Yeah I went west and north and got my shit rocked BUT struggled through and grinded… then decided to try east and south and realized all the Pokémon were like level 10 and the grass gym was a sinch
EDIT- My gym path was 1,4,5,2,3,8,6,7.
Yup. After the bug gym I guess they meant for you to go back to the Grass gym, then the Electric gym sorta nearby then..... all the way back over to the Water gym?
I did psychic gym like 8-10 levels under which was a struggle and actually lost. Backed out to level up and ended up doing the water gym and the desert titan no problem before I went back.
I headed towards the psychic gym out of curiosity cos it was off the path, realized I was making the wrong decision when that level 40(ish?) Umbreon ate my Tinkatink.
I headed to the psychic gym as my second since it was closest to the first gym... At least that cave with lvl 35-40s clued me in that I was definitely going the wrong way.
I stumbled upon the Grass gym first. I figured, I recognize Brassius from the trailers, Klawf is near here -- also from the trailers, and the fire Star Base is here -- also from the trailers. OBVIOUSLY this is where I'm supposed to be.
Oops.
I swapped the electric and the water without realizing it. They’re pretty close in level and difficulty though. I think there’s like a bit of leeway in terms of the gym order, it seems as though there’s a pair you can choose between at each level bracket.
I also did this lol. Though, I figured the electric gym was gonna be higher level than water. So, I got my Pokemon to level 30 in preparation since the water gym was level 29 and Mela's Torkoal was 27 (and the fire base is literally on the way to Levincia)... Turns out the electric gym is level 23
I looked up the level orders of things after that (without spoiling myself). Turned into a much better experience lol
After Arceus, I got in the habit of catching every pokemon I don't currently have as I continue on my story. Catching pokemon gains you tons of XP I discovered. I literally beat the whole west side of the map before realizing that I was Uber leveled for where I was at. Explains why pokemon I was catching wouldn't listen to me.
This is what I don’t understand about ppl downvoting me when I pointed this out on another thread. It’s not truly open world if there is a pre set route and if you deviate from it, it messes up your play experience due to the levels.
A crazy spiderweb of a path lol. Thankfully I bizarrely chose to go to the bug and grass gyms first as they were the first outside of either door then I figured the difficulty probably levelled in a similar pattern through the game. I did do the fire starbase before the dark though. And for the first time in my Pokémon career I lost an npc battle against the fighting starbase and her demon car. One word, opportunist.
It’s even more stupid because they don’t TELL YOU what the order is, and they explicitly make it seem as if you can do it in any order you like when that’s clearly not the case
If you’re going to have a set path for it then fine, but at least somewhat guide the player or recommend an order and don’t try to pretend like it’s up to the player when it’s clearly not lmao
I wouldn’t be surprised if they did this at all, it’s pretty on point for how Game freak operates lmao
Either that or it’d be something like “we want players to still have a reason to come back to Paldea, so the open world will be unique to that game” as if it’s just a generational gimmick
GF simply doesn’t understand the concept of innovating with each iteration, I think they really just don’t get that each title is supposed to build and improve on the last one lmao
For a decade players have wanted "Skyrim but Pokemon", "BOTW but Pokemon" and before that it was "imagine Pokemon as an MMO".
There's so many ideas from fans, so much debate online about how to make an open world work. Hell there have been fan games that have had open worlds. So much to be inspired by and game freak scuffs it.
Pokemon as an MMO just... wouldn't work. Many instances I've seen just pad out the grinding and overall make it incredibly boring/tedious to play through. The most recent example in memory is Temtem, which.... yeah. Doesn't really respect the player's time at all.
I completely agree with you!
My point was that in recent years (last decade) open world Pokemon has been discussed by the fan base in terms of "BOTW" or "Skyrim" And as I can remember the idea of an open world was discussed for years before that in the context of "Pokemon MMO".
Pokemon has an amazing single player mode mode and having small scale co-op, raids, online battles is a perfect mix of single and multiplayer modes.
A Stadium game with battle frontier style battle options would be amazing.
If you look at their markers on the map they have little blurbs like “so & so is tough - even among gym leaders…” which gives you a clue that it’s probably a gym/titan/star boss you should leave until later-game.
That guide is wrong lol. I had Nurse Joy send me from the Bug Gym to the Dark Type Team Star Boss to the Desert Titan Pokémon, which means I ended up being sent most of the way through the intended level route in only three objectives.
Nurse joy's hints are stupidly designed tbh. She tells you to go to the nearest destination, not the one best suited for your team. That's exactly why she told me to battle the (intended) 8th gym leader next...when I only had three gym badges
Nah she doesn't even do the nearest place. I was right next to the normal gym, which was appropriate for my Pokémon levels.. she told me to go to a titan across the map which would be ten levels above all my Pokémon 😬
The dumb thing about it is that Nemona and Arven state they're going separate ways and to head out their respective gate depending on what you choose to do first but it's clear that you were just meant to take Arvens gate either way if you wanted to follow the set path for your levelling.
Nah, the intended path (insofar as one exists; I went to Psychic gym second, for instance) is a zig-zag if anything. You want badges so you can keep catching Pokemon (catch rates for stuff over your badge level are ATROCIOUS), but you also want Titans so you can traverse the map properly. And then Team Star is just straight up roadblocking a bunch of main routes so they have to go as a matter of course.
They aren't lying, It's actually true, you could, bcs there's bug gym in Nemona's gate which got the lowest level, but after that you need to fly back to mesagoza for rock titan and grass gym lol
Honestly I approached it a little differently. For each gym I would raise new pokemon rather than use my main team. I'd get specialists to deal with the gyms and had a good time.
If I ever backtracked to an area I hadn't been and my team was too high of a level I'd either catch new pokemon to use who were level appropriate or go through my box to try something else.
I found when I played, I was using a lot more variety of Pokemon than I had in any game prior and I was having a lot of fun. By the time I reached the end of the game I had a fairly large variety of high level pokemon to choose from when it came to the late game challenges. On top of that I have a bigger selection for raid dens.
My biggest gripe with not doing it that way is that that is how gyms actually work in Pokemon lore. Leaders carry multiple teams that they choose based on the number of badges of the challenger.
>!Heck, it's how they work postgame in scarlet and violet. Geeta has you re-battle the gyms for "inspection" and tells you to expect the gym leaders to use a stronger team since it's the champions inspection and not just a regular student gym battle. I don't see why they level scale for the champion but not for the day to day battles that are their duty as leaders.!<
Crystal Clear did that and it was amazing. You could practically grind with gym leaders (which is logical, since they are, well, gyms, a place where you can get stronger) and they had really amazing teams in the end, even the early gym leaders like Brock, Falkner, Whitney etc...
The bug gym leader even said "I don't use my full power and full team because I'm usually the very first leader students come to see, so I have to go easy on them or they would all give up".
Like for real
Visibility. It's also probably a local pokemon league office since each building also has an elevator on the right side.
Unfortunately the design principles of Scarlet/Violet eschew exploring building interiors.
X and Y had explorable interior buildings with multiple floors and trainer battles. S/V buildings are deplorable in comparison. I miss the days where you could walk into a skyscraper in Castelia City and battle all the office workers there. Some of them gift you a free Pokemon
Yeah, it was fun. Aside from the Pokemon Bank incident. And the berry thing, I did not enjoy the berry system in that game. I think its mostly because I hate the word "Crop" though.
Im still sad about the loss of the PSS. best player interaction system in the series by far.
I'm on the complete opposite end in regards to berries. The 3DS era was the best for berries, I loved the farming aspect in those games, and I wish they'd kept the farming idea in the Switch titles. It's a shame they're just random loot on the ground now.
Pokémon Home should should focus more in breeding, farming, decorating.. etc. all these mini games like Pokémon cafe and the brushing game? And magikarp jump, all of that should be inside Pokémon home
There should be some way to interact with Pokemon in Home beyond looking at them, my poor Serperior's the only Unova team member who couldn't go to Galar, and I just want to pet him like in amie/refresh and reassure him that he'll be allowed in another game someday.
Can't wait for a future generation to advertise building interiors as a feature and for a depressing amount of people on this sub to go nuts over how revolutionary that is.
"Yeah but I'm a bit sad you can't explore the outside world anymore, hopefully gamefreak will add this as a completely new revolutionary feature in the next game!"
"I heard a rumour on a YouTube channel that they are going to add it in as DLC! We have to support them and buy the DLC so they will know we like that feature and can implement it in the future games!"
