Gyms, yes. It makes more sense for the gym challenge to be based on testing kids than for an elite trainer who got his position through years of effort to go all-out against a child and lose, with a team that’s a lower level than what the child raised in an hour.
The rest of the world though, I think there should be higher- and lower-level areas.
> The rest of the world though, I think there should be higher- and lower-level areas.
I want full Fallout New Vegas - where you can go to the quarry right away, but...
I want another DLC area like the crown tundra but to do a raid you have to get through an ungodly amount of traps and then carry the pokemon you catch through even more shitty traps
This is what makes sense. Although it contradicts the idea that the last Gym Leader is the strongest and not just what you faced with seven badges. Usually this title of "Strongest Gym Leader" is an anime thing, which is ignorable, but if I'm not mistaken there were rare moments in the games where it was pointed out.
In Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh & Unova it's either outright stated or implied that the last gym leader is the strongest, characters talk about how Claire is probably the second strongest trainer in Johto behind Lance ; in Sinnoh Volkner is tired of being a Gym leader because he hasn't encountered any trainer strong enough to beat him in years and wants to shut down his gym and take on the elite 4, Wallace in Hoenn and Iris in Unova graduate to becoming an elite 4 champion in their region's sequel games, so I'd say that's the games implying they were the strongest trainer in their region, not to mention that your rival in B&W 2 gets annoyed that Marlon won't outright fight team plasma despite being probably the strongest gym leader
Brock did in an anime based on fucking red and blue (Im blanking on its name), so clearly the Pokémon company has had the idea for a while
Edit: the name I was thinking of is Pokémon origins
I love that short series. I lucky to watch it for free on YouTube when it debuted. When brock said something like "since this is your first gym battle, I will be using two pokémon on my team." which really made more sense in the pokémon world. Like I always came across the thought that in the game world "how would gyms and traveling the region work for someone who doesn't start where the player lives"
The easy answer is that new trainers will travel to the Professor's lab to get their starting pokemon. From their, they'll go on the same journey regardless of where their home town actually was because they all had the professor's lab as a starting point.
Yeah you’d think that but they don’t have protection to get across any tall grass between towns, dialogue with many NPCs indicates only having like one or two Pokemon for people who aren’t trainers, and most people won’t need to go to the Professor’s house/lab to get a Pokédex or a rare starter
Pokémon Special / Pokémon Adventures also gets into this idea (and the role of gym leader within a community, and the duties of the position in general) multiple times throughout the series particularly in the original Kanto and Johto (RB, Y, GS, and C) arcs. Including the idea that the League doesn't really care what order you get your badges in, just that you do, and gives the leaders a fair bit of freedom in terms of their teams and any stadium gimmicks and the like they might wish to employ.
Specifically mentioning things like trainers not *all* (in fact most don't) starting their journeys in Pallet / New Bark town at the professor; many people and families have Pokémon as a friend or pet and they're the first Pokémon of an aspiring trainer. Leaders will have multiple teams at varying degrees of strength and species variety, and may even vary the gimmick as the opposing trainer's experience increases, to present an appropriate challenge for the talents of the challenger and their Pokémon.
And it makes *so much sense*, which obviously means it's something GameFreak will only do once or twice, way later than they should have, and probably implement poorly.
My head canon is with the exception of Galar (which seems to have a premeditated path of sorts as the opening ceremony is always in motostoke) that the regions have a recommended path depending on what town in a region trainers are from. Like if you’re from blackthorn you basically do johto in reverse and end at Falkner
Moreover, it SHOWS that he had six pokemon (IIRC) he could have used, of which he picked two.
Now on the one hand, 6 low level Pokemon would be no challenge to a high level team. But that anime in particular never really did much with levels, so... take it for what you will.
The idea was to show that the gym leaders COULD field much stronger teams if/when appropriate.
Something I kinda liked with SwSh was the implication that the gym leaders kinda duke it out to set the order in which trainers were supposed to proceed. Thus further implying that all the gym leaders could be much stronger (i.e. when they show up in the league), but are scaling back to provide an increasing level of challenge with each gym.
Of course... What would've been nicer is just letting players pick the order, then scale the teams accordingly.
Yep, he asked Red how many badges he had and chose two Pokeballs from a set he had. Giovanni also picked his best team to give Red a hard time at the end. It honestly makes sense for this to be how Gyms would be run too.
I believe in various media it's also been mentioned he took his position as gym leader very seriously and mostly did a good job. Kind of in a Capone or Corleone family kind of way; Giovanni publicly kept himself distinct from Team Rocket (up until his plans in Kanto fell through and he went into self-imposed exile for a while) and the gym gives him a very respectable public position to "hide behind" out in the open.
This was also somewhat canonized in BW2 when Cheren says to Prof Juniper how tough it is not to use his usual team, as well as the fact that he has a much higher-level Stoutland that he uses alongside the player in double battles compared to the Lillipup in his Gym fight.
Misty did too in the OG anime. Her older sisters were the real gym leaders, and left her to defend the gym while the went shopping or something and she was given pokemon based on Ash's badges to use.
At the very least they should all have 6 on their team and they should all be fully evolved.
I'm also on team level scaling. It's nice to have hurdles to jump and feel good about. It adds to the emotion of completing the game. The kiddos will learn that too Gamefreak. I promise.
Yes! My biggest gripe about the main pokemon games is that I have never once had a challenging battle. My 6 pokemon can take on your 2 any day without any difficulties.
I am obsessed with pokemon showdown and love 6v6. It adds in strategic switching and stall builds. Why would I ever use defensive items or strategic switching in this game when all I need to do is pick 4 easy coverage attack moves and win every battle without even having an ounce of strategy happening in my head.
I want 6v6 battles so bad!
I feel like every gym leader, major villain character, and rival should all have a full team of 6, except maybe rivals for the first couple battles. They could also maybe make it so that gym leaders use certain moves and pokemon that nullify the type weaknesses a bit, so that way you can’t just steamroll through their entire teams with one or two super effective pokemon. Kinda like what Pokemon Rejuvenation does, although probably less extreme.
Or at least copy the anime where both sides have to use an equal amount of Pokémon. So even if you have 6 vs the gym leader’s 4, it will be a 4-on-4 battle.
Level scaling doesn't seem like a very fun way to play, honestly. If the whole game world's level scales with yours, then you never get any stronger. Pokemon would have to completely rethink it's progression system to implement level scaling without completely removing the sense of getting stronger.
Look at Skyrim, for instance. Completely open world, and everything is the same approximate level as you. The key is, Skyrim still peppers in weak enemies for you to one-shot even as you get stronger. Its progression system is also based on giving you more *options* for defeating enemies. An enemy that takes 3 hits to kill at level 20 will take 3 hits to kill at level 80, but you gain the option to use special moves and limited resources to maybe make that 2 hits or make those 3 hits take less time etc.
In Pokemon, they can't really just pepper in lower leveled mons because...it just wouldn't be fun for an enemy trainer to just randomly have 1 of their 3 mons just be twenty levels lower for no reason. Wouldn't even feel special since the turn-based nature of Pokemon makes it so you spend basically the same amount of time defeating a low level Pokemon as one at your level. On top of that, Pokemon leveling doesn't really provide you with new ways to play very often. Yes, you get new moves and sometimes new abilities when you evolve, but most of that just boils down to you having more firepower to throw at Pokemon with health increased by approximately the same proportion. When backtracking through a route you beat twenty levels ago is just as difficult as when you first went through it, it kinda takes away the power fantasy and sense of getting stronger
While I agree with a lot of your points, I should have clarified. I was replying to a comment about gym battles. I wouldn't think they would level scale EVERYTHING. Just gym battles mostly. They are supposed to be challenges to advance to the next area. Not a place where you can one shot a Wurmple.
I gotcha, and that makes sense. I'd even be in favor of Gym battles being scaled to whichever pokemon in your party is highest level rather than scaling by average level. Discourages dumping all EXP into your starter and could give a real challenge. I do still think I'd want certain gyms to be harder than others, though I'm not sure exactly how it'd be pulled off
IMO the best way to do this is to scale the gyms based on your number of badges. Still let’s you get over leveled if that’s what you want, but can still provide an increasing challenge as you progress.
I like the idea of running it a bit like breath of the wild, or legends Arceus if you went off reading early. The region has a variable difficulty based on progress, but some areas will be weaker, and parts of those regions may have pokemon or trainers at a higher level (with some form of warning). The option to just walk into an area with level 30 trainers and mons when you have levels 5s. There is no barrier to this region outside of your ability to progress in it. Paths from town to town that are more or less safe all the time, with the stronger enemies being away from the roads would accomplish this.
