Topic: Ways Pokemon Games Can Improve

A longer meta-game. The main reason why gen 2 is my favorite is because the post-game is just as big, if not bigger, than the initial journey. I'd love to have that come again.

Another feature I would love is the option to automatically organize Pokémon by type, level, alphabetical order, ones you want to use, etc. Manually doing all of that can take time, and with more pokemon it'll be harder than ever. Plus, it makes finding what you want easier.

Another save slot, please.

EDIT: I just had an idea. With how battling is mostly determined either randomly or through other sectors (like Smogon), why not implement a clan system? A leader could make a clan letting certain Pokémon allowed in battle, along with limitations like what types are allowed. This would basically make it really easily to get into the really competitive scene with the likes of Smogon and others having official tier systems, like OU, UU, RU, NU, Uber, etc. Options like that could be there in addition to traditional invites and random battles.

More than one save slot. More extensive post-game gameplay. Non-linear gym progression. More character conplexity (Black and White was actually a big step in the right direction before X and Y took two steps back: parents questioned the logic of sending their children out into the wild on Pokemon adventures, your relationship with your friends was somewhat complex, and N was actually an involving and interesting antagonist). More extensive character customization options. Slightly more involved plots. And, finally, proper implementation of the 3DS' capabilities.

Even though X and Y were actually inferior to previous games in several ways, the enormous advances made in character customization, graphical presentation, and social connectivity still make it one of my favorite games in the series. They made some huge changes, so I understand them being more conservative with the writing and whatnot. I do expect this to improve with the next set of games, however.

X and Y lacks more tougher trainers with 6 Pokemon to battle against them after you beat the game so hopefully the next Pokemon has more trainers to battle and better rematches with the gym leaders and Pokemon League.

The way it goes, Pokémon doesn't have much room for improvement. But I can think of things here and there.

One thing I really want to see is a break out of the usual journey > gym > antagonists > Pokémon League routine. A main entry with a different setup would work well, like offering multiple ways to further your career.
Wanna be a contest king/queen? Duke it out with the contest house leaders, while offering exp for making a good show!
Wanna be a jerk? Go to the evil organization and do it your way!
Not interested in battles? Become a researcher and set out to train your team to face one legend after the other and fill the Dex - FOR SCIENCE!
Not interested in a Pokémon-related career? Sorry, wrong franchise.

Another part that is already improving is the story. I love good storylines, and Pokémon could really benefit from a more intriguing and surprising plot.

Other than that, they should introduce something like a rarity level for online trading. Pokémon you can catch anytime would be common, Pokémon you can keep getting through breeding would be rare, and event-only/legendary Pokés would be... well, legendary. And trading from that point is only possible between identical levels, barring shinies, which get a separate category altogether. That would not only rapidly reduce GTS trolling, but also prevent scam trades.

I don't think Pokémon games can really improve because on some levels they're fundamentally flawed. Pokémon encourages you to find and own all of 800 creatures when getting them is useless, because you can only use 6, and some are flat out useless compared to others. Balancing 800 Pokémon just isn't possible, and this can easily be seen in Pokémon at a 'professional' level; only a set of about 30 of these 800 are actually used amongst the best players.
It's just too bad that the franchise has gotten to this point though. Can they limit the number of Pokémon per game to better balance it and make catching them all much less of a chore? Yes, but then people would complain that their favourite ones aren't there anymore. They've dug themselves into a hole by never changing anything about their franchise. Yes, there are loads of fans stuck inside that hole with them that keep them going, but they wont and more importantly cant change in any meaningful way without changing what the whole franchise has become.

I'm going to use the Dragon Quest Monsters spinoff series to make a point here, because it basically is what stopped me playing Pokémon games. It has a breeding system whereby two creatures make a completely different one with traits from parents passing to offspring (Similar to SMG I believe, but I cant say for sure) which means that with the right parents any monster can be very powerful. It means that throughout the game you end up playing with many of the hundreds of possible creatures while your team only gets stronger. This way the player experiences all the different monsters in an effective way and actually has the fun of finding out the correct 'formula' for making rarer ones and, in a sense, 'completing the 'dex'.

TLDR: The Pokémon franchise in my opinion has gone too far to change in any meaningful way. Also, try playing Dragon Quest Monsters.

