[Discussion] Making Evolved Starters Neccessary?

Basically, in this game I'm working on, there are certain scenarios where you will need a fully evolved starter, specifically a part where you need to have a fully-evolved starter to acquire the game's equivalent of the Mach Bike and Acro Bike, and further down the line, there will be Bike Puzzles, especially in one of the Gyms.

Basically, I'm wondering. In general, would it be a bad thing if a game required you to fully evolve your starter, or just evolve them in general? I want to insert the above feature, but I also understand that people who box their Starter on prompt or midway exist, even in Yellow-esque games, and that the feature may not be too appealing.

It's probably not a good idea to do that unless you tell the player at the beginning of the game. In fact, if you wanted this feature I'd be tempted to make it so the player can't deposit the starter in the PC at all.

There's a good chance I would stop playing the game the moment I realized I had to grind my starter 30 levels to be able to continue the main game but if the game makes it impossible I think that's fine. Iif it was only side quests my opinion is softer.

I personally wouldn't like it. Many people have different oppinions on Pokemon and therefore may like the pre-evolution just better. Others may like to use a capture a random wild Pokemon and use it as their main Pokemon and quit traing your Starter at all. It would pretty devastating to realise you need to grind 30+ levels with a lvl. 5 Pokemon.

But if you choose to implement this feature tell the player and don't surprise them in the middle of the game.

I'm totally agree with Dasheros and mgriffin. The only way you should do this is blocking in some way the starter, forcing the player to keep in the team.

You can create a quest for that. Like Charizard Safary you need to have a Charizard (lol) to start the quest.

I still have a Quilava in my 8 year old soul silver. By the way, he's level 60. Some people don't want to evolve their starter Pokemon and still train them, maybe base it off of levels instead of evolution stage