Setting the level cap to 50, correcting any bugs this introduces, then accelerating the level curve would reduce grind and enhance enjoyment... Right?

[SuperSpyroDragon64]

My theory:

If all Pokemon required less EXP to hit level 50, lv50 became the new cap, and any bugs this introduces were corrected(moves or evolutions coded to happen after lv50 would be moved to a lower level) it would only enhance the game.

At the very least, it would make raising a max-level team faster. Once the player hits max level in a RPG, grinding to victory isn't an option any more, the player can't rely on an over-levelled starter, and developing knowledge of the game becomes the key to victory.

I believe Pokemon games should do more to ease newbies into knowing enough about competitive pokemon to enjoy a simulation of it in the lategame. No more wimpy pushover Gym Leaders/Elite Four members/Champions who don't even have complete teams or held items or functional movepools. Nothing TOO extreme(some hacks take sadism to newfound extremes), that sort of attitude should be reserved for optional postgame challenges.

I recall someone long ago telling me overlevelling is necessary because wimpy garbage pokemon can't succeed unless they're over-levelled. That doesn't sound right to me. Pokemon should buff wimpy garbage pokemon so they can compete, if they're truly that awful compared to good mons.

Of course, this is only a theory and I'd love to hear counterarguments. But to me it sure seems like the majority of a Pokemon's growth happens between levels 1 to 50, and from 51 to lv100 new moves that mean something are incredibly rare.

 

[Orion☆]

You know, put that way, this is a good idea. I don't see any reason to get our Mons to level 100 other than a sense of "completion" and taking on high-level opponents. Not only would a level 50 cap make that sense of "completion" more easily achievable, but it could also encourage players to raise more than just 6 Pokémon to get through the main game, provided that EXP yields are adjusted accordingly. Heck, it might even make raising Pokémon like pseudo-legendaries a bit less frustrating given their ridiculously late evolution levels (looking at you, Unova mons).

 

[Amore]

I recall someone long ago telling me overlevelling is necessary because wimpy garbage pokemon can't succeed unless they're over-levelled. That doesn't sound right to me. Pokemon should buff wimpy garbage pokemon so they can compete, if they're truly that awful compared to good mons.

This part is why I disagree with your idea. I like that if I really like a base form I can grind and over-level it to ensure I can still have fun. I've done it quite a bit with Sinnoh Pokémon, particularly Buizel and a shiny Bidoof.
Plus once you've "completed" a major element of the game, it usually gets boring - levels are such a common thing because if you have a sense of progress, you keep playing. For example in my last few saves I resolved to capture every Pokémon available in the game. In HeartGold this was fun, as there's so much story and you need to get your team to lv. 80 to fight Red, giving more purpose to the post-game. Whereas in my Platinum and Black saves the lack of significant obstacles meant everything became a chore - battles, wild Pokémon, hunting down items etc. whilst seeing no growth in my team.

 

[SuperSpyroDragon64]

I don't mean to sound rude but not everyone has the free time to spend grinding, or the inclination to enjoy it when anything more engaging, challenging, and conducive to skill growth or knowledge growth is on the table. Removing forced grinds is good for accessibility, as you make your game more accessible to those who can't stand grinding or physically can't spend time grinding without neglecting other responsibilities. How many interesting and meaningful decisions are you really making per second when you EXP grind? Evolution is part of Pokemon's fantasy, but if it was necessary to the core gameplay loop, why does it go away during multiplayer battles?

At least grinding for shinies is optional. And for everything out there that supposedly feels sweeter when earned due to the time spent grinding on it, it would feel even sweeter if it was earned due to personal skill/knowledge growth on the player's part, rather than some artificial number on the screen going up to simulate the illusion of growth.

