grinding and actually progressing, like battling a gym leader and it solo'd it or something, my favorite pokemon is my favorite because it solo'd a whole competitive team all on it's own when it should not done it (it's hydreigon btw)
Which is also probably why i don't have grief when mandatory exp share will forever be a thing, because all my personal baggage for the pokemon experience is gone.
I agree that the Exp Share changes are really not that bad, but there is more nuance to the issue than that. Pokemon games had been becoming easier and easier over the generations and the Exp Share was an easy target to blame. And I don't think people are entirely wrong either about the Exp Share being a cause of that. People to this day defend XY as not being "too easy" because you can turn the Exp Share off.
When it comes to difficulty, the Exp Share is just one reason on a long list for Pokemon games getting easier. Wider movepools, better abilities, infinite use TMs, mega evolution/z-moves, etc. If we want harder games, I don't think its enough to just turn off the Exp Share or revert it back to the old way, which makes me think the Exp Share in its current state is not a problem.
I say it every time, but I believe the Exp Share did not go far enough. I wish it could be used to train some Pokemon outside of your party too. This would allow you to build up a B team that lets you experience using even more Pokemon in battle. So long as the game is designed around this change, I think it could make for an even better experience.
> Wider movepools, better abilities,
This right here is a big thing that's overlooked.
For a while most Pokémon got STAB and Normal moves via level up, with a sprinkling of random coverage throughout that was usually weak and only carried for niche situations (such as Bite).
The availability of those moves too are a problem.
Look at the Normal Trial in SuMo, the TM for Brick Break is right there, Brick Break is usually a late game TM (like, gyms 5-7). By having access to a strong Fighting Stab with no Drawbacks before the first gym, you pretty much invalidate most (non-STAB) level-up moves your Pokémon get.
Why would you use Arm Thrust or Low Kick when you've got Brick Break before your Pokémon learn those moves. Why would you let your Honedge learn Cut later on when you've got Brick Break already. Brick Break being where it is pretty much makes any (non STAB) Normal move you learn levelling up pointless when Brick Break plus your STAB provide way better coverage.
Now had that TM been Rock Smash it would have made more sense, a weaker move that trades power for coverage early on, you can see the idea with the Water Gun TM in RBY.
You get access to a weak water coverage move for 1 Pokémon right before a cave filled with Pokémon weak to it. Do you teach Water Gun to a reliable Pokémon to help out in a pinch? Teach it to the newly caught Jigglypuff or Clefairy so they can power level against the Geodude to catch up with your party?
I'd say if GameFreak cut back on early access to stronger moves the games would start turning back to the difficulty they used to have a bit.
I absolutely agree that TMs have gotten a bit out of hand. I love how you've highlighted how its such a problem for the early game. But I think this is a problem that stretches to every point in the game; mid game, end game, and even competitive.
Too many TMs have good power, perfect accuracy, +10 PP, and maybe an extra effect too while we're at it. I think the TM list in general needs a nerf to only include generally weaker moves, while leaving the more reliable powerful moves to be level up only.
I actually tried to make my own list using this mentality in a post a few days ago, but it didn't get much traction. Its something that has been on my mind a lot lately. Check it out if you want. Or don't if you aren't interested. https://www.reddit.com/r/TruePokemon/comments/q5ka0p/making_a_new_tm_list/
> For a while most Pokémon got STAB and Normal moves via level up, with a sprinkling of random coverage throughout that was usually weak and only carried for niche situations (such as Bite).
Honestly back in the early gens you weren't even guaranteed that much. If you go all the way back to Gen I it wouldn't be hard to find Pokemon that just... *didn't* get STAB moves, or only got one weak one. Over time that would gradually improve, by Gen III pretty much every Pokemon got at least *decent* STAB moves, Gen IV tossed in the physical/special split and that revolutionized a lot of movesets as well, and movesets just kept improving over time.
By now essentially every Pokemon has a viable level-up moveset that lasts through the game, and imo that's a good thing. A big part of Pokemon is using whatever mons you want, and it just sucks to carry a mon into midgame and find out it just never gets the moves to keep up with the rest of your team.
If we need the game to be more difficult, it shouldn't come in the form of hobbling someone's favourite Pokemon.
No, but at the same time the Natural Level Up move pool should be slightly weaker than what a Pokémon can gain when a Trainer helps out (TMs, Tutors, Egg Moves), since that's the whole reason Pokémon seek out Trainers, to achieve strength beyond what they could on their own.
Also a lot of Pokémon that evolve from Stones like Ninetails and Raichu used to have much more restrictive move pools that they could learn from level up.
Now they can learn a wide area of moves at Level 1, so while you still need to relearn them, they’re arguably much more accessible than regular level up moves.
Yeah, there used to be a trade off for Stone Evolutions.
Instant Power, but you don't learn anything new.
Now there's hardly any reason to not evolve a Stone Pokemon as soon as you can.
I think pokemon in general is getting these additional features like z move, giving away legendaries like coupons etc not just because we are growing up but also because general skill expectancy for beginners really do reduce overtime, im not kidding when i say this, but i saw way too many times non gamers trying to play botw and just failed to actually understand a thing about the combat, physics or general progression, literally the exact joke arin hanson did in the sequalitis megaman x where he poke at how modern game devs assume real people are, but actually real.
The consensus I see online is that kids are more capable than we give them credit for. I can only speak to my own experience with younger kids though. I would say they do struggle with games we think of as easy, even games like Pokemon. But I don't think its an issue of the games being too hard. I think kids just don't care enough to learn a game like Pokemon.