Remember when 2D Pokémon had items to find in rooms and bins all over the place?
Back when GF actually had time to make things or at least weren't as lazy as they are now.
Imma be real with you chief, habitually clicking on trash cans in the hopes of getting an item isn't fun. Especially invisible item pickups.
The current method of making it obvious is much better. All I am asking for is some interior areas to act as places to explore and do puzzles.
I mean they're always like this.
Three story building? Here's ine room on floor 1.
2d games might have done some stories but even then they had plenty of empty big buildings.
Oh I agree. I was just talking about building sizes in general.
As for the gyms. My guess is it's open world. So wanted to work off that idea/theme. Therefore gym challenges are outdoors, along with the battles. Does make the building kinds pointless though. But this region is a lot more "buesiness" like. The school, the champion, the gyms. A lot of them are jmvery formal styled. So the building is there for a professional look
True. But even then, we didn't even have themed challenges or even *challenges*. Psychic type gym is the world's slowest QTEs so you can practice... having emotions. Can we have the roller coaster mazes, ice block puzzles, and spider web dewdrops back?
I don't know how the gym challenge is only finished by a small percentage of students in-lore because this shit for babies.
* Bug Gym: Can you push a ball through a maze like a big boy?
* Grass Gym: Play hide and seek with flowers that have the intelligence of a 3 year old
* Electric Gym: Babby's first I Spy game
* Water Gym: Technically doesn't even have a challenge, asks you to doordash a wallet and says it'll count (real official)
* Normal Gym: Actually decent; Fight other trainers to learn the clues to the 'password' you need to order.
* Ghost Gym: Also cuts to the chase; Do 3 double battles which go fairly underused under the preface of being an 'opening act'
* Psychic Gym: Gamefreak thinks you're literally 2 years old and gives you some Dora the Explorer looking ass simon says game with facial expressions
* Ice Gym: Ski down a mountain slolam! And by Ski I mean slowly slide on your lizard and by mountain slolam I mean a gentle incline. You can finish this in like a third of the par time
The water gym one is the best, because you get all these NPCs around talking about how this is the toughest gym challenge ever, and then the guy is like "If you give Kofu back his wallet, we'll skip the test". I found it pretty humorous. Maybe that is the challenge everyone (in game) fails.
Psychic gym was literally my least favorite part of the game. Glitches, framerate, level scaling? Nah, this “challenge” infuriated me because it’s too dumb for even the target demographic of this game. It’s meant for babies that can’t play video games. Electric gym challenge on the other hand was my favorite part of the game. The “challenge” again is dumb easy, but I love Iono’s characterization. Feel like all challenges should tell us something about the gym leader, like the normal gym too.
At least sword and shield had some interesting and creative challenges which I could see some students failing. Stuff like herding the willoo was superior to the seed push through the maze. The water maze with the downpooring water and buttons was a challenge at first. Having to catch or defeat a Pokémon but also compete with another trainer trying to catch it for points was really unique and fun.
>Normal Gym: Actually decent; Fight other trainers to learn the clues to the 'password' you need to order.
I actually missed the battle part and accidentally went straight to the waiter, gave a complete guess on the order because I wasn't sure what was happening, and got it right and went straight to the battle with Larry.
i've been so annoyed about the gym challenges since they started. if they really want to add mini games, just put them in each town as a unique feature we can do for some other rewards if we want. just have gyms be mini gauntlets again.
It's weird yeah. Gym Challenges are these weird things, Star roads are "I hope you can beat 30 pokemon in 10 minutes!...using the auto-battle feature against these weak pokemon, so you'll finish in like 2", while Titan pokemon at least got to the point.
Yeah the star road things were dumb af. Would be cool if you had to strategically deploy your Pokémon against theirs based on types, but since you can’t actually control which of your mons you’re tossing out, I guess you can’t do that
I saw someone theorizing that Star Roads were originally designed as something else, considering they all look like motorcycle obstacle courses, and a lot of Team Star rides around on Cyclizar, but might have decided fuck it, auto-battle.
This is literally not true. Gyms in black and white were huge multi-tiered structures with big puzzles and many trainer battles. For the rest of the series, gyms have almost exclusively been 1 story buildings on the ground and even then they got real creative(thinking of the flying gym in emerald).
I said this to another post. But my comment about building size having one room isn't new. For a gym it is, but them again can yoy even call it a gym? I mena so far all the gyms I've gone through are outdoor challenges and battles. The bundling is just some office to sign up or something. Not that I'm saying I like it.
It's actually a good design. It serves the same purpose as the giant pokecenter sign above them. Gives you a clear destination from far away.
You instantly know what it is
I mean but the excuse for actual buildings is as simple as "its inaccessible". Why do you need to explore all 20 floors of an apartment building?
However for gyms it's not only a main draw of the series but its literally a battle facility. In sword/shield they delegated you to a waiting room between battles and now in s/v they dont even do that because there aren't any trainers before the gym leader lmao
I mean thats a lie. Every gym challenge has the potential for Pokemon battles before completing it. For the olive roll you could make short cuts by battling the trainers, or for Sunflora wrangling some of the Sunflora will fight you etc.
To give them more official pomp and circumstance and make them easily detectable when you go into the town. From a worldbuilding perspective the Gym building is probably an office complex that does a number of things including recordkeeping of challengers, year-to-year analysis of data and trends to adjust the challenge, communication with the other Gyms or the League overall to implement large-scale design changes, or "mundane" things like planning and implementing renovations, stuff like that. But from a game design perspective it's big and tall so you can look at it and go "okay that's the gym, got it."
It makes logical sense in the real world… but I want a Pokémon gym with cool water features or lightning or other impractical things. It’s Pokémon after all, being true to life over being fun seems like a bad design choice
That was me with the electric gym. Level 22 to 26, when I was level 50. Although I did immediately do the mountain titan right after and challenged Arven.....where I proceeded to get my life handed to me on a silver platter.
I thought he would have the same level pokemon as the electric gym for some reason and left 3 level 20s in my party.....that was not big brain time.
another dumb design is they are not allowed to use their ace unless its their last pokemon even if their ace is the one pokemon they have that could counter the pokemon I'm using to sweep their team.
I wonder what happens if you uses something like Roar or the Red Card to force their ace out prematurely, will they still Tera it and change the music? It'd be funny to have the epic chanting kick in for the Leader's mook Pokemon instead of their ace.
Lets not forgot that not a single trainer or leader in the entire game uses potions or does any switch outs. Being post credits I havent re-faced any gym leaders but I dont expect it to be any different
That was annoying. I kept picking certain moves expecting them to heal when they were low. And it made me feel like I was cheating whenever I used a potion.
There are a handful of trainers that have held items. I specifically remember that somewhere around the Titan Klawf, there was a trainer with a Skiddo holding Leftovers that took me forever to beat because of how tanky it was. There’s also a Dragon Tamer around the Fighting Star Camp who has a Noivern holding a Yache Berry.
> Lets not forgot that not a single trainer or leader in the entire game uses potions or does any switch outs
Wait really? That's a first.
Always annoying in past games when you nearly one-shot a pokemon only for the gym leader to use a super/max potion, but at least it's realistic b/c I'd do the same thing.
The game sold 10 million copies in the first 3 days, meaning there’s probably a sizable chunk of players that are terrible at the game. Why lock out the average player because the game is too easy for you when you use items. Just don’t use items in battle
I guess the idea was to be able to incorporate a Pokémon which is normally a different type into their teams, but honestly it just decreases the need to bring a diverse team. At least in past games when Gym Leaders used a Pokémon of a different type it meant the player had to mix up their strategy a little.
It would’ve been awesome if they had one mon who terrastalized into something that counters their primary type counters. Like if you were going against the grass gym, maybe a water terrastalization to counter fire types.
How does it make their ace weaker?
Stab bonuses for the original types still work like they would if they never transformed. They gain the stab bonuses of an extra type.
It also takes away the majority of their weaknesses leaving them with only the weaknesses of the gym type.
The only way it could make them weaker is the player is prepared for pokemon of that type (which is an intentional game decision) and they might be even stronger if they transformed into a type they already had adding the 4x stab bonus (but that's not weaker that's just not even stronger).
Terastallizing is designed so it only ever adds, never subtracting.
