Another big difference between old and new Exp. Share is that the old one split experience between all your mons evenly, so if you were to have a team with 6 Exp. Shares, you would get a pittance of XP on each pokémon every battle. The new one lets the lead pokémon get all the standard XP, and then gives half that value to every other mon in the party.
As someone who absolutely does not play Pokemon for a challenge, I actually like XY's EXP Share because it let me raise more Pokemon quicker. That. Being. Said. Taking away the toggle is extremely frustrating and there's no reason why the feature shouldn't be optional.
My dislike of the system is simple. It was optional before. Now I don't have a choice but to use it. It's my opinion that with video games, more options should be given rather than have options taken away. Especially if the option existed in the past. Also Pokémon red and blue had the exp share but you could just put it in your box.
This is the point. This has always been the point. And more than that this item and the argument around it has been one point in a larger argument about what’s wrong with the games and what’s wrong with the studios priorities and choices when making the games.
The first games had an item called EXPALL, which also distributed EXP through your entire party. The Pokemon which won the battle for the lions share tho, if memory serves.
That item was way more balanced though because it divided the EXP earned among your Pokémon. It was basically just a quality of life feature that saved you the trouble of having to switch all your Pokémon in and out for every battle. The EXP share only because a problem in generation 6 and onward because it started multiplying EXP earned instead of dividing, meaning that it essentially created extra EXP from thin air to give to all your Pokémon that didn't participate in the battle. This completely unbalances the game's difficulty curve unless you are swapping your entire team out with newly captured Pokémon in every new route/zone... which the vast majority of players don't like to do. And for some reason, Game Freak stubbornly refuses to rebalance the difficulty curve to accommodate the overpowered EXP share.
6:06 That only applied if you picked Charmander, since both Bulbasaur and Squirtle could stomp Brock with ease. 6:27 No grinding needed here either. If you know how to use the Pokemon you have you can simply win while underleveled, especially if you use items. Item spam trivializes all fights.
Despite the obvious offensive nature of the game, I think that Pokemon Clover does the exp share thing fairly well. Their system more or less soft caps your pokemon's level based on your progress, so your strong guys can't outgrow the competition and the ones in reserves still gain the advantage of full party exp gain. Gen 5 (black and white) tried something similar with an exp curve based on your level compared to the enemy, but it made postgame prep and grinding extremely painful as a consequence. They also had Audino basically everywhere, so you could kind of use that as a loophole and outlevel things anyways since it gives out tons of exp. If they don't want to go through the hassle of balancing for exp share, I would say that keeping it as a late game reward makes sense. If they put in the effort however, it could be on throughout the entire game and be perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
I’m glad someone finally articulate and understands at least part of what the problem is with the studio and the games as of late. As someone who played the games as my main source of entertainment for my entire childhood and young adult life, I have such a passion for this franchise that seeing what they had done in the last couple generations really boiled over with sword and shield. And to just have that dismissed by people who won’t even listen or entertain the idea of the game freak might be anything but gods gift to us mortals is frustrating beyond words
2:54 - if the difficulty curve only gives you enough room for checking every nook and cranny, it'll leave you overlevelled if you even grind a little bit. If there's any fun to be had in grinding, which in Pokemon there absolutely is (searching for rare pokemon, pokemon with good stats and so forth), then you have to choose between the fun of grinding and the fun of appropriate difficulty. New Pokemon's difficulty curve doesn't just prevent difficulty when using the XP share, it prevents difficulty when *not* using it too, meaning even if you leave it off you still can't engage in the grinding, and Pokemon is one of the few games where grinding is legitimately fun.
@@hahacurrygoboom2581 who genuinely enjoys searching for Pidgeys just to increase your speed by 20% or breeding for 1000 years just for a Litten with better stats
Reading the title I was very apprehensive Watching the video at many times I audibly said "he fucking gets it" Ive been championing that point about grinding for YEARS, thank you. I want to use my pokemon, not avoid using them because theyre over leveled from just sitting in my bag. At least in X and Y I could turn off the exp share. Gen 5 had it best. Adaptive exp gains fixes the any grinding issues are alleviated it not outright eliminated.
The only issue I have with Gen 5's exp system is that it makes postgame grinding an absolute SLOG. Perhaps they could've added some sort of postgame experience boost, though? Or at least an easier way to grind.
@@astracrits4633the exp egg item an the elite 4 grinding sufficed for me. The system isnt great when considering making teams for competitve but that's an issue pokemon has struggled with for most of its lifespan. I'd take that over a poor story xp curve.
It breaks immersion for me. I don't get to raise my pokemon proper, through battle, unless I carry one at a time. That is a chore just to get the basic illusion of me being a trainer raising a pokemon. My whole team learns half as much as the pokemon that battled alone did? That doesn't make sense at all to me and cheapens the reward that exp itself is supposed to be.
@@Kohdok unfortunately EXP All vs EXP Share is a result of localization rather than a different item. they are both the same item in japanese. this does not, however, detract from your point or the video and is not meant to be anything like a rebuttal because that fact doesn't actually matter.
@@gmerc1333 Exactly this. "EXP All" and "EXP Share" are the same Items. They just have a different Names in the US Version of the Game for some reason. In the german Version both have the same Name (EP-Teiler). Its just a localization Thing. The Item is just buffed lika crazy (the same way the Attack "Leech Life was buffed like crazy. Even though its the same Attack).
For the numbers game that is this franchise, making the single player less monotonous through EXP. Share is a gold standard. However, I find myself saying “less monotonous single player” a bigger problem in of itself. Not to say grinding is entirely bad (Grinding for Magicite is optional and never truly needed unless you want access to the cool magic in FF6).
"Starting a game automatically with NG+" This is why I keep telling people not to get Mounts and Gliding in Guild Wars 2. You only need to go through it once. But doing so you learn how to move fast with your skills which later transforms into general good combat control.
As someone who did my first blind playthrough of Pokemon X with the Exp Share off and had a fun and slightly challenging time akin to the Game Boy games. I mostly used the device for.... post game competitive grinding xD I've always felt it should be a post-game item, hopefully it will be some day
@@herowither12354 You have NEVER been "forced to grind for 5 hours". Never. Not even once. Quit lying. If you did that, it's because you CHOSE to do that. The game didn't "force" you to do it. Just admit you skipped every piece of optional content and go away.
If they just brought back the ability to turn off the thing and removed the "added feature" where it shares EVs as well then it's fine. That being said I've had a of fun replaying the more difficult g5 games this year and I really wouldn't mind a more difficult mainline game or at least a more accessible version of the easy/normal/hard system from Black 2 and White 2
A lot of the hate would disappear if Gamefreak gave the player more options and flexibilities. Give an option to turn the exp share on or off. Give an option to decide how many Pokemon get the effect of the exp share. Not only this, but Jesus Christ give the players a difficult option. It's crazy to me that Pokemon is the best selling IP and is yet the most restrictive Rpg. Give. Players. Options.
@@ajbXYZcool The thing is that you can't do it with a simple switch because difficulties require balancing. I would say to make the AI more intelligent because only increasing the levels only means you only have to grind more. Give gym leaders more diverse strategies and unique gimmicks that promote team building and usage of moves other than just damage moves. This would also help give players motivation to catch multiple different pokemon for more reasons than to just collecting. If they made gym leaders and elite four/champions more based on certain strategies than a type, they would actually feel like proper bosses. The problem is that Gamefreak develops their games under time constraints, and I doubt they'd want to lose money just to make a better game, which is why if they ever do implement difficulty, it'll only be higher levels with the same dumb AI.
I'd say the counter argument to what you were saying about matching exp yield to difficulty "like other JRPGs" is that Pokemon is not like other JRPs. Specifically, most JRPGs let you have 3 or 4 characters participate in a battle at once, and in addition most traditional JRPGs have a roster of around 6-7 playable characters max. Without the exp share or switch training, in Pokemon you can only give 1 Pokemon the exp from a battle at once, and a big part of the game is collecting and evolving potentially up to 100+ unique characters. Without the exp share, if you want to keep even just a single party of 6 evenly leveled and ready to face challenges, you have to be constantly switching your lead in order to distribute exp, and this can often be difficult due to Pokemon's type effectiveness system meaning that not every Pokemon is suited to every area or trainer type. I agree that the universal exp share is a bit much, and the games should be balanced around it, but Pokemon is a very different game than other JRPGs
But those difference make the exp share even more beneficial. In older games the "meta" was to solo as much as possible to break the exp curve and destroy everything whit sheer stats whit no strategy whatsoever. As it's proven by FE as well, games whit no shared experience encourage lowmanning, as 1 sufficiently overlevveled character is pretty much invincible. Exp sharing is a good thing. Poor level curve is the problem of recent games, the exp share is not a problem if the curve is well made, as the 7th gen prove.
@@noukan42 That's what I was trying to say. The unique nature of Pokemon games makes the EXP Share good and Necessary, and comparing it to other JRPG game balancing doesn't work.
There are plenty of other monster collectors both older and newer than Pokemon that have long mastered balancing EXP gain in spite of all monsters you have gaining EXP together. Shin Megami Tensei, Dragon Quest Monsters, Digimon, Yo-Kai Watch, the list goes on. Heck, Dragon Quest Monsters actually makes use of battling high EXP yield monsters like Metal Slimes, which Pokemon doesn't do with Chansey and DQM makes it so monsters you aren't using that are back at the farm gain some EXP even when you aren't using them and the game is balanced around that and beats you to a pulp if you don't actively try new teams and try to make early route low tiers carry you.
@@noukan42 I think this reasoning is a fallacy. The modern exp share does in fact not share exp, but multiply it. You get the full exp for every Pokemon participating in battle and half the exp for every other team member. This means that soloing a game with one Pokemon is not punished anymore as it was in older games. In older games, your other team members would fall behind in level, the game punishing you for not using them. In modern Pokemon games, you can STILL solo the game with one Pokemon, in fact it's probably still as viable as in older games. But now, you get bonus exp on top of that.
SMT V gives EXP to all your living party members. It works in that game though because you’re expected to fuse your party members together or eventually replace them with guys with better skills, and they stop learning skills after a certain level. Also the amount of exp required to level up is insanely high most of the time. There is evolution but it’s really hard to do and no demon is locked behind evolution to my knowledge that is only in the Persona 2 duology.
Plus, recent SMT games make it possible to give even the early area low tiers powerful busted skillsets eventually just for the fun of it, making it meaningful and rewarding while Pokemon will reward you out the gate for overlevelling any low tier with little thought required.
@@DrCoeloCephalo yep. It’s also fun to brag to your friends that your Phoenix learned concentrate even tho you just started, or you already have some iconic move randomly on someone. But even then you will still hit a point where you gotta replace them with some end game demon. Unrelated but I am not fully opposed to exp shares in games in fact I quite like it when done correctly. I especially did like EXP share in XY because of horde battle ev training, but when it’s forced to be turned on it gives me anxiety to think about getting useless evs on my entire team and my entire team being tuned towards useless stats through no real fault of my own simply playing the game. If u could somehow find out the ev spread of every players story mode team I think it would all look very similar to each other.
Video: "With the introduction of Held items in Gold & Silver they introduced The EXP Share..." The Official Trainers guide to Gen 1: "Speak to Professor Oak's assistant at the look out Station between Route 15 and Fuchsia City. If you've collected 50 different Pokemon, he'll give you the Exp. All, which allows you to share experience points with Pokemon that don't fight in a battle."
keep in mind the exp all in generation 1 divided the exp equally between all pokemon in the party thus resulting in zero "bonus" exp. whereas the modern exp share gives 100 percent of that fights exp yield to each pokemon on the team resulting into upwards of 500 percent extra exp every battle.
To be fair, the EXP All doesn't work the way it does in later games. It actually divides the number of exp you get per fight by 6 (or however many you have in your team), as opposed to how it works post-gen 6, where your lead gets 100% and all other members get an additional 50%. If you got into a battle in RBY where you had EXP All on and you got 600 exp, each mon would get 100 exp. In the same scenario in a modern game, it would be 600+300+300+300+300+300 for 2100 exp total.
The biggest problem with the modern Exp Share for me is that it undermines training Pokémon, be it through battles or grinding. The older version allowed sharing Exp fully with another team member or doubling the exp intake, presenting a choice in how you raise your team, resulting in not needing to switch-train or grind up every single Pokémon; your "job" is made a lot easier and more interesting. The modern exp share being always on is just unnecessary, even if it does allow for more team experimentation. That said, placing it as a post-game reward is an interesting decision, although it might regress to having fewer options during the campaign, which might force more players to grind or incentivize them to not change their team composition, depending on how the developers would balance the game. Since Pokémon have always been RPGs made with customization in mind, I'd suggest adding back the old version as something like "Exp Share Lite", while also giving the player the modern version in the post-game. Then, training would remain interesting throughout the campaign and extremely convenient after the fact.
Fuck if anyone thinks Pokemon is grindy they would literally die if they tried playing the original Persona. So yeah mandatory exp share is dumb and needs to go. And they need to re-split Friendship and Affection once more.
First, Pokemon does have a grinding problem that isnt clear if you only play normal JRPGs. And that's trying to level up a weaker pokemon during the mid-game. Because Pokemon tends to stat their wild pokemon 5-10 levels smaller than the gym leaders, if you find a brand new pokemon by the end up a zone and it's super cool, it's going to probably be 5-8 levels lower than the rest of your party, by the sheer count that you probably found this rare pokemon after the rest of your party has already met the level requirement. So now you have to grind to level up this random pokemon Here's my solution Pokemon has always had the concept of a level cap. a barrier where if your pokemon is higher level than the cap, you get punished, encouraging you to play within the game's existing pacing Now, this doesnt really work, since Disobedience only applies if you're like 20 levels higher than the next gym but some hardcore nuzlockes do it differently, where you have to have the level of each pokemon equal or be smaller than the level of the highest pokemon the next gym leader will have. To ensure challenge is met What if they made the Exp Share work off that cap zone. Instead of a disobedience threshold. You make the ExpShare only work if the pokemon is lower than the capstone. and each time you beat a gym leader, the Cap Limit will be 5 levels below the gym leader's best pokemon. Meaning if you just blitzed by with the Exp share, you're going to be under-leveled. But if you played the game the way it was designed to be, then the Exp Share shouldnt matter. you should be at the required level to fight the Gym Leader Fairly
You actually understand why people prefer it off. Most of the people who are Pro-Exp. Share (including some big PokeTubers) come off as needlessly condescending.