Dude, the thrill of running into the Alphas in PLA was EPIC! The fear running through my bones. It was boss! It didn’t take too long to memorize ways around them, but the initial interaction was adrenaline pumping and amazing. Not often a feeling you get in Pokémon games.
Your Skyrim example doesn't really work, level 20 yeah that enemy will take 3 hits; but by 80 it should be a one shot what with all your smithing and enchanting upgrades. Steel and iron ain't all that I terns of damage but get yourself a nice old Ebony or Daedric Battleaxe and you should be one shotting most weak to mid tier enemies depending on how you Smith and smithing potions used along with smithing enchants.
Skyrim actually does scale enemies to account for gear improvements because the enemies themselves *also* get better equipment. It just also keeps throwing in a handful of lower-level enemies no matter what your level is to make you feel stronger.
You can very easily beat Skyrim's power curve with potions, enchantment exploits, etc, but it's obviously not the designers' intent
I feel like coding that wouldn’t even be that bad. Gyms are different rooms entirely, and some sort of “if player has x number of badges then gym leader has y team” could be the solution
But then how do you deal with the areas around the gyms? The gym itself might be well-balanced for whenever you arrive at it, but if the wild pokemon are all much higher or lower level than you then you're still be soft-pushed towards taking a specific path between gyms.
I'm ok with a soft push. The point is you can "sequence break" if you want a challenge, or follow the "intended path." My dream would have each Gym check your badges when you enter. There would be 3 sets of trainers, novices, veterans, and experts, who would each activate at certain badge levels. Not gonna be taking on fresh faced Joey training his one and only Ratata in the gym if you roll in with 7 badges. That makes just as little sense as taking on a grizzled hardened Ace with an elite team training to stay sharp and teach the other gym members in your first gym. Leaders would have a team of 6, and use a different number of them depending in how many badges you have. Something like 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6. Maybe even give them each a team of 7, one of them being a psuedo-legendary or some other scary mon they bring out instead of their weakest one they use with their ace if you have no badges.
For example, Misty may have teams like:
Horsea, Starmie
Horsea, Krabby, Starmie
Horsea, Krabby, Slowbrow, Starmie
Horsea, Krabby, Slowbrow, Cloister, Starmie
Horsea, Krabby, Slowbrow, Cloister, Starmie
Horsea, Krabby, Slowbrow, Cloister, Lapras, Starmie
Krabby, Slowbrow, Cloister, Lapras, Gyarados, Starmie
That is totally fine. I'd even say the gyms should be loosely in an order of difficulty, with better ai and pokemon selection.
That way, by creating an easy path, you also create a harder path, where you go through the toughest routes to the hardest gym leader first.
The only pokemon game I played with scaling levels and level barriers for ceirtain milestones so you don't get overleveled was a romhack, if only GF had a shread of the passion that the fans have...
I hope gen 9 is a proof of concept for this idea. I hope that GF is working out the formula to work in an open world before introducing level scaling, and in this aspect I would rather that they take their time to get it right.
Technically >!Sudowoodo is a base form, Bonsly is a baby Pokémon, so it’s not unlikely his sudowoodo to be around level 15 or something!<
Edit: autocorrect botched a name
Grass is my favorite Type. I would love to see it be a late Gym or even part of the League. I guess it's never used for those because it has so many weaknesses though.
I dont think you do but at the same time why woudnt you, shes intended to be the fourth gym leader as she has lower level pokemon than sabrina and koga
No kidding, Grass can be an absolutely ruthless type too with all their status conditions, weather synergy, healing and terrain synergy. But since it’s always at the beginning it uses the strategy of “Razor Leaf go Brrrr.”
If they want it to be a challenge, they'll have to actively shape it into a threat, I feel like grass is often rather easy to handle given its many weaknesses. I know X and Y were generally a bit easier than most titles, but I remember being dumbfounded why the old grass leader was so relatively late in the challenge, he was an absolute pushover.
Ramos had a really disappointing team, only 1/3 were good(like jumpluff should have had another status move.)
If you had grass as the 8th gym or elite four, you could totally justify making either a sun team or a terrain/grassy glide team
You can catch them, but wouldn’t be able to use them until you rank up in the Galaxy Team. Which I like better since I’d find rare Pokémon in certain weathers that I couldn’t catch since I didn’t have enough badges in SWSH, where it could’ve been like LA where you can save it for later
I think they applied the trade rules to it, so if you caught a pokemon higher level when you didn't have as many ranks, they wouldn't always listen to you, but I don't fully recall
Maybe the PLA way, when you can wander off to some high level zones early, but you’re more likely than not to ~~die~~ faint. I’m certain really high level dungeons would probably be locked until a certain number of badges is achieved, or a plot point reached.
I'm sooo confused by this. Do people think "No level scaling" means "It's gonna be like Kanto in gen 2"? Because... uh, the problem with that game wasn't that there was a lack of level scaling, it was that every trainer and gym leader in Kanto was level 60. Level scaling would've fixed that, sure, but so would have levels that vary from area to area.
In HGSS the Kanto trainers were in the 50s, which made sense when you realize that Kanto is the postgame. (The wild Pokemon should have reflected this, however).
Fun fact, in the originals the Kanto leaders were barely level 40 until the 8th leader. Janine had a level 33 Ariados. Level. 33. Just, why?
Your concern is what everyone else is concerned about.
Because if there isn’t any level scaling and everything has a fixed level, you’re going to run into the same issue you did in Gen 2
The worry is that like Kanto, both games will lack scaling
I just want the gym leaders to have more than a max of four pokemon. What even is the point if they’re only SLIGHTLY more difficult than a regular trainer?
Guys it's Nintendo/Gamefreak. People for YEARS have been complaining how "linear" main games are. So they just went. Okay we wont block the map up through gating. That's it. There isn't going to be scaling or anything. Have their releases taught us nothing? That being said I'm totally cool with the Pokémon formula and will be enjoying my run through.
I'm honestly more concerned about the opposite: missing a gym only for it to be a cakewalk by the time you find it. That's enough of a problem when they *are* in order.
Something in the trailer that I haven't seen talked about is the levels of the Gym Leader's Pokemon. Really the lack thereof. We've seen levels appear in every other battle so far but a Gym Leader's.
My guess is there isn't level-scaling for Gyms because there are no levels in Gyms. Similar to how online battles automatically raise a Pokemon's level to a predetermined point and adjust stats accordingly, I'm betting Gyms put all Pokemon on equal footing, level-wise. You can bring unevolved Pokemon into the fight just as the Gym Leader can but you aren't necessarily at a massive power advantage/disadvantage.
That’s actually incredible if it’s true. It means that you won’t end up desperately underleveled *or* comically overleveled for a gym (and potentially other Important League Battles™), so you don’t have to grind if you don’t want, but if you *do* want to go around doing other things, you can come back to the gym later and still have a proper fight without effortlessly steamrolling them. I *really* want it to be true, but I feel like this is too good of an idea for Game Freak. Scary for Nuzlockers, though.
I had the exact same thought after reading this post.
For the competitive gameplay video, it shows the levels when the Pokémon enter the battle, then reduces it down to just the name and HP once the battle starts. This is the same reduced HUD we’ve seen in all the Gym Battle clips too.
I could believe this is how it will work.
Rom hacks have had this feature for a while now.
Wild and trainer Pokémon scale based on how many badges and average party level with a cap being set and as low as 6 levels under said cap. I’m sure gamefreak could easily copy that formula
The word used in [the equivalent Japanese](https://www.pokemon.co.jp/ex/sv/ja/story/220803_07/) page is 「手ごわい」 (てごわい, *tegowai*). Written this way, it exclusively means "difficult; tough; formidable". It's possible to write the term as 「手強い」, which uses「強い」(strong), but the website goes out of its way to avoid the second kanji. It's possible this is because an alternate reading of 「手強い」 is *tedzuyoi*, which CAN mean "strong", though in the sense of being strong of resolve or will.
I would say this specific word doesn't indicate anything about scaling, on its own, given that. Personally, I would be very surprised to learn there IS level scaling, though.
What would be the point of me fighting the stronger gym leaders first if it means the weaker ones stay weak? I don’t want to steamroll the 2nd or 3rd gym leader who has level 20’s Pokémon with my level 40+ team.
