What are the arguments for having EXP sharing standard in Pokémon

[Deleted member 33533]

They need to either balance it better so you don't get overleveled simply by playing normally or at least make it optional again.

It's an improvement in every way, grinding was boring. It wasn't fun and just artificially increased playtime. before exp all my team was usually my starter and the Pokemon I gave the exp share to overlevelled because I never switched out, I was seriously just bored grinding every Pokemon. So it was usually just the. And the strongest pokemon I recently caught

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In the games that didn't share exp through the whole party, you typically did not have to grind if A) the game was balanced well or B) You were smart about how you used your team. Really they just need to let us turn it off again if they're not gonna tweak it so we don't get overleveled.

 

[Lord Azrael]

Pokémon games require zero grinding. So all this achieves is putting you 20+ levels over opponents, unless you micromanage your team constantly. Maybe if they even remotely balanced the games around it we'd have a conversation, but they don't

 

[Deleted member 49643]

I actually forgot about this for awhile. Now I'm worried it's going to be mandatory again in Pokemon Legends and BDSP.

 

[HaremKing]

It should be a toggle/option. I'm of the opinion that it makes the game far too "play itself" territory. I'm not a fan of games that minimize user engagement.

 

[blueredandgold]

it's also worked a little differently, it would split the base XP evenly among all the party rather than just generating an extra 50% for everything. you weren't going to get overleveled with the Gen 1 version like you do with the current one

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I've got a good mind to use that for a playthrough of RBY on the VC

 

[Doskoi Panda]

the problem i have is the game is now generating something like 300% more exp for each battle and wasn't balanced around that fact.

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yup yup yup

required reading

 

[808s & Villainy]

It would really only work with a massive adjustment to battles to make them more difficult and better encourage switching.

I was always of the opinion trainer battles should adopt Stadium rules where you have to pick the same number of Pokemon as your opponent.
This would force you to actually care about typing, since overleveling wouldn't be as useful. That would also force you to choose specific Pokemon to fit the situation and having something like EXP Share would be useful because you would be more free to have a large roster without having to worry about grinding the ones you don't use as often too much

Also, as people have stated, I would change it so it doesn't effectively generate significantly more EXP overall

 

[Aaronrules380]

There are more ways to make a JRPG difficult and engaging than forcing players to grind characters, and any game that can't figure out a way around that is probably poorly designed.

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I mean I agree, but the issue isn't that Pokemon doesn't force players to grind, because frankly you tended to be at a good level even without grinding in previous games with the xp share off. The issue is that the xp share always being on combined with how piss easy modern Pokemon ALREADY is means the game becomes an absolute cakewalk where you're super overleveled very quickly unless you actively avoid catching pokemon and battling trainers

 

[RXM027]

There's nothing wrong with it being on by default so long as you can turn it off.

I feel like the issue isn't EXP Share, it's that a lot of the trainer/gym battles are too easy. That's a different issue.

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This! Part of the problem is that so few opponents have more than 1 or 2 mons, so that by simply having 6 reasonably leveled team members, you can win almost any battle by sheer attrition. They redesigned how EXP was distributed (players are earning more EXP for less knockouts) but failed to design opponents with this in mind.

 

[RisingStar]

You can absolutely beat past games without grind, the argument make 0 sense to me

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That's what I find surprising and I'd like to see where that notion comes from. If you just beat the trainers on the route, that alone gave you enough xp to stay the course.

Heck Gen 2 and it's remakes went a step further had the whole region under leveled so that people wouldn't end up somewhere too difficult to the point where everything is a cake walk until the E4.

I understand for late game Pokémon that you'd love to use but they are naturally made available late game because of how powerful they become anyway. So I understood the reasoning behind making them harder to train to get the fruits of your labour.

 

[Crayolan]

Its current implementation makes it so that you have a permanent 2.5x multiplier applied on all exp gains, despite the game still being balanced around 1x exp gains, so you will always end up super overleveled. Any sort of challenge is nullified when you're 10 levels over your opponents, especially so in pokemon where having a single overleveled powerhouse pokemon is often enough to break the game, let alone 6 of them.