Even if your Pokemon doesn't gain EXP any more, you can give it new moves via tutors found in all sorts of interesting locations, or evolutions via stones, you can EV/IV grind or grind for money. You can try new items found when exploring, or when visiting new areas or completing optional side challenges or progressing in the plot. You can try out berries, TM and HM moves, cool new pokemon found in new areas, and more. You can improve your game knowledge and test out new strategies and team compositions. You can experiment, and experimenting with newfound Pokemon would be more appealing if adding a new member to your party required less time wasted grinding. There are so many ways anyone could see growth in their teams without the need for any EXP bar action.

Come to think of it, programming a Pokemon to gain one free level per enemy defeated and two levels at a time per proper levelup (unless this would take you to lv101) could result in the best of both worlds. You still get haha bar go up ding /g gratz macro, but it takes less time to hit lv100. Perhaps programming every Pokemon to gain a chunk of EXP at the end of each turn as a reward for surviving that turn could help accelerate grinding for tankier pokemon. Programming every Pokemon to give out a higher base EXP reward can help speed grinding up, but lowering the level cap would mean less of it would be needed. Less time spent mashing through menus, more time spent playing the game.

 

[Sheep]

I can understand this argument and as a veteran player personally wouldn't mind a 'hard' or 'ultra hard' setting for the games that follows a similar format to what you suggested, if they were to ever consider bringing this system back (and doing it properly, unlike the easy and challenge modes in BW2). Whether it would be beneficial for the game as a whole subjective though, and I'm not going to comment on that, but I can see myself enjoying a scaled down system like this and training more Pokémon. It's a little tiring to want a good physical move on your Luxray only to see that it learns Wild Charge at a whopping level 80... so if that were adjusted and made less tedious to obtain, I'd probably enjoy it.

But..

Pokemon should buff wimpy garbage pokemon so they can compete, if they're truly that awful compared to good mons.

I do wonder how this would affect competitive play though. Like in real life, not all animals are tough in combat so it makes sense to see some Pokémon weaker than others, plus balancing 800 plus Pokémon to be on a comparable scale seems pretty difficult without massive overlap. I guess that might be fine, but then rarer Pokémon would probably have less value to hunt for and use? I do wish some would get buffs, but not to the extent of making them all similar. Maybe you're not implying that though and just mean weaker ones should get buffs, but I wasn't sure! In that case I do agree.

 

[SuperSpyroDragon64]

The pokemon tier differences aren't that severe. Sometimes you'll see low-tier pokemon brought into high-tier matches, and a lot of awful Pokemon would be excellent if they had just 10 more speed or 20 more of the attack stat they care about, maybe if they had a typing we'd seen already changed to a defensively or offensively interesting and unusual typing. Increase the Super Effective multiplier across the board and sweepers who were already OHKOing won't care but every pokemon that just became able to compete with the OHKOers loves this change.

Some fighting games are balanced around the idea that you need to win neutral multiple times to win the round, and some are balanced around TODs and infinites. But what is Pokemon balanced around?

 

[Corveone]

I agree to some degree, but level 50 cap seems too low.

I think somewhere around level 70 or 75 would make more sense. It's around those levels where all Pokémon are fully evolved and (except legendaries) have already learned all of their moves, around that point where your Pokémon usually has nothing else to learn, and it's just levelling up for the sake of raising its stats.

Level 50 would be too easy to reach, and would require "squeezing" the movesets of some Pokémon too much so that even in their final stages they can get all their level-up moves before reaching that cap. Not to mention the need of adjusting evolution levels for some Pokémon, meaning that some of them would spend too little time in their first stages.

 

[ThePokeCorral]

I fail to see why having the Champion's team be level 50 is preferable to them being level 65 (or whatever) if it takes the same amount of training/grinding to match them either way.

Lots of Pokemon games have bad difficulty curves, but that's because the bosses and/or the EXP curve are badly designed, not because the level cap is too high. What we need is for the people crafting the difficulty curve to be better at game design; if we had that, I think what you're suggesting would be wholly unnecessary.

So no, I think this idea is pointless and bad.

