Possible unpopular opinion: Some of the difficulties from past entries were not legit. Them being gone are for the best.

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

But isn't the limit of six Pokemon to a party itself arbitrary? Personally, I think it could be cool to see a game where your party size expands as you progress. Maybe you only have two slots at the start, but once you beat the first gym leader, a third slot opens up. In the early generations, you don't get Poke Balls until after spending some time, and facing your rival, with just your starter. The game wants you to prove that you can handle one Pokemon, before you get access to any more. This would, essentially, be an extension of that. This could allow the player to expand beyond normal limits: beating the Champion could open up a seventh slot, while completing a post-game mission unlocks an eighth. Might seem like overkill, but this could be very welcome if a future game returns to an HM system, and dungeons that demand their usage. It also would be great for hatching eggs. And rematches with high-profile trainers, such as Gym Leaders and the Elite Four, could see their teams expanded beyond six as well.

In addition, the actual hard core Pokemon players just run one pokemon (plus HM fodder) to beat the story mode. As, much like Fire Emblem, low manning by piling exp all onto your starter and then actually using stuff like X Attack is the most surefire way to sweep the entire game as quickly as possible.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

21 hours ago, Lord_Brand said:

You have a point. But considering how many different kinds you can find even at an early stage of the game, two slots would fill up fast, and make raising your Pokemon a lot more tedious. Imagine if the Gen 1 games did that. One Pidgey or Rattata caught, and you've already reached maximum party capacity. I think six just felt right, giving you a manageable number of options without overloading you. Eight would have been too many, four would have been too few. That said, if the games were to allow you to switch which Pokemon are in your active party anywhere outside of battle (and perhaps dungeons), a smaller party size might then work as you can still only bring so many Pokemon into battle with you at once. But I still like the current party size of six.

Conversely, I think 6 slots is way more than you need, especially in the earlygame. In Johto, do I really need Rattata and Sentret? Pidgey and Hoothoot? I'm probably gonna drop most of these earlygame Mons a couple gyms in anyway. Giving the player a full 6 slots just encourages them to grind, and to play slower than needed, when they certainly don't need all 6 for the first gym leader! And this would explain why other trainers don't have many Pokemon - because the Pokemon League hasn't licensed them to carry a "full team" yet.

21 hours ago, Lord_Brand said:

As far as I'm concerned, HMs can stay dead. Recent generations have found far better replacements for them. If they must bring HMs back, I insist that they allow you to overwrite them with other moves; there was no good reason to make them otherwise in the first place, considering they're reusable. Even worse, Gen II introduced a Move Deleter for the purpose of deleting HM moves. Why didn't they just let you replace them normally like every other move!? It's not like you were going to get stuck, they're reusable for fox sake! I don't have a problem with the concept of interacting with the game world using your Pokemon, but there are better ways to do so than with mostly crappy moves that are a pain in the arse to replace. I'm astounded that they ever thought HMs as originally implemented were a good idea. I'm also astounded that it took them over fifteen years to figure out a better replacement and implement it.

I'm definitely torn on HMs. It's super inconvenient to have to carry around an HM slave. Either the move is bad (like Cut or Flash), making it a waste in battle... or it's too good (Fly or Surf), rendering level-up moves of the same type obsolete. And needing the Move Deleter is an admitted inconvenience. Then again, I do like the feeling of your Pokemon interacting with the overworld. Helping you along on your journey. Especially in HGSS, where if they're following you, you see them smash that rock. Assuming HMs were to return, a bigger-than-6 party would allow you to bring your full battle-ready team, plus an HM slave or two as needed. Making it at least desirable in that aspect.

Bottom-line, it's wild to me that a novice trainer can have as many Pokemon on their team as a goddamn Champion. Especially when it creates an asymmetry - if your rival showed up in your second battle with a full team of six, most players would call foul play (and not the kind with 95 BP). Placing restrictions on team size based on trainer experience explains the phenomenon of opposing trainers not having a full team, as @Jotari points out in his own post.

[Lord_Brand]

There's always the possibility that the early trainers are just n00bs. Plus there's the fact they don't want early Trainer battles to be six Pokemon long lest they feel like too much of a slog. But that begs the question of whether quality over quantity would be preferable, here. Like, would it be better to have three Trainers with two Pokemon apiece, or one trainer with a full team of six?

In an open-world game, Trainers would be used to "gate" areas less often, as they'd be traveling too, so they could get away with having larger teams even early on.