Celever
i am town
I think the Dark-Type Team Star guy is the worst of the poor level balancing, and some of the gyms get wonky toward the end (with the pathing I took, which imo felt natural, I had to pass through the Ice-Type gym to get to the Ghost-Type gym and then was solidly overlevelled as the Ghost-Type gym is meant to be I think 6th? But if it's 6th why would the 7th be in Alfornada they're right next to each other and should definitely be sequential as a result) but I also just... don't mind it. If you try to run through the game with just 6 Pokémon those Pokémon are gonna end up overlevelled by the end of the game, so for me where I had a big roster of Pokémon I'd switch in and out based on what my next planned objective was gonna be, I ended up being a bit underlevelled at all stages of the game. IMO that's easily the optimal, and intended, way to play, and is part of why this game has been so fun for me.
While I would have loved active level scaling, there are pros and cons to it, especially when applied to the game we got. Titans with level scaling would have been pretty jank, do you make them the same level as your lead? Higher levelled? Also, while I'm not sure if it's happened yet, level scaling can interact badly with especially the late-game Unova Pokémon as they're so high levelled. If Game Freak wants someone's ace to be Hydreigon, they either need to have steep level scaling to get it to 64, or just say "screw it we'll evolve it into Hydreigon at level 45 and it can be Zweilous after level 30" which feels even worse. And evolution is another trouble with it -- there's no point fighting a level 50 Teddiursa if you do it last, so it should be an Ursaring by then, but because Pokémon evolve at different levels (and through different methods like stones which creates arbitrary "we'll do it after x objective" decisions) an optimal route would still be able to be mapped out. If you don't do Katy as the first objective the level cap probably exceeds 15, so her Tarountula would be a Spidops, and then if let's say the levels increase by 5 after each objective, you have the choice between Iono having a Kilowattrel at level 25 or Brassius having a Dolliv at level 25 depending on what your team's better against etc. etc..
Basically because of the nature of Pokémon even with level scaling, there would end up being optimal route mapping. You'd also likely be incentivised to handle all the gyms first, as they're the hardest objectives, before going back to do Team Star and then to do the Titans as the Titans would never evolve or anything. That would make the game way less fun that participating in the different types of objectives over the course of the game without feeling guilty that you're handicapping yourself.
With that said, the fact that the Pokémon Centre Lady doesn't tell you what the next objective should be based on level and instead points you to the nearest one geographically (yes ma'am I do have a map) is criminal. I'm also fairly skeptical about the map design -- the choice between east or west at the start of the game sounded good but what I figured would happen would be that levels would scale up and around the ring of the region. It feels like that was the intention, but they ditched it later in the game, most likely due to not getting enough time to let people with fresh eyes playtest the game in order to see how well their map design telegraphs what the next objective should be to the player. Then modifications could have been made. It sounds like everyone did the Fire-Type Team Star before the Dark-Type one, stuff like that would have been revealed in playtesting if Game Freak gave the devs enough time to do that.
While I would have loved active level scaling, there are pros and cons to it, especially when applied to the game we got. Titans with level scaling would have been pretty jank, do you make them the same level as your lead? Higher levelled? Also, while I'm not sure if it's happened yet, level scaling can interact badly with especially the late-game Unova Pokémon as they're so high levelled. If Game Freak wants someone's ace to be Hydreigon, they either need to have steep level scaling to get it to 64, or just say "screw it we'll evolve it into Hydreigon at level 45 and it can be Zweilous after level 30" which feels even worse. And evolution is another trouble with it -- there's no point fighting a level 50 Teddiursa if you do it last, so it should be an Ursaring by then, but because Pokémon evolve at different levels (and through different methods like stones which creates arbitrary "we'll do it after x objective" decisions) an optimal route would still be able to be mapped out. If you don't do Katy as the first objective the level cap probably exceeds 15, so her Tarountula would be a Spidops, and then if let's say the levels increase by 5 after each objective, you have the choice between Iono having a Kilowattrel at level 25 or Brassius having a Dolliv at level 25 depending on what your team's better against etc. etc..
Basically because of the nature of Pokémon even with level scaling, there would end up being optimal route mapping. You'd also likely be incentivised to handle all the gyms first, as they're the hardest objectives, before going back to do Team Star and then to do the Titans as the Titans would never evolve or anything. That would make the game way less fun that participating in the different types of objectives over the course of the game without feeling guilty that you're handicapping yourself.
With that said, the fact that the Pokémon Centre Lady doesn't tell you what the next objective should be based on level and instead points you to the nearest one geographically (yes ma'am I do have a map) is criminal. I'm also fairly skeptical about the map design -- the choice between east or west at the start of the game sounded good but what I figured would happen would be that levels would scale up and around the ring of the region. It feels like that was the intention, but they ditched it later in the game, most likely due to not getting enough time to let people with fresh eyes playtest the game in order to see how well their map design telegraphs what the next objective should be to the player. Then modifications could have been made. It sounds like everyone did the Fire-Type Team Star before the Dark-Type one, stuff like that would have been revealed in playtesting if Game Freak gave the devs enough time to do that.