Maybe the level cap should be lower than 100, but it should still be higher than (or equal to) the strongest Pokemon in the League without needing to reduce the latter. Have the final boss be somewhere in the 60s, then add stronger rematch versions of the League trainers, then have the level cap be slightly higher than that. So maybe 75 or 80.

I believe Pokemon games should do more to ease newbies into knowing enough about competitive pokemon to enjoy a simulation of it in the lategame. No more wimpy pushover Gym Leaders/Elite Four members/Champions who don't even have complete teams or held items or functional movepools.

Some Gym Leaders/Elite Four members/Champions are definitely too easy and should be made stronger, but that has nothing to do with the level cap. As for giving them "smart" movesets and/or held items that are beyond the skill level of the average 10-year-old, that's what Hard Modes should be for (which is something that I think Pokemon could really benefit from), and again has nothing to do with the level cap.

But to me it sure seems like the majority of a Pokemon's growth happens between levels 1 to 50, and from 51 to lv100 new moves that mean something are incredibly rare.

I don't think that's true at all; or at least if it is, it's because those Pokemon learn an insufficient number of interesting/relevant moves. Certainly, the Pokemon I'm designing for my fictional game would be far less interesting if I had to fit their entire level-up movesets into 50 levels (unless you think it's okay for a Pokemon to be consistently learning a new move every 2 levels from level 1 to level 50).

More generally, I think that a Pokemon should be able to continue growing to some degree beyond the level it can be expected to be at the first time you face the League, regardless of what that level is. Again, it's more interesting that way. When designing a Pokemon's level-up learnset, one should not have to choose between "It is guaranteed to have access to this move by the time you face the League" and "It doesn't learn this move at all."

 

[SuperSpyroDragon64]

Who should Pokemon be balanced for? Depends on the difficulty mode. If kids are willing to choose Hardcore Mode to give trainers more challenging Pokemon+Items+Movesets that's their hill to climb.

The very existence of an "EXP Curve" is bad game design. The developer is expected to have total control over how much grinding can be done and with what pokemon, or absolute knowledge on how much grinding will be done. And for what? So the player will not do what the player can easily do without any level cap below 100: Grind all challenge away.

Giving the player a badge-based level cap prevents overlevelling while giving each pokemon an easily-attainable level of power to reach with what should be a minimal amount of grinding on local pokemon around that level cap.

Setting the cap to 50 means raising pokemon to "Max level" takes less time per mon, encouraging experimentation. It also means wild pokemon will be closer to the level cap the further you get in the game.

The learnset of a Pokemon is literally already divided between "It is guaranteed to have this move by the time you face the League" and "It will only learn this move after you grind to a level so far above League Pokemon you could steamroll it in your sleep".

Why shouldn't the final challenges of a game be immune to having the challenges they pose and the player skill+knowledge checks they pose ruined by overlevelling?

 

[ThePokeCorral]

Who should Pokemon be balanced for? Depends on the difficulty mode. If kids are willing to choose Hardcore Mode to give trainers more challenging Pokemon+Items+Movesets that's their hill to climb.

Agreed.

The very existence of an "EXP Curve" is bad game design.

...What?
"EXP Curve" simply means the level that you will be at given the amount of EXP that is available thus far at that point in the game, compared to the level of your opponents (or their stats if the opponent doesn't have "levels" in the same sense that the player does). The only way to "not" have an EXP curve is for the game to not use experience points at all (which I kind of feel is what you really want here). If the level cap were determined by the number of badges you have, then ideal game design would have the EXP curve be calibrated such that you reach your current cap at the exact same time that you reach the next Gym Leader; but there would still be an EXP curve.

If you want to propose that Pokemon be changed to not use experience points - say if your Pokemon's stats and evolution were determined entirely by the number of badges you have - then let's actually discuss that. That would be an interesting concept IMO that is at least worth considering. But that's not what you proposed.

