6th Gen Pokémon Levels XY

[Tombo]

I want an insane mode wheir you recieve your starter at like level 3.
Gym leaders 1-4 will have 4 pokemon
Leader 1(16-20)
Leader 2(24-30)
Leader 3(32-36)
Leader 4 ( 38-43)

Then leaders 5-8 should have full teams
Leader 5( 46-50)
Leader 6( 51-56)
Leader 7(56-60)
Leader 8(60-65)

Then elite 4 ( 75-80)
Then champion (85-90)

Then all gym rematches (90) once you fight them 3 different time (100) with rotating pokemon
All elite 4 rematches (95)
Then champion rematch (100) with rotating pokemon ( chosen at random) ( of his type of course, maybe he can have a total of 13 diffrent pokemon and he will randomly choose 6 to battle ) (same goes for gym leaders and elites 4))

*drools all over this post*

yes please.

 

[darkpokeball]

I would love an Easy, Medium and Hard mode but that would mean hard coding 3 different games in one, if you understand what I mean: like they would have different levels, different moves (counter moved in Hard mode), different items, possibly evolved pokémon in Hard mode that weren't evolved in easy mode (due to higher levels), etc. I'd love it, but do they have enough time to do that?

I also have two systems in mind and a combination of both as well:

The Number-of-badges dependent system

Spoiler:

Lv. = an + b,

where a = the Lv. increase rate per badge.
n = the number of badges the player has.
b = the first gym leader's highest level pokémon's level.

For example, let a = 5, and b = 14: The first gym leader's highest level poke that you fight would be Lv. 14, the second would be Lv. 19, 24, 29, and so on. This system allows you to fight the gym leaders in any order you like because it depends solely on the number of badges you have!

The Player-Level dependent system

Spoiler:

If(L<=d), h = d;
If(L>d), h = L;

where L = the player's highest level in his party.
d = the default leader's highest Lv.
h = the leader's highest Lv. (the one actually used in battle).

For example, let us use the first gym battle in FRLG (Brock had a Lv. 12 Geodude and a Lv. 14 Onix): here d = 14. If the player fights Brock with the highest level poke in his party being Lv. 14 or less
(L<=14) then the levels of his pokes would stay the same: Brock's Onix would be Lv. 14 (h=d=14) and his Geodude would be Lv. 12 (h-2=12). On the other hand if the player walks in there with say a Lv. 17 Charmeleon being his highest level in his party then Brock's Onix would now be Lv. 17 (h=L=17) and his Geodude would be Lv. 15 (h-2=15).

This allows veterans to train as much as they like and still not overpower the leaders as much.

The Combined system

Spoiler:

d = an + b,
If(L<=d), h = d;
If(L>d), h = L;

If you combine both systems now only can you fight the leaders in any order but you would never be over-levelled.

I enjoy the #-of-badges system. It's been speculated that Lumiose City will be the Central Hub of Kalos, where you can access anywhere else from. There are doors with #'s on them...so what if you could go through Kalos in any order you want? The leader's pokemon levels would change depending on how many badges you were trying to get and their pokemon might even evolve. The only problems are this:
a. The Wild Pokemon. What will determine these levels and which pokemon will be found in the grass? Same goes for the levels of trainer battles that are outside of the gym.

Here's what I think should happen:
There is an easy, standard, or 'expert' version of each gym leader and of the Elite 4. The same applies for major battles, such as the storyline's main villain(ex. Ghetsis.) Before a major battle, like a gym battle, a scren pops up and you get to choose 'easy,' 'standard,' or 'expert.' That way if you have trouble beating one gym leader, you can set it to easy for them and just beat the rest on hard. The city is seperate from the routes, because some dude blocks them, with some annoying message. Beat the gym leader, and he'll let you through the wild pokemon area. The badge that you just got determines the difficulty of the wild pokemon.

In essence, let's say I'm in Town A. I beat the gym leader in Town A, talk to the guy and he lets me through to Route A. Route A's pokemon are determined by which badge I got from gym leader A...so if gym leader A was Badge Numero Uno, I'd get a set of pokemon like the regional rodent, the common bird, all un-evolved at low levels, etc. It's not pokemon levels that change in the wild; it's the set of pokemon themselves. Say I go and get Badge B, and it turns out Gym Leader B was the eighth gym leader. Talk to the guy, he lets you through, all the pokemon in Route B are the set that are if you beat the 8th gym. But, say I go back to Route A. Route A's pokemon set stays the same because no matter what, because I beat Gym Leader A first, the pokemon in Route A will always be the set that comes from beating the first gym leader. If I challenged C first, then C will have the 1st pokemon set...the routes don't change, the trainers and their locations don't change, the pokemon do. So everyone has a different version of Kalos.

