Creating your own Version Differences

[Devalue]

Created two versions since the beginning. Varied in several ways: different available Pokemon, legendaries, main evil team, a city, gyms, mega evolution stones, time of day, clothing, and other bits here and there.

May or may not like the split. Places you in the position of designing the differences, regardless. How would you make two games different without adding too much development time?

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Aims to give the games a different experience. Views them as too similar at present. Seeks some level of shared experience, however. Wants people to talk to each other about the game. Refers to these games as Versions A and B, for ease.

1. Reverse the gym order. Keeps the town order the same, however. Drags and drops gyms without much flavor concern, typically. Alters the gym leader's team as needed. Keeps their ace consistent.

2. Swap TM locations. Finds Rock Tomb, Brine, and Bullet Seed for sale in Version A's town. Hawks Bulldoze, Flame Charge, and Icicle Spear in Version B. Sticks the missing TMs somewhere else in the game, likely very late.

3. Different evolution stone locations. Grabs Leaf, Water, Shiny, and Ice Stones before the fourth gym in Version A. Locates Electric, Fire, Dusk, and Dawn Stones in the same locations of Version B. Scatters the off-stones to before the sixth gym in both versions.

4. Different weather odds. Rains less often in Version A. Absolutely pours when it does.

5. Confronts the evil team one gym earlier in Version A.

6. Different Pokemon weights instead of version exclusives. Stumbles across Meowth 30% of the time in Version A on Route 3. Pops up only 3% of the time in Version B.

7. Different starter trios. Sets the tone early. Runs across Version B's trio somewhere in the wild rarely in Version A.

Preferred to keep difficulty largely unchanged. Risks some people getting the "wrong" version by mistake otherwise.

Did not want different characters. Goes along the thinking of shared experiences. Cannot discuss characters you never met.

 

[Duck]

I personally don't care for version differences, but if I were to do them, I'd try to work into the story and overall look and feel of the game somehow.

The gym order you mentioned is one, but it can expand to architecture, climate, maybe an area or two. Make it feel like the versions have something meaningful to do with the games.

 

[Abbehat]

1. shift game time 12 hours later for version B and 12 hours earlier for version A
2. Like BW and BW2, have a place exclusive to version A and another for version B
it is more or less that (i hate the concept to have 2 different versions)

 

[ReKoil]

I'd keep the different Pokemon availability. I've never minded it.

Additionally, any of these could be nice:
-Expand on the different gyms. The 2 gyms that have differences between Sword and Shield still have the same puzzles. Having the Gym Puzzles be different depending on version would be cool. It could actually even be the same puzzle, just with a different solution.
-I'd do 8 types of gym leaders in 1 game, 8 different type gym leaders in the other. The E4 wouldn't be type based, but theme based. So 1 of them would for example use a team of mons found in the desert. Another perhaps only uses monkey Pokemon, and so on.
-a version exclusive route/location. Could potentially tie this in with an alternate location based evolution between versions.
-maybe swap the roadblocks around so one game follows a completely different route through the region than the other.

 

[Orion☆]

I'm not very fond of the "one game for the price of two" approach, but if I were in charge of improving it, I would...

-Give different characters prominence in each version to the point the dynamic of each game changes completely. Something like Klara and Avery in the Sw/Sh DLC, or Ultra Recon Squad sending different members in US/UM, but much better - because UM got the short end of the stick with how flat Phyco and Soliera ended up being, and same for Sword with Klara.
-Change the starting town, and therefore the road the player character takes to accomplish the same goals, in each version. Additionally, I would add some kind of reward for reaching the other starting town and barging into what would be your house if you'd started with the other version. A good example would be the Crystal Clear fangame, which, up until the update where you could start in any town, gave you the option of starting in either Pallet Town or New Bark Town. Pretty simple.
-Abolish version-exclusive Pokémon, but change the locations and rarity around so that the version you pick decided whether you'll be able to get certain Pokémon earlier or later in the game (possibly even locking them to post-game.)
-Having the region be more rustic in one version and more modern in the other - just like Opelucid in B/W, but on a large scale. That goes hand in hand with all the above questions.

 

[Sheep]

- Different gym puzzles (or perhaps a reverse gym order?)
- Different rival, similar to how it was done with Avery and Klara

- Having the region be more rustic in one version and more modern in the other - just like Opelucid in B/W, but on a large scale.

Also loving this idea and 10000% on board with it.
- Starting in a different part of the region, and the levels scaling to fit
- Different Champion and evil team leader. Perhaps in one game the person who is a Champion in the other version is actually the evil team leader, and vice versa. I think it could make for an interesting story.

We know the series has had several instances of parallel/mirror worlds and each game version could be considered its own world. In a third version, it would be cool to bring these two different 'worlds' (versions) together and watch the story unfold when they collide in some way.

 

[Roni]

Different starting towns in an semi open world region sounds awesome to me. Instead of just two versions, Game Freak puts out three (in accordance with three starters), and make them vastly different at the start and middle of the journey. Maybe even completely different evil teams encountered, alongside different costumes and rivals for the player with each version.

I saw Youtuber Jello Apocalypse discuss that concept in an old video, and they convinced me that I want it too heh. Will def drive sales up, just requires more effort from GF.

 

[Palamon]

More regions where gym leaders differ between version, but have the puzzles instead of just changing the colors of the gym. That's lame.

Maybe more exclusive areas in the vein of Black City/White Forest. I'd like if they did this again at some point.

More Pokemon that evolve into something different depending on which game you play. I liked this idea with the Cosmog line and the Rockruff line evolving depending on which version you played, think it'd be cool to have version exclusive evolutions again.

They should bring back version exclusive evil teams. I liked that concept in Ruby/Sapphire where the team you faced depended on the version you played. Even if their goals are literally exactly the same, I do think this was a really cool idea back in the day. A shame it has pretty much never been revisited.

Version exclusive outfits, maybe. But Scarlet/Violet is already doing this.

I'm honestly perfectly fine with the concept of Version exclusives, though. Back in the day, the concept was created to promote the trading concept since Pokemon is a game where you're encouraged to be social and trade/battle with people. That's honestly why I'm one of the few that doesn't especially hate the concept. Nowdays, it's easy enough to just send over version exclusives through Pokemon Home, anyway making it easier to avoid trading over version exclusives, tbh.