Grinding for brock really isnt a thing. Since 2 of the 3 starters get a move at level 8 that does 4 times damage to both of brocks pokemon. I'm assuming kohdok starts with charmander.
I have an idea. What if Pokemon introduced a mechanic that incentives you to use different teams throughout the main game?The main reason I see for the EXP Share is it allows you to train up completely new teams while staying on the same level curve, so adding additional incentives to do so would help I think.
@@agr0nianTV Thinking it over, it could be some sort of "exhaustion" mechanic, explaining it away by saying the fighting in the Blarghia Region is just THAT INTENSE. After a certain number of fights out, a Pokémon becomes Exhausted and has to rest in the PC for a good number of battles. Once refreshed, you could rotate them back in. Something like that.
I feel like you basically just described the concept behind Pokemon Gyms being themed. They were meant to push you to adapt your team for them, which meant you would have to level up one (or more) new pokemon for your team to combat each gym. That could be expanded on, make type ad/disadvantage more of a factor in gym (or whatever they get called in the future) battles. Introduce modifiers exclusive to these battles.
People keep telling me that Pokemon doesn't require grinding much. But wtf are you talking about? Every time I play, I have to grind my team to deal with Lt. Surge if I don't want to use a Ground-type. Every time, I have to grind my team to deal with Koga period. Every time I have to grind to deal with Whitney if I don't use Geodude. Every time I have to grind for Brawly. Every time I have to grind for Winona. It's not like I'm "skipping content." I do Silph. Co. I do explore every route to its entirety. But one overpowered Pokemon on the enemy team will often sweep my entire team if I can't take them down quickly because Altaria likes to use Dragon Dance or Muk likes Minimize. Yes, technically the game gives me specific tools to beat these bosses. In the case of Lt. Surge's difficult Raichu, if you start with Bulbasaur or use a Ground-type, you'll be fine. But maybe I don't like Diglett and don't want to use one, or maybe I started with Squirtle. For Koga, maybe there are moves that never miss (albeit terrible moves but that's beside the point). Maybe I can get Ice Beam if I explore every nook and cranny of the world so I can OHKO Winona's Altaria, but that doesn't seem any different than grinding it until it's too easy. I wholeheartedly agree that the EXP Share should have the option to be turned off, and I don't know why they took that option away. But I just legitimately don't understand how people play these games and don't grind at all. Is it because they use only "good" Pokemon? Admittedly, I use my favorites, and they're not usually the most perfectly balanced teams, but I feel like if that's the requirement for avoiding grinding, I think we've lost sight of something here. ...But on another note, why did you bring up BDSP. This video was fine. Addressing BDSP did nothing to add to the topic of the video. All you did was throw that in to shit on it? And I mean, that's fine if you don't like it, and you should be free to express your opinions, but you just threw it in at the end for no reason in a video completely unrelated to it. This isn't even about whether or not I like it. This is about the fact that it's so out of nowhere that I almost got whiplash when you suddenly brought it up. Besides, don't pretend the remakes that came before were 100% totally flawless and beloved. Specifically ORAS. But I personally think, and have heard a lot of people agree with me, that the even the "best" set, the HGSS games, didn't really fix any of the problems I have with a poorly designed region. I even know people who disagree with me and think that the Johto games are fantastic who still agree that HGSS did nothing to fix the big issues.
Honestly, I think the main reason for the large level gap in sword and shield is actually the wild area, not to say its bad, but the game was clearly designed so you do 1 or 2 things in it between every gym, and not doing everything you can in 1 visit. I've actually noticed this myself, where in my first playthough I didn't do mutch in the wild area and only really caught a few members for my team and was actuallyon par with most of the gym leadersin that game, while in my second where I fully engaged with it on my first few visits and I was massively overleveld, the exp share dose amplie the problem but I don't think it was the main problem like it was in gen 6 and 7, though I do agree you should be able to turn it off.Also as a tip, try using more then 6 pokemon in thouse games, it not only helps metegate the problem because not all your pokemon will be with you at one time, but you can also bench your stronger pokemon if they get too high in levels, I'd Honestly recommend it as it's a unique experience that you really can't get in the older game's without heavy grinding.
I feel like scarlet and violet embraced that solution by have the obedience level caps increase by 5 instead of ten. You're basically forced to use a dedicated second team to deal with lower level badges.
To be fair, Pokémon has a somewhat unique problem in that the number of party members you can have is basically limitless. So the notion that you have enough EXP to get through the game if you just play through a good portion of the content is only true for some players. If everyone played Pokémon in a sensible way, get a team of six put together fairly quickly and stick to it with a couple alternates, then the EXP share wouldn't be necessary, but if people want to play through the campaign with a lot of Pokémon, they're punished, and not always knowingly. Little kids might not get the whole trainer battles as a limited resource thing right away. All that said... you should definitely be able to toggle it off. Even have it on by default, I don't care, but at least let me turn it off.
I don't think getting a team of 6 as quickly as possible is the optimal strategy either; in order to get the most of your experience, for the early game, should stick to just 2 or 3 Pokemon, at most. The longer you wait to add new team members, the higher level they will be (assuming they are found in the higher level areas of the world). I know this from experience, because I used to play with 6 team members ASAP, and I would *always* need to grind before the Elite Four. My most recent playthrough, I decided to wait for some of the later-game Pokemon that I've never used (like Doduo in FireRed/LeafGreen, etc) and it worked out WAY better for me. In some games as well (looking at you, gen 1 and 2) you might just be able to only use your starter and maybe 1 other Pokemon and be able to beat the entire game without much thought at all, considering just how overleveled that singular Pokemon would be. Somewhat counter-intuitively, the more Pokemon you use, the harder the games become.
@@kryzethx That's totally true "fairly quickly" is pretty broad, you might not pick up your 6th until the 5th or 6th gym, by that I just meant you're going to the whatever Pokémon you plan on sticking with as soon as you can. In either case, the point was more that you only actually use as many as you need, which, if you're wanting to actually use a full team and flesh out the game, is 6.
Monster Hunter Stories 2 solves this issue. The EXP needed to level up will inflate, creating a soft level cap that you will not break until you move on to the next area. That area then gives much more EXP, allowing you to Level Up. At anytime you add a new monster (always at Lv.1) They quickly catch up in 2-3 battles. (EXP is shared by team, but the numbers are actually balanced around that too) Another game, Monster Sanctuary, eggs just hatch 1 level below your strongest. So new monsters are always ready to go.
TIL that they removed the ability to toggle off Exp Share. That sucks. I personally would always keep it on (love me some Quality of Life Improvements), but I liked the option to make the game more challenging. I feel like the only way you could get that challenge with Exp Share always on would be to have the games put a Level Cap on your team until you beat the next Gym (like how it's *supposed* to be that Pokémon above a certain level won't listen to you unless you have a certain Badge, even though I don't think that problem is actually coded to appear enough for it to matter)
A temporary level cap is an interesting idea. This does happen in the Pokemon games. It just applies only to traded pokemon. A player can get a high level Pokemon from a different game. Then they can use it to streak through a new playthrough of the game. This would be cheating. So the developers put in the badge system in order to prevent this cheating. If someone catches a Pokemon in the game. They can level that as high as they want to without obedience problems. Pokemon that are gifted by NPCs also dont have obedience problem. This issue only applies to trades. Even trading with NPCs can cause this problem. There is an odd exception in the anime. It is in the origional Kanto series. Ash didn't get his Charmander in a trade. The Charmander was abandoned by its former trainer. Then Ash adopted it. The pokemon was obedient as a Charmander. Then it was disobedient as a Charmeleon and Charizard. Maybe the obedience problem applies to all pokemon with a different trainer in thier past, or maybe it is a case of the anime screwing up. The biggest blunder is at the end. Ash looses the Pokemon League tournament because his Charzard didn't obey him. However by then Ash had all eight gym badges. So all Pokemon should have obeyed him, even Charzard. This is a glaring innaccuracy. The anime really messed up. I find that Charmeleon is very different in the anime as it is in the game. It is night and day. Ash doesnt get Charmeleon until very late in the anime. It is depicted as something very powerful and agressive. I did have a Kanto Playthrough once, and that was in Let's Go Pikachu. In that game, I got Charmeleon quickly and easily early in the game. The level for evolution is actually pretty low. I never had an obedience problem with that Pokemon. I also got a ivysaur and wartortle quickly and easily with no obedience problem. It is funny that Ash never got these Pokemon in the origional series of the anime. He was close to getting an ivysaur in the anime, so close. It is strange that he didn't. I guess this is a wierd case of a Pokemon pressing its own B button. Maybe Bulbasaur wanted to delay evolution in order to learn Solar Beam early. However it should have evolved after that.
i still cant understand how a big ass company like GF cant put an option with exp share, lvl cap, more difficulty (like more pokemons in enemy's teams and better ia etc) some people do that in their bedroom and its better than the original... (im at 160h on a difficulty improved version of ultra moon) sorry for the comment after +1year lol
12:45 No. I wouldn't. I would chastise Pokemon for not making proper use of high EXP yield monsters to overcome this issue easily like Happiny, Chansey and Blissey just like Ni No Kuni Wrath of the White Witch did with the Toko line and what Dragon Quest does with the Metal Slime line. If Pokemon was consistent with itself, it wouldn't be so short. Pokemon makes the idea of being a Pokemon Trainer a seriously big deal full of arduous challenges training monsters to earn their respect and form a bond with them in order to become thr best of the best. Just listen to the anime song _"The Game"_ . Things like EXP share remove any semblance of that as other monster collectors may make you share EXP to all your monsters but balance that by keeping level growth slow and scale hard. EDIT: Your point about exploring as much as possible leading you to be properly levelled up is an excellent point tho, I must say. I can actually say that about Shin Megami Tensei 5. I've spent SO much time just exploring the overworld and collecting new demons and it didn't feel monotonous cuz I was doing so much and before I knew it, I was actually overlevelled. Things like that, I can agree with.
Thank you so much for talking about how grinding has almost never been necessary for Pokemon games outside of postgame content. You can beat these games just by battling all the trainers and taking on all the bosses and it's far more exhilarating than if you're just grinding up to match them in level. A Champion's Battle just isn't the same unless your entire team is getting outsped and demolished so that you have to carefully switch into predicted Hyper Beams and Earthquakes and the like. The only way I could even remotely capture that same feel in SwSh was to basically raise up two whole teams at the same time and rotate them out using the new PC accessibility. The problem with that approach, though, was that I pretty much never used my pokemon that leveled up faster and I was more or less just stuck with the same 6 pokemon that took forever to level up anyway. The ones I'd rotate in every once in a while ultimately just felt like temporary eye candy unless I randomly pulled them out for a gym battle or something... But being able to choose from 12 pokemon instead of 6 meant I was a little too prepared for any given battle. I like to stick to 6 pokemon throughout the entire game so that I have to get creative and work with the limitations those 6 pokemon have. With double the pokemon, I have twice the type coverage and twice the opportunity to construct a team against a gym leader that I'm already overleveled for... There were only two battles that were difficult in the game: The champion battle and the rival battle in the postgame because I was playing Shield and his Zacian is absurdly difficult to defeat. (Apparently this fight is incredibly unbalanced between versions and Zamazenta is significantly easier to deal with in Sword). I really do defend SwSh a lot because I feel like it's way too overhated in a lot of weirldy specific areas. I really don't think the stuff about National Dex, animations, voice acting, etc. are nearly as big of a deal as most people on the internet seem to be convinced. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say the game looks better than Pokemon's ever looked before overall. The problems that I have with the game are these difficulty concerns. It's really hard to get fully invested in the game when it bends over backwards to give as much to you for free as it can.
I've never been a huge pokemon fan. I always thought people complaining about the exp share were like dark souls fans ranting about easy modes but for a kids game where an easy mode definitely made sense. But all of that changed when Kohdok said what exactly exp share did. What? I always thought it evenly split the exp you would get amongst your team so you didn't need to focus on training them up individually. Why isn't it 1/6 of the exp to every Pokemon (or 1/5 for a team of 5 etc.) It would remove a management system that isn't immediately obvious to 8 year olds, wouldn't wreck the level curve, and would still help with quickly leveling Pokemon. Just conjuring new exp out of thin air is bizarre.
I'm kinda surprised you didn't mention bringing a new Pokemon onto an existing team. An some point in every game, usually about a quarter of the way through, where the wild Pokemon lag behind the trainers' Pokemon by a large enough gap that they will require grinding if you want to make them viable. With the single EXP share, that Pokemon will be leveled up without too much effect on the existing party, which is not something that can be done with a full part EXP share.
I actually love grinding. I found that the newer gens EXP Share actually hinders my ability to bond with my Pokémon the same way I used to in the older games, I’ve actually gone back to the old games just to get this experience back. A monster can’t mean much to me when I’ve never had to deliberately spend any time with them. Just give us the toggle back, that would make everyone happy.
These games make you reverse grind, having to purposely remove your pokemon from the party to prevent them from gaining too much exp. If I do keep it and allow it to overlevel then just auto-win pressing A, am I really using it?
When I played Omega Ruby, I love the new EXP Share at first. It helps me to not worry about switching low level pokemon in every battle. But the more I think about it, what concern me is that I have less emotional bond to my team. Everytime my other pokemon level up thanks to the Exp Share, I felt no satisfaction from it leading to me not really caring about my pokemon because they will be roughly on the same level anyway.
There's loads of design problems in Pokemon and I'm glad this is video meticulously worded. A lot of people seem to be able to look over them - but I find them unplayable.