In a hypothetical world where gamefreak actually decided to balance their games and give a heavy cut to total exp gains to account for how the exp share works, I still don't think it's a good mechanic because it gets rid of the aspect of actually raising each individual teammate and discourages using weaker teammates--there's no reason to do so when you can just use your strongest one and they still get exp. Like think about Magikarp. In the old games, raising Magikarp was a challenge. It was a pain in the ass to do but if you put in the effort you get rewarded with Gyarados. Sure, the gen 2-5 exp share could still get around this but it wasn't forced on you, plus it usually didn't come until later in the game at which point most of your "raise low level weak pokemon into a strong one" stuff is done.

I didn't care that much in gens 6/7 when it was optional but now that's it's forced onto the player it has pretty much ruined the games for me. I can't even do a self-imposed challenge with how pitifully easy it makes the games.

 

[spam musubi]

I mean I agree, but the issue isn't that Pokemon doesn't force players to grind, because frankly you tended to be at a good level even without grinding in previous games with the xp share off. The issue is that the xp share always being on combined with how piss easy modern Pokemon ALREADY is means the game becomes an absolute cakewalk where you're super overleveled very quickly unless you actively avoid catching pokemon and battling trainers

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Both rom hacks and "inspired by" games have shown that you can totally do the pokemon formula while being challenging and engaging, so that's mainly on game freak I'd say.

 

[Aaronrules380]

Honestly I'd go even further than saying they should let you turn it back off in future games and say they should allow you the option to have it on or off on a per pokemon basis too. So if you wanted to quickly level up some new pokemon that are seriously behind the rest of your team level wise you can do so without overleveling your top pokemon

 

[Rickenslacker]

It's an RPG and your entire party tends to get exp in those.

 

[Aaronrules380]

Both rom hacks and "inspired by" games have shown that you can totally do the pokemon formula while being challenging and engaging, so that's mainly on game freak I'd say.

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I mean yeah, I agree. But if they're hell bent against making difficulty levels they can at least give us this

 

[Chris.]

I prefer it but I also think it's made the game too easy.

It needs to be balanced more. IMO your enemies should always be higher level than you and require proper strategy using your team to beat them. Now it's just "well I have this team of level 60s... But I'll only use one or two of them to one hit everything."

Maybe that's not the solution, I don't really know what is but i certainly haven't likes the past few Pokemon's as much because they've been too easy.

 

[Spacejaws]

The trainers themselves need more variation. Too many trainers have just one pokemon or 3 Goldeens fuck that I want everyone to have 5-6 damn pokemon even if it is 3 caterpie and 3 weedle.

 

[Aaronrules380]

Honestly Pokemon should go back to an xp system like BW where the relative level of your pokemon vs the opponent affected xp gains. Though I'd say add one more change and make it so this only applies when you beat an opponent weaker than you to prevent overleveling, not ones higher (since that could lead to scenarios where beating high level Pokemon ended up leveling you too quickly which kind of got rid of the point of things like B2W2 hard mode)

Speaking of which remember how fucking stupid the implementation of hard mode was in B2W2. You only get it in one version (the other gave you easy mode) and only after you beat the game. And since Pokemon doesn't have a ng+, the only way to actually engage with hard mode in a meaningful way was to use the feature that let you give access to the mode to a friend if you already have it so you'd need to start a new game and be given the key to use it by a friend who had already beaten the game and also happened to have the right version to unlock it

 

[PKrockin]

I think splitting experience among your whole party is a great option, but the EXP share doesn't quite do that. From my understanding, not only does the Pokemon you used get the full 100% of the experience, but all your party Pokmeon get 50% exp on top of that. The player's getting experience 3.5 times as fast as they used to in other Pokemon games. Plus now they're gaining experience from catching. Now, I haven't played that much of Sword, but it seems like to compensate for this they had to reduce the size of the routes and reduce the number of trainers and number of Pokemon the trainers have in order to keep the player's levels from skyrocketing. Or, if I looked at it the other way around, maybe the game is just smaller and has less content and they redesigned the EXP share to allow the level curve to work with the smaller game/shorter runtime.

