More Than One Region?

[Echo7]

What would be the best way to "Level The Curve" when doing more than one region, without restricting the player but also
keeping it a challenge.

- Increase Lv
Instead of Lv.100 its Lv200 and so on...easiest and quickest way

- Region Lv Reset
My Charizard is Lv. 70 and I just complete Kanto and decided to travel to Johto and My Charizard becomes Lv. 5 and I can begin leveling, but as soon as I go to Kanto my Charizard is Lv. 70... Probably a bit too complicated?
Watch this video from Thundaga How To Make a Pokemon Game in RPG Maker - Part 73: Changing Max Level

- Slow Leveling
Play HG or SS

Having more than one region is something that I'm planning on doing for my fan game and I'm kinda curious about how you would tackle it?

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

What would be the best way to "Level The Curve" when doing more than one region, without restricting the player but also
keeping it a challenge.

- Increase Lv
Instead of Lv.100 its Lv200 and so on...easiest and quickest way

- Region Lv Reset
My Charizard is Lv. 70 and I just complete Kanto and decided to travel to Johto and My Charizard becomes Lv. 5 and I can begin leveling, but as soon as I go to Kanto my Charizard is Lv. 70... Probably a bit too complicated?
Watch this video from Thundaga How To Make a Pokemon Game in RPG Maker - Part 73: Changing Max Level

- Slow Leveling
Play HG or SS

Having more than one region is something that I'm planning on doing for my fan game and I'm kinda curious about how you would tackle it?

Just have lvl scaling. Make every trainer scale to the highest leveled pokemon in your party.
If the new region continues story or things in the start region, than make it conditional, so it doesn't dip below the max for the previous region.

Or just do that for the important people, and everyone else comparable to the other region for the most part.

Set wild encounters to whatever lvl seems right for surrounding events.

 

[Gardevoir1]

With the region reset idea, I remember playing Zeta and what thesuzerain did was lock you party from the first region in the first region and force you to start fresh in the second with a whole new team until you finished that second region main storyline and could merge the parties. The story was already pretty long in the first and he upped the level cap to 120 so it was an interesting take and I think worked well with the game

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

don't want to discount the other person's opinion, but I would absolutely hate it if I was just forced to leave my team behind for some arbitrary reason.

 

[Corveone]

If you have to reset your team when you reach the second region, it's basically the same experience as just playing two different games, since that's exactly what you have to do when jumping from one (cleared) Pokémon game into a new one, as opposed to what you do in HG/SS when switching regions.

If your Pokémon levels reset, that might also hardly work because even if your level 70 Charizard goes back to level 5, it would be still a level 5 Charizard that knows 80-120 BP moves making the 2nd region's early game laughable (unless you face a mad Dialga at the end of the first region that fires a time-twisting attack to your team changing them back to their first stage forms and resetting their moves, or something weird like that)

Honestly, two regions isn't much of an issue, you can simply continue raising levels since you don't finish a region at level 100. You might set the trainers level cap to like level 60 for the first region E4 champion (instead of Johto's level 50 so you don't have things like illegal Dragonites), then somewhere around 85-90 for the end of the second region.

Another option would be giving the players a choice upon entering the second region: Do you like to continue using your 1st region team and adjust 2nd region levels accordingly or do you want to start from scratch?

If you'd choose to start from scratch, all trainers and wild Pokémon in the 2nd region would start at low levels as if they were in a new game, and you could only use new Pokémon caught in that region, or old Pokémon caught in the first region but that don't exceed the level limit for each major battle. For example, if you caught a level 16 Joltik in the first region but never used it, you may use it in the second region but only after obtaining the first badge. Basically, each gym leader and/or major battle would raise the max level allowed, so you would still be able to use anything you caught in the previous region as long as it doesn't exceed the dynamic level cap.

The problem with that idea is that it would require to design the second region trainers in two completely different ways, because obviously a first leader at level 12 and at level 62 won't just have the same team but at -50 levels. Not only levels have to scale, the trainers' team composition and their movesets also need to be changed accordingly.

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

If you have to reset your team when you reach the second region, it's basically the same experience as just playing two different games, since that's exactly what you have to do when jumping from one (cleared) Pokémon game into a new one, as opposed to what you do in HG/SS when switching regions.

yes but that's just it, I'm not playing two different games, its the same rom, all my pokemon are there, but for some reason the creator decided to just take them away from me. -_-

and to the other points, that's pretty much what I said in my first comment, having trainer battle scale to the highest lvl pokemon in your party,
effectively puts this choice in the players hands, they could continue the journey with their beloved team, or swap out for new pokemon, and the scaling would stay on point regardless.

and you don't really need to change team composition for level change, its not like there haven't been games where you could catch fully evolved pokemon at levels lower than they normally evolve etc.

and since changing their level would change their moves, it pretty much solves itself.
but if you wanted to change moves that also isn't difficult.