When I say that the EXP curve of some Pokemon games is badly designed, I am referring primarily to the Jhoto games, where the amount of EXP available before the League is insufficient to match the levels of the League's Pokemon even with a team of only 6 Pokemon, thus requiring significant grinding (despite the League in those games having significantly lower levels than in most other Pokemon games). For most other games, I consider the problems to be with the bosses themselves (in that they are too weak in one way or another), rather than with the amount of EXP available.

The developer is expected to have total control over how much grinding can be done and with what pokemon, or absolute knowledge on how much grinding will be done. And for what? So the player will not do what the player can easily do without any level cap below 100: Grind all challenge away.

I don't really understand all of what you're saying here, but you seem to be consistently concerned with the prospect of a player "overlevelling" by grinding past the level of their current opponents; and I do not, in fact, think that removing the option to do that would "only improve the games." Giving the players more options for how to overcome an obstacle is generally a good thing; if the player is challenged by default but has the option of "grinding the challenge away," then nobody is forcing them to grind if they don't want to. What IS an actually problem, is when the game is too difficult with the natural amount of EXP gained, and the player needs to grind in order to progress. This is the opposite of "overlevelling," which seems to be what you are primarily concerned with, at least in your most recent post.

Setting the cap to 50 means raising pokemon to "Max level" takes less time per mon, encouraging experimentation. It also means wild pokemon will be closer to the level cap the further you get in the game.

So would setting the level cap to match the level of the League's Pokemon, instead of it being ~30 levels higher than that.

The learnset of a Pokemon is literally already divided between "It is guaranteed to have this move by the time you face the League" and "It will only learn this move after you grind to a level so far above League Pokemon you could steamroll it in your sleep".

Um, no it isn't? At all? Why would you even say that? If a Pokemon learns a move at a level equal to or slightly lower than the level of the League's strongest Pokemon, then your Pokemon may or may not have reached that level. (Especially since you can usually get away with being ~5 levels lower than a given boss if you have a superior type matchup.)

Why shouldn't the final challenges of a game be immune to having the challenges they pose and the player skill+knowledge checks they pose ruined by overlevelling?

This would be accomplished by setting the level cap to be equal to (or slightly higher than) the level of the League's strongest Pokemon. As I and others have said, setting the level cap to around 70 would be a lot more reasonable than setting it to 50; and the simple reason for that is that 50 is significantly lower than the highest level opponents in the main story of most Pokemon games. Why distort the level curve of the games by compressing it by 15-30%, when you can simply prevent players from grinding past the level of the League instead?

You are also not taking into account the prospect of post-game challenges, such as an additional post-game story (such as the Delta Episode) or League rematches. With that in mind, the level cap should be more like 80.

I am approaching this matter from the perspective of being someone who is in the midst of designing my own fictional Pokemon game, and I feel that what you're proposing would be a severe handicap to me if it were forced upon me; both by forcing me to cut out a lot of the story's content to ensure that the player does not naturally hit level 50 well before reaching the League, and by forcing me to cut out 10-25% of most of my new Pokemon's movesets. Setting the level cap to 70 would not have this problem.

Also, as I said earlier in this post, I feel like what you really want here is for Pokemon to not use experience points at all; which would make comparatively more sense than what you're proposing.

 

[SuperSpyroDragon64]

The goal of all developers, when designing the EXP curve, is fundamentally to make the EXP mechanic as unintrusive to the game experience as possible due to its severe volatility and ability to ruin the intended level of challenge for the player.

The sooner the player hits the level cap, the sooner this stops being a near-unsolveable question. Because you'll never know how much grinding your player will or won't do, what battles he will or won't sneak past. It's better to cap what grinding can do, rather than trusting the player to accurately guess what the intended level is.

Introducing convenient NPCs for EV Grinding and EXP/Money grinding can negate any "challenges" provided by the scarcity of money and EXP. But those challenges aren't core to Pokemon's fantasy or core gameplay loop.

Pokemon gaining EXP and levelling up and getting stronger and eventually evolving is core to the fantasy of catching and then raising monsters.

