Starters

[Jayrodd]

To start off, it's only right if we start from the starters! Every fan game has them, and it's one of the most exciting things about playing each others creations. It's a very big moment for each player and it can add a lot to experience in a lot of different ways.

• Discuss how the options you give the player for starters can impact their experience.
• Provide potential alternatives to the canon starters seen in main series titles.
• Find abstract ways starters have been implemented, both in other series or fan games.

 

[Dragonite]

I like the last point so I'll ignore the first two. Some ideas I've toyed with in the past:

- Using literal RNG to dish out a starter, if you don't like it, restart the game.
- Choose your starting city/location at the beginning of the game instead of your starting Pokémon, and make your starter something native to that location in the game.
- Don't give you a starter, but send the player out into battle on Route 1 and let them duke it out with the local wildlife on their own. (This would essentially make the Player their own starter and require that you write a Pokédex entry for . . . yourself.)

 

[doof]

For me, I think that the "success" of a starter is if the player keeps using that Pokemon through the entire game, rather than dumping it into the PC for something better. In my opinion, starters need about three things in order to really work out well.

A: They need to be balanced - they should all be similar in stats and evolutions and be able to hold their own against each other. If you have a Bagon next to a Budew and a Weedle, you can be safely assured that almost everyone would pick Bagon. It evolves into a powerful dragon that can Mega evolve and most likely take both Roserade and Beedrill on at the same time. Not to mention that Bagon is slow to evolve, Weedle is quick to evolve, and Budew needs happiness and a stone, if I recall correctly. What you want to aim for is to have starters that can compete with each other across their evolutions.

2: They need to be fairly unique and rare in that game - You shouldn't give the player something that they can find on Route 1. It really undermines the player's choice if they find their starter in the wild in their very first encounter. Starters are supposed to be can use and would want to use until the end of the game. If the starters are found commonly throughout the game, it ruins how special they are. You could almost hear the lazy professor walking up and saying "Oh hey, I caught these last night at two in the morning on Route 1. Here ya go, have fun."

III : I find that it helps if it's a Pokemon that the player probably wouldn't normally pick, but not one that they'd just ditch in the PC. Expecially if you're using official Pokemon. Charmander, Squirtle, or Bulbasaur? Meh. Used them all before. Barboach, Numel, and Skiddo? (made that up in a rush, so it's a little unbalanced) But that's a bit more interesting right there. I've never actually used a Numel, come to think of it. I've seen a ton of fan-games use the official starters, which isn't really that big an issue, but it's so much more nice to have something different to start off with. A Camerupt sounds like something that I could use for the whole game, same as Whiscash and Gogoat.

So to sum it all up, starter choice is important, and you want to give the player a decent Pokemon, no matter which one they pick.

 

[Fontbane]

• Ghost, Rock, and Steel are generally big no-nos for starters because they resist (or are immune to) most of the early game attacks.
• The usual type triangle of Grass, Fire, and Water is good, and you don't need to change it. But if you do, make sure the types are balanced.
• I like the idea of, if your game isn't the usual 8 gym formula, there being a single starter with a role in the game (SPEE for example with Eevee).
• For using the canon starters:
  • I'm not really a fan of the whole "choose from all 21 starters" thing because it's too cluttered and not really balanced. It also doesn't seem like it has much thought put into it- just "okay, lemme just throw all of them on a table"
  • Also not a fan of just using the Kanto starters. We've kinda seen them before already a lot as starters so they're a bit overdone.
  • If you use the Johto starters, please consider rebalancing them. They're probably the worst balanced set of starters for reasons I'll go into if asked.
  • Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos, or Alola starters are A+ to use, in my book. If you want to put your own spin on it, maybe give custom megas a try!
  • Personally, my favorite sets of starters are Sinnoh and Alola. I love all those starters the same so it's always hard to choose!
• Fakemon starters are also great! If your game has Fakemon, I think it's pretty important for the starters to be Fakemon too. Give them the spotlight!

@Dragonite had some pretty interesting suggestions (#2 and #3), and ones I've toyed around with before. If it fits your game, these would be interesting to see! I'd assume #3 would be something similar to the Safari Zone (no need to make yourself a Pokémon!)

