(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

[Worldie]

How? We're you running through that "substantial chunk" with a team of less than 6 Pokémon?

Or are you referring to the part between Maylene and Fantina, which is caused by Wake and Maylene having the 3 Pokémon be the exact same levels as each other, and isn't really something that can be worked around without changing the levels of Wake's Pokémon and every other important fight afterwards. Cause that's just kind of the result of the level curve going completely flat for a bit and has nothing to do with the different Exp system.

Sadly I have to echo R_N , I've ran the entire game recently (took me a while lol) with a full 6 members, and the pokemon that I did not change from the start were all brutally overleveled all the way until Cynthia.

In fact... the funny thing is that since i *DID* change some members near the end, they didnt manage to catch up, and let me tell you, fighting E4 in that game with non-overleveled pokemon was no joke and I actually only won on first try cause friendship bonus made my Gastrodon survive +4 garchomp's EQ and be able to fling 2 Ice beams instead of a single one.


However I still don't understand the complaint for EXP share, mainly cause the issue isnt exp-share per se but just the bad level curves of the games. Most modern JRPGs with "potential party members higher than current active party members" feature some sort of exp share in order to let you always use the members you want at a given time without need to level them separately, and not punish you for having leveled the "wrong" party members and suddently need the other ones who are 40 lvls below.

Plus, I'm always of the club of "If you want to play a challenging game, go play something else, because Pokemon games are not designed to be challenging, they're designed to be fun and kid friendly".

What however I *DO* wish they would remove or let you turn off is friendship bonuses. They just feel... wrong.
They're also ridicolously overpowered, mainly cause you get access to them while the opponent can't. As I said, winning against Cynthia just off a lucky survive from my Gastrodon didn't quite feel right nor satisfactory.
I can definitely see a kid be happy for it, "oh wow my Gastrodon liked me so much he endured the hit :) ", but... I just think that kind of bonuses shouldn't be obtained by default like it is in BDSP, and should at very least require you to actively do something, kinda like in gen 7 you had to use pelago if you wanted to get these bonuses.

 

[R_N]

How? We're you running through that "substantial chunk" with a team of less than 6 Pokémon?

Or are you referring to the part between Maylene and Fantina, which is caused by Wake and Maylene having the 3 Pokémon be the exact same levels as each other, and isn't really something that can be worked around without changing the levels of Wake's Pokémon and every other important fight afterwards. Cause that's just kind of the result of the level curve going completely flat for a bit and has nothing to do with the different Exp system.

I played the game "normally": 6 pokemon, and fought through the content on the various routes
By the time I reached Byron I was like 6-7 levels over him
By the time I reached Candice I was already 10+ levels over

on the way to the victory road i swear to god i was 13 levels over. It just highlights the level jump in base DP even more, honestly.

even if i had dropped the routes near pal park, for example, it would have been less extreme but that's still dumb.

However I still don't understand the complaint for EXP share, mainly cause the issue isnt exp-share per se but just the bad level curves of the games. Most modern JRPGs with "potential party members higher than current active party members" feature some sort of exp share in order to let you always use the members you want at a given time without need to level them separately, and not punish you for having leveled the "wrong" party members and suddently need the other ones who are 40 lvls below.

Plus, I'm always of the club of "If you want to play a challenging game, go play something else, because Pokemon games are not designed to be challenging, they're designed to be fun and kid friendly".

I think Gen 5-7 have more or less perfectly fine leveling curves, with a few hiccups here & there, with the exp share off. You'll never be super under leveled (although I did start to feel it around Clemont, so I flipped it on for one route after him and was fine with it off after that) but you'll typically either be a level or two lower or just "on par" unless you find yourself using one specific Pokemon a lot (which is fair)

And honestly SWSH would also have a ... mostly...fine level curve with exp share off. The big stumbling blocks would probably be the climax of the game just being back to back boss battles followed by the huge leap in Leon (the Rose battle, at least, has you go through Slumbering Weald first)


And that's fine. It's not about "this is a challenging fight", per say, it's about a modicum of friction. I like that small bit of friction, it really is just enough for me to get in a groove. Which is why I just want the ability to turn it off again; it can stay there because a lot of people DO like it for all kinds of reasons but I just don't.

