Okay, listen to this: What if, instead of breeding eggs, pokemon trained each other by playing at the day care, giving their IVs, egg moves, or abilities to the other pokemon, and your pokemon can reach it’s full potential by learning and growing from the other pokemon at the day care instead of ridiculous egg breeding chains? This could be controlled with the power items and everstones and such, but it might work a little differenty (The power bracer’d pokemon get the attack IV from the other
You know, I think I like that, or something along those lines anyway. I talked a bit in one of these old things about expanding the complexity and interactivity of Pokémon storage, placing a bit more emphasis on what your Pokémon are getting up to when they’re not actually with you, and this kind of thing might play into that kind of aim really well. I think it reinforces the sense you get of Pokémon as individuals if they help each other to learn and grow, rather than just keeping it as the sole responsibility of the trainer. There’s a lot of scope there for, say, the combinations of Pokémon’s natures having different effects on each other, or for abilities that (in addition to their battle effects) alter the way Pokémon can interact with each other in the day care. Maybe Pokémon that have trained together will be more effective in double or triple battles together? Lots of different directions you could take it.
Pokémaniacal 