Lately I've been having a rough time trying to get myself to et back into playing some of my older Pokémon games, and for the longest time I didn't understand why. I think I've found at least part of the answer to that question, but for now, I want to ask you all a question. Have you ever been playing through a Pokémon game and felt like the game was actually getting easier as you went along instead of harder?
Time and time again we hear fans say that they wish the core series Pokémon games were more challenging, or at the very least wish the developers would bring back some of the more challenging postgame content featured in older installments. I've never really been too much of a fan of things like the Battle Frontier in either of its iterations, but I can definitely respect the appeal such features bring for players who correlate challenge in their video games with how fun they can be. That being said, I think it's worth taking a look at why the difficulty progression in Pokémon can sometimes feel a bit... off sometimes, and who knows? Maybe if you're all interested, we can turn this into another cool discussion thread once I think of a proper thread title.
The game design pattern I would like to discuss in this thread is something I like to call the backwards difficulty phenomenon. As the name implies, this is when the difficulty progression of a game evolves in the backwards order of what the player should expect to see. In the case of core series Pokémon games, you (the player) would think that the later parts of the game should get progressively more challenging, as the levels of wild Pokémon and other Trainer's teams start to increase and the amount of Pokémon available to battle in the game also increases with each new area. Sounds like perfectly reasonable logic, right? Well... apparently not if I'm tempted to make an entire thread hoping to ask for other people's opinions on how much of a big fat lie this is.
I'd like to start this thread's (hopeful) discussion off with some pretty simple data science. Let's say you have these four Pikachu in your party:
In this example, let's assume that each your Pikachu are a level that is a multiple of 10. You lowest leveled Pikachu is Lv. 10, followed by one that's Lv. 20, then one that's Lv. 30, and finally your highest leveled Pikachu is Lv. 40. Let's also assume for the purpose of RNG that all of your Pikachu have no EVs and have 31 IVs in all six of their stat categories. Numerically, since the level disparity between each of your Pikachu is set at 10 for each new Pikachu added to this test, you would expect the gap in strength between each newly added Pikachu to be the same, right? Or at least close to it? Well, due to how Pokemon's stats work in relation to their level, most people who have played a Pokémon game can tell you why this is isn't the case. Since Pokémon gain a finite integer of points in each of their stat categories when they level up, the amount of which depends mostly on the Pokémon's base stat values, the disparity in strength between lower leveled Pokémon ends up being much greater than the disparity in strength between higher levelled Pokémon.
The stats of your four Pikachu should be as follows if you use the same EV and IV values I listed at the beginning of the previous section. For this list, the stat numbers are written in the order of: HP, Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, Speed.
Level 10 Pika: 30, 19, 16, 18, 18, 26
Level 20 Pika: 50, 33, 27, 31, 31, 47
Level 30 Pika: 70, 47, 38, 44, 44, 68
Level 40 Pika: 90, 61, 49, 57, 57, 89
"But wait", you ask. "Isn't this what Experience Points are for? To make it so it takes longer to level up later in the game?" Well, yeah... except for the part where the amount of experience points granted by stronger Pokémon later in the game didn't also scale with the Pokémon's level as well as its base experience yield, which can be as high as 255 in most games. At least for me, what this does is re-distribute the amount of time and effort needed to train up your Pokémon as the game progresses. In the early sections of the game, when your Pokémon have lower levels, stats, and weaker moves, the slower pace of the beginning of the game is compensated for by the lower amount of Exp. Points needed to level up your party members. Later in the game, this philosophy starts to flip, with the overall power level feeling stronger but requiring more Exp. Points to level up your team.
This is where the problem starts to become apparent, and makes my last point worth mentioning- the availability of the Pokémon themselves. The beginning of a playthrough can often feel somewhat sluggish not only because of the lower power levels, but also because there a smaller quantity Pokémon available to raise early on, the ones that are available generally having lower base stat values than Pokémon found later in the game. As you continue to play, however, the game's actual pace of training becomes faster, while the power disparity between the Pokémon available at this point in the game to both the player and to any NPCs remains constant because of the Exp. Points bit I mentioned earlier. You might need tens of thousands of Exp. Points to, say, reach Lv. 80 when you're currently at Lv. 79, but at Lv. 79 it's much easier to find opportunities to actually gain those Exp. Points because of the end-game's much faster pace and the increased availability of Pokémon to train against than if you take that same example but decrease the level examples to, say, Lv. 39 to Lv. 40.
