Are you fine with the way games are?

[Divine Retribution]

- The physical/special split was too complicated, so it was made simpler.

Minor point and maybe this was a typo but if anything it's the other way around. Physical/special moves were too simple to the point where it didn't make any sense; the elemental Punches were all special moves, but Shadow Ball and Sludge Bomb were physical moves? The point of the physical/special split wasn't to make things simpler (if it was, it failed), it was to make the differentiation between physical and special moves actually make some sense instead of just being based on type.

 

[Lykouros]

The fans have a very romaticized view of the whole "listen to us" thing, completely ignore how things aren't that simple, and how a company listening to feedback does not always means a better product, just look at the Gen 1 pandering, which was a direct response to the Genwunners complaining about the absence of their favorite Gen in BW. Now imagine how much worse this could get if Game Freak listened to more fans:

These are extremes on either end, though, not rational consideration of how the company can make changes that generally benefit the community. For example, most players, even competitive ones like myself, don't want the games to be crazy difficult or impossible or require 10,000 hours of grinding to beat, but we would appreciate a basic difficulty feature like most other games have (I play games on Extreme mode, but my husband plays them on Normal, for example). A company can listen to feedback without taking it to the extreme. Of course a game will never please everyone, and it shouldn't seek to please everyone, but if fans have the same feedback for every iteration of the game it may be because it is needed and the company isn't taking it into account.

The problem is that Game Freak often flip-flops between two opposite extremes when they listen to fans instead of thinking through the implications and finding a good middle ground solution.

Basically this.

- The physical/special split was too complicated, so it was made simpler.

It makes more sense to me that Feraligatr has physical water-type options than being stuck using Slash because water-type is always Special in gens 1-3. The physical/special split seems like a good example of Gamefreak listening to feedback.

 

[YamiCard]

I skipped a couple of generations, but I feel they have extremely improved the games in every way pretty much.

 

[Mudkip&Chinchou]

How did people complain about the physical special split?

 

[WalesNote]

The characters and plots could be better. And more diversity in region exploration, more areas to uncover. Post-game content has been lacking in gen VI and VIII as well.

Started getting worse with gen VI, got better, then got worse again.

 

[RedJirachi]

While it's still pretty good, it could do with some more ambition. Gen 4-5 compared to now is like ESB vs ROTJ

 

[Bolt the Cat]

No, I'm not. In fact, I feel that the games have been going downhill since Generation VI, with the regional design becoming too linear even earlier. Sadly, with the developers' current mentality, I doubt this will change anytime soon.

Eh, I'm not so sure now. They seem to be listening with Legends Arceus, that appears to be the grand open world adventure everyone's been asking for. Hard to say without knowing more, but that does seem to be a step forward for the series.

 

[Vini310]

While it's still pretty good, it could do with some more ambition. Gen 4-5 compared to now is like ESB vs ROTJ

To be fair, Pokémon fans don't react well to drastic changes in the formula, or gameplay improvements in general.
Pick ANY complaint a Pokémon fan has about the latest games, chances are that the thing they are complaining has been the STANDARD in Mongames since 1999 at the very least. Case in point, Medabots:

Medarots in Medarot 2 - Medapedia

medarot.meowcorp.us

Medarots in Medarot 2 Core - Medapedia

medarot.meowcorp.us