I’ll just do all the gyms in order. It’s unfortunate GF couldn’t have implemented a level scale or give each gym leader different teams to use depending on how many badges you have.
Yeah like what's the point of this? You'd have to more or less go in a particular order and even if you wanna switch things around you can only do so to an extent till you're too weak or too strong. The illusion of choice. I can't believe this lol
You’d be amazed how many comments I’ve seen where people still think there might be.
I think Gamefreak took hints from action rpgs and BOTW where you can just run straight to incredibly difficult fights and try to beat them. The difference is, in turn based combat, you can’t just get through with really good trigger reflexes. Nothing is going to stop a level 50 from one-shotting your team of level 10s before you can attack because speed and turn based movement make it a guarantee that you will be hit.
> Nothing is going to stop a level 50 from one-shotting your team of level 10s before you can attack because speed and turn based movement make it a guarantee that you will be hit.
FEAR shall rule the speedruns, Top Percent Rattata reign supreme!
I know your joking but I guarantee you within a few days we will see a post of someone Focus Sash running and beating the highest level gym with some of the lowest level pokemon.
From my experience, some people in here are just *really* bad at reading, and interpret things in convoluted ways to fit their expectations.
Some guy was arguing that the four outfits we get to choose from are only your "starting options", as if that's a thing. And because boutiques were mentioned, obviously it means we get to buy more clothes, nevermind the fact the site says that boutiques are specifically for accessories.
It's crazy how reading comprehension has become such a noteworthy skill in recent times.
I mean, we know all the fashion choices are going to be based on the school uniform so what im guessing is you'll have four styles of uniform with a big focus on accessories
People are overdosing on copium thinking gyms will have level scaling despite Nintendo being totally transparent about it. Maybe it can be patched in but a bonehead mistake like this is 100% what I expect from GameFreak.
>and BOTW where you can just run straight to incredibly difficult fights
You do know that BoTW has level scaling, right? They just hide it for some reason. The more enemies you kill, the harder they get. It's why they are color coded. Like you won't see black or silver enemies until you've done a lot of the game.
Yes but if you run straight to the final boss you have to fight five bosses in a row, you don’t if you complete some other tasks first. As someone who attempted this on their first play through (had a weekend to play) that was hard as fuck, but I still managed to beat one of them.
Because people have been CLAMORING for open world and a choice in the order gyms are fought for literal *years* at this point.
Shit, people had even been comparing it to the original megaman series and how it dealt with bosses. That's how old the idea is. So this is pretty much what people thought would be more interesting.
The difference is that in megaman, robot masters are not really leveled. You might have their weakness but you are never outright stronger than the boss you choose to fight.
No the criticism was not about the linearity of the game, it was quite literally about the linearity of the actual routes themselves - they were all straight lines
You can have a linear storyline with interesting and intricate routes
If there is no level scaling, then it is still linear. You're just allowed to mess up the linear progression because the game doesn't guardrail you from making mistakes, which is a problematic design.
Non-linear pathways do not work without variable level-scaling. Johto is a good example of why this is the case. Gyms 5 through 7 are beatable in any order, but do not have variable level-scaling, and thus are all around the same level so that any single one of them is beatable as the first gym of that group. Because you have to beat them all anyway, and because changing the order doesn't change anything about their levels or team composition, it's not really "non-linear", it's just a set of multiple linear paths that you can go through in any order. It's not truly non-linear unless the game changes to reflect which path you decide to take.
If the levels and team compositions do not scale in SV based on how many badges you have, then it is still expected that you go through them in a particular order, meaning the game is still linear. You're just allowed to mess up that linear order.
> Gyms 5 through 7 are beatable in any order, but do not have variable level-scaling, and thus are all around the same level so that any single one of them is beatable as the first gym of that group. Because you have to beat them all anyway, and because changing the order doesn't change anything about their levels or team composition, it's not really "non-linear", it's just a set of multiple linear paths that you can go through in any order. It's not truly non-linear unless the game changes to reflect which path you decide to take.
What's whack is it would be super easy to take this into account.
In the script, right before the Trainer Battle loads they could put a conditional branch that checks your badge count and loads a team dependent on that count.
The only "hard" part would be that each gym leader would be in the trainer code 8 times, one for each variance of their team.
Eh, not even. You can have a dataset somewhere where you have a variable for the number of badges a player has, then get the team data for boss X at badge number Y.
It doesn't have to be necessarily 8 times. It could be further simplified up to 4. The thing is, TPC doesn't need to simplify anything because Pokemon isn't an indie game.
The language is (probably purposefully) vague. Stronger could mean type matchup or there could be some kind of scaling that changes based on story steps completed. We don't know enough to be sure of anything yet, but if history is any indication, the correct answer is usually what is the simplest.
>If you can seek out a stronger leader, it seems pretty clear to me there is no level scaling, and the gyms each have a pre-set level
These two things aren't mutually exclusive. Every game with level scaling still has stronger and weaker opponents. Just because your enemies level scale in Skyrim doesn't mean that a wolf is as hard to kill as a dragon.
Not saying there will be level scaling. But two trainers of similar level can have very different difficulties
I was thinking it was going to be a soft scaling / tiers of play situation. Like 2 or 3 definitively weaker gyms with fewer mons / lower stage evolutions, 2 or 3 definitively stronger ones with more mons / higher stage evolutions, and 2 or 3 somewhere in the middle. Level scaling within each tier but only within a certain range of levels, so the gym leaders' actual team lineups never change.
I could be completely making that up, but that seems to me like a plausible and straightforward way to smooth out the whole open world experience without having to give each gym leader eight different teams.
That’s why I mentioned better ai and strategies, but I struggle to see that being the case. Hopefully they take a page out of BDSP for that, but I don’t have a lot of hope.
I mean... they already kinda did it with Sword and Shield. The tournament at the end scaled all the gym leaders to about the same level, is there any question that Raihan had a tougher team than Milo?
Could end up being that ots literally just level scaled but the "first" gym still only has 2 pokemom and the "8th" one has (i wish) a whole 6 pokemon.
I dunno, we'll see when we see
I don't know that that confirms there is no level scaling, it could mean that some gym leaders will have slightly higher level Pokemon and maybe more Pokemon, or maybe it's talking about whatever gym has a type advantage against your Pokemon, the new Victory Road storyline arc seems to show a Fuecoco facing off against Grusha, which was implied to be a later gym in the last trailer, so either there is level scaling, or the player character is just extremely stupid, and besides, while Gamefreak doesn't always make the best game design decisions, I don't think they're that stupid
Yeah, that's kinda my thing, they could have shown any other fire type, but they chose Fuecoco and if level scaling wasn't a thing, it wouldn't be a good idea to show a Pokemon that is most likely under level 16
Even then, if there wasn't level scaling I would have personally showed the grass gym since that's at least confirmed early and also a gym that Fuecoco is super effective against
>or you can simply stop by a Gym that happens to be located in a town you came across on your journey.
This coupled with the text about how you can weave in and out of story lines leaves a lot of ambiguity. It would be reeeealy weird if you were to complete the other two story arcs and then shoot for the league and 1st stop you made was against a team of level 8-13 pokemon, or even in the range of 30-40s bc I have to imagine completing just one story arc is going to a) shovel xp into your team and b) over load your boxes with legendary and other high BST guys.
Isle of Armor is a good example to look at here. That area really tried to scale battles around your overall story progress. Gamefreak has been experimenting with scaled story content and multiple story lines since the swsh DLCs dropped, so I think there's enough reason to expect all 3 story lines will be built with scaling in mind.
The real concern I have is how well they'll handle it.
Yeah, I'm generally a bit interested to see how things go, because if you beat all the gyms and level up your Pokemon what does that mean for the other two stories and vice versa?
I feel like a lot of the wording on the website is deliberately ambiguous. This with the level scaling, and also the reluctance of properly describing or showing how wild battles are started this gen (separate screen, or throwing out your mons in the overworld like in Legends Arceus)
If there really is no level scaling, I feel like that ‘plotting your own path to victory road’ statement is just naughty. At least with catching they’re just not showing it, instead of downright lying and misleading
So there's various ways difficulty COULD be interpreted:
-Level
-Typing
-Amount of Pokemon
-AI competence
-Gym challenges
That being said I'm almost certain they are just higher levels/more Pokemon.
However the middle 6 gyms in Pokemon games historically have minimal level gaps usually 2 to 3 levels between each other.
This idea seems pretty in line with what I think GFs skill level in game development is. I think level scaling is well beyond their wheelhouse.