I never did any grinding at all in SwSh and was leveled fairly perfectly for every encounter barring Leon. That said, you do have to avoid the massive temptation that is raid battles to achieve this. XY and SM definitely had issues with being over leveled when it’s on though. And I definitely worry about BDSP when it comes to the EXP share always being on because the originals weren’t balanced around it. And also I feel it’s okay that the remakes aren’t a major change from the originals. That’s because I feel gen 4 is when GF started to get a clue as to how to make the games properly. After that gen, all they added for the most part were new mons and gimmicks. That said, no one has to buy them and I am very certain that GF doesn’t expect those games to sell all that well. Probably around Let’s Go numbers. Arceus seems to be their main focus anyways.
The one change that I think helps with the exp share in gen 8 was the box link, with that addition to the game you could switch new pokemon into the team on the fly, this let me constantly rotate in and out new pokemon with the xp share allowing them to quickly catch up and me being able to change my team up at any point depending on the challenge. Though this play style isn't really the prefered way to play with most trainers perfering to keep the same team of six throughout the game. Really what the games need is some kind of level cap system, this you can do on your own but if pokemon couldn't out level the next gym or whatever until you beat it this will keep the challenge for player who just want a team of six and encourage others to try switching up their team with rotating members. Food for thought
1:50 Actually the EXP Share isn't originally from Gold and Silver, it was originally a Key Item called the EXP ALL that worked a lot like the modern party-wide EXP Share, but buggy.
You're absolutely right that the modern EXP share would be a fantastic post game reward. That thing is a godsend for training up a bunch of newly hatched Pokémon for competitive play. No one wants to slowly grind dozens of carefully bred Pokémon to the level cap just to be able to able to play high level multi-player. It's just the fact that it completely sabotages the difficulty of the solo story mode because it's given to players early on and can't be disabled that's a problem. I've met kids who gave up on multi-player Pokémon because they never actually learned basic important concepts of the battle system, simply because the single player gameplay is so mind numbingly easy that they just steamrolled every NPC trainer with ridiculously overleveled Pokémon and never really engaged with the mechanics.
Pokémon's main story has never been difficult, at all. These games were designed for us dumb kids to be able to steamroll through them. It's why we have stuff like Nuzlocke challenges and randomizers and it's why pretty much every romhack cranks the difficulty up.
@@ginger-ham4800 this person has never played gen 4 and faced the wrathful godess that is cynthia some parts of the older gens were rather hard. kohdok himself gives the example with pewter city's gym...made even more difficult if charmander was your starter.
@@chaoticjexak There was also Whitney and her infamous Miltank. And the elite four were never pushovers in the early gen games. While I do agree with the overall point that Pokémon games have never truly been difficult (the AI of the NPCs trainers have never been capable of using any advanced strategy) they used to at least have bigger teams and strong Pokémon, so you still had to put some amount of thought into the combat mechanics.
Same for Black 1 and White actually. If you go through all the nooks and crannies of Victory Road, your team will still be under leveled and will only get worse as the penultimate and final bosses rear their ugly heads. I’ve had Reshiram carry both battles because the rest of my Pokémon could do nothing cuz they were 10-15 levels lower to the bosses even after fighting the Elite 4.
@@fallwoodcentral7991 That sounds like a "You" problem. Use some strategy. Don't just try to facemash everything. A good strategy can make up for a 15+ level difference.
@@FF8Irvine_Fan Oh wow, I’ve never actually thought about using “strategy” in a “turn-based role-playing game that uses limited resources,” maybe I’ll use this for the other games I play, like Magic: the Gathering or Dungeons and Dragons. Sarcasm aside, even if you did come up with a strategy for the Elite Four while horribly underleveled, and survived all their lucky critical hits, your party will get minimal EXP due to most of them being dead from the battle they just took part in, leaving you still underleveled for the coming battles or lopsided level spread and with you having to repeat this whole cycle again of getting a lollipop for solving light-speed travel three more times, which means that the Champion will likely stomp you because you are now 20 levels under. It’s not that I don’t want to use a strategy, it’s the fact that despite me enjoying the game to its fullest and following all the breadcrumbs it leaves me for side quests and hidden wonders in the world, while using said strategy to gain access, it still neglects to put me on the ideal level for the Elite Four, thus ruining this difficulty curve that was quite fine for most of the game. This more often than not leads to grinding out the Elite Four and simply starting again when you faint. Is it fun to be the punching bag for a bunch of random strangers you just met? Even with a good strategy, the level gap is still prevalent and will make its presence known periodically with random critical hits that will dumpster your party whenever they feel like. You could grind up a Pokémon with Battle Armor to protect yourself from those crits, but you’re still grinding. As an example of a good game being constructed around over leveled opponents: Temtem. There are periodically opponents that appear while being 10-15 levels above you, even times when they’re Lv 100 while you are just 80 or likely lower. However, it never feels unfair because the game has given you ample opportunity to think outside the box and with synergies of your tems in this manner. The constant use of the double-battle helps in this respect, because the monsters are allowed to work together. Pokémon being stuck in a 1v1 format basically means “big number win” most of the time, that’s what the type chart is “move gets big number when against this type.” Yes, Pokemon encourages strategy, I have used poison-stalling and sweeping many times in my playthroughs, it does so for most of the Black and White games, but shouldn’t using a strategy award you with, I dunno, EXP?! So you are prepared for the next battles? Isn’t this the point of having levels: to have growing complexity and strength as you play so you can handle the next challenge? There are games that handle overleveled opponents well, and those who don’t. Simple as that.
It's worth noting that if you play Sword and Shield minimizing random encounters, but fighting every trainer in the game, you will still end up woefully underleveled for the last third of the game even though the Exp. Share is permanently on. As long as you're running away from unwanted random battles instead of murdering everything you see, you shouldn't really end up overleveled. The number of trainers seemed pretty well tuned to the existence of the Exp. Share this time around.
"If you play Pokemon without doing the main thing Pokemon does it might just be fun". Catching pokemon gives XP now too, so if you're having to avoid all non-trainer XP, you can't catch many pokemon, and if you're not catching pokemon what *are* you doing?
@@yurisei6732 As I said, you're going to end up *underleveled* later in the game if you skip all random encounters. This means that you *have* to make up the difference with random encounters. You just need to not go overboard when you do. Additionally, Max Raids don't grant experience points at all, so you can catch Pokémon from them as much as you want without any risk of overleveling. Alternatively, if you do want to catch more Pokémon from the field, you can always rotate your party instead of keeping the same 6 on your team at all times. You have access to your box storage from almost anywhere now, after all. As for me personally, I just catch my traveling team and then not bother catching anything else until the post-game when I have access to better-looking Pokéballs, False Swipe, Spore, etc.
@@Kohdok tell that to pkmn Black and White 2. For clarity, I understand that the games aren't that hard. Been playing since the gemstone era (Sapphire, specifically). From my experience, there's a few times when you kind of have to grind, especially if a gym needs the effort grind. _LOOKING AT WHITNEY AND HER MILTANK WALL._ It gets worse in newer games when the exp share can't be turned off- it actually does make a difference because if you plan properly, you could take down a few high levels to instalevel past your limit. Then you add the xp candies ...
@@lanterns_glow Milktank is easy tho, you get a plenty of options. Geodude in the caves, Machop and Onyx trades that are easily acessible, gastly who can hypnosis and is immune to her stomp, exeggcute on headbutt trees on the route just before goldenrod and pidgey with sand attack so she can't hit rollout; At least Morty can be more challenging with 2 haunters and a gengar that can eat your team if you don't know what is coming. Also B2W2, at least for me, was a breeze which i haven't got any moment i thought the game was hard, but at the time i played i started deciding my team before i even got to the game so take this with a handful of salt
...You lower it's stats with moves your starter Pokemon start with. Miltank cannot switch out, and so stuff like Growl and Leer stay on and weaken it for the entire fight. Most starters begin the game with Growl/Leer/Tail Whip for a reason.
@@Kohdok You literally alluded in your video to how exp.share is needed to enter the competitive scene due to how much grinding you'll be doing to get the bare minimum of 12 perfect natured and EV & IV tailored pokémon to level 100. 🙃
It's actually very easy to fix EXP share to be honest. Just make the EXP system similar to that of Black & White. If you don't know in Black & White the exp gain is dependant on your current level. For example if your level is lower than your opponent. You gain extra exp from battle. If your lv is higher however your exp got cut. This system actually discouraged grinding in any playthrough. I really like this system cause it make adding new member to the team less of a chore while at the same time keeping your high LV pokemon in check.
13:28 There is one thing to remember though; when you play a Pokemon game for the first time, you won't know what's good and what isn't. Not all Pokemon are created equally, and if you "waste" experience on trash Pokemon (like the aforementioned Caterpie or Weedle, or other early game noob traps), you will have to grind either a new team member that is more useful, or just grind a few more levels so that your trash 'mon is partially useful. I've fallen into this trap before, on my first playthroughs of Hoenn, Sinnoh, AND Unova, where I had to grind just before the Elite Four for HOURS. Though Exp Share should still totally be an option
@FF8Irvine_Fan I would like to ask for context on how you did that? Most pokemon games can be beaten without needing a full team if you know how to use them, but Butterfree in particular is a pokemon that doesn't really match up in stats compared to other pokemon seen later. It's not impossible, just not as likely outside of the right circumstances
I mean, it depends on how you look at it. On the positive side, it means you can just play the game with a team of your favorites and still expect to succeed without being punished for it. You want to get to and through the Elite 4 with a single Beedrill? More power to ya. I suppose it's also pretty great for people who buy every new edition so they just have the most up to date roster, and the campaign is just something that's in the way of the competitive battling game they WANT to play. There really is no reason it shouldn't be a toggle though. And while we're wishlisting things, bring back Voltorb Flip!
" you can just play the game with a team of your favorites and still expect to succeed" Bruh. Most people were doing that BEFORE they ruined the Exp Share.
MonHun is harder than DS, people have just had it memed into their mind that DS is impossible and therefore expect it to be, thus creating their own oppressive difficulty.
i play a mobile gacha game named Guardian Tales. The level system is kinda mix of shared XP and avarage grinding XP. At the end of each area, you gain a resourse named EXP Crystal, and you spent that EXP Crystal to level up your characters. So, you can go to dungeons that gave you more EXP Crystals and grind your characters, but you dont need to play with that character in order to leve up it. Its a gacha game with Stamina system, so you need to choose which resourse you wanna farm each day, but i think it is clever than the shared XP system.
The other thing that people don’t mention to often is that newer games offer a far wider selection pool of new party members. So exp share in that way can let you onboard new pokes with less resistance. It’s more that using the same team gets overbearing - and you never NEED to switch it up
I’m not sure how you fix this, bc I personally LOVE exploring a new area and trying new stuff. Lol Shin Megami Tensei fixes a lot of it by letting you fuse, maintaining the original characteristics of your investments, while giving you new toys.
Here's the easiest way to fix the exp share: turn it back to how it used to be. If that's too hard, don't make it generate new exp, just make it split it. Maybe 1/6 for every member wouldn't be that great, so maybe have the pokemon in the front get 1/2, then split the other half equally between the rest of the mons? So that, ya know, having more pokemon doesn't just generate more exp. Oh, and obviously include an off switch. And just as an aside, keep in mind Sword and Shield also included experience candies for the exact same purpose, so I dunno what they're doing.
Just include the Off Switch. Don't just remove features as they are there to solve something very important. The problem is that Pokemon has a very different desighn than most RPGs. You don't just get 6 or 10 characters. You can have hundreds. And includes competitive. If you want to use a rotating team or try to get a wild Poke to your team standard you will have to grind. A lot. The Exp Share makes it that you can have more. Before the standard strategy was already use your main and over level him. That didn't change. People still use the big guys. The only thing is that you have to spend more to train and farm exp when the Exp Share is not there. So you can take a harder chalangeand be a lower level. By sharing that precious exp to your pokes. Problem comes when you want to have more or are prepping a competitive team. To get a fully competitive Poke is hard and the Pokemon community just hacks. It's the truth. Most of what you see online are hacked. Ev, Iv, lvl. Those things take time. People don't care. So they get the perfect team in the easy way.
I was mostly listening to this one, and forgot this wasn't an arlo video. You bamboozled me good. Annnnd glad i cancelled my preorder for the remakes, didn't realize they gutted all the platinum content. what a disappointment
Some casual players are stupid and if they can turn the xp share off, they WILL level only like one Pokemon and get stuck on type disadvantage, rage quit, refund and rate game poorly. This is "kids being impatient", they can't call kids stupid. XP share toggle isn't needed. If you want to level one Pokemon, use one Pokemon. Just rebalance the god damn xp gain. If you have same level as opponent or more, xp gain is reduced by 90%. Camping gives no xp, that's stupid. Don't generate randomly more xp based on party members, just share it based on party levels on all members. If you need players to feel accomplishment more often, make the game story go to level 70 or 80 for more level ups. If your team of six is level 50 while opponent is 40, just simply reduce all the xp gain numbers by 20%. It's just math. There are no rules set in stone for the numbers. The xp share is GOOD for ALL players, it's just a matter of balancing the numbers. I think Game Freak just wants to keep the games easy. My solution for all the players: use 12 Pokemon. When team A is overleveled, switch to team B and vice versa. I have done this in all games since SM and it has worked very well. Also I get to use 12 Pokemon!
I think the thing w/ Pokémon is that because of how many options there are in team building, you could defeat “bosses” at a level disadvantage of 10-15 without having to rely on broken stuff like potions and x items. like regardless of how strong their ground stab is it can’t deal any damage to non grounded targets you know? And aside from the league, the ai trainers very rarely have the coverage to make up for their weaknesses and how rarely they switch out of poor matchups. by drastically increasing the amount of xp your party members obtain whilst not improving enemy trainers, your choice of Pokémon, moves, held items, etc feel far less important and leaves many players feeling far less attached to their party as a result
I feel like Pokémon should move to making Double Battles the standard. This would give you more strategy and get you using more Pokémon more often, making the exp share unnecessary.
