Bro, I'm 100% with you on Pokémon Colosseum and XD: Gale of Darkness. I still have my limited edition Gale of Darkness GameCube and the memory card with my original save file from 2006. Sadly, the disc reader no longer works (the laser died and needs to be replaced), but it's all there if I get it fixed. Imagine if you could access the purification chamber in XD from a menu like the PC in modern Pokémon games. You'd be able to immediately start purifying and rearranging sets whenever you catch new shadow Pokémon instead of having to backtrack and go to the lab every time! I'd probably add a restriction that only allows you to [i]complete[/i] the purification at the lab, but you still wouldn't be wasting nearly as much time since you could start the process sooner. I'd also love to see more Pokémon added to the roster like they do with other Pokémon remakes. The doubles theme is already fun, so imagine if we had more options for team building! That would be especially impactful for postgame stuff like Mount Battle, where trainers (both player and NPC) could be running more competitive teams from newer metas. Other than that, just having modern battle mechanics, abilities, and type charts would be a huge breath of fresh air for the game. A lot of the Pokémon in XD are significantly worse than they are today simply because the game came out before the physical/special split. [i]I'm still out here on my copium tank, hoping desperately that Game Freak will give us a new entry to the Shadow Pokémon series.[/i]

Eh, tbh I think I'd rather have you have to backtrack to the lab every time you want to run a Shadow Pokemon through the thingie. I know it sounds tedious, but what I like about these games is how they encourage you to always be playing with a new team. In mainline Pokemon, it feels like you're basically sticking with the same group the entire time, with only one or two getting swapped out here and there. Heck, when I played Sword, I artificially limited how I add Pokemon to my team for that reason. I wanted my team to grow and change throughout the game. Shadow Pokemon were a great way to do that. But, if you can access all your little gizmos at any PC box, I feel like that disincentivizes trying to make new teams all the time, and instead incentivizes you to just stick the Pokemon in the machine every chance you get and stick with your favorites. [spoiler]As a side note, the way I would solve this problem where I in charge of a Pokemon game is to give you limited team slots. When you first start playing you can only have, say, two Pokemon, but as you get further you unlock more and more. This would go hand in hand with how many Pokemon the gym leaders have, so you can never have more Pokemon than a gym leader. Of course, I never played the classic games. As a young'in I never had any mobile systems, so I only started playing the mainline games with X, and Alpha Sapphire, which is of course when the games started making XP share a permanent thing. Maybe it only became an issue after that point? I don't know, but hot take: I like EXP Share. I know lots of folk who grew up with Pokemon hated it, but I remember playing CrisTales a little while back, and CrisTales does not have any sort of EXP Share, so only your allies you use to fight actually gain EXP. As a result of this, I felt like I was shoehorned into using the same 3 party members the entire game, because if I ever changed them out then I'd be at a disadvantage. EXP share is a great way to avoid this issue, imo. Anyway, rant over, back to Shadow Pokemon.[/spoiler] I didn't know the Shadow Pokemon games were made before the Physical/Special split, tbh. So, there's just a single attack stat for both, then? I certainly wouldn't mind that updated. Adding new Pokemon wouldn't quite work for me, just because of how the game is structured, unless they add whole new dungeons. Which I wouldn't be opposed to, for the record. But man, I would kill for a new Shadow Pokemon game. There was that one brother dude who obviously didn't want to disband Cipher while the other two did. It's, like, we already have our next villain! Just gimme! [spoiler]As a side note, I don't usually write fanfiction, but one story I did very much write fanfiction for were the Shadow Pokemon games. They involved Cipher not only coming back, but winning. Orre had to be abandoned, as an army of Shadow Pokemon overran the entire region. As such, there were basically no humans in this story, and it followed the Pokemon themselves. The protag was a Ralts (who later evolves into Kirlia), who gets saved by what was essentially a vigilante hero group, consisting of a Glaceon, Sneasel, and Mawile. The Kirlia was being called "Delta" by Cipher, and it turned out she was some sort of experimental bioweapon Pokemon, who was first given a third typing--Fire--and then was given some sort of, like, delayed lock on her heart so that she would become a Shadow Pokemon, but only after a certain amount of time was passed and stuff. There was an edgy Absol, and the city was essentially in a post apocalyptic state where all the Pokemon gathered together into 8 clans that are totally-not-gyms based around typings, and the heroes were trying to get everyone to band together to fight against Cipher, and also Mewtwo was there because of course he was. Oh, and "Delta" was actually based off of a series of Pokemon cards. "Delta types" were Pokemon that had different typings that normal. The Ralts line were Fire types, which is why the protag was a Fire/Psychic/Fairy. It was super cringy and dumb, but I love it, and one day I should actually try to write the whole thing! :D[/spoiler]

I started with Pokémon Gold and Silver when I was 5, but I absolutely agree with you on the new experience share. I love having [i]all[/i] of my Pokémon gain experience. It saves me a lot of time grinding and allows me to add new team members later in the game. Changing my team as I go is something that I [i]enjoy[/i] doing, but I don't think players should be [i]forced[/i] to do it. You've gotta remember that a lot of players just won't use Pokémon they deem "weak" or just don't like. The purification chamber was added in XD to give players a way to purify shadow Pokémon without having to make a team of Teddiursa, Poocheyena, and a bunch of shitty route one 'mons at the end of the game when there are [i]no more trainers to fight.[/i] That's a major downside of having no/very few wild battles. As a general rule, typical players usually [i]don't[/i] change their teams as they go. They stick with the ones they like and want to train, or the ones that are powerful and sweep the game. As a result, a lot of shadow Pokémon just ended up sitting in the box unused, never to be purified. I'd say that forcing players to backtrack in order to purify Pokémon and change their teams [i]disincentivizes[/i] the idea of rotating team members. By making new pokémon accessible and purifiable without backtracking to a PC or the lab, players are more likely to use them. Fewer barriers to entry and all that. Since you didn't play early Pokémon games, I'll explain the physical/special split: In generations 1-3, moves were determined to be physical or special purely based on their [i]type[/i] instead of on a per-move basis. For example, every single dragon type move was a special attack, without exception. Every normal type move was a physical attack. Bite was a special attack because it was dark. Hyper beam was a physical attack because it was normal. So on and so forth. This system meant that Pokémon like [i]Absol[/i] were [i]actual garbage[/i]. Absol has a very high physical attack stat, but [i]every dark type move was a special attack[/i]. Absol's high attack stat was worthless because all of its STAB moves scaled off of its pitiful special attack stat. This was a bit more absurd in the original Gen 1 games. The special attack and special defense stats were originally [i]one[/i] stat, simply called "Special." If you had high special attack, you had high special defense, too. Pokémon like Alakazam, which had [i]enormous[/i] special stats, were simply overpowered because they were great at both offense [i]and[/i] defense. Thankfully, they did away with this almost immediately.

Players being more picky with their Pokemon is definitely a thing in the mainline games, but I don't think it applies to the Shadow Pokemon games as much. The game goes out of its way to explicitly tell you "Your goal is to purify these dudes". Everyone I know who played these games was always swapping out their teams for the new Shadow Pokemon. Beyond that, if any given player decides not to play the game in the intended way, they don't really have a right to complain. Saying, for instance, "I have a bunch of Shadow Pokemon at the end of the game that I can't purify because I already beat everyone!", but then also saying "I only stuck with the same team of 6 purified Pokemon the whole game!", it's like, welp, who's to blame here? Now, the game should give you the ability to purify Pokemon at the end of the game--and the games do, there's plenty of repeatable battles. The big one in Colosseum is Mt. Battle, but if you wind up overloaded at the end, that's a you problem. (note that "You" in this case, is a stand-in for the player, not, like you-you) Anyway, as for the newer QoL features, I don't know, I see where you're coming from with it potentially making them more likely to swap their teams, but I still think I disagree. Purifying Pokemon is supposed to be a big deal, but if it's as easy as simply opening the pause menu, it kinda loses its significance. It's just a box to check. I don't mind the whole "You just got a new Pokmeon, add to team?" thing that Sword does, but--and I don't recall if Sword did this or not--being able to access the Box anywhere? Eh, that kinda takes the edge out of dungeons, doesn't it? Finding a PC in Colosseum could be a life saver, because those were the only ways to heal. Swapping out Pokemon anywhere means you can throw your whole army in at once. I very much do not like that. Man, that physical/special split thing makes so much sense now. Like, I always wondered why my Umbreon was so awful. I've never actually looked at his stats, but I remember he was so much better with a Normal type move than his Dark type moves, and yeah, that makes sense. He was probably a physical attacker. Espeon always carried the early game. :p It's kind of weird, though, because I remember using Absol in Colosseum, and having him be one of my favorites. But, I mean, it's been a while. Li'l me might just not have noticed how bad he was, or simply didn't give him any of his STAB moves.

I can definitely see where you're coming from on the purification thing, I just don't agree that forced backtracking is the way to get players into the mechanic. As I mentioned, XD specifically added the purification chamber to reduce the tedium of purifying every shadow Pokémon by enabling passive purification. It doesn't seem faithful to any Pokémon game's design philosophy to pigeon-hole people into using a team of Pokémon they don't like. The core philosophy of Pokémon has always been "use the guys you like," even having in-game trainers saying it at every opportunity. Fore example, Karen of the Johto Elite Four says [i]"Strong Pokemon. Weak Pokémon. That's only the selfish perception of people. Truly skilled trainers should try to win with their favorites"[/i] after beating her. As for the PC thing, Pokémon Sword and Shield introduced the ability to access your PC (as in personal computer, not Pokémon Center) by pressing the "R" button in your party screen at any time (outside of the elite four and gym battles). To compensate for the ability to access your boxes from anywhere, it no longer heals your Pokémon when you put them in the PC. You have to use the healing station at a Pokémon Center to heal. The Purification Chamber/PC menu would presumably work the same way in XD Remastered. It would give you the ability to switch out your Pokémon freely, but you could still only heal at designated healing machines like the original game. If anything, that would incentivize players to switch out their teams more frequently if they're having a hard time - bringing in a whole new team of six with full HP would save them a trip to the healing machine, but would stop them from funnelling all of their EXP into one main team. This gives more players the ability to play the way they want, which has always seemed to be a priority in the games.

The thing with XD, though, is it just had a [i]ton[/i] of Pokemon that needed purification. Like, so many that it wasn't realistic to have the player purify all of them manually without being absolutely obsessed with the game. Like, heck, even with the purification chamber, I don't think I ever wound up purifying everyone, just because they were so many. While I think overall this is a good thing--like thinking about it from a lore standpoint, even if Shadow Pokemon are stronger than regular Pokemon, only being able to have one per team probably wouldn't actually turn the tides all that much--Colosseum had a much better.. "Balance", if that's the right word? Like, if you were swapping out teams as you went through the game, it was totally possible to reach the game with almost everyone purified. A sequel would presumably increase the number of Shadow Pokemon even more, so it would certainly need something to help you along the purification process, but I'd be hesitant to mess with the pace of purification in both Colosseum and XD... Well, aside from XD's legendaries. They went a little overboard there. Ah, right, I remember now. See, I never used the mobile PC thing, but Pokemon already has a problem with giving you too big of a team for any given situation--hence why I artificially limited my party slots--and the problem I have with the PC thing is that it opens that up even further. Obviously, most of what you have in there probably isn't leveled up, but being halfway through a dungeon and swapping out your whole party for whatever you have in reserve just ruins the pacing of the dungeon. Like, the dungeon is supposed to be a test of your skills and endurance, but being able to access the box anywhere kinda undermines that a little bit. In any case, the whole reason the Shadow Pokemon games are so good compared to the mainline games imo is that the game encourages you [i]not[/i] to just play with whatever Pokemon you want. Your choice in Pokemon is determined by the need to purify Shadow Pokemon. Some of the things you're suggesting would be fine in regular Pokemon games--like splitting XP between teams via the mobile PC--but the Shadow Pokemon mechanic already encourages that. I dunno, I just think about the idea of opening the pause menu, purifying your Bulbasaur or whatever, and then chucking him into the box feels.. Wrong? Like, you don't even got the decency to walk this guy to the shrine first. You're supposed to be opening his heart via love, compassion, and battles to the near death!