I feel my first comment pretty well handles anything brought up already.

 

[Duck]

Personally, I think the concept of many regions in one game is ... messy at best, unless you essentially have a lot of small regions that can have the same level curve a normal one region game would have (think Alola with its islands).

If you really want to do it in a more traditional sense I'd either have the game run the "anime way" preferably with an in story explanation (e.g.: the big bads stole your Pokémon, or, the Pokemon league forces you to start from scratch due to fairness or whatever), or do some level scaling (e.g.: first region ends at ~ 60 and the other at ~95).

I'm not sure the level scaling is a particularly good idea:
- you can easily get a wonky level curve
- things that don't really make sense (4 year olds with stronger Pokémon than the champion you just beat)

And worst of all in my opinion, is that you're punishing team additions / replacements.

Not only is grinding at higher levels annoying at best, since Pokémon movesets are usually balanced around the concept of "get the last move around level 60", if your second region gets past that level at the beginning, those Pokémon pretty much won't grow naturally anymore.

They can get better stats, and evolve but pretty much every moveset change will need to be artificial (be it TMs, HMs, MTs, Move Reminders, etc.). This can be very bad depending on how your game economy is set up (like say, non reusable TMs / time consuming way to buy TMs).

 

[Corveone]

and you don't really need to change team composition for level change, its not like there haven't been games where you could catch fully evolved pokemon at levels lower than they normally evolve etc.

and since changing their level would change their moves, it pretty much solves itself.
but if you wanted to change moves that also isn't difficult.

I mean, it's not that simple. When you design a (competent) gym leader, mini-boss, etc. battle, you'll probably want to give them a somewhat intelligent team composition and move sets, some kind of battle style/strategy, some synergy between their mons so each has their role and purpose. And that has to be planned and adapted accordingly. You may script the game to automatically downscale levels, evolutionary stages and moves, but that would be rather lame, because it's not as simple as turning a level 60 Outrage spamming Dragonite into a level 15 Twister spamming Dratini and call it a day, that alone won't do well.

Strong/important trainers oftenly rely on Pokémon that are not evolutions, or that are strong evolutions but their pre-evos are a total joke. How you downscale a Turtonator, a Tauros, or a Milotic? You probably won't, you'd rather remove/replace them with something completely different, which means doing adjustments to their teams beyond just downscaling levels and moves. Same goes for many Pokémon that change their types (like how Froslass could be in a Ghost type gym but Snorunt wouldn't make sense), or get completely different abilities when evolving, or get access to different move pools and strategies that weren't available in their pre-evo stages.

And so the strategy and team composition that some level 70 trainer had may not be possible or suitable anymore if you fight him at 50 levels lower, because their Pokémon wouldn't have access to some of those moves yet, or because some of those Pokémon would have to be replaced with something else, etc. Not to mention there may be equiped items, TM accessibility, etc. that may be suitable for a late game battle but may be too much for the early game.

It has to be re-thought and adjusted manually by a human brain. I don't think leaving a computer to automatically handle all that stuff would work well at all, and it's one of the big issues with the idea of designing an open world Pokémon game.

 

[Outwitter]

The best way to implement multiple regions among the given choices would be to increase the lvl cap in my opinion. Aethestode chose to implement the same on Adventures Red, and he did come up with a spectacular hack eventually. Another amazing hack that is worth mentioning and incorporates more than one region is Glazed, and if iirc, Redriders180 didn't apply any of the fancy ideas mentioned here, however, his hack was a breath of fresh air as well. So, it can be done with or without increasing lvl cap, but if you are keen on incorporating multiple regions, it's the best bet at least for now, that's what I believe nonetheless.

The second option, i.e., Region lvl reset is a bit bland for my taste and I don't think the majority of people are going to appreciate it anyway.

The option of keeping the pokemon lvls low in the first region is worth exploring, and it would also reduce the painful grinding process we have to go through in every other hack. Adding badge based lvl capping and keeping the mindless trainer battles to a minimum would also help the case.​

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

I mean, it's not that simple. When you design a (competent) gym leader, mini-boss, etc. battle, you'll probably want to give them a somewhat intelligent team composition and move sets, some kind of battle style/strategy, some synergy between their mons so each has their role and purpose. And that has to be planned and adapted accordingly. You may script the game to automatically downscale levels, evolutionary stages and moves, but that would be rather lame, because it's not as simple as turning a level 60 Outrage spamming Dragonite into a level 15 Twister spamming Dratini and call it a day, that alone won't do well.

