Just a thought, but it would be amazing if TPC goes full petty and just blatantly cribs Palworld's best feature: utility for each Pal/Pokemon outside of combat. Some are good at carrying stuff, some can be mounts, a fire type can light fires, a water types can douse it, and so on.
As for how to implement it in a Pokemon game, maybe just scatter a bunch of puzzles and challenges across the overworld. Like, say you can see an item, but you can"t reach it because you don't have a Pokemon strong enough to lift it for you, or whatever other solution. It would give you more reasons to collect Pokemon you won't put in your battle team besides filling the Pokedex, and also just more stuff to do outside of battles.
No cribbing the survival crafting stuff tho. I find that pretty rote and uninspired, a bandwagon-y mechanic for when you just don't have any other better ideas anymore (hence why assets flippers use it so much)
