>>58549350
by not having the difficulty plateau after the early game via still giving gyms few pokemon that aren't very good in the first place, for starters

I dunno, it's age-appropriate. A better question you have to ask yourself is why a game that expected to offer a level of challenge to please 20-something adult men would dress itself in such an entirely childish property?

>>58549350
Not having insanely shitty trainer AI, for one.

>>58549373
Honestly, half of these teams aren't even terrible(except the gimmick teams, like Tierno's dancing team.) The problem is just that the trainer AI is arguably worse than the wild Pokemon AI, despite both being effectively RNG.

>>58549350
pokemon should always be easy

>>58549350
i wouldn't, it's a kids game

>>58549384
the code has competent ai
it's just that every game keeps them at low level
For singles the highest value is 7, for doubles it's 15

yawnfag thread

>>58549350
Difficulty options, and bring back the battle tower for gods sake

>>58549407
>Difficulty options
good idea, we can start by bringing back the ability to disable the exp. share

>>58549350
I think that the campaign being easy is fine. It's meant for kids after all.
I think the difficulty should be reserved for optional postgame content. Like, for example. maybe a special area where you can battle trainers with competitive teams including held items, and levels scaled to match yours.
Frankly, I'm surprised Gamefreak has never thought of this.

>>58549564
>a special area where you can battle trainers with competitive teams including held items, and levels scaled to match yours
Isn't this just the Battle Tower?

Three difficulty options
- Normal
- Hard
- Champion
Normal would have mandatory exp share, enemies have lower levels, easier AI and weaker Pokémon. No held items outside of gimmicks that require items (Mega Evo, Z-moves etc). Battles locked to Switch mode and stronger Pokémon have high.
Hard would give trainers stronger Pokémon, decent AI and the options to turn off Exp. Share and Switch mode (default set to on). Important battles will always have a held item on their ace Pokémon, while late game trainers have a few items throughout out the team
Champion would have Exp. Share defaulted to off, and Set mode would be the default. Trainer AI intelligence grows at a much faster rate. More held items, EVs, IVs and strategies. More double, triple and rotation battles. Trainers have better teams. Example: Youngster Joey has a Level 4 Rattata in Normal. Hard mode it's Level 6. Champion it has perfect IVs and he also has a Level 6 Sentret.

Man, Moxie is busted. Like, it's Rollout but consistent, and Rollout is so good that people think Whitney is a menace. It doesn't help that even without that Skyla isn't great, at least she's not Brycen.

>>58549384
Yeah, this is the big issue.
Even difficulty rom hacks run into this problem. They give enemy trainers stronger teams, but the AI is so dumb that you can flowchart your way to victory.

>>58549580
After you beat the game you unlock a form of NG+. It's a second save file where you can transfer some of your stronger Pokémon over (they get level scaled and devolved). In this mode, you gain multiple settings that can make the game easier or harder.
Settings include
1. Money multiplier: You can controll the amount of money won after every battle and how much you get when selling items. You can increase or decrease it.
2. Exp. Multiplier: same as money except it's experience gained through battle and exp candies.
3. Trainer AI: You can give all trainers high level AI, or retarded AI
4. Trainer teams: Choosing how strong the trainer teams are, and how quickly they improve. Can be paired with the AI for funny scenarios

What if you get inferior rewards if you performed poorly? Like a less shiny gym badge if you used items or sent out more pokemon than the gym leader

>>58549350
Difficulty options. Modifiers like EXP Share, Set Mode, etc. should all be optional and available for every difficulty.
>easy for game journalists paid by Nintendo, LGPE level
>normal for the target demographic, Gen 4 - 5 level
>hard for veterans wanting a challenge going through the campaign, Stadium series level
>>58549373
TPBP
>>58549402
Are those levels for the highest they've set in the games or the highest the ai can possibly go?

>>58549350
Not giving every pokemon every possible type coverage. My god, 4th gen really fucked things up that way.

>>58549706
Deal, but there's a middle ground. Every pokemon should get at least one decent STAB move (80 bp or higher) from their higher attacking stat by levelup.