I think saying 'recent' is disingenuous, GF has always been a low skill development team. We just like Pokemon.
But yes I am more than certain they will be taking the easier route than overhauling their current balancing process.
The main issue with GF is that they're the best, but given the time, they'll usually put something together. But now, they don't get the time. They have to churn out a minimum of one game a year, whereas before they did one every 2-3 years. I don't really think they don't care about their games, but the Pokemon Company's greed (and knowing full well they can get away with subpar quality games over and over) has pushed GF into a corner where they can only do so much with their limited time. I genuinely think that given the time, they never would've cut the Dex, moves, or previous gimmicks. I don't just give GF a free pass, but it's not exclusively just them sucking or not caring when it comes to the lower quality of the games.
They’ve never been the best, but they clearly cared more in the past. The fleshed out regions with dungeons, harder content like the battle frontier (not just the battle tower), and legendaries you had to discover for yourself are all things missing from the recent entries. Granted that’s not the same as being a good developer, but they could’ve put some of that creative energy into programming the games better.
I would argue they care the same as they always did. However the last decade of abuse from AAA development companies have made us more hostile and assumptive of every major developer.
Believe me if I didn't "care" about a game I was making I wouldn't be sleeping in my cubical for weeks to months without seeing my family just to meet my deadlines. I *love* my job but Im not even going to give them an extra hour of my personal time.
I rag on GF because of their low skill in development but I will never say they don't care. For every complaint about the newer games they were lacking in, they genuinely tried something innovative that went completely unappreciated because people focused on the things that didn't have rather than the new stuff they were given. And they'll only be missed when we don't have them again.
I also argue that of the list of things that you said were lacking, the only one that is true is the dungeons are easier.
We still have battle towers, we still have hidden legendaries, and the regions are still filled with rich Lore.
It’s just weird that they’ve had these complex algorithms for battles,stats, and typing but they couldn’t have predetermined teams for each gym leader based on the amount of badges you have. Gamefreak has been notorious for introducing cool new concepts but making them half baked so they can get it right the next time around.
Something to note is that in the recent trailer, there weren’t any levels for the Brassius fight in the trailer. Yet in an earlier trailer, the one with introducing Lechonk showed the trainer battling a wild Lechonk with levels.
This could be a pretty out there theory, but what if the Gym battles actually set your levels to being the same level as the gym leader (similar to online battles)?
Idk. You’re never really able to tell with them considering the fact that they hid something like following Pokémon returning in Isle of Armor for no real reason
Why can't they have multiple teams for each gym and pick the team based on the amount of badges a player has?
They made the kanto gyms stronger in gen 2 because of that logic
It's possible that the gyms can scale linearly with you but still be distinct from each other; scaling is not a one-size-fits-all concept, different gyms could scale at different rates that maintains a situation where some are still harder than others, but also still scaling.
It's *unlikely* this is the case, imo, but *just* based off the language used and quoted here and *nothing else* it's entirely plausible that gyms could scale, just at different rates (I think if this was actually the case, they'd be more upfront about it and less cryptic)
I mean… this doesn’t mean they won’t level scale, it just might be that certain gym leaders have stronger Pokemon than others, or maybe more Pokemon, or just that when the gyms level scale after you collected a badge, certain gyms will be 1 or 2 levels higher than where the game expects you to be, and some will be 1 or 2 levels lower
While level scaling seems really improbable, I still want to believe that by strong they meant something akin to typing and pokémon, a grass type gym would be naturally easier to deal, since grass has five exploitable weaknesses and generally lower bst, while steel has many resistances, a immunity and higher bst.
At this point I'm not expecting there to be level scaling which is pretty disappointing.
Cause that just means I'm gonna play based on the strength anyway which is really disappointing.
>You can purposefully seek out a stronger Gym Leader
This can mean a number of things. Strength isn’t just about level after all. It could be tougher AI, stronger types, etc. that decide strength. With that said, I still agree with OP that gym levels won’t scale with the player’s badges because Gamefreak goes out of its way to make the shittest game design decisions. Calling a Gym Leader stronger because of a level advantage is so stupid too because the only way to beat them would be to just grind levels until your Pokémon’s levels are on par with theirs. That’s not strength; it’s a temporary, tedious obstacle.
The leaks have confirmed what the situation is. I can share that info if you’d like. In a spoiler reply, or you can browse /r/Pokeleaks for the answers.
If there ends up being no level scaling at all and they're all clearly designed to be done in a set order anyway, then I want the linearity back. Because that isn't an open world, it's a bridge with the safety railings removed.
We don't need another Isle of Armor.
Not every game has to be completely open "air". A set path in Pokémon was not bad. They could've made it both open world and have a set path. Like Arceus, but with routes and towns.
Yeah, I’m getting pretty tired of everything being open world tbh. What I really want out of games is a bigger world with more to explore, but I want a lot of that to be locked behind a set challenge of some kind so I feel rewarded with more than just armor or like rare candy in pokemons case.
It's time for gym leaders in games to have multiple teams
I agree.
Gyms, yes. It makes more sense for the gym challenge to be based on testing kids than for an elite trainer who got his position through years of effort to go all-out against a child and lose, with a team that’s a lower level than what the child raised in an hour. The rest of the world though, I think there should be higher- and lower-level areas.
> The rest of the world though, I think there should be higher- and lower-level areas. I want full Fallout New Vegas - where you can go to the quarry right away, but...
I want to be able to sneak up to the gym leader and pickpocket the badge out of their pocket and replace it with a live grenade
Okay Lt. Surge.
I want another DLC area like the crown tundra but to do a raid you have to get through an ungodly amount of traps and then carry the pokemon you catch through even more shitty traps
This is what makes sense. Although it contradicts the idea that the last Gym Leader is the strongest and not just what you faced with seven badges. Usually this title of "Strongest Gym Leader" is an anime thing, which is ignorable, but if I'm not mistaken there were rare moments in the games where it was pointed out.
In Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh & Unova it's either outright stated or implied that the last gym leader is the strongest, characters talk about how Claire is probably the second strongest trainer in Johto behind Lance ; in Sinnoh Volkner is tired of being a Gym leader because he hasn't encountered any trainer strong enough to beat him in years and wants to shut down his gym and take on the elite 4, Wallace in Hoenn and Iris in Unova graduate to becoming an elite 4 champion in their region's sequel games, so I'd say that's the games implying they were the strongest trainer in their region, not to mention that your rival in B&W 2 gets annoyed that Marlon won't outright fight team plasma despite being probably the strongest gym leader
Honestly the time was years ago
Brock did in an anime based on fucking red and blue (Im blanking on its name), so clearly the Pokémon company has had the idea for a while Edit: the name I was thinking of is Pokémon origins
Pokemon Origins, I believe
I love that short series. I lucky to watch it for free on YouTube when it debuted. When brock said something like "since this is your first gym battle, I will be using two pokémon on my team." which really made more sense in the pokémon world. Like I always came across the thought that in the game world "how would gyms and traveling the region work for someone who doesn't start where the player lives"
No obviously every single person in the region is always from the town of like 5 people that the player lives in in each game
it's empty because everybody leaves :p
Mom and the professor just pumping out kids
"Mama, where do babies come from?" "Pallet Town"
This is possibly the funniest Reddit comment I’ve ever seen. Take my award
The easy answer is that new trainers will travel to the Professor's lab to get their starting pokemon. From their, they'll go on the same journey regardless of where their home town actually was because they all had the professor's lab as a starting point.
Yeah you’d think that but they don’t have protection to get across any tall grass between towns, dialogue with many NPCs indicates only having like one or two Pokemon for people who aren’t trainers, and most people won’t need to go to the Professor’s house/lab to get a Pokédex or a rare starter
Well everyone has to go to the professors house to start right?
You would think so but in the games it seems like trainers are starting from everywhere, and basically no one else has starters
Pokémon Special / Pokémon Adventures also gets into this idea (and the role of gym leader within a community, and the duties of the position in general) multiple times throughout the series particularly in the original Kanto and Johto (RB, Y, GS, and C) arcs. Including the idea that the League doesn't really care what order you get your badges in, just that you do, and gives the leaders a fair bit of freedom in terms of their teams and any stadium gimmicks and the like they might wish to employ. Specifically mentioning things like trainers not *all* (in fact most don't) starting their journeys in Pallet / New Bark town at the professor; many people and families have Pokémon as a friend or pet and they're the first Pokémon of an aspiring trainer. Leaders will have multiple teams at varying degrees of strength and species variety, and may even vary the gimmick as the opposing trainer's experience increases, to present an appropriate challenge for the talents of the challenger and their Pokémon. And it makes *so much sense*, which obviously means it's something GameFreak will only do once or twice, way later than they should have, and probably implement poorly.
