(Moving this reply here because while it was in the Little Annoyances thread, the part I responded to both got away from me in length and wasn't really the main point of the response)
The thing that gets me about the level scaling is that it wouldn't really fix what the source of the difficulty is (or is not), which I think even the Teal Mask kind of showcases both intentionally and unintentionally: the actual Pokemon selection.
What good is scaling Katy up to Level 30 if you do Iono first going to matter unless they also evolve her Pokemon past the intentionally-low-power first stage Bugs and Teddiursa? To make the difficulty scaling actually matter you'd have to have checks to update the usable roster by the major opponents (if not at every single milestone, something like every 2-3 out of 18 leaders you fight), which is a massive scope increase for the team design that, let's be frank, NOBODY is going to approach for variance more than 1/20 runs where they specifically want the challenge. How many times do players skip around or take a different order for Erika, Sabrina, and Koga in Kanto, or go to Pryce before Olivine and Cianwood in Johto?
Level Scaling isn't going to get anywhere because outleveling the opponent is always a solution, unless they scale directly with your team by taking an average (as some RPGs do to keep new recruits "on pace" with you). Fighting a Level 50 Grusha with Level 60's isn't that different a challenge from fighting a Level 20 one with Level 25-30's in practice, you're still mostly going to roll over the Ice Weaknesses with maybe a stat check by his Fully Evolved Mons. SV's open nature is down to what order you want to gain certain rewards in: Gym Battles let you catch stronger Pokemon with obedience (opening your roster up for Wild Encounters with a "level floor" by where they spawn), Titans give you more movement options to look for items and special areas more easily if not totally new accessibility, and Starfall Street unlocks TMs so you have more moves available to customize your team or give you objectives to look for and craft them.
Ultimately I fail to see how this is anymore railroaded than previous entries, in that there at least exist side objectives you can make for yourself regardless of if the main progression has an intended order. Compare XY: what is there to do if you're not going through the clear story path? Some stuff like Pokemon performances but no real items to collect or side areas to explore just for their own sake (compare the Safari Zone/Great Marsh in previous games, Fuego Ironworks in Gen 4, the Abyssal Ruins in Unova or B2W2 specifically with the Desert Resort and Relic Castle).
Onto the Teal Mask as my counter example of the Level Scale aspect: Kieran sucks at the start of the DLC, just having a Sentret whether you do it main game or post-game. He's depicted as a meek kid without a lot of prowess for battling or even socializing, but as the plot shows him developing a drive and then obsession with being able to match up to you, his team gets stronger until it ends in what many consider a decently formidable in-game boss. This isn't simply the result of him leveling up his early stage jokers, he adds and replaces members that are more formidable in terms of stats or running strategies (EX: His Poliwrath swaps from using Special moves off its worse stat to stronger Physical attacks and a Belly Drum set up with a Sitrus Berry). If Kieran's battles were simply a team of 4-5 mons like his Paradise Barrens or Loyalty Plaza team jumping 5-10 levels each time, there wouldn't be any increase in difficulty as you do them all.
In turn the reason they can do this feasibly is because Kieran is one recurring opponent to build upon, rather than 8-18 opponents with varying type specialties or outright different strategies necessitated by their Pokemon that you could challenge in any order. Imagine them having to do Kieran's thing for over a dozen different battles, knowing that 75% of those variations are not going to be seen by an appreciable number of players, and is it any wonder that's not where they choose to put their incredibly crunched time and resources?
And this might just be me, but I personally don't get this obsession with Open Exploration games also needing to have non-linear progression. No game is truly non-linear in a meaningful way. Even something like Metroidvanias have gates in the form of movement upgrades or keys that you need to acquire using other abilities that take massive effort to skip over if they even can be. And the other side of the coin is something like the Open Zelda games, where none of the subplots mean jack to each other because they can't know which order players will do them in, and they barely mean anything to resolving the larger conflict because you could potentially go punch Ganon in the face without having done any of them. I remember a TotK compilation that put every Sage next to each other and showed they literally tell you the exact same information multiple times because they can't build off anything established prior in the story without knowing if you've done it already.
tl;dr Level Scaling is a lie, it won't fix any of the complaints people have about the progression in SV on a meaningful level, and the necessary measures are a waste of manpower by Gamefreak.
Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if GF hadn't even thought as far ahead as what Legendaries they were bringing back for the DLC, so they hadn't decided Tapu Koko wasn't coming back by that point (or even if they shifted gears after early VGC while Sun was just already locked in because Torkoal was base game, Groudon was base transfer, and Ninetales had been announced for the DLC ahead of time). The thing is while Flutter Mane is one dumb case, a LOT of the Paradoxes feel like they turn into VGC Ubers with the right support (Bundle outruns Flutter while having Icy Wind for fast Speed Control, Iron Hands goes from a Rocket Launcher to a Rail Gun with Quark Drive, and Iron Crown prefers Psychic Terrain for Expanding Force but they withheld Tapu Lele too so I count this).
Then again they also buffed Incineroar who was already managing top usage in Restricted-allowed Metas so I can only assume the Mon designers are not on the same page as anyone tracking VGC trends. Heck I wonder if those designing new Pokemon are even aware of what Old Pokemon are returning ahead of time.
Okay so I should probably have said in my original post, I assumed team alterations would be inherently implied in level scaling (obviously a gym leader with level 50 basic stage Pokemon would be a complete joke).
There's ways and means to get around a non-linear progression system without having to program in multiple sets of NPC rosters. Perhaps having no badges means that only a handful of NPC opponents are present in the overworld: having one will cause a few more to appear, and so on. That was off the top of my head, but the point I was making was that I don't think Game Freak are innovative enough to make an open-world Pokemon game work as well as it could. Of course you're railroaded to a greater degree in a more linear game, but in a linear game there's an excuse for the gyms being in a set order. In an open world game it makes far less sense for that to be the case.
I myself enjoy doing stuff out of order, or in some extreme cases outright blatant sequence breaking) but that's mostly just for fun. Let's face it, in Kanto you can fight the gym leaders out of order, but for the most part there's not much point because the ones who are too strong... are too strong. As I said, though, I've never been particularly invested in the idea of an open world Pokemon game. But it's an idea I saw mooted for years before the recent set of games, and I presumed the reason people wanted an open world game was for a non-linear experience, and in-game opponents scaling their difficulty to you is surely part of that. If it's going to be as straightforward as a linear game... what does the open-world element add, exactly?
It's not so much that I'm opposed on principle to an open-world setup, though I think there's always a bit of give and take. Very few games are 100% sandbox or 100% linear. I've always loved the Jak and Daxter trilogy, for instance - the first is truly open-world, with only minimal checkpointing and almost every quest being optional, while the second and third have a linear-but-branching progression system where you might have three or four quests at any one time: you have to complete them all eventually, but you're mostly free to choose the order.
Back to Pokemon, it's probably not a coincidence that Black and White - the games criticised for being the most linear of all - are among my favourites in the series. Ironic, really, because Black and White railroad you
severely in the early part of the game and it makes replaying them ever so slightly dull. But that's done for mechanical reasons*, not to needlessly constrict you, so I'm generally inclined to forgive it.
That section aside though, I think BW prove that linearity needn't necessarily be a bad thing. Yes, Unova is famously an extremely linear region, but nearly every point of the map has a number of nearby adjoining areas and each route is packed with trainers, buildings, and sidequests. It's not like the glorified corridors of Galar. By contrast the wild area in SwSh is basically just one big empty map. Also, most of its broken bridges are story-related and even then there's still an element of choice: you can clear the gym straight away and remove the next roadblock, or clear out the surrounding areas and then double back.
When I said railroading I was referring to more than just level scaling, such as the shiny locking I initially posted about. My point was about there being an inferred "correct" way to play, which as I said manifests itself in lots of little ways in the more recent games. Like how, for instance, SwSh mandates using the Exp Share. Regardless of how much an open world backdrop seems boundless I feel like there's less choice in the modern games than ever.
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*
to wit, you're restricted to Fire/Water/Grass, Normal, and Dark pre-badge 1 (unless you grind insanely hard and evolve your Tepig). This is likely because Pidove/Venipede would confer an advantage against Cilan, Blitzle/Sewaddle would confer an advantage against Cress, and Roggenrola/Drilbur would confer an advantage against Chili