Originally Posted by
Skyblade
Anyway, I've been thinking this through in my spare time. An MMO Pokemon UI is actually fairly easy to create. The menu system would be broken down a lot since it would pretty much have to move from turn based combat to real time combat, but most of it is easily solved. A six button selector for pokeballs, click once to summon a Pokemon, click again to dismiss, and you are only allowed so many Pokemon at one time. Each Pokeball button could also display a health bar and small status indicators.
You'd only need to display about eight moves at once, if we're keeping the standard Pokemon moveset of four moves for Pokemon (which I think we should), so move bars would only change when Pokemon learned new abilities or switched out. I figure new moves would be handled similar to Diablo's level process. Rather than forcing you to choose immediately, you wait and assign moves after combat ends, since battles in real time will be more hectic. You'd also need a health/exp bar for your currently selected Pokemon, so that you could monitor them a little more closely.
Moves would have to be totally revamped, since combat is moving from turn based to real time, but I don't think it would suffer too much. We already have attacks of varying speed, such as Quick Attack or charge up attacks like Solar Beam. We also already have some AoE attacks, so, while the move system needs some revamping, it could be done.
The only potential problem I've hit is the trainer. Pokemon centers are essentially rez points, and you're taken there after all of your pokemon faint. But how do we force the combat? A wild Pokemon sees you and it force summons your first slot Pokemon? That's the best solution I've seen so far, but I'm not entirely happy with it.