Forums / Media / Video Games

Perhaps it's a bad time to discuss Pokémon with the Palworld lawsuit going on right now, but why does it feel like only Pokémon gotten backlash over splitting EXP to the party starting in Gen 6 whereas other monster taming games don't despite also having that feature?

-Palworld: Has Gen 8+ Exp Share
-Cassette Beasts: Has Gen 8+ Exp Share, also allows partners to quickly catch up if their level is lower than the player
-Abomi Nation: Rather than having individual monsters having their own level, they share the player level as the game is designed around permadeath.
- Temtem:

To clarify, I'm not complaining about people dislike on it, just curious on why. I suppose that has to do with just how inflexible the Base Point/EV system is, but that still doesn't explain everything.

I honestly don’t have any problems with the exp share in gens 6 and 7, as it helps me with leveling Pokemon to evolve for the pokedex. Plus you can always turn it off if you don’t like it.

That’s not the case with gen 8 and later, as it is mandatory and cannot be turned on/off

I think there are a lot of folks who have knee-jerk reactions to TPC making it "too easy" with that sort of change, especially since there aren't many difficulty options to increase the challenge of a game. The challenge of recent titles has been rather lacking for the aging portions of the veteran fans, but I think TPC is trying to mostly focus on cultivating the next generation of audiences who want more instant gratification. Palworld, Cassette Beasts, and other spiritual successors of Pokemon appeal more to that aging core fanbase and have (as I understand it, haven't played any) a higher difficulty curve for their gameplay progression.

Also people are just flat out hypocrites when it comes to game critique. Looking at you sci-fi game fans you're all utterly horrible at remaining consistent with critiquing space sims.

[ This is coming from someone who haven't played a mainline Pokemon game since Ultra SuMo. So most of my words are coming from past experiences and gameplay videos I saw of later gens. ]

I second with Wisehowl in that Pokemon has a very deep game mechanics that steadily increases in each generation, but never really put their step into their own mechanics. While each generation tries to make the process of raising your Pokemon for competitive environment (such as IVs, EVs, Egg Moves, Natures, and Abilities, held Items), they don't really challenge the player to ever touch any of the mechanics except for type advantages. Like having trainers, even most of the boss trainers don't have teams that synergies with their types like using items, weather/field effects, hazards, or set ups. There are few exceptions, but that's just exceptions than the norm.

The only time in the mainline games were you actually use the games mechanics is not in postgame, but in a small section of battle tower. and even then, that fells more rigged than challenging.

Besides Pokemon romhacks like Radical Red and Elite Redux and other Monster Tamer games that's largely inspired by Pokemon like Disc Creatures, Cassette Beast, Coromon, Dokimon, Omega Monsters and so-on with different approaches on the mechanics of pokemon.

While there isn't a problem with Exp Share as long as it help average the level of your team (such as how BW/B2W2 adjust exp depending on your mon's level and the opponent), without worry if they might accidentally overlevel their whole team and just steamrolled the whole game. But that is on the whim on what the player want to do since it was an option to activate (unless it's built in in the game in SwSh & SV, again I haven't played them).

Technically Raihan from SWSH does focus on weather during his battles despite also being a Dragon- type trainer.

Hell he even starts with a Torkoal with Drought in his rematches

The problem is entirely that you can't turn it off in Gen 8+.

I don't have a problem with Pokemon being easy by default, it's a baby game for children, but they should give more opportunities to opt into more challenging gameplay if you want.

To be fair they've thrown the occasional bone with stuff like the Battle Frontier, VGC, etc… but through the main game, we've basically been limited to BW2's attempt at a challenge mode (what's that, nobody even knows that existed because they locked it behind Unova Link? And it doesn't even work properly?) and I guess SV allows you to break the intended difficulty curve by doing harder areas first, but that trivializes the rest of the game so…

Let's just say there's a reason fan challenges like Nuzlockes, Hardcore Nuzlockes, Solo Challenges, Kaizo Romhacks, etc… are popular but since this is Nintendo you're lucky if they don't sue you or send goons to your house for having fun wrong.

I can definitely see that the lack of difficulty being behind the reason on why, but Pokémon games have been known for being easy for the most part once you take off the nostalgia goggles. That being said, I can see why as Gen 6 onwards has been making the games much easier than ever out of fear of the competitions of mobile games (at least what masuda thought, not me), and no difficulty settings is a valid criticism.

Also worth mentioning is that the games I've mentioned can't turn the splitting off EXP to the party' as well.

I wouldn't say all of them are easy. I found Sun & Moon, particularly UltraSun & UltraMoon to be the most difficult for me; certain parts of Scarlet & Violet were also tough, particularly the Blueberry Academy. Of course, I never play in a competitive manner as I like using only Pokémon that I actually like, some are even unevolved, so you can take my claim with a grain of salt if you may.

