>>50394169This is the problem with balancing pokemon's single player in general. The developers can only guess how many pokemon a player might be using at any given time so the games often have a wildly varying sense of balance. I myself often find the older games to have a good level curve but that's only because I build a team of 6 consistently trained mons over the course of each game, which is likely how they figured people would play. A player who put's together a full team right away and then shuffles out team members when they find new ones later will find themselves falling behind and needing to grind every now and then to keep up, whereas a player who likes to solo the games with their starter will quickly become overleveled.
In both cases tho I think it's well deserved, these players are only reaping the natural results of their playstyle, using a overabundance of pokemon and using as little as possible respectfully. Maybe this is elitest of me but I think it's unreasonable for players to play in extreme ways (like soloing with your starter) and then complain when they get extreme results. Yes yes, I know, there's really no reason not to solo with your starter since it's technically the most effective way to play, but consider: do you play pokemon to have fun, or to win?
If you play to have fun then that right there is reason enough to not just use your starter but instead actually try out other pokemon, if you play to win then you have nothing to complain about by being overleveled since you'll be reaching your goal all the easier, exactly as intended. This is why I simply laugh at the overleveled starter meme, literally WHO actually plays these games as optimally as possible at all times, where's the fun in that? tryharding at fucking pokemon of all things is a sin deserving of the consequences of not reaping any enjoyment from the games IMHO