 

[Aki]

I like an original set of starters the best!
If the game just has a set of starters like Charmander/Bulbasaur/Squirtle I just can't get invested because I've played them so much, even if I get to pick one of my faves like Cyndaquil, it feels like I've done this all before. But if I get to pick from a set of uncommon pokemon, even if they're not ones I'd normally use, I have more fun with the experience!

This opinion isn't very popular but I don't think type triangles with the starters are necessary. At all.
I know why the main series games do it; a type trio is an easy way to set up rivals as immediate stronger or weaker than the player (assuming everyone keeps the starter on their team as their ace). On the other hand though, that's just one way of setting up rival characters, when it could be done a number of different ways. Other than the rival reappearing periodically with that starter, where's the need to perfectly balance the types with each other? That said, it is important to balance for the kind of stuff Sparta mentioned. The kind of growth rate, number/kind of evolutions, and general power level.

 

[manta]

I think that the usual 'choose 1 out of 3' works quite well. Starter Pokémon should be rare, to deviate them from the normal Pokémon you'll find at the beginning of your adventure. Also, a type triangle is good because it helps show that they are linked instead of being 3 random creatures.
It's also nice to have a single unique, story-oriented Pokémon as your starter. Just make sure it has many forms or evolutions so the player has a choice on how to raise it. For example, Lickitung would be a poor starter as it's got one evolution which mostly plays the same way as before.
Also, I know that many people do this, but I would advise against using psuedo-legendary Pokémon as starters. They evolve very late, and tend to be useless early on because of this. See: Dratini and Wrap. Sure, it can be cool to have a rare and powerful Pokémon to play the entire game with, but it's also frustrating to raise these guys. You could edit level rates, evolution levels, and movesets, but if you do all that you might as well have different mons as starters. There's a reason pseudo-legends aren't avaliable till the end of the game, you know.

If you use Pokémon that aren't normally starters as starters, that's a plus too. But if you use any of the canon starters from Gen5 and below, I might get turned off. Sorry, but I've played the games that they appear in to death!

 

[Mr. Gela]

- Using literal RNG to dish out a starter, if you don't like it, restart the game.

Now that's something I actually don't like much! I like being able to choose, although not a fan of personality tests either because I don't think they fit choosing a starter as they help deciding "who you are" in PMD games.

Personally, I'm using Johto starters in my game but they might not even be the 'true' starter and you might have just one option (kinda like Pikachu I guess), with the ability to get a Johto starter as a reward of sorts later on, at least that's plan B if I decide to spice the early game up.

i. Discuss how the options you give the player for starters can impact their experience.

I think you're forced to a lot of planning when it comes to Pokémon availability and Boss trainers early on.
I'd say Johto makes it a little too hard on Chikorita players (the two of us) as you don't have enough choices to hit Flying-type Pokémon other than Geodude and the Mareep Egg (HGSS only), while Totodile players are going to have to blast through about 20 Bellsprout at the same point, making you rely on your own Flying-type or a bunch of Tackle from something else, seeing as the early Bug-type Pokémon available aren't particularly strong against part Poison. On the other hand, Sinnoh allows Chimchar users to either evolve very early for a Fighting move versus Rock-types, as well as a couple Water-type Pokémon and Budew.

iii. Find abstract ways starters have been implemented, both in other series or fan games.

Thinking about Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker for the NDS, you're given a choice in three very different creatures for you to use. They aren't really a "trio" and since you don't have a rival, a triangle doens't really matter. What I like is that all three Monsters you can choose are actually all available in the wild really soon after that, but they grow at different paces. In that game, you're always catching and obtaining new monsters to replace your old ones really quickly, which lifts some weight off your starter choice, whose Growth Rate determines how easy or hard the early game becomes. I'd like to see that in a fangame. Maybe you can choose a rapidly-growing Pokémon or slower but more rewarding Pokémon like Larvitar. Here's a graphic to give you some ideas in terms of Levelling Rates.

 

[Evan]

Discuss how the options you give the player for starters can impact their experience.

This can obviously differ based on what your Pokemon fangame is--there are games where if you're role playing as a certain character and that character starts with a Bidoof, then that's fine, and it gives some nice insight as to what that character is. But, as is the case with the game I'm developing, if you're bringing in brand new choices and fakemon, the options for starters are generally the first big look at what to expect from your Pokedex, and from your game, too. The idea, I think, is to get the player attached to their starter, and so that they can be placed in one of three "groups" of people with similar experiences that can be shared among people. That's what I think has been so effective with the starter model in classic Pokemon games.


