I am currently finishing Sinnoh region and would like to share my experiences and complaints regarding story mode.
I can see developers made a lot of changes to original regions, which made them much more enjoyable and less annoying. But there were also changes, that don't achieve their goals.
1. Difficulty curve.
I understand, that vanilla story is too easy and it very much should be more challenging in MMORPG setting. But the way it is achieved is wrong, because it takes away the most fun in pokemon, which is pokemon training. In each region level of gym leaders pokemon raises exponentially, reaching 60 or 70 around gym 7. Levels of pokemon in grass encounters raise linearly, so the further in game, the less possible it is to grind on them to beat gym leaders. Only locactions for gym 8 suddenly spike in level, making grind possible again. It is very easy to get stuck at gym 7.
Design like this strongly discourages players from training more than 3 pokemon. Story should encourage player to build full ballanced team.
Suggestion : make levels of pokemon encounters in grass proportional to level of pokemon possesed by nearest gym leader. So time required to close the level gap by grinding is similar for every gym. Alternatively : let other pokemon in party gain a part of exp leading pokemon gains, similar to event exp-sharing bonuses.
2. Losing punishment.
Making players lose their money as well as experience points for losing encounter is a bad idea, because these are resources player need to reflect on his mistakes and remake strategy. I have discovered quite late in the game, that losing money is mitigated by logging off during a battle. That makes this mechanic even more pointless.
Suggestion : players only lose experience points for lost encounter.