The post-game is unlocked after you beat the 8th gym and all post-game locations will have a fixed pokemon set. So...how does that sound in terms of game difficulty? Of course, all routes would eventually lead to dead ends, like a dungeon or something or a park or a Super Training facility. Either way, you'd go back to Lumiose City every time to pick your next location and your next leader challenge.

 

[Boilurn]

Well, BW was just right with the level difficulty, but it really depends on how many trainer battles we have to fight altogether. I hope the trainers pack more Pokemon with higher levels just like the Gym leaders, (Especialy those that belong to Team Flare) so if we took that into account I guess the last Pokemon would be somewhere at Lv. 60-65.

 

[OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire]

I hope that later trainers don't have high level teams made 100 percent up of weak Pokémon like a fisherman in BW who had a team of level 60 Magikarps but no Gyarados...

 

[BeefTaco]

Black 2 and White 2 had Challenge mode, no?

 

[SheZow]

I myself prefer a challenge, but not one that requires you to have to battle them 100 times before you finally win.

 

[BluuArrowz]

I swear in black and white one it started at level 12 to like 20 for the first Gym and then Jumped Massively for the next few gyms then dropped.

 

[ballin'Blissey]

I enjoy the #-of-badges system. It's been speculated that Lumiose City will be the Central Hub of Kalos, where you can access anywhere else from. There are doors with #'s on them...so what if you could go through Kalos in any order you want? The leader's pokemon levels would change depending on how many badges you were trying to get and their pokemon might even evolve. The only problems are this:
a. The Wild Pokemon. What will determine these levels and which pokemon will be found in the grass? Same goes for the levels of trainer battles that are outside of the gym.

Here's what I think should happen:
There is an easy, standard, or 'expert' version of each gym leader and of the Elite 4. The same applies for major battles, such as the storyline's main villain(ex. Ghetsis.) Before a major battle, like a gym battle, a scren pops up and you get to choose 'easy,' 'standard,' or 'expert.' That way if you have trouble beating one gym leader, you can set it to easy for them and just beat the rest on hard. The city is seperate from the routes, because some dude blocks them, with some annoying message. Beat the gym leader, and he'll let you through the wild pokemon area. The badge that you just got determines the difficulty of the wild pokemon.

In essence, let's say I'm in Town A. I beat the gym leader in Town A, talk to the guy and he lets me through to Route A. Route A's pokemon are determined by which badge I got from gym leader A...so if gym leader A was Badge Numero Uno, I'd get a set of pokemon like the regional rodent, the common bird, all un-evolved at low levels, etc. It's not pokemon levels that change in the wild; it's the set of pokemon themselves. Say I go and get Badge B, and it turns out Gym Leader B was the eighth gym leader. Talk to the guy, he lets you through, all the pokemon in Route B are the set that are if you beat the 8th gym. But, say I go back to Route A. Route A's pokemon set stays the same because no matter what, because I beat Gym Leader A first, the pokemon in Route A will always be the set that comes from beating the first gym leader. If I challenged C first, then C will have the 1st pokemon set...the routes don't change, the trainers and their locations don't change, the pokemon do. So everyone has a different version of Kalos.

The post-game is unlocked after you beat the 8th gym and all post-game locations will have a fixed pokemon set. So...how does that sound in terms of game difficulty? Of course, all routes would eventually lead to dead ends, like a dungeon or something or a park or a Super Training facility. Either way, you'd go back to Lumiose City every time to pick your next location and your next leader challenge.

That is a good idea but would only work for dead-end routes or a very open pokémon adventure that allows you to explore the caves, forests, mountains, etc. in any order you like: if I can fight the leaders in any order then I can also visit the routes in any order. It'd be interesting if they took that jump with this gen, it'd be new, but villains and storyline battles would also have to be affected by the badge you got as those events take place in particular locations (unless GF wants to allow you to fight Ghetsis in a volcano or a forest or anywhere as long as it's after the 'n'th badge). I'm excited to see what they do with Lumiose city.

The Easy-Medium-Hard mode is great but seeing as they've said nothing of it yet (but yet they've talked about choosing different languages) I don't know if they've implemented it or are even going to try.

I hope that later trainers don't have high level teams made 100 percent up of weak Pokémon like a fisherman in BW who had a team of level 60 Magikarps but no Gyarados...

Lol, I think the 6 Magikarp teams are just a theme that GF has been trolling us with for a while. (it was also there in DPPt).

 

[SkyRyder]

I am all up for difficulty. I'll always be playing on the hardest difficulty setting. However, it is true that as long as you grind just above the opponent's level, the game isn't really that much harder than it would be on a normal difficulty.

