Game Freak focused on making it easier to raise Pokemon in X/Y, explains introduction of Fairy-type
Raising Pokemon was one of the areas Game Freak placed great emphasis on while developing Pokemon X/Y.
Director Junichi Masuda, in an interview with Famitsu, explained that players tend to play games less these days. And so raising Pokemon is much easier than before. As an example, experience points can be gained simply by catching another Pokemon.
“While we did integrate a lot of detailed adjustments into the game balance, another part would be the ease of raising Pokémon. Nowadays, we have the Internet, smartphones, and more, so I think the time spent playing games has decreased.”
“For those reasons, we made it much easier to raise your Pokémon that will allow you to play smoother and more comfortably than before. For example, simply catching a Pokémon with a Pokéball will net you some experience points.”
Masuda also spoke about the introduction of the Fairy-type, which is the first new type in over a decade.
“This is something we’ve talked about since we released the very first generation of the games, but Dragon-types are strong, and we saw little deviation in the Pokémon that were used, even at tournaments. While we did balance the games for each new title, this time we put more effort into the adjustments, and added a new type that is strong against Dragons.”
“We had many candidates for the new type, but in the end, you could say it’s due to a fantasy-like connection, that we went with a plan that involved having ‘a fairy that is strong against dragons,’ and settled with the type name as Fairy.”