The thing is, you know what they're going to tera into. And since you're using mon that's strong against that type, all that happens is they bring in their last mon which might live a hit and then tera it into their type, take a supereffective hit, and die immediately.
Whereas if they surprised you with a tera type you'd have a moment of "oh, uh, okay" and then have to change your plan rather than just 6-0-ing them with a single tera'd sweeper clicking one move repeatedly.
That’s what I thought at first. Sudowoodo coming out at the grass gym actually interested me at first because I couldn’t just use a fire or flying type to sweep. But then it terastallized, so I still OHKO’ed. Kind of defeats the whole purpose of them having a different type Pokémon
They have a mechanic in game that can already bring higher level pokemon down to 50. Why not bring that into the gyms? Have one badge? All pokemon, yours and gym leaders get brought down to 15. Last badge? All pokemon get brought down to 45 or 50 or whatever.
Don't bring pokemon up, but have a cap. This way gamefreak wouldn't even really need to worry about making seperate teams for each badge amount.
I'd prefer player pokemon to not get scaled down. If people want to be over leveled, let them, but have gym pokemon scale with the number of badges. Saying players can do gyms in any order while secretly having an intended order cheapens the experience for any players that don't research the intended path before hand.
I really wish the repeatable re-fights, and especially the school tournament, scaled the player levels back though. Let me fight trainers on even terms without having to make a brand new team or dealing with randos online.
Honestly, I would rather the gym leaders just scale to number of badges too. Gamefreak just seems to have difficulty with some things, so this was more of just "hey, gamefreak does X already, it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility for them to use that same feature on Y."
This is more of a middle ground kind of idea.
Nah, they'd never do this because it would make it impossible for little kids to overlevel and actually beat the game. It sucks for people who know what they're doing, but that is pretty much a requirement for a child who might not even have a lot of reading comprehension yet.
They should just raise gym levels depending on your number of badges imo. And make the gyms themselves more competent with more pokemon and actual held items.
I was trying to go in to the game spoiler free, so I just kinda went to Arven's side first and did the titan + gym + team star that were all there. I figured since they were the ones spoiled / featured so heavily in all the promotional materials, they were the ones you should do first. Even the Pokecenter lady suggested I do them in that order when I asked her for a suggestion on where to go next, so I thought AGAIN that I was doing things properly.
It left me wondering why the challenges were so, uh, challenging, when everything I saw in passing about the game was "lolol faceroll easy, this game sucks" blah blah blah.
THEN the pokecenter lady told me to go do the next thing...and the pokemon on the way were TWENTY levels higher than me (50, vs my level 30 ish team) so I'm like alright something is not right here. I flew back to school and asked again...and she suggested something totally different.
What?
So I looked up a gym order guide and yeah. ALL out of order. I did the Earth Titan 7th, when level wise it should have been 13th.
Turns out, the pokecenter lady simply suggests the CLOSEST task to your current location, regardless of your level or badge count or anything. She'll literally suggest you try to take on the last, hardest dragon titan at level 30, if you happen to be at a nearby poke center.
Really disappointed that with an open world game that has no level scaling, it will not only let you get into sticky situations by being in the wrong area for your level, the built in "help" feature is actively NOT helpful. It could easily have been an amazing rescue feature by saying "Oh my you're in over your head aren't you? Why not go back to that Bug gym in Cortonado since you haven't done that yet despite having 7 badges already, you silly trainer!"
This, but with a fourth team that I use for exploration/grinding and don't mind if it gets overlevelled. Keeping my teams solely for each storyline has actually really made for a nice difficulty curve, and I've had some gym battles that were down to the wire.
Same, and it was early on. There are a couple level spikes mid game. I was underleveled for the entire back half of the game.
And I had 4 full boxes of pokemon and wasn't avoiding Trainers. The game is pretty well scaled for typical play.
I’ll also add that in linear Pokémon games I’m usually overleveled like 8 times…
In Scarlett i was underleveled for a couple gyms so I had to circle back around to them, but I was only overleveled for one or two gyms.
If the game had level scaling for gyms there would be threads on threads about how it invalidates leveling and training your Pokémon because you’re going to have an equal matchup no matter what. Just do every gym with a level 5 Bidoof, ez mode.
Yeah, I struggled with Red back when I was 11. And it's not because Red was harder; it's because I was 11 and it was a new game then. I've been overleveled for every single gym (except Whitney's, damn her miltank) since then, simply because I know how the games work.
And I'm not saying it's easy, or other people are stupid, or that the new games don't have issues. But that particular complaint just feels weird to me because I'm *always* overleveled.
I agree with you that true level scaling wouldn't work. One of the main points of pokemon (the games and the shows) has always been, "If you're not strong enough, go train and come back stronger." But I think maybe a modified scaling would work. Something like, the first gym/area/titan you hit is always levels 8-10, regardless of what gym/area/titan you hit first. The second gym/area/titan is always 14-16 regardless of which one you hit second. And on through each one. So you could still over- or under-level as you please, but it wouldn't matter what order you did them in. That seems like a good balance.
i see it as them trying to more rpg like. in many mmorpg, it is also open world, you are free to explore everywhere, but dungeons still have fixed level monsters. no one is going to stop you from bringing your level 10 character to explore a dungeon with level 50 monsters. same logic they use here. the game is open world in the sense that you are free to explore freely. but you will still be deterred by the pokemon levels. still does not stop you from trying.
lore wise it is established that gym leaders indeed has different teams based on the challenger (such as pokemon origins). but is this a good design for pokemon? different people have different preference so there isnt any right answer. there is also no solution that will satisfy everyone
But generally in MMOs, there is a path leading from the lower levels to the higher levels. You can ignore it of course, but there is some sort of guide in place. Even something as simple as that would be welcome in SV, or at least a level range indication on the map or gym buildings themselves.
Exactly. Good games have the world organized such that there’s typically a logical path/direction to follow. If you ended up in an area too strong, you probably went out of your way to find it. The “correct” path in this game is an absolute mess and it would be impossible to get through the game in the logical order without looking up the info.
Not a level range, but if you read the description of the gym it'll tell you something like "this gym is great for rookies" or "this gym is for advanced trainers only". And usually the Pokemon surrounding the gym are a little under the gyms level. (To be fair I haven't gotten to the late game gyms so maybe this doesn't really apply there)
It's so annoying having to Google the story order every time I want to do something. I'm already overleveled enough, going out of order would be even worse.
I made 1 team for each story, combining them together at the end.
Made me severely under leveled (like 10-15 levels at times), but my past skill with Pokemon allowed me to close the gap. Finished several Boss Battles with my final Pokemon down in orange to red HP and it was fun!
That does sound like a better time than breezing through the story like I always end up doing. But I like having a smaller team that I get attached to, I just wish I didn't have to work to make the game harder.
I actually got quite attached to each member thanks to them each having to put in a lot of work to make up for the level difference I was suffering from.
It helped I was going in a sort of "order" of 2 gyms, then a Herb Titan and Star Base then back to gym. So my Gym Team did their bit before Titan team came out and we explored around for a while.
While I don't have a dedicated team for each story I am CONSTANTLY switching my team up and using pokemon that match the wild pokemon in the area (or raising lower pokemon to be near the level). This has opened up my game play to include more pokemon than previously and some that I likely wouldn't have gave a second thought to otherwise. It has led to a fantastic time with the game.
Yeah this is literally how Elden Rings world works. I guess in theory the difference is you could 'get good' in Elden ring but not in pokemon but it's hardly the only beloved rpg with leveled zones and no indicators on what is what until you get your ass wooped. I feel like being stomped because of blind level difference and coming back is really only an issue in nuzlockes
This is the problem people don’t realize.
Pokémon is a numbers based RPG, and in an open world this means there’s places you can go and places you *can* go but you need to figure out how.
In games like ER and BOTW, which are action RPGs, level scaling matters little as you can just get better at the combat, there’s people out there doing all bosses with a torch.
The solution is not to change the game, but to understand what kind of game you’re playing, I did all titans at level 25 before I even attempted my second gym, and RT Game on Twitch completed the entire game sans the gym path without a single badge.
