How would you go about changing the gameplay in Pokemon in a way that makes it more difficult and engaging?

How would you go about changing the gameplay in Pokemon in a way that makes it more difficult and engaging?

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Gyms scale with your parties level but you have to battle so many Pokémon in order to challenge the gym leaders. Either that or you must earn a certain rank to challenge any of the leaders.

Pokemon used by major trainers (not just the Champion and Elite 4) have EVs in their relevant stats.

1) You can select from two game modes at the start: traditional single battles or all battles are double battles. I’d give a second starter, with the 2nd one being like a Riolu or an Eevee or something.

2) Copy the open-world system from the CC fan game: gyms scale based on gym badges you have, and you can challenge them in any order. Use found items instead of HMs (to encourage exploration, but not force specific moves or Pokémon on a team).

I’d keep the universal experience share because grinding is boring. But give the ability to turn it off. I’d decrease experience payout so you’re naturally under-leveled when spread across a whole team, making you use more strategy in the battles.
Throw in some side quests using different game styles, like Mantine surf, some Pokémon Snap, and gambling to flesh out the world a bit.
Have completely optional caves with events like the Lapras or unlocking the Regis. Make them a bit of a maze, and put cool wild encounters in there. Make them high levels to suggest returning later in the game.

>remove "save anywhere" and "pokemon centers are free" - add in save points and paid healing, save points are placed at the front of gyms, pokemon centers, 'dungeons', e.g. forests, caves, evil team bases, etc.
>penalty for blacking out is going back to a save point
>gyms, dungeons, etc. cannot be left when you enter. the first gym and first set of dungeons, you can, but the game warns you heavily the rest will not be so kind
>battles now default to you having the same amount of pokemon as whomever you're fighting: all trainers will have a minimum of 3 pokemon
>it is now much more difficult to run away from wild encounters. additionally, wild pokemon have boosted stats, and can attack randomly in singles, doubles or triples battles, and will have better AI and even strategies tailored to their level moveset (i.e. the electric area will have pokemon who love to use discharge + lightningrod or volt absorb)
>tms are no longer infinite, but will operate by a weighted system, the better a TM, the fewer copies of it you'll receive on getting it. however you can get any tm in the game an infinite amount of times through certain means (such as trainer gauntlets or mini dungeons)
>evs no longer are obtained on defeating pokemon, but the player is encouraged to get vitamins, which will usually be locked behind hard trainers or sidequests. ivs/natures are removed
>while you can deposit as many mons as you like into the PC, withdrawing or changing Pokemon out from the PC is now very expensive, and scales with the number of badges you have. you can earn coupons to make the process free, but they're not easy to come by
>finally 'standard' things like limiting item usage in battle, a hard exp curve which doesn't allow you to overlevel the next boss by much if at all, shift mode nixed from the game
There are probably other things, but this would be a start

Soft level caps, adjust all Pokemon's leveling to plateau at key milestones, such as the local Gym/trainer gauntlet's levels or the Pokemon's evolve level
Fill out NPC trainers' teams, especially gym leaders'

Stat buffs fade after 3 turns to stop "setting up and sweeping" strats

>No Shift obviously
>Certain trainers get Affection bonuses just like you do, mostly those with notable dedication to their mons. Expect League trainers to have 4 or 5 Affection on at least their ace.
>Gyms and the League cap Level at certain amounts both ways (e.g. 10-20 for the first Gym). You can be whatever level, but it'll raise/lower to within the range and your experience is held until you leave.
>NPC Trainers have a lot more healing items, but work on an honor system. They won't use any Bag item type you don't, except Pokéballs (which never unlock obviously) and PP restoratives (which also unlock with Revives).
>Losing a fight now drops half your money again, unless the normal payment would be more. If you don't have enough, you lose some valuables or restoratives/X items to make up for it. Losing certain fights are an actual Game Over, booting you to your last save.
Nothing overboard, but smaller steps in the right direction for the thread.

>ivs/natures are removed
Terrible and soulless.