There's nothing wrong with it being on by default so long as you can turn it off.

This! Part of the problem is that so few opponents have more than 1 or 2 mons, so that by simply having 6 reasonably leveled team members, you can win almost any battle by sheer attrition. They redesigned how EXP was distributed (players are earning more EXP for less knockouts) but failed to design opponents with this in mind.

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It seems like trainers have only a few Pokemon specifically because if they had more all the extra experience the EXP share generates would make the player quickly surpass the NPCs in level. More trainers and more Pokemon per trainer would actually generally make the game easier. Having the EXP share in the game and being able to turn it off doesn't fix this unless you make not using the EXP share its own mode or something, with its own balancing.

 

[Faiyaz]

Its implementation is a good thing, but the trainer levels/movesets must be scaled to accommodate it well. This is the reason why Gen 6 and 8 were so irritatingly easy. Gen 7 was pretty decent though in terms of difficulty.

 

[Disclaimer]

It needs to either be optional, they need to put actual attention towards balancing the game with EXP share, and/or they need to implement a Hard mode.

Plenty of RPGs are capable of achieving EXP balance without trivialization or necessitating grinding. Plenty of RPGs are capable of having difficulty modes to engage all levels of players.

Yet, Pokemon puts no effort towards this. Sw/Sh was so mind-numbingly easy -- so removed from the need to utilize any battle mechanics whatsoever -- that gameplay was straight-up unfun.

People will make excuses like "Pokemon is for children, so naturally it should be thoughtless," but that ignores both that (1) a sizable portion of the playerbase is adult, and (2) children, contrary to Masuda's impression, don't always -- or even usually -- want games to be mindless.

 

[Doskoi Panda]

Straight up the worst thing about modern Pokemon games is that Game Freak seems utterly terrified of even giving players the OPTION of enjoying some sort of challenge, no matter how minor.

Pokemon Sw/Sh is as easy as the easiest game you've ever played if it were set to 'Story' difficulty. It's insane. Pokemon's never been particularly difficult but Sw/Sh practically made no attempt to tax any player on any level. A combat system with this much depth and malleability means nothing when I can just steamroll the entire game by mashing A.

Sw/Sh's implementation of EXP Share sucks ass and that suckage is compounded by Game Freak's reluctance to challenge the player in any way whatsoever, to such an extent that even Gym Leaders, the most powerful trainers in the game, typically only have 3 or 4 Pokemon to put up against your 6.

Your 6 which, mind you, are going to be leveled way higher than the Gym Leader's.

I stopped playing Shield after reaching a Gym Leader and realizing that several of the Pokemon I just caught in the wild on the route leading to that gym were at a higher level in the wild than the Gym Leader's own Pokemon.

There's no justification for that being the only way to experience Pokemon.

Its current implementation makes it so that you have a permanent 2.5x multiplier applied on all exp gains, despite the game still being balanced around 1x exp gains, so you will always end up super overleveled. Any sort of challenge is nullified when you're 10 levels over your opponents, especially so in pokemon where having a single overleveled powerhouse pokemon is often enough to break the game, let alone 6 of them.

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^^^

It's not like how other JRPGs implemented QOL features so that your backup party wouldn't end up underleveled. It's far worse and more invasive.

 

[Carassius Auratus]

If they're going to keep it mandatory then the games should let you be able to level down your Pokemon as well. It makes it too easy to become overleveled by just playing the game normally.

How is it any fun to just spam Tackle for 20 hours and one-shot everything? Wouldn't it be nice to be encouraged to use a tiny bit of strategy sometimes?

 

[Fiel]

I have no problem with EXP share if it is giving only like , half of exp gained and game is balance around the fact that sprite-based pokemon game difficulty in mind..

but yeah, Pokemon right now isnt even challenging at all, even exp share turn off because general design philosophy isnt there. It is more like kids game which they are aiming toward for. (Old fan now became adult so it is normal to have opinion like this)

it it XY when game became too easy, champion that game has like? 4 pokemons if i remember it correctl and very underleveled

 

[RisingStar]

Honestly I'd go even further than saying they should let you turn it back off in future games and say they should allow you the option to have it on or off on a per pokemon basis too. So if you wanted to quickly level up some new pokemon that are seriously behind the rest of your team level wise you can do so without overleveling your top pokemon

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I mean, that's sort of how EXP share initially worked from Gen 2 to I believe Gen 6. Also despite using the "it's a kids game" reasoning, to be frank, several of us were all kids when the games first came out anyway or throughout the years. I guess we all just shrugged and dropped the games. Kids are definitely smarter than that.