[quote]Like, the dungeon is supposed to be a test of your skills and endurance, but being able to access the box anywhere kinda undermines that a little bit.[/quote] C'mon, man, are we [i]really[/i] going to pretend mainline Pokémon games were ever challenging? When was the last time you struggled to get through a cave outside of something like a Nuzlocke? Hell, Pokémon Sword and Shield weren't made any easier by the addition of the mobile PC, namely because you could already OHK [i]literally everything[/i] with just your starter. There was never any risk of losing even [i]half[/i] of your party in any single dungeon, so sacrificing quality of life just to preserve "stakes" that never existed doesn't make sense. [quote]Like, you don't even got the decency to walk this guy to the shrine first.[/quote] Yeah, that's why I specified in my original comment that you would have to go back to the chamber manually to complete the purification. Being able to begin the purification process from the menu would still save time overall because you can start the process sooner, but you wouldn't be able to do it 100% passively. It would save half of the trips back to the lab overall, which is pretty significant. As somebody who [i]did[/i] purify every shadow Pokémon in XD: Gale of Darkness, having to add them to my team and battle several times to purify them would have been nonsensical, especially since you develop a backlog pretty quickly. The levels of your opponents [i]very quickly[/i] outpace the levels of the shadow Pokémon in your purification backlog, and that only gets worse the further you progress in the game. As you said, purifying every shadow Pokémon was a tall task, even with the purification chamber. It doesn't make sense to expect players to alleviate that by using the [i]slower[/i] method of manually battling with them. That just makes even more work, compounding the problem further. It was far more efficient to have a competently levelled team to take on some of the harder battles and make catching new shadow Pokémon easier. Remember, you couldn't just sweep battles. You had to stall long enough to catch a trainer's shadow Pokémon, which were all super effective against your entire team. Having an underlevelled team because you [i]need[/i] to constantly switch shadow Pokémon in for purification just doesn't cut it for situations like that.

The mainline games aren't too tough, sure, but we aren't talking about the mainline games. Now full disclaimer that it's been a hot minute since I've played either of them, but I remember there being moments in Colosseum and XD that were genuinely tough. Like, the cave on the way to Miror B, I remember way back when, coming across a terminal was a blessing in that dungeon, because I was nearly out of the game. The Shadow Pokemon games encourage not having a perfect team, and the difficulty is harder because of it. There's a chance if I replayed them today, they might not be as hard as they once were, but I do remember these games being harder than my experiences with the mainline games. That's part of their appeal. Let me be clear, when I say I didn't purify everything in XD, I did purify almost everything. In fact, I think the only ones I didn't purify were the legendaries. As cool as Shadow Lugia was, giving you a Pokemon that hard to purify right at the end of the game was very discouraging. In any case, it's hard for me to really put into words why giving you access to the purification chamber at any time doesn't feel right to me. Like, there are lot of QoL features that are genuinely great and amazing, but there are also a lot of them that that take the.. Intention out of a game for lack of a better word. Helping the game become more mindless in a way, helping the player think less about what it is they need to do. Giving the player constant access to the purification chamber falls into that latter category. It leaves them thinking less about who they need to purify and when. They can just flip open the menu and pop a Pokemon in there at any time, after all. The choice doesn't matter as much when you don't need to actually get back to the Pokemon Lab to take care of business.

[quote]Giving the player constant access to the purification chamber falls into that latter category. It leaves them thinking less about who they need to purify and when. They can just flip open the menu and pop a Pokemon in there at any time, after all. The choice doesn't matter as much when you don't need to actually get back to the Pokemon Lab to take care of business.[/quote] Giving them portable access to the purification chamber wouldn't change the way players think about or engage with purification, though. They'd do it the way they did before by opening the purification chamber, rearranging the sets to optimize their tempo/whatever that mechanic was called (which, need I remind you, took considerable time if you wanted to be effective), and popping in the shadow Pokémon. The process is the same, it just wouldn't take as much backtracking. Moving the access point from pressing "A" in the lab to pressing "A" in the menu does not change the amount of thinking required in any capacity, it just makes the process of opening the interface less inconvenient and wastes less game time.

That's what you might think, right? Like, it's the same mechanic, it's just in a menu now! But, usually, things like this do actually affect the way the players engage with the mechanic. Even if the mechanic doesn't [i]technically[/i] require less thought, when it's more easily accessible, players don't think about their choices as much. A couple examples: in Harvestella, you can swap between classes with the press of a button, but you can only have 3 classes equipped at any given time. When I first started the game, I didn't give this much thought, because, y'know, all I had to do was pause the game and swap classes if I needed one. It was only after I realized I can only change the classes I have equipped at save points that I actually started to think about what classes I wanted to bring into any situation. Swapping out, say, Fighter for Shadow Walker became a bigger deal--something I needed to think more about--when the game told me "you can't do this anywhere". Compare how health potions are treated in most games, where all you have to do is pause and use them at your leisure, compared to Kingdom Hearts, where the entire pause menu becomes totally unavailable during combat. Suddenly, you only have access to the items you have equipped before the battle, and now you're forced to stop and think about what items you want to have on you in any given situation. Finally, this is one I haven't experienced myself, but Architect of Games--who is a great game design analyst dude on YouTube--once talked about an experience he had with The Last of Us, where when he was able to craft things anywhere, he always just crafted whatever the first weapon upgrade he had available was, but when the game limited him to only crafting at crafting benches, he had to stop and think about what upgrades he wanted, because he wasn't sure when he was going to be able to upgrade next. The way I see this going with the purification chamber, and to the box access as well, is without having access to these things all the time, you have to stop and think. "Which Pokemon do I want to totally lose access to as I leave them in the chamber?" or "Which six dudes do I want to bring with me?" "Who should I purify first, and should I purify them via the chamber or my team?". When you can access the purification chamber at any time, though, you're probably just going to run down the list. If for whatever reason you want to use that Pokemon, all you need to do is open the menu, pull him out of the chamber, and stick him on your team. Now I can't speak for everyone, of course, maybe most people just go down the list anyway, but I remember that I didn't. When I purified a Shadow Pokemon, I stopped and went through my box to see who I wanted to bring out next.

[quote]When you can access the purification chamber at any time, though, you're probably just going to run down the list. If for whatever reason you want to use that Pokemon, all you need to do is open the menu, pull him out of the chamber, and stick him on your team.[/quote] As you mentioned later, my understanding is that most people just went down the list anyways. For players that know what team they want to use, this changes nothing about [i]how[/i] they make decisions about purifying Pokémon, it just makes it less inconvenient to actually execute that plan. My philosophy is that it's always better to give players [i]options[/i] to engage with the game in ways that they enjoy. By making the purification chamber easily accessible, you open the door for players to more readily check those boxes should they choose to. Players that [i]want[/i] to take more time considering their team are still perfectly able to, it just means that players that [i]don't[/i] want to do so aren't forced into it. Think of it this way: The player can always impose restrictions on themselves if they want, but they can rarely [i]remove[/i] unwanted restrictions imposed by the game. In Pokémon, the Nuzlocke is a perfect example of this. Players that [i]want[/i] challenge can enjoy the game in a new way, while players that aren't interested can continue enjoying the game their way. Now imagine if Pokémon [i]forced[/i] Nuzlocke mechanics by design. The experience for Nuzlocke players would be entirely unaffected, as they were playing that way already. It only [i]negatively[/i] impacts players who wanted to play casually, who no longer have the ability to do so. I firmly believe that games should present players with [i]options[/i] of "this is how you [b]can[/b] enjoy the game if it strikes your fancy," rather than imposing the [i]ultimatum[/i] of "this is how you [b]will[/b] enjoy the game if you want to play at all."

[quote]my understanding is that most people just went down the list anyways[/quote] In Colosseum? Maybe. But in XD? I doubt it. There were so many more Pokemon in XD, that just going down the list was unfeasible. Not only that, but the addition of the Purification Chamber meant that if there was any Pokemon that you didn't like, you could totally skip over them and pop them in the chamber. I'm sure some people still just did go down the list, but I'm willing to bet many people did actually think about what Pokemon they wanted to stick in the Chamber, and which ones they wanted on their team. The idea of giving players choices because they can always impose restrictions, but can't usually lift them is true to an extent. However, you also need to take player psychology into mind when designing these choices. I'm sure you've heard the phrase "Players will optimize the fun out of a game?"? This is totally true for most players. If you give players the freedom to do whatever they want, most of them will take the path of least resistance, not the path of most fun. There's a quote that I've coined that I very much like: "Game design is about finding the most fun way to play your game, and then tricking players into thinking they chose to play that way themselves.". Or in other words, while choices are great, you also need to make sure that the choices you create don't ever take away from whatever that best way of playing a game is. As a rather extreme example, say magic is the most fun part of your game. You may be tempted to include ranger and melee classes just because that's the standard, but if the game is really built around magic, and magic is the best part, it's actually a better idea to remove the choice altogether. Make it so players have to play with magic, and in doing so your game will be better. By giving players the choice to be able to use the Purification Chamber anywhere, you're giving them the developer approved stamp of approval to not think too hard about all this. To just go out there and hunt some Pokemon. After all, it's just what trainers do. Sure, some weirdos like myself will stick some artificial limiter on themselves, but most players won't, even if doing so would lead to a better experience. Going back to my Harvestella example from earlier, before I realized you could only swap classes at checkpoints, I was totally just going to swap out classes freely whenever I needed to. This was the past of least resistance--I was optimizing the fun out of my own game. However, by limiting me to only swapping at checkpoints, I realized that the game is actually way more fun this way, because I have to think carefully about what classes I'm bringing into every dungeon. Like, for Heaven's Egg my build is Mage/Shadow Walker/Sky Rider, but then for Jade Forest it swapped to Mage/Fighter/Sky Rider, and for Coral Shrine it's Mage/Shadow Walker/-blam!-. Stopping and thinking about these choices, and coming to these conclusions is what brought this game from having abysmal combat when I first played it, to having combat that's actually pretty fun. If the game hadn't limited my choices, though, I never would have realized the fun of the combat system. But I suppose I do also have a very "The developer's vision is more important than the player's." view in these kinds of things. You seem to have the opposite preference that the player's vision is more important than the developer's, which may be where the disagreement is stemming from. [spoiler]As a side note, I haven't had a good game design discussion in a long time. I am enjoying it very much, thank you! I miss when there were more people who liked talking about this kind of stuff around.[/spoiler]

[quote]If you give players the freedom to do whatever they want, most of them will take the path of least resistance, not the path of most fun.[/quote] That carries the implication that the path of least resistance and the path of most fun are inherently different. You're smart enough to know that that isn't the case. Fun is subjective, and for some players, adding resistance subtracts fun. [i]This comes from a certain amount of my own personal bias, as I tend to dislike difficulty in games. As we discussed previously, I don't get a sense of accomplishment from completing difficult tasks, I just find annoyance and tedium in the process.[/i] [quote]There's a quote that I've coined that I very much like: "Game design is about finding the most fun way to play your game, and then tricking players into thinking they chose to play that way themselves.". Or in other words, while choices are great, you also need to make sure that the choices you create don't ever take away from whatever that best way of playing a game is.[/quote] Don't take this the wrong way, as I don't think [i]you[/i] are an arrogant person, but that statement [i]reeks[/i] of arrogance. Who gets to decide the "best" or "most fun" way for other people to play a game? Such a thing doesn't exist. Each individual person has their own preferences for what is and isn't fun. Wouldn't you be rather annoyed if some stranger decided that the "most fun" way for you to play Sonic was to just sprint in a straight line to the end of the level and removed all of the collectables that gave you reasons to explore? The definition of "fun" is not their decision to make, it's [i]yours[/i] as a player. [quote]As a rather extreme example, say magic is the most fun part of your game. You may be tempted to include ranger and melee classes just because that's the standard, but if the game is really built around magic, and magic is the best part, it's actually a better idea to remove the choice altogether. Make it so players have to play with magic, and in doing so your game will be better.[/quote] I covered this in the previous section, but there isn't an objective "most fun" part of the game. There will be parts that a [i]majority[/i] of players gravitate towards, but what of the players that [i]love[/i] the way melee and ranged combat were used in the game, but didn't enjoy the magic? Forcing them to interact with the magic mechanic constantly because you think they [i]should[/i] like it isn't reasonable. As Goro Akechi said in Persona 5, "If nobody else wants the justice [you] fight for, isn't that just blind self-righteousness?" [quote]Sure, some weirdos like myself will stick some artificial limiter on themselves, but most players won't, even if doing so would lead to a better experience.[/quote] I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here, but again, what defines a "better experience" can only be decided by the person experiencing it. As the player, only you know what experience you're looking for. In my eyes, a successful game is one that can be enjoyed by as many players as possible. This usually means creating options with which players can tailor the experience to their own preferences. [quote]But I suppose I do also have a very "The developer's vision is more important than the player's." view in these kinds of things. You seem to have the opposite preference that the player's vision is more important than the developer's, which may be where the disagreement is stemming from.[/quote] I do agree with you here. The developer's vision can only account for a limited number of player perspectives. The decisions they make will be more in line with what [i]they[/i] want from a video game, but if players don't share that vision, the game is going to fall flat. This is where it falls on the [i]developer[/i] to decide who they're making games for. Do you want to make a game for [i]you[/i] or a game for [i]the players?[/i] Again, there is no "right" answer, as games are often a passion project for their creators. There's no shame in designing a game for yourself, but I personally would rather design a game that can make as many people happy as possible. I can still give myself the tools to enjoy the experience my way without hindering those who don't share the same interests in games, so that's what I would prefer to do. [spoiler]I've also enjoyed our discussion, as I usually do. I like debating different views (often going so far as to play devil's advocate for views I don't actually share), so it's nice to have an actual conversation. Most people just see a wall of text and walk away, never even bothering to read it (for fear of either reading itself or the idea that they might be wrong). It's hard to find a good debate partner these days, so I always appreciate our talks.[/spoiler]

