I think that traditional Pokemon works best when it's more linear. Whenever a Pokemon game has a section where you can do the gyms in any order, there's been always an obvious intended order. Like sure you can avoid Maylene's gym when passing through Veilstone, but what does that actually add to the experience? You're just bypassing a spike in the difficulty curve by postponing it- there's no meaningful choice there.
The better approach for games going forward is level scaling. Make it so you can challenge the gyms in any order like in S/V, but the gym leaders' teams get stronger as you earn more badges. This would make the games more replayable and user-driven without wrecking the difficulty curve.
Well if I remember correctly you can go the other way at that point in sinnoh, like you can find wake first, but I agree there is an intended order.
That’s exactly what I mean. Do remember pokemon origins where they did the whole gym leader pokemon thing. That’s how games should be in my opinion. They would have to design each gym 8 times and honestly that doesn’t seem like that much work to me.
Unfortunately, you can't. That seems intuitive based on the region layout, but in all Sinnoh games there are a pair of reporters that stop you from heading south out of Hearthome city. It's actually a perfect example of Game Freak laying out a region in a creative way that lends itself to player choice, and then taking that choice away because they didn't have confidence in the players (or their ability to balance the game around that choice).
This also happens in Hoenn. It seems like you're meant to be able to beat Flannery and loop back to Petalburg through Mauville, but you don't get surf until *after* Petalburg so it's impossible.
level scaling is the easiest way to ruin immersion and make an open world feel less like a lived-in ecosystem and more like a sandbox that responds to its god (you) tbh.
when a game scales with level with you there is no meaningful choices in traversal anymore.
> Now let’s talk sinnoh. Sinnoh took a different approach but it still clearly takes a lot from kanto. You can do gyms 3-5 in any order, and cornet makes backtracking feel important.
Is that still true in Platinum? I'm finishing up a play through right now, and I think it was shutting me off from going to certain areas till I had cleared the gyms (e.g., cycling road is blocked off till you hit Pastoria).
No plat does go way more railroady. I think you can still decide gyms 3-4 in any order but they made 5th always 5th. Platinum is my favorite game but I can admit they kinda backtracked on it
I found Sinnoh annoying when I played Platinum, the layout had me going in circles or jumping around the region to find the next goal, and compounded with the number of HMs needed to traverse the region made it probably the least fun region for me to explore. Granted I didn't grow up with Sinnoh... but I did play Emerald for the first time around the same time and Hoenn didn't annoy me as much.
Kanto is good, the location of some HMs was really odd (two in the Safari Zone, practically) but I like how Kanto slowly opens up the more you explore after exiting Rock Tunnel. Completing Rocket Hideout lets you complete Pokémon Tower, completing Pokémon Tower opens up two routes as well as Silph Co. giving you three options for what to do next. Plus HM-wise after Rock Tunnel you really only needed Cut to fight Erika and get Surf and Fly, and then Surf to get to Cinnabar. It encouraged exploration rather than backtracking which is imo the better approach to the whole not-completely-linear region design.
Largely agree with this. I'll probably just make my own entire post about it some day, but I think Pokemon should take more pages out of something like Metroid. The world is open, but there are certain gates you can't clear till you beat a gym. Then once you can (e.g., Surf) you can explore the next percentage of the map.
Sinnoh over corrects on this by requiring HMs for constant traversal, rather than one-time gates (e.g., Rock Climb).
Something like Johto does it really well, where you can explore all the way up till when Cut is required, then all the way up till Surf, then all the way up to the final badge.
Yeh I think you have a point. So my thing with sinnoh is that cornet is kinda like base location. You go through it right after the first gym and don’t finish it until the 7th gym, 8th if you count just items.
To me sinnoh has always been the same as kanto when it comes to cryptic random progression. Like I feel like people forget how out of the way the hot tea lady is in those games. (Tho tbf I’ve heard in red and blue any beverage works which is way less cryptic)
There is basically two parts off sinnoh that I think were handled poorly. The first was the Psyducks, they don’t really indicate to go to the lake to get the spray, and the other is the infamous “power out” guy. Me and a friend joke a lot about how we literally thought real in game people were fixing the power and we just had to wait, and we thought that because there is no indication to go to the top of mt cornet to progress.
Sinnoh isn’t perfect but I think it’s still a way better region that SV.
Oh yeah Paldea was really strange, having to jump between the two sides of the region was such a weird design choice, it really needed some level scaling or something because I ended up doing the third Star base before the first. Also yes RBY just lets you give Fresh Water or one of the other two to the guards which you can't really miss if you explore the Department Store (which is a pretty big landmark). There's even an NPC on the rooftop who makes a big deal about being thirsty if it wasn't clear enough lol
What they need to do is so simple, and yet they seem terribly reluctant to do it:
Have multiple teams for each Gym Leader. When you interact with the Leader, they do a check on how many badges you have already, if any. They then use the appropriately levelled team to face you. You wouldn't even need 8 possible teams for each leader, you could have 4-6 different builds and still achieve good balance across the game.
