Eldudorino

I usually don't run the Sinnoh Undergound because I find it to be so annoying and unrewarding. It's time-consuming, eats up money in the form of sellable items you have to give away, and you still have a good chance of being unable to solve it due to insufficient clues. For example today, I got every clue and 7 of them were "The treasure room is in the western section" while 1 of them was "The treasure room contains valuable items." That meant I had to just guess with a 1/8 chance of success. Predictably, my guess didn't work out for me. This is why I tend to only do the Sinnoh Underground once every couple of months playing, and only then because I've forgotten how obnoxious it is. Then I go back to playing as normal without doing it. Does anybody actually do the Sinnoh Underground regularly and find it rewarding? I've been wondering why they haven't revamped it so you at least can't be left with less than a 50% chance of solving it, or made the rewards more substantial so it feels more worthwhile to solve. What do you guys think?

You think players don't act up and chat doesn't get derailed when mods jump in and start warning everything all of a sudden? This happens every day. Players pick fights with the mods or try to troll the mods by playing dumb about the rules when moments before they were just having normal conversation. You're speaking in absolutes saying that it's not "even remotely close to reality" but frankly you are mistaken. Staff members doing things like typing "too many" periods in a sentence happens frequently as well, and since I like to crack wise I reminded one such staff member the other night to please not use excessive characters in their speech. I'm not about to take screenshots and try to tattle on a mod for talking like a normal human being, though. It's not bad that he/she broke the rule, because the fact that what they did is even against the rules in the first place is the real problem. It would be like trying to report a police officer for jaywalking on a residential street. And now it's like you're just trolling. Obviously nobody wants to see that, but it's easy to tear down somebody's point when you make up an extreme hyperbolic version of it that isn't what the person was even talking about. In a logically moderated system your message would not be allowed in All chat. But the real-life example I gave where a mod/CC/whatever said something like "Guys.............................." (I didn't count the periods but it was more than 6) has no logical reason to be moderated because the extra characters did not negatively impact the readability of the message or the flow of chat. Any rational person would agree that it's in no way detrimental, so there's no reason to give out warnings for behavior like that. What surprised me is that you almost seemed to agree with me when you wrote this: "Should you get warned for using 3 more letters or something? No." And yet the 5-6 extra characters where you said you draw the line is exactly the kind of thing that gets warnings. I do have one screenshot from earlier today of a warning in response to a person writing "nooooooo" which contains 6 extra letters, although depending on what your sentence meant that may or may not fit your criteria of "excessive." I did appreciate reading the first half of this sentence: "We already made changes based on this thread so this is just not true." But look at the second half of it. You're taking a constructive message and then still trying to fit a "So you're wrong" in at the end. But you know what, fair enough that as I'm re-reading the topic now, I do see some constructive responses from the moderation staff mixed in between the airing out of dirty laundry and condescending language. So hopefully the end result of this topic is more positive than what I've taken away from it.

Then why do you keep shooting down everything that anybody says? I believe that that undermines the purpose of this topic more than anything else. I see little more than argument from the moderation team in response to the question they themselves asked, which makes me feel like this topic isn't fulfilling its intended purpose and makes me feel like the players aren't really being heard. According to whose definition of "excessive letters" - mine or yours? Something like "Whaaaaat?" has a different meaning from "What?" and so yes, there is a need for that as much as there is a need for any other word we use to communicate. Calling a few extra letters "excessive" doesn't make any sense. The idea that having an extra few letters in a word will cause chat to descend into chaos is not in line with our reality. On the contrary, it's frequently the actions of the mods who jump in to tell people not to write a certain way that causes more chaos than anything else. I'm sure you've seen what happens when mods jump in and start saying every tiny thing is against the rules: normal conversation becomes essentially impossible until the mod leaves. When mods misbehave in this way, it actually causes people to be *more* likely to break the rules, not less. That isn't helpful. Yes, of course there should be *some* moderation. I'm glad to see the moderators step in when vulgar language and [legitimately non-friendly] personal attacks are tossed around, or when people really are spamming the channel. The problem is that policing certain rules is taken to cartoonish extremes. I agree that people absolutely should not be allowed to post 30 lines of the same letter over and over, as that causes everybody else to be unable to read and enjoy the chat channel. Moderating that sort of activity is logical. However, the example I've given of somebody writing a few extra characters on one line is *not* disruptive to the flow of chat and it is not disruptive to anybody's enjoyment of the chat. To say that somebody can't write an extra few periods at the end of a phrase such as "Oh boy......." because it's "excessive" is just plain illogical. You don't help the chat when you do that; you only succeed in making people feel uncomfortable and like they aren't allowed to talk to one another. And for the record, I have frequently seen mods break these rules. A couple of nights ago I saw a mod write something like "Guys.............................." Is the idea that mods can break rules but non-mods can't? Or is there maybe, just maybe, some legitimacy to the idea that what you call "excessive characters" is at times just a normal part of text conversation?

