Quote Originally Posted by strawberrycake View Post
This is true. But most of the pokemon playerbase isn't the old school vets from back in the 90s who play competitive now a days and do nuzlockes and pokemon rom hacks, it's the latest generation of young kids, who are playing cus cute animals that fight. The main Audience plays it because ti's a shallow kids game. They may grow up or pivot while they;re young, and move into the more or less niche competitive scene and other sub communitires of pokemon.

So they're right, Pokemon proved shallow gameplay can and will sell.
I don't really agree. Yes, the target demographic of Pokemon is young children, which is precisely why the games are very shallow on the surface. They want someone who's as young as perhaps 6 or 7 to be able to play through the story without getting hit with difficulty spikes they cannot surmount (which also brings into question the resistance against voice-acting since some kids at that age still can't read, or have limited reading comprehension, but whatever). But to circle back to that oh-so-subtle statement I made about "on the surface," that doesn't mean the depth and complexity doesn't exist.

Meanwhile, FFXIV, a game that has a target demographic of people who at least can purchase a subscription fee, so at minimum 18 years or older, is directly erasing depth and removing it from the game. Job design is being demolished at every turn to make the gameplay experience simple by force. Pokemon would would be more analogous to Heavensward. Because for as much as Heavesnward has a reputation of being the most complex that job design has ever been, nearly nothing in the game demanded you engage with that complexity at that level.

Similarly, in Pokemon, you can EV train your Pokemon. You can Breed perfect IV Pokemon. You can seek out Pokemon with hidden abilities. These are all things that you have the option to do even though nothing in the main story asks you to do it. Does that not sound similar to Heavensward FFXIV? Or even Stormblood?

Endwalker would be like Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee, games that explicitly removed many different aspects of Pokemon's complexity. Abilities? Gone. Mega Evolution? Gone. Like 80% of the Pokedex? Gone. Sound familiar?