There are definitely games where the fun can't be optimized out of--either because optimization [i]is[/i] the fun, or because of some clever work by the devs to make sure the easiest path is still fun, but I'm sure you've seen this happen at least once or twice? Where you find yourself doing something very bland and tedious, and then realize "Why am I doing this?". Usually this happens either because: A. There's no other option, usually a bad choice on the devs part, or something that's intentionally tedious to promote mictrotransactions B. There is actually a more fun way to do things, but this method is better for some reason. Takes less resources, is easier, removes the time pressure etc. There may have been a little bit of misunderstanding about my quote. I'm not going to deny that there's some arrogance to it, but maybe not as much as it may seem: Game design is about finding the most fun way to play YOUR game, and tricking the players into thinking they chose to play that way themselves. It's not about finding some objectively best way to play every game ever. There's still a little bit of subjectivity here, sure, but not every game needs to appeal to every player. The best games, however, are the ones with a clear sense of identity. They know what they are, what they want to do, and what the best way to achieve that goal is. CrossCode, for example, knew that the most fun part of the game, and as such everything in the game revolves around it. The puzzles, the combat, all of it has the games' four elements at its core. Also, to be clear, this doesn't mean you can't give the players choices. My "remove everything but mage" is an extreme example. Another way would be to figure out what it is about the mage class that's so fun, and then apply that to the other classes as well. The other classes can be different, but knowing the core of your game will help you make the game more fun, and more focused. It won't appeal to everyone, but that's okay. I'll go on a little side rant to hopefully help illustrate this, and I'll stick it in a spoiler. [spoiler]There's a genre of game that I'll call "split-genre", because I don't have a better name. This name could mean a lot of things, but in this case, I'm specifically using it to refer to games that are basically two games in one; the most common example I know of are RPGs that are also farming sims. I've played 3 of these types of games: Cult of the Lamb, Harvestella, and Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin. The best one is Sakuna, Harvestella is in the middle, and Cult of the Lamb is the worst. So, why is this? The simple answer: Sakuna understood the genre the best. It knew what was fun about the genre, and tied everything in the game to that central focus. Everything in Sakuna ties together. The combat is assisted by your farming, because you can only heal from eating, and you eat using food grown on your farm, and you don't gain any experience, and instead only get stronger through your crops. The combat also helps out your farming, though, because you need materials gathered from the field to fertilize your soil. That sort of thing. In Harvestella, your farm helps out your combat, because once again you can only heal through food grown on the farm, but dungeon diving doesn't do much to help your farm, and the two halves of the game are much more independent. Finally, in Cult of the Lamb, once again the calmer side of the game--in this case a town management sim--helps out the dungeons, but the dungeons actively harm your town. This causes a wedge between the two that just made me not want to go dungeon diving. If you look at these games, Harvestella is probably the most laid back of them. Like, your farm basically only serves to make health potions, and if you want you could easily play only one half of the game. And, it's not bad, but it lacks so much compared to Sakuna. In Sakuna, the two halves of the game cannot exist without the other. The game forces you to play in the way that is the most fun; that is swapping between dungeon diving and farming, and for this reason, it's the best in it's genre, at least that I've seen. Does that mean Sakuna is going to be amazing for everyone? Well, no, but by knowing what it wants to be, and what it wants to do, and then tying everything in the game to that central goal, it becomes a much better game because of it.[/spoiler] Tying this back to Pokemon, the appeal of the mainline Pokemon games, and the appeal of the Shadow Pokemon games are very different, at least for me. The appeal of the mainline games is about building your perfect team, and growing together to become the very best like no one ever was. But the appeal of the Shadow Pokemon games is all about the fact that you [i]don't[/i] ever have a perfect team, that you can't. You don't have access to all the Pokemon in the dex, and you need to constantly swap out Pokemon to try and purify everyone, while also creating a decent enough team to not get your butt kicked at every corner. Everything in a hypothetical Shadow Pokemon sequel should revolve around that feeling, which I think would be strengthened by not giving you access to the Purification Chamber via the pause menu, or giving you mobile access to the boxes. It pulls away from the strategy of cobbling together the best team you can with what you've got. Like, I can see someone leveling up some team of normal Pokemon, with only one Shadow Pokemon on their team at a time, and then just swapping them out as soon as that bar hits empty. Not having access to the boxes or Purification Chamber, though, encourages you to take more Shadow Pokemon with you, because if you're doing this one-by-one thing you have to trek all the way back to the last PC every time one gets purified. With a full team of Shadows, you can just swap out the head of the party. One unfortunate truth about game design, is a lot of casual gamers want very shallow games. This is why a lot of bland open worlds get heralded as the best games ever without fail. So if we're talking about trying to reach the widest audience possible, well, sure, you can make a very shallow game with as many choices as possible. If you want to make a game deep, though--if you want to make the kind of game someone can really get deep into and learn the mechanics inside and out, you need to start cutting that freedom. I'm not sure exactly how a graph would look if you graphed out freedom vs depth, but at least to a point, the less freedom you give to a player, the deeper you can make your game--the better you can see your vision. I don't know if the reason for that is financial, or something (like where you're putting your resources), but I do find it to be true. I mentioned earlier that the best games are the ones with a clear identity, that tie the whole game around that identity, and I don't think that's coincidence. By knowing exactly what you want your players to get out of that game, you can put all your energy into making that experience as satisfying as possible. [spoiler]It used to be that having debates on this site was so easy. Like, there was always a good debate partner right around the corner. I'm not much one for wistfully staring at the horizon for the good ole days, but that is one thing I genuinely miss. I do very much love debates like this.[/spoiler]

[quote]There are definitely games where the fun can't be optimized out of--either because optimization [i]is[/i] the fun, or because of some clever work by the devs to make sure the easiest path is still fun, but I'm sure you've seen this happen at least once or twice? Where you find yourself doing something very bland and tedious, and then realize "Why am I doing this?"[/quote] I've never had that happen. For me, a significant part of [i]any[/i] game is optimizing the way I play to suit my needs. I've always had a natural drive to make things work efficiently. Hell, the only reasons I don't speedrun games are because I hate failure and I hate timers (because I hate failure, and timers are inherently a failure condition). I've always been good at optimizing things, and it's something that I do instinctively in everything I interact with. [quote]not every game needs to appeal to every player.[/quote] I do agree with this in general, but for the specific example of Pokémon, they've indicated in the past that they [i]want[/i] the game to appeal to a wide variety of players. Alienating the casual playerbase in a franchise whose player demographic is dominated by casuals and children doesn't make logical sense. [quote]Another way would be to figure out what it is about the mage class that's so fun, and then apply that to the other classes as well. The other classes can be different, but knowing the core of your game will help you make the game more fun, and more focused.[/quote] That's a much better way to handle those situations. Instead of deciding whether or not players are allowed to interact with a mechanic, just do your best to make the mechanic engaging so that players [i]want[/i] to engage with it. Forcing players to do something in hopes that they think it's their own idea only works for players that share your view of what's enjoyable. If a player doesn't like a mechanic, they're never going to believe it was their idea to engage with it because each forced interaction stands out by virtue of it [i]being[/i] forced. How many times have you come across a game where you can't skip, for example, an annoying minigame? The minigame is far more annoying [i]because[/i] you can't skip it than it would have been if you could have just ignored it. Every time that minigane pops up, you're thinking "why do I have to do this when I could be playing the part of the game that I [i]love[/i]?" It's far more effective to encourage players to [i]try[/i] something, then give them the option to continue engaging with it if they see fit. When players encounter a part of the game that they dislike, it won't be as prominent in their minds if it isn't thrust in front of them every ten minutes. Out of sight, out of mind. They'll be too busy enjoying the parts of the game that [i]they[/i] think are good to worry about it. [spoiler]I'll admit, I haven't even heard of most of the games you've referenced in these posts. I have no experience with them, so I can't make judgements on them. That's why I haven't responded to these sections, in case you happen to be wondering.[/spoiler] [quote]Tying this back to Pokemon, the appeal of the mainline Pokemon games, and the appeal of the Shadow Pokemon games are very different, at least for me. The appeal of the mainline games is about building your perfect team, and growing together to become the very best like no one ever was. But the appeal of the Shadow Pokemon games is all about the fact that you [i]don't[/i] ever have a perfect team, that you can't. You don't have access to all the Pokemon in the dex,[/quote] I [i]strongly[/i] disagree here. The draw for Pokémon XD (I still haven't played Colosseum) is the same as every Pokémon game: Collect all the guys and make the coolest, most effective teams I can with the Pokémon included in the title. [i]Most[/i] of the Pokémon games don't include the entire dex on their own. They have very limited selections until postgame, and even then, half of the dex is locked to transferring from older titles, trading, and events. By your logic, the mainline games shouldn't have the appeal of "building your perfect team" because you don't have access to all the Pokémon in the dex, [i]but that isn't the case.[/i] It's always been about [i]building the best team you can with the Pokémon that you can acquire.[/i] In every title, I have the "perfect" team of guys for that game, and that includes XD. [quote]and you need to constantly swap out Pokemon to try and purify everyone, while also creating a decent enough team to not get your butt kicked at every corner.[/quote] Remember how I said I purified every Pokémon in XD? I only purified like three of them manually, and that was just because I had to before the Purification Chamber became available. I [i]loathed[/i] the process of manual purification. Every other turn, my shadow Pokémon qould disobey orders, go into their recoil mode or whatever, and I'd have to waste valuable actions in a turn based game just telling them to cool their jets. It only got worse the closer they got to being purified, as they had their drawbacks occur more frequently. Not only was it in inherent conflict with my drive for efficiency, but it [i]obliterated[/i] the illusion that these Shadow Pokémon were "dangerous fighting machines built for battle." -blam!- please, they got one action for every three a normal Pokémon got because they were too busy whining about their conflicted emotions! I would have loved the idea of having a full team of shadow Pokémon, but they just felt like dead weight. As soon as I got access to the purification chamber, it became the only way that I purified my Pokémon. I enjoyed the game significantly more because of it. Now, you might say that this game wasn't for me, but that isn't at all the case! I [i]loved[/i] the story, the graphics blew my eight-year-old mind, and I really enjoyed the idea of stealing Pokémon from abusive trainers! There were so many things that XD did right that it is still my second favorite non-spinoff Pokémon game of all time. (I consider XD closer to mainline instead of a spinoff game like Mystery Dungeon or Ranger because the gameplay is identical to the main series.) [quote]that feeling, which I think would be strengthened by not giving you access to the Purification Chamber via the pause menu, or giving you mobile access to the boxes. It pulls away from the strategy of cobbling together the best team you can with what you've got.[/quote] Not at all! Again, it changes nothing about the strategy, just the frequency with which you're allowed to [i]think[/i] about that strategy. If I have to backtrack to the lab every time I want to change my team, I'm going to think about my team once and never strategize again. I hate backtracking. It's a waste of my time and I'm good enough to beat the game with what I've got. By putting barriers between me and team-building (THE thing I like about Pokémon), you are limiting my ability and willingness to strategize a good team for a specific fight. I [i]could[/i] spend 20 minutes running back through the dungeon to get to a PC and formulate an interesting team with a fun gimmick for the upcoming fight, or I can save myself 20 minutes of repeated content and just [i]hit it 'till it dies[/i] with the guys in my current team. Welp, braindead attack spam with an overlevelled team it is, then! That's the [i]opposite[/i] of what you were aiming for, no? [quote]Not having access to the boxes or Purification Chamber, though, encourages you to take more Shadow Pokemon with you, because if you're doing this one-by-one thing you have to trek all the way back to the last PC every time one gets purified. With a full team of Shadows, you can just swap out the head of the party.[/quote] It didn't. It just made me groan every time I went back through the same level to put a shadow Pokémon in the chamber. Also, I never did it one at a time. Backtracking is so obnoxious that I just waited until I had a bunch of new shadow Pokémon to drop in at once. Additionally, bringing shadow Pokémon in your party isn't any faster - you still have to backtrack to the relic stone, which is [i]even more[/i] walking than the purification chamber by virtue of it being in a cave in the back of a town. Not only do you have to do the same backtracking, but you have to use inefficient teams to boot. [quote]One unfortunate truth about game design, is a lot of casual gamers want very shallow games. This is why a lot of bland open worlds get heralded as the best games ever without fail. So if we're talking about trying to reach the widest audience possible, well, sure, you can make a very shallow game with as many choices as possible.[/quote] That's true. Breath of the Wild was by far the most lifeless open world game I've ever played, but it got constant praise for being the "pinnacle of the genre." That said, making a game casual-friendly [i]does not[/i] necessitate making it shallow. You just have to make it so that the depth isn't mandatory. Players that want to engage with it can, but casuals never even need to know it's there. [quote]If you want to make a game deep, though--if you want to make the kind of game someone can really get deep into and learn the mechanics inside and out, you need to start cutting that freedom. I'm not sure exactly how a graph would look if you graphed out freedom vs depth, but at least to a point, the less freedom you give to a player, the deeper you can make your game[/quote] I can't agree here, either. Taking away freedom doesn't make the game deeper, nor does giving more choices make a game shallow. I've played plenty of games where there was little depth and little freedom. On the other hand, Xenoblade Chronicles is a game with plenty of freedom [i]and[/i] depth. I wouldn't say that depth and freedom are correlated at all.