I haven't played pokemon since GBA. I recently did try out a romhack with exp share enabled. Didn't know what it meant at first, but it didn't take me long to realise its implications. I basically didn't spend any time training most of my pokemon! I didn't personally experience them grow at all. They were just in the backseat leveling up automatically, which felt really awful! I disabled it after one day of play. I might look back at it if I want to grind some pokemon up from low level though.
I did a playthrough of Emerald last year, and even after fighting every trainer, I still was under leveled for the Elite 4, resulting in hours of grinding against rematches with other trainers. I haven't replayed Platinum in some time, but I wouldn't be surprised if the same applied to the Elite 4 there given how hard everyone remembers it being. So the problem of a Pokemon game having moments that require grinding did still continue on for a bit longer than gen 2.
...You had to grind your level 70 Rayquaza? Wow, how bad was the rest of your team? I also just finished my Platinum playthrough. No grinding, average team level 52. Cynthia was a nightmare, but I still cleared her on my first try.
I didn’t use Rayquaza. That particular play through I wanted to use mostly new Pokémon I haven’t used before. But I do get what you’re saying. The game gives you a high level legendary Pokémon which decimates that level gap, sure, but if you stick with your normal team, it’s not so easy. EDIT: In case it wasn’t obvious, I had beaten Emerald long ago. Hence why I didn’t use Rayquaza on my most recent run.
When I played the original Diamond game, my starter was 10 levels ahead of my opposition, and 20 levels ahead of the rest of my team. I’m not even sure how EXP Share worked back then. I think it’s a midgame item, except it’s off by default and I didn’t know it was a thing to turn it on. I was, like, a pre-teen? Early teen? From a non-English speaking country, and without modern day internet walkthroughs. I knew what the gen’s Pokémons were because I bought a magazine that came with a poster of them. The game was still too easy because I could OHKO anything, except I didn’t have the option to use any mons except my starter because they were underleveled. The only content I skipped on purpose were trainer battles, and I stopped after finding out one of them was needed to complete the Pokédex (and, in the end, it turned out I did miss a trainer who was the only one with a Pokémon I needed). (Playing with other people? I knew one other kid who had a DS, let alone own the same game, much less both of our parents let us bring our videogames to the same place at the same time. Wi-fi? Naw, only dial-up.) I agree a more challenging game would be more rewarding, though nowadays my priorities are different. I’d be more pleased if the game made catching the Pokémon I want less grindy. I’ve played Pokémon fan games, and I get frustrated mowing my way through 50 Pokémon who can’t deal an ounce of damage to me for the chance the Pokémon I do want spawns. Of course, it’s a fan game, but the tools to change the core mechanic don’t exist (I think), only the specific Pokémon that spawns in a place. Anyways, my point is that I think arguing for better balancing (be it battle difficulty or catching difficulty) is more important, although “make EXP Share toggleable” is much more simpler for the devs.
i don't think the main reason why they changed the EXP share was to reduce grinding. I think the main reason is something that Pokemon has struggled with since its beginning, which is that how its battle system works runs counter to a lot of Pokemon's ideology. The problem is that using a diverse team of 6 Pokemon has never been the optimal strategy to play these games. Battles in Pokemon are almost always 1 on 1, where If you knock out a pokemon, then you take away their ability to act for that turn. So if you have a strategy where you can always outspeed your opponent and knock them out in a single hit, then there is nothing your opponent can do, you will always win. And the absolute easiest and simplest way to achieve this is to just funnel all your EXP into a single Pokemon, creating one overpowered beast that you can run plow trought the entire game. A single overleved pokemon will ALWAYS be stronger then a balanced team of 6 because of this. This is by far the easiest way to beat any of the early Pokemon games and its not even close. Training up more then 1 Pokemon is almost never actually worth it, its more time consuming, its a hassel having to switch train, and try to distribute exp evenly between the Pokemon you are trying to use. While this is the easiest way to beat a Pokemon game, it is also really boring, it is way more fun to build a balanced team of 6, even if it makes the games harder. But if you look at how kids and other inexperienced players play pokemon this is not the case. There players usually just run trough the games with their starter or another pokemon that they like, not because they don't want to use more different Pokemon, but because training up underleveled Pokemon is hard and time consuming, so they don't bother, their overleveled starter or other pokemon of choice can just knock out anything by itself anyway. This is the problem i believe Gamefreak tried to addrese with the EXP share change. Since using anything less then a party of 6 just straight up gives you less exp now, there is no reason not to have a full party of 6. It encurages less experienced players to use more Pokemon, which everyone has already found out is a way more fun way of playing these games.
Dragon Quest 11 uses a system in which the entire party gets expy regardless of weather they were in battle or not. Buuut it's okay in that game because there's 7 party members instead of 150+ like in Pokémon and all of them are mandatory at some point, so one or two of them falling behind in lvl because their skills aren't useful in a certain area would be a bigger deal. So basically expy share works in traditional RPGs, but not in mon games IMO.
@@DrCoeloCephalo I was never a big fan of SMT and Persona, but based on their recent entries I have more confidence in the future of those series than Pokémon's.
Personally, I've never seen grinding in Pokemon to have anything to do with the main story. Rather, it's for the Catch'em All crowd who wants to complete the Pokedex. Without the ability to rebattle random trainers, getting that old Lv. 5 rodent too evolve at endgame is a bit annoying. So... I guess making it a Championship prize would help fix that.
Pokémon's main story has never needed grinding, we could all beat these games as little kids with shitty teams and having no idea how useful stat boosting moves are, what EV's & IV's are, what natures actually do, etc. That only comes in during the competitive scene which is objectively the actual meat of pokémon, that's where the real grinding comes in. Having to train 20+ plus perfect pokémon to level 100, with no EXP share? No thanks. It's why we have pokémon showdown, to cut out all the needless fat.
You are only right about old school Pokémon being balanced without grinding if the player sticks to a core team of six from pretty much start to finish. Should a player want to experiment with a wider variety of options throughout their journey, they'll be at an XP deficit that can only be overcome by grinding. That's the problem the XP share solves, especially in X/Y which has the largest regional dex of any game in the entire franchise. There were multiple new Pokémon to be caught on nearly every route with hardly any repeats. The thing I always loved about X/Y is that I could not only train up a full team without grinding, but also have reserves that I could switch in. For the first time ever, I felt like the game was actually trying to encourage even casual players to catch them all. And, yes, new low-level Pokémon can actually catch up if the player just constantly rotates their team, boxing any mons that are getting over-leveled and pulling them back out later. The problem isn't the XP share, the problem is people not adjusting their playstyle to compensate.
I explored the wild area for a bit. I got too many xp candies. I made the mistake of using them, and it ruined the game for me. I was too bored to get past the 6th gym because the battles not the story interested me.
Only time you really need to grind throughout pokemon is when you want a specific pokemon on your team and it's under leveled at you point of the game (I always wanna play a dratini)
@@christianhooper7975Street Fighter no doubt about it is Capcom's #1 franchise. No other game under their belt has garnered that much history, fame and money. Only MegaMan can compare to the sheer influence Street Fighter has had, and they let MegaMan die off lol.
@@ginger-ham4800 true, SF is definitely their most recognized. But I feel like resident evil still makes more money for capcom. It’s definitely more advertised than SF, I mean they are STILL making resident evil movies. Regardless, you are right about mega man but at least my blue boy is getting a new game next year 😭 (Also Jill valentine and Chris Redfield are in fortnite lol)
I've found that modern EXP share makes it easy to overlevel but i'd rather that to have to grind forever. ROM hacks handle the EXP share way better and one's that opt out tend to feel slow and slugish.
Indeed. My particular problem is that LGPE onwards forces EXP share but I've played through the series so much that grinding is never a necessity, even with Superbosses like Red. With BDSP I played through the first time with Nuzlocke rules and even with the reimagined movesets for the bosses my only struggles was Roark... I don't expect the series to pander to me but the worst part is the balance was there in xy to USUM
Finally someone gets it. I've always hated the empty argument that everyone would use to say the exp share is bad. Interestingly enough pokemon does have a solution to the exp share problem and it's with it's exp level grouping. Many starting pokemon gain level faster then powerful late game pokemon. In sword and shield if you had a team of these slow and very slow level up pokemon the level stay on track. Making this slow level up speed the norm would allow game freak to be stubborn but fix there game flow. Though like you said a better solution is the switch and maybe a way to limit further ahead pokemon from gaining exp like a level cap or just an exp zero switch per pokemon.
I've never had a need to grind - so exp share makes an already easy-ish game too easy. To counteract this in BDSP, I will be: - Sticking to a team of 5 mons to use in battle (and swapping them out if they get too high level) - Using a cute/weak 6th pokemon PURELY to walk around (as the Pokemon which walks around gets friendship benefits, which I also hate as they make things too easy...)
I did a playthrough of Sword with a team of the Galarian evolutions (Perrserker, Cursola, Runerigus, Sirfetch'd, Mr. Rime, and Obstagoon. Breed them for IVs, but still horrible type composition btw) where I only did required battles, no Dynamaxing, and no items in battle. When I got to the Leon fight my team was around 7 levels below his lowest team member. By the end of the fight after many attempts, only my Cursola was alive and just barely. I had to create my own difficulty, but it was a fun playthrough. Does not address the problem, really just proves the point further, but it shows that because of how Pokemon games are structured it isn't hard to tailor your experience even with the Exp. Share forced on. Just look at the Nuzlocke community and what they do with the games.
My problem with grinding in Pokémon is right near the end... getting up to level 100. After everything story wise has been said and done, I have developed a habit of getting my starter to the power it deserves after all the trials we've been through together
I continue to play Black 2. First thing I do is catch Riolu, the first partner I caught on my first run, and put him at the front of the party. I love the ground type gym, with his team being super effective, making it a neck and neck battle where the finale music came in at just the right time.
But if you used a full team of pokemon your team of Mons would only be Lv38-40 by the time you reached the elite four. After the first elite four battle you would be at a level difference of 4-10(as you progress up to the Champion) levels. There was a lack of exp on the route to Victory Road, and then in the cave itself. You would have to use only 3 Pokémon and even then you would only be around Lv 45-47 which would still be a 5 to 3 levels lower then most of Lance's pokemon. Up until that point the game was good
I like playing Pokemon were the challenge is being severely under-leveled. It has been like a decade for me since a repel worked on my initial run through victory road. I want to have gym leader and elite 4 battles where I have to come up with a turn by turn plan to win, so I typically start skipping all shippable trainers and avoiding wilds around gym 3-4 in older games to get sufficiently under-leveled, especially with gen 1-3s hidden stat boosts. I tried playing gen 6 the first time with the new exp share, and halfway through started alternating 2 whole teams out every gym so I'd have some challenge around gym 5, and then forever turned it off. Playing gen 8s was extremely annoying, as they cut the capture rate in 10 if the opposing Pokemon is higher level than you During the main story, so I fought against the game to be under-leveled, and then was further punished by every capture of a new Pokemon I thought looked interesting being 10x worse. Even being under-leveled there was very little challenge until Leon. Not very fun.
There was actually an EXP All in Generation 1 that did something similar to the modern EXP Share, except it was halved EXP to all pokemon that were not the active pokemon when the opponent's pokemon was knocked out.
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 91 | คู่เอก "คมอาวุธ vs อเล็กเซย์"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/V0RkEfYFsgM/mqdefault.jpg)
Another big difference between old and new Exp. Share is that the old one split experience between all your mons evenly, so if you were to have a team with 6 Exp. Shares, you would get a pittance of XP on each pokémon every battle. The new one lets the lead pokémon get all the standard XP, and then gives half that value to every other mon in the party.
Sharing the xp evenly actually defeats the reason why people actually use it. It's meant to be a catching-up mechanism.
As someone who absolutely does not play Pokemon for a challenge, I actually like XY's EXP Share because it let me raise more Pokemon quicker. That. Being. Said. Taking away the toggle is extremely frustrating and there's no reason why the feature shouldn't be optional.
that arlo impression at the begining. 10/10
My dislike of the system is simple.
It was optional before. Now I don't have a choice but to use it. It's my opinion that with video games, more options should be given rather than have options taken away. Especially if the option existed in the past.
Also Pokémon red and blue had the exp share but you could just put it in your box.
This is the point. This has always been the point. And more than that this item and the argument around it has been one point in a larger argument about what’s wrong with the games and what’s wrong with the studios priorities and choices when making the games.
The first games had an item called EXPALL, which also distributed EXP through your entire party. The Pokemon which won the battle for the lions share tho, if memory serves.
Not quite... It's RBY of course it would be a glitchy non functional pile of coding.
That item was way more balanced though because it divided the EXP earned among your Pokémon. It was basically just a quality of life feature that saved you the trouble of having to switch all your Pokémon in and out for every battle.
The EXP share only because a problem in generation 6 and onward because it started multiplying EXP earned instead of dividing, meaning that it essentially created extra EXP from thin air to give to all your Pokémon that didn't participate in the battle. This completely unbalances the game's difficulty curve unless you are swapping your entire team out with newly captured Pokémon in every new route/zone... which the vast majority of players don't like to do. And for some reason, Game Freak stubbornly refuses to rebalance the difficulty curve to accommodate the overpowered EXP share.
That Arlo bit had me DYING bro
And the fact he kinda naturally sounds like him got me too. lmao
Also the trash can makes him like Oscar the grouch.
the arlo jab gets a solid 10/10
-"Pokemon should stop being turn based"
-"You should stop playing Pokemon"
Respect
6:06 That only applied if you picked Charmander, since both Bulbasaur and Squirtle could stomp Brock with ease.
6:27 No grinding needed here either. If you know how to use the Pokemon you have you can simply win while underleveled, especially if you use items. Item spam trivializes all fights.