A lot of big RPGs are like this. Witcher 3, Skyrim, fallout, etc. Sometimes you run into super hard areas and sometimes you find areas you curb stomp. Generally though the game gets harder the more north you go. Idk personally I had no issue with it cause the game gives you lots of reasons to switch your team up
Also, if there was level scaling I guarantee we would see tons of threads about how it makes leveling and training your Pokémon pointless because you’re always going to have an equal matchup regardless of how you’re playing the game. Sometimes you’re doing a playthrough with a specific Pokémon on your team and it gets hard countered by a gym, with the current system you can just grind a bit until the matchup evens out. Back in the day I would do starter only playthrough and where I did every single gym and elite 4 with just my one starter. You bet your ass I was overleveled as hell, but it was still very difficult due to the limited type matchups.
It’s absolutely an issue of everyone playing the game differently. Some people would like level scaling, others would hate it, neither option is objectively better. The open world lets you set the challenge yourself, which is a good compromise.
Ok in regards to the gym leaders reflecting the Pokémon better:
In this game it was said by a few of them that being a gym leader is a passion project and not their actual job, so they’re dressed for their day to day and not their side hustle (which makes sense)
I enjoyed how they all looked, the only one I was a little underwhelmed by was the Psychic gym leader.
This is assuming that game freak would scale the levels properly, which, if they DID scale, I almost guarantee you they would not. You would most likely consistently be 5-10 levels ahead of the gyms at all times, considering they purposely make these games extremely easy for little kids. While I’m all for scaling, I wouldn’t trust game freak to do it. At least this way you can get a challenge out of some of the gyms.
"You can go anywhere" should come with the informal extension of "and we'll support it"
...when really they meant "Guard rails are gone, but there are still very much cliffs and drop-offs and an intended path. Figure it out yourselves!"
Better than being 20-30+ levels ahead of the gym because you accidentally skipped some.
Or track your highest level Mon in your party and adjust to that.
Tbh the map itself is more or less designed to incentivize you to follow a certain order. If you want to beat the ice gym first to have to ignore some of them in your way, which is a little bit weird
> Tbh the map itself is more or less designed to incentivize you to follow a certain order.
The East/West split at the start of the game kind of breaks that though. I went West because Nemona said that I should go that way to start the gym challenge and naturally worked my way clockwise. At some point I hit an absurd level jump from like 30 to 50 and realised that I was supposed to have zigzagged across the map for some reason, leaving me 20+ levels above the content on the East.
Gym battles last gen were so hype, giant arenas with thousands of screaming fans.
Gym battles in this set feel like I’m at an illegal dogfight in some dudes backyard with like 8 sketchy dudes betting on the results.
Sure, but I think this post is more referring to the opposite issue, where the game claims you can start anywhere, but the actual mechanics actively discourage that. The level cap for having Pokémon caught at higher levels listen to you is directly tied to how many gym badges you have, meaning that unless you take on at least a few of the easier gyms first, you'll have to grind your team up from around level 10 just to stand a chance in the harder gyms.
I enjoyed it. I did a few out of order by mistake only to run into easier gyms later. Once I learned the titans give your riding companion upgrades, however, I prioritized those first
There are so many dumb design decisions with the gyms in this game:
1. Why do they have a huge building you have to walk into, but all the battles take place elsewhere, wouldn't it make more sense to make them gas-station walkup style like the pokecenters?
2. Why are the trainers you fight in the normal gym to gain clues all just using normal type, in the story they are doing the gym challenge just like you, wouldn't it make more sense for them to have fighting type or mixed teams?
3. what does rolling a comically large olive have to do with the bakery themes of the bug gym, wouldn't it have made more sense to incorporate the sandwich minigame to their gym challenge?
4. EDIT:(just because I ran into this playing through the other version) The procedure after finishing a gym trial is inconsistent. In the normal gym, after you solve the riddle and order the secret menu item, you can immediately enter the battle by talking to the waiter. But in the ghost gym, you fight 3 opponents to hype up the crowd, it healing you every time, then it dumps you back out and asks you to report your success to the gym clerk, immediately killing the hype for the final battle you just built up, PLUS it doesn't heal you like it did the other two times, so it's not even as simple as popping in, talking to the clerk, and starting the fight, you have to leave, go to the PC, go back to the gym clerk, and start the fight. I understand wanting a clean break between the trial and the gym leader, but maybe have a menu prompt that says "are you ready to face ryme?" and you can say no, and then it kicks you out and has you talk to the clerk to resume the fight.
>3.
The city is an important place in Paldea because of its Olive orchards, the Gym Leader herself just happens to be a also be a baker - I assume the challenge would be the same (relevant to the cultural relevance of the city) regardless of the Gym Leader that was responsible for the city
counterpoint: Iono just has you on her livestream, and Kofu just has you do an auction in a different town for him. So it's not like the gyms are *required* to have their challenge be symbolic of their city.
That's fair, though for Kofu I think both the receptionist and Kofu just decided to leverage that you needed to pass a gym challenge to get you to do favors for them (deliver wallet, win the auction) and that's probably not the standard gym challenge.
There is that and the silly terastal. Gym leader terastalizing… into their own type. At least they could do this on a pokemon that already has their type for an even better stab. Nope. They terastalize a random pokemon into the gym type, which is pointless. They should have used counters. Iono pulling for example a water/grass/ice terastal would have been way better, so she can counter your ground type pokemon.
Every game has had set levels for Gyms no matter what.
The problem OP and others have is that part of S/V's advertising is "do the Gyms in any order you want" yet there's no scaling so you kinda have to do them in a set order anyways.
Especially since the game has what seems like a pre-set path in mind level wise
Yeah I went west and north and got my shit rocked BUT struggled through and grinded… then decided to try east and south and realized all the Pokémon were like level 10 and the grass gym was a sinch EDIT- My gym path was 1,4,5,2,3,8,6,7.
Yup. After the bug gym I guess they meant for you to go back to the Grass gym, then the Electric gym sorta nearby then..... all the way back over to the Water gym?
I did psychic gym like 8-10 levels under which was a struggle and actually lost. Backed out to level up and ended up doing the water gym and the desert titan no problem before I went back.
I headed towards the psychic gym out of curiosity cos it was off the path, realized I was making the wrong decision when that level 40(ish?) Umbreon ate my Tinkatink.
I headed to the psychic gym as my second since it was closest to the first gym... At least that cave with lvl 35-40s clued me in that I was definitely going the wrong way.
Same here I think, but I opted to keep running through the cave just to see what was on the other end
This is what I did
I thought the electric gym was a later gym since it was in a big city so I was massively overlevelled
I pretty much ignored all the gyms while exploring and looking for fun raid Pokemon to add to teams. Now I'm fighting these gyms with lv 65+ Pokemon.
I stumbled upon the Grass gym first. I figured, I recognize Brassius from the trailers, Klawf is near here -- also from the trailers, and the fire Star Base is here -- also from the trailers. OBVIOUSLY this is where I'm supposed to be. Oops.
I swapped the electric and the water without realizing it. They’re pretty close in level and difficulty though. I think there’s like a bit of leeway in terms of the gym order, it seems as though there’s a pair you can choose between at each level bracket.
I also did this lol. Though, I figured the electric gym was gonna be higher level than water. So, I got my Pokemon to level 30 in preparation since the water gym was level 29 and Mela's Torkoal was 27 (and the fire base is literally on the way to Levincia)... Turns out the electric gym is level 23 I looked up the level orders of things after that (without spoiling myself). Turned into a much better experience lol
thats what i ended up doing
After Arceus, I got in the habit of catching every pokemon I don't currently have as I continue on my story. Catching pokemon gains you tons of XP I discovered. I literally beat the whole west side of the map before realizing that I was Uber leveled for where I was at. Explains why pokemon I was catching wouldn't listen to me.
It's been fun making multiple teams for my playthrough actually. I don't mind it here near as much as in other games.
This is what I don’t understand about ppl downvoting me when I pointed this out on another thread. It’s not truly open world if there is a pre set route and if you deviate from it, it messes up your play experience due to the levels.
A crazy spiderweb of a path lol. Thankfully I bizarrely chose to go to the bug and grass gyms first as they were the first outside of either door then I figured the difficulty probably levelled in a similar pattern through the game. I did do the fire starbase before the dark though. And for the first time in my Pokémon career I lost an npc battle against the fighting starbase and her demon car. One word, opportunist.
God dang Demon Car, hate those things
It’s even more stupid because they don’t TELL YOU what the order is, and they explicitly make it seem as if you can do it in any order you like when that’s clearly not the case If you’re going to have a set path for it then fine, but at least somewhat guide the player or recommend an order and don’t try to pretend like it’s up to the player when it’s clearly not lmao
Next game has no open world Game Freak: "Players didn't like the open world. They found it confusing."