But lv50 seems like an excellent place to put the level cap. Accelerate the level cap so the player's reached this after a few gyms, and you've got yourself a game more friendly towards experimentation, especially with wild Pokemon. Could you imagine catching a lv7 pokemon and training him to lv80 so he can be useful and reach the level of pokemon you're fighting during a daily playthrough of a game you've already beaten a hundred times?

 

[Corveone]

But lv50 seems like an excellent place to put the level cap. Accelerate the level cap so the player's reached this after a few gyms, and you've got yourself a game more friendly towards experimentation, especially with wild Pokemon. Could you imagine catching a lv7 pokemon and training him to lv80 so he can be useful and reach the level of pokemon you're fighting during a daily playthrough of a game you've already beaten a hundred times?

If you want the player to reach the maximum level after a few gyms, then what would be the point of having a level system at all? If you don't want players to deal with Exp and levelling, you'd better just make a game with no Exp and levelling mechanics period. No point in coding such mechanics into a game if they'll no longer serve any purpose after beating a few gyms. They're core RPG mechanics, you can't ask an RPG to stop being an RPG when you aren't even halfway through.

Training a Pokémon should take some time and effort (more or less, depending on the Pokémon, obviously training a Beldum should take more work than training a Rattata, because bigger effort = bigger reward). It's part of the experience, and it's what makes raising a Pokémon and seeing how it grows stronger more rewarding. If you could quickly train anything you want from level 1 to whatever the max level is with barely any effort, that wouldn't be ok either.
There has to be a balance, training a Pokémon shouldn't be a painful task, nor it should be a complete joke you can do in no time. Pokémon games usually don't require grinding provided that you more or less stick with a team... now if you want to train dozens of Pokémon, well that will obviously take some time.

Levelling up is already very player friendly with the modern Exp. Share. And if you don't want to allow players to overlevel and cheese the difficulty, or don't want to make them worry about accidentally overlevelling and having to skip trainers, you could implement temporary level caps as some rom hacks do, for example if 2nd gym leader has Pokémon between level 20 and 22, make that Pokémon stop gaining Exp after reaching level 21 until the player defeats that gym leader.
Exp. Share + caps for gyms and other "boss" battles solve both issues, as it makes levelling easy while preventing accidental or deliberate overlevelling.

If you also don't want players to worry about all the IV and EV stuff, simply get rid of those things entirely. Max IVs for everything, and no EV gain for any Pokémon. That's a different issue that can be taken care of separately from Exp and levelling mechanics.

 

[ThePokeCorral]

The goal of all developers, when designing the EXP curve, is fundamentally to make the EXP mechanic as unintrusive to the game experience as possible due to its severe volatility and ability to ruin the intended level of challenge for the player.

First of all, something I haven't brought up yet is that this principle is more complicated in Pokemon than in some other EXP-based RPGs, since how much the EXP you gain gets diluted can vary wildly depending on the number of different Pokemon you use throughout the playthrough. Setting that aside for now, I agree with this statement, and that is why I say that the level cap should be set roughly equal to the strongest Pokemon in the League, and make it so that the amount of EXP available will get you roughly to that level at that time. I still completely fail to undertstand why you want to make the opponents' levels significantly lower, rather than calibrating the amount of EXP the player gains to match what those levels already are.

Because you'll never know how much grinding your player will or won't do, what battles he will or won't sneak past. It's better to cap what grinding can do, rather than trusting the player to accurately guess what the intended level is.

No, it isn't. It's better to give the player options. If the game provides a decent challenge if the player plays it as presented to them, but the player has the option of grinding to make it easier, this does not make the game worse. It makes the game more accessible to players of different skill/patience levels. What makes the game bad is when the player needs to grind in order to have a hope of progressing (Jhoto), or when the game becomes absurdly easy if they don't skip trainers (Kalos).

Similarly, if the default challenge is descent but the player wants it to be harder... well, the real answer to that ought to be "set the game to Hard Mode," but, again, if the player has the option of going out of their way to skip trainers to make the game harder, that is not a bad thing.

