Originally, one of the biggest appeals of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet was the open-world aspect where players could choose their own paths and go in whatever order they liked, but it didn’t always feel that way—especially with Gym battles.
Now though, months down the line, players are brewing up how these Gym battles could be improved to actually give fans what they’d been hoping for since Gen IX’s release.
The main problem fans had with the Gen IX Gyms was the lack of level-scaling, despite the fact you could challenge the Gyms in any order. This meant you could’ve, if you wanted, challenged Grusha’s ice team first, but they would be level 47 or 48 (I know I wasn’t the only one who was severely under-leveled battling him).
Similarly, if you accidentally saved Katy for last, her bug Pokémon would still be level 14 or 15. In a way, this defeated the purpose of letting players choose which Gyms to visit first since it was possible to walk into a battle extremely under-leveled or over-leveled.
In a Reddit thread on July 3, one player shared how they would have implemented a level-scaling system for the eight Paldea Gyms in Scarlet and Violet instead. The concept is simple—as the player collects more Gym badges, the remaining Gym Leaders’ teams would grow by adding new members or through evolution.
For example, Larry, everyone’s favorite businessman, is normally in the middle of the pack when it comes Gym Leader levels.
But, if we utilized the level-scaling from the trainer’s idea, he would only have a Tandemaus and Dunsparce if he’s the first Gym you challenge. If you instead battle him after earning three badges, his Tandemaus and Dunsparce would be evolved, and he’d also have a Staravia and Komala to make it slightly more challenging.
In this way, it would be way more practical to challenge the Gyms in any order without feeling out of place. Other players agreed this is how Gen IX Gyms should’ve worked in the first place in the open-world titles.
Fans are now hoping future Pokémon games will take this idea into consideration if the open-world aspect stays because that’s exactly what we want to see.
