Should Pokemon be Linear?

[YellowHat's Revenge]

If Pokemon were open-ended, I feel like a great way to help little kids stay on track with objectives is to have a little reminder every once in a while. Say the professor gives you a call on your cell phone and says, "Hey, have you checked out the ___ gym yet?" or "Hey, my friend ____ in ___ city needs help!" yadda yadda.
And then you can roam! Do whatever! But you know eventually you'll have to go somewhere to activate some plot-related event.

 

[Silent Skies]

If Pokemon were open-ended, I feel like a great way to help little kids stay on track with objectives is to have a little reminder every once in a while. Say the professor gives you a call on your cell phone and says, "Hey, have you checked out the ___ gym yet?" or "Hey, my friend ____ in ___ city needs help!" yadda yadda.
And then you can roam! Do whatever! But you know eventually you'll have to go somewhere to activate some plot-related event.

It would certainly teach younger kids that in life, there are often many, many things that a person has to do at once, but the person can only manage one or two of those tasks at a time. It would definitely being Game Freak throwing a bone to those players and help them learn responsibility. Then the problem would be asking whether a player would be overwhelmed by the amount of mandatory stuff they had to do at any one point in the game just to progress.

 

[EmphaticPikachu]

I think my biggest concern, if the games were to become more open directionally, would be with maintaining the steady difficulty incline. As we saw with the first few generations (particularly Johto, for some reason), when the game opened multiple routes for you to travel after accomplishment X, you eventually found yourself exploring a route where the challenges were calibrated to the team you had 15 levels earlier. Clearly, they can't have you beat the 3rd Gym Leader with your level 30 Pokémon and then give you the option of taking the path populated by level 45 Pokémon; but you also don't want to go spend six hours on one leg of your Pokémon game and then come back to your other choice and discover that you're suddenly a God in an environment of gnats...

So I'm all for increased exploratory freedom in Pokémon games, but only if it came with some mechanism of matching each stretch of your journey to the level your team reached at that point of the game. And then we also have to remember that the game must be amenable to childhood success, so they need to retain a high level of directionality and not-too-cryptic puzzles. To be honest, I'd say the argument that they've been doing it right enough so far is still pretty strong: kids have played every generation, and have been able to beat the games each time but also have themselves an enjoyable challenge doing it, and the sales figures are proof of the model.

What about dynamic area leveling then? (I only quoted your post because reminded me of the dynamic leveling idea...)

like you can kind of choose your own path somewhat, and the levels of the opposing pokemon adjust accordingly.

It would require a lot more effort, both in story justifcation and insertation...

But I would LOVE to see it.

 

[Silent Skies]

What about dynamic area leveling then? (I only quoted your post because reminded me of the dynamic leveling idea...)

like you can kind of choose your own path somewhat, and the levels of the opposing pokemon adjust accordingly.

It would require a lot more effort, both in story justifcation and insertation...

But I would LOVE to see it.

I could actually see this being a thing in a Pokémon spinoff game. But for the main series games, I don't really see it happening.

I'd probably play that game, depending on how well the dynamic leveling system is executed.

 

[Scolipedeluv]

Personally I think Pokemon should stay linear because if you try sequence-breaking the pokemon would just get progressively stronger and stronger.

 

[Divine Retribution]

I'm fine with it either way. The storyline is just an annoying series of miniquests I must accomplish before I can get to doing things I actually want to do. Or it was, until I discovered the magic of simulators.

 

[Kalosian]

For me, it doesn't matter if the games are linear or not. I have enjoyed both linear and nonlinear regions. What matters to me is that the levels are balanced. A game that is too nonlinear would likely have to compensate for this by having unbalanced levels, which would drop the enjoyment of the game for me. So in that aspect, I'd rather play a linear game with balanced levels than an nonlinear game with unbalanced levels.