I also do not understand why Challenge Mode was even removed in the first place. It's as if they are afraid to make the game remotely challenging. If the idea was to make catching Pokemon the main draw, then besides Let's Go, they didn't really sell that idea well with Sw/Sh either, (can't catch Pokemon at higher levels than you).

 

[Antrax]

I would never turn it off but also wouldn't care if it was an option for people that would.

I always think it's funny when people complain about it making the game too easy. Can you remember to use water moves on the fire guy? If so, literally every Pokemon game is a cakewalk. Having to periodically grind levels is not a challenge.

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Yeah, Sabrina in the original games is still the only hard battle in the entire series, and that's because GF forgot to put any Psychic counters in.

The people who say "it just eliminates level grinding" absolutely miss the point. Past maybe the first few games, and especially in the 3DS games, even with Exp. Share off there is never any need to grind because Pokemon gives you so many tools to deal with the rare challenge that you encounter. Make good use of status effects, stat boosting/lowering moves, items, etc., and even with significant level differences you'll never have to go out and level grind unless you don't want to engage with the game's systems.

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No one talking about grinding thinks it was required to beat the games. But one of the key USPs of Pokémon is building a team and switching them in and out. If I want to use a different Grass type in the late game for whatever reason, there's a solid chance it may be like level 12 or something when I make that call. So I have to grind to get it to a point where it can battle basic trainers (let alone actual gym leaders/Elite 4/etc....). In past games, the way that worked is you had to run around drawing aggro for battles with the weakling in front, then switch it immediately for something else (who would take a hit), and win. This was particularly frustrating if the thing you put in for the hit got poisoned, or if the random Pokemon you battled had an anti-switching mechanic.

 

[Ryuelli]

I love it and I don't personally know anyone who doesn't like it or who wants to turn it off. But me and my friends aren't competitive players. It takes away a lot of the grinding, which is always a plus for me.

It should definitely always be a toggle, though.

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I feel the same way.

 

[Aaronrules380]

I mean, that's sort of how EXP share initially worked from Gen 2 to I believe Gen 6. Also despite using the "it's a kids game" reasoning, to be frank, several of us were all kids when the games first came out anyway or throughout the years. I guess we all just shrugged and dropped the games. Kids are definitely smarter than that.

I also do not understand why Challenge Mode was even removed in the first place. It's as if they are afraid to make the game remotely challenging. If the idea was to make catching Pokemon the main draw, then besides Let's Go, they didn't really sell that idea well with Sw/Sh either, (can't catch Pokemon at higher levels than you).

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I honestly would not be shocked if they said challenge mode was removed because noone used it in B2W2 and ignored how fucking awful, obtuse, and convoluted the way they implemented that mode in those games was where you actively had to jump through several hoops to use it at the start of the game and where said hoops would've been actually impossible for people to jump through on day 1 regardless of whether they would want to or not

 

[Clay]

Yeah, Sabrina in the original games is still the only hard battle in the entire series, and that's because GF forgot to put any Psychic counters in.

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The Miltank from one of the gyms in Gold or Silver is the only fight I can remember struggling with, and it's not challenging in a fun or interesting way that I want to see more of.

 

[Doskoi Panda]

It can be easy to stick with the same party throughout the whole game, which can be boring. EXP share makes it easier to experiment.

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If you search my posts you'll find that I've praised X/Y up and down for this exact reason.

Unfortunately, in Sw/Sh, the EXP Share and EXP mechanics are balanced in such a way that it's impossible to keep from becoming overleveled. I literally restrained myself to only keeping 3 Pokemon in my party at all times, rotating CONSTANTLY to almost every new Pokemon I caught. Every last one of them would become over-leveled in no time flat. Sometimes within minutes. Now THAT'S boring.

