Pokémon Core Series Renovation

[Celever]

There has been a lot of discussion throughout the community about how the core Pokémon franchise requires a renovation of some description. Many fans are growing tired of the linearity and predictability of the franchise leading into the future, faulting the "8 gym badge beat villainous team" formula which has served the games so well thus far.

This does pose a dilemma, though. When is Pokémon no longer Pokémon? The aformentioned formula is what defines the franchise, and the two turn-based RPGs that don't follow the formula, Pokémon Colosseum and Pokémon XD: Gales of Darkness, have their own long-lasting discussion about whether they should even be considered a part of the core series or not.

If there is such a dire need for a revitalisation throughout the core Pokémon franchise, how should Game Freak go about doing it? The core franchise must remain accessible and familiar to all fans, so what further steps can Game Freak make leading into the future to prevent the games from growing stale? Should they just make an entirely radical set of games and see how people react? Post your thoughts here!

Note: Please don't wishlist. This thread is primarily focused on what the Pokémon formula is and what makes it so great. How to take it into the future is also an interesting topic, but all changes should have good reasoning behind them at the same time. It's OK to say how you would change the games leading into the future, but only if it is focused on the topic at hand.

 

[Caramel Prisoner]

I believe before you can answer that question, you'd have to define what actually is at the series' core first. For me personally, it's the concept of catching monsters and making them battle other monsters, breeding, and the like - the general mechanics - that need to stay. The eight gym villain team formula you talked about shouldn't be set in stone in my opinion, and really, doing whatever with the game as long as the game mechanics themselves stay relatively stable (i.e. discounting the usual adjustments they do every new generation) should be interesting.

I won't go into further detail though for fear of starting wishlisting.

 

[Kurona]

I think perhaps the Villainous Team part of the formula is that which is in most need of criticism. I mean don't get me wrong; it's a video game aimed at kids revolving around battles. You're inevitably going to have to need some sort of villain.
But I think perhaps the villainous teams are a bit... tired. The other staples of each game that keep being repeated - a professor, 8 gyms + league, FWG starter core etc. - can all be seen as some sort of integral part to a standardized society. To further explain; take a trip to any developed country in the real world -- you'll generally find the same staples of a government, a law enforcement, citizen rights etc. I do realize I'm bringing this up in Pokémon of all things, but the point is that like a society you could very easily argue that the way trainers are treated from region to region are generally standardized and the same. That said the argument could be made that maybe each region could have it's twists on the formula like maybe 9 gyms or a Dark/Psychic/Fighting starter trio, but I'm getting ahead of myself. That said I think the FWG trio is important from a game creation standpoint in order to give an easy introduction to type advantages to a newcomer. Any child can easily see why Water would beat Fire; it's a little harder for them to immediately grasp why on earth Fighting beats Dark. On that note however I am glad that Game Freak seems to be starting to make each starter trio unique; with Gen 4's having unique typings - Empoleon and Torterra still do not share their typing with any other Pokémon - and bringing the secondary DPF trio into the Kalos starters. Now we're out of the Fire/Fighting dark era perhaps we can see something more unique on this front.
But I digress. ... a lot. The basic point of that was to show that from a gameplay perspective this could easily be seen as some sort of standardized society - the form a villain would take never needs to fit into this, and at this point having a villainous team seems relatively silly especially when the antagonists of both Gen 5 and 6 - not counting ORAS - could arguably have worked better as a single person in parallel to the player or, in Gen 6's case, a certain immortal giant. What I'm getting at is that perhaps villainous teams, the core of the 'serious' plot in Pokémon, should start getting more unique. It was a fine idea in RBY; it made sense to have the same team - but even then it was fragmented and had a new direction - in the sequel GSC, and I suppose it wasn't too tired by RSE. But by DPPt things start to seem a little tired. Is there really no other direction an antagonist can come from? It can't just be a single trainer, or hell, perhaps a group of Pokémon that are the antagonists? I realize why they've had to go with the team formula because Pokémon is the sort of game you battle a ton of enemies one after the other, but at one point or another a villainous team is going to be a little boring.

