Will they tone down the difficulty to match XY?

[firepanda]

The gym leaders have been getting distinctly easier since gen 4. They started restricting gym leaders to 3 pokemon in BW and then we were completely overlevlled in XY.

The RSE gym leaders were the hardest in the game. Having a mudkip made gyms 1, 3, 4, 6 and 7 easier, but still hard. People starting with treecko or torchic would have found them a massive hurdle.

 

[Peaceful Giraffe]

I REALLY, REALLY hope this doesn't happen, because XY got boring sooo fast for me after beating it the first time, which was ridiculously easy.

 

[Nate21212]

Do you some of you guys just play Pokemon games for the main story? Difficulty, or lack thereof, was never an issue for me. I for one appreciate how huge the games have gotten and the majority of my playtime has been spent completing the Dex and trading/battling online.

 

[Peaceful Giraffe]

Do you some of you guys just play Pokemon games for the main story? Difficulty, or lack thereof, was never an issue for me. I for one appreciate how huge the games have gotten and the majority of my playtime has been spent completing the Dex and trading/battling online.

I don't battle online, as I dislike how competitive it is, and I find it annoyingly hard to complete the dex, so what I usually do is restart the game over and over again, usually using some sort of challenge to keep it from being boring. It's no fun when its too easy, though.

 

[pastabender]

I wouldn't mind if the new EXP share came to ORAS, but I would definitely turn it off. If it does come back, I just hope that they also include the old EXP share as well because training that way is much preferred and easier to manage.

Also challenge mode was one of my favourite things about BW2, and made the game so much more enjoyable in a second playthrough. Not sure if I'll turn it on straight away if we do get the option at the start, but I'd use it in a second playthrough.

I remember being stuck on Norman's team, and stuck with the twins' gym for a fairly long time, thinking it was almost impossible. I look forward to the rematch.

 

[Muur]

I hope not. 3 for late Gym Leaders and four for E4? the fuck is that about.

Only time I used the EXP Share in X/Y was when I was grinding up my Pokemon to match the level of the highest leveled Pokemon the Gym Leader/Champion had. Same thing with the Lucky Egg.

I didn't even do that. I challenged all Gym Leaders, Elite Fours and the Champion with an underleveled team. It was much more challenging and fun. In fact, if not by my lovely Aegislash, I would have lost twice against the Elite Four. In my second playthrough, though, I tried turning the EXP.Share on and it was awful. By the time I reached a Gym, my least used Pokémon would be 5~10 levels above the most level Pokémon in the Gym Leader's team. I honestly have no idea why Game Freak thought giving the Exp.Share in the main game would be a good idea. The feature is extremely useful in the post-game, when you want to level up fast to have online battles, but during the main game it is the most "anti-fun" feature ever created by an human being.

I was also underleveled, expect I didn't nearly lose. I was 8 levels under the champion and w/e under the E4 and only lost a Pokemon twice, with none to the Champion.

vs Champion, Tyrantrum takes out Hawlucha, swtich to Florges (not cheat switch, set), then spam Calm Mind and then one shot everything else. All that whilst 8 levels under.

Only time I used the new EXP share was training up some Pokemon to evolve them for the Pokedex.

 

[henrymidfields]

Did use the Exp XY, and to be frank, did not mind at all. I saw it as a great opportunity to try out more Pokémon and make them part of my main team. In the end, I had around 18-20 on my main team, and the I also kept most of my Pokémon unevolved until they were in their Lv40s-50s. Thus, most of the time I was on the same levels as my opponents, and in a few occasions I wasn't, I was underlevelled. Even better/worse, I actually lost to a couple of people. I'm sorry, but if one didn't bother to turn off the EXP All, just did the same usual 6 Pokémon on his/her rotation, and didn't think of some thing new, then I think it's pretty much his/her fault for being lazy and not thinking up of something creative to add a layer of challenge.

What should change, however, is the movesets/number of Pokémon/AI of opponents. And I believe that the new EXP Share allows an oppourtunity to being the AI to the next level.