 

[R_N]

I happened to have some screenshots of the levels I was seeing on the "gym 7/climax" zone, unfortunately all my screenshots for Byron & victory road didnt have the dang level on them so I can'ts how you the full lower/higher bound.

All the trainers were like this. 8-12 levels...
Even with the "extra" routes I did (& there's seriously not that many...), this is ridiculous. I would have, in fairness, expected them to be a little higher than normal (I did do "extra" content after all) but more on the spectrum of i dunno 2-3. Perhaps 4, on the lower end trainers. Not 8+++

Affection no doubt played a role in this too (why on earth is it always on....) but I think exp share just exacerbates the whole ordeal. DP had problems with its level curve already, EXP Share just changed what the problem was then runs face first into the other problem with DP's level curve (The end game gauntlet)

 

[QuentinQuonce]

So Pokemon Go have just announced the debut of shiny Finneon and Lumineon for an upcoming event and my god they're horrendously bad shinies. Why are so many shinies (particularly a lot of the Galarian species) just a bland sepia wash?

It's one of the many things that's always bugged me about Lumineon, a Pokemon I really want to like a lot more than I do. It's a butterfly fish which I think is more than enough justification to give it some Bug-type affiliations and I've griped before that it doesn't get Quiver Dance, which would hardly be a gamebreaking addition to its movepool and give it a cool niche in the crowded pool of Water-types. But c'mon! If anything should have a bold, vibrant shiny it's this! If I'd had to design one it'd be vivid yellow or shocking pink or citrus green or even just a more glittery icy blue.

 

[DrCoeloCephalo]

This EXP Share thing honestly feels like one of those issues where you're just better off playing anything else. No other monster collector from the vast number I played puts up with this problem of "getting too much EXP at once", even games that use a 1v1 system over the general 3v3 such as Nexomon where battles scale or Coromon where level growth is slower. Anything else is pretty much designed to beat you to a pulp even if you DO reach max levels.

Oh well. At least mods can turn it off.

Ideally, mods should be used to enhance an already good vanilla game experience, not act as a crutch to a game lacking selling points. Nobody exactly praises Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the quality that Project M provides.

View attachment 443986
So Pokemon Go have just announced the debut of shiny Finneon and Lumineon for an upcoming event and my god they're horrendously bad shinies. Why are so many shinies (particularly a lot of the Galarian species) just a bland sepia wash?

Pokemon is probably the only game where I can't stand monster recolors. They do nothing, their color schemes tend to be awful and getting them is luck-reliant time sinks that usually don't involve actually playing the game.

I could give less of an iota of care that other monster collectors use recolors as roster filler cuz at the end of the day, the fact will remain that they play differently, actually understand color theory and are still just extra optional content no different from Shinies.

I usually GIVE my Shinies away cuz I have no use for them. Like one time, I came across a shiny Gigalith den in SWSH and used soft reset cheese to get a ton with my pals that were Shiny hunting. I wasn't even looking for the thing. I just happened across it and helped give it to someone that cares.

 

[Ironmage]

Something I noticed during my playthrough of BDSP is that the Exp Share becomes a feedback loop. You get more total Exp for having more mons standing, so a 6-0 victory increases the capability of having more in the future. Meanwhile, a fight that goes down to the wire will award Exp only to the fewer player mons still standing. Regardless of the results (I was able to walk the knife's edge until victory road), it just doesn't feel like good game design since it pushes away from the center of the level curve in both directions. The Exp scaling with level difference tries to mitigate this, but I feel that the simplest approach of "defeating this enemy gives exactly ##### Exp total to the party" would be more consistent than having two competing scaling methods that key off different data.

 

[R_N]

Something I noticed during my playthrough of BDSP is that the Exp Share becomes a feedback loop. You get more total Exp for having more mons standing, so a 6-0 victory increases the capability of having more in the future. Meanwhile, a fight that goes down to the wire will award Exp only to the fewer player mons still standing. Regardless of the results (I was able to walk the knife's edge until victory road), it just doesn't feel like good game design since it pushes away from the center of the level curve in both directions. The Exp scaling with level difference tries to mitigate this, but I feel that the simplest approach of "defeating this enemy gives exactly ##### Exp total to the party" would be more consistent than having two competing scaling methods that key off different data.

