Survey: How big should the pokedex be in a hack?

so i'm making a hack at the moment, and i am stuck between two options. i can either include every official pokemon that exists, or i can limit the dex size and only include a sub-section of pokemon of my choosing.

it seems like if i limit the dex size, it would make it feasible for a player to complete the pokedex. completing an 898 pokedex in a romhack could be very daunting, especially in emerald where the PC won't even fit that many pokemon by default. but on the other hand, the larger pokedex gives players more options to customise their team. both of these are things i'd like to have for my hack.

a limited dex also gives a hack a feeling of cohesion. i feel that it makes a region more believable, like you're giving the player the experience of learning its unique biodiversity. this is mostly flavour, but flavour is important. it does also have gameplay ramifications, as it makes routes and trainers more predictable. in hoenn, you know you need to prepare for tentacool and pelipper, but never qwilfish and mantine. is this predictability a good thing, or does it make battles feel stale?

i think either option will work fine for my hack, but i'm still curious how others feel about this. so please share your thoughts!

I'd say: Ask yourself what's the focus/goal of your game or what's your intended audience, and that will help you decide.

If your goal is to create a difficulty hack, or a Nuzlocke oriented hack, you should probably try to include as many Pokémon as you can, because players in that kind of games want to have as much Pokémon variety to build their teams as possible. Enjoying the challenges, battling and team building is more important there than consistent world building, story, or other aspects.

Many popular hacks are essentially playing through Kanto/Hoenn for the 700th time, but with increased Pokémon variety, higher difficulty, updated move sets, megas, P/S split, and many QoL features. And many people love that kind of games, and probably won't care at all if the increased Pokémon variety comes at the expense of bloating routes with too many different Pokémon in a way that doesn't feel natural or that doesn't really feel like all those Pokémon belong there.

If your goal is to create a more unique game, with its own region, with your own characters and story, immersion and consistent world building is important and I think you should definitely try to make your region's biodiversity believable, rather than just throwing every single existing Pokémon for the sake of trying to please everyone.

I personally prefer games featuring their own region and custom Pokédex. Some Pokémon might be common, some might be rare, and some might just not be found anywhere, and that's fine, because it gives your region personality and makes it more believable. I think it's also exciting for the player to experience the uniqueness of a new region and wondering what Pokémon you'll find and what not.

Consider what you put and where, and avoid throwing many redundant Pokémon. There's no reason to have Rattata, Sentret, Zigzagoon, Bidoof, Patrat, and so on in the same game, or to have every early game Bug, or every Pika-clone, or every Dragon pseudo-legendary. Try to build your own Pokédex, where every Pokémon you include can have a somewhat unique role/purpose, avoid Pokémon that essentially won't offer anything that another Pokémon you already have already does.

For a single region, I think 400-500 Pokémon for the main game is a good balance. It allows you to have a lot of variety and mons from different gens, but without bloating the game in an unrealistic way and forcing you to include too many unique species on every route, which just feels unnatural.

For a typical Pokemon game I think around 300-400 is the right amount. Too many feels bloated, while too few leaves you with the potential for lame gameplay as Gym Leaders and Elite Four members have duplicates, underevolved Pokemon and Pokemon that don't fit their theme. (Gen 5 was highly tuned to maintain type balance, and thus got away with a regional Pokedex of about 150, but there's a sizeable portion of the playerbase who were turned off due to not liking many of the new Pokemon, so more is better up to a point.)

thank you for your input! i think you both have good advice. i was definitely expecting more support in favour of a full pokedex tbh, especially with the response to sword and shield, tho i understand why that might be considered a very different case.

personally I don't find it matters much, most people aren't really worried about actually completing the dex,
just the pokemon they can use.

The only thing I recommend keeping in mind is that the original games have a size limit,
unless you change it yourself, the dex can only go up to I believe 999 pokemon.

After that it glitches out.

reason being it was never meant to display more than 3 digits.


Also remember its your hack, you're making it for you first and foremost, not for everyone else.
So do what you want, there's no right or wrong about it otherwise.

to be clear, altho working on my own hack is what got me thinking about this question, i'm not only looking for advice for my case. my main reason for posting is that these inaccessibly big pokedex sizes are pretty new to romhacks in general, and i hadn't seen any discussion about how people feel about them. and i think it's a topic worth thinking about rather than just taking it for granted that more is better.

right now i'm leaning towards having a limited dex. but i'm dreading the horrid task of picking which pokemon to cut!

Enough such that the player can encounter 1 to 3 new pokemon upon first visiting each location. One of them should be kinda rare. Increase the number of new pokemon encountered by another 1 to 3 if moving into a new environment (like going from a country route into a forest or cave). If the game supports multiple encounter lists per location (such as different encounters for time of day, day of week, the current season, etc), then apply this rule to each encounter list individually. This should get you a nicely-sized pokedex without encounters feeling too samey or too crowded.

For how many a hack should have, my favorite way to do it is simply include every Pokemon Nintendo has ever made regardless of generation, and then adding in my numerous fan fiction Pokemon.