In addition it might be fun to see some expansion on the general battling formula. And this... this is a tricky one to tackle; opens up a while can of worms. I was talking on a skype chat about this the other night actually; started by one of my friends saying that despite loving Pokémon, she is starting to find it a little... repetitive. And to some degree I have to agree. I think perhaps some big mechanics change should take place, but I've not yet seen one suggestion that I think would work. A lot of them either seem to ignore that Pokémon's an RPG, a lot want it to be darker to the extent they'd have to raise the age rating, and then there's an MMORPG idea which... argh, let's not get into that. I digress, I was able to ignore it this gen because they literally had to start everything from scratch on a 3D world rather than go with sprites, and this meant a ton more detail than before. They also introduced the Fairy type, new balancing mechanics and of course, Mega Evolution. All that in mind it's safe to say I really didn't mind the gameplay being pretty much the exact same as it's always been, and honestly to push a massive mechanic change onto Game Freak's plate along with everything they did for Gen 6 would really be asking too much of them. (Also Klefki is kind of the best Pokémon ever so) It's like 100 guys and what they've done deserves praise. But come Gen 7 or 8, I really doubt I'd be inclined to buy them were it not for my collectionist and competitive nature should nothing big happen to the game. I don't know what they could do, but hey, Game Freak does seem to like surprising me and everyone else with a new trick around the corner -- I can guarantee no-one would have guessed they'd introduce a brand new gameplay mechanic that makes Kangaskhan and Mawile of all things dominate multiplayer. So I'll just have to keep faith they're going to do something, I guess.

 

[Mulan15262]

I would say that the linear gym challenging needs to go. Kalos and Unova, the two most recent regions, were designed in such a way that it would be easy to make the gyms nonlinear, but that would add some replayability as you could fight the gym leaders with different teams and in a different order. They could even make the order of the gym challenges change the champion's team/e4 members/villainous team plans to add in more replayability. And, if they did this, it would still be pokemon, just a better version of that pokemon.

 

[Doubt]

I think removing linear gym challenging is a very, very dangerous path to go down, but also one with lots of potential. The way I see linear gym challenging being handled is a level scaling system; gym leaders always have a team of 5 mons (due to the increased ability to wander and capture mons), but level scaling, evolution, etc happens based on how many badges you have. A sample team might be A level 10 Bidoof, Starly, Patrat, and Lillipup, and a level 12 Rattata with 0 badges, but level 50 Bibarel, Staraptor, Watchog, and Stoutland, with a level 52 Raticate at 7 badges.
The real trick to this I think is how regular trainers would be treated - Should trainers and mons be assigned a "gym", and scale based on how that gym scales (stops scaling after you obtain the badge), or will all scale evenly? If trainers scale (meaning if they scale with gyms, not scaling after the gym stops), do they automatically rematch you on-sight (to discourage going around the whole region and beating all trainers without doing any gyms), and when will they offer rematches after they stop scaling? If Pokemon does go down this route, I think it needs to be done with extreme caution.

I do feel like this is something that could greatly benefit the series as a whole, especially if you can go and catch the team you'll challenge the elite 4 with before you even enter the first gym. It would truly create a sense of "I've been with all these pokemon through thick and thin, and now we will together achieve our goal", as well as helping prevent stupid "I really want to use Gallade, but can't until elite 4 (unless I do super training), because I don't get the stone until then", with stones being scattered in the overworld, allowing one to strategically pick which stone they want to get when.

 

[Millky95]

I like to define the "Core Series" Formula as "Travelling a region to collect Gym badges and defeat the Elite 4". Villainous teams are in every Pokemon game (Go-Go Squad in Ranger, Gengar's team in PMD, Cipher in XD, etc) so including that aspect in the "core" games is a bit redundant. Had to include travelling a region otherwise Stadium would be main series as you somewhat collect badges (Gym Leader Castle).

I think removing linear gym challenging is a very, very dangerous path to go down, but also one with lots of potential. The way I see linear gym challenging being handled is a level scaling system; gym leaders always have a team of 5 mons (due to the increased ability to wander and capture mons), but level scaling, evolution, etc happens based on how many badges you have. A sample team might be A level 10 Bidoof, Starly, Patrat, and Lillipup, and a level 12 Rattata with 0 badges, but level 50 Bibarel, Staraptor, Watchog, and Stoutland, with a level 52 Raticate at 7 badges.
The real trick to this I think is how regular trainers would be treated - Should trainers and mons be assigned a "gym", and scale based on how that gym scales (stops scaling after you obtain the badge), or will all scale evenly? If trainers scale (meaning if they scale with gyms, not scaling after the gym stops), do they automatically rematch you on-sight (to discourage going around the whole region and beating all trainers without doing any gyms), and when will they offer rematches after they stop scaling? If Pokemon does go down this route, I think it needs to be done with extreme caution.

I do feel like this is something that could greatly benefit the series as a whole, especially if you can go and catch the team you'll challenge the elite 4 with before you even enter the first gym. It would truly create a sense of "I've been with all these pokemon through thick and thin, and now we will together achieve our goal", as well as helping prevent stupid "I really want to use Gallade, but can't until elite 4 (unless I do super training), because I don't get the stone until then", with stones being scattered in the overworld, allowing one to strategically pick which stone they want to get when.

