"I feel like there is a portion of this community that likes to convince themselves that previous titles were "difficult" and newer titles are "way easier", when in reality the game's never really been that hard. You're conflating convenience with difficulty."

I've played pretty much every Pokemon there is, from Yellow onward, and I keep seeing this nonsense about "old game hard new game easy". I feel like people are vastly misremembering how difficult previous games were, and/or they're trying to somehow pretend that access to QOL resources "lowers difficulty".Examples:"Too much healing"This isn't making anything "easier". It's just convenient. If you wanted to, in every previous gen, you could be fully healed before every single trainer fight, save for the League, free of charge, at a center. Or, with a decent wallet of change built up, you could simply fully heal your team after every fight with items, also in every single previous game. That hasn't changed. The only thing that's different is there are more places you can go to heal, which may save you some time running to and from areas and perhaps get you out of a few wild encounters, perhaps saving you money. Healing isn't making the game itself easier, you're just using a resource you've ALWAYS HAD ACCESS TO more often now because it's right in front of you and you like to press A. It's convenient, but not inherently "easier", as you could just as easily choose to NOT heal, and experience the rush of a low-health team all the way through route X or whatever it is you're running through."Team too strong cuz exp"The game is designed in such a way that if two mons of the same level face off and one has type advantage, it's pretty much an easy win. Always has been, and more than likely always will be. The only thing that makes newer games "easier" is that it takes considerably less grinding and time to keep your entire team leveled appropriately. This then allows you to cover a larger type pool more reliably, giving you a much higher chance of having a type advantage, meaning you win. The real difference is in previous titles you typically only had 1 or 2 'mons on your roster that were level appropriate for your point in the game, and if they didn't make type advantage or fell to an unlucky crit you'd be SOL, unless you dedicated a lot of extra time to leveling a full team to whatever the current level range was for your progress point. This made the game "harder" in the sense that it took a lot more time to level up, but the core gameplay is still pretty braindead easy. Get type advantage, be roughly the same level, win. Bonus points if you have STAB. So basically, the core gameplay of leveling and progressing was still just as easy, the only real difference was the time you needed to dedicate to grinding to get your team up to where they needed to be, which really isn't "difficulty", it's just grinding. It's time consuming, and was typically complained about as it's not exactly thrilling to sit in a bush fighting the same Rattata 85 times because you need your Beedrill to learn a decent bug move to handle Celadon gym because you've been banking on your Wartortle and Graveler to carry you to victory but that plan's not working anymore. The gameplay isn't difficult, the process is just more drawn out. Easier isn't the right term, it's really just more convenient and streamlined.Would the game be "harder" if the level scaling put you significantly behind if you didn't make it a point to grind your team up on the side? Sure, but you could also just grind your whole team up and skate on by without issue. Takes time, but isn't in any way "hard". If you intentionally force yourself to fight underleveled throughout, that's hard. Props to you for creating your own challenge, in the kid's game. Play how you like, I'm not judging here."Trainers 2 easy"They were never that hard. I can count on one hand the amount of random encounter trainer NPCs that gave me a hard time in any of the games. Again, if you were at level and had type advantage, the game's almost always been a pretty easygoing steamroll of a time. Now again, the biggest difficulty point was, if you played like me and prayed that your starter could solo literally everything and kept your bird about 5 levels below just to have a backup, you'd be in a pickle if you got hit by an unexpected oneshot. That said, if you consistently maintained a full team of 6, level appropriate, type varied 'mons, you were almost always for the most part easy sailing through the entire game. It's not a hard game.Most of you probably nailed 6/8 gyms on your first try. Some of you nailed 8/8 gyms on their first try. Those people bypassed the legendary Miltank with a Heracross, and we hate them for that.The League is the League. It's clocked up, shit hits harder, it's more impactful, but at the end of the day I'm pretty sure we all squashed Lance with 8 uses of Ice beam and called it a Tuesday. You certainly had to work harder in the League to steamroll, which I appreciated, but it still wasn't anything type advantage didn't make mostly pretty one-sided."Type advantages are spoon-fed to you."Except they aren't. Any 'mon you haven't encountered is a blank canvas, and you know nothing about its typing other than what you can infer. After you log it in your dex and know its type, yes, now the game educates you on your type advantages in combat, but you could have just as easily looked it up in your dex and researched what moves beat what. That's public information, and was always accessible to the community, even back when you had to buy a cute little book before the internet was big. The only aspect of difficulty here is how eager you are to learn your types and if you can remember simple idioms like "people are afraid of ghosts bugs and the dark, so those beat psychic" or any other of the weird little logic trains that explain type matchups (mind over matter psychic over fight/poison, steel is harder than rock, the only thing as strong as a dragon is another dragon, etc). There's no "difficulty" in just not learning your types. That's called ignorance, and it can be as painful or blissful as you'd like it. If you're a genius that can automatically guess a typing off sight alone, that's not "easy gameplay", that's you being so trained in the art that it's no longer difficult for YOU.--------I've had to say this before in other communities that were known for their game being "difficult", but even though the context is different, the point stands. Not only is Pokemon really not a hard game, nor has it ever been, you've also probably pretty much mastered it at this point, unless you're like 10 and don't feel like learning types. In which case, good for you, play on.I don't disagree with the notion that the conveniences and extra bits this game provides make the process of playing easier in the sense that it takes MUCH less time to progress with less hassle, which for some can make the game dull in the sense that you feel less challenged, but I don't agree that this somehow is an argument for the game being "easy". It's not really an issue of difficulty. If you wanted to take the time, the game's almost always been a cakewalk throughout the bulk of its main storyline.I personally, don't mind. It's a game that's finally starting to fade in my life because I've grown out of the kid-oriented storylines. If these changes and conveniences makes the game feel less rewarding to you, that is an opinion I encourage you to have and maintain as long as you so choose. I just wish we'd stop making the argument about "difficulty", because I simply don't think that's where the problem lies.TL;DR, it's always been an easy game, the newer titles just make the steamroller roll just a wee bit faster, and with less bumps. Is that a bad thing? That's a personal opinion.EDIT: My point is not that this game is not easier than the likes of Hoenn or Sinnoh or Unova etc. My point was really just that those games weren’t really all that hard to begin with, and we seem to be exaggerating the gap between them. Maybe that clarifies some things.Not entirely sure why I’m getting downvote bombed in my comments for simply making statements but hey, polarizing topic.Nonetheless, I appreciate the civil discussion. via /r/pokemon https://ift.tt/2D4KsEY