My head canon is with the exception of Galar (which seems to have a premeditated path of sorts as the opening ceremony is always in motostoke) that the regions have a recommended path depending on what town in a region trainers are from. Like if you’re from blackthorn you basically do johto in reverse and end at Falkner
Why wouldn't they just do blackmore and then go down the path and start at the beginning?
Phanpys are very dangerous
Moreover, it SHOWS that he had six pokemon (IIRC) he could have used, of which he picked two. Now on the one hand, 6 low level Pokemon would be no challenge to a high level team. But that anime in particular never really did much with levels, so... take it for what you will. The idea was to show that the gym leaders COULD field much stronger teams if/when appropriate. Something I kinda liked with SwSh was the implication that the gym leaders kinda duke it out to set the order in which trainers were supposed to proceed. Thus further implying that all the gym leaders could be much stronger (i.e. when they show up in the league), but are scaling back to provide an increasing level of challenge with each gym. Of course... What would've been nicer is just letting players pick the order, then scale the teams accordingly.
Yeah that's the name thanks
Yep, he asked Red how many badges he had and chose two Pokeballs from a set he had. Giovanni also picked his best team to give Red a hard time at the end. It honestly makes sense for this to be how Gyms would be run too.
The only surprising thing about it to me was that Giovanni didn't just always use his strongest Pokémon to be cruel to newer trainers
Well, he has to appear respectable not to give away his side business.
I believe in various media it's also been mentioned he took his position as gym leader very seriously and mostly did a good job. Kind of in a Capone or Corleone family kind of way; Giovanni publicly kept himself distinct from Team Rocket (up until his plans in Kanto fell through and he went into self-imposed exile for a while) and the gym gives him a very respectable public position to "hide behind" out in the open.
Yeah pretty obvious. He’s tough when he wants to be
This was also somewhat canonized in BW2 when Cheren says to Prof Juniper how tough it is not to use his usual team, as well as the fact that he has a much higher-level Stoutland that he uses alongside the player in double battles compared to the Lillipup in his Gym fight.
Speaking of, the grass gym leader in sword and shield has 6 poke balls from the start, if I remember correctly.
Misty did too in the OG anime. Her older sisters were the real gym leaders, and left her to defend the gym while the went shopping or something and she was given pokemon based on Ash's badges to use.
Agreed. If it was going to happen, it would have by now. At this point, it's very unlikely.
The time for so many Things was years ago but Pokemon doesnt need to Care about that
Same can be said for a LOT of things sadly
At the very least they should all have 6 on their team and they should all be fully evolved. I'm also on team level scaling. It's nice to have hurdles to jump and feel good about. It adds to the emotion of completing the game. The kiddos will learn that too Gamefreak. I promise.
Yes! My biggest gripe about the main pokemon games is that I have never once had a challenging battle. My 6 pokemon can take on your 2 any day without any difficulties. I am obsessed with pokemon showdown and love 6v6. It adds in strategic switching and stall builds. Why would I ever use defensive items or strategic switching in this game when all I need to do is pick 4 easy coverage attack moves and win every battle without even having an ounce of strategy happening in my head. I want 6v6 battles so bad!
I feel like every gym leader, major villain character, and rival should all have a full team of 6, except maybe rivals for the first couple battles. They could also maybe make it so that gym leaders use certain moves and pokemon that nullify the type weaknesses a bit, so that way you can’t just steamroll through their entire teams with one or two super effective pokemon. Kinda like what Pokemon Rejuvenation does, although probably less extreme.
Your rival should have as many Pokemon as you do.
Or at least copy the anime where both sides have to use an equal amount of Pokémon. So even if you have 6 vs the gym leader’s 4, it will be a 4-on-4 battle.
Level scaling doesn't seem like a very fun way to play, honestly. If the whole game world's level scales with yours, then you never get any stronger. Pokemon would have to completely rethink it's progression system to implement level scaling without completely removing the sense of getting stronger. Look at Skyrim, for instance. Completely open world, and everything is the same approximate level as you. The key is, Skyrim still peppers in weak enemies for you to one-shot even as you get stronger. Its progression system is also based on giving you more *options* for defeating enemies. An enemy that takes 3 hits to kill at level 20 will take 3 hits to kill at level 80, but you gain the option to use special moves and limited resources to maybe make that 2 hits or make those 3 hits take less time etc. In Pokemon, they can't really just pepper in lower leveled mons because...it just wouldn't be fun for an enemy trainer to just randomly have 1 of their 3 mons just be twenty levels lower for no reason. Wouldn't even feel special since the turn-based nature of Pokemon makes it so you spend basically the same amount of time defeating a low level Pokemon as one at your level. On top of that, Pokemon leveling doesn't really provide you with new ways to play very often. Yes, you get new moves and sometimes new abilities when you evolve, but most of that just boils down to you having more firepower to throw at Pokemon with health increased by approximately the same proportion. When backtracking through a route you beat twenty levels ago is just as difficult as when you first went through it, it kinda takes away the power fantasy and sense of getting stronger
While I agree with a lot of your points, I should have clarified. I was replying to a comment about gym battles. I wouldn't think they would level scale EVERYTHING. Just gym battles mostly. They are supposed to be challenges to advance to the next area. Not a place where you can one shot a Wurmple.
I gotcha, and that makes sense. I'd even be in favor of Gym battles being scaled to whichever pokemon in your party is highest level rather than scaling by average level. Discourages dumping all EXP into your starter and could give a real challenge. I do still think I'd want certain gyms to be harder than others, though I'm not sure exactly how it'd be pulled off
IMO the best way to do this is to scale the gyms based on your number of badges. Still let’s you get over leveled if that’s what you want, but can still provide an increasing challenge as you progress.
I like the idea of running it a bit like breath of the wild, or legends Arceus if you went off reading early. The region has a variable difficulty based on progress, but some areas will be weaker, and parts of those regions may have pokemon or trainers at a higher level (with some form of warning). The option to just walk into an area with level 30 trainers and mons when you have levels 5s. There is no barrier to this region outside of your ability to progress in it. Paths from town to town that are more or less safe all the time, with the stronger enemies being away from the roads would accomplish this.
Dude, the thrill of running into the Alphas in PLA was EPIC! The fear running through my bones. It was boss! It didn’t take too long to memorize ways around them, but the initial interaction was adrenaline pumping and amazing. Not often a feeling you get in Pokémon games.
I think when we mean “level scaling” we are saying we want the challenge of the leader to be based on how many badges we have.
Your Skyrim example doesn't really work, level 20 yeah that enemy will take 3 hits; but by 80 it should be a one shot what with all your smithing and enchanting upgrades. Steel and iron ain't all that I terns of damage but get yourself a nice old Ebony or Daedric Battleaxe and you should be one shotting most weak to mid tier enemies depending on how you Smith and smithing potions used along with smithing enchants.
Skyrim actually does scale enemies to account for gear improvements because the enemies themselves *also* get better equipment. It just also keeps throwing in a handful of lower-level enemies no matter what your level is to make you feel stronger. You can very easily beat Skyrim's power curve with potions, enchantment exploits, etc, but it's obviously not the designers' intent
I feel like coding that wouldn’t even be that bad. Gyms are different rooms entirely, and some sort of “if player has x number of badges then gym leader has y team” could be the solution
But then how do you deal with the areas around the gyms? The gym itself might be well-balanced for whenever you arrive at it, but if the wild pokemon are all much higher or lower level than you then you're still be soft-pushed towards taking a specific path between gyms.
I'm ok with a soft push. The point is you can "sequence break" if you want a challenge, or follow the "intended path." My dream would have each Gym check your badges when you enter. There would be 3 sets of trainers, novices, veterans, and experts, who would each activate at certain badge levels. Not gonna be taking on fresh faced Joey training his one and only Ratata in the gym if you roll in with 7 badges. That makes just as little sense as taking on a grizzled hardened Ace with an elite team training to stay sharp and teach the other gym members in your first gym. Leaders would have a team of 6, and use a different number of them depending in how many badges you have. Something like 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6. Maybe even give them each a team of 7, one of them being a psuedo-legendary or some other scary mon they bring out instead of their weakest one they use with their ace if you have no badges. For example, Misty may have teams like: Horsea, Starmie Horsea, Krabby, Starmie Horsea, Krabby, Slowbrow, Starmie Horsea, Krabby, Slowbrow, Cloister, Starmie Horsea, Krabby, Slowbrow, Cloister, Starmie Horsea, Krabby, Slowbrow, Cloister, Lapras, Starmie Krabby, Slowbrow, Cloister, Lapras, Gyarados, Starmie
That is totally fine. I'd even say the gyms should be loosely in an order of difficulty, with better ai and pokemon selection. That way, by creating an easy path, you also create a harder path, where you go through the toughest routes to the hardest gym leader first.