Strong/important trainers oftenly rely on Pokémon that are not evolutions, or that are strong evolutions but their pre-evos are a total joke. How you downscale a Turtonator, a Tauros, or a Milotic? You probably won't, you'd rather remove/replace them with something completely different, which means doing adjustments to their teams beyond just downscaling levels and moves. Same goes for many Pokémon that change their types (like how Froslass could be in a Ghost type gym but Snorunt wouldn't make sense), or get completely different abilities when evolving, or get access to different move pools and strategies that weren't available in their pre-evo stages.

yeah you could but unless you're in decomp you don't really have that much control over ai strategy. Much of it is guess work and happy coincidence; and personally I would just keep the evolved forms in, instead of downgrading to their pre-evolved forms, that's exactly what I talked about in my last comment.. to make your point you're practically ignoring what I said.

I see no problem with a twister spamming Dragonite or Dragonair, of the other pokemon you mention most have evolutions that aren't based on level, so there's no reason to replace them. And Again I said there's no reason not to have "important characters" use a different system.

It has to be re-thought and adjusted manually by a human brain. I don't think leaving a computer to automatically handle all that stuff would work well at all, and it's one of the big issues with the idea of designing an open world Pokémon game.

idk about that last one, open world or not, the problems or issues that exist would be about the same as a normal pokemon game.
and I think by now most of the potential issues have already been solved, or have some fix that gets at least most of the way.

Like Badge based gym battle scaling.

and its not like the "human brain" is some how superior or distinct from an ai. ai decision trees are made by humans, so the only limitation is what the human conceived of at that time.
I think it would work just fine with proper preparation and planning.

Besides the ai that exists in pokemon games, isn't some artificial living intelligence that changes things on the fly, its just a very complex web of pre-programmed conditions,
its worked so far and I think that's all that is really needed for a pokemon game, opw or not.

 

[Corveone]

yeah you could but unless you're in decomp you don't really have that much control over ai strategy. Much of it is guess work and happy coincidence; and personally I would just keep the evolved forms in, instead of downgrading to their pre-evolved forms, that's exactly what I talked about in my last comment.. to make your point you're practically ignoring what I said.

Keeping them in their evolved forms would break the game balance and the sense of consistent progression. If you have a 9th Gym leader (1st gym leader on the 2nd region) whose team is: Centiskorch, Galvantula, Scizor, Araquanid and Yanmega, that would be totally fine for a player who chooses to start the second region with their previous team that has just conquered the Elite Four, but for a player who decides to start anew facing that same team at a lower level (even if they have worse moves) would be really weird.

I mean, to each their own, I'm pretty sure some players would enjoy that, but for the sake of game design and more reasonable progression I think that each trainer should just have a "NG" and "NG+" team, especially for the early game.

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

Keeping them in their evolved forms would break the game balance and the sense of consistent progression. If you have a 9th Gym leader (1st gym leader on the 2nd region) whose team is: Centiskorch, Galvantula, Scizor, Araquanid and Yanmega, that would be totally fine for a player who chooses to start the second region with their previous team that has just conquered the Elite Four, but for a player who decides to start anew facing that same team at a lower level (even if they have worse moves) would be really weird.

I mean, to each their own, I'm pretty sure some players would enjoy that, but for the sake of game design and more reasonable progression I think that each trainer should just have a "NG" and "NG+" team, especially for the early game.

mmm, yeah, if you decide to follow the typical idea that the first gym should have baby pokemon, or first evo only even though they're a professional nationally recognized trainer.

that can be balanced a bit by specific choice of pokemon available to catch in the area.
I'll probably have to test that at some point to be really sure about it.

Speaking of logical progression there's 2 ways you can think of that.

Either the new region should be a reset, or it should increase the challenge to make the game feel new again in a different way.

Depending on the option chosen, different things are needed.


The way I feel is, yes its the start of a new journey in a new region, but the player has been through the entire game at that point,
gaining skill and improving.

I think it would feel pointless if things only reset/restart.
So I know I'm almost switching arguments, but if levels were reset, then I'd say highly specified enemy teams, would be completely necessary, to ensure there was still a challenge
for players to test the skills they gained in the first half of the rom.

 

[_pheebee]

Having two regions is a risky task.

If the second region isn't an already established region you have to put in a lot of effort to make it memorable, and worth the effort to travel around.
If you're re-using an old region like, Kanto for example. You have to keep it similar to it's original appearence, while also making it unique enough to travel.

Then, obvious there's the situation about level scaling.
GSC did it terribly, where gym leaders were still 50 - 60, while Red was 60 - 70 and made it hard to grind.
HGSS improved slightly, gym leaders were tougher, but so was Red. But there was also the oppurtunity to re-challenge all 16 gym leaders at certain times.

As long as you scale the level reasonably, and make it always possible to grind, and level it should be fine.