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Free up the schedule

morrison

760
Posts
14
Years
  • Seen Dec 16, 2016
Playing Leaf green again made me realise that you used to have a much freer schedule as to where you go and which badge you get first. It was still there to some extent in g/s as well but it went downhill in sapphire and was worst in B/W
Basically in Leaf green you can visit celadon and the surrounding cities while only owning 2 badges.and as long as you do some side quests like poketower you can even add fuchsia to the spin.
in G/S you could still choose to do either mahagony or the anemonia first.
in later games you have a much more strict schedule as to which gym you have to do to be able to progress
i would like if in future gens they could open up the schedule again.
 
Khoshi

Khoshi

[b]とてもかわいい！[/b]
2,647
Posts
11
Years
Ah, the element of freedom. Yeah, I've found that with each new Pokemon game, it's mostly on rails, meaning there's less chance to deviate from the set story to do whatever. I haven't really gained the chance to hop cities without having the gym badges, but nowadays you have too many routes which require a HM that you can't use without the gym badge that you went past. It's quite a bother, as I originally thought Pokemon was a game franchise where you go your own way to becoming champ; all this just takes away my original dream.
 

Arlo

483
Posts
11
Years
  • Seen Oct 2, 2020
I MUCH prefer linear progression over that "freedom," because that "freedom" comes at a cost - since you're free to travel to multiple places, the wild pokemon you might encounter along the way have to have gimped levels so it's at least possible to actually survive traveling in whatever area you might go to. IMO, that ultimately creates a flat and boring world.

The first route you choose at any given time might be challenging, but by the time you do the alternate routes, your team will have leveled up and you'll be facing wild pokemon of roughly the same level as the ones you just passed. And the more routes there are available at any given time, the more routes have to have pokemon of roughly the same level. To me, that gets crushingly dull in a hurry, and ultimately destroys any additional enjoyment I might've gotten out of being free to choose a direction. It's just not worth it to me.

Yes - a linear progression through the game is a bit more dull in one sense, but by keeping it to a linear progression, they can continue to ramp up the levels of the opposing pokemon so that battles are always a challenge instead of becoming a tedious and unrewarding grind, and that makes it worth it.
 

morrison

760
Posts
14
Years
  • Seen Dec 16, 2016
The trainer levels (and there are lots of trainers) are at a good level spread I think (in lg). I also dont mean to make it fully open but just less linear and more like 1stgen than before.
Also when the game is bigger you can have just multiple setting like this like 4 sets of regions which are still progressive. and seriosuly level raise of wild pokemon was never their strenghts anyway
 

DMoCTTA

YouTuber DMoCTTA
12
Posts
9
Years
  • Age 28
  • Seen Jun 8, 2014
In playing FR/LG it was a good fresh feeling to be able to explore. However in my run I'm only using the three starters, and they are all OP now. I only have 4 badges but they're all in the 40s. Too many trainers/too weak of wild pokemon = not enough challenging parts.

I think Emerald had it best when it came to "freedom" and "linear"
 

Oryx

CoquettishCat
13,184
Posts
13
Years
  • Age 31
  • Seen Jan 30, 2015
Arlo said:
I MUCH prefer linear progression over that "freedom," because that "freedom" comes at a cost - since you're free to travel to multiple places, the wild pokemon you might encounter along the way have to have gimped levels so it's at least possible to actually survive traveling in whatever area you might go to. IMO, that ultimately creates a flat and boring world.

The first route you choose at any given time might be challenging, but by the time you do the alternate routes, your team will have leveled up and you'll be facing wild pokemon of roughly the same level as the ones you just passed. And the more routes there are available at any given time, the more routes have to have pokemon of roughly the same level. To me, that gets crushingly dull in a hurry, and ultimately destroys any additional enjoyment I might've gotten out of being free to choose a direction. It's just not worth it to me.

Yes - a linear progression through the game is a bit more dull in one sense, but by keeping it to a linear progression, they can continue to ramp up the levels of the opposing pokemon so that battles are always a challenge instead of becoming a tedious and unrewarding grind, and that makes it worth it.
Click to expand...

Having the levels set from the start of the game isn't a given, actually. That's how they've been doing it up until now but there's no reason why it can't be variable, even just by gym badges - if you take one route, the other routes level up once you get the badge, so you can go the rest of the way with higher leveled Pokemon. If they didn't want to do it by gym badges, they could do it by the level of your own Pokemon - that would leave you free to visit anywhere without automatically dying. But it would also remove entirely the concept of managing your levels compared to the trainers (no overleveling them, no underleveling them).
 
Altairis

Altairis

take me ☆ take you
5,188
Posts
11
Years
I like freedom! I really hate it when Gamefreak has to make up stupid reasons for why I can't progress, like a man telling me to do something (or buy a dozen RageCandyBars in HGSS) as if it's his business, lol.

I really liked how they handled the "freedom" in RSE. You were allowed to go to Slateport before Dewford, however, in order to advance the story you had to talk to someone in Slateport who wouldn't appear unless you had the gym badge. It was a very subtle way to keep us from going to far ahead, and it was a lot smoother than in newer gens. :3 I believe in BW there were even a bunch of men blocking a route saying "Today we're dancing here and tomorrow we'll be gone for no reason" or something like that.
 
Pepperton

Pepperton

3,419
Posts
10
Years
When I played through RBY and GSC, I didn't even realize you had the freedom to venture the region without certain badges or achievements, so I went about my game in order, haha. I think it's fine that they're making it more defined, because I expect that's what they originally intended to do. If they wanted the whole gym leader challenge to be based off freedom, they'd make the region open to all trainers, with no restrictions as to when Gym leaders are challenged.
 
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