I would love a non-linear gym system as much as the next guy but scaling just wouldn't work. What's to stop me going through the game, beating every trainers level 5-10 Pokemon in the entire region and then getting all 8 badges in as many fights? The EXP grind would be a bit painful but gym leader's level don't get much higher than level 50s (Wulric's Avalugg is the highest at 59). Doing the math, there are roughly 140 trainer battles in XY just on Routes, and if each battle on average drops the EXP of 2 level 10 Pidgey's, based on this* you'd gain 214 exp per fight which is 29,960. So not a great amount of EXP but if you up it to a Panpour you get 37,800. With the Pidgey example, with 1 Pokemon you get them to a minimum level of 27. Which isn't including wild Pokemon battles and trainer battles in the city. Would almost make the game easier by grinding some early. Whilst the levels seem quite low, scaling wouldn't be a nice experience for me.

You could do what HGSS did but you get gyms 5-7 within no more than 5 levels apart.

Making Pokemon challenging whilst non-linear would be a tough ask


*The math (1.5*1*50*1*10*1*1*1)/(7*1)

 

[Xen]

I think people forget that gym challenges throughout the series weren't always linear. With the exception of the 1st and 8th gyms in Red/Blue, gyms could be completed in nearly any order the player wanted, with some slight exceptions (Gym 7 requiring Surf to reach and Gym 3 requiring Cut). With the series growing increasingly more story-based with the villainous teams, the games had to adapt to a linear progression.

The problem with that is, if the series tries to regress back to a non-linear fashion, it would be difficult to keep a somewhat-coherent story in place; likewise, if the series goes on the story-based route, there would be little to no room for flexibility in progression (akin to Black/White). That's more of an issue than level scaling imo, since levels worked out alright back then. Only way we'd get non-linear story progression back is if the stories involving the villainous teams/legendary Pokemon regress back to Gen I-II era storytelling, or are dropped all together for something different in the story layout.

 

[noobcubed]

I feel we've been here before - in fact these discussions are almost as formulaic as the games they decry.

Personally the 8 badges thing + Elite Four thing is what I think needs to change the most. I just find it a little odd that the player's final act in these games us to become the champion. Don't you think that defeating the bad guys should be saved for last? That's how every other work of fiction has it (or at least those works of fiction with antagonists).

In fact if I ruled a world where some solitary ten-year-old single-handedly took down a highly-organised criminal gang I'd bestow any honour on him that he wanted, Pokemon League Champion included.

 

[Kurona]

I have gone over the linearity argument in the "little problems with gen 6" thread or whatever it was. My general feeling is that you should either have a good, compelling story to justify being linear such as Black and White, or you should focus completely on exploration and have the story only going on in the background and left to interpretation like RGBY/FRLG and to a slightly smaller extent GSC/HGSS. I do personally feel that focusing around exploration is a key strength to a world such as Pokémon and it's honestly a shame it's basically been abandoned since Gen 2 aside from the remakes.

 

[Lady Vader]

Non-linearity and plot can work together. Look at Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. While the beginning and ending are rather linear (makes sense since those tend to be more linear in any game), the middle is completely non-linear. I can go to Tatooine first, or I can go to Korriban first. I can have Manann third or fourth and it doesn't affect the story. Instead, certain events are based when, not where. Here is the basic walkthrough:

Spoilers to a 12-year-old game that isn't even canon anymore

-On the first Star Map planet you go to (that isn't Dantooine), you will be attacked by Dark Jedi and bounty hunter Calo Nord (who has a beef with you during earlier events in the game)
-On the second Star Map planet you go to, you will be attacked by more Dark Jedi.
-On the third Star Map planet you go to, you will fight Malak's apprentice, Darth Bandon.
-After you've acquired the fourth Star Map (third non-Dantooine), you will be captured by Malak's flagship. There is quite a bit of plot and the game's twist.
-I can't remember if anything happens when you visit the final Star Map planet. Wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't another assassination attempt by Malak's minions.

Just adapt that idea to Pokémon and we are set.
The only remaining problem would be level scaling, but to be fair, that's a problem in most RPGs*. You can just sit around and grind for a long time and then just sweep through the rest of the game. I once sat around forever, just grinding up in Naruto: Path of the Ninja early in the game. By the time I stopped, I didn't have to grind ever again. Even when I got to the final boss, I was simply in that sweet spot for that boss (not overleveled, not underleveled). And to be honest, Pokémon has it worse thanks to trading. Yeah, you can't just trade in higher leveled Pokémon thanks to Badges, but what if you simply trade over the Pokémon from the game you are playing to one you've beaten, grind until they are very overleveled (easy thanks to higher level Pokémon you can fight and the boost in experience due to being an outsider Pokémon), then trade them back**. And that's not even to take in consideration eggs traded over and hatched, TMs, and good late game items you can trade over as well!