Despite the obvious offensive nature of the game, I think that Pokemon Clover does the exp share thing fairly well. Their system more or less soft caps your pokemon's level based on your progress, so your strong guys can't outgrow the competition and the ones in reserves still gain the advantage of full party exp gain. Gen 5 (black and white) tried something similar with an exp curve based on your level compared to the enemy, but it made postgame prep and grinding extremely painful as a consequence. They also had Audino basically everywhere, so you could kind of use that as a loophole and outlevel things anyways since it gives out tons of exp.
If they don't want to go through the hassle of balancing for exp share, I would say that keeping it as a late game reward makes sense. If they put in the effort however, it could be on throughout the entire game and be perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
I’m glad someone finally articulate and understands at least part of what the problem is with the studio and the games as of late. As someone who played the games as my main source of entertainment for my entire childhood and young adult life, I have such a passion for this franchise that seeing what they had done in the last couple generations really boiled over with sword and shield. And to just have that dismissed by people who won’t even listen or entertain the idea of the game freak might be anything but gods gift to us mortals is frustrating beyond words
2:54 - if the difficulty curve only gives you enough room for checking every nook and cranny, it'll leave you overlevelled if you even grind a little bit. If there's any fun to be had in grinding, which in Pokemon there absolutely is (searching for rare pokemon, pokemon with good stats and so forth), then you have to choose between the fun of grinding and the fun of appropriate difficulty. New Pokemon's difficulty curve doesn't just prevent difficulty when using the XP share, it prevents difficulty when *not* using it too, meaning even if you leave it off you still can't engage in the grinding, and Pokemon is one of the few games where grinding is legitimately fun.
I'm pretty sure no sane person likes to EV/IV train
@@TinNguyen-rl2xr it's not even that hard
@@hahacurrygoboom2581 who genuinely enjoys searching for Pidgeys just to increase your speed by 20% or breeding for 1000 years just for a Litten with better stats
@@TinNguyen-rl2xr honestly fair enough
@@TinNguyen-rl2xr I like ev training but only in Gen 6 because it's pretty quick and easy. It sucks everywhere else.
Reading the title I was very apprehensive
Watching the video at many times I audibly said "he fucking gets it" Ive been championing that point about grinding for YEARS, thank you.
I want to use my pokemon, not avoid using them because theyre over leveled from just sitting in my bag. At least in X and Y I could turn off the exp share.
Gen 5 had it best. Adaptive exp gains fixes the any grinding issues are alleviated it not outright eliminated.
The only issue I have with Gen 5's exp system is that it makes postgame grinding an absolute SLOG. Perhaps they could've added some sort of postgame experience boost, though? Or at least an easier way to grind.
@@astracrits4633the exp egg item an the elite 4 grinding sufficed for me.
The system isnt great when considering making teams for competitve but that's an issue pokemon has struggled with for most of its lifespan. I'd take that over a poor story xp curve.
It breaks immersion for me.
I don't get to raise my pokemon proper, through battle, unless I carry one at a time. That is a chore just to get the basic illusion of me being a trainer raising a pokemon.
My whole team learns half as much as the pokemon that battled alone did? That doesn't make sense at all to me and cheapens the reward that exp itself is supposed to be.
the EXP share was in the first generation it's just no one used it because it took a full minute to show every pokemon getting 17 exp points.
That was the EXP All. Different Name.
@@Kohdok oh yeah you're right, though it's functionality is pretty close to modern Exp share.
it'd be less embarrassing to admit you overlooked it than to clutch at technicalities bro
@@Kohdok unfortunately EXP All vs EXP Share is a result of localization rather than a different item. they are both the same item in japanese. this does not, however, detract from your point or the video and is not meant to be anything like a rebuttal because that fact doesn't actually matter.
@@gmerc1333 Exactly this. "EXP All" and "EXP Share" are the same Items. They just have a different Names in the US Version of the Game for some reason. In the german Version both have the same Name (EP-Teiler). Its just a localization Thing. The Item is just buffed lika crazy (the same way the Attack "Leech Life was buffed like crazy. Even though its the same Attack).
For the numbers game that is this franchise, making the single player less monotonous through EXP. Share is a gold standard. However, I find myself saying “less monotonous single player” a bigger problem in of itself. Not to say grinding is entirely bad (Grinding for Magicite is optional and never truly needed unless you want access to the cool magic in FF6).
"Starting a game automatically with NG+" This is why I keep telling people not to get Mounts and Gliding in Guild Wars 2. You only need to go through it once. But doing so you learn how to move fast with your skills which later transforms into general good combat control.
As someone who did my first blind playthrough of Pokemon X with the Exp Share off and had a fun and slightly challenging time akin to the Game Boy games. I mostly used the device for.... post game competitive grinding xD
I've always felt it should be a post-game item, hopefully it will be some day
Maybe it should atully divide the exp between the party and allow you to pick witch Pokemon you want to gain exp
I hate the idea that you'd be forced to grind for 5 hours for every gym, so I think it shouldn't be a post game item.
@@herowither12354 You have NEVER been "forced to grind for 5 hours". Never. Not even once. Quit lying. If you did that, it's because you CHOSE to do that. The game didn't "force" you to do it. Just admit you skipped every piece of optional content and go away.
If they just brought back the ability to turn off the thing and removed the "added feature" where it shares EVs as well then it's fine. That being said I've had a of fun replaying the more difficult g5 games this year and I really wouldn't mind a more difficult mainline game or at least a more accessible version of the easy/normal/hard system from Black 2 and White 2
A lot of the hate would disappear if Gamefreak gave the player more options and flexibilities.
Give an option to turn the exp share on or off. Give an option to decide how many Pokemon get the effect of the exp share.
Not only this, but Jesus Christ give the players a difficult option. It's crazy to me that Pokemon is the best selling IP and is yet the most restrictive Rpg.
Give. Players. Options.
Question - how would you, with a simple switch, make Pokémon more difficult without requiring grinding?
@@ajbXYZcool The thing is that you can't do it with a simple switch because difficulties require balancing.
I would say to make the AI more intelligent because only increasing the levels only means you only have to grind more.
Give gym leaders more diverse strategies and unique gimmicks that promote team building and usage of moves other than just damage moves.
This would also help give players motivation to catch multiple different pokemon for more reasons than to just collecting.
If they made gym leaders and elite four/champions more based on certain strategies than a type, they would actually feel like proper bosses.
The problem is that Gamefreak develops their games under time constraints, and I doubt they'd want to lose money just to make a better game, which is why if they ever do implement difficulty, it'll only be higher levels with the same dumb AI.
I'd say the counter argument to what you were saying about matching exp yield to difficulty "like other JRPGs" is that Pokemon is not like other JRPs. Specifically, most JRPGs let you have 3 or 4 characters participate in a battle at once, and in addition most traditional JRPGs have a roster of around 6-7 playable characters max. Without the exp share or switch training, in Pokemon you can only give 1 Pokemon the exp from a battle at once, and a big part of the game is collecting and evolving potentially up to 100+ unique characters. Without the exp share, if you want to keep even just a single party of 6 evenly leveled and ready to face challenges, you have to be constantly switching your lead in order to distribute exp, and this can often be difficult due to Pokemon's type effectiveness system meaning that not every Pokemon is suited to every area or trainer type. I agree that the universal exp share is a bit much, and the games should be balanced around it, but Pokemon is a very different game than other JRPGs
But those difference make the exp share even more beneficial. In older games the "meta" was to solo as much as possible to break the exp curve and destroy everything whit sheer stats whit no strategy whatsoever. As it's proven by FE as well, games whit no shared experience encourage lowmanning, as 1 sufficiently overlevveled character is pretty much invincible.
Exp sharing is a good thing. Poor level curve is the problem of recent games, the exp share is not a problem if the curve is well made, as the 7th gen prove.
@@noukan42 That's what I was trying to say. The unique nature of Pokemon games makes the EXP Share good and Necessary, and comparing it to other JRPG game balancing doesn't work.
There are plenty of other monster collectors both older and newer than Pokemon that have long mastered balancing EXP gain in spite of all monsters you have gaining EXP together.
Shin Megami Tensei, Dragon Quest Monsters, Digimon, Yo-Kai Watch, the list goes on.
Heck, Dragon Quest Monsters actually makes use of battling high EXP yield monsters like Metal Slimes, which Pokemon doesn't do with Chansey and DQM makes it so monsters you aren't using that are back at the farm gain some EXP even when you aren't using them and the game is balanced around that and beats you to a pulp if you don't actively try new teams and try to make early route low tiers carry you.
@@noukan42 I think this reasoning is a fallacy. The modern exp share does in fact not share exp, but multiply it. You get the full exp for every Pokemon participating in battle and half the exp for every other team member. This means that soloing a game with one Pokemon is not punished anymore as it was in older games. In older games, your other team members would fall behind in level, the game punishing you for not using them. In modern Pokemon games, you can STILL solo the game with one Pokemon, in fact it's probably still as viable as in older games. But now, you get bonus exp on top of that.
SMT V gives EXP to all your living party members. It works in that game though because you’re expected to fuse your party members together or eventually replace them with guys with better skills, and they stop learning skills after a certain level. Also the amount of exp required to level up is insanely high most of the time. There is evolution but it’s really hard to do and no demon is locked behind evolution to my knowledge that is only in the Persona 2 duology.
Plus, recent SMT games make it possible to give even the early area low tiers powerful busted skillsets eventually just for the fun of it, making it meaningful and rewarding while Pokemon will reward you out the gate for overlevelling any low tier with little thought required.
@@DrCoeloCephalo yep. It’s also fun to brag to your friends that your Phoenix learned concentrate even tho you just started, or you already have some iconic move randomly on someone. But even then you will still hit a point where you gotta replace them with some end game demon. Unrelated but I am not fully opposed to exp shares in games in fact I quite like it when done correctly. I especially did like EXP share in XY because of horde battle ev training, but when it’s forced to be turned on it gives me anxiety to think about getting useless evs on my entire team and my entire team being tuned towards useless stats through no real fault of my own simply playing the game. If u could somehow find out the ev spread of every players story mode team I think it would all look very similar to each other.
Video: "With the introduction of Held items in Gold & Silver they introduced The EXP Share..."
The Official Trainers guide to Gen 1: "Speak to Professor Oak's assistant at the look out Station between Route 15 and Fuchsia City. If you've collected 50 different Pokemon, he'll give you the Exp. All, which allows you to share experience points with Pokemon that don't fight in a battle."
keep in mind the exp all in generation 1 divided the exp equally between all pokemon in the party thus resulting in zero "bonus" exp.
whereas the modern exp share gives 100 percent of that fights exp yield to each pokemon on the team resulting into upwards of 500 percent extra exp every battle.
To be fair, the EXP All doesn't work the way it does in later games. It actually divides the number of exp you get per fight by 6 (or however many you have in your team), as opposed to how it works post-gen 6, where your lead gets 100% and all other members get an additional 50%.
If you got into a battle in RBY where you had EXP All on and you got 600 exp, each mon would get 100 exp. In the same scenario in a modern game, it would be 600+300+300+300+300+300 for 2100 exp total.
The biggest problem with the modern Exp Share for me is that it undermines training Pokémon, be it through battles or grinding. The older version allowed sharing Exp fully with another team member or doubling the exp intake, presenting a choice in how you raise your team, resulting in not needing to switch-train or grind up every single Pokémon; your "job" is made a lot easier and more interesting. The modern exp share being always on is just unnecessary, even if it does allow for more team experimentation.
That said, placing it as a post-game reward is an interesting decision, although it might regress to having fewer options during the campaign, which might force more players to grind or incentivize them to not change their team composition, depending on how the developers would balance the game.
Since Pokémon have always been RPGs made with customization in mind, I'd suggest adding back the old version as something like "Exp Share Lite", while also giving the player the modern version in the post-game. Then, training would remain interesting throughout the campaign and extremely convenient after the fact.
Fuck if anyone thinks Pokemon is grindy they would literally die if they tried playing the original Persona.
So yeah mandatory exp share is dumb and needs to go.
And they need to re-split Friendship and Affection once more.
First, Pokemon does have a grinding problem that isnt clear if you only play normal JRPGs. And that's trying to level up a weaker pokemon during the mid-game. Because Pokemon tends to stat their wild pokemon 5-10 levels smaller than the gym leaders, if you find a brand new pokemon by the end up a zone and it's super cool, it's going to probably be 5-8 levels lower than the rest of your party, by the sheer count that you probably found this rare pokemon after the rest of your party has already met the level requirement. So now you have to grind to level up this random pokemon
Here's my solution
Pokemon has always had the concept of a level cap. a barrier where if your pokemon is higher level than the cap, you get punished, encouraging you to play within the game's existing pacing
Now, this doesnt really work, since Disobedience only applies if you're like 20 levels higher than the next gym
but some hardcore nuzlockes do it differently, where you have to have the level of each pokemon equal or be smaller than the level of the highest pokemon the next gym leader will have. To ensure challenge is met
What if they made the Exp Share work off that cap zone. Instead of a disobedience threshold. You make the ExpShare only work if the pokemon is lower than the capstone. and each time you beat a gym leader, the Cap Limit will be 5 levels below the gym leader's best pokemon. Meaning if you just blitzed by with the Exp share, you're going to be under-leveled. But if you played the game the way it was designed to be, then the Exp Share shouldnt matter. you should be at the required level to fight the Gym Leader Fairly
OH NO, 5 LEVELS!? Oh wait... I recently beat Cynthia while I was at a 15 level disadvantage. Your entire argument is worth nothing now.
You actually understand why people prefer it off. Most of the people who are Pro-Exp. Share (including some big PokeTubers) come off as needlessly condescending.
Grinding for brock really isnt a thing. Since 2 of the 3 starters get a move at level 8 that does 4 times damage to both of brocks pokemon. I'm assuming kohdok starts with charmander.
The exp share makes sense for post game/competitive, for early game? Totally broken
I have an idea. What if Pokemon introduced a mechanic that incentives you to use different teams throughout the main game?The main reason I see for the EXP Share is it allows you to train up completely new teams while staying on the same level curve, so adding additional incentives to do so would help I think.
That'd be cool, but would be painful for folks who get attached to their pokemon.
@@agr0nianTV Thinking it over, it could be some sort of "exhaustion" mechanic, explaining it away by saying the fighting in the Blarghia Region is just THAT INTENSE. After a certain number of fights out, a Pokémon becomes Exhausted and has to rest in the PC for a good number of battles. Once refreshed, you could rotate them back in. Something like that.
@@ajbXYZcool If done correctly that'd be really damn cool. Would make for a really interesting game to speed run too.
I feel like you basically just described the concept behind Pokemon Gyms being themed. They were meant to push you to adapt your team for them, which meant you would have to level up one (or more) new pokemon for your team to combat each gym. That could be expanded on, make type ad/disadvantage more of a factor in gym (or whatever they get called in the future) battles. Introduce modifiers exclusive to these battles.
Shin Megami Tensei
Dragon Quest Monsters
Yo-Kai Watch
Digimon
All these games do that.
People keep telling me that Pokemon doesn't require grinding much. But wtf are you talking about? Every time I play, I have to grind my team to deal with Lt. Surge if I don't want to use a Ground-type. Every time, I have to grind my team to deal with Koga period. Every time I have to grind to deal with Whitney if I don't use Geodude. Every time I have to grind for Brawly. Every time I have to grind for Winona. It's not like I'm "skipping content." I do Silph. Co. I do explore every route to its entirety. But one overpowered Pokemon on the enemy team will often sweep my entire team if I can't take them down quickly because Altaria likes to use Dragon Dance or Muk likes Minimize. Yes, technically the game gives me specific tools to beat these bosses. In the case of Lt. Surge's difficult Raichu, if you start with Bulbasaur or use a Ground-type, you'll be fine. But maybe I don't like Diglett and don't want to use one, or maybe I started with Squirtle. For Koga, maybe there are moves that never miss (albeit terrible moves but that's beside the point). Maybe I can get Ice Beam if I explore every nook and cranny of the world so I can OHKO Winona's Altaria, but that doesn't seem any different than grinding it until it's too easy.
I wholeheartedly agree that the EXP Share should have the option to be turned off, and I don't know why they took that option away. But I just legitimately don't understand how people play these games and don't grind at all. Is it because they use only "good" Pokemon? Admittedly, I use my favorites, and they're not usually the most perfectly balanced teams, but I feel like if that's the requirement for avoiding grinding, I think we've lost sight of something here.
...But on another note, why did you bring up BDSP. This video was fine. Addressing BDSP did nothing to add to the topic of the video. All you did was throw that in to shit on it? And I mean, that's fine if you don't like it, and you should be free to express your opinions, but you just threw it in at the end for no reason in a video completely unrelated to it. This isn't even about whether or not I like it. This is about the fact that it's so out of nowhere that I almost got whiplash when you suddenly brought it up.
Besides, don't pretend the remakes that came before were 100% totally flawless and beloved. Specifically ORAS. But I personally think, and have heard a lot of people agree with me, that the even the "best" set, the HGSS games, didn't really fix any of the problems I have with a poorly designed region. I even know people who disagree with me and think that the Johto games are fantastic who still agree that HGSS did nothing to fix the big issues.
Honestly, I think the main reason for the large level gap in sword and shield is actually the wild area, not to say its bad, but the game was clearly designed so you do 1 or 2 things in it between every gym, and not doing everything you can in 1 visit. I've actually noticed this myself, where in my first playthough I didn't do mutch in the wild area and only really caught a few members for my team and was actuallyon par with most of the gym leadersin that game, while in my second where I fully engaged with it on my first few visits and I was massively overleveld, the exp share dose amplie the problem but I don't think it was the main problem like it was in gen 6 and 7, though I do agree you should be able to turn it off.Also as a tip, try using more then 6 pokemon in thouse games, it not only helps metegate the problem because not all your pokemon will be with you at one time, but you can also bench your stronger pokemon if they get too high in levels, I'd Honestly recommend it as it's a unique experience that you really can't get in the older game's without heavy grinding.
I feel like scarlet and violet embraced that solution by have the obedience level caps increase by 5 instead of ten. You're basically forced to use a dedicated second team to deal with lower level badges.
The way I see it, if it's toggleable then everyone can be happy.
To be fair, Pokémon has a somewhat unique problem in that the number of party members you can have is basically limitless.
So the notion that you have enough EXP to get through the game if you just play through a good portion of the content is only true for some players. If everyone played Pokémon in a sensible way, get a team of six put together fairly quickly and stick to it with a couple alternates, then the EXP share wouldn't be necessary, but if people want to play through the campaign with a lot of Pokémon, they're punished, and not always knowingly. Little kids might not get the whole trainer battles as a limited resource thing right away.
All that said... you should definitely be able to toggle it off. Even have it on by default, I don't care, but at least let me turn it off.
I don't think getting a team of 6 as quickly as possible is the optimal strategy either; in order to get the most of your experience, for the early game, should stick to just 2 or 3 Pokemon, at most. The longer you wait to add new team members, the higher level they will be (assuming they are found in the higher level areas of the world).
I know this from experience, because I used to play with 6 team members ASAP, and I would *always* need to grind before the Elite Four. My most recent playthrough, I decided to wait for some of the later-game Pokemon that I've never used (like Doduo in FireRed/LeafGreen, etc) and it worked out WAY better for me.
In some games as well (looking at you, gen 1 and 2) you might just be able to only use your starter and maybe 1 other Pokemon and be able to beat the entire game without much thought at all, considering just how overleveled that singular Pokemon would be. Somewhat counter-intuitively, the more Pokemon you use, the harder the games become.
@@kryzethx That's totally true "fairly quickly" is pretty broad, you might not pick up your 6th until the 5th or 6th gym, by that I just meant you're going to the whatever Pokémon you plan on sticking with as soon as you can.
In either case, the point was more that you only actually use as many as you need, which, if you're wanting to actually use a full team and flesh out the game, is 6.
Monster Hunter Stories 2 solves this issue. The EXP needed to level up will inflate, creating a soft level cap that you will not break until you move on to the next area. That area then gives much more EXP, allowing you to Level Up. At anytime you add a new monster (always at Lv.1) They quickly catch up in 2-3 battles. (EXP is shared by team, but the numbers are actually balanced around that too)
Another game, Monster Sanctuary, eggs just hatch 1 level below your strongest. So new monsters are always ready to go.
TIL that they removed the ability to toggle off Exp Share. That sucks.
I personally would always keep it on (love me some Quality of Life Improvements), but I liked the option to make the game more challenging. I feel like the only way you could get that challenge with Exp Share always on would be to have the games put a Level Cap on your team until you beat the next Gym (like how it's *supposed* to be that Pokémon above a certain level won't listen to you unless you have a certain Badge, even though I don't think that problem is actually coded to appear enough for it to matter)
A temporary level cap is an interesting idea. This does happen in the Pokemon games. It just applies only to traded pokemon. A player can get a high level Pokemon from a different game. Then they can use it to streak through a new playthrough of the game. This would be cheating. So the developers put in the badge system in order to prevent this cheating. If someone catches a Pokemon in the game. They can level that as high as they want to without obedience problems. Pokemon that are gifted by NPCs also dont have obedience problem. This issue only applies to trades. Even trading with NPCs can cause this problem.
There is an odd exception in the anime. It is in the origional Kanto series. Ash didn't get his Charmander in a trade. The Charmander was abandoned by its former trainer. Then Ash adopted it. The pokemon was obedient as a Charmander. Then it was disobedient as a Charmeleon and Charizard. Maybe the obedience problem applies to all pokemon with a different trainer in thier past, or maybe it is a case of the anime screwing up. The biggest blunder is at the end. Ash looses the Pokemon League tournament because his Charzard didn't obey him. However by then Ash had all eight gym badges. So all Pokemon should have obeyed him, even Charzard. This is a glaring innaccuracy. The anime really messed up. I find that Charmeleon is very different in the anime as it is in the game. It is night and day. Ash doesnt get Charmeleon until very late in the anime. It is depicted as something very powerful and agressive. I did have a Kanto Playthrough once, and that was in Let's Go Pikachu. In that game, I got Charmeleon quickly and easily early in the game. The level for evolution is actually pretty low. I never had an obedience problem with that Pokemon. I also got a ivysaur and wartortle quickly and easily with no obedience problem. It is funny that Ash never got these Pokemon in the origional series of the anime. He was close to getting an ivysaur in the anime, so close. It is strange that he didn't. I guess this is a wierd case of a Pokemon pressing its own B button. Maybe Bulbasaur wanted to delay evolution in order to learn Solar Beam early. However it should have evolved after that.
i still cant understand how a big ass company like GF cant put an option with exp share, lvl cap, more difficulty (like more pokemons in enemy's teams and better ia etc)
some people do that in their bedroom and its better than the original... (im at 160h on a difficulty improved version of ultra moon)
sorry for the comment after +1year lol
That Arlo jab was unexpected, but good. XD
12:45
No. I wouldn't.
I would chastise Pokemon for not making proper use of high EXP yield monsters to overcome this issue easily like Happiny, Chansey and Blissey just like Ni No Kuni Wrath of the White Witch did with the Toko line and what Dragon Quest does with the Metal Slime line.
If Pokemon was consistent with itself, it wouldn't be so short.
Pokemon makes the idea of being a Pokemon Trainer a seriously big deal full of arduous challenges training monsters to earn their respect and form a bond with them in order to become thr best of the best. Just listen to the anime song _"The Game"_ . Things like EXP share remove any semblance of that as other monster collectors may make you share EXP to all your monsters but balance that by keeping level growth slow and scale hard.
EDIT:
Your point about exploring as much as possible leading you to be properly levelled up is an excellent point tho, I must say.
I can actually say that about Shin Megami Tensei 5. I've spent SO much time just exploring the overworld and collecting new demons and it didn't feel monotonous cuz I was doing so much and before I knew it, I was actually overlevelled.
Things like that, I can agree with.
personally my only problem with the exp share is the icon for the damn thing like, what even is that. is like a torture device
Thank you so much for talking about how grinding has almost never been necessary for Pokemon games outside of postgame content. You can beat these games just by battling all the trainers and taking on all the bosses and it's far more exhilarating than if you're just grinding up to match them in level. A Champion's Battle just isn't the same unless your entire team is getting outsped and demolished so that you have to carefully switch into predicted Hyper Beams and Earthquakes and the like.
The only way I could even remotely capture that same feel in SwSh was to basically raise up two whole teams at the same time and rotate them out using the new PC accessibility. The problem with that approach, though, was that I pretty much never used my pokemon that leveled up faster and I was more or less just stuck with the same 6 pokemon that took forever to level up anyway. The ones I'd rotate in every once in a while ultimately just felt like temporary eye candy unless I randomly pulled them out for a gym battle or something...
But being able to choose from 12 pokemon instead of 6 meant I was a little too prepared for any given battle. I like to stick to 6 pokemon throughout the entire game so that I have to get creative and work with the limitations those 6 pokemon have. With double the pokemon, I have twice the type coverage and twice the opportunity to construct a team against a gym leader that I'm already overleveled for... There were only two battles that were difficult in the game: The champion battle and the rival battle in the postgame because I was playing Shield and his Zacian is absurdly difficult to defeat. (Apparently this fight is incredibly unbalanced between versions and Zamazenta is significantly easier to deal with in Sword).
I really do defend SwSh a lot because I feel like it's way too overhated in a lot of weirldy specific areas. I really don't think the stuff about National Dex, animations, voice acting, etc. are nearly as big of a deal as most people on the internet seem to be convinced. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say the game looks better than Pokemon's ever looked before overall. The problems that I have with the game are these difficulty concerns. It's really hard to get fully invested in the game when it bends over backwards to give as much to you for free as it can.
7:40 oh boy, you cannot even begin to imagine how much I want to see you talk about Pathologic.
I've never been a huge pokemon fan. I always thought people complaining about the exp share were like dark souls fans ranting about easy modes but for a kids game where an easy mode definitely made sense.
But all of that changed when Kohdok said what exactly exp share did. What? I always thought it evenly split the exp you would get amongst your team so you didn't need to focus on training them up individually. Why isn't it 1/6 of the exp to every Pokemon (or 1/5 for a team of 5 etc.) It would remove a management system that isn't immediately obvious to 8 year olds, wouldn't wreck the level curve, and would still help with quickly leveling Pokemon. Just conjuring new exp out of thin air is bizarre.
I'm kinda surprised you didn't mention bringing a new Pokemon onto an existing team. An some point in every game, usually about a quarter of the way through, where the wild Pokemon lag behind the trainers' Pokemon by a large enough gap that they will require grinding if you want to make them viable. With the single EXP share, that Pokemon will be leveled up without too much effect on the existing party, which is not something that can be done with a full part EXP share.
I actually love grinding.
I found that the newer gens EXP Share actually hinders my ability to bond with my Pokémon the same way I used to in the older games, I’ve actually gone back to the old games just to get this experience back. A monster can’t mean much to me when I’ve never had to deliberately spend any time with them.
Just give us the toggle back, that would make everyone happy.
Exp share has been in pokemon since gen 1
These games make you reverse grind, having to purposely remove your pokemon from the party to prevent them from gaining too much exp. If I do keep it and allow it to overlevel then just auto-win pressing A, am I really using it?
I've played every game wih nodern exp share and don't remember being overleveled
When I played Omega Ruby, I love the new EXP Share at first. It helps me to not worry about switching low level pokemon in every battle. But the more I think about it, what concern me is that I have less emotional bond to my team. Everytime my other pokemon level up thanks to the Exp Share, I felt no satisfaction from it leading to me not really caring about my pokemon because they will be roughly on the same level anyway.
The ring fit theme really gets the blood pumping
There's loads of design problems in Pokemon and I'm glad this is video meticulously worded. A lot of people seem to be able to look over them - but I find them unplayable.
I never did any grinding at all in SwSh and was leveled fairly perfectly for every encounter barring Leon. That said, you do have to avoid the massive temptation that is raid battles to achieve this. XY and SM definitely had issues with being over leveled when it’s on though. And I definitely worry about BDSP when it comes to the EXP share always being on because the originals weren’t balanced around it.
