Highlights
- Generation Ten should implement level scaling in open-world Pokemon games to make exploration and training more enjoyable.
- The ability to tackle gym challenges in any order should be accompanied by level scaling to ensure appropriate difficulty.
- Performance issues in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet need to be addressed for Generation Ten, as a polished release is crucial for the franchise's success.
Pokemon Scarlet And Violet released almost a year ago, and they came with a fair amount of praise, but also their own fair share of issues. With fans anticipating new games within the next couple of years, attention has switched to what the next generation of Pokemon games could be like.
Scarlet and Violet were immensely ambitious games, the likes of which we'd never seen in a Pokemon game before, but they released with numerous technical and design issues that are yet to be addressed by Game Freak. In a first generation product like an open-world Pokemon game there were bound to be issues, but how could they be fixed or improved on in Generation Ten? Here are the top ten changes Pokemon needs to make in Generation Ten.
10 Level Scaling
Pokemon Scarlet And Violet massively overhauled the traditional style of Pokemon games. They added enormous open worlds with hoards of roaming Pokemon, which massively opened up the potential for players to bulk up their teams. The only problem? A lack of level scaling meant that those Pokemon were often drastically under-leveled when players reached them.
Those levels could be scaled by a combination of factors including Gym Badges, average party Pokemon level, and lead Pokemon level. It would massively increase Pokemon training possibilities and make exploration infinitely more appealing.
9 The Ability To Do Gyms In Any Order
Technically, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet players can tackle the Gym Challenge in any order they please. It's entirely possible to walk from one end of the map to the other and challenge the last gym first. The issue with this is that there's no level scaling between gyms, so the last gym would be an impossible challenge. Likewise, the first gym is immeasurably easy if players have completed even one other gym beforehand.
With the open-world nature of new Pokemon games, it's entirely possible to miss gyms altogether, and it would add to the freedom of the new Pokemon experience if gyms scaled to the player's level.
8 Performance Upgrades
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet released in a notoriously shabby state. With the size and quality of games only increasing, it would be to the detriment of Game Freak to allow Pokemon to release in such a technically poor state. Low frame rates, pop-in, and poor-quality models were just some of the performance issues affecting Pokemon Scarlet and Violet.
If Nintendo wants Generation Ten to be a landmark entry to the franchise, it needs to release in a more polished state. Even taking the time to polish the game leading to a delayed release date would be a better option than allowing their tent pole franchise to release in as poor a state as Scarlet and Violet did.
7 Improve The Autobattling Feature
One of the more innovative upgrades included in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet was the autobattling feature. It allowed the player to level up their Pokemon without having to directly engage in time-consuming battles. The main issue with this was that Pokemon sent out to autobattle would often miss their target, or fail to engage other Pokemon.
If this feature was improved on, such as making the sent-out Pokemon more accurate, or allowing the Pokemon to hold berries in order to heal, then autobattling could be one of the biggest features in Generation Ten, rather than a gimmick.
6 Shorter Tutorial Area
An age-old Pokemon complaint is the overly long Tutorial area. Experienced Pokemon fans have been frequently frustrated by long tutorial zones ever since the games began, especially since Pokemon X and Y. With Pokemon approaching its Tenth Generation, it's time to trust players a little more.
Tutorial sections should be skippable in future Pokemon games, and having this option adds a huge amount of replayability to games. There's nothing worse, after all, than having to button mash through a massive section of dialogue to get to the part of Pokemon games that fans love.
5 Glitch Patching
Among Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's technical issues was a mass of glitches. After seeing how bad performance was, players were then introduced to a whole new section of issues caused by these glitches. Going to space, invisible Pokemon, and going through buildings were just a few major issues players would face.
In the Tenth Generation, glitches should be the last thing making the games difficult. With the nearly infinite resources available to the teams at Game Freak, there's little to no excuse for game breaking glitches to be present in new games.
4 A Way To Turn The EXP Share Off
Pokemon has never been known to be the most difficult game, but this reputation was made even more prevalent with the addition of the EXP Share in Generation Six. The ability to disable the EXP share would allow more experienced players to ramp up the difficulty, and add another difficulty option for newer players.
The option to disable the EXP share would mean that players could be more adventurous in battling and catching Pokemon, as there would be far less of a risk of becoming over-leveled.
3 The Return Of Challenge Mode
Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 introduced one of the most innovative features of any Pokemon game; a challenge mode. This mode unlocked after players beat the champion of the Unova region and ramped up the difficulty massively. The inclusion of this mode would be yet another option to encourage replaying the newest Pokemon titles.
Including another difficulty option would make Generation Ten the most challenging generation so far, and would entice back players that had departed the franchise after finding the previous games too easy.
2 An Improved Minimap
The minimap in Pokemon Scarlet and Violetwas fairly useless, with very little helpful information shown. In the next games, the minimap could be a helpful tool used to discover the exact distance of waypoints, highlight nearby Pokemon types and trainers, and show the locations of Terra Raid Battles.
An improved map could make the newest open-world games more accessible to players that are less likely to manually explore, and open the games to a wider audience. A better map would also be a good quality-of-life feature for experienced players, or players hoping to complete multiple objectives at once.
1 Pokemon Legends: Arceus Features
This one is most definitely a long shot, but including features from Pokemon Legends: Arceus would help make Generation Ten feel like the definitive Pokemon experience. With features such as battle styles, manual Pokemon catching, and Alpha Pokemon, there are several Pokemon features currently locked to that game that would improve the next Pokemon games.
The additions could even be as simple as allowing the player to climb or roll, as they allow for the game to feel more traversable, and therefore enable the developers to make use of more space, making Generation Ten feel like a revolution of the Pokemon experience.