PS I'm actually surprised that some people found BW easy. Once you outlevel the wild Pokémon in the area, the computer instantly becomes stingy with experience points, and there were far more cases of wild Pokémon 1-2OHKO-ing all my Pokémon than any other games that I played. (RBY, GSC, or XY) This lack of feasibility/practicality in level grinding, made BW's gym battles the most difficult in my case. Might as well just stick to three Pokémon in this case. Yes, I know Audino's there for the extra exp, but I didn't find it very reliable; in many cases, it was either no shaking grass, or an Emolga. (Am I just being unlucky with finding Audino, and having wild Pokémon screw me over?)

PS2: Oops, didn't realize this thread was dated. Sorry for bumping this.

 

[Alola]

Everything after Gen IV became a walk in the park. I understand that mechanics have changed and advanced, but that's GF's job to accommodate these changes and still provide a challenge. As of now, things look bleak. With new Mega Evolutions and the whole concept of Mega Evolution now in ORAS, gameplay difficulty will most likely follow XY unfortunately.

 

[Absolclaw]

No. Fuck no. I want accomplishments to actually feel like accomplishments, instead of beating Gym Leaders and Elite Four who are weaker than the damn random trainers.

If you want an easy game play X Y.

 

[Ampharos King]

For general play, Game Freak will probably keep ORAS' difficulty at or slightly lower than Ruby and Sapphire's difficulty.

 

[DoctorWhy]

Personally, I'd want ORAS to be at least as difficult as RS. Less grinding would be alright I suppose, but I'd prefer for AI to be higher and for teams to be more solid. They better not reduce team sizes for leaders and E4. I want the E4 members to have at least 5 pokemon. I'd like for GLs to have at least 4 by the final leader, but I'd prefer 5 or even 6. XY were far too easy. But if they're about equal in difficulty to RS, then that'd be cool with me.

Oh, and I hated the repetition of Pokemon in the Elite 4 teams. Like Glacia's 3 members of the Spheal line, etc. I wouldn't mind if GF was forced to add to the Hoenn dex a bit if it meant fixing that issue.

 

[Kallyle]

I think that it would be best if the Gym Leaders of ORAS at the very least had better AI, or even slightly EV trained Pokémon with higher EVs. Granted, the "only 3 Pokémon" rule with the Gym Leaders is getting annoying, but as long as the AI and EV/IV values go up, numbers don't matter. Granted, I'd rather have the leaders be like they were in ORAS, but the current trend doesn't seem to be lending any credibility for such hope.

 

[EmpoleonProd]

They won't have to tone down anything, if anything, Hoenn needs a buff since we'll probably get the XP Share from X and Y, I could get through the first six gyms in Hoenn, and completely skip every trainer battle I could between the 6th and 8th gyms, and then hit the Elite Four because they started in the mid-40's and the champion was mid-50's. If you went back after the Sootopolis scene to catch Rayquaza in Emerald, you'd fight Wallace with his mid-50's with a level 70+ Rayquaza. Hoenn needs to be harder. Ruby was my first game and I got through it so easily, and when I got LeafGreen it took me forever because the Champion's Pokemon are about 10 levels higher in Kanto than in Hoenn and I was used to skipping trainer battles a lot back then.

Personally, I'd want ORAS to be at least as difficult as RS. Less grinding would be alright I suppose, but I'd prefer for AI to be higher and for teams to be more solid. They better not reduce team sizes for leaders and E4. I want the E4 members to have at least 5 pokemon. I'd like for GLs to have at least 4 by the final leader, but I'd prefer 5 or even 6. XY were far too easy. But if they're about equal in difficulty to RS, then that'd be cool with me.

Oh, and I hated the repetition of Pokemon in the Elite 4 teams. Like Glacia's 3 members of the Spheal line, etc. I wouldn't mind if GF was forced to add to the Hoenn dex a bit if it meant fixing that issue.

With the addition of Froslass, her team is almost guaranteed to be less-repetitive, the dumbest one was when Drake had two Flygon's, and a Shelgon with Salamence.

His team could be:

-Salamence
-Kingdra
-Flygon
-Altaria
-Sceptile? (Drake could possibly use Mega Evos, if not a normal Sceptile with Outrage would be fine.