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>>58549350
A branching series. Think the reverse situation of monster hunter and monster hunter stories. The "main" series stays as is for retarded gibbering babies that lick paint chips off of their mcDonalds toys. The new series is intended for the very large older audience and has actual RPG gameplay and proper bosses, with Legendary fights as postgame superbosses.

>>58549350
Start with healing the player's team after every encounter, balance opposing trainers' teams around that

>>58549350
you get castrated irl if your pokemon faints

if the anime did one thing right (at least early on, I stopped watching after Johto), it was making the gyms seem like a challenge because they had rules. I think if you had things like leaders forcing a 3v3 battle so you can't rely on 3 more bodies to fodder than they can, or the trials in gen 7 where you can leave, but you have to start over if you do. Access to all the tools on your belt and all the healing for free at your fingertips is really what makes the games too easy

>>58550319
Also maybe prevent overleveling by making it so you can't gain EXP past a certain level threshold above the fainting pokemon. What more can my level 20 rowlet really gain from beating up level 2 rookidees or whatever

>>58550338
I mean, the EXP rewards are already reduced to practically 0 once you get to around 10 levels above who you're fighting. I get you're exaggerating it to comedic effect, but you'd genuinely struggle to level up to begin at that point.

>>58549970
That's basically the Legends series

>>58549350
It doesn’t need fixing btw

>>58549350
Give us propper "have you played Pokemon before". Question.
And on hard:
Give items to opponents.
Keep the teams but make them use more strategy
Champion has all perfect iv and ev

>>58550319
This.

>>58549350
EXP. share is not the problem
But level caps are the solution
EXP. share allows you to have an active team of 6 pokemon without fear of them being underleveled, but with the downside of gross overleveling.
If the game has level caps based on gym badges (let's say your pokemon can't go above lvl 14 until you've beated Brock and his lvl 14 Onix) then the downside of overleveling is basically eliminated. You could even go a step further and have the level cap be 2 levels below the gym leader, or have that be bound to a hard mode setting.
Also, limit the amount of pokemon you can bring to a gym fight. If a gym leader has 2 pokemon, you shouldn't be able to bring more than 2 yourself.

>>58549350
>enemy miss
>you crit
you didn't win that fight

>>58549580
exp share is a 1999 bitching meme that has never impacted the game difficulty in any way. stop readin chat gpt fantasy chats and play real games for once, tertiary piece of shit.

You inherently cannot without removing a significant amount of player freedom.
Pokemon's story difficultly balance settles on a razor-thin edge. You overtorque the encounters in terms of level or team quantity and/or quality, and you either make the game too hard or too tedious. Step off the gas, and the game is too easy. Pokemon is specifically balanced so that a player of middling skill and basic awareness of battle mechanics can barely squeak by on the bare minimum in required experience sources to progress the story.
If YOU find the game too easy, it's because you: Know optimal teambuilding, have an in-depth knowledge of battle mechanics and pokemon stats and type matchups, allow yourself to overlevel, and/or know the game in advance. If you outspeed and OHKO everything, it's because YOU put together a team that can pull it off.
You can't be a decades-long franchise veteran and expect the game to present to you the same challenge it did when you were first finding your feet. If you truly need to challenge yourself, there are a multitude of challenge hacks out there to try. Or if you desire reactive battles that require you to think, you can test yourself against actual human opponents in the competitive scene.

every single post outside >>58551738 gets completely shat on by overleveling or trading. nice difficulty

>>58551803
>You can't be a decades-long franchise veteran and expect the game to present to you the same challenge it did when you were first finding your feet.
trvke for any game really but this will not go over well with /vp/
everything else, mainly teambuilding, is also spot on, like with how many options for mons you can create a team with there are everyone is going to struggle with different battles depending on how their unique teams stack up vs various battles, it's not like everyone goes into battles with the exact same tools

>>58549350
Give trainers more Pokemon. That’s it.
Why does the SIXTH gym leader only have three mons?