*Actually, not a problem in Knights of the Old Republic since the levels of every opponent is determined by your own and you have a level cap at 20, which you get to on the last planet of the game unless you did about no sidequests. I mean, you get exp from opening chests! So maybe depending on the trainer, the number of badges you have, and the levels of your Pokémon could determine this?
**I actually once did this in Pokémon Diamond since I just needed to quickly get to the end of the game so I could catch a decent Dialga and Heatran (though not well enough since I caught up around Spear Pillar).

 

[Kurona]

Non-linearity and plot can work together. Look at Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. While the beginning and ending are rather linear (makes sense since those tend to be more linear in any game), the middle is completely non-linear. I can go to Tatooine first, or I can go to Korriban first. I can have Manann third or fourth and it doesn't affect the story. Instead, certain events are based when, not where. Here is the basic walkthrough:

Spoilers to a 12-year-old game that isn't even canon anymore

-On the first Star Map planet you go to (that isn't Dantooine), you will be attacked by Dark Jedi and bounty hunter Calo Nord (who has a beef with you during earlier events in the game)
-On the second Star Map planet you go to, you will be attacked by more Dark Jedi.
-On the third Star Map planet you go to, you will fight Malak's apprentice, Darth Bandon.
-After you've acquired the fourth Star Map (third non-Dantooine), you will be captured by Malak's flagship. There is quite a bit of plot and the game's twist.
-I can't remember if anything happens when you visit the final Star Map planet. Wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't another assassination attempt by Malak's minions.

Just adapt that idea to Pokémon and we are set.
The only remaining problem would be level scaling, but to be fair, that's a problem in most RPGs*. You can just sit around and grind for a long time and then just sweep through the rest of the game. I once sat around forever, just grinding up in Naruto: Path of the Ninja early in the game. By the time I stopped, I didn't have to grind ever again. Even when I got to the final boss, I was simply in that sweet spot for that boss (not overleveled, not underleveled). And to be honest, Pokémon has it worse thanks to trading. Yeah, you can't just trade in higher leveled Pokémon thanks to Badges, but what if you simply trade over the Pokémon from the game you are playing to one you've beaten, grind until they are very overleveled (easy thanks to higher level Pokémon you can fight and the boost in experience due to being an outsider Pokémon), then trade them back**. And that's not even to take in consideration eggs traded over and hatched, TMs, and good late game items you can trade over as well!

*Actually, not a problem in Knights of the Old Republic since the levels of every opponent is determined by your own and you have a level cap at 20, which you get to on the last planet of the game unless you did about no sidequests. I mean, you get exp from opening chests! So maybe depending on the trainer, the number of badges you have, and the levels of your Pokémon could determine this?
**I actually once did this in Pokémon Diamond since I just needed to quickly get to the end of the game so I could catch a decent Dialga and Heatran (though not well enough since I caught up around Spear Pillar).

Oh most certainly; I agree completely. Perhaps I misworded my post, but when I said sacrificing Linearity for Plot, I didn't necessarily mean you should have one or the other -- it was more like, if you absolutely have to be linear, the plot better benefit from it in some way to justify it.

 

[Hiddenfreezer]

I can't contribue much, but I would love a Pokemon Colloseum succesor with making an other battle style(doubles, triples etc.) the prominent one alongside different objectives. Pkmn Colloseum in that regard was superb!

Edit: Noticed this is wishlisting.
Ehem
In regards to Pokemon Colloseum, what makes it work is 3 things changed with the formula:
-NO wild Pokemon battles
-No Gym Badges to be collected
-No Elite Four/Champ

What I am trying to say is: I would be perfectly fine if those last 3 points would be removed for one game or altered(Stealing mons is kinda...you know)

 

[Mulan15262]

The problem with that is, if the series tries to regress back to a non-linear fashion, it would be difficult to keep a somewhat-coherent story in place; likewise, if the series goes on the story-based route, there would be little to no room for flexibility in progression (akin to Black/White). That's more of an issue than level scaling imo, since levels worked out alright back then. Only way we'd get non-linear story progression back is if the stories involving the villainous teams/legendary Pokemon regress back to Gen I-II era storytelling, or are dropped all together for something different in the story layout.

