A numbers approach to the Spawn Rates problem

[Skazord]

So, we need to have this talk. I know we've had it before, but we need to do it again, since most of them died out due to lack of interest or facts or numbers, or I dunno, but I feel like there hasn't been enough talked about this.

 

Spawn rates are a big problem. And not a little problem either, it's actually a big one. Certain pokemon have obviously way less than 1% appearance rate. Some of those might even have lower than 0.1% rate, due to how little of them exist on the server as of right now. We don't know for sure, but it's not hard to imagine something like that.

 

What this means is, there are certain species of pokemon that are rarer than some shiny species. No, not even joking. You can find Zubats pretty much anywhere, which means that a lot of people will see them. You can, however, only find certain species in specific spots, that a lot of people don't actually go to. Therefore, it is very likely that there are STILL species of pokemon ingame that have yet to be found, which make them even rarer, and therefore, more expensive, than common shinies, and that's just not right and should not happen. Some players are grinding these rarer pokemons for HOURS without seeing a single one of them.

 

Now, let's follow a competitive perspective. Dragonite is a pretty big staple in any metagame, in the most popular tier, OU. In Gen6, it is an extremely bulky powerhouse, thanks to its amazing base stats, good move pool, and amazing ability, Multiscale. However, Multiscale is a hidden ability. This means that you will find a Marvel Scale Dratini every 10 or so Dratinis you find. Dratini, for those that tried to find one, is extremely rare as it is. You will find one VERY VERY rarely. When you do, it has 50% chance of being the same nature as your Synchronize (assuming you're using one). Then, it has a 1/10 chance of being a Marvel Scale Dratini, that then becomes Multiscale. And after THAT, you'll want it to have 31 speed IVs, because you're most likely running Jolly to outspeed and oneshot stuff with Choice Band.

 

So you have a 1/100 (I'm being nice here, it's likely lower than that) chance of finding a Dratini, 1/2 chance of it being Jolly, 1/10 chance of it being Marvel Scale, and 1/31 of it being max speed. This is, if we turn a blind eye on its Attack, which if it is anything lower than 20, is most likely garbage.

The chance of finding a USABLE Dratini is lower than the chance of finding any shiny.

 

The thing is, you can only find Dratini in a specific spot, and by fishing. You can find a shiny anywhere. So you're more likely to find a shiny, than to find a decent, competitive Dratini.

 

Don't get me wrong. I understand the problem of having high rates, no one wants everyone to walk around with super competitive pokemon, or a million shiny rare pokemon. But the current rates are bullshit, to say the least. Dratini was just an example, there's worse offenders than that.

 

There needs to be a middle ground. The current rates are too extreme. In my opinion, these rates simply don't work, even more so when they are for first evolutions. Keep Dragonair or Dragonite rare, that's perfectly fine, but I don't see what's wrong with giving Dratini a 5-10% appearance rate. That's still rare, that will still keep it hard to find a good competitive one or shiny, but will allow us to breathe a sigh of relief every time the pokemon we're looking for actually appears. Grinding 5 hours to never see what we want is discouraging, to say the least. And then it hits you that the first one you find will most likely not fit your needs, and you just don't even feel like trying anymore. I know what I'm talking about, I found my Synchronizers, and I'm now idling until this problem is fixed, because I see no reason to try to find these incredibly rare pokemon that most likely will suck anyway.

 

TL;DR:

A player that only cares for the mainstory shouldn't be stuck hours looking for their favorite pokemon. 10-20 minutes is all it should take, and the rate should be based off of that.

A competitive player shouldn't be stuck weeks or months looking for the pokemon they need for their team, with all the right stats and natures. This should take, at the very most, 1 day of intense grind (by this, I mean around 7-8 hours, and this is very extreme). The rate should be adjusted to fit that. Don't forget that these players don't need to farm just a single pokemon, they will have to grind several of them, for several teams and tiers. They'll be your longest lasting player base, for sure. 7-8 hours to find a single good pokemon is already a long grind, if you think about it.

 

Hopefully this shows that the struggle is very real. This is hurting the player's experience a lot, and needs to be changed soon, it's a very glaring and important issue right now.

[Sesshomaru]

So, we need to have this talk. I know we've had it before, but we need to do it again, since most of them died out due to lack of interest or facts or numbers, or I dunno, but I feel like there hasn't been enough talked about this.

 

Spawn rates are a big problem. And not a little problem either, it's actually a big one. Certain pokemon have obviously way less than 1% appearance rate. Some of those might even have lower than 0.1% rate, due to how little of them exist on the server as of right now. We don't know for sure, but it's not hard to imagine something like that.