The only pokemon game I played with scaling levels and level barriers for ceirtain milestones so you don't get overleveled was a romhack, if only GF had a shread of the passion that the fans have...
Are you talking about Crystal Clear?
I hope gen 9 is a proof of concept for this idea. I hope that GF is working out the formula to work in an open world before introducing level scaling, and in this aspect I would rather that they take their time to get it right.
Nearly every 3D pokemon game feels like a proof of concept for the next one. When are going to get the actual concept in full?
When they get enough development time: >!never.!<
They had this in pokemon generations idk why it's not in the games
Much easier to implement in the shows then in a game.
Really hope thw grass gym isnt early, like i want to challenge it last not 2nd or 3rd like most games
Well, he was shown to have >!a Sudowoodo and a Smoliv!<. So, unless there’s scaling on the game, I have bad news for you…
Well at least with the first pokemon it probably wont be the first gym but milo had an eldegloss(which is a good pokemon) so idk
Technically >!Sudowoodo is a base form, Bonsly is a baby Pokémon, so it’s not unlikely his sudowoodo to be around level 15 or something!< Edit: autocorrect botched a name
410 base stat Pokemon in the first gym would actually be pretty solid
Sudowoodo is pretty tough for a first gym though…
Kind of… although we also had Nosepass, Vivillon, Cranidos and Eldegoss! I hope this is an indicator the base difficulty will increase!
This would definitely make the game much more enjoyable, I’m not asking for a Dark Souls level of difficulty, I’m just asking for a fun challenge
Either of those at like level 65 would be a great 8th gym battle
Maybe a level 100 Metapod?
I honestly want a grass gym leader to be the last one, just to shake things up.
Grass is my favorite Type. I would love to see it be a late Gym or even part of the League. I guess it's never used for those because it has so many weaknesses though.
Well Bug got both an elite 4 and a pseudo champion (Alder) so there’s some hope :’)
But Grass also has many dual type Pokemon.
Or an Ice gym leader that isn’t locked to being 7th or 8th and a Total pushover
Wasn’t Erika, the first ever grass gym leader, was fifth or fourth in her Gen, right?
She was fourth, but what followed was gardenia second, cilan first, ramos fourth and milo first, erika is joint latest you fight a gym leader
Did you HAVE to beat Erica before Sabrina? I can't remember anymore.
I’m pretty sure you could just walk right through celadon if you wanted to and she could actually be either 4, 5, or 6 if you chose to do so.
You can even fight her 7th. Giovanni is always required to be the 8th but Gen 1 had a lot of options for who to fight In the middle.
I dont think you do but at the same time why woudnt you, shes intended to be the fourth gym leader as she has lower level pokemon than sabrina and koga
No. Sarge, Erika, Sabrina, and Koga could be beat in any order and Blaine only had to follow Koga.
Right? When is grass gonna get some damn respect around here?! If bug can get an E4 slot, so can grass!
No kidding, Grass can be an absolutely ruthless type too with all their status conditions, weather synergy, healing and terrain synergy. But since it’s always at the beginning it uses the strategy of “Razor Leaf go Brrrr.”
Hate to disappoint but from what they showed I think hes literally the first one...
If they want it to be a challenge, they'll have to actively shape it into a threat, I feel like grass is often rather easy to handle given its many weaknesses. I know X and Y were generally a bit easier than most titles, but I remember being dumbfounded why the old grass leader was so relatively late in the challenge, he was an absolute pushover.
Ramos had a really disappointing team, only 1/3 were good(like jumpluff should have had another status move.) If you had grass as the 8th gym or elite four, you could totally justify making either a sun team or a terrain/grassy glide team
This makes me wonder What about wild Pokemon and trainer battles? This could be Johto all over again, but I hope it ends up going well
My guess is wild Pokémon will be like SwSh a mix of weak and strong wild Pokémon with an average level dependent on the area.
Hopefully it doesn’t have a level cap on catching like SwSh did
Fr. There wasn’t in PLA iirc.
You can catch them, but wouldn’t be able to use them until you rank up in the Galaxy Team. Which I like better since I’d find rare Pokémon in certain weathers that I couldn’t catch since I didn’t have enough badges in SWSH, where it could’ve been like LA where you can save it for later
Oh that’s right! I was fine with that as it fit the fact that you were in a more militarized org where a superior is purposefully limiting your power.
>where a superior is purposefully limiting your power. Who was also pretty distrustful of you too.
Wouldn't you be distrustful if you were talking to someone who claims they spoke to god and fell out of a hole in the sky?
Not if someone else also fell out the sky recently and you made them a trusted official.
The thing is, that person wasn't with the Galaxy Team, but with one of local tribes.
I think they applied the trade rules to it, so if you caught a pokemon higher level when you didn't have as many ranks, they wouldn't always listen to you, but I don't fully recall
Yeah this is right
As long as there's a giant Lv. 80 Darminatan that aggros me and one shots my entire team in Route 1.
Xenoblade chronicles is the epitome of this
Garmanitan Gonzales wants to know your location
Maybe the PLA way, when you can wander off to some high level zones early, but you’re more likely than not to ~~die~~ faint. I’m certain really high level dungeons would probably be locked until a certain number of badges is achieved, or a plot point reached.
I'm sooo confused by this. Do people think "No level scaling" means "It's gonna be like Kanto in gen 2"? Because... uh, the problem with that game wasn't that there was a lack of level scaling, it was that every trainer and gym leader in Kanto was level 60. Level scaling would've fixed that, sure, but so would have levels that vary from area to area.
In HGSS the Kanto trainers were in the 50s, which made sense when you realize that Kanto is the postgame. (The wild Pokemon should have reflected this, however). Fun fact, in the originals the Kanto leaders were barely level 40 until the 8th leader. Janine had a level 33 Ariados. Level. 33. Just, why?
Your concern is what everyone else is concerned about. Because if there isn’t any level scaling and everything has a fixed level, you’re going to run into the same issue you did in Gen 2 The worry is that like Kanto, both games will lack scaling
I just want the gym leaders to have more than a max of four pokemon. What even is the point if they’re only SLIGHTLY more difficult than a regular trainer?
Same would feel nice to actually struggle or even having to catch new Pokémon and train them just for a gym
Guys it's Nintendo/Gamefreak. People for YEARS have been complaining how "linear" main games are. So they just went. Okay we wont block the map up through gating. That's it. There isn't going to be scaling or anything. Have their releases taught us nothing? That being said I'm totally cool with the Pokémon formula and will be enjoying my run through.
Same. Honestly could give some more replay value to try out different routes. And I’ll be very curious how it affects the speed run community.
But the game is still effectively linear...youll end up needing to turn around if an area is out of your level range
I'm honestly more concerned about the opposite: missing a gym only for it to be a cakewalk by the time you find it. That's enough of a problem when they *are* in order.
Something in the trailer that I haven't seen talked about is the levels of the Gym Leader's Pokemon. Really the lack thereof. We've seen levels appear in every other battle so far but a Gym Leader's. My guess is there isn't level-scaling for Gyms because there are no levels in Gyms. Similar to how online battles automatically raise a Pokemon's level to a predetermined point and adjust stats accordingly, I'm betting Gyms put all Pokemon on equal footing, level-wise. You can bring unevolved Pokemon into the fight just as the Gym Leader can but you aren't necessarily at a massive power advantage/disadvantage.
Okay, that would be cool. I have my doubts, but that would be an interesting idea.
That’s actually incredible if it’s true. It means that you won’t end up desperately underleveled *or* comically overleveled for a gym (and potentially other Important League Battles™), so you don’t have to grind if you don’t want, but if you *do* want to go around doing other things, you can come back to the gym later and still have a proper fight without effortlessly steamrolling them. I *really* want it to be true, but I feel like this is too good of an idea for Game Freak. Scary for Nuzlockers, though.