Provide potential alternatives to the canon starters seen in main series titles.

So, what you want to do is look at why the starters are chosen for the start of the story. All neutral to normal type moves (the most common in the early game), are somewhat weak to begin with, but evolve twice to allow usability throughout the entire game. If you want to search for Pokemon similar to that in the dex to use as starters, they should end up being successful. Something like a Sandile, or a Nidoran, or Mareep will generally fit that bill. Though, if there will be a rival character, you'll also need to focus on balancing the starters against each other, either in a circle, or completely neutral to each other.


Find abstract ways starters have been implemented, both in other series or fan games.

I'm unsure if anyone's mentioned Pokemon Colosseum or XD yet, where you're given your starters, but I especially liked how it worked in Colosseum, where you start with your Espeon and Umbreon, and instead of giving the player a choice, it informed you not only on the characters backstory (he must have really liked his Eevees for them to have evolved into these Pokemon) but also provides good backing for the double-battle centric gameplay.

 

[Deo]

Starters, to me, are both very important for that first impression of your fan game, but also not something I care about that much. Let me explain.

When you start a fan game typically your first major decision is the starter, besides things like your player name I guess. Aside from anything the player has read in a thread, seen screenshots of, or saw a video of, this is going to leave the player with their first important impression of the game. I don't find much enjoyment in playing games with canon starter Pokémon, so if the developer went with those I'll be a bit disappointed. Just from reading the replies in the thread, I'm not alone on that.

At the same time, I don't care about starters in the grand scheme of things. Unless your game is restrictive at the start with what I can catch, if I don't like the starter choices I'll just box it and catch something else. One of the things that I enjoy the most about Pokémon is using new 'mons everytime I play, so I don't fancy using Squirtle for the tenth time. I'm probably not going to get too attached to it.

So how do you make a good first impression? I think you have to either make the way in which you get the starter, or the starters themselves memorable to the player. Picking from three starters on a table isn't going to impress me. It works, but I won't think much of it. Someone mentioned it in this thread, but in a past project of mine you used to actually catch your own starter at the Safari Zone. It was a fun way to get something the player might want, and a cool way to present it.

I ran into an issue with the safari zone method though: time. I feel like you shouldn't have to play too long to get your starter unless there's a very good reason for it. Even if I end up boxing it, I don't want to play for 45 minutes before getting it. With the aforementioned safari zone method, the player ended up getting their starter about 14 minutes into the game, which I found too long for my own project. That was all on my execution of it, though.

So with talk of getting the starter out of the way, let's talk starter choice.

I feel like there's very little wrong you can do with starter choice. I'm not a fan of canon starters, but otherwise I'm not really picky. Someone earlier mentioned not having your starter be rock type and what not, but I feel like if you balance your game with that in mind, you can make your starters pretty much any type. The only type I'd probably have reservations for is Ghost since most things only have normal type moves early on, but you could alleviate this with throwing in Pokémon with the Scrappy ability, or having your game start at around level 15 or higher.

I also don't think you have to do three starters if you don't want to. Go for just one if you want. Or four. I don't think they have to be "balanced" to battle one another either. How often are you really going to be battling them one on one with no other Pokémon? I don't just mean type matchups. The idea of starter balance (aside from the games themselves) seems arbitrary to me, unless that's something you want to involve.

Wrapping up, some closing thoughts:

• Having them be determined by a personality quiz or RNG is annoying. Just let the player pick, why waste their time?
• If you're going for an unusual starter, adjust things like the movepool, stats it gets, and or the level it evolves at. Document this stuff publicly somewhere, though. (Unless you consider it a spoiler I guess?)
• If you have more than one starter, make the others available at some point in the game. Player to player multiplayer isn't a huge thing in fan games, don't restrict the player from achieving 100% completion because of a design choice done for games with a big focus on multiplayer.
• This post was longer than I originally intended. I have a lot of thoughts on starters for someone who doesn't really care about starters that much.

 

[Fontbane]

• If you have more than one starter, make the others available at some point in the game. Player to player multiplayer isn't a huge thing in fan games, don't restrict the player from achieving 100% completion because of a design choice done for games with a big focus on multiplayer.

