I'm going to reply to each of these individually, if it's not too much of a problem.
I think you might have opposite views on the FAQ than the mods; this isn't necessarily a bad thing, just different, and I'd like to explain our views more. The way we see it is that Route is enormous and fast-paced and already incredibly intimidating, so therefore it makes sense to encourage new players to read through the FAQ as much as possible before entering the game.
Even if we did change the system, and nothing's been set in stone yet, we wouldn't be asking anything difficult from our players; we know that we have people coming in with zero pokémon knowledge, asking them to suddenly be experts would be incredibly rude on our parts. We feel, however, that encouraging new applicants to familiarize themselves with the game's policies before they join isn't asking too much. Again, we don't want anyone to know everything (that's what we're here for!), but we do expect players to come in with some knowledge of how Route works, or at the very least to know where the FAQ is and how it's laid out so that they can more easily access it for later reference. This holds not just players with no prior pokémon experience and master trainers alike; even if you've played all the games, Route doesn't exactly function like its digitized counterpart.
If we change the system, we'll definitely attempt to keep things as relaxed and fun as possible. We're not out to indimidate people out of apping, either, and we want every part of the game to reflect Route's lighthearted appeal.
Re: Part 1: Passwords
I think you might have opposite views on the FAQ than the mods; this isn't necessarily a bad thing, just different, and I'd like to explain our views more. The way we see it is that Route is enormous and fast-paced and already incredibly intimidating, so therefore it makes sense to encourage new players to read through the FAQ as much as possible before entering the game.
Even if we did change the system, and nothing's been set in stone yet, we wouldn't be asking anything difficult from our players; we know that we have people coming in with zero pokémon knowledge, asking them to suddenly be experts would be incredibly rude on our parts. We feel, however, that encouraging new applicants to familiarize themselves with the game's policies before they join isn't asking too much. Again, we don't want anyone to know everything (that's what we're here for!), but we do expect players to come in with some knowledge of how Route works, or at the very least to know where the FAQ is and how it's laid out so that they can more easily access it for later reference. This holds not just players with no prior pokémon experience and master trainers alike; even if you've played all the games, Route doesn't exactly function like its digitized counterpart.
If we change the system, we'll definitely attempt to keep things as relaxed and fun as possible. We're not out to indimidate people out of apping, either, and we want every part of the game to reflect Route's lighthearted appeal.