bartholen said:
Still not an excuse to me. I agree that populating the areas with 5 different types would be overwhelming, but even the starting zone pokemon number at least in the 40+ count. There's no reason why they couldn't throw at least 6 different species in the zone. That would at least make it more interesting and give an incentive to stay in or even come back to the zone to see if you missed any pokemon there. All the games I've played have demonstrated in crystal clear terms that nope, there's nothing of value in the starting zones after you pass them the first time. Nothing but Rattata/Sentret/Zigzagoon/Hoothoot/Pidgey to be found there. Hell, they could just add this as an additional feature, sort of like difficulty settings: more pokemon for advanced players, basic formula for beginners.
To be honest, there are usually at least 5 pokemon types in the starting zones these days. For Sun/Moon there was Caterpie, Metapod, Ratata, that new bug pokemon, pichu, a bird pokemon and a couple more. Even in the other core games, it was usually only the very first route that had only 1 or 2 pokemon, once you made it to the second town the numbers rose more. One thing with it though is that some of those pokemon are around a 1-5% chance of appearance. It does give you a reason to mess around and go back, but it isn't something you'd use as a core part of the game still.
Another part of it is post game content. Early game up until beating the Elite IV is meant to thematically flow as the story of that region - not as just a generic catch everything game. This means a higher focus on the ~150ish or so main pokemon in that region during this period of the game. Post elite IV, often methods to acquire pokemon from other regions more reliably appears, as the game changes from "Complete the story of this region" to "Catch everything". Keeping content for this post-game stage increases the lifespan of the game, and tends to keep people interested longer, while also introducing them to new pokemon at a more constant and manageable rate.
As for settings... Pokemon in general doesn't do settings, when a lot of the time it could help. That said though, as I said, there are other reasons than just complexity as to why there are only ~5-6 pokemon per zone generally [Though I think these days there are more in some]. Difficulty with appearance rates would mean anyone wanting to catch more types of pokemon, would play on the 'easier' setting where they can easier find those pokemon, and thematically and aesthetically it could cause incongruences depending on the zone and the pokemon available.
As for the bug/dragon thing, is there a reason why it should be that way? In R/S/E you can catch Aron, a steel type, which evolves into one of the strongest pokemon in the game, before the second gym. Hell, you can get Magikarp early on in all of the games. In that light the argument of dragon pokemon meant for late game doesn't IMO hold up very well. Since the strongest types require more EXP, and therefore more time to train, it's not IMO a question of game balance, but investment. Do I want to train this pokemon I know will be strong in the late game now, when that means all my other pokemon will be weaker?
Can't comment on Aaron since its been a while, but Magikarp is entirely useless until he does evolve, and he takes a while to evolve too. If you got magikarp late game, you'd spend an hour wondering around using exp share to level him up before he became useful. Hell, you often do that anyway as keeping him in your party is just... painful. The idea of giving it to you early is that you can exp share it from the start, and slowly build it up so that it evolves by the time you'd be ready to catch it in the wild.
As for the option of training one strong pokemon vs a team... Pokemon has, for a while now, been pushing towards making you train a team as a whole rather than a single sweeping pokemon, and that is generally the better strategy in the games anyway thanks to typings and such. There's already often a problem of many new players simply using their starter for the whole game, and then reaching a tough gym, having their starter faint, and that's the battle over. Its intended to push newer players to develop more varied strategies, that allow them to pass varied challenges, rather than one simple cheese strategy that stops their whole game when it fails. Its part of the reason exp share is now a group thing, rather than individual. The other half of that was to reduce grind - which is also part of why dragon/steels usually come later in the game; so you don't spend a ton of grind time levelling them up to be useful. When you get them, they're already useful, or close to it. You don't have to sit on it for the next 4 towns before you can use it in your party as a main combatant.
And, again, theming and aesthetic come into it too. Often the areas it makes sense for these rare, strong, dragons to be in, are areas you visit later in the game. You could re-arrange things so that the ancient village of the dragons is near the starting area, but it kind of conflicts with the idea of the dragons being strong and powerful when that happens, and may not fit with the world you're trying to build.