This opens up a whole new discussion- how will you make the unchosen starters available?
As far as I know, there are a lot of options for this:

• Have the base stage available for trade with your rival (like Shauna in XY)
• Have the rivals give eggs of the unchosen starters (for some reason I haven't seen this around much)
• Have them be capturable in some special format (like XY's Friend Safari)
• Have the base stage available as a gift from an NPC (like Steven's Beldum in Mossdeep)
• Mystery Gift (IIRC, Ethereal Gates did this with their starters)

The other question is, when would they be available to the player? I think the other starters should be post-game, so that you can't just go against your rival with the same Pokémon they have. It would be weird. I also think that, if you have two rivals, they should give you the unchosen starters in different ways from each other, like not both giving you eggs. If you go the Mystery Gift route, it would be better if it lasted forever so people who get the game late don't miss out (like the Magearna event).

 

[Deo]

This opens up a whole new discussion- how will you make the unchosen starters available?
As far as I know, there are a lot of options for this:

• Have the base stage available for trade with your rival (like Shauna in XY)
• Have the rivals give eggs of the unchosen starters (for some reason I haven't seen this around much)
• Have them be capturable in some special format (like XY's Friend Safari)
• Have the base stage available as a gift from an NPC (like Steven's Beldum in Mossdeep)
• Mystery Gift (IIRC, Ethereal Gates did this with their starters)

The other question is, when would they be available to the player? I think the other starters should be post-game, so that you can't just go against your rival with the same Pokémon they have. It would be weird. I also think that, if you have two rivals, they should give you the unchosen starters in different ways from each other, like not both giving you eggs. If you go the Mystery Gift route, it would be better if it lasted forever so people who get the game late don't miss out (like the Magearna event).

I like all the ideas you listed, and agree with your comment about mystery gifts. Unless mystery gifts are permanently active once online, that doesn't help anyone who wants to hit 100% completion after it expires.

As for when you get them, I think it really depends on how the developer is handling starters. Getting all three right at the start or in the early game would feel weird, but spreading them out as trades or in the wild across the region would be fine in my opinion. Unless your starters are immensely powerful, I don't think you have to worry about 'balance' with them. At that point the rival should hopefully have enough of a time to deal with multiple types.

 

[BIGJRA]

This opens up a whole new discussion- how will you make the unchosen starters available?
As far as I know, there are a lot of options for this:

• Have the base stage available for trade with your rival (like Shauna in XY)
• Have the rivals give eggs of the unchosen starters (for some reason I haven't seen this around much)
• Have them be capturable in some special format (like XY's Friend Safari)
• Have the base stage available as a gift from an NPC (like Steven's Beldum in Mossdeep)
• Mystery Gift (IIRC, Ethereal Gates did this with their starters)

The other question is, when would they be available to the player? I think the other starters should be post-game, so that you can't just go against your rival with the same Pokémon they have. It would be weird. I also think that, if you have two rivals, they should give you the unchosen starters in different ways from each other, like not both giving you eggs. If you go the Mystery Gift route, it would be better if it lasted forever so people who get the game late don't miss out (like the Magearna event).

The first/second and third of these are probably my favorites I've seen done, to varying degrees.

Trading the rivals for their egg (or l.5 mon) works, but what do you have to trade for it? Trading for something random but specific (Slowbro came to mind) is slightly weird, and letting it be anything (@ Jasmine from HGSS) also seems like a cop-out in a way because you can run over to the nearest patch of grass and quick ball something real quick. I guess one way to alleviate this is making you trade your own egg of your starter, as it makes lore sense if your rival is a collector as well. It could be slightly annoying given the 87.5% male gender ratio of all the canon starters but eh, it's workable if you have a Ditto or alternative (Duplicat from Uranium, e.g.).

That said, since most games focus on a single rival with a single starter, you'd have to figure out how to get the other one in that case. Perhaps the professor gives you the last Pokemon, either just because or due to Pokedex completion rewards. I feel like half of the available Pokemon in a 100-250 total game would suffice?

Addressing the safari point, I think Vega did this, and it worked well. Just like Emerald, it had an expanded Safari Zone containing both the starters and other Pokemon, which made it logical that they'd be there lore-wise, locks them behind a door until the right moment, and also makes it just hard enough that you'd have to get lucky, luckier than just throwing Quick Balls on a route. This would also make your starter available in the wild too in case you have a male, don't have a Ditto, and wanted to breed.

As for time, Reborn for example has the other of the 17 starters begin to appear around the 5th or 6th gym badge (of 18), with the better ones like Froakie and Torchic yet to be obtainable with our current 14 badges. Streamlining this to the 3 starter case likely in most fangames, I'd say it's safe to do something similar in terms of progression, as around the 6th badge the player will have already fully evolved their choice, meaning it wouldn't really ruin the choice like how putting them on Route 1 would as you guys said. Most games tend to put them in the post game, just like XY did, which is logical, if not a bit frustrating that you have 6/9 of the first few slots unfillable in the Pokedex before clearing the E4. As long as it's not cheap and not too early though I don't think you can really go wrong as long as they're available without trading for people like me who loathe going through the motions of trading with others.

 

[TechSkylander1518]

Personally, I'm quite fond of seeing people create a new type triangle or use canon Fire/Water/Grass types that weren't starters before-I like seeing the patterns people can find!

Like many have said in this thread, you don't necessarily have to worry about balancing starters-your rival doesn't have to use the other starters, after all. (Frankly, I think it's better to give rivals an entirely different starter Pokemon, to characterize them better, but perhaps that's not wholly on-topic)

All 21 canon starters isn't usually appealing to me, but I quite enjoyed Rejuvenation's take on it-instead of rows and rows of Poke Balls, they were all spread across an open habitat, and you could go and seek them out. (a format that I don't think would have been quite as entertaining with only three)

This opens up a whole new discussion- how will you make the unchosen starters available?
As far as I know, there are a lot of options for this:

• Have the base stage available for trade with your rival (like Shauna in XY)
• Have the rivals give eggs of the unchosen starters (for some reason I haven't seen this around much)
• Have them be capturable in some special format (like XY's Friend Safari)
• Have the base stage available as a gift from an NPC (like Steven's Beldum in Mossdeep)
• Mystery Gift (IIRC, Ethereal Gates did this with their starters)

The other question is, when would they be available to the player? I think the other starters should be post-game, so that you can't just go against your rival with the same Pokémon they have. It would be weird. I also think that, if you have two rivals, they should give you the unchosen starters in different ways from each other, like not both giving you eggs. If you go the Mystery Gift route, it would be better if it lasted forever so people who get the game late don't miss out (like the Magearna event).

A very important thing to keep in mind!

I personally think the best way to do it is through a guaranteed distribution in later game (getting them as a gift just feels more natural to me than catching them), though I also think they should be encounterable with a PokeRadar for anyone who wants to get different kinds of Poke Balls on them. But Mystery Gift is a pretty bad idea IMO-sure, everyone who's already finished the game will just be getting a missing dex slot, but new players would get two starters pretty early on in the game.

 

[BIGJRA]

Personally, I'm quite fond of seeing people create a new type triangle or use canon Fire/Water/Grass types that weren't starters before-I like seeing the patterns people can find!
All 21 canon starters isn't usually appealing to me, but I quite enjoyed Rejuvenation's take on it-instead of rows and rows of Poke Balls, they were all spread across an open habitat, and you could go and seek them out. (a format that I don't think would have been quite as entertaining with only three)

I personally think the best way to do it is through a guaranteed distribution in later game (getting them as a gift just feels more natural to me than catching them), though I also think they should be encounterable with a PokeRadar for anyone who wants to get different kinds of Poke Balls on them. But Mystery Gift is a pretty bad idea IMO-sure, everyone who's already finished the game will just be getting a missing dex slot, but new players would get two starters pretty early on in the game.

Ooh, I forgot to mention how much I think Rejuvenation did it right. With a 721 (soon to be 802) game, having all the canon starters is very logical I think, plus it encourages replay-ability to have that many options. I can see why someone would be opposed to it for say, a newer player, but getting that many options after you've played it to get a feel for the game it's cool being able to go so many ways with different play-styles. That said a game of 20+ fakemon starters would be... quite difficult to choose if you don't know a thing about any of them.

I like Rejuvenation's choice too, like TechSkylander said, you can seek the one you want out and it's visually cool and all that, plus Oshawott follows you around and it's too cute. It also has an interesting mechanic, the jackpot machine chooses randomly out of the 18 starters, which is good enough in itself for someone unsure. Yet, it also has Ralts, Axew, and Eevee available at <1% chances, which I think is absolutely a great idea! It expands your ability to monotype the game as, in this scenario: Normal, Dragon, Ice, Electric and Fairy all become available (via evolution for the latter three) right from the start, yet these choices don't overtake the otherwise decent starters. That said, it's kind of a feature for the dedicated gamer with a predetermined starter in mind to sit there resetting (Ralts took me 20 min) and doesn't change up the game much. Though you can change it up, canon starters + rare extras in a jackpot machine is something to consider.

EDIT: Forgot to say, I agree about Mystery Gift, I think the feature is better suited for shinies, mons otherwise available but with HA's/Special moves/maaaybe canon mega stones than for exclusive mons.

 

[Shgeldz]

Briefly speaking, I think that actually obtaining your starters was handled the best in pokemon meat two Sun and Moon. The entire process was somewhat spiritual in nature, and matched the gravity of the situation in terms of the fact that you're obtaining the Pokémon who will very likely be your partner throughout the entire game. The whole moving forward, the tentativeness, and the eventual lift and bond creates an immediate connection not seen in previous games.

Gen 1: Here's a Pokémon to help you with completing your Pokédex
Gen 2: Here's a Pokémon to help you deliver this package
Gen 3: Here's a Pokémon to save this Professor with CHOOSE FAST!
Gen 4: Here's a Pokémon to fend off attacking Pokémon (I actually had to look this one up because I forgot)
Gen 5: See Gen 1 (Had to look this up too)
Gen 6: Your friends literally just give you one

 

[Mak]

Obviously how you handle starters depends on a lot of things.

Usually you want to keep in mind the difficulty of the game as well as the gyms/challenges you'll be going up against.
For example, you don't usually want to make it to where one starter has a really difficult time against the majority of the game, you're better off balancing the game around keeping the general level of difficulty mostly balanced.

You also want the Pokemon to be useful throughout the whole game. For I myself, there have been plenty instances where my starter ended up losing a bit more consistently, to the point where I've eventually dropped them. You don't want any starter to be objectively better than another, which is what the main series starters usually have to balance.

I myself have an extremely unconventional trio, however, their stats are unbalanced (I have Poochyena as a starter) to the point where I had to buff Mightyena to keep up with the other two starters. It also helps, for example, to give them Mega Evolutions, if your game includes them. It isn't necessary, but it can help to give a special connection with your starters.


By no means to starters have to be the canon ones, but in my opinion having different starters makes a lot more sense when they are not handed out through the traditional method. Conventional starters feel like they are bred for the purpose of being handed out together. Having an experienced professor give out these extremely rare, not found in the wild Pokemon feels natural.
In terms of types, you could go the traditional Fire/Water/Grass route, or you could mix it up and find a different triangle. Or you don't even have to make a triangle at all. Whatever you want, really.

I personally do not have a conventional Fire/Water/Grass triangle, nor do my starters even make that cohesive of a triangle. But its not too big of a deal, considering that I have three rivals; each one with an ace weak to one starter. The connection isn't there, which is the point. The starters themselves are simply picked up in the moment, not in a big, intentional way. They are found, and so they are used.

 

[Caeles]

I think that what makes a starter relevant is the conexion that the player develops with that pokémon along the game. Following this logic, I figured out that the best way to do this in my game was to have a relevant background for each starter, a story of how they come to be and a personality of their own. Sure, you have the usual grass-fire-water triangle, but if you want something more and you don't mind that you can capture those pokémon later on (although each one of them has an unique trait like 31 IV's in one stat or being shiny) you can enjoy a story that you would simply miss if you go with the typical starters. For me, that's the best reward (or encouragement) you can give to your player: a story and a development of that pokémon.

 

[Domiok]

From strictly a player’s perspective, these are what I see as the most important qualities relating to starter Pokémon.
- uniqueness: both in terms of rarity and in design
- reflectivity: similarities or reasonable contrasts in typing, total stats, evolution
- context: how the player acquires the starters

Uniqueness matters because you don’t want to just encounter the cool Pokémon that you have for the start of your quest on the first or second route. You want to move forward with confidence in your choice, and you want to feel like you’re on a journey with a special companion that stands out from many of the other creatures in the world.

Reflectivity matters in making the choices in starters all satisfying, varied enough, and worthwhile. You don’t want to get the idea that you made the incorrect choice because one starter Pokémon evolves much earlier than the other two or because one of the starters has super useful typing and abilities. You want to sense pride in making a fair decision that makes the game interesting for you without missing out on a massive opportunity.

