How to design a pokemon MMORPG

Well, believe it or not, the Pokémon franchise as it is now, is not suited for an MMORPG. Among all of the untapped potential lies a series of problems that would otherwise cripple an MMORPG. The first and foremost being the "Gotta catch them all" mentality of the game.

 Why catching them all is a bad thing

The biggest aspect of most MMOS, is the feeling of becoming stronger, so while catching them all may add an end goal, and a sense of progression as your doing it, it doesn’t necessarily make you feel any stronger. That point  is only emphasized as players are then forced to grind, there newly found catch to the point of being semi useful, assuming they don’t just plop that Pokémon in the bank and forget it ever existed. This then brings us to the next point, of what’s the point of catching them all, if you don’t use them? In its current form not only does Pokémon discourage using them all, but it adds no incentive to either. There are no tournaments, or gym battles where you can only use one type of Pokémon, and there are no titles, or elements to say "I'm the best Grass trainer" or "I’m the best Fire trainer" there is only the "I'm the best Pokémon master" and what that really comes down to is "I’m the one with the faster Pokémon". 

The battle system is broken and dated

Currently, the battle system relies on a series of counters to win, if you want to beat a fire Pokémon, you've got to send out a water Pokémon, and so on so forth.  Thus that forces players to create a balanced team, with a balanced move set, while this is not necessarily bad, it is not a battle.  Having one individual attack, for one individual Pokémon really diminishes the meaning behind that move; it more or less becomes an Instant win button more than a move. Granted Nintendo has done an amazing job at balancing this system with all of their Pokémon, a more battle oriented battle system would go a long way in improving the franchise. For example, water beats fire, UNLESS, fire uses a fire shield, to block water, or if fire used a fire attack to counter waters attack thus diminishing the damaged received and not instantly getting 1 hit KOed.  Simple changes like that would not only keep certain Pokémon from becoming ignored, but would allow much more diverse and unique Pokémon setups, which thus in return would allow for more unique and fun battles, and not just have everyone using the same popular Pokémon.

The Steady decline

At the beginning of a Pokémon game, you are a weak child with only one weak Pokémon, walking through the forest is a very dangerous life and death situation. However, quickly you begin building your little army, and before you know it, you don’t even know what the game over screen looks like. This would be a great situation, if it happened over the course of the entire game, however, it generally happens within the first 30 minutes of the game. No area is too dangerous, and the game will never let you progress outside of easy territory. While some may look at this as a blessing, the lack of being able to explore dangerous areas, Is the equivalent of your parents telling you you’re not old enough to date. Now i know this game was made with kids in mind, but some of us are not kids, and some of us like challenges, thus Pokémon series needs to implement these challenges throughout the game and not just in the first 30 minutes. This can be done, through a multitude of ways, the first being an emphasis of exploration, Create hard to get to towns, with dangerous and high leveled enemies along the way, the player doesn’t have to go there, but hey, who knows what could be there! Secondly, create a reason to swap Pokémon, the Pokémon i first start off with should undoubtedly be my strongest however, it should not be able to face roll every trainer I come across. There should be areas where certain types are not allowed, or it will draw unwanted attention to a player thus forcing them into more battles, and decreasing there chance of a successful trip. Lastly and most obviously increase the difficulty, Am i really the only trainer with my entire brain intact? Why are all of these other trainers stacking the same 6 weak Pokémon or not creating any balance at all? If I wanted to feel like the all powerful and undefeatable god, I would go play The Sims, what I want is a battle, please deliver me one.  

Risk and reward

Adding a risk and reward system would go a long ways in creating a more challenging game, and even though the title says it all  I will discuss this. The fastest way a Pokémon MMORPG would fail, is if players could easily and effortlessly catch them all. So to help prevent this, and to add more challenge certain Pokémon would be in high stake areas, where players might not only loose there life, but the life the very Pokémon there using. Yes I realize this might be a little dark, so to keep in kid friendly, the Pokémon could maybe just run away in fear. Additionally, any MMORPG needs PvP and what better prize could there be then a well trained Pokémon. I figure, this could easily be pulled off by allowing players to capture 1 Pokémon for every 1 empty space they have. So if player a Is battling with 3 Pokémon, and Player B is battling with 6 Pokémon, should player A win, he will then get to choose 3 of player B's Pokémon to take. And as an added bonus, not only would this create a booming trading economy, it would add an incentive for players to use other Pokémon, thus killing 2 birds with 1 stone. 