I have to agree that most of the responses in this topic really do make it seem like the moderation team isn't actually interested in feedback, which is discouraging. My complaint is with over-moderating. I fundamentally disagree with the assertion that every instance of a minor infraction needs to be called out. Sometimes All chat is completely civil but then somebody writes 4 extra letters in a word and a mod jumps in to tell them not to do that. E.G. The person might say "Whaaaaat?" as a way of expressing disbelief and the mod will remind All chat not to spam excessive letters. At this point, the chat will become derailed as people are more concerned with why the mod is wasting everybody's time than with the original topic. That kind of moderation has the exact polar opposite of its intended effect. Rather than keeping chat clean and productive, it causes it to degrade and become more chaotic. And for what gain? I'm not talking about somebody spamming 5 lines of letters; I routinely see mods chime in because of a single-digit number of extra letters as if it's spam that is making it harder to read chat. It's not. Similarly, the people who help in Help chat should be allowed to be humans for a moment here and there. Maybe I've just helped somebody with something difficult and they are trying to wrap their heads around it and I'll tell them "Yeah, I struggled at first, too. One time, I even had x happen to me. It was nuts". Technically my last couple sentences are 'not help' and belong elsewhere but at the same time they keep the channel feeling conversational and human. If a mod then tells me to keep it on-topic, they aren't really helping anybody. That doesn't improve the quality of help anybody gets or their ability to ask questions and be heard. It just makes everything awkward and sometimes it chases away the people who are actually there to help. I spend less time helping new players than I used to because of over-moderation of the Help channel.

Currently, until you have all 8 badges, you cannot be traded pokémon from another region, and I think that is smart. Actually, I think we could go a little bit stricter and lock other regions until the E4 is beaten, but that's for a different post. My suggestion is that once you are champion of a region, you should be able to trade for pokémon from any region. Then, when you start a new region, the normal locking rules would apply. So in other words, if I catch a Helioptile in Sinnoh, I think I should be able to trade it to the Johto champion and he can use it against Boss Lorelei or in PvP but then when he starts Hoenn it will be locked until he becomes the Hoenn champ or has 8 Hoenn badges. This way, the challenge of starting a new region is retained but trading becomes less cumbersome. As things stand right now, a large number of players cannot purchase Sinnoh pokémon, even if the pokémon is something extremely basic and common like a Zubat. You have to make it clear when trading that your pokémon is from that region, and many players don't read properly so they'll agree to a trade, you go to meet them in a P.C. and then you find out that they cannot actually trade you for that mon because they haven't beaten Sinnoh yet. I think the region lock is a good idea when you start a new region but once you're the champ it becomes an unnecessary layer of frustration when dealing with traders who don't know better. I'll also admit to having once screwed up by trying to sell a pokémon often found in Kanto that I'd caught in Sinnoh because I forgot to check its region, so I've contributed to this frustration with other players as well as vice versa. Short version: Make all region champs able to trade any pokémon with all other region champs, and then just apply the normal locking rules when a player starts a new region and hasn't earned their badges yet. There's no point in being unable to sell a Sinnoh Zubat just because it happened to have been caught in a region a lot of people haven't played yet.

All done!

I can't tell if this forum has like a more official way to do this or what but :thanks:

Hi, I was using the PC Pokemon Storage (first time ever) and one of the elements is stuck on my screen. The little rectangle that shows the Pokemon name, level and type for one of my mons is frozen in place. I tried logging out and back in and it's still there. Doesn't seem like I can get rid of it. Any ideas? Here's what it looks like: