"Hey Wakeangel, you've only been back into pokemon for like 10 months, why are you pretending to care so much about it?" -shut up, I may have taken a decade and a half off the franchise but its not like I ever hated it, and like everyone else I like to share and speculate on things I care about. So, that being said what would I like to see in the upcoming pokemon game for Switch?
1) Evenly Matched Starters. Since gen 1 the rule has always been a kind of rock paper scissors game with the starters, they have an inherent advantage against one but a weakness to the other due to their type. But when I played Y I noticed the second type they evolved doubled down. They became Water/Dark, Grass/Fighting, and Fire/Psychic; that means each of the starters became DOUBLY week to the one they were vulnerable to and double strong against the one they had an advantage on. Imagine if that were reversed? What if they became Water/Fighting, Grass/Dark, and Fire/Psychic? (I don't want another fire/fighting type, we got like 3 of those and it's already repetitive.) That means each starter will be evenly matched with it's counterpart, strong in one aspect but weak in another, that could TOTALLY change the rival relationship in the game's narrative! This might make players gravitate towards the one starter with the highest base speed stat, so they could be guaranteed to get the first attack out, so I think the devs should give all 3 of the starters the same base speed, differentiate by making one better at attack, another better at defense, and the third better at special, but nobody has an inherent speed advantage.
2) A Pegasus pokemon. Yeah, this is the Brony in me, we got a Unicorn Pokemon in gen 1 with Rapidash and an Earth Pony pokemon in gen 7 with Mudsdale, so we need a Pegasus pokemon to round out the trinity! (Oh, and Ponyta and Mudbray need to be capturable in this game because I want a pony party!) You know what, if that's the case I promise I will play through the game with all 3 of them in my party.
3) Don't make the new Eevee evolutions TOO convoluted. Yeah, eevee can evolve 8 ways, but there are 18 pokemon types so we can still theoretically have 10 more, but getting a Sylveon in Gen 6 was A PAIN because that "affection" stat rose SO SLOWLY (it was MUCH easier to do in gen 7 so thank you) and having to evolve Glaceon and Leafeon in particular areas wouldn't be so bad if those areas weren't located at such a late point in the game, in Moon the frosty rock is on the second to last island (and the special magnetic field is on the last island, I couldn't get my Magnezone until practically the post game!) Maybe a newly discovered evolution stone, or leveling it up with an easy to find new region pokemon in the party (like how Mantike evolves) but don't make us go through too many hoops to get whatever the new eevee forms will be.
4) A reliable place to level up in post game. Yeah, the biggest problem with pokemon is once you face all the trainers in the game all you can really do besides fight wild pokemon is take on the Elite 4 over and over. Trainer battles yield more XP and give you money, so having an area like gen 6's Battle Chateau where new trainers will respawn endlessly would be REALLY helpful in adding variety while you level your party up to 100 or train battle teams for competitive play. To prevent it from being a total exploit maybe give it a cooldown like, only x number of trainers appear each day and have a way to manipulate the levels of the opponents so you can take weaker parties in and have them fight their own fights rather than abusing the exp share.
5) RELATIONSHIPS WITH YOUR POKEMON! One of my legit favorite parts of Moon was how my party pokemon would grow attached to me over the course of the game, and this attachment would allow them to tank would be knock out blows, land critical hits more often, shake off status effects, and other benefits. It makes the little data packets feel more like real beings and helps with immersion. I want MORE of this somehow, like maybe have a party pokemon walk by your side once its friendship or affection is high enough, or have some kind of mini-event involving a pokemon that has been in your party for a long time without being swapped out. This is an RPG right? Growing attached to your party members is supposed to be one of the most important parts of the immersion.
6) Put REAL thought into your "object" pokemon. I don't have anything against object pokemon inherently, after all living "things" are totally a staple of many a classic monster movie, and the game is called "pokeMON" not "pokeplants&animals." But some of the object pokemon just show VERY little creativity, I'm looking at you Vanillish the ice cream cone or Klinklang the couple of gears. If you're going to give us a living object try to tie it into some legitimate lore like how Voltorb mysteriously first appeared after the invention of pokeballs or how Sandygast and Pallosand look like sand castles but actually trap victims within themselves to drain their life force.
7) Keep down the legendary pokemon. I would MUCH rather their ONLY be the 2 obligatory legendary pokemon for the versions. Legendary pokemon are a pain to get, can't be used in single player post game stuff (such as Moon's Battle Tree) and are just clutter in multiplayer. I really don't give a crap about "Legendaries" outside of what purpose they serve in the plot (At least moon gave me reasons to CARE about Nebby, but why is Magearna so important?) Plus there MUST be a way to legitimately get both in one game without trading, the convoluted bullcrap I had to go though to get Solgaleo (get to post game, unlock other world that can only be accessed at certain times of day, go to place on map, get the cosmog there, level it up until it evolves twice and since it has no real attacks it has no battle ability so it's a TOTAL exp share parasite, then get your SECOND Lunala which you then trade to someone who has Sun version to get their second Solgaleo) was incredibly tedious and annoying. Of course that is STILL an improvement on X and Y, where you can ONLY catch Xernias OR Yveltal and the other doesn't even appear in the game, so if you want to complete the pokedex you have to give your legendary away and there's no way to get both unless someone is willing to go without either, and OF COURSE you can only catch ONE of the elemental birds depending on which starter you picked, so getting all 3 in your pokedex means finding 2 other people who have the game that picked different starters from you, UGH that is BULLCRAP!
and finally 8) Don't try to manipulate how we build our party by giving us powerful pokemon for free. I didn't like how Pokemon X/Y just handed over one of the Kanto starters and a Lucario with a megastone to the player, pretty much obliging you to put them in 2 spots on your party or feel like your rejecting a gift. This worked in Pokemon Yellow because that was specifically trying to recreate the journey Ash went through in the anime, and was a last ditch effort to sell gen 1 to holdouts like me who didn't buy red or blue, but you can't do that again without feeling either manipulative or trying for a cash grab. All 6 members of my team in Moon are there because I decided I liked them the best, and I didn't feel like I was making a team that a ton of other people would create because they were basically told to.
Well, those are the things I'M hoping for in pokemon Gen 8, how about you guys?
