>>49483584The franchise chooses to have a new, big, flashy gimmick each gen now, for better or worse.
>>49482439Well, since PLA is doing fine, I could see them bringing back the Wild Area as a permanent staple if it wasn't already, and same goes for regional variants (plus maybe a time machine/portal gimmick somewhere that gives you access to the PLA mons.
As for actually NEW gimmicks, it's not going to be anything TOO difficult like actual fusions, unless it's just for the starters and the box legendary (plus Pikachu and Eevee, maybe).
I could see them separating equipment from held items, for one. You'd have things like choice specs and such take up the equipment slot, while berries and such are reserved for the held item slot. The actual gimmick would be that some equipment items would tie into a certain 'mon and change their appearance, or even change their abilities or some moves, like Pikachu would swap to the different Hat Pikachus through the equipment slot and gain boosted stats, and the starters would each have special equipment too.
Maybe even bring back Megas through this?
No. ;_;Honestly there's a decent chance the next gimmick might be NFTs of your mons, maybe you have to max out their friendship and do something in the game, then they get minted and it's """yours""" forever as an actual NFT. Maybe you can only do it with your starters, I dunno.
All I know is just about every company is getting into NFTs these days, and with TPC being a whore for merch, I could definitely see it happening.
More towards the game, maybe having the NFT is represented by a badge your mon wears that gives it those little "your Charizard toughed out the hit so you don't cry" effects.
