Mentioned this a few times before on the discord server so I’ll try to keep this brief.
Leader pokemon should be able to be switched switched upon fainting like the other 3 team slots.
To be honest, this is a simple change that I doubt anyone would complain about, as there’s no real reason to give the 1st slot that kind of special treatment to begin with…
Giving my 2 cents of agreement as someone who was also part of said discord conversations:
The current leader mechanic is pretty reductive; the only difference between slot 1 and slots 2-4 is that it causes an instant wipe when fainted. The only purpose it currently serves is acting as a bogus slot where you can’t put a mon you actually want to use, especially in the early-mid game where you don’t have access to escape ropes.
I’ll reiterate what I said earlier regarding the leader mechanic: either it should be made into an actual mechanic, or it should probably just be scrapped (if doing so is possible).
Honestly, as much as making the 1st slot the same as any slot improves gameplay in general, the reason behind this imo has something to do with just how other pmd games work.
In other games, you, or in some case including your partner, has to be alive at all time for you to clear a dungeon. Following pokemon, however, can leave the dungeon when they faint and have no revs left.
Normally I’d agree with that, but this hasn’t been the case since psmd to my knowledge.
Even the original games know there’s no real reason to force an instant wipe like that outside of story-related stuff, wich pmu straight up doesn’t have.
Also, with the style of gameplay this game has, it would function better as a team of four where all members counted instead of just a team of three plus escort (since that’s how slot 1 feels).
Yeah I don’t think this can even happen with the current game without breaking a lot of stuff. The lead pokemon being unchanging is important for the game to confirm at least one of the Pokemon on your team is yours. If you take on an escort or use a heartslate, and then send all your other pokemon home, you’re leaving that dungeon with no Pokemon, probably crashing your own game, and maybe crashing everyone’s.
So then naturally you’d have to do all this extra work to make it not do that. Solutions like making it so you can’t put escorts or legends on the first slot, or ones as convoluted as setting a specific mon in someone’s assembly as one that would enter your party when you left the dungeon (and would have to be a reactive system since there are ways to release mons in your assembly mid dungeon).
And all of this extra work, for a system that’s pretty fine honestly. Like it just kinda makes sense that the group wouldn’t keep going if the leader of it randomly fainted out of the dungeon. And randomly changing expedition leaders mid dungeon just feels kinda weird.
tldr; This change would literally break the game, but also I just don’t like it
But doesn’t team members have their own unique variable to register it’s a team member? After all, escorts and Heart Slate Pokémon usually leave after a dungeon or using an Escape Orb, so why not just have a code that’s like “if team has 1 recruited Pokémon, then lock command sending home for slotted recruited Pokémon”. It’s a simple solution to make it work, and it’s not really all that extra. This change wouldn’t break the game. Besides, you can have a team member in Slots 1 & 4, but that’s not game-breaking.
This system has never been fine to me. Having to think of which Pokémon would be held in the back meant one of the four Pokémon you brought along wouldn’t be able to be utilized to its fullest potential. And besides, I feel like the leader is us, the one “leading” them through the dungeon, and not just some random HM Slave in the first slot.
While I do think that this was the reason for it’s initial implementation, I think its not much of a reason to keep the current system. If the leader was given some meaningful mechanics to differentiate it more, then sure.
As is now, though, the PMU team functions much more similarly to a team in the mainline games than in a traditional PMD game, with a single active mon switched in and out from the party. In HGSS, it would be pretty absurd if an instant blackout was triggered after the following pokemon fainted.