>>54853374What gamefreak thinks of as difficulty is much more complex than how players think of it though.
For example, things like DP having less overall pokemon in the dex, and every pokemon being used by at least 1 trainer so you can see every pokemon without necessarily needing to find it in the wild, make it "easier" to complete the dex than in some previous games. Things like having moves be color coded, having the physical special split, having double the TMs, and having more high powered moves overall, make it much "easier" for players to manage their team's movesets. Things like the AI being a bit worse on average, and the average level of non-gym trainers being quite low (such that it's closer to the level of wild mons than in some past games), make it much "easier" to find opportunities to train up weaker team members than in some previous games.
Most people on this board simply do not consider the full breadth of what an actual game designer would consider to be "difficulty", they aren't simply gauging how close a gym leaders team composition is to a smogon set, but rather they're legitimately asking themselves whether the various aspects of the game were designed to feel easier or harder overall. This includes a great number of facets, many of which have more to do with balancing what to communicate the player directly vs what to make them figure out for themselves than with battling itself.
TLDR quotes like this make perfect sense if you actually understand RPG game design and aren't a compfag.
