That, right there, is the crux of the issue, alas. But it would be possible for it to be overcome, and I can think of a good reason for NindFreak to do it.I think you're forgetting that this is still a children's game.
The Smogon faithful (or even the Serebii noobs) garner such a small part of the market that no game will ever be designed for us.
Dude, you were ten and you dealt with it and you thought it was all awesome in the end. Since when did something "for kids" also mean something "boring"? Like seriously, children's entertainment that anyone can enjoy these days is when they make a horribly crappy animated movie that then has equally crappy pop culture references so that "the adults love it, too." Seriously, entertainment "for adults" doesn't need to be "complex" and "mature" and entertainment "for kids" doesn't need to be "simple" and "whatever the noncondescending antonym of mature is". If you want everybody to enjoy what you're doing, it needs to be "good", which Nintendo's lacking on. Pokemon wouldn't sell half as well if the games industry didn't make older game obsolete every five years and have a huge boner for what are ultimately useless things like THREE DEE. Pokemon Red is an old game? The Little Prince is an old children's book that basically everyone loves, and it's three times as old and new enough to be a "modern classic".I think you're forgetting that this is still a children's game.
The Smogon faithful (or even the Serebii noobs) garner such a small part of the market that no game will ever be designed for us. Level scaling would actually be easier than you think (just set each trainer to be X levels lower than your highest team member and each gym leader to scale in at X levels higher, then limit you two 3 or 4 areas before progressing to solve any evolution problems) but taking the semblance of linearity out of the game would make them increasingly more challenging and drive away the target market.
Remember when you were 10 and you got your first copy of Pokemon Red? You didn't know how to play; you accidentally skipped Lt. Surge and were frustrated and upset when it wouldn't let you use Fly; you didn't necessarily 'get' all the type match-ups {ghost is bad against psychic gen1, that's why my Kadabra destroyed Agatha amiright?}.
Now that the mechanics of the game have become increasingly more complex they have had to compensate by making how you play it less and less complicated for the people who will buy the most copies. Do you think a 10 year-old buys one cart for wifi and does most of his playthroughs with an emulator? Of course he doesn't, he (well, his parent) buys 3 to 5 Pokemon games each generation.
So, if we can expect anything it will be for gamefreak to "dumb down" the story even more and to base it around 2 mandatory--but hopefully spaced apart--legendary encounters.
First off, when I was 10, I was bad at Pokemon. Sure I had a grasp of the type match-ups but I ignored stats and movepools as erroneous. I thought Sword's Dance was a waste of a turn, "why would I need one stronger attack when two regular attacks will get same job done." If some adult had ever bothered to play with me and didn't decide to let me win: I wouldn't have.Dude, you were ten and you dealt with it and you thought it was all awesome in the end.
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If you want everybody to enjoy what you're doing, it needs to be "good", which Nintendo's lacking on. Pokemon wouldn't sell half as well if the games industry didn't make older game obsolete every five years and have a huge boner for what are ultimately useless things like THREE DEE. http://kotaku.com/5331307/the-everything-disease-a-forensic-analysis-of-the-popularity-of-pokemon
You cannot possibly try to deny that the game's mechanics have become incredibly more complex since the first generation. With that added complexity there needs to be some kind of change within the game so that it stays simple enough for these 10 year old children to keep playing. The easiest, and probably best, way to do this is to make the game more story driven. So that children who do not have the patience for grinding--and they don't--can still "beat" the game and progress through the Elite 4.In the case of Pokemon, we have a game that is — if truth be told — incredibly well put-together. The developers of the Pokemon game work hard to evolve the series and increase its appeal to gamers of nearly all ages, and they do a spectacular job of consistently turning out better and better products.
If they want to sell Mystery Dungeon to kids, they have...problems. I mean, not only is it a lot like http://www.NetHack (with difficulty to match!), but there's a lot of scary-ass stuff in Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky (I'm pretty sure the main characters are forced to contemplate suicide at one point).It would be quite natural for the games to age with the audience (Nintendo could keep making Mystery Dungeon and Ranger for the younger folks) and, quite frankly, keep us playing and buying their games.
It would be good if teh attacks were actually useful. Rock Climb would be great if it were Rock Type, Strength could easily be Fighting. Cut and Rock Smash need to be more powerful and maybe even some new effect to make them interesting. Surf and Waterfall are fine, and Fly is decent in-game.Only thing about it is. I dislike the methods used to keep us in line. HMs need to go, or in someway change. I'm sick of using useless attacks taking up slots.
Strength not being Fighting always seemed a little odd to me. But yes, I think that if they do keep around things like Cut, they should beef up the power a tad. I'm perfectly fine with having say...Around a 70ish BP Cut on something being leveled early on like a Beedrill. The water HMs (Sans Whirlpool/Dive) are quite fine. They should be used as an example to how HMs should work, abeilt the other HMs should be a tad weaker. After all, we wouldn't want to just hand over some really powerful moves to tack onto everyone.It would be good if teh attacks were actually useful. Rock Climb would be great if it were Rock Type, Strength could easily be Fighting. Cut and Rock Smash need to be more powerful and maybe even some new effect to make them interesting. Surf and Waterfall are fine, and Fly is decent in-game.
Considering the kinds of things you can find on the Pokewalker before you even reach Violet City, I wouldn't exactly consider HGSS to be a paragon of gameplay balance.Considering pretty much everything in HGSS could be taught Headbutt very early on in the game making Cut 70BP wouldn't be game-breaking.
So basically GameFreak has no intention of doing anything creative with Pokemon. At least not as a mainline title.TSPhoenix said:http://www.officialnintendomagazine.co.uk/article.php?id=16177
ONM: Pokémon is now over 15 years old. In that time have you ever considered reinventing the series or do you think fans like the fact that it's familiar?
Junichi Masuda: If we thought totally reinventing the series would be attractive enough, we would definitely try. But, if we want to simply try something new, then, I just add those ideas to a new series. (laugh) I always try to create a game that anybody, including those who have never played before, can enjoy.
Unsurprisingly they make every game so that the new generation of 10 year old kids will get hooked on it. They can't really afford to make the mainline titles offputting to newcomers or they'd kill the franchise. If you look at how till this generation games [in general] were getting more complex and less people played them, the logic makes sense. Still the GC [Pokemon] titles were a decent experiment. If GameFreak tried something similar it'd be awesome.