What I think should happen, and hope it happens, is an overhaul to the AI code. I'll be honest, the AI isn't really that great, and I saw no improvement to it while playing on challenge mode in Black 2. If they can perfect it even more, I'm sure that can add on to the difficulty aspect.

Another thing to add on difficulty is just giving trainers' Pokemon their own custom movesets instead of the lame, predefined ones, which is the 4 recent moves they can learn. Maybe on a higher difficulty, the IVs of each Pokemon can be heightened to an amount, but will cap at 31 if necessary. One thing I noticed in the 5th gen games, was each trainer class had a value that determined their Pokemon's IVs. Youngsters had Pokemon with 0 IVs across the board, which is pathetic, whereas Veterans had 21 IVs across the board, Gym Leaders/Elite 4 had 30-31 IVs, etc.

Heck, hopefully on the hardest difficulty, bosses will (ab)use mega evolutions. That alone is enough, lol.

 

[OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire]

I sure hope they use Megas too as it'll come off as a player only thing if they don't...also they should give them more healing items...I hated it in RS when the E4 would heal their Pokémon bur that made it tough.

 

[GeckoPutt]

I am all up for difficulty. I'll always be playing on the hardest difficulty setting. However, it is true that as long as you grind just above the opponent's level, the game isn't really that much harder than it would be on a normal difficulty.

What I think should happen, and hope it happens, is an overhaul to the AI code. I'll be honest, the AI isn't really that great, and I saw no improvement to it while playing on challenge mode in Black 2. If they can perfect it even more, I'm sure that can add on to the difficulty aspect.

Another thing to add on difficulty is just giving trainers' Pokemon their own custom movesets instead of the lame, predefined ones, which is the 4 recent moves they can learn. Maybe on a higher difficulty, the IVs of each Pokemon can be heightened to an amount, but will cap at 31 if necessary. One thing I noticed in the 5th gen games, was each trainer class had a value that determined their Pokemon's IVs. Youngsters had Pokemon with 0 IVs across the board, which is pathetic, whereas Veterans had 21 IVs across the board, Gym Leaders/Elite 4 had 30-31 IVs, etc.

Heck, hopefully on the hardest difficulty, bosses will (ab)use mega evolutions. That alone is enough, lol.

I think whilst levelling is definitely an important aspect of the Pokémon series and the Challenge mode introduced in Black 2/White 2 was a very good move, I think that there is more to it than that - and just like XSky RiderX said above me, it's all about the AI.

If they can improve the AI in X & Y so that is much more of a challenge then the game would automatically be harder regardless of levels. If the trainers are able to switch in and out freely, use more items, have more strategic moves and use them effectively (Trick Room teams, Sun, Rain, Hail and Sandstorm teams etc.) - that I what I hope from these games.​

 

[Guy]

Like others have said, the AI is just as important as the level curve, if not more. Both of which I hope are set at a respectable level, even during regular gameplay. I like a challenge, so to see other characters in the game using more strategic moves would be nice for once. Fifth Gen showed some signs of improvement in this area.

I do think what Black2 and White2 started with the option for game difficult, however, was great. It just sucked that you had to complete the game first before you actually had any access to it. This is something I'd like to see come back that could determine where the levels are set in X and Y. Only this time have it available before you start the game rather than after.

 

[Aeroblast]

I think Easy/Medium/Hard difficulties should be available from the get-go.

Coming from someone who has been addicted to FE: Awakening, I'd like to see a Lunatic mode, which has more trainers, and opposition Pokemon with even higher level than Hard mode, possible dream world (or even totally unique) abilities and exclusive movepool, and perfect/near-perfect IVs. In my opinion that'll give a fresher challenge than just implementing AI Hax. I'd like for it to be unlocked only after beating Hard mode.

I'd also like for levels 80+ to have some content rather than just being an E4 grindfest.

 

[fenyx4]

I'm guessing the "Second Wave" variants of the Elite 4 and Champion teams from FireRed/LeafGreen are not counted (for the original post) as well, since those occur after the first defeat of the reigning Champion...

I would like to have a choice between normal and hard mode right at the beginning, this way advanced players could take Hard mode to have a challenge.

This.

Nice post, and I think a easy mode would be good for very young players as well.

As for level boundaries, I would think something like this:

Easy level: (7 - 52)
Normal level: (10 - 62)
Hard level: (13 - 72)

Some good distinction between the levels would be appreciated.

And this...

^This, I want hard mode to have e4 & Champ around 65-75. Thus making post-game e4 & Champ around 75 - 85.

This could be nice.

