User blog comment:Agent Derp/Pokemon as a MOBA/@comment-203182-20130429032316

Decided to toss this idea to some friends of mine, see what we could come up with:

Pokemon would only get improved stats via items in a match (just like champions do now), but you unlocked different evolved forms for purchase once you reached a high enough "Trainer Level" (so a Pidgotto skin for the Pidgy, for example). Pokemon that evolve through means other than leveling up would need the player to buy the item from the shop in order to unlock those skins (Eevee would be a special case, since each Eeveelution would be it's own "champion", rather than just a new skin for the same champion).

Their moves would probably need to be pre-selected, rather than something you could change, just for balance sake, with exclusive moves taking priority (or filling the Ultimate slot, if they only have one, like Volt Tackle for Pikachu). Ditto and Smergel would probably only get one ability (their Ultimate) that lets them copy all the abilities of the target Pokemon, except the target's ultimate.

You'd be capped at certain levels and need to win a Co-Op vs AI battle against an enemy Gym Leader (which could be another requirement to unlock stuff, like... beating Brock gets you access to lots of Rock pokemon to unlock).

And you can't have a Pokemon game without being able to trade, so there'd need to be a way to trade your "champions" (which would probably include all the skins you got for them as well).