 

What this means is, there are certain species of pokemon that are rarer than some shiny species. No, not even joking. You can find Zubats pretty much anywhere, which means that a lot of people will see them. You can, however, only find certain species in specific spots, that a lot of people don't actually go to. Therefore, it is very likely that there are STILL species of pokemon ingame that have yet to be found, which make them even rarer, and therefore, more expensive, than common shinies, and that's just not right and should not happen. Some players are grinding these rarer pokemons for HOURS without seeing a single one of them.

 

Now, let's follow a competitive perspective. Dragonite is a pretty big staple in any metagame, in the most popular tier, OU. In Gen6, it is an extremely bulky powerhouse, thanks to its amazing base stats, good move pool, and amazing ability, Multiscale. However, Multiscale is a hidden ability. This means that you will find a Marvel Scale Dratini every 10 or so Dratinis you find. Dratini, for those that tried to find one, is extremely rare as it is. You will find one VERY VERY rarely. When you do, it has 50% chance of being the same nature as your Synchronize (assuming you're using one). Then, it has a 1/10 chance of being a Marvel Scale Dratini, that then becomes Multiscale. And after THAT, you'll want it to have 31 speed IVs, because you're most likely running Jolly to outspeed and oneshot stuff with Choice Band.

 

So you have a 1/100 (I'm being nice here, it's likely lower than that) chance of finding a Dratini, 1/2 chance of it being Jolly, 1/10 chance of it being Marvel Scale, and 1/31 of it being max speed. This is, if we turn a blind eye on its Attack, which if it is anything lower than 20, is most likely garbage.

The chance of finding a USABLE Dratini is lower than the chance of finding any shiny.

 

The thing is, you can only find Dratini in a specific spot, and by fishing. You can find a shiny anywhere. So you're more likely to find a shiny, than to find a decent, competitive Dratini.

 

Don't get me wrong. I understand the problem of having high rates, no one wants everyone to walk around with super competitive pokemon, or a million shiny rare pokemon. But the current rates are bullshit, to say the least. Dratini was just an example, there's worse offenders than that.

 

There needs to be a middle ground. The current rates are too extreme. In my opinion, these rates simply don't work, even more so when they are for first evolutions. Keep Dragonair or Dragonite rare, that's perfectly fine, but I don't see what's wrong with giving Dratini a 5-10% appearance rate. That's still rare, that will still keep it hard to find a good competitive one or shiny, but will allow us to breathe a sigh of relief every time the pokemon we're looking for actually appears. Grinding 5 hours to never see what we want is discouraging, to say the least. And then it hits you that the first one you find will most likely not fit your needs, and you just don't even feel like trying anymore. I know what I'm talking about, I found my Synchronizers, and I'm now idling until this problem is fixed, because I see no reason to try to find these incredibly rare pokemon that most likely will suck anyway.

 

TL;DR:

A player that only cares for the mainstory shouldn't be stuck hours looking for their favorite pokemon. 10-20 minutes is all it should take, and the rate should be based off of that.

A competitive player shouldn't be stuck weeks or months looking for the pokemon they need for their team, with all the right stats and natures. This should take, at the very most, 1 day of intense grind (by this, I mean around 7-8 hours, and this is very extreme). The rate should be adjusted to fit that. Don't forget that these players don't need to farm just a single pokemon, they will have to grind several of them, for several teams and tiers. They'll be your longest lasting player base, for sure. 7-8 hours to find a single good pokemon is already a long grind, if you think about it.

 

Hopefully this shows that the struggle is very real. This is hurting the player's experience a lot, and needs to be changed soon, it's a very glaring and important issue right now.

 

well Arnie told me that hidden abilities have 1% chance, not 10%. i thought it was higher too tho from my experience

[Skazord]

.

 

well Arnie told me that hidden abilities have 1% chance, not 10%. i thought it was higher too tho from my experience

 

I was actually being nice there too. That just makes this issues even bigger, really.

[Sesshomaru]

meh cant edit in this forum either <.<

 

well i dont think its as worse as u pointing it out, i already bought some comps that have those horrible encounterrates that u pointed out with a decent nature and all ivs 23+. i dont think they will ever be buffed to 5-10% encounter, maybe slightly tho, cause they want to keep it with the idea of an mmo with "high end gear" and lower valuable stuff. there are plenty of things that a comp player by heart wont like in this game, but making comps easy accessible made other pokemon online mmos crash totally. i already had my rant about the idea of having legendaries only as one timers for the comp scene, but apparently they wont be allowed in ranked play anyways. i kinda like the idea of having hard to get comps, i know that pure comp players wont like that, but they at least give a long time goal in the end.

[Sanchez]

When you will notice trace do not works will throw yourself to the window.This is a not funny thing.

Actually the game isnt prepared to competitive.And there are many things to do before that.I just dont expect nothing about competitive in a few months.Which means the spawn rate probably prevail.