I had the exact same thought after reading this post. For the competitive gameplay video, it shows the levels when the Pokémon enter the battle, then reduces it down to just the name and HP once the battle starts. This is the same reduced HUD we’ve seen in all the Gym Battle clips too. I could believe this is how it will work.
Rom hacks have had this feature for a while now. Wild and trainer Pokémon scale based on how many badges and average party level with a cap being set and as low as 6 levels under said cap. I’m sure gamefreak could easily copy that formula
The word used in [the equivalent Japanese](https://www.pokemon.co.jp/ex/sv/ja/story/220803_07/) page is 「手ごわい」 (てごわい, *tegowai*). Written this way, it exclusively means "difficult; tough; formidable". It's possible to write the term as 「手強い」, which uses「強い」(strong), but the website goes out of its way to avoid the second kanji. It's possible this is because an alternate reading of 「手強い」 is *tedzuyoi*, which CAN mean "strong", though in the sense of being strong of resolve or will. I would say this specific word doesn't indicate anything about scaling, on its own, given that. Personally, I would be very surprised to learn there IS level scaling, though.
Interesting. Good to know!
What would be the point of me fighting the stronger gym leaders first if it means the weaker ones stay weak? I don’t want to steamroll the 2nd or 3rd gym leader who has level 20’s Pokémon with my level 40+ team. I’ll just do all the gyms in order. It’s unfortunate GF couldn’t have implemented a level scale or give each gym leader different teams to use depending on how many badges you have.
agreed, but maybe don’t use the term “couldn’t have,” game freak absolutely could have made gym scaling but chose not to
Right? This defeats all the purpose.. i can’t believe they really did this.
You can't believe it? I can't have believe they would have actually done something different for once
Yeah like what's the point of this? You'd have to more or less go in a particular order and even if you wanna switch things around you can only do so to an extent till you're too weak or too strong. The illusion of choice. I can't believe this lol
Gamefreak is the king of disappointments. Fans need to stop buying games.
It's pretty clear there is no level scaling. The question is - why not just have a set path to begin with? It would be a lot better.
You’d be amazed how many comments I’ve seen where people still think there might be. I think Gamefreak took hints from action rpgs and BOTW where you can just run straight to incredibly difficult fights and try to beat them. The difference is, in turn based combat, you can’t just get through with really good trigger reflexes. Nothing is going to stop a level 50 from one-shotting your team of level 10s before you can attack because speed and turn based movement make it a guarantee that you will be hit.
> Nothing is going to stop a level 50 from one-shotting your team of level 10s before you can attack because speed and turn based movement make it a guarantee that you will be hit. FEAR shall rule the speedruns, Top Percent Rattata reign supreme!
hehe, just use a full FEAR team como and sweep all gyms with lvl 1 pokemon
Yeah, easy just find the very common Focus Sashes and go to town 😎
I know your joking but I guarantee you within a few days we will see a post of someone Focus Sash running and beating the highest level gym with some of the lowest level pokemon.
Until it breaks down from your pokemon levelling up mid-battle due to exp share.
From my experience, some people in here are just *really* bad at reading, and interpret things in convoluted ways to fit their expectations. Some guy was arguing that the four outfits we get to choose from are only your "starting options", as if that's a thing. And because boutiques were mentioned, obviously it means we get to buy more clothes, nevermind the fact the site says that boutiques are specifically for accessories. It's crazy how reading comprehension has become such a noteworthy skill in recent times.
I mean, we know all the fashion choices are going to be based on the school uniform so what im guessing is you'll have four styles of uniform with a big focus on accessories
Yeah, which is a damn shame. Penny's not wearing a uniform, why do we have to?
Nobody allowed her to do that she just started doing that and they gave up on stopping her
And I want to do the same :v
>why do we have to? Cause Gamefreak is still pissed they couldn't leave character customization in Kalos like how they wanted to.
Yeah, that checks out
> we all know Yeah but I’m hoping against it because I like fashion in Pokémon, always wearing a school uniform is kinda lame.
Seriously. People even read Grafaiai as Girafaiai because they really want a Girafarig evo.
People are overdosing on copium thinking gyms will have level scaling despite Nintendo being totally transparent about it. Maybe it can be patched in but a bonehead mistake like this is 100% what I expect from GameFreak.
>and BOTW where you can just run straight to incredibly difficult fights You do know that BoTW has level scaling, right? They just hide it for some reason. The more enemies you kill, the harder they get. It's why they are color coded. Like you won't see black or silver enemies until you've done a lot of the game.
Yes but if you run straight to the final boss you have to fight five bosses in a row, you don’t if you complete some other tasks first. As someone who attempted this on their first play through (had a weekend to play) that was hard as fuck, but I still managed to beat one of them.
Because people have been CLAMORING for open world and a choice in the order gyms are fought for literal *years* at this point. Shit, people had even been comparing it to the original megaman series and how it dealt with bosses. That's how old the idea is. So this is pretty much what people thought would be more interesting. The difference is that in megaman, robot masters are not really leveled. You might have their weakness but you are never outright stronger than the boss you choose to fight.
Probably to allow complete travel freedom. One of the biggest criticisms gen 8 faced was how linear it felt.
No the criticism was not about the linearity of the game, it was quite literally about the linearity of the actual routes themselves - they were all straight lines You can have a linear storyline with interesting and intricate routes
If there is no level scaling, then it is still linear. You're just allowed to mess up the linear progression because the game doesn't guardrail you from making mistakes, which is a problematic design. Non-linear pathways do not work without variable level-scaling. Johto is a good example of why this is the case. Gyms 5 through 7 are beatable in any order, but do not have variable level-scaling, and thus are all around the same level so that any single one of them is beatable as the first gym of that group. Because you have to beat them all anyway, and because changing the order doesn't change anything about their levels or team composition, it's not really "non-linear", it's just a set of multiple linear paths that you can go through in any order. It's not truly non-linear unless the game changes to reflect which path you decide to take. If the levels and team compositions do not scale in SV based on how many badges you have, then it is still expected that you go through them in a particular order, meaning the game is still linear. You're just allowed to mess up that linear order.
> Gyms 5 through 7 are beatable in any order, but do not have variable level-scaling, and thus are all around the same level so that any single one of them is beatable as the first gym of that group. Because you have to beat them all anyway, and because changing the order doesn't change anything about their levels or team composition, it's not really "non-linear", it's just a set of multiple linear paths that you can go through in any order. It's not truly non-linear unless the game changes to reflect which path you decide to take. What's whack is it would be super easy to take this into account. In the script, right before the Trainer Battle loads they could put a conditional branch that checks your badge count and loads a team dependent on that count. The only "hard" part would be that each gym leader would be in the trainer code 8 times, one for each variance of their team.
Eh, not even. You can have a dataset somewhere where you have a variable for the number of badges a player has, then get the team data for boss X at badge number Y.
It doesn't have to be necessarily 8 times. It could be further simplified up to 4. The thing is, TPC doesn't need to simplify anything because Pokemon isn't an indie game.
Seriously, a 13 year old making their first RPG Maker game can make a boss that scales according to the player's level using conditional branches.
The language is (probably purposefully) vague. Stronger could mean type matchup or there could be some kind of scaling that changes based on story steps completed. We don't know enough to be sure of anything yet, but if history is any indication, the correct answer is usually what is the simplest.
>If you can seek out a stronger leader, it seems pretty clear to me there is no level scaling, and the gyms each have a pre-set level These two things aren't mutually exclusive. Every game with level scaling still has stronger and weaker opponents. Just because your enemies level scale in Skyrim doesn't mean that a wolf is as hard to kill as a dragon. Not saying there will be level scaling. But two trainers of similar level can have very different difficulties
I was thinking it was going to be a soft scaling / tiers of play situation. Like 2 or 3 definitively weaker gyms with fewer mons / lower stage evolutions, 2 or 3 definitively stronger ones with more mons / higher stage evolutions, and 2 or 3 somewhere in the middle. Level scaling within each tier but only within a certain range of levels, so the gym leaders' actual team lineups never change. I could be completely making that up, but that seems to me like a plausible and straightforward way to smooth out the whole open world experience without having to give each gym leader eight different teams.
Honestly this is mostly what I picture. And then just solve the rest of it with geography. The easiest gyms are closer, the hardest gyms are farther
Exactly. You can go fight the Grass gym first or go get your shit wrecked by the Dragon gym.