[quote]I've never had that happen. For me, a significant part of [i]any[/i] game is optimizing the way I play to suit my needs. I've always had a natural drive to make things work efficiently. Hell, the only reasons I don't speedrun games are because I hate failure and I hate timers (because I hate failure, and timers are inherently a failure condition). I've always been good at optimizing things, and it's something that I do instinctively in everything I interact with.[/quote] Really? I also really enjoy optimizing things, but even I've had it happen sometimes. The first thing that comes to my mind is some of the grinding I did in Terraria. Namely, for the Rod of Discord, and Flame Feather. The grinds were tedious no matter what, but when I got to the point where I set up AFK farming spots, that's when I realized I should just call it quits. [quote]I do agree with this in general, but for the specific example of Pokémon, they've indicated in the past that they [i]want[/i] the game to appeal to a wide variety of players. Alienating the casual playerbase in a franchise whose player demographic is dominated by casuals and children doesn't make logical sense.[/quote] If you ask me, that they want to appeal to a wide variety of players is exactly why they should make this spinoff more difficult/not about the same thing. The casuals have the mainline games, the hardcore players have the Shadow games. For a while, I thought they were doing this, actually, making the Legends spinoff games for the open world junkies, and letting the mainline games remain linear. Then they didn't, and I was very annoyed. [quote]That's a much better way to handle those situations. Instead of deciding whether or not players are allowed to interact with a mechanic, just do your best to make the mechanic engaging so that players want to engage with it. Forcing players to do something in hopes that they think it's their own idea only works for players that share your view of what's enjoyable. If a player doesn't like a mechanic, they're never going to believe it was their idea to engage with it because each forced interaction stands out by virtue of it being forced. How many times have you come across a game where you can't skip, for example, an annoying minigame? The minigame is far more annoying because you can't skip it than it would have been if you could have just ignored it. Every time that minigane pops up, you're thinking "why do I have to do this when I could be playing the part of the game that I love?" It's far more effective to encourage players to try something, then give them the option to continue engaging with it if they see fit. When players encounter a part of the game that they dislike, it won't be as prominent in their minds if it isn't thrust in front of them every ten minutes. Out of sight, out of mind. They'll be too busy enjoying the parts of the game that they think are good to worry about it.[/quote] Just to be clear, my quote/attitude is not some new revolutionary idea in game design. 99% of games already do this, but most people just don't even notice because, well, because they tricked you into thinking it's your own choice. I just put the concept into words. Clever level design, indirect tutorials, and the hardest but best way to do this, by making the part of the game that's the most fun also the most efficient, and so on. It makes players feel really clever and proud of themselves, when really that was the dev's intentions all along. Recently, I played Signalis, and without going into spoilers, this game was really really good at this. The puzzles in Signalis are all, honestly, super easy to solve, but for some reason they make you feel like a mastermind when you figure it all out. The reason comes down to how Signalis' levels are built. They show you all the pieces early on, but only let them come together much further down the line. Lots of great "aha" moments, making the player feel like a genius, when in reality, they were just playing right into the developer's vision. You could potentially make the argument of "well duh, those are puzzles!", but it applies to other facets of design too. Bringing up CrossCode as an example again, it has a very simple weakness/resistance system: fire and ice are opposites, and so are wave and shock. If you see an enemy using wave attacks, there's a good chance you can blast them with a thunderbolt for major damage, and vice versa. This gets the player into a way of thinking, where they can immediately read the battlefield just by the colors of enemies, and the kinds of attacks they use, and jump between elements. You really do feel like the Avatar, switching elements on a dime, and pulling off all these crazy attacks. If the game was a little bit more careless, it could have very easily fallen into the trap of players just kinda defaulting to one of their elements, instead of using all of them equally. This isn't even hypothetical--I [i]did[/i] fall into this trap while playing Harvestella, a game with a very similar "rapid swap between elements" battle system, and I only snapped out of it and realized how great the combat was when I went out of my way to swap classes on the regular. [quote]Now, you might say that this game wasn't for me, but that isn't at all the case! I loved the story, the graphics blew my eight-year-old mind, and I really enjoyed the idea of stealing Pokémon from abusive trainers! There were so many things that XD did right that it is still my second favorite non-spinoff Pokémon game of all time. (I consider XD closer to mainline instead of a spinoff game like Mystery Dungeon or Ranger because the gameplay is identical to the main series.)[/quote] No, I'd say the game just wasn't for you. It reminds me of I Am Setsuna. I loved this game's story, and I loved its art style, and I loved its whole premise. But, man, did I loathe the actual gameplay. I hated the way the combat was structured, and every time I got into a fight it was just so tedious. I wound up never finishing the game, because I tried to avoid every combat encounter and wound up too underlevelled to beat a boss. Despite that, I actually still love I Am Setsuna. I loved so much about it, it did so much right. But it wasn't for me. I'd say you have a similar experience with XD. As for the whole "Shadow Pokemon aren't dangerous super soldiers" bit, well, you do need to remember, we were nice trainers. We tried to keep them calm and stuff. The bad guys would've taken advantage of Hyper Mode. Heck, even as the hero [i]I[/i] took advantage of Hyper Mode once or twice. It is actually genuinely kind of scary when you fight using a Hyper Mode Shadow Pokemon. iirc, their Critical Hit Rate just skyrockets. [quote]That's the opposite of what you were aiming for, no?[/quote] Well, it's not a 100% thing. People will respond to it differently. Going back to the very first part you said, you're already a very optimization-minded person. You're the kind of guy who'd really love Re:CoM--you don't need that extra help! However, most players do. You give the players the ability to craft anywhere, they're going to craft whatever they can as soon as they can, you only give them access to crafting at crafting benches, they're going to stop and think about what it is they want to upgrade next. Now, I'll admit, I've seen this kind of thing happen in a few scenarios, but it is worth noting I haven't actually seen it in the context of a Pokemon team. Like, maybe it's different for some reason there? But if this mindset applies to the class swapping in Harvestella, I don't see why it wouldn't apply to Pokemon team building, too. [quote]That said, making a game casual-friendly does not necessitate making it shallow. You just have to make it so that the depth isn't mandatory. Players that want to engage with it can, but casuals never even need to know it's there.[/quote] Oh, yeah, 100%. If I implied that a casual friendly game can't be deep, I didn't mean to. I love a good easy to learn hard to master game. :p [quote]I can't agree here, either. Taking away freedom doesn't make the game deeper, nor does giving more choices make a game shallow. I've played plenty of games where there was little depth and little freedom. On the other hand, Xenoblade Chronicles is a game with plenty of freedom and depth. I wouldn't say that depth and freedom are correlated at all.[/quote] Well, it's not a 100% correlation. There are bound to be exceptions. From my experience, though, those exceptions are far and few between. I think a big part of it is just money--like do you spend your resources deepening the experience, or broadening it--but I also don't think that's the full picture. I think there's a lot of depth that can come directly from limiting freedom. The first thing that comes to my mind are knowledge gates--parts of the game where the player could theoretically do something the entire time, but they don't actually have the knowledge on how to do so until they find it later in the game. If you give the player total freedom to do whatever, though, then having a knowledge gate is impossible, because by its very definition it's a limitation on the player--it prevents them from accessing whatever is behind the gate.

