6th Gen How the Exp. Share Works in X/Y

[Cyclone]

I want to note there is a thread called Exp. Share overpowered? already in this forum. I wanted to separate this because it contains analysis and I can edit this as an informational post if this forum's moderators would like. Therefore, please do not merge it into the existing thread.

I have done analysis over four battles, two with identical opponents and different scenarios. My party (ignoring levels, genders, etc.) was as follows:
- Pikachu (of course)
- Bunnelby
- Zigzagoon
- Pidgey
- Bidoof
- Azurill

The battles I conducted were as follows:

Battle 1: Pikachu (Lv. 7 Farfetch'd)
Battle 2: Zigzagoon (Lv. 6 Psyduck)
Battle 3: Bidoof/Azurill (Bunnelby)
Battle 4: Bidoof/Zigzagoon/Pidgey (Lv. 7 Farfetch'd)

Notice for starters that the first and last battles are both against a Lv. 7 Farfetch'd. I'll provide all analysis, but those are the most interesting data here.

So I sent out Pikachu to fight a Farfetch'd. She (yes, my first Pikachu found was female, didn't know rarity so didn't want to chance missing, but I can now breed them, so...) obviously won. She gained 123 Exp. Everyone else gained 61.

Zigzagoon took the lead against a Psyduck. No switching, gained 54. Everyone else: 27.

Here's where it gets interesting. Bidoof and Azurill both went out for a battle (via a switch in-battle). Basically, both gained 33 each, while the other four gained 16 each.

Even more interestingly, another Farfetch'd happened along, and I sent out a trio (see above) to fight it in turn. They all got 123 just like the first battle. The rest got 61.

So I turned off the Exp. Share and encountered another Bunnelby. 33 Exp. gained. Another Psyduck appeared. Chalk up another 54. Basically, the same numbers in the two cases above even with the Exp. Share turned off.

Thus, I can conclude the Exp. Share works as follows:

The Exp. Share, in Pokémon X/Y, has no effect on the experience gained by any of the battling Pokémon. Instead, any non-participant gains half of the experience gained by any battling Pokémon, rounding down.

Thoughts?

 

[acatfrommars]

I personally think that the EXP share is overpowered, although I really did like it in XY. I think that it could be good for training pokemon for competitive use because it will make training go by quite a bit faster. My hippowdon that I trained the least was around level 60 by the time of the E4. It was awesome, but cheap as well. xD

 

[Aeroblast]

It's extremely overpowered, especially if you have a Pokemon that's traded over that get 3/4ths of the experience by doing absolutely nothing. My Blaziken was overlevelled compared to my other 'mons and I've only sent it out to battle like 5 times ever.

 

[Shackles]

If you put a pokemon thats from another regoin (example, japan) as leader, from a diferent trainer, with lucky egg/charm, you can gain up to 15000 exp, and the rest of team 7500, so yeah a bit overpowered.

 

[Aminta]

Do I think the experience share is overpowered? Yes.

On the flip side, however, it serves wonderfully to eliminate the more monotonous aspects of the game. It's a double-edged sword in that it's great to not have to grind wild Pokemon battles to level each of your Pokemon, but the removal of the need to grind experience shaves hours off the average playthrough and makes the game feel shorter. It's a shorter, sweeter experience, in my opinion. I often reached a point in previous games where I had to grind a couple levels for all my Pokemon, and it got too tedious to be enjoyable. It started to feel like a chore.

What I like about the way it works in this game is that, for players like me, it makes it much easier and more enjoyable to fill out my Pokedex by evolving my caught Pokemon. It's much less of a hassle to evolve Pokemon I don't intend on battling with, and just want the Pokedex information on - I can load up my party with 5 Pokemon in their first evolution stage, give a Lucky Egg to a high level Pokemon at the front of my party, turn on Experience Share, and battle wild Pokemon or trainers with my strong lead and funnel that experience into the other 5 Pokemon until they've all fully evolved. In earlier generations it made more sense to devote a lot of time to evolving each Pokemon because there were less of them. Although it was a slow process, we didn't have as many Pokedex slots to fill as we do now, with over 600 Pokemon and counting! The process has sped up to scale with the increase in amount of Pokemon there are to acquire.

However, there are a few adjustments that could be made that I think would be beneficial to the experience and would still keep the monotony at bay without making the entire game feel like a cakewalk.
Maybe lower the amount of experience shared to 1/3rd rather than 1/2, and don't give the Experience Share to players until they've beaten the first 4, 5 or 6 gyms.

 

[Hiatus]

To be honest, I'm loving the new Experience Share. Thanks to that, I was able to keep all my Pokémon at a balanced level throughout the entire gameplay for the first time ever. It also made it easy for me to catch up my under-leveled Pokémon. Before X and Y, if you ever wanted to give any of your weak Pokémon some good experience, you constantly had to switch them in and out of battles, which I found to quite annoying; with the help of this, you don't need to do that anymore. The Exp. Share does lower the difficulty a little, but hey, at least they've given us an option to disable it. If you want the game to be more challenging, then you could always turn it on. d: I currently have Pokémon Y; will download X a few months later. When I do, I'll play the game with Experience Share turned off and see how it's like.

 

[PokeBound98]

I do have to agree with most people that the experience share this generation is indeed quite overpowered. It really makes all my Pokemon overleveled for any upcoming battles, especially gym leader battles. One example of this is Gym Leader Korrina. Because I still had the experience share turned on by that point in the game, I was quite a few levels over her Pokemon, therefore making it an easy but very unsatisfying win. I wanted the game to be somewhat challenging, so after that battle I turned it off. And boy, did that ever make a difference.