 

[KillstealWolf]

There is no issue with splitting EXP between Party members, it reduces grinding in the endgame and is mutually beneficial for everyone.

...Did you spot the key part of that sentence boys and girls?

In the Endgame.

In the main game, it often results in you having a full team of 6 pokemon that are 5 or 6 levels over the opponents at all times. Back in X and Y when they had the system for the first time, I had a team of over Level 40s by the time I reached Korrina, the third gym.

For reference, Korrina's strongest pokemon was a level 32 Hawlucha. The Mega Lucario you get after the fight to introduce megas is the same level, It's suppose to be strong and powerful, and yet this one was 8 levels lower than the rest of my team.

The first Gym Leader that would actually challenge me level wise would be Valerie at the 6th gym, except she won't because I would be in the 50s at that point. This is before you take into stuff like the Amie Bonuses with the dodge chance, crit chance, shake of status chance, survive hit chance (Like anything was even going to kill me at that point).

Effectively, act 1 of the game was over and nothing was going to challenge me for the rest of the game.

So I turned that off for Sun and Moon, and with the old EXP curve, I actually stayed around the same level of the opponents and actually got to enjoy a small bit of challenge with the major fights (Helps that the Totems actually have interesting movesets to go against).

Then here comes Sw/Sh and you can't switch it off anymore. So now to avoid another X/Y Situation, I have to self impose a whole bunch of additional rules so I feel like the AI can have a fair chance. Swap pokemon between gyms, don't use any raid pokemon with their perfect IVs or raid rewards like the ludicrous EXP boost candies or the TRs with insanely strong mid and end-game moves before you even beat the first gym. No Camp Bonuses. No Dynamax in Gym Leader Battles (Seriously, if you Dynamax Turn one in Gym Battles you can often just Steam Roll it there and then when you get those stat and weather/terrain buffs)

And despite that, I still found myself outpacing the game level wise. A wild pokemon I caught in the route before the Fairy Gym (An Indeedee) was put in the team, did not battle once, and was already a higher level than the Gym Leaders strongest pokemon when I got to them. Even with all these self imposed rules, the game was still too easy with how much EXP it gives.

So should EXP be shared, I don't see why it shouldn't. But the system really needs to be changed so that it doesn't result in an overpowered team. Because if I get an overpowered team. I'm essentially just playing a Clicker game at this point. Just leading with my 10 levels stronger pokemon, hitting whatever overpowered TR I got in Slot 1. Not even needing to care about type advantages of weaknesses because they don't have the raw stats (or in many cases, an actual decent attacking move) to put up any sort of challenge and then, oh I guess I'm champion I guess.

 

[shinobi602]

Yeah, Sabrina in the original games is still the only hard battle in the entire series, and that's because GF forgot to put any Psychic counters in.

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Giovanni wasn't a pushover either. And I distinctly remember losing to the Elite 4 many times before finally winning, from Yellow to G/S, R/S etc.

They put up some pretty decent fights.

 

[EggmaniMN]

The games were already baby easy with zero challenge at any point, EXP share just lets me actually level the stuff I want to use instead of funneling it all into one at a time who just outlevels the entire game and trivializes it anyway. There was literally never a point where the games were difficult.

 

[AnimaRize]

In the games that didn't share exp through the whole party, you typically did not have to grind if A) the game was balanced well or B) You were smart about how you used your team. Really they just need to let us turn it off again if they're not gonna tweak it so we don't get overleveled.

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I didn't grind that was all just trainer battles I still had my starter hugely overlevelled, the game wasn't exactly balanced back then either, you had to go out of your way to balance the game yourself, even up to gen 5 the game was hugely unbalanced. Like even if your starter fainted bunch of revives the back legendaries and fodder you could beat any league

 

[spyroflame0487]

Really just need to make it an optional experience. I love using it but I understand some people don't like it being forced on you.

Personally if I had resources and I wss Gamefreak, I'd simply make what fans have asked for and made difficulty modes.