Introducing convenient NPCs for EV Grinding and EXP/Money grinding can negate any "challenges" provided by the scarcity of money and EXP.

If by "convenient" you mean "easily accessible but out of your way" - like the trainer rematches in Pokemon Uranium - then, again, no it doesn't. The player should ideally be able to make the game as easy or difficult as they want it to be; THAT is what good game design looks like. Having the option of going out of your way to grind does not make the game "too easy," any more than having the option to go into the menu and change the difficulty to Easy Mode makes the game too easy.

But lv50 seems like an excellent place to put the level cap. Accelerate the level cap so the player's reached this after a few gyms, and you've got yourself a game more friendly towards experimentation, especially with wild Pokemon.

I still don't understand why you want the level cap to be reached before reaching the League, instead of as you reach the League.

Could you imagine catching a lv7 pokemon and training him to lv80 so he can be useful and reach the level of pokemon you're fighting during a daily playthrough of a game you've already beaten a hundred times?

That's what the EXP Share should be for. More generally, I agree that there should be ways of doing this, but changing the level cap isn't one of them.


All of that having been said, I think that your earlier-mentioned idea of having the level cap increase with each badge you gain is not necessarily a bad one. I just think that the "final" level cap after you have 8 badges should be higher than 50; more like 65-70, or 75-80 if the cap increases again after you beat the League for the first time. The latter scenario would ideally come with a post-game story arc and a stronger rematch version of the League.

In short, I believe that the current level cap should ideally be reached as you reach the next difficult checkpoint if you play the game as presented to you, rather than significantly before it. And the reason why I think that dynamic should top out at around level 70, rather than compressing both the opponents' levels and the EXP curve down to level 50, is because Pokemon can have more interesting and varied movesets that way.

If you want the player to reach the maximum level after a few gyms, then what would be the point of having a level system at all? If you don't want players to deal with Exp and levelling, you'd better just make a game with no Exp and levelling mechanics period. No point in coding such mechanics into a game if they'll no longer serve any purpose after beating a few gyms. They're core RPG mechanics, you can't ask an RPG to stop being an RPG when you aren't even halfway through.

Precisely. Again, it seems to me that what you actually want is for Pokemon to not use EXP at all, which would make comparatively more sense than what you're actually proposing.

 

[SuperSpyroDragon64]

Removing EXP entirely would ruin level-based evolutions and level-based move learning.

But making EXP less of a time-wasting grindy slog would make the games more accessible for those with more IRL responsibilities and less free time.

We've all played at least one fangame or romhack that got the level curve so wrong, we were forced to correct it with slow tedious grinding, right?

What does a EXP difference between your Pokemon and those of your foe really add to the game? They don't make battles "Harder" or "Easier", they either make battles unfairly easy, or they make battles unfairly hard unless you can make the level difference irrelevant through using better Pokemon or grinding more.

 

[ThePokeCorral]

But making EXP less of a time-wasting grindy slog would make the games more accessible for those with more IRL responsibilities and less free time.

As I understand it, if you play Kalos, Alola, or BDSP (I don't know about Sword & Shield) with a team of only 6 Pokemon and don't skip any trainers, you already have more EXP than you need, zero grinding required. (This is notwithstanding sudden difficulty spikes like Ultra Necrozma and the BDSP League, but that's another discussion.) And if that still isn't enough, you can use the EXP Share on top of that. The last few generations of games do not need a way to reduce progress-mandated grinding.

If on the other hand you're using a rotating squad of more than 6 Pokemon, then in general that is what the EXP Share is for. As I touched on earlier, the EXP Share can only do so much, and as your team gets larger there comes a point where grinding becomes unavoidable; and beyond that point, grinding is simply the price you pay for using a large extended team. Perhaps other mechanics besides the EXP Share could be added to push that limit further back, but there is still likely to be a limit at some point.

