Ken Sugimori spoke about ideas that could improve the next generation of Pokemon games, which surprisingly, after the advancements Pokemon X and Y made, included simplifying the games. Pokemon has always been a game that anyone of any coherent age could pick up and play and feel a connection with, so do we need simplification? Or can one argue that Red Blue and Yellow were the best of all generations and any efforts to go back to those roots would make greatness?
That can be left up for debate, but regardless of whether they go for simplification or advancement in the next Pokemon game, some of these ideas should be worked in.
1. Eliminate or Fix EV/IV Training
EV are these stat leveling up points earned through battling different types of Pokemon. After you have leveled up all the way to 100, your stats are not necessarily done increasing. Some “hardcore” players take this to extreme levels and utilize this to their battling advantage. It is not enough to raise your Pokemon, beat the League and even catch them all. A segment of the fan base breeds the Pokemon for their exact nature desire and then fine tune selectively EV train them to get their ideal stats. Time consuming? Yes. Rewarding? Maybe for the one that spent the time doing so…
The problem with this is, these stats are never even clearly stated in the actual game’s story and are not reflected anywhere in the stats screen. It is near impossible to accurately track in normal game progress, how your EV training is going or what is even happening as the EV training progresses. The concept of raising a Pokemon a specific way is not a bad thing, but giving casual trainers no real way of understanding or seeing their progress just creates an unfair advantage and quite honestly makes online battling worthless. At least give the option to turn the training off at the beginning of the game and segregate the online battles by those that di take advantage of the system and those that did not. Can always let the players that opted out to opt in later in the game, but not the other way around.
2. Multiplayer
The series was built on connectivity, but they have done it all in terms of a social experience expect for having a shared story. Why not Four Swords style it up for the story and have you be able to go out on your adventure with a friend? The Pokemon anime had Ash, Brock and Misty working together as a team, even lending each other Pokemon at times, but yet the games have isolated gamers into going solo.
Players have been calling for a sandbox style open world game for the longest time too. Could always use this as a stepping stone to something greater.
3. New Plot
This kid leaving his mother because some Professor told him so story is getting old. Then insert some evil organization and 8 badges and you have a Pokemon game. Oh yeah… don’t forget fighting some Elite League. That is all they can do for a game? The formula has been old for a while, with Black and White at least making an effort to add personality to Team Plasma that we hadn’t seen since the days of Team Rocket. Team Flare was just a rehash of old, boring ideas… with flare. Yeah…
Fans have thousands of alternative plot concepts, use one, two.. of them and get something new going. Or, go for that open world style play where multiple approaches can be taken.
4. Make the Attack Power Make Sense
You can always calculate the amount of damage a attack would do… with a calculator, but that seems excessive. We have Base Power, check. Type advantage, sure. Attack stats, Ummm… Defense Stats, double ummm… So? Just how much damage will your attack do each turn? Who knows. This is something that could be more clearly explained and simplified.
5. Stop Making Battling So Passive
In the anime you see Pokemon battles consist of the opposing Pokemon running, jumping, flying and going all over the combat stage to get the advantage. Attacks are being dodged. Unique physical features about individual species are being utilized, and combat look exciting. In the games, you have no control over whether an attack hits, where it hits the opposing Pokemon, dodging attacks… nothing. Paper Mario at least lets you do a series of timed button commands to help reduce damage of attacks or even dodge some attacks, and the same with powering up some attacks.
Why can’t some kind of actual attack and defense mechanisms be worked into the games to make the player more than an idle viewer after one of four moves has been selected?
There we have it. What improvements do you have for the next Pokemon generation?
