What should the next mystery dungeon game be like?

[Lugia trainer]

So this thread is for discussing what you would like to see in the next mystery dungeon. Stuff like what features should be added, what features should be removed, what the story should be like, what the post-ending story should be like, etc.. I think that they should make giving a nickname to pokemon you recruit optional again because it's so damn hard to think of a nickname for each individual member. I also think they bring back having every pokemon in the franchise appear in the game as well as having them all be recruitable.

 

[Helioptile]

More than 5 possible PCs.

 

[Finicky Fennekin]

I hope it's a lot more like the first few DS ones than Gates to Infinity. I loved the plot of Blue Rescue Team so much - I still replay that game even after having had it since release. I never owned Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky myself, but did get to play a friend's copy, and I enjoyed that one just as much. I'd hoped Gates to Infinity would be like Blue and the others, but I was pretty disappointed in it.

I just really didn't like any of the changes Gates made compared to Red/Blue and Time/Darkness/Sky. Blue Rescue team always felt like I was immersed in the world, Gates just felt like I was observing from a distance, I couldn't get myself as invested in that one.

 

[lugia61617]

It should be like the first five, and NOTHING like Gates to Infinity. That game was such a step backwards compared to the original five.

 

[ange]

Blue Rescue Team is the only PMD game I've ever played through and beyond. I really liked that one. I loved the idea and different designs of the Friend Areas and was very engaged in recruiting every Pokemon, especially the legendaries. Explorers of Darkness, however, totally killed my interest in the PMD series and I haven't played a PMD ever since. The removal of the Friend Areas and other changes just made me uninterested.

If a new PMD is more like Blue Rescue Team, I might pick it up again.. but only maybe. Losing your items and money upon death just discourages me so much.

 

[Lugia trainer]

Gates to infinity really was a big step in the wrong direction and for more than one reason. The fact that there are less pokemon and the fact that not all of them are recruitable along with the games short post-ending story coupled with the fact that it revolves around something that in previous games took place as part of the ending really makes the game disappointing in comparison to the previous ones.

 

[Stratelier]

- Adhere closer to main series mechanics where possible. Like Pokemon Conquest was. (Gates to Infinity DID get a few things right this time - remember False Swipe? Infatuation?) Other specific things that really bug me:
-- Some moves don't match up with the main series. E.g. Dragon Pulse can hit non-adjacent opponents in the main series but in GTI it only hits an adjacent opponent. Dragon Breath is the opposite case, only hits adjacent opponents in the main series but in GTI it's a ranged (line-of-sight) attack.
-- Types still don't grant immunities (only double resistances) while abilities do.
-- Why'd they take in-game genders out again?
-- How come all weather conditions stop HP regeneration? For a Roguelike dungeon crawler, HP regeneration is much more important in the long run than an attack boost. Heaven help you if the floor goes perma-hail or perma-sandstorm; even if you're immune to the damage, you don't regenerate HP.

- Reduce the emphasis on move ranks. The additional PP is very welcome, but once certain moves hit Lv.3 they just start getting broken. My PC's Lv.7 Dual Chop mowed through any and everything in nearly single turns apiece; even Kyurem didn't take long to down.

- Allow main characters to evolve during the main story; the reasons against it never held water in the first place (aside from the limited selection of facial-expression portraits).

- Speaking of which, I didn't mind the limited selection of starters in GTI, but they seriously need the full range of facial expression portraits. Without 'em, once your starters evolve, they feel a lot more impersonal and distanced because they can't emote anymore.

- Better algorithm for generating level layouts. I realize there are certain limitations inherent to the random nature of it, and it's slowly improved with each installment, but I still just want more open spaces in my dungeon crawling. Making, for example, all tunnels two tiles wide instead of one would greatly improve the flow of battle (currently when you engage an opponent in a tunnel only your lead Pokemon really gets to do anything).

 

[colours]

I would love for there to be more Pokemon selection in the next Mystery dungeon game, because IIRC there was only a limited amount of Pokes available in Gates to Infinity, and thats one of the the things I didn't like. .___. Not sure whether it had the fewest amount of Pokemon available, but it sure seems like it.

 

[Axe to Fall]

Like the last ones, I suppose, It's a winning formula.