LA kind of experimented with that, I think.
At least when it came to the Trainer battles you got a static lump sum. Not sure about the rest of the game

 

[DrCoeloCephalo]

I don't get this idea that the permanent Exp All unbalances the game? In SwSh it resulted in all of my team being within 2 levels of Leon's when I went into the battle and in BDSP my Infernape went into the E4 at more or less the same level the ones I used as a kid did, just so did the rest of the team too rather than them all being like 10ish levels lower. DP was an Exp desert in the original game that basically required grinding if you wanted your entire team of 6 to be entering the important battles on par with both eachother and the opponent.

Not having methods to gain EXP by choice is also more of a self-inflicted game design flaw.

In Dragon Quest games, all you need to do is be strong enough to kill a Metal Slime, Liquid Metal Slime or King Metal Slime and level grinding is a non-issue.

Pokemon has Happiny, Chansey, Blissey and even Audino but outside of LA or Unova, you're not allowed to battle those in the wild because reasons. At least THAT would allow more player choice because with how Pokemon's flow is set up, you generally don't HAVE a choice with a good number of NPC battles and now you get even less choice due to the enforced EXP gain.

 

[R_N]

Not having methods to gain EXP by choice is also more of a self-inflicted game design flaw.

In Dragon Quest games, all you need to do is be strong enough to kill a Metal Slime, Liquid Metal Slime or King Metal Slime and level grinding is a non-issue.

Pokemon has Happiny, Chansey, Blissey and even Audino but outside of LA or Unova, you're not allowed to battle those in the wild because reasons. At least THAT would allow more player choice because with how Pokemon's flow is set up, you generally don't HAVE a choice with a good number of NPC battles and now you get even less choice due to the enforce EXP gain.

Gen 8 introduced experience candies (well, Let's Go introduced it but...whatever) which functionally accomplish the same thing, although you need to either pony up (LA has a candy shop later in the game) or battle for them (Raids in SWSH, drops from certain stronger pokemon in LA; both drop with decent frequency at all sizes, you acquire a fair number)

it works pretty nice in the post game, actually, no qualms about their existence. If I were someone bringing in a mid-to-late comer I'd probably go the candy route during the normal game too.

 

[DrCoeloCephalo]

Gen 8 introduced experience candies (well, Let's Go introduced it but...whatever) which functionally accomplish the same thing, although you need to either pony up (LA has a candy shop later in the game) or battle for them (Raids in SWSH, drops from certain stronger pokemon in LA; both drop with decent frequency at all sizes, you acquire a fair number)

it works pretty nice in the post game, actually, no qualms about their existence. If I were someone bringing in a mid-to-late comer I'd probably go the candy route during the normal game too.

EXP Candies are one of many features I would argue they took from Yo-Kai Watch and the reason it works so well in that game is cuz of its much slower level growth, far more challenging gameplay and a 3v3 system that encourages building different teams.

That said, those are definitely a good example of having more player freedom with strengthening a monster since you have complete freedom to just not use them as opposed to many NPC battles or the EXP Share with no off switch.

 

[pika pal]

However I still don't understand the complaint for EXP share, mainly cause the issue isnt exp-share per se but just the bad level curves of the games. Most modern JRPGs with "potential party members higher than current active party members" feature some sort of exp share in order to let you always use the members you want at a given time without need to level them separately, and not punish you for having leveled the "wrong" party members and suddently need the other ones who are 40 lvls below.

Plus, I'm always of the club of "If you want to play a challenging game, go play something else, because Pokemon games are not designed to be challenging, they're designed to be fun and kid friendly".

The bigger issue is that there was no reason to remove the ability to toggle the feature on and off given it should by all rights be a ridiculously simple implementation by nature, not to mention one they had already done multiple times to significantly less criticism than the permanent on.