-Bring back multiple difficulties. And, this is important, MAKE THEM AVAILABLE FROM THE START OF THE GAME! Bringing in multiple difficulties was a great idea, but the way it was implemented in BW2 made it nearly useless. And with the direction the series has been heading in since 5th gen where they've been idiotproofing the game to the point where even a braindead hamster could beat it, they pretty much need it to keep the older fans interested. And speaking of idiotproofing, either bring back nonlinear region design or include some kind of new key item that helps the little kiddies not get lost.
-Reorganize movesets. They should look into having multiple movesets for different situations, while it's fine to restrict Pokemon to four moves for battle, it's awfully restrictive for other things such as field moves or Contests. So they should allow Pokemon to have extra moves for different situations. And maybe even a different moveset for Form changes and Mega Evolutions as well so that changes. Also, they should redo some Pokemon's movesets so that they benefit their type, stats, and abilities, it's a little ridiculous when a Pokemon's moveset doesn't really synergize with its general theme (Flare Blitz-less Flareon says hi).
-Tweak the type chart (and they don't necessarily need new types to do this). The biggest problem with the type chart IMO is the fact that Ice cannot resist anything but itself, which makes it useless defensively (which is even more problematic considering how many Ice types are defensively oriented). Bug is also resisted by several types that make no sense (such as Ghost and Fairy), and considering that it's resisted by almost half of the type chart, it could stand to lose a few of those. But if they are going to add more types, they should give Electric another weakness (Ground's near monopoly on Electric type coverage needs to end) and give Dark and Ghost different type advantages. No idea what types could fix those problems, though.
-Double Grass/Flower Patches are a neat idea, but they're not being used for anything useful (having the exact same Pokemon at different levels is kind of pointless). If they're going to keep this mechanic, they need to actually put some different Pokemon in them. Which could really help even out the distribution and give the areas a little more character, it'd be neat if you had to explore the area to reach a particular patch of grass that has rarer Pokemon, or if a route with different themes to it could have different Pokemon in certain areas (for example, Kalos Rt. 8 has one section which is a cliffside area and one section which is a beach area, and with two different distributions they could put more mountainous Pokemon on the cliffside path and more water dwelling Pokemon on the beach). I have no idea why they didn't do this in the first place.
-I liked the idea for seasons, but not how long they last, which made them incredibly annoying, I shouldn't have to wait 4 months to go to a particular area or catch a certain Pokemon. Instead, I think they should bring this idea back as weather, which would follow weekly patterns that you could follow by watching a weather report on TVs or one of the player's gadgets (like the Holo Caster). Many of the seasonal changes translate into weather pretty well too, Hail would obviously function like Winter, Sun and Rain can affect the water level like it did in Castelia Sewers, and Sandstorm can pile up sand in certain areas like the leaf piles in Autumn on Rt. 20.
-Give the Pokedex more Pokedex 3D functionality, so that it can display movesets, Egg moves, evolutions, etc. You know, like a REAL Pokemon database.
-Give people a way to change Pokemon's nickname in trades. It's really annoying when you get a Pokemon with a dumb name in a trade and you're stuck with it forever. Or even worse, you transfer a Pokemon that you already own from a previous generation and you're still stuck with it since they can't be sent back.
-As bad as the key idea was for multiple difficulties, I do think it's worth bringing back if they use it for the right things. One right thing that they didn't really do was the ability to switch between version exclusive areas, and being able to obtain the Pokemon that are obtainable in that version's layout. For instance, if you have Black 2 and switch to White 2's Rt. 4, you could catch Mincinno, Gorebyss, and Braviary despite the fact that you have the other version.
-There's a couple of things they could do to change up the storyline to make it more fresh (and let's face it, we're all tired of the beat 8 gyms, stop the evil team from using the mascot legendary to take over the world, beat the Pokemon League). For one, they could have more than 8 gyms and make a few of them optional. Also, they could have new types of mascots instead of having the mascot be a super powered legendary that isn't encountered until the very end of the game, they could have the mascot obtainable earlier in the game and play more of a role in the storyline. They could give the legendary a baby form that you're given earlier in the game, and then its evolved form would be the game's mascot. Or they could make the game mascot a nonlegendary like Lucario or Zoroark and distribute it in a similar way.
-Probably not happening until a future handheld when we get dual Circle Pads, but they need a way to change the camera. XY has pretty much proven that certain designs do not work with a fixed camera (Lumiose City, Azure Bay).
-Another improvement that would require a future handheld, if we ever get something like the Fusion where we can play handhelds on consoles (with some improvements), I'd like to see some kind of MMOlike multiplayer mode in the vein of Entralink or the past missions in Guardian Signs, where other players could enter your game and progress through new areas catching Pokemon

Pokemon Origins showed us how that would work. Each leader uses different teams depending on how far along you are. For instance, Brock won't bust out a level 55 Golem against some noob after his first badge.

yes they could even simplify the scaling method in a not so smart(but extremely efficient) way, only by the number of badges and little else, they could also remove HMs altogether or make it so they can be used outside battle as soon as the player finds them.

I agree with making legendaries really legendaries. They should be difficult to obtain, and above regular Pokémon. I also think there are WAY too many legendaries, and I dislike legendaries who are "god of ____", it's just so stupid.

I think there should be more post-game content. Battle Frontier is great, but it's not enough.

Storyline should be minimal. Pokémon is about battling, and battling should always be the focus.

Dear god, no more anime elements

Lastly, stop spewing out new Pokémon. Rather expand upon those we already have. There are what, over 700 now?

Oh, and secret bases with StreetPass

I actually think the slowdown in XY was the right ammount, only 70 is way better than over 100

Moves, abilities, etc

NONE

They shouldn't do an all-region game before they're ending the series. Otherwise it'd be hard to top.

The only problem with a game that huge is that you'd reach lvl 100 before you've reached the third region. Of course, they could hold off your Pokémon until you've cleared the league in each region, then allow you to use all your Pokémon in that region. Otherwise they could make it harder to level up or increase party size. The former would make it hard to raise Pokémon through breeding, the latter would be a too drastic change to the series.

GameFreak needs to learn that there are players who dont really care about online and the next game needs to go deeper with the story and lore.....sorta like gen 4

At the same time, the main journey was the shortest in the entire series.

The most post-game content any other game had was extra routes and Battle Frontier. And even then...is there even a purpose to said post content?

I don't think level scaling is a very feasible idea. For one, it'd be a lot of work for them to do it, because they'd have to do several sets of rosters for almost every trainer in the game. Second, they'd have to scale the wild Pokemon as well, and that would lead to all sorts of distribution problems.

@Bolt_Strike yeah I was only thinking of the gyms, forgot this detail.....

unless the gyms became secondary stuff that don't matter to the story and in the same huge city even bigger than lumiose....

Morally grey choices are the best choices (in games) and with a little Mass Effect stirred in we could get great nuanced decisions.

Pokemon main games have so much freaking potential. X/Y made great strides in customization but fell short on so many things.
Pokemon main games need to start improving drastically with each entry. Each entry should be memorable and epic.

Having a less mean-spirited, elitist fandom, har har.

But seriously, I now avoid the games because they hoard those legendaries and I can't catch 'em all.