 

[King of KOTBC]

well im the kind of guy who likes to use those out of the box like pokemon such as machop i don't really like going with starter pokemon very often in explorers of time and darkness other than riolu and i guess evee the other kinda out of the box pokemon weren't really appealing to me but i just went with chimchar cause thats what i got on the test but the newest one only had 5 options! three starters pikachu and axew and i didnt like it plus i miss the personality test

 

[Lugia trainer]

I would love for there to be more Pokemon selection in the next Mystery dungeon game, because IIRC there was only a limited amount of Pokes available in Gates to Infinity, and thats one of the the things I didn't like. .___. Not sure whether it had the fewest amount of Pokemon available, but it sure seems like it.

It did have the fewest number of pokemon available. There were only 140 something pokemon in gates to infinity that could be recruited (starters included) whereas the previous games had hundreds of recruitable pokemon (pretty much every pokemon that had been revealed at the time of each games release). But there's one thing I've always wondered about the pokemon world that gates to infinity took place in: how the hell did that world get so bitter to the point that the Bittercold was created?

 

[G50]

- It should have more than 5 Pokemon to choose from in the beginning
- The Wonder Orbs should continue to be available for the boss area
- an equally good storyline as the previous games
- no change in the amount of Pokemon available
- for the Pokemon unavailable for recruiting in GTI be available for the next game
- for level 99 dungeons not to be insanely difficult for a change
- a better alternative for Pokemon Paradise.

 

[Lugia trainer]

Personally I think the concept of preparing land and building facilities in paradise was interesting. Maybe they could do something similar in future game. But instead of a pokemon paradise they could do something like this: The games town is run down and all but a few of it's residents have left so you and your partner decide to help restore the town to it's former glory. And throughout the game you work on preparing the land that used to part of the town but has been left barren and unsafe due to natural disasters that have plagued the town for years. Once you restore parts of the towns land you can work on building new shops in the town to bring back the old residents, lure in new ones, and give you more ways to prepare for explorations inside dungeons. And while the story would in part focus on restoring the town it would also focus on you and your partner working on helping pokemon in need, unraveling the mystery of why you were turned into a pokemon, and what is happening to the world. Also over the course of the game as you continue to restore the town you see the residents start to return some of which end up playing a role in the story some major some minor the same goes for pokemon who are new to the town and some of those pokemon have come to investigate rumors they have heard aout the town, such as rumors about the towns restoration and rumors that play a deeper role in the story. What do guys think about that? I think it's pretty good.

 

[GastlyGibus]

I kind of liked Gates to Infinity, but I have to admit it wasn't nearly as good as Red/Blue rescue team was. And while I could go on and list some of the minor issues I had with the game, I'm going to talk about one feature that should have been in all the games, but for some reason isn't.

Let me issue direct orders to my partners.

Now, I'm not familiar with the Roguelike/Dungeon Crawler genre, so I don't know if this is a staple of those types of games, but it's incredibly frustrating if it is. Being unable to issues commands to my teammates is the single most terrible thing that holds the games back. Having to go and physically turn off certain moves like Razor Leaf because my partner insists on attacking that sleeping Aerodactyl that's sitting 20 tiles away while we're at low health is the most infuriating thing ever. It's annoying because when I do want to use that move, I have to pause, go to the menu, go to moves, partner's moves, turn it on, go back, go to tactics, partner's tactics, always use moves, unpause, defeat the enemy, go back to the pause menu, go to moves.... I think you get it now.

The game would be greatly improved in my opinion if I could just give out some general commands that most role-playing games have these days. Commands like "attack my target" or "use this move now" or "follow me" without having to navigate through a convoluted menu system and manually finding each little tactic that corresponds to the specific action I want to be taken. I can't tell you how many times I've died in Blue Rescue Team because my partner went off and did something stupid without my knowledge. One time, in Explorers of Sky I think it was, my partner just up and left formation, wandered off somewhere and died before I could catch up to him, forcing me to start over. Just being able to tell allies things like "Use Ice Beam!" or "follow me and don't attack" would be a huge improvement in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, I love the Mystery Dungeon series, but the brain-dead AI is something that really holds it back.

 

[Pikafanboy]

I want it exactly like Sky, just in 3D and with every Pokemon there is available.

 

[Stratelier]

Let me issue direct orders to my partners.

Now, I'm not familiar with the Roguelike/Dungeon Crawler genre, so I don't know if this is a staple of those types of games, but it's incredibly frustrating if it is.

Sadly, I think that's standard for the roguelike pedigree. Moreinfo:

Roguelike - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Main/Roguelike - Television Tropes & Idioms

And yes, I do agree that the ability to issue commands to your teammates (preferably without consuming your own turn) would increase the tactical nature of grid-based battles. (Which is part of what made Pokemon Conquest battles so engrossing.)