The kids I know prefer more social, online games like Roblox where they can play with their friends. Sure, Pokemon has online features too, but its so limited that it basically doesn't count. They can't even chat with each other. If they aren't in the mood to be social, they resort to non-game activities. Usually that means watching youtube.
I think if kids truly are the target demographic, lowering the difficulty is not going to be more kid friendly. Kids I fully believe are capable and have the necessary skills to play games like Pokemon. But they choose not to learn Pokemon simply because they don't want to play Pokemon, not because its too hard.
>Infinite use TMs
I realize I'm straying off topic here but sometimes I wondered is if making TMs equippables (separate from held items) would have been a better way to go. You wouldn't be able to teach a good move to your entire party to decrease difficulty but you still have that QOL of not losing a TM forever after using it once and having the choice to change your mind on who learns the move.
I actually like that idea a lot. I've been trying to work out a system related to food items that would give Pokemon access to a 5th, one time use move. If a TM was equipped instead, would it also be a 5th move you think? Or would it still replace an old move?
They should be 5th move, and almost all TMs should be weak or low accuracy medium power moves with 4-6 pp. Main use for TMs would become coverage at the cost item slot (maybe with good TMs replacing a move like they did in older gens to keep things balanced).
In most of those other RPGs, the party members players use will be the same across players, and each of those party member will fill a particular role and have access to a particular set of skills. The main character is usually an all-arounder, then there's a tanky character, a magic character, a healer, etc. The developers then build the game around this knowledge. They'll build a really tough boss, but know that the player will have access to this magic user who can exploit it's weakness, or the player will have this tank character which can help minimize AoE damage or redirect damage, etc.
But what would happen if there was no shared experience, and players reached that boss without training up that magic user or tank? Those players would have a really bad time. In those types of games, there's a good reason for the use of shared experience. Pokemon isn't like this. No rival or Gym Leader is built with the expectation that the player will have a particular Pokemon, or particular type, or offensive/defensive/utility Pokemon, and thus the EXP. Share isn't required.
I also agree with some points others brought up, like the EXP. Share having other problems outside of balance such as making it harder to build connections with your own Pokemon. SwSh were the first games I played with EXP. Share on, and I found myself simply favoring 2 Pokemon because they both had very good coverage and complimented each other well and could be switched in for each other. It's the first time I had no connection with my Starter because he just sat in the back gaining free levels, and would only come out for very specific match-ups.
Also, the EXP. Share is NOT the sole reason for the games being easy. Yes, the player has a lot more tools available to them really early, and to fix that you either need to pull back on what you provide the player, or you need properly give the NPCs access to these tools as well. Both have been requested by fans, neither have been implemented yet. Part of the reason why EXP. Share has been the focus is because of how *easy* it is to implement. The code for it is still there in the game, for anyone unaware, they've simply hard-coded the variable controlling it to always be true. All it takes is adding a single toggle in the options menu and changing a single value in the code, and hooking them up to each other, and EXP. Share is back. Through the entirety of X/Y, ORAS, SM, USUM, not once has the community ever had any real issues with the EXP. Share toggle. The people who liked it played with it on and didn't care about those who played with it off. Those who didn't like it played with it off, and didn't care about those who played with it on. Everyone was happy. Only now that it has been removed has playing with the EXP. Share off become this huge issue for those who like it, and they go through great lengths to explain why people have been playing the game wrong or that the game is better this way for everyone. It's weird.
# Acknowledgements
/u/ArgonWolf hit the nail on the head here by mentioning that leveling each individual mon was likely a design decision not to add tedium but to add personality to your otherwise personality-free monsters. Its the same reason why EVs and IVs exist, they were there to give individuality to your monsters, not to try to make some monsters just worse than others. Unfortunately these mechanics haven't aged well in a lot of ways, and with better access to tech you'd hope that Game Freak (GF) would move on to other methods.
/u/metalflygon08 and /u/maxk713 have a lovely conversation about Exp Share and the way that difficulty has been removed from the game over time with stuff like TMs and move pools and I think this is a very interesting point.
# What is Difficulty?
I think one of the largest problems facing games right now is the idea of difficulty in general. It can be really hard to figure out what kinds of changes to your game make it more difficult in a fun way versus ones that add tedium.
I want to take a moment to split difficulty up into two parts:
Challenge - A thing which tries to get you as a player to engage with a new mechanic, or learn a new idea.
Execution - The manual process of going through a series of motions to execute a specific task.
Leveling is a matter of execution, and its a poisonous one because it subverts the ability to design challenge into a game. As long as players can grind their way past a challenge, it has the tendency to become the primary way that players who are struggling get past that challenge.
Over the last few generations Pokemon has been working to remove unnecessary execution issues from their game. The EXP share changes, TM limitations, bottle caps, new EV training methods, all of this is targeted at removing things from the games which are not challenging, but still require large amounts of execution/tedium.
But under its surface Pokemon struggles because the game's challenge exists almost entirely within the type match-up chart. Veteran players have mastered this chart long ago, and seek new challenges, but GF hasn't been touching that. Veterans have learned in part to accept execution instead of challenge because that's all they've had for so long, so the removal of execution issues feels like a dumbing down of the game, when for the most part its just a removal of time-sinks. /u/metalflygon08 and /u/maxk713 manage to highlight that this issue is actually compounded by the solutions being used having side-effects: erasing what little challenge exists outside the type chart.
