It’s less that it is an obstacle and more that it doesn’t scale well. I don’t think it’s a huge issue, but it’s a critique of the gen often pointed out.
Building on LordGlenn’s idea, I would like to see a more “open world” approach to Pokemon. One of the strengths of the earlier gens was that they were less linear and allowed the player to sequence break, albeit this made scaling a bit wonky.
Would be cool to see a more “open” map layout where you can tackle items in any order, but with some sort of autolevel mechanism based on gyms or other checkpoints to ensure the pacing still works.
At the risk of being pedantic, because the stat gains for leveling up in Pokemon are additive, there are diminishing returns for matching the opponent’s level as level’s increase. A level 5 mon is at a bigger disadvantage against a level 15 mon than a level 35 is when facing a level 45, and a level 90 is on just about equal footing with a level 100. Sure it’s always better to be higher level, but it’s less important as the numbers get bigger because the percent difference between stats of Pokemon with the same level difference becomes smaller. This is especially true in the first two gens when the player gets significant additive bonuses to stats just by playing the game normally through the original stat experience mechanic.
So taking on the E4 with mons in the mid-high 30s isn’t really that daunting unless the player still has not fully evolved Pokemon due to the lower levels Johto is typically finished at or the Player is using mons that need evolution stones, which are locked to Kanto or specific phone NPCs in Crystal. Will can be a bit tough if the player doesn’t have a decent answer to Psychic types because all of his Pokemon know Psychic, but the rest of the E4 mostly suffer from typical, early gen terrible boss movesets (Karen’s Gengar knows Lick). Again, HGSS are a completely different animals because of a much less generous EV system that is more tailored to competitive play than the story, and Lance’s Dragonites have actual, physical STAB moves that can tear through a lower level team.
And like you said, a lot of the reason Gen 2 levels the way it does is because there’s a decent stretch after getting Surf where the player is free to do things in any order, and then most of Kanto is non-linear. So it’s a bit of a tradeoff.
I see I managed to gather some interest despite some skepticism so here’s some links:
as I’m writing this repo is just stock pokecrystal with a 60 fps hack i stole from speedchoice. Will mess with readmes and stuff soon™️. I have some other stuff from when I messed with this a while back I should port too.
I am definitely open to making something more open (mdr). One of the things I find is a shame about traditional pokémon games is how linear and especially hand-holdy they are. I understand why they are that way of course but I feel like there’s missed potential here.
What I would have done if I were to design a pokémon game is just make it like any other but with as little barriers as possible, allowing the player to “sequence break” to their heart’s content, and a bunch of branching paths; then I would perhaps introduce some form of catching up scaling mechanic for when the player backtracks to the content they skipped (I believe one of the mentioned crystal hacks also does something like that but I haven’t played them).
One problem with scaling things programmatically is that the gameplay quality may suffer. (Good) hand made content is always better than generated content. There’s a balance to strike here.
Reguarding tech, it will be hard to not make maps be somewhat corridor like. Those are just limitations of the engine and system that are probably hard to overcome.
Are there documented properties on this, much like how FE maps have their maximum boundary limitations of around 43x36? Would be helpful to know. Given how some things are structured, my idea of the larger “interconnected” spaces would effectively be to stitch routes together into (mostly) a big rectangle to make the larger overall space, but without knowing the specifics of the system, it’s hard to suggest it as more than just a theoretical idea.
(width + 6) * (height + 6) <= 1300 in blocks of 2x2 walkable tiles. So max square map would be 30x30 blocks (60x60 walkable tiles)… I guess that’s still kind of big