The Pokemon Phone System

I grew up on Pokemon and my favorite version is "Pokemon Gold". Anyone who's played the gen2 games probably remember the phone system as something pretty cool. However, looking at it again and seeing  how the series has evolved through the years, I find that the system is not being used at it's full potential.

The current phone system lacks interaction.. It only consist of an NPC calling you to talk about something completely random. Sometimes, they'll call with useful information, alerting you about Pokemon swarms, offering you items or asking you for a rematch. However, most of the time, they'll call you to talk about the most stupid topics imaginable and I find this to be a waste of a great game mechanic, one which they should expand instead.

What exactly should they do? Well first, add in the possibility for actual interactions. When a trainer calls, offer the player a few choices that will influence his/her relationship with the caller.A good relationship with the trainer means they will call more often offering items and asking for friendly battles while a bad relationship  will result in the trainer calling less often and only talking about random, unimportant topics. This creates a natural reward system with a bigger involvement of the player.  

Example: let's say "Joey" call's me to talk about his "Top percentage Rattatta", I could respond with:

• "Wow, that's pretty cool. You guys sure work hard."(A nice response, improves relationship)
• "I don't care about your stupid Rattatta!"(A mean response, worsens relationship)
• "Then why isn't your Rattatta a Raticate yet?"(A snarky remark, can go either way)
• "How about you prove that in a battle?"(An invite to a battle)

However, just adding a few choices will not improve the system completely. You need to give each NPC that is "phone enabled" a personality. I think the best choice here is to go with stereotypical personalities for each trainer group: Youngsters would be overconfident of there abilities, psychics would think they're superior to others, hikers would be happy blokes with advice to give and so on. Also, I think it would be a good idea to include a few "different trainers" who would have non-stereotypical personalities and act differently than others in their trainer group.

All in all, I think that after so many years, it's time we see a good use to this phone system. It's been underused and replaced by pale imitations over and over again, and these imitations avoid the simplicity and natural feel that it has. I don't know if someone will improve this mechanic in future versions of the games, but I hope someone does.