[quote]Really? I also really enjoy optimizing things, but even I've had it happen sometimes. The first thing that comes to my mind is some of the grinding I did in Terraria. Namely, for the Rod of Discord, and Flame Feather. The grinds were tedious no matter what, but when I got to the point where I set up AFK farming spots, that's when I realized I should just call it quits.[/quote] See, I love being able to create AFK farming setups, especially if it involves exploiting loopholes in mechanics to make them work in ways that they [i]technically[/i] shouldn't. I've always enjoyed taking things apart, figuring out how things work, and putting them back together (or turning them into something entirely new). I was reverse engineering before I was old enough to know what engineering [i]was[/i]. While one could argue that I'm not playing [i]the game itself[/i] by creating an AFK farm, the game is still the toolbox I play with to get my engineering kick, so it's still the source of the fun that I'm having. [quote]If you ask me, that they want to appeal to a wide variety of players is exactly why they should make this spinoff more difficult/not about the same thing. The casuals have the mainline games, the hardcore players have the Shadow games.[/quote] I can actually agree with this reasoning to an extent, but I still have one problem with it: I wouldn't say that Pokémon XD is particularly "hardcore" compared to the main series; it's just more tedious. There are more tasks to do (purifying Pokémon) and they involve more grinding. That's it. Aside from the addition of the shadow type (which is easy to learn matchups for, given that it's effective against everything but itself), the gameplay is unchanged. Catching Pokémon is the same, levelling up and learning moves are the same, creating a balanced team composition is the same, the Pokémon are the same, and you're still gonna sweep the game if you spam Earthquake/insert-other-100-power-move-here. The only aspects of XD that are more "hardcore" leaning are the fact that everything is a double battle (Very cool, but not particularly hard. Even the new Scarlet/Violet DLC did that.) and the final boss that effectively has 7 Pokémon (really just 6 because 99% of players use the master ball on Lugia). [quote]Clever level design, indirect tutorials, and the hardest but best way to do this, by making the part of the game that's the most fun also the most efficient, and so on. It makes players feel really clever and proud of themselves, when really that was the dev's intentions all along.[/quote] Do people really feel smart when they figure out that the mechanics the game [i]tells you use to beat the game[/i] are [i]good at beating the game?[/i] Even when a game tries to be subtle and have the player "figure out" the correct response to a situation through gameplay instead of spelling it out with text, it still feels like the devs are holding your hand. This is [i]especially[/i] true of puzzle games, as there are usually only a few ways you can solve the puzzle (assuming there's even more than one). Getting to the only solution(s) doesn't feel like an accomplishment because all roads lead there eventually. Even if you're using core mechanics effectively, it's obvious that the devs wanted you to do that because it was [i]the only path forward.[/i] It never feels like "my idea," it's more of an "okay, it took this long to unscramble the anagram. Yippee." Do most people feel like they're clever for arriving at pre-determined answers? Maybe average gamers are just stupid or something, I don't know. [quote]This gets the player into a way of thinking, where they can immediately read the battlefield just by the colors of enemies, and the kinds of attacks they use, and jump between elements. You really do feel like the Avatar, switching elements on a dime, and pulling off all these crazy attacks. If the game was a little bit more careless, it could have very easily fallen into the trap of players just kinda defaulting to one of their elements, instead of using all of them equally.[/quote] This reminds me of the element weakness system in Persona games. Elemental affinities aren't obvious at first because each Persona has a unique set of weaknesses, resistances, and immunities (including element reflection, which redirects attacks at the caster) that are hidden until you attack it with each element. The main character has the ability to use multiple Personas, allowing them to switch their affinities and the attacks at their disposal. Oddly enough, despite my usual need to optimize, the most fun I've had lately was with a run where I [i]didn't[/i] allow myself to switch the protag's Persona. (This is due in large part to the fact that I have 2000+ hours between P5 and P5R.) I had Joker (protag) stick with his starting Persona the whole way through, limiting him to his "canonical" element affinities and attacks. The party members you get throughout the game cover every other element, so I had to use turns swapping my party members in battle to take advantage of enemy weaknesses (if I even had access to them by any given point in the game). I'm actually nearing the end of a second run like this. I've done my runs with 100% optimized Personas. I've built a Persona that's immune to all forms of damage and status effects, I've built several with 99 in every stat, and I've built two that can OHK each phase of the original final boss. I had my fin doing that, and now, since I have options, I'm having fun playing a new way. This is a great example of a way that players can [i]choose[/i] to impose challenges on themselves for fun without limiting the way other players are [i]allowed[/i] to engage with the game. [quote]No, I'd say the game just wasn't for you.[/quote] Ah, but I disagree! I would say that [i] Colosseum[/i] wasn't for me (which is why I still haven't played it), but the Purification Chamber in XD handily solved my only major gripe with the game. By adding alternative ways to play around purifying shadow Pokémon, they made the game appealing to players that wouldn't have liked it [i]without[/i] limiting the options for the players that enjoyed the old purification system. More types of players get to enjoy the game without adversely affecting the fans of the predecessor, which I'd say is objectively good. [quote]As for the whole "Shadow Pokemon aren't dangerous super soldiers" bit, well, you do need to remember, we were nice trainers. We tried to keep them calm and stuff. The bad guys would've taken advantage of Hyper Mode. Heck, even as the hero [i]I[/i] took advantage of Hyper Mode once or twice. It is actually genuinely kind of scary when you fight using a Hyper Mode Shadow Pokemon. iirc, their Critical Hit Rate just skyrockets.[/quote] Man, I'd love to have the option to be a bad guy in these games. [i]Give me more options![/i] I love games that let your actions decide the course of the story. [quote]I think a big part of it is just money--like do you spend your resources deepening the experience, or broadening it--but I also don't think that's the full picture. I think there's a lot of depth that can come directly from limiting freedom.[/quote] I agree here to some extent. I'm 100% with you on the cost aspect of it - it's obviously going to take more time and money to make a more complex game. That's a given. I think limiting freedom makes it [i]cheaper[/i] to add depth to the game. If your game has few options and mechanics, you have more time and budget to spare on making those mechanics [i]deeper[/i]. The more time and money you have to make your game, the more mechanics and choices you can add to the game without sacrifing depth. That graph of freedom and depth that you talked about should also include "budget" (which includes both time and money). At lower budgets, more restrictive games will have more depth. At higher budgets, however, the trends will even out, eventually stopping at the limitation of "this is the maximum depth a human mind can produce/comprehend."

[quote]See, I love being able to create AFK farming setups, especially if it involves exploiting loopholes in mechanics to make them work in ways that they technically shouldn't. I've always enjoyed taking things apart, figuring out how things work, and putting them back together (or turning them into something entirely new). I was reverse engineering before I was old enough to know what engineering was. While one could argue that I'm not playing the game itself by creating an AFK farm, the game is still the toolbox I play with to get my engineering kick, so it's still the source of the fun that I'm having.[/quote] Ah, that's a rare breed of gamer! Do you go in and study game design at all? This is the kind of mindset that would make you great at making games! (probably!) Meanwhile, I'm over here playing Harvestella and refusing to build a sprinkler because I like watering my crops myself. :p I haven't played it myself (and hopefully I get the name right), but there's a game called Factorio you would probably love. It's all about automating the process of creating and gathering materials and whatnot. There's a whole genre of these kinds of games, actually. I haven't played many of them, but I did enjoy Slime Rancher. [quote]I can actually agree with this reasoning to an extent, but I still have one problem with it: I wouldn't say that Pokémon XD is particularly "hardcore" compared to the main series; it's just more tedious. There are more tasks to do (purifying Pokémon) and they involve more grinding.[/quote] I disagree. You kind of admitted to not really engaging with the Shadow Pokemon mechanic as much as you were supposed to, so tbh it's kind of not surprising you didn't really see the increased difficulty the game has to offer. The Purification Chamber wasn't meant to be the main way you purify Pokemon I'm pretty sure. It was supposed to support you as your main way of purifying Pokemon was via battling with them. While I consider XD the better game overall, Colosseum was definitely a bit more true to its vision. The Shadow games [i]are[/i] about not having the perfect team like you would in the mainline games. Everybody I knew who played these games as a kid played this way. They always battled alongside their Shadow Pokemon, they never had the perfect team under their belt, and these games got pretty tough--especially XD where trainers could have multiple Shadows on their team. It's more than just an extra grind, it *should* fundamentally change the way you play the game. The only reason you didn't experience that is because, well, you kinda cheated. :p [quote]Do people really feel smart when they figure out that the mechanics the game tells you use to beat the game are good at beating the game? Even when a game tries to be subtle and have the player "figure out" the correct response to a situation through gameplay instead of spelling it out with text, it still feels like the devs are holding your hand. This is especially true of puzzle games, as there are usually only a few ways you can solve the puzzle (assuming there's even more than one). Getting to the only solution(s) doesn't feel like an accomplishment because all roads lead there eventually. Even if you're using core mechanics effectively, it's obvious that the devs wanted you to do that because it was the only path forward. It never feels like "my idea," it's more of an "okay, it took this long to unscramble the anagram. Yippee." Do most people feel like they're clever for arriving at pre-determined answers? Maybe average gamers are just stupid or something, I don't know.[/quote] You're definitely an outlier here. It's not that average gamers are stupid, but rather you seem to be better at seeing the man behind the curtain. As I mentioned, I don't know if you actually study game design, but one unfortunate side effect of doing so is once you know these tricks, they don't have as much of a hold on you. If you don't study game design, well, it's probably just the way your brain works. As you mentioned, you like understanding the way things work, and so for you, you can more clearly see the bread crumbs the devs have left for you. These things go over a casual player's head, though. They don't see the puzzle pieces clearly enough to realize that they're being tricked. Looking at Elden Ring as an example, you get all this hate for the Mountaintops of the Giants (even though it's one of the best zones) because of how linear it is, but tbh it's not really all that more linear than the earlier area Liurnia, or to a lesser extent, Caelid. Caelid and and the magic swamp castle are just a little more subtle about it. Caelid is literally just a big circle, and Liurnia is actually split into three separate paths, and whether you realize it or not, 99% of players are going to wind up following the path one way or another. [quote]This is a great example of a way that players can choose to impose challenges on themselves for fun without limiting the way other players are allowed to engage with the game.[/quote] I'm not against that sort of challenge run thing. Heck, Ender Lilies has an amazing system postgame where it lets you tweak stats and make things harder for yourself. Again, I'm not saying to go 100% anti-choice or anything. Giving players the ability to create different builds, and offering different playstyles is great. What I'm saying is that everything should be anchored to, and build towards, whatever the game's core focus is. Going back to my extreme example of removing all classes but mages, it comes down to what you want your game to be. Say, for example, you come to the conclusion that the core feature of this game is the ability to fuse spells together. However, the game's melee combat was detracting from this, because, well, you can't fuse spells together if you aren't using spells. This is only half hypothetical, because while I don't believe removing everything except magic is the correct way to go in this situation, this is kind of the situation that FFCC finds itself in. Magic really is at the core of this game in every way, but the game includes melee combat seemingly just for the sake of it. The game actually does sort of address this issue, by having every melee weapon have a Focus Attack, which does act in a similar way to spells, and can even be fused with spells just like normal, but the inclusion of melee combat leads a lot of folk to call the game "shallow", or "simple" because they aren't engaging with the mechanics that are really at the core of the experience. Now, I don't think melee combat should have been removed--again, that's the extreme example--but I do think it should have been disincentivized in some way, or altered to support the core experience somehow. Because as it is, if you do decide to go melee, and don't use your Focus Attacks, you won't really see what it is that actually makes the game so fun. [quote]More types of players get to enjoy the game without adversely affecting the fans of the predecessor, which I'd say is objectively good.[/quote] And to the end of just adding the Purification Chamber, I agree. I just don't think it's a good idea to give the player constant access to it. Hearing how you played the game, it's not that surprising that you'd like constant access, but I'd argue you weren't engaging with the game on its deepest level. You were engaging with it on the level of it being a regular Pokemon game, and I think that's a shame. I mean, sure, theoretically players who don't want to use it don't have to, but that's why I brought up my Harvestella example of how I was planning on just opening the pause menu and swapping to whatever class I needed at the time. It was a more optimal way to play, but was also sapping some of the fun out of the game. It was only once I realized the game didn't give me that option that I realized what I was about to miss out on. Because yes, in theory, just giving the players the option is better, because in theory, they can just ignore the feature if they don't like it. However, unless that player already has a mind for challenge runs or game design, chances are they're going to use it without thinking, and not realize that there's an alternative that's more fun right around the corner. Honestly, the fact that you liked your Persona challenge run so much makes me think that you [i]would[/i] enjoy engaging with the Shadow Pokemon mechanic more deeply if you gave it more of a chance. Just like how you don't have your best Personas all the time, engaging with the Shadow Pokemon mechanic at its fullest forces you to make due with what you have, to still build good teams but while also not just being able to make the best teams you can. [quote]Man, I'd love to have the option to be a bad guy in these games. Give me more options! I love games that let your actions decide the course of the story.[/quote] Well, while I disagree in this particular case, because Pokemon is already kind of riding the line of being a game about animal abuse, and it openly stepping out and saying "Go ahead and be an animal abuser" is something I very much do not approve of, if this was meant to be a counterargument, I would like to reemphasize I'm not saying that choice is bad. Players having choices is good. This is about making sure the choices they have don't detract from the core vision of the game. To make sure that no matter how they play, they're seeing the developer's vision. They don't have to see it exactly the same, but if there's a choice they can make that pulls them away from that vision, that choice shouldn't be there. I kinda ran out of room to address the freedom vs depth argument, but in short, I would argue that it's not 100% a budget thing, and that freedom itself can remove depth, but obviously only to an extent.

