[Discussion] Obtainable Pokemon in Fan-Games

[Worldslayer608]

Recently, I have been thinking about this a bit.

For me, I feel like having all of the Pokemon obtainable, even with a good number of them through specific events requires the developer to generate a hearty sized world for them. At what point is it worth giving up the consistency of finding a certain species, to allow the player to fill their entire Pokedex?

The other side of this coin is that most games do not actually see completion, and parting out the obtainable Pokemon generally means that there would need to be another version or expansion to help complete a Pokedex and creates a bit of a paradox.

Do you fancy having all of the Pokemon available in your game?

What about only having some of them available? What do you feel is the proper number of obtainable Pokemon?

 

[th3shark]

I think what's most important is how frequently the player encounters new pokemon. Encountering wild pokemon should feel as not repetitive as possible. Variety of pokemon among routes is important too.

The total pokemon in the game doesn't matter too much. A shorter game can get away with having less species than a longer one. For tradition's sake, I'd say 150 pokemon should be the minimum for a complete game, and I don't think it's possible for a game to have too much pokemon (unless the creator spaces them out poorly).

At what point is it worth giving up the consistency of finding a certain species?

This never liked this kind of play-style. For me, knowing ahead of time what pokemon you're going to meet ruins a big part of the experience. Putting together a well-rounded team with whatever pokemon you can find, good or bad, is part of what makes pokemon immersive and exciting. Of course, that's the viewpoint of only some players. But these are the kinds of players that would want to play a fan game in the first place, to experience something new.

 

[Wootius]

I feel including a Pokemon just to include is is a bit silly. Filling the Pokedex is boring, grinding levels just to evolve something would drive me to tears.

Ideally, you'd do something like the northwest of Kanto is a Pidgey habitat and southeast a Starly habitat. Pidoves would be the city bird Pokemon. Taillow would be common to both, but Wingull/Ducklett only in areas of salt water/fresh water respectively.

So I'm not so much against adding pokemon to a region as I'm advocating thinking of ways to creatively making areas feel different when type/roles start repeating.

 

[Maruno]

I don't think it's at all necessary, or even desirable, to have every single species available in a fangame. As you said, there's loads of them, and regions are only going to be so big, so it's be overwhelming to try.

Number of Pokémon species in each regional Dex:

• Kanto: 151
• Johto: 251 (spread across two regions)
• Hoenn: 202
• Sinnoh: 151 (210 in Platinum)
• Unova: 156 (300 in B2W2)
• Kalos: 150 + 153 + 151

Obviously the trend is to have longer and longer Dexes, but by the same token the regions themselves are getting bigger and bigger. They also have two versions of each game to split the available Pokémon between.

As for being able to transfer or trade or otherwise put every single species into a single game, it's obvious that the official games would allow that. However, they're the official games, they have a huge player base with extensive multiplayer and time-wasting features (Battle Frontier, etc.), and they can afford it. Fangames are entirely different in that regard, by being smaller, less-played with, virtually nil multiplayer and a couple of scraps of time-wasting features (which I honestly doubt people would play much anyway once they've finished the plot, because what's the point?). You have to bear this in mind when coming up with a size and scope for your game.

I think a good number is about 150, with a maximum of 200. Any more than that is just cramming them in for the sake of it. For each extra full-sized region, I'd say you can add 100 to this amount, but a significant number of species should be unique to one region or another, rather than all spread across all regions. It's a matter of saturation.

A game with "only" 150 species in its Pokédex does not have an incomplete Pokédex. It's complete in the game, which is all that matters.

 

[tImE]

Making all Pokémon, currently available, accesible in a fan-game is a daunting task and so is the task of catching them all, for the player.

As th3shark said; You need variety, and it shouldn't get boring or annoying to enter wild battles. (Unless you are scavenging a cave for items. God I hate Zubats.) But at the same time, having too many makes the player confused and you lose the important feature of recognition. A player that remembers or recognizes elements from earlier in the game makes a game more enjoyable. It's not good to only meet a Pokémon once in your entire playthrough, simply so all Pokémon can fit.
What is important is not the quantity of Pokémon, but the pacing of how many you encounter along the way.

A bigger question in my opiniong is; Which Pokémon to include?
I find this a lot harder than deciding a sheer number. What if you manage to not include the most popular Pokémon and end up disappointing a lot of players?

 

[griever7x]

I feel like every area needs to have pokemon that would naturally reside in it.
That should give the player immersion and make the world feel alive and 'real'.
Adding pokemon for the sake of it is just bad; the number of species residing in an area should make sense. For example, in a small route, I would not expect to encounter more than, say, 2 or 3 species of pokemon, like pidgey, rattata and nidoran. In a heavily forested area though, the number would have to increase. I think that in the ocean the number should be even bigger: in real life, when diving, you can see dozens of different types of fishes and it was always a letdown for me to be able to only fish 2 pokemon in every route. Of course the total amount of pokemon that should be in a game still varies depending on the size of said game's world, though, but I think that's less important and noticeable if you do a good job at it.

 

[FL]

First, I'm totally against the "150 Regional Dex". This is a big waste of game potential. You has more than 700 pokémon, but just uses 150 in the game first part or even in the entire game? C'mon...

For me this is the biggest fault at DP and this is even corrected in Platinum. I guess that even Game Freak realize this. BW2 has 300 available pokémon in the regional dex and XY has 454, these two are the lastest pokémon games.

A quote for an old discussion about this:

I like the BOTH ways, National Dex since the start or Regional Dex and, maybe at the end game the National Dex.

It's easier to people that never played pokémon or only played one game to know about 200-300 pokémon (types, strategy, etc...) that more than 600. And it's nice the feeling of unlocking the National Dex. But also it's good to unlock every pokémon from the start and hunting for your favorites

Things that I didn't like are putting too many pokémon available in several areas that you almost don't spend time, so you miss a lot of pokémon and the small regional dex of DP. This pokédex has ONLY two Fire pokémon families and one is the starter, so I suggest to use 200-300 pokémon for a regional dex.

I don't think it would be... "A good idea"... To use all Pokémon anyway, since as the_end already said, you'd need a new encounter every route, it will make the game crowded and "unrealistic" so to speak.

The official games ARE unrealistic in this aspect, specially when talking about Unova being far away and, after you unlock the National Dex, hundreds of foreign species become avaliable. Also, since RBY some pokémon can be obtained by trades, Game Corner shop, give away (like Eevee), etc... You can also create new methods.

And I really dislike trainers using the same pokémon over and over. In BW early game, you fought against almost only Patrat, Purrloin and Lillipup. In DP you battle versus too many Galactic grunts with the same pokémon.

 

[Demon Wolf]

Just make super sized region each area will have a different species like pokemon x n y but bigger and make an epic trilogy of it so it takes a week or more to beat the plot have characters have a chase be a dective soldier something then pokemon will be caught all of them

 

[Eichro]

I think that depends on what you aim to achieve with your game. For me, more Pokémon means a more complete experience and I know when I make my own game, it will have as many Pokémon as possible, but maybe what the creator focuses on isn't completeness, but something else.

As a player though, I'd rather have more than less.