"The reason the EXP Share is so divisive is because it is poorly designed"

The EXP Share was redesigned to solve two issues in Pokemon games, the forced grinding of recently caught, low level Pokemon that cannot yet win battles on their own and to limit the level gaps that can naturally arise from leaning on the stronger Pokemon in your team. While the old EXP Share could also accomplish this, it was often only obtainable later in the game and required constant management to make sure it was on the right Pokemon. Unfortunately, due to the way it was implemented, the EXP Share created an unresolvable balancing issue for the games that include it.The old EXP Share took away experience from the Pokemon participating in the battle to give an equal amount to the Pokemon holding the item, and as a result it did not have any affect on the experience gained from winning a battle. This makes the games relatively easy to balance, since the developers can determine how much experience a player's team should have obtained throughout the game.The new EXP Share no longer takes away experience from the Pokemon participating in the battle, instead granting an extra 50% of the experience to each Pokemon in the party, with the exception of fainted Pokemon. Keeping fainted Pokemon from gaining experience makes sense on the surface, but it is this detail that makes modern Pokemon games impossible to balance.As an example, if a new player faces a challenging gym and emerges victorious, but loses 4 Pokemon in the process, they will receive 1.5x the standard experience from defeating the last Pokemon. A veteran player facing the same gym might only lose 1 Pokemon, receiving 3x the standard experience from the last Pokemon. The veteran player gains twice as much experience, and widens the difference in power between their team and the new player's team.This is not the only problem it creates. Previously, experience was split between all participants in the battle, but the new EXP Share gives full EXP to all Pokemon that participate in a battle. This creates more experience for each switch that happens while fighting a Pokemon, something that corresponds strongly with the "switch" and "set" options. Players who use the "set" option are given more experience, working against the optional difficulty setting that they have enabled.From a developer perspective, the new EXP Share makes the games impossible to accurately balance. If they aim for a game balanced around a low EXP Share multiplier then veteran players will suffer from overleveling, but if they balance the game around a high EXP Share multiplier then new players will be stuck constantly grinding to get by. In general, I would expect Pokemon games to continue to face significant balancing issues unless the EXP Share is adjusted again. I think the item is fixable by allowing fainted Pokemon to gain experience and splitting the full experience currently gained by all Pokemon that participate in a battle.TL;DR: Unintuitively, the EXP Share punishes new players for their mistakes and rewards skilled players for keeping their team from fainting. This creates a balancing issue that cannot be solved simply by balancing the game around the EXP Share. via /r/pokemon https://ift.tt/3oTnuIt