>>37432020This
It's kind of amazing how little it's changed since, say, Gen 3. It's still 4 moves, 1 ability, 1 held item, IVs from 0-31, 510 EVs with 252 max in each stat, natures that give +-10%, and essentially identical battle mechanics save for the Physical/Special split in Gen 4. There's so much room for variation, experimentation, and evolution, but the system hasn't substantially changed in over 16 years. Instead Game Freak just piles on new shit every game like Z-moves and Mega Evolutions.
Game Freak's problem is they feel pressured to both include a good amount of new Pokemon every gen, but also to maintain all existing Pokemon for compatibility reasons so you can always trade up your favorites to the new games. In Gen 8 that will put the total number of Pokemon near 900, with over 400 being fully evolved.
Since they're determined to keep bowing to both of these pressures its no surprise they haven't changed the battle system or stat system in any meaningful way, because they'd have literally nearly a thousand Pokemon to completely rebalance for the new mechanics. The paltry 10-point buffs in Gen 6 and the slightly bigger boosts they gave to a tiny selection of Pokemon in Gen 7 are the most they can manage.
Gen 8 needs to be a soft reboot. Make a new stat system that's more transparent, changed up battle mechanics if not an entirely new system (still turn based though, you children asking for real time combat can fuck off), maybe 200 or so existing Pokemon and 100 brand new ones, with the old ones completely overhauled and rebalanced. Focus on giving every Pokemon a unique movepool, unique abilities, signature moves, etc so that every Pokemon has a niche.
Sure there will be backlash at first but if you make the new mechanics fresh and satisfying, and the models and animations and whatnot are high quality due to needing to make far fewer of them, I imagine people would come around.
