"My idea to address the games' lack of difficulty: Change trainer battles into even matches"

It's widely accepted that the games have gotten less difficult over time and were never all that hard to begin with. Part of that is a conscious choice for the many children who play the games, but a lot of it is just baked into the game design itself.Part of it is just an issue of AI and movesets, but that's an obvious fix. Instead, I wanted to address one of the most difficult disbeliefs to suspend in the game: why are you allowed to use six Pokemon when your opponent has only three? What kind of Pokemon League considers that fair? It's especially egregious with route trainers who only have one Pokemon. Why would they agree to that battle in the first place? For obvious reasons, making trainer battles even by giving every trainer six Pokemon would present its own problems; the game would turn into a slog.Instead, the player should get challenged to battles that are 2-on-2, 3-on-3 and so on. Suddenly, the matches are actual sportsmanlike challenges like they are in the anime without adding much time to the game. Losing the battle wouldn't make you scurry back to a Center unless your last Pokemon fainted, but you could still face the resource drains that are needed for RPGs to feel meaningful, and key trainers could always choose not to let you progress until you beat them where needed. There would also be a reward to predicting the opponent's roster by being able to choose your lead each battle.There's plenty of room for variety here to make battles more flavorful. For example, against trainers on the street, you could just pick from your full party according to the match, while official Gym Battles could lock you into a portion of your party you pick in the beginning. Meanwhile, the classic style of play would be kept alive against wild Pokemon, and would make sense to keep for battles against bad guys, where sportsmanlike conduct would make no sense and they could come in enough hordes to be a challenge against a full team of six.I think this would be the single most impactful change to the games that would make them feel much better than they do currently, when a full party of six is basically unbeatable except by another large party. I also don't think it would be such a challenge or increase in complexity that younger players would find it overly difficult or unintuitive. That said, I never see this idea mentioned anywhere. Thoughts? via /r/pokemon https://ift.tt/31KNniu