It just fundamentally reduces the options for how one can choose to play the game while, as demonstrated, making the design side significantly stricter if you want to create a gameplay progression instead of a token resistance railroading the player to see the shiny features and merch subjects characters in their playthrough.

-If the level curve is too low without the EXP Share on: Bad (Game will always be too easy unless you specifically kneecap your team like picking junk mons or Nuzlocking etc)
- If the level curve is too low with the EXP Share on: Turn it off and it may help keep your team from outrunning the gameplay
- If Level Curve is too high with the EXP Share on: Bad (Grinding needed not often popular)
- If Level Curve is too high with EXP Share off: Can turn it on

The inability to toggle the Share removes half of the above for no particular reason, despite one of the removed options being a mitigation for imperfection on the region designers' part. People have cited potential solutions like cycling your Pokemon out to prevent them from getting overleveled, but besides being higher maintenance on maintaining more team members, this feels like it depersonalizes the experience since you're tagging out the creatures the game is ostensibly about bonding and growing with.

On top of this, making the game too easy can legitimately reduce the value of even having the player engage with the systems.

• Single-player wise, a journey in which there's no significant adversity doesn't leave an impression or engage the human brain the way that legitimate challenge and obstacles, be it experienced or simply observed in another's story, do. Consider that some of the most memorable parts of Pokemon, be it in the fanbase or even when it was a full Pop-Culture pillar, would usually be predicated on extremely strong opponents who challenged or roadblocked the player experience (Whitney's Miltank, Ultra Necrozma, Ghetsis's infamous Hydreigon, Cynthia in Gen 4). Without battle design that tests the player to the point they struggle or at least have to try harder, you've almost completely removed the point of putting emphasis on a Single-Player campaign structure over simply making Pokemon a giant sandbox and monster raising game, which isn't a bad idea but clearly not the direction they have been trying to take the IP.
• Multiplayer/Metawise, it leaves little reason to internalize or learn anything the game tells you for the rare times where it does matter, be it the game throwing an abruptly paced difficulty spike, battling your friends, or even trying out other games because you liked Pokemon and heard other games recommended because they're also RPG's or Monster collecting games or such. Playing games like Orre and original Gen 4 were how I learned things like Pokemon specializing in specific Offensive stats, or the value of using Status effects against more powerful opponents. My experience with Gen 8 was that not mattering much because between Dynamax, Raid resources, and the ease with which you could match or outlevel your opponents, the extent of strategy needed tends to be "don't click the NVE move", never mind opponents like Colosseum that had legitimate strategies like Rain teams or Sunny Day/Solarbeam spam. It takes to a more extreme degree that joke about "move doesn't do damage -> Move bad" thinking that most kid players had because the game is never challenging enough that getting past that is worth it.

I've seen stories of kids who played older Pokemon games, then started playing RPG's like Final Fantasy or Persona when they got older, who legitimately never thought to try the Buff or utility skills because their RPG experience up to that point had sufficed on "Attack until it dies" in Pokemon, despite in several cases (see Job System games) those utilities ranging from "needed to have a chance" to "more efficient than beatsticks at breaking the game". I won't act like the old games were FromSoftware experiences, but upon revisiting them, they ask for markedly more of a player than the current games tend to, on top of the latter being made even easier to bruteforce through without conscious effort.

The question I have yet to see a sufficient answer to: Why take away simple to provide playthrough options from the player, especially ones you have already offered before?

 

[AztecCroc]

I happened to have some screenshots of the levels I was seeing on the "gym 7/climax" zone, unfortunately all my screenshots for Byron & victory road didnt have the dang level on them so I can'ts how you the full lower/higher bound.

All the trainers were like this. 8-12 levels...
Even with the "extra" routes I did (& there's seriously not that many...), this is ridiculous. I would have, in fairness, expected them to be a little higher than normal (I did do "extra" content after all) but more on the spectrum of i dunno 2-3. Perhaps 4, on the lower end trainers. Not 8+++

Affection no doubt played a role in this too (why on earth is it always on....) but I think exp share just exacerbates the whole ordeal. DP had problems with its level curve already, EXP Share just changed what the problem was then runs face first into the other problem with DP's level curve (The end game gauntlet)

To be fair, it seems like you probably did a fair bit of Underground Pokémon catching? Given you have a Mamoswine and you can't actually get Swinub before the post-game without using the Underground or trading, and given Pokémon from down there are anywhere from 5 to 20 levels ahead of the curve (or boosted exp from being a traded Pokémon). If you caught her yourself that Swinub was anywhere from 16-20 if you got her before Gardenia, and anywhere up to only two levels lower than it is in those pictures if you just caught it just before these battles (which would also be the two levels needed to get it from Swinub to Mamoswine).