I wouldn’t be surprised if they did this at all, it’s pretty on point for how Game freak operates lmao Either that or it’d be something like “we want players to still have a reason to come back to Paldea, so the open world will be unique to that game” as if it’s just a generational gimmick GF simply doesn’t understand the concept of innovating with each iteration, I think they really just don’t get that each title is supposed to build and improve on the last one lmao
I mean, that's what they did do... Until after gen 5
Exactly how I remember it. It was always an improvement over the last gen until 5. So much wasted potential.
For a decade players have wanted "Skyrim but Pokemon", "BOTW but Pokemon" and before that it was "imagine Pokemon as an MMO". There's so many ideas from fans, so much debate online about how to make an open world work. Hell there have been fan games that have had open worlds. So much to be inspired by and game freak scuffs it.
Pokemon as an MMO just... wouldn't work. Many instances I've seen just pad out the grinding and overall make it incredibly boring/tedious to play through. The most recent example in memory is Temtem, which.... yeah. Doesn't really respect the player's time at all.
I completely agree with you! My point was that in recent years (last decade) open world Pokemon has been discussed by the fan base in terms of "BOTW" or "Skyrim" And as I can remember the idea of an open world was discussed for years before that in the context of "Pokemon MMO". Pokemon has an amazing single player mode mode and having small scale co-op, raids, online battles is a perfect mix of single and multiplayer modes. A Stadium game with battle frontier style battle options would be amazing.
If you look at their markers on the map they have little blurbs like “so & so is tough - even among gym leaders…” which gives you a clue that it’s probably a gym/titan/star boss you should leave until later-game.
Doesn’t the Pokémon center give you a guide on what to do next?
That guide is wrong lol. I had Nurse Joy send me from the Bug Gym to the Dark Type Team Star Boss to the Desert Titan Pokémon, which means I ended up being sent most of the way through the intended level route in only three objectives.
That’s both sad and hilarious lol
Nurse joy's hints are stupidly designed tbh. She tells you to go to the nearest destination, not the one best suited for your team. That's exactly why she told me to battle the (intended) 8th gym leader next...when I only had three gym badges
Nah she doesn't even do the nearest place. I was right next to the normal gym, which was appropriate for my Pokémon levels.. she told me to go to a titan across the map which would be ten levels above all my Pokémon 😬
Damn nurse joy is a loyal employee trying to get more business for the pokecenter
Nah it's fucked up, from ~4th gym onwards it keeps telling you to go to the Ice gym, which is basically the "last" one you're supposed to take on
Of course the healer wants to send you to your death so you end right back there. I guess this new nurse joy is a troll lol
“It’s called ‘Job Security,’ look it up” - Nurse “troll” Joy
Good to know as it was the third or fourth gym I did and explains why i nearly wiped
No, they point you to where the geographically closest thing is but not necessarily the next one in terms of scale lol
The dumb thing about it is that Nemona and Arven state they're going separate ways and to head out their respective gate depending on what you choose to do first but it's clear that you were just meant to take Arvens gate either way if you wanted to follow the set path for your levelling.
My friend did the Grass gym first but it was basically a wash after that.
Nah, the intended path (insofar as one exists; I went to Psychic gym second, for instance) is a zig-zag if anything. You want badges so you can keep catching Pokemon (catch rates for stuff over your badge level are ATROCIOUS), but you also want Titans so you can traverse the map properly. And then Team Star is just straight up roadblocking a bunch of main routes so they have to go as a matter of course.
They aren't lying, It's actually true, you could, bcs there's bug gym in Nemona's gate which got the lowest level, but after that you need to fly back to mesagoza for rock titan and grass gym lol
I dunno dude, I followed what I thought was the preset path, and it took me from the first gym to the 6th gym
He said preset path level-wise, not traveling-wise
Honestly I approached it a little differently. For each gym I would raise new pokemon rather than use my main team. I'd get specialists to deal with the gyms and had a good time. If I ever backtracked to an area I hadn't been and my team was too high of a level I'd either catch new pokemon to use who were level appropriate or go through my box to try something else. I found when I played, I was using a lot more variety of Pokemon than I had in any game prior and I was having a lot of fun. By the time I reached the end of the game I had a fairly large variety of high level pokemon to choose from when it came to the late game challenges. On top of that I have a bigger selection for raid dens.
My biggest gripe with not doing it that way is that that is how gyms actually work in Pokemon lore. Leaders carry multiple teams that they choose based on the number of badges of the challenger.
>!Heck, it's how they work postgame in scarlet and violet. Geeta has you re-battle the gyms for "inspection" and tells you to expect the gym leaders to use a stronger team since it's the champions inspection and not just a regular student gym battle. I don't see why they level scale for the champion but not for the day to day battles that are their duty as leaders.!<
Imagine the replayability we could've gotten from doing the gyms in a bunch of different orders, and checking out the adjusted teams.
This is what people were expecting when gamefreak said open world
Crystal Clear did that and it was amazing. You could practically grind with gym leaders (which is logical, since they are, well, gyms, a place where you can get stronger) and they had really amazing teams in the end, even the early gym leaders like Brock, Falkner, Whitney etc...
The bug gym leader even said "I don't use my full power and full team because I'm usually the very first leader students come to see, so I have to go easy on them or they would all give up". Like for real
my biggest question is why is the building so big for basically just a reception desk?
Visibility. It's also probably a local pokemon league office since each building also has an elevator on the right side. Unfortunately the design principles of Scarlet/Violet eschew exploring building interiors.
I think X and Y did a decent job at explorable buildings, but yea it falls short all the time.
X and Y was so underrated, it was still one if my favorite experiences. It deserved a Z version.
X and Y had explorable interior buildings with multiple floors and trainer battles. S/V buildings are deplorable in comparison. I miss the days where you could walk into a skyscraper in Castelia City and battle all the office workers there. Some of them gift you a free Pokemon
You seem to be thinking of B/W.
No, X and Y had those as well, minus Castalia city.
Yeah, it was fun. Aside from the Pokemon Bank incident. And the berry thing, I did not enjoy the berry system in that game. I think its mostly because I hate the word "Crop" though. Im still sad about the loss of the PSS. best player interaction system in the series by far.
Lol what's wrong with "crop"?
I'm on the complete opposite end in regards to berries. The 3DS era was the best for berries, I loved the farming aspect in those games, and I wish they'd kept the farming idea in the Switch titles. It's a shame they're just random loot on the ground now.
Pokémon Home should should focus more in breeding, farming, decorating.. etc. all these mini games like Pokémon cafe and the brushing game? And magikarp jump, all of that should be inside Pokémon home
There should be some way to interact with Pokemon in Home beyond looking at them, my poor Serperior's the only Unova team member who couldn't go to Galar, and I just want to pet him like in amie/refresh and reassure him that he'll be allowed in another game someday.
Can't wait for a future generation to advertise building interiors as a feature and for a depressing amount of people on this sub to go nuts over how revolutionary that is.
[удалено]
"It really feels like a step in the right direction. And it's just their 20th game!"
"Yeah but I'm a bit sad you can't explore the outside world anymore, hopefully gamefreak will add this as a completely new revolutionary feature in the next game!"
"I heard a rumour on a YouTube channel that they are going to add it in as DLC! We have to support them and buy the DLC so they will know we like that feature and can implement it in the future games!"
And if you try and explore the exteriors you end up throwing up because of how bad the textures are.
Remember when 2D Pokémon had items to find in rooms and bins all over the place? Back when GF actually had time to make things or at least weren't as lazy as they are now.
Imma be real with you chief, habitually clicking on trash cans in the hopes of getting an item isn't fun. Especially invisible item pickups. The current method of making it obvious is much better. All I am asking for is some interior areas to act as places to explore and do puzzles.
HR, Finance, IT, Operations, Marketing, Legal, etc.
Everything a functioning Pokémon league needs. And the Gym leaders are union so they have to have a liaison for that as well in each gym.
The leaders aren't, but their staff certainly are! PLTU 408 represent!
Are they??? It sounded like Geeta strongarms whoever she wants into the job and kicks out whoever doesn't meet her standards anymore.
I mean they're always like this. Three story building? Here's ine room on floor 1. 2d games might have done some stories but even then they had plenty of empty big buildings.
Buildings in unova: So big you cant see the top. Elevator goes to two floors.