I’m sorry this OP is so long compared to my usual posts, and I do understand if this feels like a lot of information to take in. I'm mainly just interested to find out if it's really just me who feels that core series Pokémon has backwards difficulty progression, or if I'm not alone in thinking this. As far as earning challenging victories are concerned, I personally believe all of the core series games, especially the newer ones, would feel infinitely more rewarding to play through if a solution were to be found to this. that's just my opinion, though. Feel free to let me know what you all think as we hopefully turn this into a discussion thread worth revisiting from time to time. Until next time, take care, and have fun training hard. Peace :-)
Time and time again we hear fans say that they wish the core series Pokémon games were more challenging, or at the very least wish the developers would bring back some of the more challenging postgame content featured in older installments. I've never really been too much of a fan of things like the Battle Frontier in either of its iterations, but I can definitely respect the appeal such features bring for players who correlate challenge in their video games with how fun they can be. That being said, I think it's worth taking a look at why the difficulty progression in Pokémon can sometimes feel a bit... off sometimes, and who knows? Maybe if you're all interested, we can turn this into another cool discussion thread once I think of a proper thread title.
The game design pattern I would like to discuss in this thread is something I like to call the backwards difficulty phenomenon. As the name implies, this is when the difficulty progression of a game evolves in the backwards order of what the player should expect to see. In the case of core series Pokémon games, you (the player) would think that the later parts of the game should get progressively more challenging, as the levels of wild Pokémon and other Trainer's teams start to increase and the amount of Pokémon available to battle in the game also increases with each new area. Sounds like perfectly reasonable logic, right? Well... apparently not if I'm tempted to make an entire thread hoping to ask for other people's opinions on how much of a big fat lie this is.
I'd like to start this thread's (hopeful) discussion off with some pretty simple data science. Let's say you have these four Pikachu in your party:
In this example, let's assume that each your Pikachu are a level that is a multiple of 10. You lowest leveled Pikachu is Lv. 10, followed by one that's Lv. 20, then one that's Lv. 30, and finally your highest leveled Pikachu is Lv. 40. Let's also assume for the purpose of RNG that all of your Pikachu have no EVs and have 31 IVs in all six of their stat categories. Numerically, since the level disparity between each of your Pikachu is set at 10 for each new Pikachu added to this test, you would expect the gap in strength between each newly added Pikachu to be the same, right? Or at least close to it? Well, due to how Pokemon's stats work in relation to their level, most people who have played a Pokémon game can tell you why this is isn't the case. Since Pokémon gain a finite integer of points in each of their stat categories when they level up, the amount of which depends mostly on the Pokémon's base stat values, the disparity in strength between lower leveled Pokémon ends up being much greater than the disparity in strength between higher levelled Pokémon.
The stats of your four Pikachu should be as follows if you use the same EV and IV values I listed at the beginning of the previous section. For this list, the stat numbers are written in the order of: HP, Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, Speed.
Level 10 Pika: 30, 19, 16, 18, 18, 26
Level 20 Pika: 50, 33, 27, 31, 31, 47
Level 30 Pika: 70, 47, 38, 44, 44, 68
Level 40 Pika: 90, 61, 49, 57, 57, 89
"But wait", you ask. "Isn't this what Experience Points are for? To make it so it takes longer to level up later in the game?" Well, yeah... except for the part where the amount of experience points granted by stronger Pokémon later in the game didn't also scale with the Pokémon's level as well as its base experience yield, which can be as high as 255 in most games. At least for me, what this does is re-distribute the amount of time and effort needed to train up your Pokémon as the game progresses. In the early sections of the game, when your Pokémon have lower levels, stats, and weaker moves, the slower pace of the beginning of the game is compensated for by the lower amount of Exp. Points needed to level up your party members. Later in the game, this philosophy starts to flip, with the overall power level feeling stronger but requiring more Exp. Points to level up your team.
This is where the problem starts to become apparent, and makes my last point worth mentioning- the availability of the Pokémon themselves. The beginning of a playthrough can often feel somewhat sluggish not only because of the lower power levels, but also because there a smaller quantity Pokémon available to raise early on, the ones that are available generally having lower base stat values than Pokémon found later in the game. As you continue to play, however, the game's actual pace of training becomes faster, while the power disparity between the Pokémon available at this point in the game to both the player and to any NPCs remains constant because of the Exp. Points bit I mentioned earlier. You might need tens of thousands of Exp. Points to, say, reach Lv. 80 when you're currently at Lv. 79, but at Lv. 79 it's much easier to find opportunities to actually gain those Exp. Points because of the end-game's much faster pace and the increased availability of Pokémon to train against than if you take that same example but decrease the level examples to, say, Lv. 39 to Lv. 40.
I’m sorry this OP is so long compared to my usual posts, and I do understand if this feels like a lot of information to take in. I'm mainly just interested to find out if it's really just me who feels that core series Pokémon has backwards difficulty progression, or if I'm not alone in thinking this. As far as earning challenging victories are concerned, I personally believe all of the core series games, especially the newer ones, would feel infinitely more rewarding to play through if a solution were to be found to this. that's just my opinion, though. Feel free to let me know what you all think as we hopefully turn this into a discussion thread worth revisiting from time to time. Until next time, take care, and have fun training hard. Peace :-)
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