"Youngster" mode would make all pokemon scale lower than you/make enemies make dumb choices in their moves. EXP share is always on, given to you at the start of the game.

"Trainer" mode would make all Pokemon keep a set scale like normal. EXP Share is toggeable on and off, given to you after first or second gym.

"Ace Trainer/Pkmn Master" mode would make all Pomemon scale above your level. EXP share is not given out until post game and remains toggleable.

 

[MarvelousIntent]

I don't like it, but not because it's made the game too easy. It takes away the tedium that I enjoy. I like having to use my Pokemon in battle to make them stronger. EXP share makes me use my individual pokemon less because I'm not doing any grind/training breaks to even out my team. I only like EXP share for post-game when I'm trying to fill out the Pokedex.

 

[Tbm24]

It's a convenient option for me as I don't have the time to grind out all my moms like that. That said, I'm also surprised seeing people say it makes the games less difficult as quite frankly, I've never found any of them difficult. I also grind xp for fun in rpgs in general so maybe it's just something I never noticed.

 

[ffdgh]

Give people an on and off option.

 

[werezompire]

Give me XP Share but also give me DQ11-style Draconian modifiers like Harder Enemies and no XP gained when overleveled so I can make the game more challenging.

 

[Ryuelli]

Giovanni wasn't a pushover either. And I distinctly remember losing to the Elite 4 many times before finally winning, from Yellow to G/S, R/S etc.

They put up some pretty decent fights.

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Whitney and her Miltank destroyed 9 year old me.

 

[Thorn]

It would be more tolerable if trainers (or at least gym leaders) scaled in level.

In SwSh I was over leveled in every fight, and I didn't even grind.

 

[Sargerus]

People thinking its too easy should go for Nuzlocke challenges for a bit more of difficulty :p

 

[Pat_DC]

It should be a toggle. Options are always nice.

As someone who has always dabbled but never finished any of the gba, ds and now 3ds games.
I found in the 3ds games I did a lot more experimentation with my party.

On the flip side I am now trying to finally finish a playthrough of HG and I have to admit there is a weird joy in finally leveling a mon like Zubat who starts quite weak into the higher levels once they learn new moves and become quite handy. The only thing is I feel I needed to be really sure about what my team would be to invest the time. Awhile from what I played of the 3ds games i was a bit less worried about what my final team would be.

 

[Deleted member 33533]

I didn't grind that was all just trainer battles I still had my starter hugely overlevelled, the game wasn't exactly balanced back then either, you had to go out of your way to balance the game yourself, even up to gen 5 the game was hugely unbalanced. Like even if your starter fainted bunch of revives the back legendaries and fodder you could beat any league

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I mean balance in the way that in most of the games you wouldn't be woefully under leveled and need to grind a bunch to keep up. There are some exceptions but generally I wasn't grinding to progress.

Of course if you only use one or two Pokémon, they are going to be overleveled. That's how it was balanced. A small but stronger team with little type coverage vs a full but weaker team with good type coverage. Both were viable.

 

[Thorn]

People thinking its too easy should go for Nuzlocke challenges for a bit more of difficulty :p

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I don't want permadeath nuzlock shenanigans. I just want the game to require SOME challenge.

 

[Crayolan]

People thinking its too easy should go for Nuzlocke challenges for a bit more of difficulty :p

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A Nuzlocke challenge isn't difficult when you have a team of 6 level 40+ pokemon and the opponents have like 3 pokemon in the low 30s. You can add as many extra stipulations as you'd like and it won't matter, the game cannot be difficult when all your pokemon are so overleveled you can just 1 shot every opponent before they get a chance to even move.

 

[Phellps]

It's a real quality of life improvement, but the game should be designed around it. The difficulty curve just isn't there right now.

 

[danm999]

I would agree it should be fine for people to turn it off if they want it.

But the default game should be balanced around it being on.

 

[Zomba13]

EXP Share isn't the issue, it's the balance/difficulty of the game that's the issue where it's still balanced like Exp Sharing isn't a thing.

 

[Dad]

I don't understand the people saying the old games were always easy but required lots of grinding. How do you reconcile these ideas?