You can't exactly fault the Exp Share for that when even a freshly caught and evolved Mamoswine at that point of the story could also be that level with no Exp Share involved.

 

[mertyville]

The main problem with having the exp share permanent is that people just want the option to train 1 Pokemon while having other members around. Why? It can have multiple reasons. Perhaps something like not wanting to give the wrong EVs to another Pokemon.

What I don't get is why there is a problem with people complaining about others wanting the option to turn it off. Like this game has no difficulty setting, so giving at least that much ability to customize the experience of oneself shouldn't be asking too much.

It is onne of the appeals for Pokemon after all. Creating ones own experience I mean.

 

[R_N]

To be fair, it seems like you probably did a fair bit of Underground Pokémon catching? Given you have a Mamoswine and you can't actually get Swinub before the post-game without using the Underground or trading, and given Pokémon from down there are anywhere from 5 to 20 levels ahead of the curve (or boosted exp from being a traded Pokémon). If you caught her yourself that Swinub was anywhere from 16-20 if you got her before Gardenia, and anywhere up to only two levels lower than it is in those pictures if you just caught it just before these battles (which would also be the two levels needed to get it from Swinub to Mamoswine).

You can't exactly fault the Exp Share for that when even a freshly caught and evolved Mamoswine at that point of the story could also be that level with no Exp Share involved.

Yes I'm well aware thank you, none of that applies to this scenario

swinub was caught at level 26, after gardenia
I think I actually sat on it for a route or so and brought it out proper for Maylene. I found one other photo of around that that's still the level it was. So that actually puts it just below Maylene's levels
it was the lowest leveled pokemon on my Maylene team

This trend continued through the game.
Those earlier screenshots had Mamoswine because those happened to be the only ones I had. This wasn't a case of purposely picking an over leveled capture and setting it against it for Sick Dunks, everyone else was at that level or higher throughout the game.

God I wish I had saved the screenshot of when I was fighting some seaking on candice's route or maybe on the water route to victory road where I was just a flat 15 levels ahead with....Jirachi, I think. I was flabbergasted.
And as you can tell from me using a Jirachi I tried my best to just approach the game "casually", so it's not like I was expecting a hard game here but like. Damn. That's so many levels. I didn't even do grinding...

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Ideally, mods should be used to enhance an already good vanilla game experience, not act as a crutch to a game lacking selling points. Nobody exactly praises Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the quality that Project M provides.

I know.

Kinda sad, isn't it?

 

[Pikachu315111]

Well I mean with how Home handles moves currently it's kind of already doing this, so...

Echoing R_N , HOME was specifically programmed with this weird separate movesets for bdsp/swsh/la exactly because otherwise they would have needed ludicrous amounts of either placeholders or "pls delete this" tags different per each game

But, correct me if I'm wrong, those are only for Moves which were made no longer usable; it makes sense to just delete those Moves.

Let's wait and see what they decide to do, either option is possible (or a combination if they decide some Moves are fine but others would maybe cause an inbalance).

There is no point in any game where you take a boat to Cianwood, Cianwood's in Johto.
Are confusing it with Dewford in Hoenn?

Derp, I think I was, sorry.

... Though now thinking about it why was harbor in Cianwood? Yeah, sure, for the player we just Surf to it, but for world building a little dock with a boat would show the common person isn't trapped on the island.

Um, the point was people are making Johto maps with Cianwood connected to Olivine by land, rather than being across the sea.

There's nothing wrong with them correcting me, especially when I'm wrong on something.