I've always thought that by the end of the game your Pokemon should be nearly capped out. It would make sense that the champion have 6 level 100 pokemon.

It makes sense in theory (because by all means, anyone calling himself/herself a "Champion" should have the strongest Pokemon in the region; it's embarrassing when Youngsters with maximum-level Pokemon (Level 100) in the Battle Frontier could wipe the floor with the 'Champion'), and it would be a fairer/truer fight against the Champion since you can't take advantage of the tactic of "over-leveling" (which renders difficulty levels meaningless). However, I agree with others; I've never had a playthrough where my non-legendary Pokemon have approached the range of Level 90-100 prior to defeating the regional Champion for the first time (although I've only played Sapphire, Emerald, FireRed, and somewhat Ruby)...if I had to guess, they're usually around the Champion's Pokemon's levels or slightly higher/lower. Getting a team of Level 100s is possible before defeating the Champion but I'd hardly say it's feasible; it's hard enough getting one non-traded Pokemon to Level 100 without (ab)using Elite 4/Champion run-throughs and Hoenn Secret Base battles, all of which are post-game (though technically you could grind against the Elite 4 teams, lose to the Champion, and repeat that process).

However, I agree that the Champion's team should be at Level 100 at some point (either during the first rematch or some point after that); the Elite 4 teams at Level 100 could also work after a set number of rematches.

The DPPt NPC level ranges surprised me when compared to the RSE level ranges (mainly due to how high the Champion's Pokemon apparently are).

Then all gym rematches (90) once you fight them 3 different time (100) with rotating pokemon
All elite 4 rematches (95)
Then champion rematch (100) with rotating pokemon ( chosen at random) ( of his type of course, maybe he can have a total of 13 diffrent pokemon and he will randomly choose 6 to battle ) (same goes for gym leaders and elites 4))

Not sure about the initial foe team levels, but I agree with the "Pokemon rotation from a given pool" thing for the Gym Leaders, Elite 4, and Champion, where 5 Pokemon out of an applicable pool are chosen at random, while the Trainer in question still retains his/her signature Pokemon (like how the Pokemon World Tournament does it, IIRC). Eventually, I think all rematches should be at Level 100 at some point (mostly Gym Leaders, Elite 4, and Champion teams).

In any case, some nice ideas in this thread. Aside from opposing Pokemon levels and Artificial Intelligence (AI) implemented within the game, I think experience point yields (which mostly tie in with levels) have to be taken into account as well (especially if you're talking about rematches).
One thing I hate (!) about the RSE Elite 4 and Champion is that their Pokemon's levels remain static even after you've fought them like 10 times. Emerald irritated me with this even more, as the Gym Leaders' Pokemon receive adequate level boosts (providing hefty/nifty Experience Points) yet the Hoenn Elite 4/Champion teams remained unchanged in terms of levels. Conversely, FR/LG proved that you can have at least some boosts to the Elite 4/Champion Pokemon after the first run-through (although the Gym Leaders unfortunately have no rematches). The RSE Elite 4/Champion foe levels are OK for the first run-through, though I feel they're just pitiful for training against (it usually averages to about 2 level-ups per run-through once you're past Level 50, I think). I'm not sure about what experience formula XY will be using, though (haven't tried BW, but from what I'm hearing, it works horribly when you're trying to level up a single high-leveled Pokemon). The level range of 62-75 (which is what Elite 4/Champion rematches in FR/LG range from) would work well for initial rematches, IMO, providing decent Experience Points in the process. Ideally, I'd like "Hard Mode/Challenge Mode" or whatever to have Gym Leaders, Elite 4, and Champions to eventually have all Level 100 Pokemon, for training purposes and "fairness" purposes.

I wonder what would happen if all opposing League members (Gym Leaders, Elite 4, Champion) all used the "equalizing of Levels" feature (where the levels of all opposing Pokemon are identical to the highest-leveled Pokemon in the player's party)....?

 

[Shrew]

I would really like a key system from the start. :D I don't like playing a region more than once, hence why BW2's keys were useless for me.

So long as they don't surpass HGSS Red's Pikachu level of 88, I'm fine.

 

[Ω Ruby and α Sapphire]

While levels are important, I personally don't think that's the right way to make battles harder, it'll just make players grind until their levels are equal or higher, which get extremely boring. I think the best option is making the A.I smarter or more naive, depending if you want to make the games easier or harder. Many NPC's will just leave their grass type pokemon in when you put your fire type in, even though they have a water type. They could make it more difficult by actually getting the NPC's to assess the situation, know the type chart, use items like revives, EV training, getting their pokemon to have helpful natures and so on. I think that would be a much more effective way of altering the difficulty than just increasing the opponents levels.