>>58549350
Id start with ending the mono-type trainer gimmick. ZA did a really good job at introducing obviously type themed trainers but not having the ENTIRE team be the same type. The Ace should be of the type but every other Pokémon around the ace should support the type and follow the general vibe of the trainer.

Overall I actually do like the direction of ZA. I think adding cooldowns to when you can switch out for another Pokémon and when you can use another item is perfect to stop cheese item and switch spamming.
Real time battling is the way forward. Turn based is interesting in the competitive scene but in the solo playing experience it no longer is enjoyable

>>58549401
Kids have played Final Fantasy, pokemon hs little excuse, a fetus would find to easy.

>It's for children!!!
Aren't most video games? I feel like I got smoked in some old ass JRPGs when I was a babby but you figure things out. Or you look online, now days.

But having gyms be:
>Mandatory double battles (the one in Emerald is goated)
>Using 6 pokemon
>Prepared for for type advantage
>Don't sit there and fucking Growl at you
>More gimmicks like confusion or even Miltank rollout or something you have to PREPARE for
>Equal level to trainer's best pokemon (or use level caps for each gym)
would be a nice start

>>58552413
Mandatory double battles sounds unfun. They should instead just make single battle format more difficult. Singles is just more iconic and I don’t want that to go away

Disobedience should be a real mechanic, I your Pokémon reach certain level, let's say 2 levels above the next gym leader's ace Pokémon, it doesn't obey you anymore, forfeiting fights, automatically switching to a random team member who will receive a free hit, etc.

>>58549350
Like it or not ZA takes a lot of steps to fix this sort of thing. Speed not being the dominant stat and bulk being valuable regardless of what Pokemon you're using is a great shakeup. And that's not even getting into the nuances of the new combat system. Positioning, move behavior, cooldown management. It really makes you realize just how simple the turn-based combat is, for better or worse.

>>58552693
>It really makes you realize just how simple the turn-based combat is, for better or worse.
But if you look at competitive, you realize it's not simple at all. The only problem is that the meta (or not even meta, core mechanics) are unexciting, with moves like protect being so integral. But singles in the mainline games is basically about having a sweeper. And in most games, that's your starter. You can just Infernape CC/BB half the game - the whole game if you're over-levelled. Other turn-based games don't seem to encounter this problem, but they're not usually 1v1 environments (most often 4vx).

>>58549350
Make it easier. Remove the ability for enemy trainers to use items.

>>58552716
>Other turn-based games don't seem to encounter this problem
I mean, grinding/overleveling is a universal solution to any JRPG, it's just easier to do in Pokemon than most others because of the nature of the turn-based combat. A combination of developing disobedience as a mechanic (have all Pokemon disobey you if you level them too quickly) and adaptive/dynamic difficulty (if the player hasn't lost in a while, give trainers higher level Pokemon or alter their teams/movesets to be effective against the player's team) would solve this, but that's A) a lot of effort for mechanics that few people would appreciate and B) just not something most people who play these games want or care about. The amount of people who could be buying these games but aren't because they're too easy is a very, very small minority. It just doesn't make sense to focus on that instead of improving the experience in ways most people will care about.

>>58552787
>have all Pokemon disobey you if you level them too quickly
Is this not the case anymore? It wasn't just traded Pokemon that did this in the past, it was just that traded Pokemon leveled up faster.

>>58549350
Make it so that every trainer has 75+ lvl pokemon after the 8th gym

>>58549970
That could have been Colosseum or Stadium

>>58549350
Just include battle facilities and fix the AI so it can’t be abused by entrainment traunt gimmicks.

>>58549350
Unironically take notes from Johto.
>have to work for the strong mons
>have to use status moves and buffs instead of autistically grinding and brute forcing the game

>>58553368
>Is this not the case anymore?
In ZA as long as the Pokemon is CAUGHT below a certain level it'll always obey you. Pretty sure it was the same in SV. This was changed in response to the game being open world so you couldn't just go abuse RNG and catch something stupidly overpowered and steamroll the entire game with it, but it doesn't address overleveling at all.

