[Discussion] Open World Pokemon Game

So just had a laugh at the Rom hack Pokemon Maia :
https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?p=9850534#post9850534

but what if there was seriously a fan game with no story line but several gyms , trainers but an open world allowing you to travel to any city of your choice in a non linear way. There would need to be side quests to keep the player interested but still have something to be drawn to like : help this trainer and receive a water stone. Throughout the game there would be level scaling though to give the player a challenge and allow for the game to keep up with the player despite not following a linear pattern. would you guys play a game like this?

The reason it hasn't been done yet is because it simply doesn't work with the current Pokemon set-up. The ability to catch any foe you encounter is the backbone of the series, but it also happens to destroy an open world set-up because you could just go catch something lv.80 after a couple of tries, and breeze through the rest of the game.

Likewise, everyone's go to solution, "level scaling", doesn't work either. The reason Pokemon has such a large community is because of the similar in-game experiences we can discuss with each other. We can all remember the time we went up against Whitney's OP miltank, or getting a free pansage/sear/pour early in the game to balance out our starter's typing. An Open World/Level scaling ruins those. Sure everyone playing will have a more unique experience, but it will be harder for others fans to relate to them. That's in addition to those experiences probably not being as good as a linear, hand-crafted one by the developers.

Really the best solution we've seen thus far is something like Xenoblade Chronicles "zone" system, where instead of one big open world, the game goes through multiple smaller open world chunks. Grand Theft Auto splitting its cities into 3 parts is another example. Unfortunately as it applies to Pokemon however, it still suffers from the issues listed above. Even if you did the whole game in 2-3 gym chunks, the player could still start from the highest level area and work backwards.

Bottom line is, Open world works for action games. It does not work so well for turn based rpgs.

Almost everyne don't notice, but gen 1 and 2 are semi open world, in gen 1, after you pass third gym, you can fight Erika, Koga and Sabrina in any order, also by defeating Koga you can fight Blaine, in gen 2 you have 2 situations of semi open world, after defeat Morty, you can defeat jasmine, pryce and Chuck in any order as well, and The first 5 gyms of Kanto campaign can also be challenged in any order.

Note that those games takes a open world in a point where your pokemon need lot xp points to level up and the player is already 'familiar' with the world, open world are hard to give a progressive learning to the player, these factors are what generally breaks a open world experience in rpgs, since level up occurs frequently in lower levels, this is why in gen 1 and 2 they take an aproach to open world only after you reach middle game. Recent games however took a completly linear gameplay, also gen 1 and 2, visually gives you a kind of 'suggestion' of which gyms you have to fight in a more linear way

This was one of the topics on my "how to make a stand out Pokegame" trail of thought. I am no pro game designer, but this is what came to my mind:
1) "Learning curve" is kinda off for open world style. In your-all-average Pokegame, as the story goes, the difficulty raises up, but so your Pokemon. There are thresholds to achieve to get access to new areas and so on. This is all off for open world.
2) Story plot is also hard to implement for open-world. I might understand "open world" term a little bit other way, but when your story is "go to town A, do the things, then go to town B" it makes game a little less open-worldly in my eyes.
3) Open world is all about scale: what the point of all open world stuff when your simple forest is just 150*150? With these sizes you are just as good with making your-all-average corridor-like Pokemon game.
4) Open world is all about randomness: random encounters, random stuff lying on ground (not random generated areas, it is too complicated I think) make an experience of exploring more memorable.
5) Open world is all about exploration: correlates with third point: what the point with all open world stuff if the player simply can't enjoy it and go whenever they want? It would look like Legend of Zelda, and while LoZ is a good game, its mechanic and gameplay won't fit nicely to a Pokemon game. Mostly because of 4th point.

This is two pennies on the philosophical matters. I believe there are some technical difficulties of designing such game as gameplay: lvls of wild and trained pokemon should be adjusted yadda yadda yadda.

IRON NIDOW said:

Almost everyne don't notice, but gen 1 and 2 are semi open world, in gen 1, after you pass third gym, you can fight Erika, Koga and Sabrina in any order, also by defeating Koga you can fight Blaine, in gen 2 you have 2 situations of semi open world, after defeat Morty, you can defeat jasmine, pryce and Chuck in any order as well, and The first 5 gyms of Kanto campaign can also be challenged in any order.

Click to expand...

Those are a couple instances of non-linear gameplay, not open world gameplay. Giving the player options of linear paths, is not the same as letting them create any path they'd like. Also, have you ever seen the response to gen.2's level curve? It isn't pretty, and certainly not an example of open world gameplay working well in Pokemon.

Someone made an open world rom hack with level scaling of pokemon red.

I forgot what it was called

You're not referring to Pokemon Chromatic, are you? I'd pretty much gotten the open world mechanics how I wanted them and released a demo a couple years ago.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PokemonROMhacks/comments/7eh0x1/pokemon_roaming_red_beta_1_released/

It could very well be this as well.