It would still be possible to make a coherent story and scale levels well with the player being free to challenge the gyms in any order. Below is a possible example of such a story:

In XY, Lumiose City has 4 blocks heading out of it (I'm counting Laverre City and Dendemille Town as one together, and all other routes going out of it as one by itself). They could put two gyms in each (Santalune City, Snowbelle City, Camphrier Town, Cyllage City, Coumarine City, Shalour City, Laverre City, Dendemille Town), with the bolded ones being gyms that, when you defeat, activate a plot event of Team Flare taking a part for their secret weapon (and succeeding). Then, once you have all 8 gym badges, Team Flare unleashes their ultimate weapon, at the Geosenge Town that was blocked off from both sides by a rock slide (or something else similar) that was just cleared away by Team Flare, and then you have to rush over (within a specific time limit) to stop their ultimate weapon from being used. If you get there within the time limit, you come in and stop everything. If you do not, then you arrive just to see their weapon being fired and them taking over Kalos (make it a weapon that just destroys technology/metal objects/other non-living things, not killing people or pokemon so its fine for little kids to play), and then you have to free Kalos from them (again, if you take too long).

At the elite 4, you have to challenge the e4 in a predefined order, based off of the order in which you got the 4 plot activating gym badges. Their teams are also slightly based off of . Once you get past the e4 and to the Champion, the Champion will have one pokemon for each of the types of the last 6 gyms you challenged, with the champion's strongest being the type of the last gym you challenges.

As far as level scaling goes, make the gym leader's first 2 pokemon the average level of your team, the next 3 pokemon the level of the highest-level pokemon on your team, and then the last pokemon would be two levels higher. For minor trainers, their pokemon would be set to be around the same level as yours. For the e4 and champion, it would be the same as the gyms leaders, but increased by 2 or 4 levels, respectively.

 

[Pikachu315111]

In terms of event flags the scaling which actually be pretty easy, just have it linked to the amount of Badges you have. The main problem is figuring out how to scale things up for things like normal trainer battles and wild Pokemon. However I also have a suggestion for this: the HMs. First give us a general area we have full access to at the beginning of the game and we can travel to all the main towns/cities. But also have plenty of paths and locations that branch off but you need HMs to access. Then you can have trainers and wild Pokemon at those places scale up (you can even stack needing multiple HMs to access branch paths off the branch paths. Path branchception). I would also think that all trainers should be re-batteable and have it based of the badges (think Interviewer Gabby & Ty). I can go into more details but I hope I said enough to get my point across. Its now that have a wide open game with a solid story is impossible, it just need more effort to be done and carefully planned. I think the examples I said would be one of the best ways to do it, both encouraging exploration but also having plenty of story events. Also depending on what order you do will effect how you play the game as you'll get access to different areas which have different Pokemon in it (moreso if certain Badges gives you certain HMs instead of getting the HMs in the same order no matter what Badges you get).

As for the formula of 8 Gyms + Pokemon League, I would personally like to see some experimentation with the idea. For example what if instead of types they were based on different things like stats, strategies, or themes. Examples:

Stats

Offensive Gym (Attack & Special Attack)
Defensive Gym (Defense & Special Defense)
Speed Gym (Speed)
Physical Gym (Attack & Defense)
Special Gym (Special Attack & Special Defense)
"Hunter" Gym (Attack & Special Defense)
"Shooter" Gym (Special Attack & Defense)
"Speedy Wall" (Defense, Special Defense, & Speed)

Strategies

Priority Gym
Evasion Gym
Weather Gym
Field Hazards Gym
Baton Pass Gym
Double Battle Gym
Triple Battle Gym
Rotation Battle Gym

Theme

Fossil Gym
Eeveelution Gym
Pikaclone Gym
Dog Gym
Cat Gym
Bird Gym
Serpent Gym
Pseudo Dragon Gym

As for the antagonist force, you could do a whole batch with that. Gen V showed they could have an interesting leadership structure instead of the usual Grunt-Admins-Boss previous teams had (XY sort of tried doing that, but honestly the Flare "Admins" were just stronger grunts while the Scientists acted like the real "Admins". Though they had an interesting idea by having an Elite Four Member as a member of their team, though they never did anything with it). Of course a "Villain Team" isn't the only kind of antagonistic force. Maybe they could do something with your rivals (we haven't had a jerkish rival in a while), like actually try to make it feel like you're competing with them to become Champion or some other goal. Or how about some other kind of antagonistic force, like maybe have the Gyms competing with each other so their constantly helping/hindering you in order to preserve their Gym's reputation. Maybe you could even have the antagonistic force be Pokemon themselves, like that region's Legendary decides to strike back against humanity or have initiated a plan that is going to end badly for everyone involved so you need to battle against it and its Pokemon soldiers/generals.