I'm glad the type of person who unironically uses the term 'soulless' dislikes the idea, this makes me even more sure it's a fantastic concept

The proposed level cap system in Easy mode is a non-factor, as, generally speaking, one or two levels is more than sufficient to beat a boss' ace monster. Grinding is also such a lame way to make a game more difficult. Rather than adding a modifier to Experience Points, simply increase the amount of Experience Candies the player can receive at any given moment. And, possibly, their type. The reverse also works, I suppose, with the modifier being lifted in latter modes, so players have to conserve/use candies wisely, but I don't like the idea of the modifier period.

No changes at all. You have the option right now to play with level caps, nuzlockes, or any other rule you dreamed up to create challenge in a kid's game.

I like the difficulty settings in your image, they make a solid bandaid and the additional rules actually scale very reasonably from "basically how it already is but there's less grind and less incentive to grind" to gradual moves towards competitive rules and more punishments for failure.
The way I see RPG design, the goal is less to create a traditional idea of "difficulty", and more to allow and encourage creativity. Difficulty can and should be in service of this, mostly by way of creating obstacles that prevent you from falling into a rut.
Omori is a somewhat recent example I'd point to of a battle system that actually has a lot going for it, but is ultimately held back by the game's low difficulty preventing you from needing to branch out into the weirder ideas that are possible in the system.
Pokemon has had this problem since its inception, but I would also say its system is, in general, not great. An IDEAL answer would probably genuinely be to burn it all down and make a new monster catching RPG, but an acceptable answer is really just to make doubles the primary format of the game. Colosseum and Gale of Darkness are more functional RPGs in a sense, but I feel their mistake is in the limitations placed on team comp, ironically making their issues inverse to ordinary pokemon.
Pokemon is at its most engaging when you're trying to build a team that synergizes not just by way of having type coverage, but by having direct, planned interactions between the members of your party, that are capable of failure which needs to be accounted for. Many changes could be made in service of all this as long as you know where to look for the problems, and the problems are in format, enemy design, and AI patterns. Changes to other areas can help, but I think if these particular areas were addressed (in addition to implementing OP's difficulty options), you could actually mold nearly any mainline game into something that's actually on-par with most non-pokemon RPGs

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Turn based systems with levelling are usually not engaging in terms of difficulty unless you don't grind.

3 game modes:

Easy
>EXP All available from the start
>All trainer-owned Pokemon are 2 - 3 levels below their Normal Mode counterparts
>Amulet Coin always on
>Trainers, including bosses, all have 0 - 10 IVs in every stat
>Max 1 healing item for every Gym Leader and E4, 2 for the Champion
>Affection mechanics

Normal
>EXP Share available after the 2nd gym
>Trainers have random IVs, bosses have 20 across the board
>Every boss has at least 2 progress-relevant potions (Potion -> Super -> Hyper -> Max -> Full Restore)
>Boss fight Pokemon have a flat 84 EVs in every stat across the board and a beneficial nature

Hard
>EXP Share available after the 8th gym
>All trainer-owned Pokemon are 3 - 5 levels higher than their Normal Mode counterparts
>Trainer Pokemon all have 20 IVs acrossthe board, bosses have 31 across the board
>Every boss has infinite potions, and starting from the 4th gym onwards, at least 1 revive (2 for E4 and Champion)
>Bosses all have positive natures and EVs
>Every Gym Leader, Admin, E4, and Champion Pokemon after the 1st gym have items, with really good items like Life Orb, Choice Band, Weakness Policy, Red Card, Salac Berry, and so on coming in after gym 7
>X-items and Vitamins have their prices swapped

Optional DQXI-esque challenge options that you can choose at the start of the adventure and turn off when you please, but may never be turned back on if you turned them off. They stay on until you defeat the Champion, after which you are rewarded with exclusive items for completing said challenges. These include:
>No EXP for catching Pokemon
>Wild Pokemon don't give EXP to you if they're more than 5 levels under your Pokemon's level
>Fainted Pokemon on your team cannot be unfainted (Nuzlocke mode basically)
>No non-held items during battle
>No field-PC (just like every game pre-LGPE)
>No legendaries mode (legendaries, including mythicals and UBs since they're legendaries, cannot be used in battle until you beat the Champ)
>Set mode