But wait, they directly connect Cianwood with Olivine? Um, aren't there four caves surrounded by whirlpools between the two, kind of an important place, where a powerful Legendary rests...

Playing many other monster collectors, it's ironic how Pokemon has such fast overall level growth that even EXP given to one monster at a time still makes it easy to overlevel.

As many posts below yours began to discuss, at least in recent games the blame for that falls onto the changed done to the Exp Share in Gen VI where it became a Key Item which gave all non-fainted Pokemon with experience.

The most obvious way to see this is with the games it can be turned off: XY, ORAS, SM, & USUM. With Exp. Share turned on the games balance is skewed in your favor many of the times, rarely is there a jump in Levels you haven't already reached. BUT turn Exp. Share off and these games become a tad more difficult as you're not always able to keep your party with pace with the opponent Trainer levels unless you grind a bit.

But then came the Switch games which kept the Exp. Share always on. First one was LGPE, BUT I'd give that one a pass as there's no Wild Battles in those games, only Trainer Battles, and though you got experience from catching a Pokemon that does use resources and having to manage all the captured Pokemon. It made sense just to have all Pokemon gain experience from Trainer Battles plus the few Wild Battles you'd want to do as not to bog down the game too much. But there was no reason to keep it for SWSH, especially when the game also showers you in Exp Candy; Not that you need it as it doesn't feel like the game was made to scale with the Exp Share always on until the Leon battle where he has a massive Level jump. But what finally showed the brokenness of this Exp. Share, especially when forced to be always on, is BDSP which Levels weren't adjusted from their Diamond & Pearl levels (where at most the player only had one Pokemon getting extra Experience via the holdable Exp Share) and in those games you gotta be running two or even three sets of Pokemon teams just to keep their Levels balanced with the main game difficulty.

However I still don't understand the complaint for EXP share, mainly cause the issue isnt exp-share per se but just the bad level curves of the games.

(...)

What however I *DO* wish they would remove or let you turn off is friendship bonuses. They just feel... wrong.

I like the Friendship bonuses but they have the exact same problem as the Exp Share you just mentioned: They're not balanced in the main game in a way which preserves SOME difficulty unless you go out of your way to avoid them (which usually means switching out Pokemon constantly). With Exp. Share it's not making the opponent's level correctly scale with how much experience an average playthrough would give (or lowering the experience the other Pokemon get), and with Friendship Bonuses it's that they're just too frequent and can happen in a row.

 

[Worldie]

I like the Friendship bonuses but they have the exact same problem as the Exp Share you just mentioned: They're not balanced in the main game in a way which preserves SOME difficulty unless you go out of your way to avoid them (which usually means switching out Pokemon constantly). With Exp. Share it's not making the opponent's level correctly scale with how much experience an average playthrough would give (or lowering the experience the other Pokemon get), and with Friendship Bonuses it's that they're just too frequent and can happen in a row.

Well I'd say they are different ways of unbalanced..

EXP share at its core only feels unbalanced because the level curves arent done properly. But that's... a problem of the level curves, not of exp share per se.

Friendship bonuses on the other hand are basically potentially providing all your pokes with passively built in
- endure
- super luck
- auto status removal
on a non-once-per-battle scenario too. And these are things you can't just... also give to the AI, it'd literally turn the game in a RNG fest of which poke triggers endure and which doesn't.

I get that the design of friendship bonuses is a reward for the kid that's using his favourite pokemon through all of the game but... they're on the line of "Too powerful" even for an already easy game.

 

[Sonikku A]

It's bad enough that we gotta have kids as protags every single game, but man, we losing drip now too?

Having adults be protags isn't gonna do much if they're written like Wes, who is as interesting as wet cardboard outside the intro :V
At this point, GF had exhausted the silent protag. It was at its worst Gen 7, but honestly already archaic as early as Gen 3 (especially with Mystery Dungeon RRT having a much more engaging protag). Even BoTW Link suffered it, honestly being a regression from WW, TP, and SS Link, though that's unrelated

GF though, the sheer fact the story just has you stand by while others do their thing is absurd. People talking on your behalf since Gen 5 was pretty stupid. This OUR journey, stop removing us from it! At least give us snarky multichoice text prompts!