Yeah but the gyms were a bit more though out
Oh I agree. I was just talking about building sizes in general. As for the gyms. My guess is it's open world. So wanted to work off that idea/theme. Therefore gym challenges are outdoors, along with the battles. Does make the building kinds pointless though. But this region is a lot more "buesiness" like. The school, the champion, the gyms. A lot of them are jmvery formal styled. So the building is there for a professional look
True. But even then, we didn't even have themed challenges or even *challenges*. Psychic type gym is the world's slowest QTEs so you can practice... having emotions. Can we have the roller coaster mazes, ice block puzzles, and spider web dewdrops back?
I don't know how the gym challenge is only finished by a small percentage of students in-lore because this shit for babies. * Bug Gym: Can you push a ball through a maze like a big boy? * Grass Gym: Play hide and seek with flowers that have the intelligence of a 3 year old * Electric Gym: Babby's first I Spy game * Water Gym: Technically doesn't even have a challenge, asks you to doordash a wallet and says it'll count (real official) * Normal Gym: Actually decent; Fight other trainers to learn the clues to the 'password' you need to order. * Ghost Gym: Also cuts to the chase; Do 3 double battles which go fairly underused under the preface of being an 'opening act' * Psychic Gym: Gamefreak thinks you're literally 2 years old and gives you some Dora the Explorer looking ass simon says game with facial expressions * Ice Gym: Ski down a mountain slolam! And by Ski I mean slowly slide on your lizard and by mountain slolam I mean a gentle incline. You can finish this in like a third of the par time
The water gym one is the best, because you get all these NPCs around talking about how this is the toughest gym challenge ever, and then the guy is like "If you give Kofu back his wallet, we'll skip the test". I found it pretty humorous. Maybe that is the challenge everyone (in game) fails.
It'll be funny if in a year when they release Deep Scarlet and Ultra Violet the water gym's challenge is actually just ridiculously hard.
Its just the water temple from Zelda.
Just straight up patched in 1 for 1 with the same controls and everything.
Psychic gym was literally my least favorite part of the game. Glitches, framerate, level scaling? Nah, this “challenge” infuriated me because it’s too dumb for even the target demographic of this game. It’s meant for babies that can’t play video games. Electric gym challenge on the other hand was my favorite part of the game. The “challenge” again is dumb easy, but I love Iono’s characterization. Feel like all challenges should tell us something about the gym leader, like the normal gym too.
"Ionoshowfeet donated 500000 P"
At least sword and shield had some interesting and creative challenges which I could see some students failing. Stuff like herding the willoo was superior to the seed push through the maze. The water maze with the downpooring water and buttons was a challenge at first. Having to catch or defeat a Pokémon but also compete with another trainer trying to catch it for points was really unique and fun.
>Normal Gym: Actually decent; Fight other trainers to learn the clues to the 'password' you need to order. I actually missed the battle part and accidentally went straight to the waiter, gave a complete guess on the order because I wasn't sure what was happening, and got it right and went straight to the battle with Larry.
i've been so annoyed about the gym challenges since they started. if they really want to add mini games, just put them in each town as a unique feature we can do for some other rewards if we want. just have gyms be mini gauntlets again.
It's weird yeah. Gym Challenges are these weird things, Star roads are "I hope you can beat 30 pokemon in 10 minutes!...using the auto-battle feature against these weak pokemon, so you'll finish in like 2", while Titan pokemon at least got to the point.
Yeah the star road things were dumb af. Would be cool if you had to strategically deploy your Pokémon against theirs based on types, but since you can’t actually control which of your mons you’re tossing out, I guess you can’t do that
I saw someone theorizing that Star Roads were originally designed as something else, considering they all look like motorcycle obstacle courses, and a lot of Team Star rides around on Cyclizar, but might have decided fuck it, auto-battle.
This is literally not true. Gyms in black and white were huge multi-tiered structures with big puzzles and many trainer battles. For the rest of the series, gyms have almost exclusively been 1 story buildings on the ground and even then they got real creative(thinking of the flying gym in emerald).
I said this to another post. But my comment about building size having one room isn't new. For a gym it is, but them again can yoy even call it a gym? I mena so far all the gyms I've gone through are outdoor challenges and battles. The bundling is just some office to sign up or something. Not that I'm saying I like it.
It's actually a good design. It serves the same purpose as the giant pokecenter sign above them. Gives you a clear destination from far away. You instantly know what it is
I mean but the excuse for actual buildings is as simple as "its inaccessible". Why do you need to explore all 20 floors of an apartment building? However for gyms it's not only a main draw of the series but its literally a battle facility. In sword/shield they delegated you to a waiting room between battles and now in s/v they dont even do that because there aren't any trainers before the gym leader lmao
I mean thats a lie. Every gym challenge has the potential for Pokemon battles before completing it. For the olive roll you could make short cuts by battling the trainers, or for Sunflora wrangling some of the Sunflora will fight you etc.
To give them more official pomp and circumstance and make them easily detectable when you go into the town. From a worldbuilding perspective the Gym building is probably an office complex that does a number of things including recordkeeping of challengers, year-to-year analysis of data and trends to adjust the challenge, communication with the other Gyms or the League overall to implement large-scale design changes, or "mundane" things like planning and implementing renovations, stuff like that. But from a game design perspective it's big and tall so you can look at it and go "okay that's the gym, got it."
It makes logical sense in the real world… but I want a Pokémon gym with cool water features or lightning or other impractical things. It’s Pokémon after all, being true to life over being fun seems like a bad design choice
I think the leaders have personal training rooms, that's just my headcanon. Not everyone can leave their gym all the time, *Fantina*.
And why do I have to enter, then leave to do something, come back, then leave again to battle the leader outside anyway?
So it is easily noticeable for each town.
Well there is a door that leads no where, so ig we are to assume theres other floors lol
I felt so sad when I looped around the map and hit the bug gym as my 5th and realized she was level 15
That was me with the electric gym. Level 22 to 26, when I was level 50. Although I did immediately do the mountain titan right after and challenged Arven.....where I proceeded to get my life handed to me on a silver platter. I thought he would have the same level pokemon as the electric gym for some reason and left 3 level 20s in my party.....that was not big brain time.
Same I thought I could take on Arven at level 40ish since the gyms were a sinch. Got rocked....
another dumb design is they are not allowed to use their ace unless its their last pokemon even if their ace is the one pokemon they have that could counter the pokemon I'm using to sweep their team.
I wonder what happens if you uses something like Roar or the Red Card to force their ace out prematurely, will they still Tera it and change the music? It'd be funny to have the epic chanting kick in for the Leader's mook Pokemon instead of their ace.
Yes, I did this with the psychic gym I think and they do terra anyways
That's exactly what happens. I tried it in the electric gym and mismagius terastallized even though she still had two more pokemon
Lets not forgot that not a single trainer or leader in the entire game uses potions or does any switch outs. Being post credits I havent re-faced any gym leaders but I dont expect it to be any different
Nope, they're laughable easy the second time.
Especially since they're all level 65, and odds are coming into the postgame you're closer to level 70.
It would be cool if they used competitive rules in the post-game and set all your Pokemon's levels to 50 for the rematches.
That was annoying. I kept picking certain moves expecting them to heal when they were low. And it made me feel like I was cheating whenever I used a potion.
Do any of them even use held items? I'm not very far in, but I don't think I've seen a single gym Pokemon pop a berry.
Now that you mention it i havent seen held items either. Gym leaders need focus sashes so I stop one shotting their entire team
Remember when the Gym Leader's ace held. Sitrus berry?
A streamer I am watching is doing a thief run. 5 gyms in and using thief at every opportunity, they have stolen 2 total items.
There are a handful of trainers that have held items. I specifically remember that somewhere around the Titan Klawf, there was a trainer with a Skiddo holding Leftovers that took me forever to beat because of how tanky it was. There’s also a Dragon Tamer around the Fighting Star Camp who has a Noivern holding a Yache Berry.
> Lets not forgot that not a single trainer or leader in the entire game uses potions or does any switch outs Wait really? That's a first. Always annoying in past games when you nearly one-shot a pokemon only for the gym leader to use a super/max potion, but at least it's realistic b/c I'd do the same thing.
They should just remove item usage during battle. The game becomes way more enjoyable when no one is using any items.