 

[G50]

Yeah, it would be nice to be able to command the partners. It would be great if it was made impossible for them to wander off on their own in the dungeons and always be by your side automatically.

It would be great if the GTI Pokemon personalities were also in the next Mystery Dungeon game. I found them very enjoyable compared to the older games.

 

[Alolan Slowpoke]

It needs to be a Dreamcast II exclusive and have Dragon Quest characters with multiplayer fps deathmatch as a dlc.

...

But srs I would like to see a little more detail in the dungeons. The memories I have of the PMD games are fairly bland. Etrian Odyssey, another dungeon crawler, has spectacular dungeons and landscapes that keep you interested in not just the objective but also the dungeon itself. I'm sure this would be harder with the randomized dungeon feature, but it would make the game a little easier to look at in my opinion.

 

[Team Gaara]

-I'd like to see the Personality Quiz come back. It was pretty much a novelty of the series. Not that I ever really stuck with what I got and answered purposefully to get the Pokémon I wanted, I still liked the Quiz.

-On that note, please give us more Pokémon to choose from. Only having the generic Unova Marketing Pokémon and the obvious Pikachu in Gates to Infinity really sucked. I really liked how we got such a wide range of unique starters and partners in the previous five games, which gave the games more replay value to play with all different kinds of Pokémon. Those being: every starter Pokémon along with some unique additional ones likes my favorites, Eevee or Skitty, and then a Ground and Fighting type or something like that. Only having five, and then the four most boring Unova Pokémon they could have possibly chosen seeing as they appear together on EVERYTHING doesn't really get me excited for the game.

-I don't know who the hell's idea it was to make it so we could only do one mission at a time, but that person needs to be fired just for that. I can't tell you how slow this game felt when I'm stuck being only able to carry out one mission at a time regardless of how many I have accepted for the area. It's incredibly stupid and seems to only be done to stretch out the length of the game.

-I've never found a Mystery Dungeon game with a bad story, but I'd really like to go back to us having some sort of actual purpose in the games. Rescuing in the first two, which is my personal favorite, (despite the much more favorable catching of outlaws added later) exploration in the next three; Gates had us rescuing for pretty much no reason other than the fact that Mystery Dungeon carries the connotation of Rescuing based on the first two. I mean...what were we? We weren't a Rescue or an Exploration team, we were just kinda chilling and trying to make a Paradise and essentially get ourselves sucked into the story by chance, which just was such a major step down from saving other Pokémon in the first games, or even finding treasure in the second set.

-I'm highly confused about the limited amount of Pokémon we got in Gates to Infinity to recruit. The Rescue and Explorers series each had every available Pokémon at the time of the games' releases in the games except Arceus. We don’t even get all of the Unova Pokémon in this game which is absolutely ridiculous. 200 or so out of 649 is unacceptable, especially with all of the DLC this game had. I’d like it if every game from now on had every Pokémon available to be recruited.

-There needs to be some sort of difficultly in the games. Pretty much all of the games do this well. In the first five games, it was dealing with Hunger and Traps, along with Monster Houses that can mess you up and severe consequences for fainting. Gates to Infinity nerfed the difficulty a bit with removing hunger almost entirely and allowing the use of orbs in boss fights, along with keeping Poke when you faint and, in my play of the game, there are seemingly less Monster Houses. It’s now even impossible to lose items in different terrains. Though they did add that Mysteriosity thing and prevent you from healing in weather to add some difficultly, it still seemed that, though the game was nowhere near a cake walk for me, they reduced a lot of the challenging aspects in it.

-For some reason, gender was removed. It’s not really important in the Mystery Dungeon series anyway, but why did they see fit to remove it in the International versions of Gates? Assuming there will be a new one in the future, with new Pokémon like Meowstic and Pyroar, I’d imaging gender will make a return.

-And finally, since this list is going on too long, I’d just like the games to come in pairs again. I mean, I know there’s really no difference except recruitable Pokémon in the MD series, I just like paired versions so I can get one for the purpose of being able to play with different Pokémon.

I didn't really have a problem with Gates, despite what it may seem, but a lot of what they did with it just made it a much less enjoyable Mystery Dungeon game to me compared to the first two installments. It just didn't truly feel like one.

 

[Lugia trainer]

I think it might be interesting to how the next game would work out on the wii u. You and your team would be on the T.V. screen and the map and menus would be on the controllers screen. I still think the idea I posted earlier is a good one by the way.