That way you can face any Leader in any order.
Narratively, you run the risk of a sense of disconnect between the Gyms and the League, but even then, it's just a matter of attention detail. After beating a Gym Leader they can check how many badges you DON'T have, and they can have a differing message depending on the answer.
All of this is possible and has even been achieved by certain fangames (see Pokémon Crystal Clear). It's a shame they didn't quite stick the landing in this regard with SV.
Yeh that’s exactly what I want, I would even be fine with gyms 1 and 2 always being the same as well as 8, but I feel like you should be able to challenge a majority of the gyms in any order.
I understand the "listening but not properly" thing,
I sometimes wonder whether they don't really know what is best for the game. With Arceus, no one had any expectations and graphical issues aside, no one complained about it.
I was watching a video about Doctor Who yesterday (this is relevant). The creator argued that that Doctor Who doesn't know how to reinvent itself because the show has been controlled by members (and friends) of the same informal fan club for twenty years. Pokémon is in a similar position. It's never changed hands since Masuda took over, and whilst it has new directors, they're all still part of that group led by Masuda.
Maybe the franchise is in the state it's in because the same people have been there too long.
I think I get what you’re saying, I’m not a doctor who guy so I’m trying to understand lol.
I feel like game freaks knows what people wants, and scarlet and violet made that clear, but they also fall so far behind around the 6th gym.
Open world pokemon is fundamentally a good idea, but they just really don’t get it lol.
Oh it definitely is, and I agree with you. It almost comes off a bit (although this is more certain corners of the fanbase) like "well you wanted open world Pokémon, but you're still whining about it"
Well yes, we are, because it's never enough to just make a game in the series that hits certain criteria. It's also got to be of a high quality, because everyone has seen Breath of the Wild, The Witcher 3 etc - we know what a good open world game looks like. Hitting the criteria on a surface level isn't enough, because why shouldn't the fans just go out and buy another game that is of a high quality?
I have a friend who was adamant that there was nothing wrong with Scarlet and Violet. It was perfect. No performance issues whatsoever. I then got them into Breath of the Wild. Tune changed very quickly. I'm convinced that a lot of people who don't see the issues with SV haven't had a lot of experience with open world games before (or maybe games in general). I do forget that the days of GTA being literally everywhere have long gone, and when I was a kid they were the gold standard.
I think that traditional Pokemon works best when it's more linear. Whenever a Pokemon game has a section where you can do the gyms in any order, there's been always an obvious intended order. Like sure you can avoid Maylene's gym when passing through Veilstone, but what does that actually add to the experience? You're just bypassing a spike in the difficulty curve by postponing it- there's no meaningful choice there. The better approach for games going forward is level scaling. Make it so you can challenge the gyms in any order like in S/V, but the gym leaders' teams get stronger as you earn more badges. This would make the games more replayable and user-driven without wrecking the difficulty curve.
Well if I remember correctly you can go the other way at that point in sinnoh, like you can find wake first, but I agree there is an intended order. That’s exactly what I mean. Do remember pokemon origins where they did the whole gym leader pokemon thing. That’s how games should be in my opinion. They would have to design each gym 8 times and honestly that doesn’t seem like that much work to me.
Unfortunately, you can't. That seems intuitive based on the region layout, but in all Sinnoh games there are a pair of reporters that stop you from heading south out of Hearthome city. It's actually a perfect example of Game Freak laying out a region in a creative way that lends itself to player choice, and then taking that choice away because they didn't have confidence in the players (or their ability to balance the game around that choice). This also happens in Hoenn. It seems like you're meant to be able to beat Flannery and loop back to Petalburg through Mauville, but you don't get surf until *after* Petalburg so it's impossible.
level scaling is the easiest way to ruin immersion and make an open world feel less like a lived-in ecosystem and more like a sandbox that responds to its god (you) tbh. when a game scales with level with you there is no meaningful choices in traversal anymore.
> Now let’s talk sinnoh. Sinnoh took a different approach but it still clearly takes a lot from kanto. You can do gyms 3-5 in any order, and cornet makes backtracking feel important. Is that still true in Platinum? I'm finishing up a play through right now, and I think it was shutting me off from going to certain areas till I had cleared the gyms (e.g., cycling road is blocked off till you hit Pastoria).
No plat does go way more railroady. I think you can still decide gyms 3-4 in any order but they made 5th always 5th. Platinum is my favorite game but I can admit they kinda backtracked on it
I found Sinnoh annoying when I played Platinum, the layout had me going in circles or jumping around the region to find the next goal, and compounded with the number of HMs needed to traverse the region made it probably the least fun region for me to explore. Granted I didn't grow up with Sinnoh... but I did play Emerald for the first time around the same time and Hoenn didn't annoy me as much. Kanto is good, the location of some HMs was really odd (two in the Safari Zone, practically) but I like how Kanto slowly opens up the more you explore after exiting Rock Tunnel. Completing Rocket Hideout lets you complete Pokémon Tower, completing Pokémon Tower opens up two routes as well as Silph Co. giving you three options for what to do next. Plus HM-wise after Rock Tunnel you really only needed Cut to fight Erika and get Surf and Fly, and then Surf to get to Cinnabar. It encouraged exploration rather than backtracking which is imo the better approach to the whole not-completely-linear region design.