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>>remove "save anywhere"
Will be made obsolete by the third gym cos of money, if you don't want the player to have much money then you're also limiting a lot of other features like styling and buying items.
>>gyms, dungeons, etc. cannot be left when you enter.
Not fun, but that's subjective.
>>battles now default to you having the same amount of pokemon as whomever you're fighting
Limits creative strategies and makes the games boring, a challenge is useless if it isn't fun. Just add a level cap and improve the gym leader's teams a bit.
>>it is now much more difficult to run away from wild encounters.
Why? This does in no way make it actually hard and just makes it tedious, you accidentally run into a wild encounter and now you're stuck there, sounds like an ass feature.
>>tms are no longer infinite
This one sounds good, but they should be made fully infinite by the postgame.
>>evs no longer are obtained on defeating pokemon
Instead of adding a minigame like XY that made it fun you're just making it a spam A fest, how is that fun?
>>withdrawing or changing Pokemon out from the PC is now very expensive
Again, limits creativity and enforces a playstole of "you shouldn't catch new Pokémon because they'll be expensive ass hell to take out from the PC", and encourages you just to spam through the entire game with 3-6 Pokémon and never using more.
> limiting item usage in battle, a hard exp curve which doesn't allow you to overlevel the next boss by much if at all
Yeah, and no more damn forced exp all.

You gotta remember that games are supposed to be enjoyable, not just a grindfest where the entire games feels slow as shit and a slog.

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Lots of good suggestions in this thread, but I'll throw in my two cents for the easiest, lowest-effort way to implement difficulty modes:

Easy
>the way it is now
Normal
>do what BW2 challenge mode did, except bump levels up by 1-10 instead of 1-5 and give more trainers larger parties with more variation
Hard
>do what Clover did

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>make it hard just by making it super inconvenient to play
Gross

make it an rts

>then you're also limiting a lot of other features like styling and buying items
Yes, that is the point.
Also, ideally, you would scale healing cost with badge amount.
>Limits creative strategies and makes the games boring,
I really don't see how. If anything, it means that you can't default to having the might of an entire team to crush an opponent with just sheer numbers.
>makes it tedious
Wild encounters in their current form serve nearly zero purpose and are at worst an annoyance, at best easily removed from the game with Repels.
This, along with the player forced to actually ration their money, makes it so that wild encounters are a threat, are something that has to be considered beyond 'it wastes my time', makes it so that the player has to choose between buying Repels or healing items.
>you're just making it a spam A fest
It's insanely strange to me that you're making exact, negative as possible interpretations of a general structure I'm proposing. What part of "hard trainers or sidequests" implies "spam A fests"?
>encourages you just to spam through the entire game with 3-6 Pokémon and never using more
That would be a question of how trainer teams and actual areas are designed.
If a group of 6 Pokemon can't get through a given dungeon, then you're putting more thought and carefulness into your decision making than just 'I can freely change anything I have to optimize against the next major obstacle'.

I also, personally, despise the fact that most 'hard' Pokemon games and hacks tend to be exactly this, long calculator sessions because of disproportionately difficult boss fights with very little care given to anything that happens between them.
>not just a grindfest
Nothing in my post implies this - in fact, I welcome a forced exp all as long as the exp curve is tempered, I think level bloat is awful. I'm not surprised a post that advocates removing most easily available conveniences is garnering this much negativity, but be honest.
In any case, the problem with Pokemon difficulty is because of the fact it is too free and open ended, and not in the right places. The player just has far, far too many advantages in every scenario and this is used to justify absolutely retarded decisions when it comes to enemies, rather than the general environment the player interacts with. You can add more Pokemon or items or levels to a boss and ultimately unless you make it blatantly unfair most of the time the boss is going to be a cakewalk because of how Pokemon works.
I acknowledge this would never work for a real Pokemon game, but that's not what the OP is about.