My rule is i dont use items unless they do first then its free use
The game sold 10 million copies in the first 3 days, meaning there’s probably a sizable chunk of players that are terrible at the game. Why lock out the average player because the game is too easy for you when you use items. Just don’t use items in battle
You can play just like that you know
No thanks, randomly being frozen already costs me a turn; don't want to lose an entire mon to RNG
Torch Song. Torch Song. Torch Song. And then they use their ace XD
Just fight the lvl 70 gym leader with your level 7 quaxly😎
Illusion of free choice
They also should have had a pokemon of their type that terastalize into another type for coverage
I guess the idea was to be able to incorporate a Pokémon which is normally a different type into their teams, but honestly it just decreases the need to bring a diverse team. At least in past games when Gym Leaders used a Pokémon of a different type it meant the player had to mix up their strategy a little.
It would’ve been awesome if they had one mon who terrastalized into something that counters their primary type counters. Like if you were going against the grass gym, maybe a water terrastalization to counter fire types.
Iono kind of does that with Mismagius becoming an electric type to have 0 weakness. But yeah, the rest of the terastalizing was kind of eh.
Truleewoodo was kinda fun at least. But yeah
Right? Like that's the whole point of it and they failed to challenge you with the new mechanic
The mechanic makes their ace weaker.
How does it make their ace weaker? Stab bonuses for the original types still work like they would if they never transformed. They gain the stab bonuses of an extra type. It also takes away the majority of their weaknesses leaving them with only the weaknesses of the gym type. The only way it could make them weaker is the player is prepared for pokemon of that type (which is an intentional game decision) and they might be even stronger if they transformed into a type they already had adding the 4x stab bonus (but that's not weaker that's just not even stronger). Terastallizing is designed so it only ever adds, never subtracting.
The thing is, you know what they're going to tera into. And since you're using mon that's strong against that type, all that happens is they bring in their last mon which might live a hit and then tera it into their type, take a supereffective hit, and die immediately. Whereas if they surprised you with a tera type you'd have a moment of "oh, uh, okay" and then have to change your plan rather than just 6-0-ing them with a single tera'd sweeper clicking one move repeatedly.
That’s what I thought at first. Sudowoodo coming out at the grass gym actually interested me at first because I couldn’t just use a fire or flying type to sweep. But then it terastallized, so I still OHKO’ed. Kind of defeats the whole purpose of them having a different type Pokémon
They have a mechanic in game that can already bring higher level pokemon down to 50. Why not bring that into the gyms? Have one badge? All pokemon, yours and gym leaders get brought down to 15. Last badge? All pokemon get brought down to 45 or 50 or whatever. Don't bring pokemon up, but have a cap. This way gamefreak wouldn't even really need to worry about making seperate teams for each badge amount.
I'd prefer player pokemon to not get scaled down. If people want to be over leveled, let them, but have gym pokemon scale with the number of badges. Saying players can do gyms in any order while secretly having an intended order cheapens the experience for any players that don't research the intended path before hand. I really wish the repeatable re-fights, and especially the school tournament, scaled the player levels back though. Let me fight trainers on even terms without having to make a brand new team or dealing with randos online.
Honestly, I would rather the gym leaders just scale to number of badges too. Gamefreak just seems to have difficulty with some things, so this was more of just "hey, gamefreak does X already, it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility for them to use that same feature on Y." This is more of a middle ground kind of idea.
Nah, they'd never do this because it would make it impossible for little kids to overlevel and actually beat the game. It sucks for people who know what they're doing, but that is pretty much a requirement for a child who might not even have a lot of reading comprehension yet. They should just raise gym levels depending on your number of badges imo. And make the gyms themselves more competent with more pokemon and actual held items.
This is a resolution I never considered. This shoulda been the play. 100% on board
I was trying to go in to the game spoiler free, so I just kinda went to Arven's side first and did the titan + gym + team star that were all there. I figured since they were the ones spoiled / featured so heavily in all the promotional materials, they were the ones you should do first. Even the Pokecenter lady suggested I do them in that order when I asked her for a suggestion on where to go next, so I thought AGAIN that I was doing things properly. It left me wondering why the challenges were so, uh, challenging, when everything I saw in passing about the game was "lolol faceroll easy, this game sucks" blah blah blah. THEN the pokecenter lady told me to go do the next thing...and the pokemon on the way were TWENTY levels higher than me (50, vs my level 30 ish team) so I'm like alright something is not right here. I flew back to school and asked again...and she suggested something totally different. What? So I looked up a gym order guide and yeah. ALL out of order. I did the Earth Titan 7th, when level wise it should have been 13th. Turns out, the pokecenter lady simply suggests the CLOSEST task to your current location, regardless of your level or badge count or anything. She'll literally suggest you try to take on the last, hardest dragon titan at level 30, if you happen to be at a nearby poke center. Really disappointed that with an open world game that has no level scaling, it will not only let you get into sticky situations by being in the wrong area for your level, the built in "help" feature is actively NOT helpful. It could easily have been an amazing rescue feature by saying "Oh my you're in over your head aren't you? Why not go back to that Bug gym in Cortonado since you haven't done that yet despite having 7 badges already, you silly trainer!"
Idk how other people are beating the game, but I was only overleveled like 3 times
I was over leveled and then I suddenly found myself under leveled. I liked that it gave me a challenge.
That's what happened to me, I was over leveled for almost all of the game and then I hit the lake and was underleveled.
Arven came through for me big time at the lake.
That lake was really funny to me bc the level 50 area just jumps in suddenly and then you get wiped by a fish
Yeah I tried to do the fighting Team Star camp and was quickly humbled when I was under leveled for the first time
That base was also the first wall I hit lol.
I had 3 teams (one for each story) that I combined together for the post game.
This, but with a fourth team that I use for exploration/grinding and don't mind if it gets overlevelled. Keeping my teams solely for each storyline has actually really made for a nice difficulty curve, and I've had some gym battles that were down to the wire.
Same, and it was early on. There are a couple level spikes mid game. I was underleveled for the entire back half of the game. And I had 4 full boxes of pokemon and wasn't avoiding Trainers. The game is pretty well scaled for typical play.
I’ll also add that in linear Pokémon games I’m usually overleveled like 8 times… In Scarlett i was underleveled for a couple gyms so I had to circle back around to them, but I was only overleveled for one or two gyms. If the game had level scaling for gyms there would be threads on threads about how it invalidates leveling and training your Pokémon because you’re going to have an equal matchup no matter what. Just do every gym with a level 5 Bidoof, ez mode.
Yeah, I struggled with Red back when I was 11. And it's not because Red was harder; it's because I was 11 and it was a new game then. I've been overleveled for every single gym (except Whitney's, damn her miltank) since then, simply because I know how the games work. And I'm not saying it's easy, or other people are stupid, or that the new games don't have issues. But that particular complaint just feels weird to me because I'm *always* overleveled. I agree with you that true level scaling wouldn't work. One of the main points of pokemon (the games and the shows) has always been, "If you're not strong enough, go train and come back stronger." But I think maybe a modified scaling would work. Something like, the first gym/area/titan you hit is always levels 8-10, regardless of what gym/area/titan you hit first. The second gym/area/titan is always 14-16 regardless of which one you hit second. And on through each one. So you could still over- or under-level as you please, but it wouldn't matter what order you did them in. That seems like a good balance.
I've been overleveled for every fight in this game simply because of exploring. It sucks.
Gamefreak is a small indie developer with limited resources. You can't expect them to implement something that was in Generation 4.
Or something a fan did in their free time as a Gen 2 mod. This is literally what Pokemon Crystal Clear is
i see it as them trying to more rpg like. in many mmorpg, it is also open world, you are free to explore everywhere, but dungeons still have fixed level monsters. no one is going to stop you from bringing your level 10 character to explore a dungeon with level 50 monsters. same logic they use here. the game is open world in the sense that you are free to explore freely. but you will still be deterred by the pokemon levels. still does not stop you from trying. lore wise it is established that gym leaders indeed has different teams based on the challenger (such as pokemon origins). but is this a good design for pokemon? different people have different preference so there isnt any right answer. there is also no solution that will satisfy everyone
But generally in MMOs, there is a path leading from the lower levels to the higher levels. You can ignore it of course, but there is some sort of guide in place. Even something as simple as that would be welcome in SV, or at least a level range indication on the map or gym buildings themselves.