However, i realize some players do not like to take such huge risk's but sitll enjoy pvp, for these players certain pvp zones would be "no risk" thus allowing players to compete over areas, without the horror of loosing there hard trained pokemon, these areas could have most of the "interactive to catch" pokemon (placing honey on trees etc..) as well as the other resource gathering objectives.this way, if some douche bag is being greedy and hogging all of the resources, you can teach them a lesson by sending them back to town. I realize this could potentially frustrate some players who are too weak to compete for an area, however, it would largely in part defeat macroers, and perhaps with good negotiation skills players could work out an agreement or better yet, swap there Pokémon to beat "The king of the hill".

Community

Personally, i believe for there to be a community there needs to be a healthy economy. These 2 issues go hand in hand. Instead of going on for hours and hours, on how to achieve this, i think its just simpler to say, if you keep the majority of items player made, instead of rare items dropped by a specific boss, your community is going to be more friendly, and less aggressive. So what this means is there needs to be skills outside of battling that players can train should they choose to do so, however at no point should a player be forced to train a skill he is not interested in. On top of that, skills should be somewhat entertaining if at all possible, and i beleive the best example of skill driven economy would be runescape, and the best example of a player driven economy would be atlantica online, Fusing these 2 economies together I believe would make the most vibrant and healthy economy ever seen in gaming history.To continue with, players need to be able to play with thiere friends. So perhaps clans could compete for towns, as players auction/buy shops/ properties in a town. Additionally, players could compete for ownership of a gym, or atleast a spot in the gym, (ofcourse with heavy restrictions). As well as all the normal stuff you would expect out of an mmorpg, raids, fraction wars, tournaments, the works. People need a way to become friends, an a healthly economy and group activities go alot further than just randomly talking to strangers.

Lasting appeal

Ah, all good things must come to an end, or do they? The first and foremost thing that must be done is to create an interactive player leveling system, separate from the Pokémon leveling system. This leveling system could be tied into multiple aspects, like what gear players could use and could be used to balanced out pvp. The most important thing is making the levels matter. So while I’m against restricting lower levels from entering higher zoned areas, a little bit of restriction would be needed.  Secondly, the level cap for Pokémon needs to be raised to 200, an almost unreachable level that could potentially take months. This is not to say players couldn’t catch level 200 Pokémon, it's just to say they would be pretty low tier if not trained from a low level. The reason for adding this insane new level, is so that players never feel like there Pokémon has stopped growing, perhaps the stat advantage would become so dismall that a level 120 pokemon could almost fight a level 200 equally, but all that matters is that the player never gets the feeling of "I can’t do anything more to become stronger" because once a player has reached that phase the game starts to become boring and every battle he spends at a maxed out level feels like a waste of time. 

 To continue with, each individual move needs to be given a level, and its own unique feeling, now these moves wouldnt take forever to level up, but to become a master in them may take awhile.In the same regard, a title and a ranking system would be greatly needed. Everyone knows that gamers generally have an ego, so an elusive title that only one person could have at a time would be popular to the hardcore. Such as "Best firetrainer" and "Best dueliest" in addition to this title system the legendary or (only 1 or very few of this monster) would be just as elusive and just as hard to hold onto. Should a player ever loose a battle, the legendary would then become the victors, even if it were to an npc. Thus the urge to defeat such a player would be huge no matter where he went, essentially a bounty system that would be very very unique to expereince. (however if a player had more then 1 legendary he would only loose 1). Adding several unique expereinces like that to the game, would surely give this sure to be a success mmo, that much more appeal to last.Now theres clearly alot more that could be added onto this, but i'm afraid i've grown tired of rambling on, so i'll end it with this.

THIS.