Context matters in helping the game present itself to the player early, in pulling the player into the game, and in supporting the developers’ choices for starters. You want, as a player, to have options that excite you. You want to have a sense of what you might expect out of the game based on how you got your starter.

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Unless a game thrives off uncomfortable circumstances or other specific situations, I don’t believe that a game should offer starters in any sort of RNG context. For a casual Pokémon experience, most players expect to have freedom in how they start their journeys, and to me, it makes little sense in limiting starter options unless it really emphasizes some goal within your game, especially if Pokémon are just as available in the wild as they typically are.

One example of how uncertainty in choice actually works emerges through the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games. Many people complain about the introductory survey that determines which Pokémon you become in the Mystery Dungeon games. Often, people look up the answers to get the Pokémon that they want, but at the same time, others feel content to go along with the role assigned to them. This restricted start, in my eyes, coincides with the unfamiliarity that the games seek to convey. You’ve been thrown into a world and don’t know how you got there or how you became the Pokémon that you now are. You don’t know what’s happening, and I always enjoyed how starting as a somewhat random Pokémon added to the situation. These games also give you a choice of a companion Pokémon though, so players are not left totally without choice.

Unless your traditionally styled fan game incorporates a theme that matches the RNG of getting a starter, I don’t think that it’s a good idea. I think that it was Aki who described how mixing and matching the some of the original starter trios feels like the developer wants the player to play the game in the way that the developer would play it, and while not quite the same idea, I would feel like the game wanted me to enjoy it a way that’s not my own if I had a starter that I did not want chucked at me randomly. One might argue that having as few as three starters is a big restriction, forcing players to go with one of a few Pokémon that they may not want, which is a fair assessment. I say that a three-starter opening usually makes up for the numbers by providing high quality Pokémon while still offering some amount of choice to the players. On top of that, players should have little trouble in finding another Pokémon that they would want to use on their teams once they get out into the world even if they dislike all of the starters offered.

Other quick topics:

• Short games such as those in Game Jams can explore options for giving out starters. These games tend to have much more focused gameplay. This justifies some reasons for setting up the player with particular Pokémon, and with less game time, players have less reason to be upset with the Pokémon presented to them and have less time in the game to worry about how their Pokémon will fare in the game’s world.

• If there are multiple, unique starters, there should be some way to acquire them all, and other people here shared neat ideas for this that I support, particularly Fontbane’s suggestions. If the starters are meant to be rather meaningful, then establishing the other starters as high-tier rewards for accomplishments could maintain that special meaning compared to simpler ways of offering additional starters to the players.

Sorry if I got lost a bit in what I was saying. I wrote this in several chunks during the day.

 

[Darius_Oak]

I'll just provide an example from the project my group used to work on:

The way my old project handled starters was that some wild Pokemon had been causing trouble around the town and you had to investigate. Depending on where you went, the professor would actually catch your starter as the capture tutorial and give it to you, as you were already her student and were only just now expressing interest in going on a journey. The nature of each location gave its type away, so let there be no misconceptions. I only just now realize that this is similar to how it's handled in Pokemon Yellow, except with choice.

For the record, the final evolutions were Grass/Dark, Fire/Fairy, and the Water starter was split based on gender, either becoming Fighting or Sound (which we were thankfully successful in implementing). None of them received Mega Evolutions. While our first Gym was going to be Water-type, plenty of Pokemon of many different types were going to be made available before reaching that town, since there were actually a good handful of areas in between, so choosing your starter wasn't essentially choosing a difficulty level like in Kanto. I think Kanto did a poor job of setting things up pre-Brock, but it was also the first set of games, so I'll give it a pass. Johto did it quite a bit better, after all.

Other region starters would be extremely rare encounters in very select areas. We were setting things up so that the region would be big enough to fit all 721 Pokemon plus about 70 of our own, and actually succeeded in mapping out their locations before we cancelled. If I ever decide to revive my 2011 game idea, the starter would either be a choice among the 15 (up to 5th gen) or just Eevee. I think Eevee is actually a great starter idea so long as you don't have Rock, Steel, Fighting, and Ghost thrown in your face before being able to set up a half-decent team.

 

[its L]

New/old thought to bring up discussion, How should starters be typed? I personally think they should be Rare typing. Something not often seen or not at all seen, in order to add some kind of novelty to the starter.