>>58549350
>Scaling
>Better AI
>Limited healing in gym battles.
There, i unretardered your pokemon game

Make leveling against wild pokemon VERY slow.
Go in the opposite direction with the handfuls of xp candies they shovel towards you.

>>58552413
All of this would be nice.

>>58552681
this but include a little text box saying careful! X might become stronger than you stop listening. Once the cap is reached. Just so the little tards don't panic.

>>58552681
Honestly based idea

>>58549350
you can make this argument on any Pokemon game. Just last week I went through the entirety of Crystal with just Cyndaquil.

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>>58552681
Let's grade it a little. It's a 33% chance of listening if you're one gym leader behind, 10% if it's two, and 0% if it's three+.
Also, anything above the champion's should be applicable, which means that after beating the champion you don't have to deal with the overleveling anymore.

It won't fix everything though. The AI needs to become adaptable for edge cases, like Zoroark. The AI ABSOLUTELY needs to become smarter. See the webm I've attached. Took it from the (absolutely not now deleted like I originally thought because I fucked up the URL from the archive) thread >>58553845.

>>58553716
Oh, I see. That's quite silly.

On a side note, is it just me misremembering, or did generation 5 mention the poison status doing damage in the overworld, even though it stopped doing in it in that generation?

>>58553918
I mean yeah, but is there anything wrong with the discussion of how to improve the game?

>>58552681
this will be REALLY annoying unless a way to lower a mon's level on demand is implemented
or just implement progression-based hard level caps on what your mons can reach without rare candies like most fangames with level caps do so there's still a level cap without a risk of accidentally bricking your mons' usability

>>58554032
>this would be really annoying
How often do you get to level your Pokemon beyond the gym leader's? How difficult is it?

>>58554048
just by playing the game normally (aka not swapping mons in and out of the party every single time I come across a PC)

>>58554081
>playing the game normally
That... doesn't tell me fucking jack shit about it. I have only ever overleveled once in my definition of "normal play" and that was in Kalos, shortly before gym 3. I train teams of 6 when possible though, and try to spread my EXP evenly.

Anyways, I am heavily against hard caps, but I'm all for soft caps where it quickly reduces your EXP gain until you have to be very determined to grind for several hours on end to actually reach the level limit of obedience.

HMs were unironically a great way to handicap the player from giving all their mons 4 80+ bp moves.
Bring back HMs

>>58549350
Every gym past 2, and team leader, rival battle, ect should have 6 pokemon. No excuses. Even at 2 is an admission your wild pokemon availability is so dogshit, that you can't expect the player to have a balanced team by then, and needs to be able to win by numbers (though you CAN still use this productively by giving them a very high stat pokemon the player couldn't have yet).
More custom ai packages for trainers. Most trainers run on, more or less, the same AI package they have since Gen 3, that being mostly rng, with a vague awareness of going for kills. There is zero excuse for a gym leader, team leader, or other significant fight to not have a custom package, built with their team in mind.
With the above in mind, most significant opponents should be given SOME way of dealing with the most common player cheese. Most teams need some form of priority, some form of defensive choke to survive 1 hit, always, a way to phase, and a way to set up. These things are useless without the ai to use them appropriately.

This should be enough for most purposes. More than this, is reserved for actually challenging hacks and such. This is the bare minimum required to make the games not complete snoozefests, that you actually need to prepare for.
If you're shit, you can still overlevel, and the player always has the advantage of tailoring a team for what's in front of them. This is just enough to not be able to coast through the game on a starter and 5 random shitmons, 2 of which only see use to revive the starter.

>>58554177
HMs are good with multiple use TMs.
HMs are not good with single use.