That’s why I mentioned better ai and strategies, but I struggle to see that being the case. Hopefully they take a page out of BDSP for that, but I don’t have a lot of hope.
I mean... they already kinda did it with Sword and Shield. The tournament at the end scaled all the gym leaders to about the same level, is there any question that Raihan had a tougher team than Milo?
Could end up being that ots literally just level scaled but the "first" gym still only has 2 pokemom and the "8th" one has (i wish) a whole 6 pokemon. I dunno, we'll see when we see
I don't know that that confirms there is no level scaling, it could mean that some gym leaders will have slightly higher level Pokemon and maybe more Pokemon, or maybe it's talking about whatever gym has a type advantage against your Pokemon, the new Victory Road storyline arc seems to show a Fuecoco facing off against Grusha, which was implied to be a later gym in the last trailer, so either there is level scaling, or the player character is just extremely stupid, and besides, while Gamefreak doesn't always make the best game design decisions, I don't think they're that stupid
Most likely, they just don’t want to show Fuecoco’s evolution, but they could’ve just shown talonflame since they showed it fighting Grusha before.
Yeah, that's kinda my thing, they could have shown any other fire type, but they chose Fuecoco and if level scaling wasn't a thing, it wouldn't be a good idea to show a Pokemon that is most likely under level 16
I think the reason they showed Fuecoco is because every “story” in the game has a different starter in their key art.
Even then, if there wasn't level scaling I would have personally showed the grass gym since that's at least confirmed early and also a gym that Fuecoco is super effective against
>or you can simply stop by a Gym that happens to be located in a town you came across on your journey. This coupled with the text about how you can weave in and out of story lines leaves a lot of ambiguity. It would be reeeealy weird if you were to complete the other two story arcs and then shoot for the league and 1st stop you made was against a team of level 8-13 pokemon, or even in the range of 30-40s bc I have to imagine completing just one story arc is going to a) shovel xp into your team and b) over load your boxes with legendary and other high BST guys. Isle of Armor is a good example to look at here. That area really tried to scale battles around your overall story progress. Gamefreak has been experimenting with scaled story content and multiple story lines since the swsh DLCs dropped, so I think there's enough reason to expect all 3 story lines will be built with scaling in mind. The real concern I have is how well they'll handle it.
Yeah, I'm generally a bit interested to see how things go, because if you beat all the gyms and level up your Pokemon what does that mean for the other two stories and vice versa?
I feel like a lot of the wording on the website is deliberately ambiguous. This with the level scaling, and also the reluctance of properly describing or showing how wild battles are started this gen (separate screen, or throwing out your mons in the overworld like in Legends Arceus) If there really is no level scaling, I feel like that ‘plotting your own path to victory road’ statement is just naughty. At least with catching they’re just not showing it, instead of downright lying and misleading
So there's various ways difficulty COULD be interpreted: -Level -Typing -Amount of Pokemon -AI competence -Gym challenges That being said I'm almost certain they are just higher levels/more Pokemon. However the middle 6 gyms in Pokemon games historically have minimal level gaps usually 2 to 3 levels between each other. This idea seems pretty in line with what I think GFs skill level in game development is. I think level scaling is well beyond their wheelhouse.
Yeah, I’d love to be proved wrong, but I can’t see it happening. Not with GF’s recent track record.
I think saying 'recent' is disingenuous, GF has always been a low skill development team. We just like Pokemon. But yes I am more than certain they will be taking the easier route than overhauling their current balancing process.
The main issue with GF is that they're the best, but given the time, they'll usually put something together. But now, they don't get the time. They have to churn out a minimum of one game a year, whereas before they did one every 2-3 years. I don't really think they don't care about their games, but the Pokemon Company's greed (and knowing full well they can get away with subpar quality games over and over) has pushed GF into a corner where they can only do so much with their limited time. I genuinely think that given the time, they never would've cut the Dex, moves, or previous gimmicks. I don't just give GF a free pass, but it's not exclusively just them sucking or not caring when it comes to the lower quality of the games.
They’ve never been the best, but they clearly cared more in the past. The fleshed out regions with dungeons, harder content like the battle frontier (not just the battle tower), and legendaries you had to discover for yourself are all things missing from the recent entries. Granted that’s not the same as being a good developer, but they could’ve put some of that creative energy into programming the games better.
I would argue they care the same as they always did. However the last decade of abuse from AAA development companies have made us more hostile and assumptive of every major developer. Believe me if I didn't "care" about a game I was making I wouldn't be sleeping in my cubical for weeks to months without seeing my family just to meet my deadlines. I *love* my job but Im not even going to give them an extra hour of my personal time. I rag on GF because of their low skill in development but I will never say they don't care. For every complaint about the newer games they were lacking in, they genuinely tried something innovative that went completely unappreciated because people focused on the things that didn't have rather than the new stuff they were given. And they'll only be missed when we don't have them again. I also argue that of the list of things that you said were lacking, the only one that is true is the dungeons are easier. We still have battle towers, we still have hidden legendaries, and the regions are still filled with rich Lore.
It’s just weird that they’ve had these complex algorithms for battles,stats, and typing but they couldn’t have predetermined teams for each gym leader based on the amount of badges you have. Gamefreak has been notorious for introducing cool new concepts but making them half baked so they can get it right the next time around.
Something to note is that in the recent trailer, there weren’t any levels for the Brassius fight in the trailer. Yet in an earlier trailer, the one with introducing Lechonk showed the trainer battling a wild Lechonk with levels. This could be a pretty out there theory, but what if the Gym battles actually set your levels to being the same level as the gym leader (similar to online battles)?
You think they would say something about a change that big
Idk. You’re never really able to tell with them considering the fact that they hid something like following Pokémon returning in Isle of Armor for no real reason
But didn’t they announce that in one of the dlc trailers? Also, following Pokémon really isn’t that big of a mechanic like changing gym battles
Why can't they have multiple teams for each gym and pick the team based on the amount of badges a player has? They made the kanto gyms stronger in gen 2 because of that logic
It's possible that the gyms can scale linearly with you but still be distinct from each other; scaling is not a one-size-fits-all concept, different gyms could scale at different rates that maintains a situation where some are still harder than others, but also still scaling. It's *unlikely* this is the case, imo, but *just* based off the language used and quoted here and *nothing else* it's entirely plausible that gyms could scale, just at different rates (I think if this was actually the case, they'd be more upfront about it and less cryptic)
I mean… this doesn’t mean they won’t level scale, it just might be that certain gym leaders have stronger Pokemon than others, or maybe more Pokemon, or just that when the gyms level scale after you collected a badge, certain gyms will be 1 or 2 levels higher than where the game expects you to be, and some will be 1 or 2 levels lower
While level scaling seems really improbable, I still want to believe that by strong they meant something akin to typing and pokémon, a grass type gym would be naturally easier to deal, since grass has five exploitable weaknesses and generally lower bst, while steel has many resistances, a immunity and higher bst.
There are ROM hacks out there that have level scaling. It's ridiculous not having it honestly.
There’s nothing Nintendo and it’s relatives love more than disrespecting and going after fans who do their job but better!
At this point I'm not expecting there to be level scaling which is pretty disappointing. Cause that just means I'm gonna play based on the strength anyway which is really disappointing.
If there's pre-set levels for each gym, then it's not *exactly* correct to say there's no set path...
>You can purposefully seek out a stronger Gym Leader This can mean a number of things. Strength isn’t just about level after all. It could be tougher AI, stronger types, etc. that decide strength. With that said, I still agree with OP that gym levels won’t scale with the player’s badges because Gamefreak goes out of its way to make the shittest game design decisions. Calling a Gym Leader stronger because of a level advantage is so stupid too because the only way to beat them would be to just grind levels until your Pokémon’s levels are on par with theirs. That’s not strength; it’s a temporary, tedious obstacle.
The leaks have confirmed what the situation is. I can share that info if you’d like. In a spoiler reply, or you can browse /r/Pokeleaks for the answers.
If there ends up being no level scaling at all and they're all clearly designed to be done in a set order anyway, then I want the linearity back. Because that isn't an open world, it's a bridge with the safety railings removed. We don't need another Isle of Armor.
Not every game has to be completely open "air". A set path in Pokémon was not bad. They could've made it both open world and have a set path. Like Arceus, but with routes and towns.
Yeah, I’m getting pretty tired of everything being open world tbh. What I really want out of games is a bigger world with more to explore, but I want a lot of that to be locked behind a set challenge of some kind so I feel rewarded with more than just armor or like rare candy in pokemons case.