Personally - and this is highly subjective - I think that you should be able to roughly match the levels of each Gym Leader by using a rotating squad of about 9 Pokemon and skipping no trailers. If you're using only 6, then you should be somewhat overlevelled (unless you skip trainers) since IMO the game should be balanced for using at least somewhat of an extended team; whereas if you're using about 12, I think that needing to either grind or use the EXP Share is only fair. But again, that's just my opinion, and I'd expect others' preferences for what constitutes a "normal" team size to vary a lot. That variation in preference is why mechanics like the EXP Share, that allow you to alter the game's EXP curve, are so important in Pokemon.

We've all played at least one fangame or romhack that got the level curve so wrong, we were forced to correct it with slow tedious grinding, right?

Yes, and the primary solution to that is that the people making the game be good at game design, so that the level curve isn't broken. What's more, if they aren't good at balancing the game, then asking for artificial level caps probably isn't going to help, since they're probably going to calibrate that wrongly too.

Having developers who are good at balancing, and implementing mechanics like the EXP Share and selectable difficulty levels that allow the player to alter the EXP curve at their discretion, are the primary solutions to this kind of problem. If you have the former of those things, then further improving the player experience involves expanding the player's options for adjusting the difficulty, and level caps do the opposite of that.

What does a EXP difference between your Pokemon and those of your foe really add to the game? They don't make battles "Harder" or "Easier", they either make battles unfairly easy, or they make battles unfairly hard unless you can make the level difference irrelevant through using better Pokemon or grinding more.

If by "a EXP difference" you mean "a level difference between your foe's level and the level you will naturally be at" (and if you don't mean that then I don't understand what you're talking about), then that difference is an analog scale. Of course it makes battles "harder" or "easier"; it only makes them "unfairly" harder or easier when that difference is big. This paragraph really doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

 

[SuperSpyroDragon64]

Both. You've hit the nail on the head. The best games with EXP curves fine-tuned it with the help of many playtesters to keep EXP from being as intrusive as it could be.

The game developer has no control over whether the player grinds challenge out of the game or not. But if you balance your mons around the expectation of high levels, suddenly adding someone new to your team requires a lot of grinding. If there's no dedicated area or NPC to help, this can take ages. Especially if you're playing a fangame that lacks a speedup function and forgot to accelerate HP/EXP bar speed and text scroll speed. The best thing any game designer can do for the difficulty curve of his game is to stop EXP from ruining it. Ergo, low level caps (or low level caps that raise with each gym leader defeated) help the intended play experience.

Pokemon isn't meant to be about crushing low-levels with your high-level mon, it's meant to be about the fun of using your favourite mons. Competitive battling is about winning through the use of whatever works in your tier, but the core fantasy of Pokemon is that you and your pokemon won, not their numbers.

 

[ThePokeCorral]

You've hit the nail on the head. The best games with EXP curves fine-tuned it with the help of many playtesters to keep EXP from being as intrusive as it could be.

Precisely.

The game developer has no control over whether the player grinds challenge out of the game or not. But if you balance your mons around the expectation of high levels, suddenly adding someone new to your team requires a lot of grinding. If there's no dedicated area or NPC to help, this can take ages. Especially if you're playing a fangame that lacks a speedup function and forgot to accelerate HP/EXP bar speed and text scroll speed.

So the best solution here is that there should be "dedicated areas or NPCs to help," and "speedup functions."

I've only touched on this briefly so far, but I believe that all Pokemon games should have the ability to go back and rematch certain trainers that you've defeated previously, and that these rematches should always be at a similar level to the trainers you're facing at your current point in the story progression, based on how many badges you have. The Hoenn games sort of have this feature, but the levels aren't always up to par. The fangame Pokemon Uranium has a much better version of this, and it's great. At one point, after realizing I'd made a mistake and missed a move one one Pokemon that it could only learn at an early evolution stage, I went back and caught another one on Route 1 and grinded it up to the early or mid 20s. This took time, but it went way faster than if I had only had wild Pokemon to grind against. The game's EXP Share also helped, which if used in combination with switch training allows a Pokemon to gain 75% of the experience from a battle while another Pokemon does all the work.