>>58554225
Agreed

>>58554048
Depends on the game.
Some, like gen 6, it's literally impossible to not unless you regularly box your active team. Or like gen 4, where you will almost assuredly overlevel either Maylene or Wake, or 2 where you will almost assuredly overlevel Pryce, or Chuck & Jasmine.
Some like gen 3, it's actually pretty hard, unless you are only using your starter.
The better solution is really just what gen 5 already did, with exp banding. Legit, gen 5 exp, with gen 6 exp share is the most reasonable way to play these games, and any romhack worth its salt understands this. Makes it hard to overlevel, even if you keep using the same pokemon, while also making it easy to rotate new pokemon into your party, and not having to go back to the level 12 area to train Scrimblo for the upcoming electric gym. Pokemon Clover, for all its other flaws, has EASILY the best exp system out of any romhack I have ever played, because it just makes the gen 5 exp banding harder. An underlevelled new pokemon can be caught up in like 5 battles, getting even a single level over the cap takes like 20, 30 minutes of focused grinding, but is technically doable. Also makes rare candies an actually valuable resource for getting a temporary power boost over the current softcap, rather than just piling up.
Disobedience capping is what Pokémon Reborn's solution was. You do NOT want to be Pokémon Reborn.

>>58553748
Horrible idea, this leads to juggernauting with your starter even more, because training replacements is even harder.

>>58549670
It has been 20 years since I opened my badge case to look at my badges.
Give me some pocket lint with pubes in it, I don't give a shit

>>58554097
Agree
Hard caps kinda reek of desperation whenever I encounter them in a romhack. Probably the only game that's ever implemented them well is fukkin, whatsit, Mariomon, because they completely give up the facade and just have a button you press to level everyone to the next cap, which allows them to do more with the premise. Not as much as they could have, they really should have made everything for the next split at that cap, but whatever.
Soft caps effectively accomplish the same thing anyways, but feel more organic.

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>>58549350
/vp/ isn't going to like this, but the only way to make a Pokemon game difficult is through DP's game design, a highly restricted dex outright lacking a few types. USUM is tough by Pokemon standards, but even that game slowly comes apart due to all the options at your disposal. Now imagine USUM but there's only 1 Dark type or 2 Water types. Romhacks don't get this either with their gigantic dexes. In DP, you were in for a tough time against any Bronzong if you didn't take Chimchar, Lucian is stronger than Cynthia, I am being serious.

>>58554440
Really, it's just the starter types that should be limited for this (maybe Ghost, Steel, Dragon, and Fairy, too).
This makes starter choice more significant, and these are pretty important types to have holes.

Gen 1did it kinda retarded, but has a good example for Brock. Brock is hard mostly because of the lack of good options to really deal with him. If you didn't take Bulbasaur or Squirtle, Butterfree (or one of the Nidorans in Yellow iirc) is literally your only access to something that Brock doesn't super resist. Personally I think Butterfree makes it TOO free, but, more pokemon availability problems like this would actually be really good.

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>>58554524
>Personally I think Butterfree makes it TOO free
I think if a player goes through the effort of training up a Caterpie or, god forbid, a Metapod that only knows Harden, they deserve an easy win.
A lot of attempts at a harder difficulty miss this idea. There's more to the game than just battling, and players should be rewarded for exploring and preparing rather than gunning straight for the next gym leader. Battles should be hard for the lazy but only a mild challenge for the engaged. Instead most romhacks make battles impossible for the lazy and still ball-bustingly difficult for people who do everything they can to prepare.

>>58554628
I will say, the flip side is the Reborn problem, where difficulty is in large part due to only having shitmons.
Getting unexpected use out of shitmons is one thing, but ONLY shitmons just isn't fun anymore, and leads to bizarre situations where a team with 4 Persian on it is probably ideal.

The Exp Share shouldn't give EVs to everyone, specially when NPCs doesn't have them

>How would you fix Pokemon's difficulty?
Bigger pool of moves for both the player and the NPCs, say, 10 instead of 4.
Lower the amount of EXP for the non-participating members of the team.
The camping mechanic, sorta like in Sw/Sh, but better.
The issues mechanic, like in Mount&Blade. Like, one of your Pokemon sees a rogue female of his kind and wants to temporary leave to get some ooga-booga, and you decide to let him or not. That directly influences the friendship parameter.
Also, visible friendship parameter.