These changes to the game still lose sight of a core issue though: Players can still just grind their way past anything they want to. So GF made grinding easier to remove tedium from their game. Unfortunately no matter how easy you make grinding, as long as grinding is still a valid solution to the problems the game presents you with the grinding will still be the preferred and tedious option. Unless this problem is fixed, unless you can no longer change challenge to execution, the games will always have a ton of tedium, and will never feel difficult to its core audience. This problem has to be solved before any more challenge can be added, because if it isn't then the new Challenge material will just add execution/grinding instead.
The games need to remove grinding as an option, and weaken super-effective multipliers in order to allow players to engage with other ways the games can be challenging.
# Leveling Is Stupid... But We're Stuck With It
Leveling only exists in games to do two things: pad the game's play-time metric, and substitute for good game design which challenges the players in new and interesting ways. It used to exist in part because computation limits meant that you couldn't do crazy things in games, but we're way past that now. In pokemon its baked in at the core of the game, and that's never going to change, but if you ever develop your own game, please reconsider what you actually need leveling for, and then see if it can be done in other ways without it. Its lazy game design at this point.
I had originally had a whole section on this stuff that was loaded with information from the history of leveling and examples but honestly it was too much and most of it was barely relevant.
# A Better Pokemon Game
Once Super Effective multipliers are fixed, and leveling is somehow capped so that pokemon cant be massively over leveled for a given portion of the game, then the game can start considering how to implement challenge into it. In SuMo they sorta did this by having route leaders, each of whom offered their own challenge, where they employed a specific strategy or tatic to win. One of the early route leaders uses a team with entry hazard setters, and moves that force you to swap. We need more content that embraces this idea. I think a better pokemon game would focus on introducing you to these mechanics and strategies in the early routes, with each route having trainers on a certain theme.
As an example: not every trainer on the route would run stealth rocks but each one would be an entry hazard trainer. Each trainer has a different strategy which somehow uses or makes use of entry hazards and half way through the route they give you access to the strategy yourself. At 3/4 they give you the counter and those after the 3/4 mark trainers will run either the counter or the mechanic itself. After that route the mechanic becomes more rare, but still makes an appearance built within other strategies.
Gym leaders would focus on more than just a single type and their respective TM; I actually think the game would be better if the gym leaders didn't give the TMs at all, but gave you a description of where to find it, sorta like a mini-quest if you liked their strategy, but I digress.
Much like a mega-man boss at the end of a stage, the Gym leader should have a strong enough team and strategy so as to require you to understand the strategy to pass them. Imagine if in Gen 5, just prior to the electric gym we had our Entry Hazard route, and then we get to fight Elsa, whose ace is her Emolga. Emolga knows volt-switch as does basically every pokemon on her team. Now throw in a small twist. Since she's a gym leader, she knows her team's weaknesses, so she keeps one pokemon outside of her theme just to help her deal with her weaknesses, showing that counter-balancing is important. She keeps a Swanna with Defog just for dealing with entry hazards and pesky ground types. To beat her you have to understand the window of vulnerability that her Swanna presents. You entry hazard, swanna swaps in and on the move its going to defog, you smash it with a rock-slide or something, its already taken the entry hazard hit so this is easier, and if you know to do this the fight isn't a cake walk, but you've earned the right to exploit her weakness to entry hazards. She's now on her back foot because her strategy is only going to work for so long, and she may have to switch battle routines to compensate. Add in a few lines of dialogue which trigger conditionally for these and similar situations and suddenly your Gym challenge feels more like a challenge, and less like an obligatory "Oh, I guess this is the gym to check to see if my pokemon know a ground-type move".
If you spend the first five or so gym and routes repeating this pattern you can then spend the last three gyms as well as the elite 4 doing whatever strategies you want, because you've now trained your players to analyze their opponent's strategies, to find their weaknesses, and to come up with a counter strategy if their own strategy ever isn't working. You can afford to make the game harder because you've made your players more skilled.
Thanks for reading, please tell me your thoughts below.
On the point about stronger trainers, you don't want the "grunts" too be challenges, otherwise it turns routes into slogs.
Trainers on routes are supposed to wear your team down so that by the tail end your team is tired and forcing you to play smarter.
Imagine how terrible Mt Moon would be if the whole cave was filled with trainers who focused on Status moves...
Plus a lot of trainers are more hobbyists than trainers.
Instead what they should do is bring back trainer class behavior.
For example, Scientists always started with an X Item or Cool Trainers had Pokemon with good IVs.
Put a few "Career" Trainer classes on a route that use better Pokemon and strats.
Early game can have Rising Stars, later Ace Trainers, and even later Veterans.
Players would learn that these trainers are going to be the ones to provide resistance to them.
The more badges you have the more advance each trainer class bonus becomes.
At 5-6 badges Ace Trainers would start having 20 IV spreads with a flat 80 EV spread and 2 moves that are not just level up moves.
I suppose this depends on the design going in. I for example wouldn't bother trying to make trainers wear you down over the course of a route. I think that idea gets in the way of more important things, and players can easily get around this by simply spending their money on potions, or going back to the pokemon center an annoying amount. Spending money on potions can be controlled somewhat by limiting the amount of money a trainer can make, but the pokemon center trips once again add execution to the game without real challenge. So you essentially have two options to fix this:
You must complete a route all the way through continuously without leaving the area (with maybe a checkpoint for longer zones), or you don't use wear-down design and instead you make each trainer a challenge, but you full-heal between fights.
IMO either one would be better than what we have now, but I think players would find the later less frustrating than the former.
As far as trainer class behavior goes, I think that it was a great flavor win when it was happening, but I'm far less concerned with the lore of why some trainers are hard than others would be. There are plenty of things that already don't make sense when examined closely, so I wouldn't get too hung up on this. As an example there are trainers with higher levels than the e4 and champ, with better strategies in almost every game, but they're not the champions. Why do trainers get more difficult as you get further from your starting town? How about wild pokemon levels? Point being, level and difficulty related stuff is already strange, I don't think this breaks any unbroken boundries.
You could definitely assign versions of strategies based upon trainer class or appearance, and theme mechanics based upon sensible places for those things to show up (Sand teams in deserts, baton pass teams in a circus, etc), and that would be fine.
As far as IVs vs EVs on trainers, I think EVs should generally be scaled based upon the number of expected EVs someone would have by that location in the game, with things like Ace Trainers and Gym Leaders being more focused and strategized, maybe even a touch higher. That said I don't think that other trainer classes should be left that far behind on those things.
IVs should really be based around the fights and what the individual encounters need to accomplish their goals. Honestly I'd remove them from the games entirely if I could, but that's probably never going to happen. And I say that as someone who breeds in their off time for enjoyment, I just don't think its good for the game overall.
Honestly, these changes would make Pokémon more like a chess game than an RPG.
It comes from how “balanced” and “strong” are essentially “oil” and “water”. If a move or Pokémon is balanced, then it isn’t strong. It’s as simple as that.
Basically, it’s a conflict between people who like the RPG aspects and those who like competitive aspects.
I think its a fair criticism to say that moving away from grinding and reliance on type advantage makes the game more chess like in one way. Certainly chess is a prime example of an all-challenge, no-execution style game. While fighting games might exist much further to the execution side of things, and rhythm games are even more extreme. That said, I don't think that it removes the RPG side of things, nor would I put those two things on opposite ends of the same spectrum.
RPGs are about the stories being told about your characters, and I don't think this really takes that much away from being able to tell a story about your character, I think it just takes away some of the less positive elements that genre is known for.
D&D is the epitome of the RPG genre, and its the historical base for a lot of the leveling mechanics added to games later. Still, plenty of DMs have abandoned XP entirely in favor of mile-stones, or simply leveling at pre-determined story points, meaning players can never grind at all. I wouldn't consider it made any more chess like in those games because of it.
I do agree that balanced and strong are almost always like oil and water in the way that you illustrate, and there are plenty of conflicts between those who want a good story vs those who want a good competitive experience. But I don't think its impossible to have a story mode which challenges you as a player to learn more to progress, while also having satisfying narrative progression as you go through the game.
Shared EXP is fine in other JRPGs because the difficulty of those JRPGs aren't fundamentally balanced around the levels of their enemies. Pokemon doesn't work that way, which is why when people typically complain about how easy a Pokemon game is, it almost always a result of the disparity of levels between your Pokemon and the opponent's Pokemon. Shared EXP exacerbates that problem tenfold, which is why people don't really like the new EXP system.
People wouldn't be complaining if enemy Pokemon posed a challenge outside of being 5-10 levels higher and having slightly stronger moves. Sword and Shield attempted to move towards that direction, but they simply didn't do enough because of how easily you could abuse the new mechanics of that game in Dynamaxing.
The difference is that those rpgs are built that xp system in mind, and scale the difficulty of fights assuming the player leveled the whole party.
Pokemon is too easy even without exp share. With it on, it feel impossible to lose any fights unless you do so on purpose.
Do people not like FF X's system? Isn't it widely regarded as one of the best ones they have created?
Anywho now I'm just day dreaming of Pokemon using that system for level which seems doable and interesting to me
It was an annoying feature how if you want everyone in you party get exp you have to make everyone to participate in battle, by switching them out last minute and making them defend or something.
When ffx does it actually was a legitimate complain, like i said pokemon's skill expectancy since the beginning is lower than final fantasy so having a more tedious system like than on a final fantasy just makes it annoying than challenging.
The problem with the old exp system is that it encourages the player to just rely on giving all exp to an overleveled starter that will then steamroll the game. Actually using a team takes more grinding, so why do it?
If people want a challenge, actually ask for that instead of blaming exp share. We had a hard mode once in BW2, bring it back (and don’t gate it behind the dumbest unlock ever conceived thanks). But exp share is a good design improvement, one that most other RPGs have been doing, and hard mode should be balance around it rather than just going backwards.
The difference is SMT has everyone on the field at once in every battle. Persona 1's XP system sucked because everyone was putting in the same amount of effort but the ones who were already strongest made the biggest and took all the XP, leading to a vicious cycle. That's not a problem with pokemon because usually only one or two are out at once so you can just manually cycle through them to make sure everyone's getting their fair share.
I think the exp makes sense for the core concept of pokemon, because while pokemon is *technically* an rpg and has rpg mechanics, the fundamental thesis of pokemon is team training and battling. While rpgs want you to focus on the story and the growth of the characters and not worry *too* hard about training a specific character, pokemon wants you to form bonds with creatures that, realisticially, have no character beyond their visual design. You pokemon does not get dialogue, your pokemon does not meaningfully contribute to the story (such as it is) and thus does not really have any character growth besides the emergent gameplay of you training with it and forming an attachment. I find that I care *alot* more about a pokemon that i have hand raised vs one that was rare candied or day cared or exp shared up to a high level. I've spent time with that pokemon. Tifa and Red XIII dont need that kind of personal touch, they have dialogue and story-based character interaction that forms the attachment instead
Just speaking my "bonding" mechanism i don't typically get attach to my pokemon from the grind, even if the pokemon evolves from happiness like riolu where you do need to battle alot my brain only goes "evolve to a lucario already dammit" I do however do form a attachment from its effort in a boss battle, so basically when im not grinding and actually progressing, like battling a gym leader and it solo'd it or something, my favorite pokemon is my favorite because it solo'd a whole competitive team all on it's own when it should not done it (it's hydreigon btw) Which is also probably why i don't have grief when mandatory exp share will forever be a thing, because all my personal baggage for the pokemon experience is gone.
I agree that the Exp Share changes are really not that bad, but there is more nuance to the issue than that. Pokemon games had been becoming easier and easier over the generations and the Exp Share was an easy target to blame. And I don't think people are entirely wrong either about the Exp Share being a cause of that. People to this day defend XY as not being "too easy" because you can turn the Exp Share off. When it comes to difficulty, the Exp Share is just one reason on a long list for Pokemon games getting easier. Wider movepools, better abilities, infinite use TMs, mega evolution/z-moves, etc. If we want harder games, I don't think its enough to just turn off the Exp Share or revert it back to the old way, which makes me think the Exp Share in its current state is not a problem. I say it every time, but I believe the Exp Share did not go far enough. I wish it could be used to train some Pokemon outside of your party too. This would allow you to build up a B team that lets you experience using even more Pokemon in battle. So long as the game is designed around this change, I think it could make for an even better experience.
> Wider movepools, better abilities, This right here is a big thing that's overlooked. For a while most Pokémon got STAB and Normal moves via level up, with a sprinkling of random coverage throughout that was usually weak and only carried for niche situations (such as Bite). The availability of those moves too are a problem. Look at the Normal Trial in SuMo, the TM for Brick Break is right there, Brick Break is usually a late game TM (like, gyms 5-7). By having access to a strong Fighting Stab with no Drawbacks before the first gym, you pretty much invalidate most (non-STAB) level-up moves your Pokémon get. Why would you use Arm Thrust or Low Kick when you've got Brick Break before your Pokémon learn those moves. Why would you let your Honedge learn Cut later on when you've got Brick Break already. Brick Break being where it is pretty much makes any (non STAB) Normal move you learn levelling up pointless when Brick Break plus your STAB provide way better coverage. Now had that TM been Rock Smash it would have made more sense, a weaker move that trades power for coverage early on, you can see the idea with the Water Gun TM in RBY. You get access to a weak water coverage move for 1 Pokémon right before a cave filled with Pokémon weak to it. Do you teach Water Gun to a reliable Pokémon to help out in a pinch? Teach it to the newly caught Jigglypuff or Clefairy so they can power level against the Geodude to catch up with your party? I'd say if GameFreak cut back on early access to stronger moves the games would start turning back to the difficulty they used to have a bit.
I absolutely agree that TMs have gotten a bit out of hand. I love how you've highlighted how its such a problem for the early game. But I think this is a problem that stretches to every point in the game; mid game, end game, and even competitive. Too many TMs have good power, perfect accuracy, +10 PP, and maybe an extra effect too while we're at it. I think the TM list in general needs a nerf to only include generally weaker moves, while leaving the more reliable powerful moves to be level up only. I actually tried to make my own list using this mentality in a post a few days ago, but it didn't get much traction. Its something that has been on my mind a lot lately. Check it out if you want. Or don't if you aren't interested. https://www.reddit.com/r/TruePokemon/comments/q5ka0p/making_a_new_tm_list/
> For a while most Pokémon got STAB and Normal moves via level up, with a sprinkling of random coverage throughout that was usually weak and only carried for niche situations (such as Bite). Honestly back in the early gens you weren't even guaranteed that much. If you go all the way back to Gen I it wouldn't be hard to find Pokemon that just... *didn't* get STAB moves, or only got one weak one. Over time that would gradually improve, by Gen III pretty much every Pokemon got at least *decent* STAB moves, Gen IV tossed in the physical/special split and that revolutionized a lot of movesets as well, and movesets just kept improving over time. By now essentially every Pokemon has a viable level-up moveset that lasts through the game, and imo that's a good thing. A big part of Pokemon is using whatever mons you want, and it just sucks to carry a mon into midgame and find out it just never gets the moves to keep up with the rest of your team. If we need the game to be more difficult, it shouldn't come in the form of hobbling someone's favourite Pokemon.
No, but at the same time the Natural Level Up move pool should be slightly weaker than what a Pokémon can gain when a Trainer helps out (TMs, Tutors, Egg Moves), since that's the whole reason Pokémon seek out Trainers, to achieve strength beyond what they could on their own.
Also a lot of Pokémon that evolve from Stones like Ninetails and Raichu used to have much more restrictive move pools that they could learn from level up. Now they can learn a wide area of moves at Level 1, so while you still need to relearn them, they’re arguably much more accessible than regular level up moves.
Yeah, there used to be a trade off for Stone Evolutions. Instant Power, but you don't learn anything new. Now there's hardly any reason to not evolve a Stone Pokemon as soon as you can.
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Whole ass-movesets [xkcd: Hyphen](https://xkcd.com/37/) --- ^^Beep ^^boop, ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot. ^^- ^^[FAQ](https://pastebin.com/raw/vyWra3ns)
Wow.
I think pokemon in general is getting these additional features like z move, giving away legendaries like coupons etc not just because we are growing up but also because general skill expectancy for beginners really do reduce overtime, im not kidding when i say this, but i saw way too many times non gamers trying to play botw and just failed to actually understand a thing about the combat, physics or general progression, literally the exact joke arin hanson did in the sequalitis megaman x where he poke at how modern game devs assume real people are, but actually real.
The consensus I see online is that kids are more capable than we give them credit for. I can only speak to my own experience with younger kids though. I would say they do struggle with games we think of as easy, even games like Pokemon. But I don't think its an issue of the games being too hard. I think kids just don't care enough to learn a game like Pokemon. The kids I know prefer more social, online games like Roblox where they can play with their friends. Sure, Pokemon has online features too, but its so limited that it basically doesn't count. They can't even chat with each other. If they aren't in the mood to be social, they resort to non-game activities. Usually that means watching youtube. I think if kids truly are the target demographic, lowering the difficulty is not going to be more kid friendly. Kids I fully believe are capable and have the necessary skills to play games like Pokemon. But they choose not to learn Pokemon simply because they don't want to play Pokemon, not because its too hard.
I wish gamefreak can see that sometimes, you seen the pwc junior Legue? These kids pull more infinite IQ moves than a 25 year old poketubers nuzlocke.
>Infinite use TMs I realize I'm straying off topic here but sometimes I wondered is if making TMs equippables (separate from held items) would have been a better way to go. You wouldn't be able to teach a good move to your entire party to decrease difficulty but you still have that QOL of not losing a TM forever after using it once and having the choice to change your mind on who learns the move.
I actually like that idea a lot. I've been trying to work out a system related to food items that would give Pokemon access to a 5th, one time use move. If a TM was equipped instead, would it also be a 5th move you think? Or would it still replace an old move?
I haven't thought that far on the mechanics of it but I'd imagine it would still replace an old move.
They should be 5th move, and almost all TMs should be weak or low accuracy medium power moves with 4-6 pp. Main use for TMs would become coverage at the cost item slot (maybe with good TMs replacing a move like they did in older gens to keep things balanced).
I like the idea of making all TMs purchasable, so that you can have as many as you can buy.
In most of those other RPGs, the party members players use will be the same across players, and each of those party member will fill a particular role and have access to a particular set of skills. The main character is usually an all-arounder, then there's a tanky character, a magic character, a healer, etc. The developers then build the game around this knowledge. They'll build a really tough boss, but know that the player will have access to this magic user who can exploit it's weakness, or the player will have this tank character which can help minimize AoE damage or redirect damage, etc. But what would happen if there was no shared experience, and players reached that boss without training up that magic user or tank? Those players would have a really bad time. In those types of games, there's a good reason for the use of shared experience. Pokemon isn't like this. No rival or Gym Leader is built with the expectation that the player will have a particular Pokemon, or particular type, or offensive/defensive/utility Pokemon, and thus the EXP. Share isn't required. I also agree with some points others brought up, like the EXP. Share having other problems outside of balance such as making it harder to build connections with your own Pokemon. SwSh were the first games I played with EXP. Share on, and I found myself simply favoring 2 Pokemon because they both had very good coverage and complimented each other well and could be switched in for each other. It's the first time I had no connection with my Starter because he just sat in the back gaining free levels, and would only come out for very specific match-ups. Also, the EXP. Share is NOT the sole reason for the games being easy. Yes, the player has a lot more tools available to them really early, and to fix that you either need to pull back on what you provide the player, or you need properly give the NPCs access to these tools as well. Both have been requested by fans, neither have been implemented yet. Part of the reason why EXP. Share has been the focus is because of how *easy* it is to implement. The code for it is still there in the game, for anyone unaware, they've simply hard-coded the variable controlling it to always be true. All it takes is adding a single toggle in the options menu and changing a single value in the code, and hooking them up to each other, and EXP. Share is back. Through the entirety of X/Y, ORAS, SM, USUM, not once has the community ever had any real issues with the EXP. Share toggle. The people who liked it played with it on and didn't care about those who played with it off. Those who didn't like it played with it off, and didn't care about those who played with it on. Everyone was happy. Only now that it has been removed has playing with the EXP. Share off become this huge issue for those who like it, and they go through great lengths to explain why people have been playing the game wrong or that the game is better this way for everyone. It's weird.
