>>54176358Now, what I think would make a good "difficulty" hack?
Route Trainers: These should never really pose a challenge, however, there needs to be a balance struck. Nobody is having fun fighting Bug Catcher Jimmy when he has six Caterpies with perfect IV/EVs. You're just having to spam triple the amount of Embers. Conversely, nobody is having fun killing his single Level 3 Caterpie that spams String Shot; the effort and time simply starting the battle is tedious itself. The biggest issue that most don't address? Regardless of where they are on the scale, there are always too many fucking trainers in the base game, and these hacks never change that. You should have half, even a third, as many fights but ones that require a bit of effort.
Rivals/Leaders/Admins: This is where the challenge should lie. The 2 dozen or so Gym/Admin/Rival fights should be the only challenges where you stand a chance to lose multiple times. Short of enforcing a format (3v3, 4v4, etc.) they should always use 6 pokemon as you do. They should scale to your level or enforce a level cap. They should have great IVs, a nature that boosts their primary and hinders a stat they don't use, and a moveset that includes TM moves. I'm not against giving some of them sub/pseudo-legendaries. I would be totally fine with the Elite Four, the Team Leader, and your rival's last fight having a thematic legendary. Some do this, by giving Maxie/Archie the box legendary in their last encounter. Your rival should end up with the opposite box legendary after you catch yours.
As an example for R/B/Y Brock, he should be using a team that resembles his GSC battle, at the appropriate levels. These are the "elite" trainers of the region and I'm honestly sick of being the prodigy 10 year old who sweeps a nation.
This is probably tl;dr for most people, but it's what I would like to see as an option for mainline games. Have the current babby difficulty, but a "hard" difficulty for most other people.