The clothing options being axed does suck though. Curse ye school uniforms...

 

[CPU]

Man, I forget about friendship bonuses until someone brings them up and then I get upset over them again.

I believe they also start giving your Pokémon a passive experience boost once you hit a high threshold; I don't think it factors into the experience curve much, but it is there.

 

[R_N]

But, correct me if I'm wrong, those are only for Moves which were made no longer usable; it makes sense to just delete those Moves.

Let's wait and see what they decide to do, either option is possible (or a combination if they decide some Moves are fine but others would maybe cause an inbalance).

It's everything

If you take a Dialga from Diamond and put it into....
-SWSH. It retains the original moves but will just mark you to delete anything it cant use
-BDSP. It gets a new moveset and begins tracking a "BDSP Moveset"
-LA. It gets a new moveset and begins tracking a "LA Moveset"

This continues as you move around the Dialga. Effectively Home tracks 3 different movesets for the Pokemon in question if you were to move it between the games.


I have a post where I experimented with this when the update dropped, somewhere.

 

[Worldie]

There is one defense I also would give to permanent non disableable EXP share and that it makes designing the level curve easier.

Obviously ignoring for a moment the fact that GF still sadly fails at designing level curves...

If you have permanent exp share, you can always have a rough estimation of what the party level will be. You know that by gym X the party should be around level Y, no matter which poke the player actually used the most.
Without exp share, there's a bunch of extra cases that start triggering, notably the one thing we all did as kid in gen 1 and/or 2 (if you didn't you're a liar), where we'd literally only use the starter 90% of the time and would end up with a ridicolously overleveled starter that would effortlessly smash through everything without caring of stabs or supereffective hits.
There's also the case where you are mainly using like 2-3 pokes, and then hit a brick wall when none of them can chew through <insert enemy that resists their attacks> and have to go out and level a poke manually (i have PTSD of leveling pikachu so much that it could actually beat Brock by spamming quick attack)
Or worse, you want to replace one of your pokes, but dread at the thought of having to manually level it (how many tier lists have Ralts or Abra or Magikarp as bottom tier because it takes 3 years to actually evolve them into a usable form without exp share?)

Permanent exp share fixes all these issues, the devs will always be able to have a rough estimate of your power level at a given point of the game, and you as player are free to swap around your party with mainly no downside as your lower level new entries will quickly catch up to the others without any special effort.


Thus I will bounce back to what I said above.
Permanent non-toggleable EXP share is a good feature, and used in almost every RPG that has "party more numerous than active combat partecipant" (pokemon being one, as you have a party of 6 and use 1 or 2 at time).
It helps developers balance the game over the intended powerlevel (outside of fringe cases where people go out of their way to powergrind)
It lets the player have freedom to swap around their party and use their favourites with little or no downside.
It also allows developers to make more varied challenges, as they don't have to consider the scenario where you did not level (or did not catch) the party member that works well against a given boss, because you will have it at the correct level, or are able to add it with no downside.

You don't hear people playing other RPGs or collectible games saying "man how I wish I could turn off shared exp and only level 3 people", do you?

The *issue* is that GF is just bad at doing level curves and players would use "no exp share" to try and fix it... but the problem is the bad level curve, not the exp sharing.
Requesting a feature to fix a problem is far more inefficent than... just requesting to fix the problem instead.

As someone said above regarding mods... "Mods should be used to add things to a game, not to fix a game's problem". Same applies here.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

There's nothing wrong with them correcting me, especially when I'm wrong on something.

But wait, they directly connect Cianwood with Olivine? Um, aren't there four caves surrounded by whirlpools between the two, kind of an important place, where a powerful Legendary rests...

To put this to bed, it's maps like these (apologies for the appalling quality but needs must)

 

[misterdarvus]

To put this to bed, it's maps like these (apologies for the appalling quality but needs must)

Cianwood is supposed in Shikoku Island, right?

 

[AztecCroc]

Speaking of maps, you know what annoys me?

The maps in PLA don't even remotely line up with actual Sinnoh.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Cianwood is supposed in Shikoku Island, right?

Yeah, that's right.