To play devil's advocate for a sec:
as... like... a general thing (that happens a lot in fanmade open world Pokémon), I
kind of hate an overreliance on level scaling, and I think whenever I've seen people try to do it in Pokémon games like ROM hacks, it never works for me as well as they think it will?
I don't like the way people treat "you can go anywhere if you try hard enough" as interchangeable with "everything available to you has the same difficulty and presents the same amount of friction," you know?
I know some people think the appeal of open world is "there are no rules or expectations at all," but that's just
really boring for me in practice; I have been firmly rooting from the start for there to be a meaningful difference in the difficulty of the bosses available to you at any given moment.
Most of the fun of being allowed to sequence-break comes from the fact that
doing something before you're supposed to feels different from doing everything in order,
so if you just give every Gym Leader a different team for every number of Badges (such that every leader's Gym 1 team is equal and every Gym 5 team is equal and every Gym 8 team is equal), the idea of doing them in a different order ends up... deceptively less meaningful in a way that doesn't really appeal to me.
You can't really seek out a more challenging route on purpose, I guess, is the thing? You're railroaded into a specific one-size-fits-all difficulty level and it's much more difficult to try making your own challenges.
It's obviously
harder to pull off "open world/player freedom" without that in a series like Pokémon, where levels and numbers do so much that a
too-steep level disadvantage isn't something you can overcome with skill alone,
but I usually get a lot more enjoyment from going into a boss at least slightly underleveled, and most of them feel kind of underwhelming if I match them perfectly.
Frankly, that gets even
worse with "automated level scaling," and I've played hacks that try to do this
(and get praised for it and touted as excellent examples of what Pokémon should do), but it has always felt to me like they botch it
horribly so early-game areas are unreasonably difficult and everything else is extremely dull "smooth sailing," and I don't really want to be forced to deal with that in a game that could maybe, like, actually be good. It sounds contradictory, but
directly scaling levels to the player (as opposed to just having multiple versions of enemy teams based on progress like badge count)
is even worse at accommodating for different playing styles because not everyone likes to approach a boss at the same relative level.
Doing this might mean everyone is superficially on "equal footing," but it takes away the option to pursue an extra challenge by going in at a level disadvantage on purpose, which is something I have enjoyed in games I wanted to make harder for myself, and it also limits the option to make the game easier by bouncing off of a too-challenging boss and focusing on one other content available to them until they're comfortable trying again.
(That could mean going in at the same level as a boss or a level much higher than them! I remember seeing some wacky challenge content like "FRLG with Wooper only" when I was a kid, and this example was only possible because Erika could be skipped and wouldn't level up, for instance, so the player could complete content that was reasonable for a Wooper instead and then come back with more of an advantage much later in the game. The game would have been pretty boring if the player was stuck level grinding without access to any new content until they were able to beat Erika, but it would also have been
quite literally impossible if Erika's entire team went up in level to match the player when they came back with a stronger Wooper!)
Basically, I am aware everyone here
thinks level scaling is a one-size-fits-all solution, but
one-size-fits-all solutions in Pokémon are a myth and I feel strongly that this kind of thing does not actually work for as many people as you think it will in practice.
There is no Universal Level Curve Algorithm that ~ just works ~ and everyone will have different opinions on how strong a boss needs to be relative to the player or how quickly they should get stronger.
That's why the point of Scarlet and Violet is making your own path - you can
pursue the options across the three paths that give you the level of friction you personally want at any given moment, which is
only possible when all of the options available to you present different amounts of friction.
The other thing is that I trust Game Freak more than most people and believe they do things for actual reasons, even if sometimes those reasons aren't ones I agree with
(!!!!! I know, I'm just absolutely insane, aren't I),
and I think they have the basic common sense to
grasp "the point" of open world but also put in the time to make sure that whatever approach they went with was the right one in their eyes, while recognizing that the mechanics of Pokémon are not exactly conducive to the same strategies as other series.
I doubt they reached this conclusion without putting thought into it, and I am. just.
interested to see what they do to make it work? I'm frankly
more open to it than I would have been if they took any of the "just look how easy this fix would have been!!" options I keep seeing people suggest; this one already displays a more compelling approach to player freedom than any of the so-called "open world" quick-fix ROM hacks I've seen.
When we first heard "you can go out of order, and the devs know full well that people will, but they're
not messing with levels to make that frictionless," it definitely made me optimistic that there would be at least that were hard enough that casual players were expected to find them hard, bounce off of them, go do something else and come back later. The scenario I kind of considered most likely at that point was "harder Gym Leaders than we're used to, probably taking some cues from BDSP; players will be expected to pursue the ones they have an advantage over or put them off until they feel ready, rather than breezing through a single route all at once."
They want there to be an order - they just also wanted to have fun with people breaking it, which is different and in my opinion more interesting than having no order at all and making every Gym Leader interchangeable.
From what we've seen, I've actually been strongly reassured that they
do have similar priorities to me on that.
We don't have a lot of detail on the bosses so far for obvious reasons, and we probably won't have anything super specific or informative until the datamine comes out, but I definitely want to highlight that we've already seen them making some bold choices to make sure they actually have the kinds of bosses that will
make players bounce off and chart their courses carefully!
Like, I've seen people complain that the player outlevels Brassius in the trailer. But uh, has anyone noticed that
the official site shows the player using a team of 6 at level 15... to fight Mela's team of only 2 Pokémon... but she opens with
a level 27 Drought Torkoal? and it's not even her ace?