So, there is an issue that between Gens 1-4 it is actively damaging to use full teams of 6, and the lack of EXP duplication in the form of Gen 6+ EXP share is to blame for that. You can cruise through Pokemon Crystal if you just main Feraligatr, but it becomes a tedious grind if you want a team of 6.

My problem is this was fixed in Gen 5 with EXP scaling and Audino, a Pokemon that would appear on every route and provide massive amounts of EXP. This allowed for a solution without changing how the game is played.

EXP sharing changes how you play the game. The reason I don't like the EXP share, at least as a forced option, is because I don't need to actually train a Pokemon to train it. There was a satisfaction of switching out until a Pokemon could win a fight on it's own, like your climbing a wall together. But now that a Pokemon like Magikarp can just stay until my party until it's ready, the entire point of Magikarp is now just redundant. It's not an infamously weak Pokemon, just a Pokemon slot reserved until it reaches level 20, a level where you likely don't have a full team anyways.

Now a Pokemon can sit for multiple fights and only see use when I need it as coverage.

The issue isn't that the games are easier, Gen 1 is one of the easiest Gens. I beat Red with just a Clefairy. The issue is that Pokemon is smoothing out any kind of potential friction to the point that all games are starting to have a similarly smooth surface. You already get a starter for the most part unique to you in the game world that is engineered to never fall off and be very good for most major fights in the game, access to hidden stats the enemies never get to use until endgame at the earliest, enemies don't even run berries anymore let alone other held items outside of post-game, this is just another "main-character" advantage in a franchise already criticized for storylines where characters quite frequently tell you how special you are.

To be clear, I really like Gen 9, and there are some creative fights in the DLC that do provide a challenge. Additionally, Gen 6 is absurdly easy even without EXP Share. EXP Share is not the breaking point for me enjoying the games, I'm just saying there's a kind of hand-holding nature to these games now that dilutes the value of choices when it comes to team building. Like you know it won't matter outside of what backside you're looking at.

"It's for kids" is a common deflection, but so are Minecraft and Fortnite? They have methods and options to get new, young players into their game loops, but when they want to stop holding your hand they will.

Pokemon doesn't need to be dark souls or anything, but I shouldn't have to use a cheat software to get back an option that use to exist that makes the game somewhat harder.

Coming in here with my own opinion and not reading everyone else's here, here's what my issue with it is (or was given I don't play them anymore since ORAS)

It was because we (my sister and I) saw that was coming. What is optional will soon become permanent fixtures. We're 'weird' in the sense of we like raising our team members by hand. We do enjoy items like the Lucky Egg, but generally we want to figure out how certain Pokemon tick and nothing does that better then literally battling with that 'mon. So it SUCKED when we found out the exp share was forever turned on with no way to shut it off. It afforded us to be lazy and just get to know our favorite Pokemon from a design level and disallowed discovering from a mechanics level.

An example of that would be Excadrill for me. I flat out don't like it's design that much. But when I gave it a try and found out it was a monster (I don't follow any competitive scene whatsoever), it was amazing, but at the same time I found out about it's rather 'almost there' speed and awful defense, it made me for the first time use a sandstorm-based team just to see if it could shine and boyhowdy did it. It got my usual 'eh pick whatever and see what works' approach to 'MAN I DO SURE LOVE EATING S A N D'

I get that not everyone wants to do that, and so having it as an option WOULD had been nice, but the fact they took that away makes everyone play way more comfort 'mons. Its also why I love the Shadow Pokemon games because it MAKES you consider these less popular mons by limiting your choice.

But what do I know, I'm just a dumb Totodile who hasn't played since gen 6/shrug

EXP share is good. Don't have enough time in my life to grind compared to when I was a kid. At a certain point, the level grind will all my Pokemon gets boring, and I gotta get back to work. Very useful tool.

I like RPGs, but I just can't spend as much time grinding. The feature of Metaphor: ReFantazio where you can just run-over enemies that are weaker than you helps, because otherwise I just get mods to reduce padding.

Probably won't finish it in a year or more, but in-between everything I only clear RPGs very slowly, and I'm okay with that. It's wasting time that really gets to me.

The real irritating thing is unless their engine/code is a fucking mess, it would've been the easiest thing in the word to leave it as a toggle.
Even if it's on by default there's 0 reason not to have a single variable that switches it off or on.
The fact that Romhack creators absolutely clown on GF in terms of difficulty customization is embarrassing.
Literally one main series game has included a difficulty setting and it was in the dumbest way possible, only available after you already beat the damn game.

My Take:

Pokemon was already easy enough as is, even with purposefully bad teams and tougher entries like in Gens 3, 4, and 5. Just keep level- and item-grinding and you'll eventually beat any campaign without any other form of trying, and at a decent speed compared to most RPGs.

If it wasn't for the fact that Gen 6 was so painfully easy, this wouldn't have been such a big problem. They also should've just called it the EXP. All like they did in Gen 1 and saved a lot of headache. Because it's certainly not the EXP. Share we knew from Gens 2-5