The best thing any game designer can do for the difficulty curve of his game is to stop EXP from ruining it. Ergo, low level caps (or low level caps that raise with each gym leader defeated) help the intended play experience.

Okay, I still don't get this part.

Say one Gym Leader's Pokemon are at level 20, and the next one's are at level 25. Under your system, your Pokemon would naturally reach level 25 at some point inbetween the two Gyms, and then be prevented from levelling up any further until you beat that Gym. In what way does this make grinding less time consuming, compared to having your Pokemon naturally reach level 25 at the same time that you reach the next Gym? If, just before facing the Gym Leader, all of the rematch trainers available to grind against are at an identical or comparable level to that of the Gym Leader, then what purpose is served by having the second half of the trek between the two Gyms be at a flat level curve?

What would be lost by cutting out all of the trainers after you reach the level cap, so that you reach the next Gym at the same time that both your Pokemon and the trainers you face reach level 25? Or by letting the trainers in the latter part of the trek continue increasing in level naturally; so that your Pokemon, the Gym Leader, the trainers just before the Gym Leader, and the level cap are all at level 28? In all three of these scenarios, the grindable trainers just before the Gym are going to be at the same relative level compared to the Gym Leader, so what purpose does the low level cap serve?

And then, from the point of reference of one of the latter two scenarios, what is then lost by removing the level cap, giving the player the option of grinding past that level if they choose to do so?

All of this is ignoring the fact that in reality, the Gym Leader is probably going to be at a marginally higher level than the trainers immediately before them, and that having the player's level be exactly the same as the Gym Leader's would probably in fact make the game too easy if you know your type matchups; but that's irrelevant to the point I'm making. The point is that the ease of grinding compared to the strength of the next Gym Leader is going to be same regardless of whether you have an artificial level cap or not, provided that the EXP curve is calibrated correctly.

 

[Corveone]

But making EXP less of a time-wasting grindy slog would make the games more accessible for those with more IRL responsibilities and less free time.

In what Pokémon games do you feel like levelling is a time wasting grindy slog?

Ever since Gen 6 onwards, I've literally had to either toggle Exp. Share off at times (until GF had the brilliant idea of not even allowing that) or purposely skip some battles to prevent overlevelling. Levelling in modern Pokémon games is a breeze.

We've all played at least one fangame or romhack that got the level curve so wrong, we were forced to correct it with slow tedious grinding, right?

Yes, but fan games/rom hacks can become grindy and tedious usually for one of these reasons:
-Poorly balanced level curve.
-Very high difficulty that requires players to swap team members between important battles, causing Exp to dilute into more than the usual six Pokémon.

But what official games are grindy nowadays? You overlevel in games like SwSh or BDSP by simply playing normally, you actually have to restrain yourself not to do so.

What does a EXP difference between your Pokemon and those of your foe really add to the game? They don't make battles "Harder" or "Easier", they either make battles unfairly easy, or they make battles unfairly hard unless you can make the level difference irrelevant through using better Pokemon or grinding more.

Still not getting what's the issue here that certain rom hacks haven't already found a solution for. You prevent underlevelling by having a properly calibrated level curve, and by adding features like Exp. Share. You can prevent overlevelling by setting level caps for major battles. Exp scaling also exists for a reason, it helps lower level Pokémon added later catch up a lot faster while punishing and discouraging already strong Pokémon from overlevelling (although not totally stopping it).

You can address both without any need of halving the max level and changing all the move sets and evo levels for some species. Lower max level doesn't necessarily make a game less grindy. I've played a fan-game not long ago that ended with the E4 at level 100, and it wasn't a grindy game because the trainers and wild level progression was properly calibrated. Johto has the lowest level E4 in the whole franchise, with Champion's strongest at level 50, and it's generally considered the region with the worst level curve.