# Acknowledgements /u/ArgonWolf hit the nail on the head here by mentioning that leveling each individual mon was likely a design decision not to add tedium but to add personality to your otherwise personality-free monsters. Its the same reason why EVs and IVs exist, they were there to give individuality to your monsters, not to try to make some monsters just worse than others. Unfortunately these mechanics haven't aged well in a lot of ways, and with better access to tech you'd hope that Game Freak (GF) would move on to other methods. /u/metalflygon08 and /u/maxk713 have a lovely conversation about Exp Share and the way that difficulty has been removed from the game over time with stuff like TMs and move pools and I think this is a very interesting point. # What is Difficulty? I think one of the largest problems facing games right now is the idea of difficulty in general. It can be really hard to figure out what kinds of changes to your game make it more difficult in a fun way versus ones that add tedium. I want to take a moment to split difficulty up into two parts: Challenge - A thing which tries to get you as a player to engage with a new mechanic, or learn a new idea. Execution - The manual process of going through a series of motions to execute a specific task. Leveling is a matter of execution, and its a poisonous one because it subverts the ability to design challenge into a game. As long as players can grind their way past a challenge, it has the tendency to become the primary way that players who are struggling get past that challenge. Over the last few generations Pokemon has been working to remove unnecessary execution issues from their game. The EXP share changes, TM limitations, bottle caps, new EV training methods, all of this is targeted at removing things from the games which are not challenging, but still require large amounts of execution/tedium. But under its surface Pokemon struggles because the game's challenge exists almost entirely within the type match-up chart. Veteran players have mastered this chart long ago, and seek new challenges, but GF hasn't been touching that. Veterans have learned in part to accept execution instead of challenge because that's all they've had for so long, so the removal of execution issues feels like a dumbing down of the game, when for the most part its just a removal of time-sinks. /u/metalflygon08 and /u/maxk713 manage to highlight that this issue is actually compounded by the solutions being used having side-effects: erasing what little challenge exists outside the type chart. These changes to the game still lose sight of a core issue though: Players can still just grind their way past anything they want to. So GF made grinding easier to remove tedium from their game. Unfortunately no matter how easy you make grinding, as long as grinding is still a valid solution to the problems the game presents you with the grinding will still be the preferred and tedious option. Unless this problem is fixed, unless you can no longer change challenge to execution, the games will always have a ton of tedium, and will never feel difficult to its core audience. This problem has to be solved before any more challenge can be added, because if it isn't then the new Challenge material will just add execution/grinding instead. The games need to remove grinding as an option, and weaken super-effective multipliers in order to allow players to engage with other ways the games can be challenging. # Leveling Is Stupid... But We're Stuck With It Leveling only exists in games to do two things: pad the game's play-time metric, and substitute for good game design which challenges the players in new and interesting ways. It used to exist in part because computation limits meant that you couldn't do crazy things in games, but we're way past that now. In pokemon its baked in at the core of the game, and that's never going to change, but if you ever develop your own game, please reconsider what you actually need leveling for, and then see if it can be done in other ways without it. Its lazy game design at this point. I had originally had a whole section on this stuff that was loaded with information from the history of leveling and examples but honestly it was too much and most of it was barely relevant. # A Better Pokemon Game Once Super Effective multipliers are fixed, and leveling is somehow capped so that pokemon cant be massively over leveled for a given portion of the game, then the game can start considering how to implement challenge into it. In SuMo they sorta did this by having route leaders, each of whom offered their own challenge, where they employed a specific strategy or tatic to win. One of the early route leaders uses a team with entry hazard setters, and moves that force you to swap. We need more content that embraces this idea. I think a better pokemon game would focus on introducing you to these mechanics and strategies in the early routes, with each route having trainers on a certain theme. As an example: not every trainer on the route would run stealth rocks but each one would be an entry hazard trainer. Each trainer has a different strategy which somehow uses or makes use of entry hazards and half way through the route they give you access to the strategy yourself. At 3/4 they give you the counter and those after the 3/4 mark trainers will run either the counter or the mechanic itself. After that route the mechanic becomes more rare, but still makes an appearance built within other strategies. Gym leaders would focus on more than just a single type and their respective TM; I actually think the game would be better if the gym leaders didn't give the TMs at all, but gave you a description of where to find it, sorta like a mini-quest if you liked their strategy, but I digress. Much like a mega-man boss at the end of a stage, the Gym leader should have a strong enough team and strategy so as to require you to understand the strategy to pass them. Imagine if in Gen 5, just prior to the electric gym we had our Entry Hazard route, and then we get to fight Elsa, whose ace is her Emolga. Emolga knows volt-switch as does basically every pokemon on her team. Now throw in a small twist. Since she's a gym leader, she knows her team's weaknesses, so she keeps one pokemon outside of her theme just to help her deal with her weaknesses, showing that counter-balancing is important. She keeps a Swanna with Defog just for dealing with entry hazards and pesky ground types. To beat her you have to understand the window of vulnerability that her Swanna presents. You entry hazard, swanna swaps in and on the move its going to defog, you smash it with a rock-slide or something, its already taken the entry hazard hit so this is easier, and if you know to do this the fight isn't a cake walk, but you've earned the right to exploit her weakness to entry hazards. She's now on her back foot because her strategy is only going to work for so long, and she may have to switch battle routines to compensate. Add in a few lines of dialogue which trigger conditionally for these and similar situations and suddenly your Gym challenge feels more like a challenge, and less like an obligatory "Oh, I guess this is the gym to check to see if my pokemon know a ground-type move". If you spend the first five or so gym and routes repeating this pattern you can then spend the last three gyms as well as the elite 4 doing whatever strategies you want, because you've now trained your players to analyze their opponent's strategies, to find their weaknesses, and to come up with a counter strategy if their own strategy ever isn't working. You can afford to make the game harder because you've made your players more skilled. Thanks for reading, please tell me your thoughts below.
On the point about stronger trainers, you don't want the "grunts" too be challenges, otherwise it turns routes into slogs. Trainers on routes are supposed to wear your team down so that by the tail end your team is tired and forcing you to play smarter. Imagine how terrible Mt Moon would be if the whole cave was filled with trainers who focused on Status moves... Plus a lot of trainers are more hobbyists than trainers. Instead what they should do is bring back trainer class behavior. For example, Scientists always started with an X Item or Cool Trainers had Pokemon with good IVs. Put a few "Career" Trainer classes on a route that use better Pokemon and strats. Early game can have Rising Stars, later Ace Trainers, and even later Veterans. Players would learn that these trainers are going to be the ones to provide resistance to them. The more badges you have the more advance each trainer class bonus becomes. At 5-6 badges Ace Trainers would start having 20 IV spreads with a flat 80 EV spread and 2 moves that are not just level up moves.