And also I feel it’s okay that the remakes aren’t a major change from the originals. That’s because I feel gen 4 is when GF started to get a clue as to how to make the games properly. After that gen, all they added for the most part were new mons and gimmicks. That said, no one has to buy them and I am very certain that GF doesn’t expect those games to sell all that well. Probably around Let’s Go numbers. Arceus seems to be their main focus anyways.
If you have to leave non-postgame content on the table deliberately to be the correct level that content should be locked to post game.
It’s been 20 years since the first Pokémon game. Why haven’t game freak introduce level caps? Basics man.🤦♂️
And thats just the exp-share
They forced the pokemon-ami-thing as well
Honestly, yeah. If you want the new games to be challenging, you have to actively avoid content.
The one change that I think helps with the exp share in gen 8 was the box link, with that addition to the game you could switch new pokemon into the team on the fly, this let me constantly rotate in and out new pokemon with the xp share allowing them to quickly catch up and me being able to change my team up at any point depending on the challenge. Though this play style isn't really the prefered way to play with most trainers perfering to keep the same team of six throughout the game. Really what the games need is some kind of level cap system, this you can do on your own but if pokemon couldn't out level the next gym or whatever until you beat it this will keep the challenge for player who just want a team of six and encourage others to try switching up their team with rotating members. Food for thought
It’s so basic yet somehow so difficult for game freak.
1:50 Actually the EXP Share isn't originally from Gold and Silver, it was originally a Key Item called the EXP ALL that worked a lot like the modern party-wide EXP Share, but buggy.
You're absolutely right that the modern EXP share would be a fantastic post game reward. That thing is a godsend for training up a bunch of newly hatched Pokémon for competitive play. No one wants to slowly grind dozens of carefully bred Pokémon to the level cap just to be able to able to play high level multi-player.
It's just the fact that it completely sabotages the difficulty of the solo story mode because it's given to players early on and can't be disabled that's a problem. I've met kids who gave up on multi-player Pokémon because they never actually learned basic important concepts of the battle system, simply because the single player gameplay is so mind numbingly easy that they just steamrolled every NPC trainer with ridiculously overleveled Pokémon and never really engaged with the mechanics.
Pokémon's main story has never been difficult, at all. These games were designed for us dumb kids to be able to steamroll through them. It's why we have stuff like Nuzlocke challenges and randomizers and it's why pretty much every romhack cranks the difficulty up.
@@ginger-ham4800 this person has never played gen 4 and faced the wrathful godess that is cynthia
some parts of the older gens were rather hard. kohdok himself gives the example with pewter city's gym...made even more difficult if charmander was your starter.
@@chaoticjexak There was also Whitney and her infamous Miltank. And the elite four were never pushovers in the early gen games.
While I do agree with the overall point that Pokémon games have never truly been difficult (the AI of the NPCs trainers have never been capable of using any advanced strategy) they used to at least have bigger teams and strong Pokémon, so you still had to put some amount of thought into the combat mechanics.
I really didn't expect that diss at Arlo
The issue with gold and silver was also present in ruby and sapphire. You were very likely to be underleveled for the elite four
Same for Black 1 and White actually. If you go through all the nooks and crannies of Victory Road, your team will still be under leveled and will only get worse as the penultimate and final bosses rear their ugly heads. I’ve had Reshiram carry both battles because the rest of my Pokémon could do nothing cuz they were 10-15 levels lower to the bosses even after fighting the Elite 4.
@@fallwoodcentral7991 That sounds like a "You" problem. Use some strategy. Don't just try to facemash everything. A good strategy can make up for a 15+ level difference.
@@FF8Irvine_Fan Oh wow, I’ve never actually thought about using “strategy” in a “turn-based role-playing game that uses limited resources,” maybe I’ll use this for the other games I play, like Magic: the Gathering or Dungeons and Dragons.
Sarcasm aside, even if you did come up with a strategy for the Elite Four while horribly underleveled, and survived all their lucky critical hits, your party will get minimal EXP due to most of them being dead from the battle they just took part in, leaving you still underleveled for the coming battles or lopsided level spread and with you having to repeat this whole cycle again of getting a lollipop for solving light-speed travel three more times, which means that the Champion will likely stomp you because you are now 20 levels under. It’s not that I don’t want to use a strategy, it’s the fact that despite me enjoying the game to its fullest and following all the breadcrumbs it leaves me for side quests and hidden wonders in the world, while using said strategy to gain access, it still neglects to put me on the ideal level for the Elite Four, thus ruining this difficulty curve that was quite fine for most of the game. This more often than not leads to grinding out the Elite Four and simply starting again when you faint. Is it fun to be the punching bag for a bunch of random strangers you just met? Even with a good strategy, the level gap is still prevalent and will make its presence known periodically with random critical hits that will dumpster your party whenever they feel like. You could grind up a Pokémon with Battle Armor to protect yourself from those crits, but you’re still grinding.
As an example of a good game being constructed around over leveled opponents: Temtem. There are periodically opponents that appear while being 10-15 levels above you, even times when they’re Lv 100 while you are just 80 or likely lower. However, it never feels unfair because the game has given you ample opportunity to think outside the box and with synergies of your tems in this manner. The constant use of the double-battle helps in this respect, because the monsters are allowed to work together. Pokémon being stuck in a 1v1 format basically means “big number win” most of the time, that’s what the type chart is “move gets big number when against this type.” Yes, Pokemon encourages strategy, I have used poison-stalling and sweeping many times in my playthroughs, it does so for most of the Black and White games, but shouldn’t using a strategy award you with, I dunno, EXP?! So you are prepared for the next battles? Isn’t this the point of having levels: to have growing complexity and strength as you play so you can handle the next challenge? There are games that handle overleveled opponents well, and those who don’t. Simple as that.
It's worth noting that if you play Sword and Shield minimizing random encounters, but fighting every trainer in the game, you will still end up woefully underleveled for the last third of the game even though the Exp. Share is permanently on. As long as you're running away from unwanted random battles instead of murdering everything you see, you shouldn't really end up overleveled. The number of trainers seemed pretty well tuned to the existence of the Exp. Share this time around.
"If you play Pokemon without doing the main thing Pokemon does it might just be fun". Catching pokemon gives XP now too, so if you're having to avoid all non-trainer XP, you can't catch many pokemon, and if you're not catching pokemon what *are* you doing?
@@yurisei6732 As I said, you're going to end up *underleveled* later in the game if you skip all random encounters. This means that you *have* to make up the difference with random encounters. You just need to not go overboard when you do.
Additionally, Max Raids don't grant experience points at all, so you can catch Pokémon from them as much as you want without any risk of overleveling.
Alternatively, if you do want to catch more Pokémon from the field, you can always rotate your party instead of keeping the same 6 on your team at all times. You have access to your box storage from almost anywhere now, after all.
As for me personally, I just catch my traveling team and then not bother catching anything else until the post-game when I have access to better-looking Pokéballs, False Swipe, Spore, etc.
It takes out the EFFORT of grinding, Kohdok.
That, and grinding in pkmn actually gives you EV- effort value points. This affects growth.
...But you're only Grinding in a Pokemon game if you did something wrong...
@@Kohdok tell that to pkmn Black and White 2.
For clarity, I understand that the games aren't that hard. Been playing since the gemstone era (Sapphire, specifically). From my experience, there's a few times when you kind of have to grind, especially if a gym needs the effort grind. _LOOKING AT WHITNEY AND HER MILTANK WALL._
It gets worse in newer games when the exp share can't be turned off- it actually does make a difference because if you plan properly, you could take down a few high levels to instalevel past your limit. Then you add the xp candies ...
@@lanterns_glow Milktank is easy tho, you get a plenty of options. Geodude in the caves, Machop and Onyx trades that are easily acessible, gastly who can hypnosis and is immune to her stomp, exeggcute on headbutt trees on the route just before goldenrod and pidgey with sand attack so she can't hit rollout; At least Morty can be more challenging with 2 haunters and a gengar that can eat your team if you don't know what is coming.
Also B2W2, at least for me, was a breeze which i haven't got any moment i thought the game was hard, but at the time i played i started deciding my team before i even got to the game so take this with a handful of salt
...You lower it's stats with moves your starter Pokemon start with. Miltank cannot switch out, and so stuff like Growl and Leer stay on and weaken it for the entire fight.
Most starters begin the game with Growl/Leer/Tail Whip for a reason.
@@Kohdok You literally alluded in your video to how exp.share is needed to enter the competitive scene due to how much grinding you'll be doing to get the bare minimum of 12 perfect natured and EV & IV tailored pokémon to level 100. 🙃
It's actually very easy to fix EXP share to be honest. Just make the EXP system similar to that of Black & White. If you don't know in Black & White the exp gain is dependant on your current level. For example if your level is lower than your opponent. You gain extra exp from battle. If your lv is higher however your exp got cut. This system actually discouraged grinding in any playthrough. I really like this system cause it make adding new member to the team less of a chore while at the same time keeping your high LV pokemon in check.
No. Bring back the toggle. Nothing else will EVER be a "fix".
13:28 There is one thing to remember though; when you play a Pokemon game for the first time, you won't know what's good and what isn't. Not all Pokemon are created equally, and if you "waste" experience on trash Pokemon (like the aforementioned Caterpie or Weedle, or other early game noob traps), you will have to grind either a new team member that is more useful, or just grind a few more levels so that your trash 'mon is partially useful. I've fallen into this trap before, on my first playthroughs of Hoenn, Sinnoh, AND Unova, where I had to grind just before the Elite Four for HOURS.
Though Exp Share should still totally be an option
My butterfree soloed Red in a recent HGSS run. How can something that can Solo a Superboss while underleveled be "trash"?
@FF8Irvine_Fan I would like to ask for context on how you did that? Most pokemon games can be beaten without needing a full team if you know how to use them, but Butterfree in particular is a pokemon that doesn't really match up in stats compared to other pokemon seen later. It's not impossible, just not as likely outside of the right circumstances
I mean, it depends on how you look at it. On the positive side, it means you can just play the game with a team of your favorites and still expect to succeed without being punished for it. You want to get to and through the Elite 4 with a single Beedrill? More power to ya. I suppose it's also pretty great for people who buy every new edition so they just have the most up to date roster, and the campaign is just something that's in the way of the competitive battling game they WANT to play. There really is no reason it shouldn't be a toggle though. And while we're wishlisting things, bring back Voltorb Flip!
" you can just play the game with a team of your favorites and still expect to succeed" Bruh. Most people were doing that BEFORE they ruined the Exp Share.
MonHun is harder than DS, people have just had it memed into their mind that DS is impossible and therefore expect it to be, thus creating their own oppressive difficulty.
Well, there goes my theory that Kohdok is Arlo...
i play a mobile gacha game named Guardian Tales. The level system is kinda mix of shared XP and avarage grinding XP. At the end of each area, you gain a resourse named EXP Crystal, and you spent that EXP Crystal to level up your characters. So, you can go to dungeons that gave you more EXP Crystals and grind your characters, but you dont need to play with that character in order to leve up it. Its a gacha game with Stamina system, so you need to choose which resourse you wanna farm each day, but i think it is clever than the shared XP system.
The other thing that people don’t mention to often is that newer games offer a far wider selection pool of new party members. So exp share in that way can let you onboard new pokes with less resistance. It’s more that using the same team gets overbearing - and you never NEED to switch it up
I’m not sure how you fix this, bc I personally LOVE exploring a new area and trying new stuff. Lol Shin Megami Tensei fixes a lot of it by letting you fuse, maintaining the original characteristics of your investments, while giving you new toys.
Except it doesn't, though? Your new Pokemon will just keep getting outpaced by the old ones because all of them keep gaining exp.
@@BMVfilms You fix it by giving us back the OPTION to turn it off.
Here's the easiest way to fix the exp share: turn it back to how it used to be. If that's too hard, don't make it generate new exp, just make it split it. Maybe 1/6 for every member wouldn't be that great, so maybe have the pokemon in the front get 1/2, then split the other half equally between the rest of the mons? So that, ya know, having more pokemon doesn't just generate more exp.
Oh, and obviously include an off switch.
And just as an aside, keep in mind Sword and Shield also included experience candies for the exact same purpose, so I dunno what they're doing.
Just include the Off Switch. Don't just remove features as they are there to solve something very important. The problem is that Pokemon has a very different desighn than most RPGs. You don't just get 6 or 10 characters. You can have hundreds. And includes competitive.
If you want to use a rotating team or try to get a wild Poke to your team standard you will have to grind. A lot. The Exp Share makes it that you can have more. Before the standard strategy was already use your main and over level him. That didn't change. People still use the big guys. The only thing is that you have to spend more to train and farm exp when the Exp Share is not there. So you can take a harder chalangeand be a lower level. By sharing that precious exp to your pokes. Problem comes when you want to have more or are prepping a competitive team.
To get a fully competitive Poke is hard and the Pokemon community just hacks. It's the truth. Most of what you see online are hacked. Ev, Iv, lvl. Those things take time. People don't care. So they get the perfect team in the easy way.
I was mostly listening to this one, and forgot this wasn't an arlo video. You bamboozled me good.
Annnnd glad i cancelled my preorder for the remakes, didn't realize they gutted all the platinum content. what a disappointment
Some casual players are stupid and if they can turn the xp share off, they WILL level only like one Pokemon and get stuck on type disadvantage, rage quit, refund and rate game poorly. This is "kids being impatient", they can't call kids stupid.
XP share toggle isn't needed. If you want to level one Pokemon, use one Pokemon. Just rebalance the god damn xp gain. If you have same level as opponent or more, xp gain is reduced by 90%. Camping gives no xp, that's stupid. Don't generate randomly more xp based on party members, just share it based on party levels on all members. If you need players to feel accomplishment more often, make the game story go to level 70 or 80 for more level ups. If your team of six is level 50 while opponent is 40, just simply reduce all the xp gain numbers by 20%. It's just math. There are no rules set in stone for the numbers. The xp share is GOOD for ALL players, it's just a matter of balancing the numbers. I think Game Freak just wants to keep the games easy.