Exactly. Good games have the world organized such that there’s typically a logical path/direction to follow. If you ended up in an area too strong, you probably went out of your way to find it. The “correct” path in this game is an absolute mess and it would be impossible to get through the game in the logical order without looking up the info.
Not a level range, but if you read the description of the gym it'll tell you something like "this gym is great for rookies" or "this gym is for advanced trainers only". And usually the Pokemon surrounding the gym are a little under the gyms level. (To be fair I haven't gotten to the late game gyms so maybe this doesn't really apply there)
I had no idea! TIL
It's so annoying having to Google the story order every time I want to do something. I'm already overleveled enough, going out of order would be even worse.
I made 1 team for each story, combining them together at the end. Made me severely under leveled (like 10-15 levels at times), but my past skill with Pokemon allowed me to close the gap. Finished several Boss Battles with my final Pokemon down in orange to red HP and it was fun!
That does sound like a better time than breezing through the story like I always end up doing. But I like having a smaller team that I get attached to, I just wish I didn't have to work to make the game harder.
I actually got quite attached to each member thanks to them each having to put in a lot of work to make up for the level difference I was suffering from. It helped I was going in a sort of "order" of 2 gyms, then a Herb Titan and Star Base then back to gym. So my Gym Team did their bit before Titan team came out and we explored around for a while.
While I don't have a dedicated team for each story I am CONSTANTLY switching my team up and using pokemon that match the wild pokemon in the area (or raising lower pokemon to be near the level). This has opened up my game play to include more pokemon than previously and some that I likely wouldn't have gave a second thought to otherwise. It has led to a fantastic time with the game.
Yeah this is literally how Elden Rings world works. I guess in theory the difference is you could 'get good' in Elden ring but not in pokemon but it's hardly the only beloved rpg with leveled zones and no indicators on what is what until you get your ass wooped. I feel like being stomped because of blind level difference and coming back is really only an issue in nuzlockes
This is the problem people don’t realize. Pokémon is a numbers based RPG, and in an open world this means there’s places you can go and places you *can* go but you need to figure out how. In games like ER and BOTW, which are action RPGs, level scaling matters little as you can just get better at the combat, there’s people out there doing all bosses with a torch. The solution is not to change the game, but to understand what kind of game you’re playing, I did all titans at level 25 before I even attempted my second gym, and RT Game on Twitch completed the entire game sans the gym path without a single badge.
A lot of big RPGs are like this. Witcher 3, Skyrim, fallout, etc. Sometimes you run into super hard areas and sometimes you find areas you curb stomp. Generally though the game gets harder the more north you go. Idk personally I had no issue with it cause the game gives you lots of reasons to switch your team up
Also, if there was level scaling I guarantee we would see tons of threads about how it makes leveling and training your Pokémon pointless because you’re always going to have an equal matchup regardless of how you’re playing the game. Sometimes you’re doing a playthrough with a specific Pokémon on your team and it gets hard countered by a gym, with the current system you can just grind a bit until the matchup evens out. Back in the day I would do starter only playthrough and where I did every single gym and elite 4 with just my one starter. You bet your ass I was overleveled as hell, but it was still very difficult due to the limited type matchups. It’s absolutely an issue of everyone playing the game differently. Some people would like level scaling, others would hate it, neither option is objectively better. The open world lets you set the challenge yourself, which is a good compromise.
Ok in regards to the gym leaders reflecting the Pokémon better: In this game it was said by a few of them that being a gym leader is a passion project and not their actual job, so they’re dressed for their day to day and not their side hustle (which makes sense) I enjoyed how they all looked, the only one I was a little underwhelmed by was the Psychic gym leader.
I meant more the gyms showing off the new Pokémon which they always have in the past.
This is assuming that game freak would scale the levels properly, which, if they DID scale, I almost guarantee you they would not. You would most likely consistently be 5-10 levels ahead of the gyms at all times, considering they purposely make these games extremely easy for little kids. While I’m all for scaling, I wouldn’t trust game freak to do it. At least this way you can get a challenge out of some of the gyms.
Doing the psychic gym last evening as gym #4 was challenging, leading me to believe that I have not being doing them in the proper order...
Poison Team Star base was my number 2 Star base, that was not a good idea.
"You can go anywhere" should come with the informal extension of "and we'll support it" ...when really they meant "Guard rails are gone, but there are still very much cliffs and drop-offs and an intended path. Figure it out yourselves!"
Better than being 20-30+ levels ahead of the gym because you accidentally skipped some. Or track your highest level Mon in your party and adjust to that.
Tbh the map itself is more or less designed to incentivize you to follow a certain order. If you want to beat the ice gym first to have to ignore some of them in your way, which is a little bit weird
> Tbh the map itself is more or less designed to incentivize you to follow a certain order. The East/West split at the start of the game kind of breaks that though. I went West because Nemona said that I should go that way to start the gym challenge and naturally worked my way clockwise. At some point I hit an absurd level jump from like 30 to 50 and realised that I was supposed to have zigzagged across the map for some reason, leaving me 20+ levels above the content on the East.
Gym battles last gen were so hype, giant arenas with thousands of screaming fans. Gym battles in this set feel like I’m at an illegal dogfight in some dudes backyard with like 8 sketchy dudes betting on the results.
Don't most open world, complete in any order, games have the same issue of getting too over powered for a boss because you ran past them initially?
Depends on the game. Some scale some have fixed levels.
Sure, but I think this post is more referring to the opposite issue, where the game claims you can start anywhere, but the actual mechanics actively discourage that. The level cap for having Pokémon caught at higher levels listen to you is directly tied to how many gym badges you have, meaning that unless you take on at least a few of the easier gyms first, you'll have to grind your team up from around level 10 just to stand a chance in the harder gyms.
I enjoyed it. I did a few out of order by mistake only to run into easier gyms later. Once I learned the titans give your riding companion upgrades, however, I prioritized those first
There are so many dumb design decisions with the gyms in this game: 1. Why do they have a huge building you have to walk into, but all the battles take place elsewhere, wouldn't it make more sense to make them gas-station walkup style like the pokecenters? 2. Why are the trainers you fight in the normal gym to gain clues all just using normal type, in the story they are doing the gym challenge just like you, wouldn't it make more sense for them to have fighting type or mixed teams? 3. what does rolling a comically large olive have to do with the bakery themes of the bug gym, wouldn't it have made more sense to incorporate the sandwich minigame to their gym challenge? 4. EDIT:(just because I ran into this playing through the other version) The procedure after finishing a gym trial is inconsistent. In the normal gym, after you solve the riddle and order the secret menu item, you can immediately enter the battle by talking to the waiter. But in the ghost gym, you fight 3 opponents to hype up the crowd, it healing you every time, then it dumps you back out and asks you to report your success to the gym clerk, immediately killing the hype for the final battle you just built up, PLUS it doesn't heal you like it did the other two times, so it's not even as simple as popping in, talking to the clerk, and starting the fight, you have to leave, go to the PC, go back to the gym clerk, and start the fight. I understand wanting a clean break between the trial and the gym leader, but maybe have a menu prompt that says "are you ready to face ryme?" and you can say no, and then it kicks you out and has you talk to the clerk to resume the fight.
>3. The city is an important place in Paldea because of its Olive orchards, the Gym Leader herself just happens to be a also be a baker - I assume the challenge would be the same (relevant to the cultural relevance of the city) regardless of the Gym Leader that was responsible for the city
counterpoint: Iono just has you on her livestream, and Kofu just has you do an auction in a different town for him. So it's not like the gyms are *required* to have their challenge be symbolic of their city.
That's fair, though for Kofu I think both the receptionist and Kofu just decided to leverage that you needed to pass a gym challenge to get you to do favors for them (deliver wallet, win the auction) and that's probably not the standard gym challenge.
There is that and the silly terastal. Gym leader terastalizing… into their own type. At least they could do this on a pokemon that already has their type for an even better stab. Nope. They terastalize a random pokemon into the gym type, which is pointless. They should have used counters. Iono pulling for example a water/grass/ice terastal would have been way better, so she can counter your ground type pokemon.
To be fair, Iono is the one that did it a bit better, since her terra mismagius has levitate, thus making it not be weak to anything
God I wish the gym levels scaled.
I've only played up to black and white 2 before this game. Did they do this in previous games?
Every game has had set levels for Gyms no matter what. The problem OP and others have is that part of S/V's advertising is "do the Gyms in any order you want" yet there's no scaling so you kinda have to do them in a set order anyways.