OR a Lati's member.

Sidney's team had five different Pokemon, his Emerald team would work fine.

Phoebe's team will actually be the hardest, the only three Ghost-types are the Dusknoir family, the Banette family, and Sableye. There's also Shedinja, which she could use, have it hold a Focus Sash or something so it takes two hits to kill.

 

[Battaman]

Drake might keep his Shelgon, Shelgon and Salamence are way different, different typings, different abilities, different stats distribution. I found it very fitting that his weakest were Shelgon and strongest were Salamence. Shelogon is nothing like Sealo who is basically Walrein jr.

Drake should not have a legendary and he should keep 5 dragons, his Emerald team is good as is.

Glacia needs Froslass at the very least.

Phobe might keep a Dusclops (maybe with an Evolite) and get a Dusknoir, that would at least give her something different.

Would be epic if all members of the League had a Mega, but I doubt that would ever happen.

 

[Stakatakis]

Hopefully they tone down Sky Pillar's bike puzzle.

 

[Ivysaur]

Hopefully they tone down Sky Pillar's bike puzzle.

I imagine the circle pad will make it a lot easier than before.

 

[BlackButterfree]

I want them to keep the Exp. Share, the Lucky Egg, everything that made X and Y easy... and use it as an excuse to crank the AI difficulty all the way up. I want Roxanne with 3, maybe even 4 Pokémon. I want Brawly using Full Restores every time you fail to land a 1HKO, I want Steven/Wallace's Metagross/Milotic to be 10 levels higher than the rest of their Pokémon in the Champion battle. If you're going to make it extremely easy to level up your team, then at least have the decency to make the overall game much more challenging, damn it.

And considering Pokémon is a children's game, they obviously don't want to make it uniformly difficult for everyone and it shouldn't be. So how about adding Normal, Easy and Hard Modes like they did with B2/W2? But unlike B2/W2, make them accessible from the start instead of having to play through the game three different times to unlock them all. The Easy mode would be insanely easy. Normal mode would be around X and Y's level of difficulty. And Hard Mode could be the Hellish Odyssey I just described above.

 

[Jukain]

The Exp. Share is optional. It may not be obviously optional, but it is. Despite that, I don't think that made the game easy. It's a pushover of it's own accord. I have not experienced BW2's Hard Mode and it's competitive held items, so I don't know what that's like. It can't be that much harder other than it taking more effort. I don't consider that to be harder, just tedium. I will say that a boss should take more effort to beat, though. RPGs just were not designed that way, though. Sure, you might have junk that has HP going into the far reaches of the universe, but all that it really takes to beat them is patience. Pokemon doesn't have anything like that, but it would make no difference if it did. You're playing the wrong kind of game if you want to be totally blindsided by an attack you didn't see coming. You're REALLY playing the wrong kind of game if you actually WANT the enemies to be so powerful that no amount of grinding will save you. The point of a game is to be able to win it. If it's made in a way that none but the most skilled people can win, then it's not fair. (or it's Japanese, but still, we would be unable to endure it) I will not deny they've made lots of things that make this game too easy, but I don't care. I just want to play the game. Leave the nitpicky junk to the competitive people. To them, the game doesn't matter at all.

 

[DCM]

the nitpicky junk to the competitive people. To them, the game doesn't matter at all.

hey man I really like the games in addition to the competitive scene

anyways, I would imagine they'll try to stay more consistent with X and Y when it comes to difficulty. the xy exp share made the game so much easier than it needed to be and the trainers never had six pokemon (i think only the champion did.) I'd love to see a hard mode so veteran players can be challenged.

 

[Finicky Fennekin]

I honestly don't think RS were any harder than current games. In third grade when they came out? Hell yeah they were hard. But I was a little kid and I sucked at video games in general. Going back and replaying RS right now? I really can't say they were any more difficult than current games.

Does the new Exp. Share make things a bit easier? Yeah it does, but only if you actually use it. Switch it off if it really bothers you that much: I did when I first got it in XY and I've never turned it on since.