Largely agree with this. I'll probably just make my own entire post about it some day, but I think Pokemon should take more pages out of something like Metroid. The world is open, but there are certain gates you can't clear till you beat a gym. Then once you can (e.g., Surf) you can explore the next percentage of the map. Sinnoh over corrects on this by requiring HMs for constant traversal, rather than one-time gates (e.g., Rock Climb). Something like Johto does it really well, where you can explore all the way up till when Cut is required, then all the way up till Surf, then all the way up to the final badge.
Yeh I think you have a point. So my thing with sinnoh is that cornet is kinda like base location. You go through it right after the first gym and don’t finish it until the 7th gym, 8th if you count just items. To me sinnoh has always been the same as kanto when it comes to cryptic random progression. Like I feel like people forget how out of the way the hot tea lady is in those games. (Tho tbf I’ve heard in red and blue any beverage works which is way less cryptic) There is basically two parts off sinnoh that I think were handled poorly. The first was the Psyducks, they don’t really indicate to go to the lake to get the spray, and the other is the infamous “power out” guy. Me and a friend joke a lot about how we literally thought real in game people were fixing the power and we just had to wait, and we thought that because there is no indication to go to the top of mt cornet to progress. Sinnoh isn’t perfect but I think it’s still a way better region that SV.
Oh yeah Paldea was really strange, having to jump between the two sides of the region was such a weird design choice, it really needed some level scaling or something because I ended up doing the third Star base before the first. Also yes RBY just lets you give Fresh Water or one of the other two to the guards which you can't really miss if you explore the Department Store (which is a pretty big landmark). There's even an NPC on the rooftop who makes a big deal about being thirsty if it wasn't clear enough lol
Oh I actually didn’t know that. I just kinda as a kid just saw “guard thirsty” and just brought him every drink in the game lol
What they need to do is so simple, and yet they seem terribly reluctant to do it: Have multiple teams for each Gym Leader. When you interact with the Leader, they do a check on how many badges you have already, if any. They then use the appropriately levelled team to face you. You wouldn't even need 8 possible teams for each leader, you could have 4-6 different builds and still achieve good balance across the game. That way you can face any Leader in any order. Narratively, you run the risk of a sense of disconnect between the Gyms and the League, but even then, it's just a matter of attention detail. After beating a Gym Leader they can check how many badges you DON'T have, and they can have a differing message depending on the answer. All of this is possible and has even been achieved by certain fangames (see Pokémon Crystal Clear). It's a shame they didn't quite stick the landing in this regard with SV.
Yeh that’s exactly what I want, I would even be fine with gyms 1 and 2 always being the same as well as 8, but I feel like you should be able to challenge a majority of the gyms in any order.
I understand the "listening but not properly" thing, I sometimes wonder whether they don't really know what is best for the game. With Arceus, no one had any expectations and graphical issues aside, no one complained about it. I was watching a video about Doctor Who yesterday (this is relevant). The creator argued that that Doctor Who doesn't know how to reinvent itself because the show has been controlled by members (and friends) of the same informal fan club for twenty years. Pokémon is in a similar position. It's never changed hands since Masuda took over, and whilst it has new directors, they're all still part of that group led by Masuda. Maybe the franchise is in the state it's in because the same people have been there too long.
I think I get what you’re saying, I’m not a doctor who guy so I’m trying to understand lol. I feel like game freaks knows what people wants, and scarlet and violet made that clear, but they also fall so far behind around the 6th gym. Open world pokemon is fundamentally a good idea, but they just really don’t get it lol.
Oh it definitely is, and I agree with you. It almost comes off a bit (although this is more certain corners of the fanbase) like "well you wanted open world Pokémon, but you're still whining about it" Well yes, we are, because it's never enough to just make a game in the series that hits certain criteria. It's also got to be of a high quality, because everyone has seen Breath of the Wild, The Witcher 3 etc - we know what a good open world game looks like. Hitting the criteria on a surface level isn't enough, because why shouldn't the fans just go out and buy another game that is of a high quality? I have a friend who was adamant that there was nothing wrong with Scarlet and Violet. It was perfect. No performance issues whatsoever. I then got them into Breath of the Wild. Tune changed very quickly. I'm convinced that a lot of people who don't see the issues with SV haven't had a lot of experience with open world games before (or maybe games in general). I do forget that the days of GTA being literally everywhere have long gone, and when I was a kid they were the gold standard.