>>58554874
making strong pokemon rare and rare pokemon strong is an easy way to tip the scales towards players who go balls deep. it's a pretty banal suggestion honestly. this sort of shit is basic game design but pokemon fucks it up so frequently that the series has metastasized into its own genre where all sense of purposeful availability goes out the window. and i don't mean romhacks, i mean official games are fumbling this idea.

>>58554874
>Reborn
>where difficulty is in large part due to only having shitmons.
that's not really an applicable example of what you described
maybe for the first 2-3 badges but after that you'll have no shortage of decent or even good mons, and the difficulty curve in reborn really only starts catching up in the last third or so
just putting actual thought into teambuilding will make up for relatively limited options early on so you won't have to rely on pure brute force. as long as you teambuild for a purpose (both with mon selection and their sets) and make sure to cover obvious weaknesses you should be fine
though I should probably point out that I tend to go out of my way for mons that I like and know are going to be useful, of which the venn diagram is almost a single circle, so I may just be proving >>58554628's point and that Reborn only saddles you with mostly shitmons if you only go from main quest location to main quest location instead of looking for new mons
the only true shitmons in a campaign are the ones that aren't useful for anything. like anything else in a video game, the context something is in matters much more than anything else.
it's only when you get to the point in your second sentence where things get unreasonable; though I guess in the end it's generally just a matter of whether or not a given hack gives you sufficient options to complete its story without cheesing, and if you somehow end up in a situation where you have to stack duplicate shitmons just to get through the main questline then that's probably a red flag about the hack itself

>>58549350
Just bring back the little strategies they used to have. It doesn't need to be hard, just make you think.

>>58554628
Tactical/strategy during battle > le grinding and exploration
Good strategy games don't require the latter to be played at high level. Good romhacks don't require grinding to succeed either

>>58556153
pokemon isn't a strategy game, it's a role-playing game

>>58556170
Good roleplaying games interestingly share the trait of not requiring grinding.
Exploration has more emphasis though.


This entire thread feels like a Minecraft developers situation.

An actual AI that isn't completely stupid.
Actually threatening moves not just giving the 4th or 5th gym leader Rock Smash.
Full movesets, none of this 2-3 moves on a mon.
Using the Weathers/Terrains
Actual Coverage and Mons to counter a types biggest weakness, like a Fire Gym leader with Sun+Solar Beam/Energy Ball or an Ice Gym that uses Permanent Snow+Aurora Veil with Water and Ground types
Double Battles
More then 4 average mons by endgame

>SV introduces Tera
>Oh, gym leaders will probably try to counter you with that! That'll be interes-
>they Tera into their own type
Hope had faded a long time ago.

>>58549589
You cant not flow chart your way to victory. Its a turn based game with a very straightforward battle system.

It doesn't need to be hard, it needs to be fun, and constantly basing challenges around one specific type that you can just spam the same move on over and over is not fun
>But kids need to learn the type matchups
That hasn't mattered since gen 7 where it just tells you what button to push

>>58549350
Change the level up scheme or damage formula around to no longer have Level differences impact damage so badly.

For example a pokemon that is L30 has stats about 45% higher than a L20 mon. But the reality is that they have a 45% higher HP and Def/SpD meaning its closer to a x2.1 increase in bulk and the 45% higher Atk/SpA AND Level means a x2.1 increase in damage output.
A change would need to make this less drastic to discourage one-manning the main game.

Then just do basic shit like give more trainers full teams and make sure the EXP curve does not you get ahead of opposing trainer levels.
Pokemon could really use some difficulty options, BW2 were the only games to have them but they were locked away in the most retarded way possible

hilda's eggs and uterine lining

>>58549588
I swept pretty much everything in whichever X/Y game I played with a Krookodile with Power Up Punch and Moxie

>>58549373
This is the biggest part.

Every single one of Skyla's mons in this webm could've oneshot the Scraggy and none of them ever used a damaging move.