Mela is the closest member of Team Star to Mesagoza and you can fight her right away if you want - heck, she was shown off alongside what are implied to be the
"first bosses" of the other two routes - but her power level is
way different from them and she looks scary to deal with early in the game. I'm thinking they will be playing a lot with asymmetry and more varied approaches to power levels to make these bosses stand out from each other, and
that appeals to me - when you introduce me to a boss like Mela right away and say I can deal with her whenever I want, I might decide to leave and come back if she seems too strong the first time, but I will also be constantly thinking about how early I can beat her and challenging myself to do it before I match her in level - maybe I get a new team member I think will help and decide to go right back, or maybe I want to see if I have a shot when my best Pokémon gets to level 20 or something instead of 27 and get a feel for how close I am.
This kind of challenge can potentially be omnipresent - if I'm at around the third Gym but I'm starting to feel too powerful and I'm coasting more than I want to be, setting up the game this way actually empowers me to address that by skipping to the fourth Gym, adjusting the level curve for myself. Comparatively, if whatever they decide is the "third Gym level" is too low for my liking, but all six remaining Gyms are rebalanced to the "third Gym level" and they keep scaling up at a rate that doesn't work for me, I'm just kinda stuck with that?
With a system like this, I'm expecting to have a
ton of fun challenging Gym Leaders earlier than I "should" because I feel ready for them or because my team has a type advantage or something, and maybe I have a thrilling battle and come out on top or maybe I get absolutely beaten up and have to think about my approach.
I understand that there's a drawback to doing this (whatever Gyms I "skip" and "come back to" won't be as challenging for me), but there are ways for that to be useful - maybe I want a more engaging way to raise an underleveled team member later, so I would
love a bonus area that's a bit weaker than the rest of my team to mess around in rather than just carrying the new member with the Experience Share forever.
I noticed this coming up a lot in BDSP: a lot of optional areas, like Wayward Cave or the side areas you can only reach after getting Surf, turned out to be convenient when I wanted to add underleveled new members like Pokémon from the Grand Underground, the now-level-1-for-some-reason fossils after the second Gym or the Great Marsh... it really helped me spend time with and get attached to every member of my team even though I was on a big rotation, which can be more of an issue in a game like SwSh where the level curve is more rigid and there's less optional content you can use to catch up new members.
In SV, this is actually fundamentally baked into the design of the game! I can see it being a lot more fun to raise new team members in an environment like this, where there's
always still meaningful content worth doing that happens to be a lower level than my main team and I'm always doing something "new" with them.
Even if this isn't applicable to your playing style, there are still... like... a
ton of bosses in SV - if it feels like I'm on track to face all 18 of them at a higher level than I want and it's ruining the experience, I would
gladly "sacrifice" just a handful of those to face all of the ones that remain on my own terms.
You can't do that if the level curve puts too much emphasis on being "adaptive" without understanding what purpose that serves or understanding an individual player's needs, but SV are giving the player a
ton of control over the experience and
strongly encouraging them to make it their own!
Let's also put that crazy level dissonance in the Mela fight in the context of other new features in the game, like the way that Auto Battles were presented primarily as a "convenient grinding" tool for people who don't like to be underleveled or want to skip to a certain boss.
I think the way they have chosen to structure the open world gives them a lot more freedom to create big challenges like this:
a) the three different routes and the variety in types of bosses (both in battle style, since all three routes have their own mechanics, and in... y'know... literal type matchups, since there are conspicuously about 18 different bosses around the region), you can always have something else worth doing and then come back at a higher level if you need;
your progress isn't halted if a boss stonewalls you, and "get stronger and come back later" doesn't mean "go spend time doing absolutely nothing but leveling up,"
but also b) there are new features designed to help you catch up to the curve more easily if you really want to fixate on one story path and don't want to leave and do something else first, and they are trying to make it as adaptable and time-saving as possible,
so people don't have any need to worry about "grinding" even if their playing style is one that doesn't naturally get them the levels they need.
We also still have raids in this game, so I wouldn't be surprised if Candies are back, and they're integrated into even more of the region rather than boxed into their own dedicated section in the Wild Area - SwSh had no qualms with dumping insane amounts of free experience on you to eliminate grinding for people who fell behind. Raids and Auto Battles tell me SV are extremely conscious of that, but Mela tells me they are
actively working with the fact that it's optional for once and they do not plan to force you to match the bosses' levels whether you like it or not; this is actually shaping up to be a really good and player-friendly "sandbox" all around and it
really is shaping up to accommodate for a lot more playing style diversity than people realize!
That's my main point, I guess - there is just a lot more emergent gameplay from
exposing a constantly-changing player to a set of fixed challenges that they may not be ready for when they first encounter them than from tailoring the gameplay so every player is exactly as ready for every challenge, all the time. The latter is just an incredibly basic and boring lack of direction in my opinion, but Scarlet and Violet have
made me actually care about "open world Pokémon" for the first time in my
life and that tells me they're actually doing something right.
- If the Tera type you select is the Pokemons natural typing, it gets 4x STAB
In existing games, a non-STAB move has a modifier of 1x, a STAB move has a modifier of 1.5x, and an Adaptability-boosted STAB move has a modifier of 2x
("instead of" regular STAB's 1.5x - it's effectively 4/3 stronger than regular STAB).
Some people are assuming Terastal applies "double STAB," as in 1.5 x 1.5 (a modifier of 2.25). However, those people are insane, so don't listen to them.
It's probably the same boost as Adaptability, and this is already the scariest thing about Terastal. It will definitely not be 4x.
We also do not yet have any way of knowing if it stacks with Adaptability or what the modifier would be like if it did.
The rest of your understanding is right, accounting for R_N's addendum! C:
edit: also Farigiraf is my best friend
