Like most of the
rest of the world, I have been playing Pokemon Go. With work and home life, I
haven't had much time to properly grind out the 'mons and I am nowhere near a
Pokemon Master. I still have a lot content left to do… that being said, I find
myself wishing there was more "game" in the game. So here are 3 changes I would like to see Niantic make to Pokemon Go:
Implement the Game
Freak combat system
The major strength
of the Pokemon franchise is, in my opinion, the combat system developed by Game
Freak for the GameBoy games. It is superficially simple, but has a ton of
strategic depth and would certainly keep me interested in the game far past the
point where the click mashing / ball flicking mechanics become tiresome.
Encourage social
gaming
Pokemon Go has
become a massive social phenomenon. You can see people wandering around all
over the place, or camped out around pokestops, chatting and having fun.
Niantic should capitalise on this by adding in some social features to the
game. The ability to trade pokemon seems like a no-brainer and being able to
challenge other trainers (even if it's just at stops or gyms) would be a lot of
fun if they implement the Game Freak combat system first.
Make me care about
my pokemon
One issue I have
with Pokemon Go is that all the pokemon you catch (even your starter) are
completely disposable. You are almost guaranteed to catch a higher level
pokemon as soon as you level up, so spending any resources (or emotional
investment) in any specific one feels terrible when it becomes obsolete. Adding
some Tamagotchi type mini-game would provide more emotional attachment and
could provide a "training" mode to improve or replace a Pokemon's
move, increase hit-points or attack power.
Pokemon Go has got
off to an incredible start. I don't think anyone involved in it's development
anticipated the overwhelming attention it's release got, but it's important
that they don't rest of their laurels. If they just sit back and leave the game
as it is, I don't think it will be long before players get bored of the
bare-bones game play and move onto one of the new Augmented Reality games that
are sure to pop-up in the wake of Pokemon Go.
-Odd
"Oh, I know what I'll do! I'll use my trusty frying pan as a drying pan!" - Brock