My solution for all the players: use 12 Pokemon. When team A is overleveled, switch to team B and vice versa. I have done this in all games since SM and it has worked very well. Also I get to use 12 Pokemon!
The real question is: How is Game Freak's technical team so bad while art and character desing is so good?
I think the thing w/ Pokémon is that because of how many options there are in team building, you could defeat “bosses” at a level disadvantage of 10-15 without having to rely on broken stuff like potions and x items. like regardless of how strong their ground stab is it can’t deal any damage to non grounded targets you know? And aside from the league, the ai trainers very rarely have the coverage to make up for their weaknesses and how rarely they switch out of poor matchups. by drastically increasing the amount of xp your party members obtain whilst not improving enemy trainers, your choice of Pokémon, moves, held items, etc feel far less important and leaves many players feeling far less attached to their party as a result
I feel like Pokémon should move to making Double Battles the standard. This would give you more strategy and get you using more Pokémon more often, making the exp share unnecessary.
Can I just say I love that you used the Pokémon tcg battle music in this video?
I totally agree!
12:39 Does anyone know what he's saying?
"Bupkis". Malarkey. Hollow. Worthless.
@@Kohdok thanks! :D
I haven't played pokemon since GBA. I recently did try out a romhack with exp share enabled. Didn't know what it meant at first, but it didn't take me long to realise its implications. I basically didn't spend any time training most of my pokemon! I didn't personally experience them grow at all. They were just in the backseat leveling up automatically, which felt really awful! I disabled it after one day of play. I might look back at it if I want to grind some pokemon up from low level though.
I did a playthrough of Emerald last year, and even after fighting every trainer, I still was under leveled for the Elite 4, resulting in hours of grinding against rematches with other trainers. I haven't replayed Platinum in some time, but I wouldn't be surprised if the same applied to the Elite 4 there given how hard everyone remembers it being. So the problem of a Pokemon game having moments that require grinding did still continue on for a bit longer than gen 2.
...You had to grind your level 70 Rayquaza? Wow, how bad was the rest of your team? I also just finished my Platinum playthrough. No grinding, average team level 52. Cynthia was a nightmare, but I still cleared her on my first try.
I didn’t use Rayquaza. That particular play through I wanted to use mostly new Pokémon I haven’t used before. But I do get what you’re saying. The game gives you a high level legendary Pokémon which decimates that level gap, sure, but if you stick with your normal team, it’s not so easy.
EDIT: In case it wasn’t obvious, I had beaten Emerald long ago. Hence why I didn’t use Rayquaza on my most recent run.
When I played the original Diamond game, my starter was 10 levels ahead of my opposition, and 20 levels ahead of the rest of my team. I’m not even sure how EXP Share worked back then. I think it’s a midgame item, except it’s off by default and I didn’t know it was a thing to turn it on.
I was, like, a pre-teen? Early teen? From a non-English speaking country, and without modern day internet walkthroughs. I knew what the gen’s Pokémons were because I bought a magazine that came with a poster of them.
The game was still too easy because I could OHKO anything, except I didn’t have the option to use any mons except my starter because they were underleveled. The only content I skipped on purpose were trainer battles, and I stopped after finding out one of them was needed to complete the Pokédex (and, in the end, it turned out I did miss a trainer who was the only one with a Pokémon I needed). (Playing with other people? I knew one other kid who had a DS, let alone own the same game, much less both of our parents let us bring our videogames to the same place at the same time. Wi-fi? Naw, only dial-up.)
I agree a more challenging game would be more rewarding, though nowadays my priorities are different. I’d be more pleased if the game made catching the Pokémon I want less grindy. I’ve played Pokémon fan games, and I get frustrated mowing my way through 50 Pokémon who can’t deal an ounce of damage to me for the chance the Pokémon I do want spawns. Of course, it’s a fan game, but the tools to change the core mechanic don’t exist (I think), only the specific Pokémon that spawns in a place.
Anyways, my point is that I think arguing for better balancing (be it battle difficulty or catching difficulty) is more important, although “make EXP Share toggleable” is much more simpler for the devs.
i don't think the main reason why they changed the EXP share was to reduce grinding. I think the main reason is something that Pokemon has struggled with since its beginning, which is that how its battle system works runs counter to a lot of Pokemon's ideology.
The problem is that using a diverse team of 6 Pokemon has never been the optimal strategy to play these games. Battles in Pokemon are almost always 1 on 1, where If you knock out a pokemon, then you take away their ability to act for that turn. So if you have a strategy where you can always outspeed your opponent and knock them out in a single hit, then there is nothing your opponent can do, you will always win. And the absolute easiest and simplest way to achieve this is to just funnel all your EXP into a single Pokemon, creating one overpowered beast that you can run plow trought the entire game. A single overleved pokemon will ALWAYS be stronger then a balanced team of 6 because of this. This is by far the easiest way to beat any of the early Pokemon games and its not even close. Training up more then 1 Pokemon is almost never actually worth it, its more time consuming, its a hassel having to switch train, and try to distribute exp evenly between the Pokemon you are trying to use.
While this is the easiest way to beat a Pokemon game, it is also really boring, it is way more fun to build a balanced team of 6, even if it makes the games harder. But if you look at how kids and other inexperienced players play pokemon this is not the case. There players usually just run trough the games with their starter or another pokemon that they like, not because they don't want to use more different Pokemon, but because training up underleveled Pokemon is hard and time consuming, so they don't bother, their overleveled starter or other pokemon of choice can just knock out anything by itself anyway.
This is the problem i believe Gamefreak tried to addrese with the EXP share change. Since using anything less then a party of 6 just straight up gives you less exp now, there is no reason not to have a full party of 6. It encurages less experienced players to use more Pokemon, which everyone has already found out is a way more fun way of playing these games.
No mention of the XP All? Aka the modern XP share years ahead?
He forgot about it, same way he completely forgot about the online competitive scene where the actual grinding comes in lol
Dragon Quest 11 uses a system in which the entire party gets expy regardless of weather they were in battle or not. Buuut it's okay in that game because there's 7 party members instead of 150+ like in Pokémon and all of them are mandatory at some point, so one or two of them falling behind in lvl because their skills aren't useful in a certain area would be a bigger deal.
So basically expy share works in traditional RPGs, but not in mon games IMO.
You should probably play other monster collectors.
Games like SMT, DQM, YKW and others don't suffer from this like Pokemon continues to.
@@DrCoeloCephalo I was never a big fan of SMT and Persona, but based on their recent entries I have more confidence in the future of those series than Pokémon's.
Personally, I've never seen grinding in Pokemon to have anything to do with the main story. Rather, it's for the Catch'em All crowd who wants to complete the Pokedex. Without the ability to rebattle random trainers, getting that old Lv. 5 rodent too evolve at endgame is a bit annoying.
So... I guess making it a Championship prize would help fix that.
Pokémon's main story has never needed grinding, we could all beat these games as little kids with shitty teams and having no idea how useful stat boosting moves are, what EV's & IV's are, what natures actually do, etc. That only comes in during the competitive scene which is objectively the actual meat of pokémon, that's where the real grinding comes in.
Having to train 20+ plus perfect pokémon to level 100, with no EXP share? No thanks. It's why we have pokémon showdown, to cut out all the needless fat.
You are only right about old school Pokémon being balanced without grinding if the player sticks to a core team of six from pretty much start to finish. Should a player want to experiment with a wider variety of options throughout their journey, they'll be at an XP deficit that can only be overcome by grinding.
That's the problem the XP share solves, especially in X/Y which has the largest regional dex of any game in the entire franchise. There were multiple new Pokémon to be caught on nearly every route with hardly any repeats. The thing I always loved about X/Y is that I could not only train up a full team without grinding, but also have reserves that I could switch in. For the first time ever, I felt like the game was actually trying to encourage even casual players to catch them all.
And, yes, new low-level Pokémon can actually catch up if the player just constantly rotates their team, boxing any mons that are getting over-leveled and pulling them back out later. The problem isn't the XP share, the problem is people not adjusting their playstyle to compensate.
The problem isn't the exp share. It's the games that aren't balanced around them
The games CAN'T be balanced around it. It just isn't possible.
I explored the wild area for a bit. I got too many xp candies. I made the mistake of using them, and it ruined the game for me. I was too bored to get past the 6th gym because the battles not the story interested me.
Only time you really need to grind throughout pokemon is when you want a specific pokemon on your team and it's under leveled at you point of the game (I always wanna play a dratini)
it's so weird hearing monster hunter be called mainstream, but then I guess that's true now
It is. It's Capcom's biggest and most popular franchise.
@@Kohdok nah that’s still resident evil. Monster hunter definitely the second tho.
@@christianhooper7975Street Fighter no doubt about it is Capcom's #1 franchise. No other game under their belt has garnered that much history, fame and money.
Only MegaMan can compare to the sheer influence Street Fighter has had, and they let MegaMan die off lol.
@@ginger-ham4800 true, SF is definitely their most recognized. But I feel like resident evil still makes more money for capcom. It’s definitely more advertised than SF, I mean they are STILL making resident evil movies. Regardless, you are right about mega man but at least my blue boy is getting a new game next year 😭
(Also Jill valentine and Chris Redfield are in fortnite lol)
@@christianhooper7975 I had to search it up just to be sure since Fortnite gets new things added almost weekly lol
I've found that modern EXP share makes it easy to overlevel but i'd rather that to have to grind forever. ROM hacks handle the EXP share way better and one's that opt out tend to feel slow and slugish.
Indeed. My particular problem is that LGPE onwards forces EXP share but I've played through the series so much that grinding is never a necessity, even with Superbosses like Red. With BDSP I played through the first time with Nuzlocke rules and even with the reimagined movesets for the bosses my only struggles was Roark...
I don't expect the series to pander to me but the worst part is the balance was there in xy to USUM
Finally someone gets it. I've always hated the empty argument that everyone would use to say the exp share is bad. Interestingly enough pokemon does have a solution to the exp share problem and it's with it's exp level grouping. Many starting pokemon gain level faster then powerful late game pokemon. In sword and shield if you had a team of these slow and very slow level up pokemon the level stay on track. Making this slow level up speed the norm would allow game freak to be stubborn but fix there game flow. Though like you said a better solution is the switch and maybe a way to limit further ahead pokemon from gaining exp like a level cap or just an exp zero switch per pokemon.
I've never had a need to grind - so exp share makes an already easy-ish game too easy. To counteract this in BDSP, I will be:
- Sticking to a team of 5 mons to use in battle (and swapping them out if they get too high level)
- Using a cute/weak 6th pokemon PURELY to walk around (as the Pokemon which walks around gets friendship benefits, which I also hate as they make things too easy...)
13:26 I would still complain about not being able to turn it off, but I would definitely love it as a post-game reward
Not gonna lie, i appreciate the yakuza 3 ost you've put in video quite a bit
I did a playthrough of Sword with a team of the Galarian evolutions (Perrserker, Cursola, Runerigus, Sirfetch'd, Mr. Rime, and Obstagoon. Breed them for IVs, but still horrible type composition btw) where I only did required battles, no Dynamaxing, and no items in battle. When I got to the Leon fight my team was around 7 levels below his lowest team member. By the end of the fight after many attempts, only my Cursola was alive and just barely. I had to create my own difficulty, but it was a fun playthrough. Does not address the problem, really just proves the point further, but it shows that because of how Pokemon games are structured it isn't hard to tailor your experience even with the Exp. Share forced on. Just look at the Nuzlocke community and what they do with the games.
i saw your enlighten video i just wanted to ask are they safe to buy?
Very interesting video! I thought of an idea, what to you think about having the gym leader's pokemon scale to match the average of a player's team?
My problem with grinding in Pokémon is right near the end... getting up to level 100. After everything story wise has been said and done, I have developed a habit of getting my starter to the power it deserves after all the trials we've been through together
My man here called our arlo! Hahaha. Give this dude a sub
I continue to play Black 2.
First thing I do is catch Riolu, the first partner I caught on my first run, and put him at the front of the party. I love the ground type gym, with his team being super effective, making it a neck and neck battle where the finale music came in at just the right time.
I stand by my opinion that heartgold/soulsilver are hand down the best pokemon games ever made.
But if you used a full team of pokemon your team of Mons would only be Lv38-40 by the time you reached the elite four. After the first elite four battle you would be at a level difference of 4-10(as you progress up to the Champion) levels.
There was a lack of exp on the route to Victory Road, and then in the cave itself. You would have to use only 3 Pokémon and even then you would only be around Lv 45-47 which would still be a 5 to 3 levels lower then most of Lance's pokemon.
Up until that point the game was good
I like playing Pokemon were the challenge is being severely under-leveled. It has been like a decade for me since a repel worked on my initial run through victory road. I want to have gym leader and elite 4 battles where I have to come up with a turn by turn plan to win, so I typically start skipping all shippable trainers and avoiding wilds around gym 3-4 in older games to get sufficiently under-leveled, especially with gen 1-3s hidden stat boosts. I tried playing gen 6 the first time with the new exp share, and halfway through started alternating 2 whole teams out every gym so I'd have some challenge around gym 5, and then forever turned it off. Playing gen 8s was extremely annoying, as they cut the capture rate in 10 if the opposing Pokemon is higher level than you
During the main story, so I fought against the game to be under-leveled, and then was further punished by every capture of a new Pokemon I thought looked interesting being 10x worse. Even being under-leveled there was very little challenge until Leon. Not very fun.
There was actually an EXP All in Generation 1 that did something similar to the modern EXP Share, except it was halved EXP to all pokemon that were not the active pokemon when the opponent's pokemon was knocked out.
Correction! The original Pokemon Red and Blue had the modern day experience share. (AKA: "experience all")
what's thr game at 10:20
I think it’s a dragon quest game ?
@@Bluesharky38 thanks