Let's see. If I worked at Game Freak, I would try to push on few ideas from the point of view from a business administrator and a player.
- Less momentary "special" stat boosting.
Stop pushing out or at the very least make them much fewer new ways to momentary stat boosts your Pokemon because it easily becomes boring and continious repeat to the audience. Not to mention that these have almost completely removed (in my opinion) the use of stat boosting items during combat. We have had two "special" stat boost forms brought in a row of two games gigamaxing and terracrystal. I would rather release a game with a stat "special" mechanic maybe every three games and spend that time building a new mechanic to something else that has been neglected: characters, stories, Pokemon designs, etc.
- Bring back unique stories.
As someone who played Pokemon Dungeons and Pokemon XD and out of all games these stories stand up to me as the most memorable ones due to their different take on story-wise. Hell they did it with Legends of Arceus which in my opinion worked very well! In Pokemon Scarlet and Violet I can see some resemblance that Game Freak attempted to make a more unique end game with having legendaries from the beginning and making them feel like they are part of your team and have more character. However, in exchange of the story the actual characters were neglected and made very blank and forgetful.
- The Pokemon.
I am not going to say that all new Pokemon designs and names look like they have been rushed. However, there is proof from the fandom that people are not happy with a lot of new designs that are brought forward. Yes, some bad designs do eventually grow on us, but most of the time its not the case. Taking away from the actual creature designs and attempting to distract the players with new momentary buffs gigamax/terracrystal. In my opinion as a business administrator the moment that your brand's selling point, in this case the Pokemon themselves are starting to receive neglect from the creators you are starting to fail.
- Better balance with good character and story.
In older Pokemon games characters tend to be more memorable than the story due to the constant copy-pasting and slight differences. I think Pokemon Scarlet and Violet belongs to the latter where they tried to push for more story elements, but they tried to make three different stories in a single game. However, it is possible to make a game with a good slice of both worlds, but it needs understanding of team management and not trying to shove the entire cake into your own mouth at the same time.
- To better explain this most game development teams tend to work individually or as a one team, which causes you to neglect one or more areas about the game. This neglect can cause blank characters, the world not feeling like its "empty" or there not being enough story elements to make sense. Neglecting is very common on a lot of games both AAA and Indie games.
- As an example the way how I and my development team for The Wings of Dawn avoid neglecting areas of the game is by splitting the team into three categories: humans team, creatures team and world team. Our game is a creature and human medieval multiplayer survival game, so we split our team into the three main categories: creatures, humans and the world.
- Human Team makes sure that players who want to play as humans have everything from planned mechanics, structures/building, crafting, weaponry, etc. and then create these assets and push them to game-ready state.
- The Creatures Team's job is to make sure that the world is filled with creatures to bring life to the world and immersion of an ecosystem. This team is also responsible of designing and production of our dragon species that the players who want to play as creatures can play as.
- Finally the World Team is responsible of making sure that the world: the map, the story and programming team are able to put everything together. Basically coming around to tie everything together.
Game development is not easy, but the way how you approach it, plan it and execute things matters. I feel like Game Freak has to an extent failed in these areas for an extent and Scarlet and Violet had the worst frame rate (FPS) issues compared to the previous games. I do believe that there is lots of room to improve future Pokemon games if proper actions are taken to manage the course of development.
