>>56740418It's an old comic about what it'd look like if Pokémon used SMT's negotiation system.
Although, to ramble a bit, if I was going to redesign Pokémon's mechanics from the ground up I'd make it look a lot more like the tabletop TPG Lancer.
That may sound strange at first but hear me out. In Lancer, you pilot mechs, and each mech frame has a number of base stats and frame traits that are modified by your pilot skills, as well as weapon slots and systems slots.
Frame -> Mon
Mech stats -> Base stats
Pilot skills -> EVs
Weapon slots -> Move slots
Systems slots -> Items
Frame traits -> Abilities
There's even similarities in how attacks use either attack or tech attack and target evasion of e-defence, paralleling attack/sp.attack and defence/sp.defence.
However, Lancer is a grid based tactics combat game, and one that highly rewards manipulating your environment through the creation and destruction of cover, hazards and other phenomenon that effect the field, and one that encourages constant movement. I feel this paradigm would do a much better job reflecting the sorts of battles seen in the anime.
Another aspect I'd want to pull from Lancer and it's fantasy counterpart Icon is the bonds system. In Icon especially, you don't level up through combat primarily, you level up through non combat social interaction. Imagine a Pokémon game with dialogue and player choice that allowed meaningful interaction with your team, and now imagine if those bonds were actually what made them stronger. It'd be so much more thematic than the current system.
Of course all of that is way outside of Game Freak's capability or comfort zone, and even a competent team would probably need 5-7 years to make a game like that.
But one can dream.
