So why are Effort Values kept hidden from the UI?

[Azureth]

I don't get it. They're just a form of alternate EXP, yet they deliberately hide it from the User Interface and keep it vague.Why don't they put a gauge on the status screen that showed how far certain EVs accumulated on each stat? I can understand why IVs are kept obscure, since they're used to randomize stats, but EV is a form of character progression.

And on that note....they should put the Pokedex 3D move set data into the game itself.

 

[Sirfetch’d]

It makes it more challenging.

 

[Seki]

The game makers would just probably want to make the game easier to understand for young kids as the game is targeted to kids. EVs are at the competitive battling catergory which explores a lot into the game engine, that would be difficult for kids to understand. So that's probably why they hid it from the UI.

 

[LightOfTruth]

Maybe they could stick a option to turn effort values on/off in the options menu of Gen 6 and have it switched off when you start. This means you have to go to options to and turn it on. There is a few things they can do in that options screen to improve the game :)

 

[60]

There are a lot of other aspects hidden, IVs probably being the notable one. So idk, if they made EVs visible they might be obliged to display IVs too. They're both pretty difficult to understand so I think that does actually play a factor.

 

[WeGotTheJazz]

Because Game Freak secretly want to make our lives miserable.

 

[SnowpointQuincy]

You are not supposed to care about EVs. They were only added to the game so that a Lv.100 Charizard had different statistics than another Lv100 Charizard. EVs ONLY exist to make each pokemon you capture a unique creature.

The target audience is still 10 years old, and they don't care about min/maxing their pokemon. When my nephew was 10, he would use his Empolion in every battle and never use other pokemon.

EVs are cool, and I do train "almost perfect" pokemon, but Evs are not fun for children. So, they are a "secret".

 

[blue]

This is mainly why I don't bother with them, it's hard to keep track of them and I find it all too confusing tbh.

 

[morrison]

Yea I don't care about them either really so no need to show them for me. those that are interested in them still have the in game peeps telling them if a poke has maxxe4d out ev.

 

[Autophobic]

They probably kept it hidden because they knew that a lot of younger kids would just play the games casually, not competitively.

 

[True Honey]

Maybe it is just to keep the game more random, as without it being so easy to figure out or understand it gives a greater variety to Pokemon battles that the audience doesn't know about. Also, EVs are a very hard concept to fully understand and take advantage of so, for the target audience which is primarily younger children, the game mechanic is probably too hard.

 

[Rivvon]

There are already many older teens and young adults who can't even wrap their heads around the concept of EV training; a child seeing EVs would get confused no doubt, and trying to explain EVs to them would probably turn them off from the game. That, of course, is every game developers worst nightmare. So they exist for the competitive players, but are kept hidden for the sake of people who don't want to deal with them.
The fact that in B2W2 Bianca, as the new "effort reader," tells you which stats your Pokemon are EV trained in is pretty significant in its own right. Also, it's easy enough to just mark off how many EVs your Pokemon has gained. It's pretty irritating when you're trying to reset EVs, but at the same time the berries stop working once they've hit 0, so even then it's not so much of an issue that they aren't shown.