[quote]Ah, that's a rare breed of gamer! Do you go in and study game design at all? This is the kind of mindset that would make you great at making games! (probably!)[/quote] I've always been curious about the world of game design, but I've never actually looked into it. I don't know the first thing about coding, and I'm currently studying design technology (programs like AutoCAD and Revit) to get my degree. I've taken all of my off-major classes already, so I can't waste my uncle's money on classes that don't progress my degree requirements. [quote]I haven't played it myself (and hopefully I get the name right), but there's a game called Factorio you would probably love.[/quote] I haven't played too many games in this genre due to a lack of storage space (and, more importantly, [i]money[/i]), but the ones that I [i]have[/i] played are a ton of fun. I've spent hundreds of hours building redstone contraptions alone in Minecraft, not counting the several hundred more that I spent on architecture. I'm interested in a game called SatisFactory that I've watched my stepdad play, but I don't have any room on my hard drive right now. (As it is, I recently had to delete Cyberpunk to make room for updates on another game that I'm actively playing.) [quote]I disagree. You kind of admitted to not really engaging with the Shadow Pokemon mechanic as much as you were supposed to, so tbh it's kind of not surprising you didn't really see the increased difficulty the game has to offer.[/quote] Wouldn't playing without shadow Pokémon technically be [i]harder[/i] because most trainers have at least one Pokémon that's super-effective against your entire team? This is increasingly true for the late game, where bosses have 2-6 shadow Pokémon, including three shadow legendaries on the final boss' team. Also, to clarify, only [i]purifying[/i] them in the shadow chamber doesn't mean I didn't [i]use[/i] shadow Pokémon. I just took them out of my team when they got around 50-60% purified because they started going into Fever Mode more often and it got tedious. I actually really [i]liked[/i] them when they weren't smacking themselves in the face every turn. [quote]The Purification Chamber wasn't meant to be the main way you purify Pokemon I'm pretty sure. It was supposed to support you as your main way of purifying Pokemon was via battling with them.[/quote] I can't agree with that. The entire early plot was about finishing the chamber, and a lot of dialogue was about how "the chamber is gonna revolutionize purifying Pokémon! [i]This[/i] is the best way to do it, that's why we've spent 10 years off-camera building it!" Not only that, but the [i]only[/i] way to purify Shadow Lugia is to have 100% efficiency in [i]every set[/i] in the chamber. It's pretty clear that they wanted you to be constantly engaging with the chamber and optimizing the tempo mechanic or whatever it's called to progress towards that final goal. (Also, I enjoyed optimizing sets, but that should come as no surprise to you at this point.) I'd say manual purification was left in to support the chamber, not vice-versa. [quote]The only reason you didn't experience that is because, well, you kinda cheated. :p[/quote] Woah, there! If the devs tell the player "Hey, use this mechanic! We built it specifically so you would use it," it's not fair to call it cheating. Not self-imposing a challenge that the game clearly designed itself [i]away[/i] from isn't akin to breaking the game. Is playing Hades with the character upgrades/buffs (or whatever they are, I haven't played it myself) "cheating?" I'm happy to admit that I cheat in single player games when it looks fun, but that's a fundamentally different process. [quote]You're definitely an outlier here. It's not that average gamers are stupid, but rather you seem to be better at seeing the man behind the curtain. [...] If you don't study game design, well, it's probably just the way your brain works. These things go over a casual player's head, though. They don't see the puzzle pieces clearly enough to realize that they're being tricked. [/quote] Okay, that's fair. I am fairly neurodivergent (more than a few counselors have suggested getting tested for ASD, but I haven't been willing to get diagnosed), so I can totally see it being another thing my brain processes differently from most people. [quote]Again, I'm not saying to go 100% anti-choice or anything. Giving players the ability to create different builds, and offering different playstyles is great. What I'm saying is that everything should be anchored to, and build towards, whatever the game's core focus is. Going back to my extreme example of removing all classes but mages, it comes down to what you want your game to be. [/quote] That's reasonable, but it will ultimately come back to the question that I asked previously: Are you building the game for [i]you[/i] for for the [i]players?[/i] You and I both know the answer the other would make, but we're not the only game designers. If a designer wants a game that will be enjoyed by many, options are the way to go. If they want a game tailored to be perfect for people who share their vision, restrictions can work well for them. Ultimately, it will come down to [i]your[/i] metrics for what qualifies as "success." [quote]I mean, sure, theoretically players who don't want to use it don't have to, [...]. It was only once I realized the game didn't give me that option that I realized what I was about to miss out on.[/quote] That comes down to whether or not the player knows what they want. I don't have faith in humans as a general rule, but I do have enough faith in their selfishness to wholeheartedly believe that [i]most people know what they like[/i]. After all, most people are perfectly happy to ignore the harm they cause others if it gets them to their goal. [quote]Because yes, in theory, just giving the players the option is better, because in theory, they can just ignore the feature if they don't like it. However, unless that player already has a mind for challenge runs or game design, chances are they're going to use it without thinking, and not realize that there's an alternative that's more fun right around the corner.[/quote] Alternative that [i]might[/i] be more fun! That's an important word that you skipped over. That's why I advocate for making the player [i]try[/i] each mechanic. I absolutely agree that it's a shame when people don't engage with a part of the game that they might like because they didn't know it was there, but that's usually due to a lack of exposure. A truly great game exposes players to every tool in the sandbox for a short time, then lets them loose to play with the ones that they gravitate towards. If a player neglects the shovel, it shouldn't be because they didn't know it was there. It should be a choice they made because they were more interested in playing with the [i]hammer![/i] I'm also fond of letting players switch tools whenever they see fit. If that hammer-swinger decides they feel like digging now, the shovel should always be right there for them to pick up! [quote]Honestly, the fact that you liked your Persona challenge run so much makes me think that you would enjoy engaging with the Shadow Pokemon mechanic more deeply if you gave it more of a chance.[/quote] Remember, I only had fun with limitations [i]after[/i] burning myself out with 2k hours of non-challenge runs. Swapping Personas was what [i]initially[/i] got me into the game, and I would've found it pretty dull if I only had access to the one persona in my early playthroughs. I only started enjoying the self-imposed limitations after satisfying my itch for collection/optimization. If the game didn't have the Persona collecting and element swapping that drew me in for the sake of "focusing on the one guy every player is [i]guaranteed[/i] to use," I would never have finished (or possibly even played) what is now my favorite game of all time. [quote]Just like how you don't have your best Personas all the time, engaging with the Shadow Pokemon mechanic at its fullest forces you to make due with what you have, to still build good teams but while also not just being able to make the best teams you can.[/quote] I understand the sentiment here, but allowing myself to use shadow Pokémon (namely after 50% purification) wouldn't be "making due" with what I have, it would [i]increase[/i] the options available to me. By nature, not using shadow Pokémon [i]is[/i] restricting myself and limiting what I can use to make a team. Almost every Pokémon you get is a shadow Pokémon, so the pool of purified Pokémon that I can use to build a team is [i]inherently smaller[/i] than if I included shadow Pokémon. Additionally, it meant that most trainers had a counter for my [i]entire team.[/i] I was pursuing your goal of "making due with an 'imperfect' team" more than players that used shadow Pokémon by virtue of having [i]half[/i] of the available roster that you had at the same point in time. Using more shadows would accomplish the opposite of what you're suggesting and detract from your stated goal! [quote]Well, while I disagree in this particular case, because Pokemon is already kind of riding the line of being a game about animal abuse, and it openly stepping out and saying "Go ahead and be an animal abuser" is something I very much do not approve of. If this was meant to be a counterargument[/quote] Fair. It wasn't meant as a counterpoint, I just think the idea sounds fun. I am with you on the [i]animal abuse[/i] part now that I think about it, though. Yikes. I'm also close to the character limit now, so this is all I could fit. I actually had to delete pretty large chunks to post this, lol. Before I run out of space, I buried my treasure in th

[quote]Game design[/quote] Most game designers actually don't recommend going to school for it anyway. You're much better off studying it on your own. That's what I do! I haven't tried my hand at coding yet, but that's my goal this year if I can make enough monies to buy a new computer. Even if I never get to the coding part, though, studying game design is fun in it of itself. Plus, you could always try your hand at making a board or card game or something. I've actually got the foundations of a card game written into my laptop! If you're interested, I would recommend looking up Game Maker's Toolkit and Adam Millard - Architect of Games on YouTube. They're the main ones I watch. Extra Credits is, like, alright, too, but they used to be a lot better. Their other shows are still good, but their game design stuff hasn't been as great as it used to be. [quote]Satisfactory[/quote] That's the one I meant, actually, not Factorio. Whoops. :p [quote]Playing without Shadow Pokemon[/quote] I mean, theoretically, yes, not using Shadow Pokemon means the enemy has one Pokemon that's super effective against your entire team, but, er, let's be honest here, the Shadow type moves all kind of suck. They become scary when paired with Hyper Mode, but without Hyper Mode, you're better off just using regular type moves. Ah, you saying that you did at least use Shadow Pokemon makes a bit more sense now, though. Your previous comments implied that you basically never did--that you stuck with a team of normals, and let the Chamber do all the hard work. I don't actually recall Hyper Mode making them hit themselves, though, if I'm being honest. I just remember it meaning they sometimes would straight up ignore you, and do something you didn't tell them to--like attack their partner. Which is still bad, which is why you don't let them stay in Hyper Mode if you can help it. They do go into Hyper Mode more as they get more purified, but I never found it to be unmanagable. [quote]Purification Chamber[/quote] I'll be honest, it's been a hot minute since I've played the game, so I may be misremembering, but I do remember the Chamber being a big help, but that my main method of purification was still through battling. That could just be my Colosseum bias sticking through, though, as I played Colosseum more than XD. Even so, I still feel like the game wanted you to stick with Shadow Pokemon all the way through, and use the Chamber to purify others in the background. [quote]Cheating[/quote] Well, I was using it more of a "Haha, you cheater! *lightly nudges you with shoulder*" kind of way. :p You didn't [i]actually[/i] cheat. It's more that it doesn't sound like you engaged with the mechanic to its fullest. [quote]You or the gamers[/quote] No matter the answer, though, your audience actually doesn't know what they want a lot of them time. Most of them will say they do, most of them think they do, but most of them really really don't. This isn't just a game design thing either, this is just a media thing in general. People who don't actually write *think* they might know some amazing thing they'd add to the story to make it better, when actuality it would kind of suck, and people who *think* they might know how to make a game great but don't actually go too deep into game design, would wind up coming up with a pretty awful idea. One great example of this is the 343 Halo games. The reason the story sucks so bad in these games is 343 wasn't willing to stick to its guns. They kept giving the fans what the fans wanted instead of following their own vision, and as a result you get.. Well, Halo 5, which just backpedals on everything that Halo 4 did, and then from what I heard Halo Infinite backpedals on everything Halo 5 did, because they just won't stick with what they've got. Which I guess also addresses your next question of whether players know what they want. I watched a video fairly recently that explained why they don't in probably a better way than I could. It wasn't about video games, but I think it still gets the point across. I'd recommend watching Overly Sarcastic Productions' video about "The Noodle Incident". [quote]The shovel[/quote] To an extent you're correct. The problem, however, is sometimes having a choice actually removes the choice. Like, for example, let's say that you always have the option to dig. You never even need to actually equip the shovel. Well, in doing so, now the player doesn't need to choose between the hammer and the shovel, they can just do both, and 99% of players will just use both without actually thinking much about it. However, let's say hypothetically this is actually a team-based game, and the real core of the game was actually to have one player use the shovel, and one to use the hammer, but they let the player have both just for the sake of giving them the option, and working together is where the real fun of this game lies. Even if you put a little box in the menu that says "Always have shovel" 99% of players aren't going to even consider unchecking it, and they lose out on the fun teamwork experience because of it. QoL features have to be handled very carefully, because to an extent all QoL features lift some weight off the player's brain, but if you do that too much, you can wind up sucking the life out of your game. [quote]The roster[/quote] I can see where you're coming from, but your roster is still limited either way. The thing about using regular Pokemon, though, is they can grow with you. You can continue to take them through your adventure as you keep going. If you use Shadow Pokemon, though, you can't. They're locked in at certain levels until purified. Or in other words, with Shadow Pokemon, it's like you're bringing in a whole new team to every level, but with purified Pokemon, sure your roster may be limited by how many Pokemon you've purified, but your team will become more and more set in stone as you progress through the game. Not only that, but you acknowledged yourself that Shadow Pokemon are harder to handle. They have their Hyper Mode to deal with, which is a very powerful double edged sword. [quote]Before I run out of space, I buried my treasure in th[/quote] There's a line in Splatoon 2 where Pearl says "By the way, Marina, make sure you don't eat the", and then Marina panics and says "Don't eat the what?! Your text box ran out of room!". :p

[quote]Game Design[/quote] I might check some videos out at some point, but like everything else in my life, it will be a mood thing. I have two modes: [i]I am hyperfixating on X and won't do anything else. Don't need food, don't need sleep, don't know what time or even day it is[/i] mode and [i]I literally could not care less. That is such a non-factor to me right now that I will forget it exists on mere moments[/i] mode. Like, if I'm absorbed in a book and someone says something to me, I might say something in acknowledgement at the time, but I won't remember that anybody even spoke to me a few hours later. [quote]The Shadow type moves all kind of suck.[/quote] My friend, that's either the Colosseum bias kicking in, or you've been using the [i]wrong shadow moves[/i]. https://m.bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Shadow_move In XD, there were quite a few that were absolutely terrifying. While a lot of them were limited to niche support effects, some of the attacks were pretty strong. Aside from Shadow Blitz (40 power, 100% accuracy) and Shadow Rush (55, 100%), most of the shadow attacks had high power and/or hit all enemies. Shadow Rave (70, 100%, AoE), Shadow Break (75, 100%), Shadow Bolt (75, 100%, paralysis) are some of the [i]mid-level[/i] shadow moves in terms of power. Remember, [i]these are always super-effective[/i] against non-shadow Pokémon. In other words, if you used a team of shadow Pokémon and resisted them, you were playing on easy mode :P While I will concede that most of the shadow Pokémon in early-mid game didn't have access to the better moves, that has always been the case for non-shadow moves as well. When was the last time you encountered a trainer using Earthquake before the 8th gym? I stand firmly by my stance that the game was easy until the final boss, and I was using a team that was selected from a limited pool and was [i]also[/i] weak to half of the Pokémon in the endgame. (Remember, XD started putting multiple shadow Pokémon on trainers halfway through the game, especially on bosses.) At the end of the day, the game was made for children. Children have always been GF's target audience, and they'll most likely continue to be unless they stop playing entirely. Hell, they even scrapped the idea of revealing that [i]Wes[/i] was Michael's dad, and that [i]he[/i] was the mastermind behind Cipher's revival because it wouldn't be kid friendly. [quote]I don't actually recall Hyper Mode making them hit themselves, though[/quote] I don't know how Hyper Mode worked in Colosseum, but Fever Mode in XD could cause shadow Pokémon to take recoil damage from attacks. I've always had an obsession with keeping my HP full after battle in video games (In Pokémon, this was usually by killing things before they could attack me, but that wasn't always feasible in double battles), so recoil damage is a huge pet peeve of mine. [quote]People knowing what they want[/quote] Yeah, that makes sense, but I've always been unwilling to believe/accept that. I'd sooner die than be a part of a species where people happily manipulate, hurt, and kill each other for things that they don't even know they want. For the sake of my own mental stability, I have to continue assuming that people commit atrocities because they [i]do[/i] know what they want. I can't forgive such acts either way, but I refuse to believe that all of that suffering didn't even serve a -blam!-ing purpose. It's just too depressing. [quote]The shovel[/quote] The example you brought up made sense in the context of co-op games, but I don't play those in any capacity. Remember, I'm not a people person. That said, I'm perfectly cool with giving meaning to choices through opportunity cost. Back to my initial example, the player had to put down the hammer in order to pick up the shovel. Every moment that they spend shovelling is a moment that they [i]can't[/i] spend hammering. To tie this in with the original example of the portable PC in Sword and Shield, the opportunity cost was fairly small since it was on a per-battle basis. Each battle you do with one set of Pokémon is experience that [i]didn't[/i] go to the guys in the PC. Bringing a team of weaker Pokémon means you can't use the strong guys to win that battle. You've expressed two ideals that are in direct contradiction with each other: You want players to spend more time shaking up their teams and using new guys, but you want them to have less access to the [i]only place you can change your team.[/i] The longer the gap between PCs, the less players are able to switch their teams. More importantly, the more experience your PC Pokémon are missing, the less likely players are to use them because they're now ridiculously underlevelled. This is fine when you've got two towns that are just a short route apart, but what about the times when you've got a route leading into a cave, followed by another route? That's a lot of XP to miss out on, and given that wild Pokémon start out significantly below trainer levels to begin with, the gap only gets wider. Now, let's talk about a game that [i]has[/i] portable PCs, Pokémon Sword/Shield. Because players can switch up their team from the menu, they were able to make [i]longer[/i] routes and caves without worrying about the player needing to heal. Gaps between towns are significantly larger, allowing for more trainers and a larger world. This didn't amount to much overall because the trainers in Sword/Shield were set to [i]baby mode[/i], but imagine if they were actually reasonably strong! That freedom could be well used to make a longer, more challenging game while still giving players the [i]option[/i] to backtrack and heal if they aren't up for the challenge. [quote]The roster[/quote] To be clear, I'm not saying that bringing fresh teams of shadow Pokémon is without difficulty. (Well, I did say it was "easy mode" earlier in this post, but that was a joke.) I was just pointing out that my playstyle more closely fit the goal that you outlined initially (making do with a team built from a limited roster) because my restrictions on shadow Pokémon meant I had [i]objectively, numerically[/i] fewer choices for who I could put on my team at any given point in time. The playstyle I went with on my most recent playthrough unintentionally stayed closer to your stated goal than the playstyle you were advocating for. Something that I forgot to mention entirely is that my [i]initial[/i] playthrough with my father was in 2006, when I was eight. Most of what I've talked about is from when I replayed it 4-5 years ago. I know that we used shadow Pokémon a lot in my first run, but my memory of that time is too limited for me to use it as a source for points in a debate. The only thing I [i]do[/i] distinctly remember is that we had a great time drawing up plans on paper for the "perfect purification chamber" to purify Shadow Lugia (before internet guides were a thing). That was one of the last things that we ever did together, so it's one of my core memories of the game.

[quote]Shadow Moves[/quote] Yeah, it could be my Colosseum bias here. Colosseum only had Shadow Rush. I do remember XD adding more, but I don't remember them being all that good, but it's been a minute, so who knows? Dang, I didn't know about the Wes/Michael thing. Wes was the default name for the guy in Colosseum, right? Maaan, that'd suck. :p I'm starting to remember how Fever Mode worked now. I forgot they changed it, tbh. Maybe I need to replay XD sometime. Which I would gladly do if we got a remaster! :D [quote]People don't know what they want[/quote] Let me be clear, I'm speaking specifically when it comes to media here, not life as a whole. Like, people might think they know what they want in a movie, but if you were to take someone who doesn't actually work on movies, and made a movie exactly how they wanted it to be.. It would suck. Same goes for games. Once you study how to write/design/etc., then you can know what does/doesn't work better. I would say most people do know what they want out of their life, because that's something their more familiar with. I just don't think they know what they want when it comes to making a game. [quote]Portable PC[/quote] See, you talked about wanting players to mix things up, and not being able to because of missing out on XP, but that's not how Shadow Pokemon work remember? In my cringy Pokemon Cipher fanfic, the big plot twist was that the main character was set with what was essentially a timed lock on her heart, so that she became a Shadow Pokemon after a set amount of time. So she's a normal Pokemon up until the point where her heart just suddenly locks, and she becomes a Shadow Pokemon. Was bringing this up an excuse to rant about my cringy Pokemon fanfic? Yes, but also, the reason I wrote the story this way, is because Cipher knew that if they just locked her heart straight away, she'd be a lot weaker because Shadow Pokemon don't gain XP. So, the whole argument about not switching out Pokemon because you'll miss out on XP fits within the context of a regular Pokemon game, but in a Shadow Pokemon game, your Pokemon aren't gaining XP most of the time anyway. [spoiler]Well, okay, they technically *do* gain XP, but they don't level up until they're purified[/spoiler] The limited boxes access to boxes is just designed to get players to actually think about the teams they're making. You mentioned that you still put the same amount of thought into things, but this is a trap that most players will fall into. The more easily accessible something is, the less they think about it. I think we may just have to agree to disagree on this one, but here is the future that I see; A player is going along their happy way, with a full team of normal Pokemon. They get in a fight, catch a Shadow Pokemon, and rather than going like "Oh, I should add this guy to my team!" they just open up the Purification Chamber, plop them in, and go about their merry way with nary a second thought. My example with the shovel was co-op focused, but it applies to single player games, too. When a player can do both, they're not going to bother making a choice. [quote]The roster[/quote] But surely, with your team of regulars, you gradually started to fall into keeping the same few Pokemon on your team? Like, even I kept one or two regulars on my team as my backup calvary, surely with a team of all regulars you gradually drifted towards your favorite Pokemon. This is why I feel like you didn't hit the vision quite as I imagine it. With a team of full Shadows (or in my case, 4 Shadows and 2 Regulars) your team is *always* changing, right up until the end of the game. Like, I'm pretty sure the team I went into the final dungeon with wasn't the team I beat the game with. Shadow Lugia was one of the ones I never purified I think. I don't remember if I ever set up the purification chamber properly or not. It sounds like a fun memory. I hope I can have kids and give them those kinds of memories one day! :D Tbh, though, I'll be honest, if we got a sequel with these changes (PC anywhere, and all that), then I wouldn't be thrilled, but I wouldn't actually care all that much. I would mostly just be annoyed if we got a remaster that added these changes. I remember both Colosseum and XD having really nice difficulty curves, and I would hate for them to dumb them down.

[quote]Yeah, it could be my Colosseum bias here. Colosseum only had Shadow Rush. I do remember XD adding more, but I don't remember them being all that good, but it's been a minute, so who knows?[/quote] To be fair, a lot of the moves in XD [i]are[/i] pretty useless. It's just that the ones you start encountering on endgame trainers are definitely a threat to be aware of. That said, I'd still say the game is far from "difficult" without any self-imposed challenges. I haven't talked about it in this thread, but one challenge that I always do (more due to OCD than any actual desire for challenge) is "Pokéball only." The [i]only[/i] type of Pokéball I am allowed to use for catching Pokémon is the default red and white variant. (I sometimes do Premier Ball only, but that's only in games where you can buy them in bulk like X/Y.) In XD, the lower catch rate comes with a much larger impact on difficulty than in other games because you're catching Pokémon from *trainers* in *double battles.* It's not much harder when a trainer only has one shadow Pokémon, as you can just beat the rest of their team before catching it to remove all other threats. That said, when trainers start having 2+ shadows later in the game, it gets harder to survive while attempting to catch multiple Pokémon with the lowest catch rate ball. Since I didn't let myself "skip" any shadow Pokémon, I had to actually catch all of them in one go or reload my previous save. The only exception to the "no skipping" rule was Greevil, due to two factors: -The dude literally has four shadow legendaries and three normal shadows. Sometimes you just don't have enough Pokéballs for that. -His uncaptured shadows stay with him for rematches instead of having to wait for Miror B (the best character in all of Pokémon) to find them. [quote]Dang, I didn't know about the Wes/Michael thing. Wes was the default name for the guy in Colosseum, right? Maaan, that'd suck. :p[/quote] Yep, Wes was the protag from Colosseum. I don't remember the [i]original[/i] source of the information, so take it with a grain of salt, but I believe the person who I heard it from was Chuggaaconroy on YouTube. He researches the -blam!- out of the games he plays for the channel, so I've got a fair amount of trust in what he said. [quote]See, you talked about wanting players to mix things up, and not being able to because of missing out on XP, but that's not how Shadow Pokemon work remember?[/quote] Oh, I did completely forget about that part. It would definitely be more applicable to main series games, then. I'd still like more access to the PC, though, for reasons that I mentioned later in this thread, but [i]before[/i] I typed this sentence. [quote]I think we may just have to agree to disagree on this one,[/quote] Yeah, I figured it would be that way from the start. Our views on game design are pretty mutually exclusive, but I wouldn't say either one of them is "right" or "wrong." We just have different priorities for what we like to see in games, and that's fine. It's still fun to debate the merits of each view. [quote]But surely, with your team of regulars, you gradually started to fall into keeping the same few Pokemon on your team? Like, even I kept one or two regulars on my team as my backup calvary, surely with a team of all regulars you gradually drifted towards your favorite Pokemon.[/quote] That's just the thing: I [i]wanted[/i] to switch up my team, but I couldn't because it required me to backtrack through the entire dungeon to find a PC. There were many times that I was like "Oh, I want to add this guy to my team! Too bad there isn't a PC here." By the time I got to the next PC, I'd either forgotten about that Pokémon that I wanted to add or they were just too weak compared to my current team to be worth using. You reminded me of something in one of your earlier responses that I think would be a good compromise: I'd be cool with bringing back the "You caught this new guy! Do you want to add him to the team or send him to the PC?" dialogue after battle. That would let me switch out my team at a more sustainable pace without having to backtrack. That said, it would still bother me to not be able to adjust my team to account for the type matchups that I'd be gaining/losing with the switch, so I wouldn't make use of that feature as often as I'd like. [quote]Shadow Lugia was one of the ones I never purified I think. I don't remember if I ever set up the purification chamber properly or not. It sounds like a fun memory. I hope I can have kids and give them those kinds of memories one day! :D[/quote] Do it! (Not the having kids part, we have too many humans in this world as it is. Adopt somebody that has no family if you want a child!) XD is definitely worth playing again. I've also been itching to replay it lately, but as I said in the first post, my GameCube's disc reader is broken :/ [quote]Tbh, though, I'll be honest, if we got a sequel with these changes (PC anywhere, and all that), then I wouldn't be thrilled, but I wouldn't actually care all that much. I would mostly just be annoyed if we got a remaster that added these changes.[/quote] I'd personally be more annoyed if they remastered a game that I enjoy and [i]didn't[/i] add the quality of life features that modern games in the series have. As mentioned, I don't remember Pokémon games ever being particularly "difficult," so there's not much more "dumbing down" that could even happen outside of removing battle mechanics. You can already faceroll every game in the series with one or two Pokémon, and I did so rather frequently as a kid. I hated grinding, so my endgame team was usually just an overlevelled starter and a bunch of route 1 'mons that were still the same level that I caught them at. Hell, the only Pokémon I used to beat the Champion in Pokémon Silver (when I was 5 years old) were my level 74 Typhlosion and level 30-something Red Gyarados. The rest of my team was below level 15. Remember, [i]five-year-old me was a dumba[b][/b]ss.[/i] He was trapped in Elm's lab for an hour until his mom read the dialogue for him and told him that he needed to pick a Pokémon! If that idiot could sweep the older, more "difficult" games, anybody can do it.

[quote]Shadow moves/pokeballs[/quote] I remember back in Colosseum, you can catch a Misdreavous that can learn Shadow Ball. Every time I've played Colosseum, this Misdreavous has been a staple of my team (i.e., one of the two normals I carry around), but as this was my first real Pokemon game, I wasn't too familiar with the moves. When she learned Shadow Ball, me and my sister thought that was a Shadow Pokemon move, and I almost didn't want to purify her so that she'd keep her Shadow Ball. :p In any case, no wonder you hate the grind to purify Shadow Pokemon! You're already putting an extra grind on yourself to catch everything with regular Pokeballs! Losing all that purification progress must be demoralizing if you fail for any reason. The grind really isn't that bad, otherwise. Aside from the legendaries, anyway. [quote]Wes/Michael[/quote] I genuinely can't imagine Wes restarting Cipher. I could totally see him as the guy who started the Pokemon lab, but this dude went through so much crap to take Cipher down the first time. He was a reformed criminal and everything! But of course, he is a silent protagonist, and probably the edgiest protagonist in Pokemon, so I guess I can sorta see it happening? It'd totally ruin my cringy Pokemon fanfic, though, where he shows up as a lone drifter character and rescues the protag when she collapses from exhaustion in the desert, though! [quote]Right/wrong game design[/quote] I'm kind of split on this, actually. Now, let me be clear, I'm not saying I'm better than you and I'm right--it is totally feasible (and probably even likely) that I'm a little too strict on this issue. Like I mentioned before that my "removing all classes but mage" is an extreme example, but at the same time, I'm hoping to try to start making a game this year, and that game is literally me doing exactly that! :p However, on the flip side, I feel like this is an issue that's hard to catch/reconcile until you see it first hand. Giving players choices *can* backfire. I think you're the kind of person where it very much doesn't--which is pretty awesome by the way, it even hits me sometimes, and I know about the issue--but for a lot of players it really does. I feel like if you were to make a game with the mindset of "give everyone all the choices and those who want to limit themselves will", you might find yourself demoralized when nobody winds up using the choices you've provided them. They just take whatever route is easiest. Depending on the game in question, this could easily lead to backlash and negative reviews. I would argue there is a "right" way to make games, but it's probably somewhere in the middle of where we're at. We're both extremists! :D [quote]Mobile PC[/quote] I mean, if we really want to get into potential solutions, there could be a "temporary box". Like, when you catch a new Pokemon, you do get to switch around your team, but only when you catch a new Pokemon. I would personally say this should also do something so that your "state" is preserved, though. Like, if you swap out a Pokemon with 50% health and paralysis, then the new guy also gets 50% health and paralysis. When the game is built for it, I actually think that turn based games that heal you to full after every battle, and refill your resources like mana, are best, but Pokemon isn't really built that way, so minimizing cheap heals is pretty vital, I think. But tbh, the mobile PC bugs me less than the mobile Purification Chamber. If somehow, we were actually making this thing, the compromise we would probably come to is no mobile Chamber, but letting the mobile PC slide. :p Like, I've got problems with the mobile PC, but at least you're still encouraged to use Shadow Pokemon that way. [quote]Memories[/quote] Haha, I didn't mean XD specifically, I just meant memories with playing video games together in general. Some of my favorite memories of my mummy are when we first got Mario Kart: Double Dash. Me and my sister were so excited to play it. The whole family was there unpacking the box, and we were practically squealing with excitement, when my mummy turned around and said "Ah-ah-ah, [i]we[/i] get the first game!", and then my mummy and step dad played the first couple of races while we watched. I miss those days. :( [quote]QoL/Difficulty[/quote] I mean, I guess I can sort of see where you're coming from, but I'm not sure I agree. Like, I mentioned I'm a huge fan of the new EXP Share, but even so, I am not a fan of how they put the new EXP Share in Shining Pearl, a game which formerly did not have it. One thing that has totally slipped my mind until now, actually, is how they handled Holy and Gravity Rings in FFCC. These spells usually need to be fused together from other spells, making them a decent effort to cast--in multiplayer multiple people need to work together, and in single player they take up extra Command Slots. However, the remaster added in the Holy Ring and Gravity Ring that let you cast them without fusion. You could argue this was a QoL feature, making it easier to cast some difficult to cast spells, and if that's all they were I would probably hate them, but one neato thing about them is that they're unlockables. You don't just start with these things, you need to put in a lot of work to unlock them. And, furthermore, you can only unlock them in the postgame, so the base game needs to be played old school! Now, there's an argument to be made that having to unlock a QoL feature does kind of undermine the point, but tbh I probably wouldn't mind either the mobile PC, or the mobile Chamber if they were unlocked through some optional challenge. With the Chamber specifically, preferably a postgame thing. It's a minor difference, but firstly this makes it seem more like something I had to work for, rather than just someone holding my hand, but on top of that, since you didn't have access to them until you complete this challenge, you are already in the mindset of working around your limitations, and are less likely to fall into that mindless state.

[quote]Shadow Ball on Misdreavus[/quote] Fun fact: Shadow Ball was a physical move at the time! Remember how I was telling you about the physical/special split? Ghost type moves were all physical before the Gen IV games. If you were to get a Misdreavus with Shadow Ball in a modern game, it would be even stronger because it would scale off of Misdreavus' 85 base Special Attack instead of its 60 base Attack! (That jumps up to 105 base special attack if you evolve it into Mismagius, which didn't exist in Gen III.) [quote]In any case, no wonder you hate the grind to purify Shadow Pokemon! You're already putting an extra grind on yourself to catch everything with regular Pokeballs! Losing all that purification progress must be demoralizing if you fail for any reason. The grind really isn't that bad, otherwise. Aside from the legendaries, anyway.[/quote] Yeah, I could see that being the case. I can't stand repeating the same stuff that I just did (*cough* backtracking), so losing any significant amount of progress usually results in me turning off the game and finding something else to do. That said, I don't tend to have as much of a problem with traditional RPG grinding these days, it was more of an issue when I was a kid. [quote]I'm hoping to try to start making a game this year, and that game is literally me doing exactly that! :p[/quote] Ooh, good luck! Remember to hide a shovel somewhere as an easter egg in reference to this conversation :P [quote]I feel like if you were to make a game with the mindset of "give everyone all the choices and those who want to limit themselves will", you might find yourself demoralized when nobody winds up using the choices you've provided them. They just take whatever route is easiest.[/quote] I wouldn't really take issue with it, honestly. If that's how the majority of players decide to play the game, that's their choice. That's the reason they're in there. I'd be far more disappointed if a feature that I [i]forced[/i] players to engage with ended up turning players away from the game. [quote]I would argue there is a "right" way to make games, but it's probably somewhere in the middle of where we're at. We're both extremists! :D[/quote] We are both extremists, but I wouldn't say there's a "right" way to make games. That's too limiting. It's more of a matter of finding the "right" games for the player. There is no perfect game design philosophy that makes every player happy, so what works for one player won't always work for another. If developers were to stumble across that "right" way you mentioned, wouldn't everybody start to design games that way? (The massive surge of knockoff 'Battle Royale' trashware that followed Fortnite's commercial success comes to mind. We barely got any decent video games for a year because so many devs were too busy trying to make quick money off the trend.) And what of the players that don't enjoy the games produced as a result? Are they now "wrong" for not liking them? [quote]I mean, if we really want to get into potential solutions, there could be a "temporary box". Like, when you catch a new Pokemon, you do get to switch around your team, but only when you catch a new Pokemon. I would personally say this should also do something so that your "state" is preserved, though. Like, if you swap out a Pokemon with 50% health and paralysis, then the new guy also gets 50% health and paralysis.[/quote] I could roll with most of that idea. I'm not sold on the idea of preserving the state for [i]each[/i] of your Pokémon, though, as the newly caught guy is, in all likelihood, already paralyzed and at red HP from being captured. It will most likely be lower health and level than whatever you swapped out for it. If you're also trading out other Pokémon at the same time while keeping each of their states, your team is keeping the total damage% while losing a (probably significant) number of levels by virtue of the Pokémon being in the box for however long. That's just a pure downgrade. Instead, I like what Sword and Shield did. Each Pokémon's state is stored when you put the in [i]the box[/i]. If you later decide to re-add the same Pokémon to your team (before healing at the Pokémon Center), they'll be exactly as you left them. I'd personally make it so that the Pokémon Center [i]doesn't[/i] heal the guys in the PC boxes, making who you switch out and when more meaningful. [quote]When the game is built for it, I actually think that turn based games that heal you to full after every battle, and refill your resources like mana, are best, but Pokemon isn't really built that way, so minimizing cheap heals is pretty vital, I think.[/quote] I'm of the mind that refilling health after battle is fine (especially in open world action RPGs, maybe not as much for turn-based RPGs), but I'm iffy on refilling SP/Mana/resource bars after each battle. That's actually a resource that I like having meaningful limitations on, oddly enough. As you mentioned for other things, an SP bar causes you to be mindful of what you do in battle. You need to decide if you'd rather use that big attack on these trash mobs or save it for the boss. (I'm all for giving players items to restore SP/Mana, but it's on them to decide if they want to use them.) Pokémon is the exception. I don't really care one way or another about the PP system. [quote]But tbh, the mobile PC bugs me less than the mobile Purification Chamber. If somehow, we were actually making this thing, the compromise we would probably come to is no mobile Chamber, but letting the mobile PC slide. :p Like, I've got problems with the mobile PC, but at least you're still encouraged to use Shadow Pokemon that way.[/quote] How about this: Players get access to the Purification Chamber through their PDA, but the chamber only starts with a few slots unlocked. How do you unlock more? By purifying Pokémon, of course! (Also, maybe after defeating key bosses.) No matter what method you use, purifying a certain number of Pokémon will trigger an email from Professor Krane saying that they've managed to boost the chamber's capacity, unlocking a new set for use. If players only use the chamber, it will take longer to unlock more slots because you can only purify a few Pokémon at once. This encourages players to engage with both methods without enforcing either one. [quote]Now, there's an argument to be made that having to unlock a QoL feature does kind of undermine the point, but tbh I probably wouldn't mind either the mobile PC, or the mobile Chamber if they were unlocked through some optional challenge.[/quote] I'm 100% with you on this one. I feel that [i]basic[/i] QoL stuff should be available from the start, but bigger changes like the mobile Purification Chamber are absolutely worth using as a reward for completing objectives. Not only does this help players become aware of the [i]value[/i] of the change, it also gives them more goals to aim for and can extend a player's interest in the game. I [i]love[/i] goals like that. Pokémon Emerald Rogue, a prominent fan game that turns Pokémon into a rogue-like, does an [i]extremely[/i] good job with this. The "hub" before starting a run is extremely bare bones at first, but as you complete objectives, you unlock more merchants and features. Objectives vary from making progress in a run, completing runs in various gamemodes, acquiring specific Pokémon, completing a run with only one type, trading your whole team for random Pokémon whenever possible, et cetera. These unlock more and more features for the hub, permanent items to buy from hub shops, the inclusion of Pokémon from more generations, access to mega evolution, and other goodies to help enjoy the game more. Those same rewards would cheapen the experience for some players if they were just given out for free, but because you had to [i]earn them[/i], they felt deserved.