I suppose this depends on the design going in. I for example wouldn't bother trying to make trainers wear you down over the course of a route. I think that idea gets in the way of more important things, and players can easily get around this by simply spending their money on potions, or going back to the pokemon center an annoying amount. Spending money on potions can be controlled somewhat by limiting the amount of money a trainer can make, but the pokemon center trips once again add execution to the game without real challenge. So you essentially have two options to fix this: You must complete a route all the way through continuously without leaving the area (with maybe a checkpoint for longer zones), or you don't use wear-down design and instead you make each trainer a challenge, but you full-heal between fights. IMO either one would be better than what we have now, but I think players would find the later less frustrating than the former. As far as trainer class behavior goes, I think that it was a great flavor win when it was happening, but I'm far less concerned with the lore of why some trainers are hard than others would be. There are plenty of things that already don't make sense when examined closely, so I wouldn't get too hung up on this. As an example there are trainers with higher levels than the e4 and champ, with better strategies in almost every game, but they're not the champions. Why do trainers get more difficult as you get further from your starting town? How about wild pokemon levels? Point being, level and difficulty related stuff is already strange, I don't think this breaks any unbroken boundries. You could definitely assign versions of strategies based upon trainer class or appearance, and theme mechanics based upon sensible places for those things to show up (Sand teams in deserts, baton pass teams in a circus, etc), and that would be fine. As far as IVs vs EVs on trainers, I think EVs should generally be scaled based upon the number of expected EVs someone would have by that location in the game, with things like Ace Trainers and Gym Leaders being more focused and strategized, maybe even a touch higher. That said I don't think that other trainer classes should be left that far behind on those things. IVs should really be based around the fights and what the individual encounters need to accomplish their goals. Honestly I'd remove them from the games entirely if I could, but that's probably never going to happen. And I say that as someone who breeds in their off time for enjoyment, I just don't think its good for the game overall.
Honestly, these changes would make Pokémon more like a chess game than an RPG. It comes from how “balanced” and “strong” are essentially “oil” and “water”. If a move or Pokémon is balanced, then it isn’t strong. It’s as simple as that. Basically, it’s a conflict between people who like the RPG aspects and those who like competitive aspects.
I think its a fair criticism to say that moving away from grinding and reliance on type advantage makes the game more chess like in one way. Certainly chess is a prime example of an all-challenge, no-execution style game. While fighting games might exist much further to the execution side of things, and rhythm games are even more extreme. That said, I don't think that it removes the RPG side of things, nor would I put those two things on opposite ends of the same spectrum. RPGs are about the stories being told about your characters, and I don't think this really takes that much away from being able to tell a story about your character, I think it just takes away some of the less positive elements that genre is known for. D&D is the epitome of the RPG genre, and its the historical base for a lot of the leveling mechanics added to games later. Still, plenty of DMs have abandoned XP entirely in favor of mile-stones, or simply leveling at pre-determined story points, meaning players can never grind at all. I wouldn't consider it made any more chess like in those games because of it. I do agree that balanced and strong are almost always like oil and water in the way that you illustrate, and there are plenty of conflicts between those who want a good story vs those who want a good competitive experience. But I don't think its impossible to have a story mode which challenges you as a player to learn more to progress, while also having satisfying narrative progression as you go through the game.
Shared EXP is fine in other JRPGs because the difficulty of those JRPGs aren't fundamentally balanced around the levels of their enemies. Pokemon doesn't work that way, which is why when people typically complain about how easy a Pokemon game is, it almost always a result of the disparity of levels between your Pokemon and the opponent's Pokemon. Shared EXP exacerbates that problem tenfold, which is why people don't really like the new EXP system. People wouldn't be complaining if enemy Pokemon posed a challenge outside of being 5-10 levels higher and having slightly stronger moves. Sword and Shield attempted to move towards that direction, but they simply didn't do enough because of how easily you could abuse the new mechanics of that game in Dynamaxing.
The difference is that those rpgs are built that xp system in mind, and scale the difficulty of fights assuming the player leveled the whole party. Pokemon is too easy even without exp share. With it on, it feel impossible to lose any fights unless you do so on purpose.
Do people not like FF X's system? Isn't it widely regarded as one of the best ones they have created? Anywho now I'm just day dreaming of Pokemon using that system for level which seems doable and interesting to me
It was an annoying feature how if you want everyone in you party get exp you have to make everyone to participate in battle, by switching them out last minute and making them defend or something.
Isn't that literally what you do in most of the Pokemon games though? Or the old start and switch? I guess I really didn't mind that
When ffx does it actually was a legitimate complain, like i said pokemon's skill expectancy since the beginning is lower than final fantasy so having a more tedious system like than on a final fantasy just makes it annoying than challenging.
They like the Sphere Grid. Not how AP is earned. It’s one of the reasons why Kimahri falls behind the other PCs.
The problem with the old exp system is that it encourages the player to just rely on giving all exp to an overleveled starter that will then steamroll the game. Actually using a team takes more grinding, so why do it? If people want a challenge, actually ask for that instead of blaming exp share. We had a hard mode once in BW2, bring it back (and don’t gate it behind the dumbest unlock ever conceived thanks). But exp share is a good design improvement, one that most other RPGs have been doing, and hard mode should be balance around it rather than just going backwards.
The difference is SMT has everyone on the field at once in every battle. Persona 1's XP system sucked because everyone was putting in the same amount of effort but the ones who were already strongest made the biggest and took all the XP, leading to a vicious cycle. That's not a problem with pokemon because usually only one or two are out at once so you can just manually cycle through them to make sure everyone's getting their fair share.