>>58549580
I like the idea of difficulty options, but I'd rather just have all of these be in the options menu so I can mix and match and change them dynamically. Like, once I beat the game I just want to set it to max easy for when I'm completing the Pokedex, but playing the game I'd want it hard. Maybe I want to turn on the exp share when playing on hard mode to level up a newly caught Pokemon, but keep it off after. Obviously any options are better than none, but there's no reason to group them when they can all be separate.

>>58557358
Could do what Rimworld does, which is group the settings into concrete difficulty groupings, but then you can deviate from them.

>>58549350
Reverse Set Mode.
You must switch your Pokemon after your opponent's Pokemon faints (you don't see what they're sending in).

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>>58550319
I still remember there was one gym leader that was implied to be using different teams based on who the challenger is, but I'm blanking on who it was.

>>58552681
No, fuck that, you'd be forced to entirely stop using your Pokemon if their levels get too high. I'd rather have it be a level cap if you'd want to do that, then any excess EXP you gain above the cap would be banked until you beat the next gym.

>>58549350
Difficulty options would help.
Hell, just the Exp Share itself is a difficulty setting, a HUGE one, so "normal mode" could just be with EXP Share on, and "hard mode" would disable it, and that could be the only change and be an objective improvement.
Anyway, yeah, that's my vote: difficulty settings.
Probably shouldn't be full-competitive, and it'd have to be something lazy because TPC couldn't be assed to care.
TPC simply isn't going to make a mode with a more complex AI, or go through the trouble of making alt teams for every trainer or anything like that, so it needs to be more "general" stuff.

Normal mode would play as normal, no changes.
Hard mode:
>gyms and the E4+champ scale up (if lower) to the level of your highest level Pokemon (includes evolution, and new moves only fill empty slots)
>the evil team scales up (if lower) to the average level of your party
>no EXP Share (maybe an EXP All?)
>wild Pokemon use the trainer AI, so they don't spam String Shot 999 times
>give every trainer a couple healing items and give all gym leaders a revive / full revive
>further decrease EXP from fighting stuff below your level
>items in shops cost more, including Pokeballs
>Set mode mandatory

>>58549350
Add gas stations and helium tanks.

>>58549350
Take cues from USUM, which had absolutely no trouble punishing players for trying to solo the game with a single Pokemon and is still touted as the most challenging mainline game in the entire franchise.

each trainer has a gun with one bullet they can use to instantly kill one of your pokemon

>>58557526
>Hell, just the Exp Share itself is a difficulty setting, a HUGE one, so "normal mode" could just be with EXP Share on, and "hard mode" would disable it, and that could be the only change and be an objective improvement
changing the amount of grinding doesn't affect difficulty, only time taken
stop conflating the two

>>58556766
only time this was used even remotely interestingly was Iono's mismagius with levitate teraing into electric so it'd have no weaknesses
everything else was wasting potential

>>58557949
Outside of people just sticking to one overleveled Pokemon, increasing grinding in Pokemon games via the lack of an EXP Share means they're less likely to want to grind a ton.
For me, it means stopping a few levels early and saying "good enough", then using a team where only one Pokemon's a decent level and I have to improvise actual strategies to minimize losses.

EXP Share being on all the time makes it VERY easy to overlevel your whole party while you're doing other shit.
In my case, I'll dick around SOS farming for something, or I'll be grinding out items via Pickup, or spamming Pay Day in one of the games where money is a limited resource and whoops, now my whole team is 10 levels higher than I should be.

>>58557907
Joke aside, that's basically Z-crystals.

>>58557907
what if the very next generation they got 3 bullets per battle

>>58558001
all that does is discourage using more pokemon than what's already in your party
you know
discouraging the main fucking point of a monster catching RPG

>>58550319
I always force myself to only use the same amount of pokemon as whatever the gym leader uses
its not exactly hard mode but its something

>>58558157
and putting goombas in a mario game discourages me from moving forward

>>58558501
I move forward in mario games because it’s the best strategy to beat the level
I don’t use more than 1 pokemon in any game without exp share because it’s the best strategy if you have more than 50 IQ and understand the basic concept of min/maxing