But this is a mmo.

And this things will happen.

[Skazord]

meh cant edit in this forum either <.<

 

well i dont think its as worse as u pointing it out, i already bought some comps that have those horrible encounterrates that u pointed out with a decent nature and all ivs 23+. i dont think they will ever be buffed to 5-10% encounter, maybe slightly tho, cause they want to keep it with the idea of an mmo with "high end gear" and lower valuable stuff. there are plenty of things that a comp player by heart wont like in this game, but making comps easy accessible made other pokemon online mmos crash totally. i already had my rant about the idea of having legendaries only as one timers for the comp scene, but apparently they wont be allowed in ranked play anyways. i kinda like the idea of having hard to get comps, i know that pure comp players wont like that, but they at least give a long time goal in the end.

 

All IVs 23+ don't matter if the IV that matters isn't 31, or if the nature isn't the right one, or if the ability is wrong. 10% is too much, sure, but 5% is already pretty low, it's 1/20 encounters. It's fine having rare stuff, like I said, it's not fine to make it so hard to find that you'll never find a good one.

 

If it is kept as it is, I wouldn't be surprised if stuff like Dragonite never saw play, and instead more common stuff with the right IVs did. I know I'd rather use common, weaker (in theory) pokemon, with the IVs in the right place, because I know that they will out speed and one shot the shitty Dragonites, or take 4 hits instead of 3 the shitty Blissey would, and so on. You get my point, surely.

When you will notice trace do not works will throw yourself to the window.This is a not funny thing.

Actually the game isnt prepared to competitive.And there are many things to do before that.I just dont expect nothing about competitive in a few months.Which means the spawn rate probably prevail.

But this is a mmo.

And this things will happen.

 

That Dragonite sucks, to be honest. It has Inner Focus, which means that it's ability is pretty much nothing. It will get oneshot by any pokemon that knows Ice Shard. It's Adamant and 25atk, which is decent, but only has 19 speed IVs, which means it will be out sped by any other Dragonite that is Jolly/Timid with over 10 IVs in it, and since it's also a base 80 speed, it gets out sped by the majority of the OU tier.

That Dragonite doesn't work neither as a revenge killer, for being too slow, nor as a setup, because they'll just switch in anything with an Ice move or Ice Shard and one shot it.

 

I understand the game isn't ready for competitive. But it will never be if these issues don't start getting tackled soon.

[Sesshomaru]

meh cant edit in this forum either <.<

 

well i dont think its as worse as u pointing it out, i already bought some comps that have those horrible encounterrates that u pointed out with a decent nature and all ivs 23+. i dont think they will ever be buffed to 5-10% encounter, maybe slightly tho, cause they want to keep it with the idea of an mmo with "high end gear" and lower valuable stuff. there are plenty of things that a comp player by heart wont like in this game, but making comps easy accessible made other pokemon online mmos crash totally. i already had my rant about the idea of having legendaries only as one timers for the comp scene, but apparently they wont be allowed in ranked play anyways. i kinda like the idea of having hard to get comps, i know that pure comp players wont like that, but they at least give a long time goal in the end.

 

All IVs 23+ don't matter if the IV that matters isn't 31, or if the nature isn't the right one, or if the ability is wrong. 10% is too much, sure, but 5% is already pretty low, it's 1/20 encounters. It's fine having rare stuff, like I said, it's not fine to make it so hard to find that you'll never find a good one.

 

If it is kept as it is, I wouldn't be surprised if stuff like Dragonite never saw play, and instead more common stuff with the right IVs did. I know I'd rather use common, weaker (in theory) pokemon, with the IVs in the right place, because I know that they will out speed and one shot the shitty Dragonites, or take 4 hits instead of 3 the shitty Blissey would, and so on. You get my point, surely.

When you will notice trace do not works will throw yourself to the window.This is a not funny thing.

Actually the game isnt prepared to competitive.And there are many things to do before that.I just dont expect nothing about competitive in a few months.Which means the spawn rate probably prevail.

But this is a mmo.

And this things will happen.

 

That Dragonite sucks, to be honest. It has Inner Focus, which means that it's ability is pretty much nothing. It will get oneshot by any pokemon that knows Ice Shard. It's Adamant and 25atk, which is decent, but only has 19 speed IVs, which means it will be out sped by any other Dragonite that is Jolly/Timid with over 10 IVs in it, and since it's also a base 80 speed, it gets out sped by the majority of the OU tier.

That Dragonite doesn't work neither as a revenge killer, for being too slow, nor as a setup, because they'll just switch in anything with an Ice move or Ice Shard and one shot it.

 

I understand the game isn't ready for competitive. But it will never be if these issues don't start getting tackled soon.

 

i get your points, but i think u see it TOO MUCH from a comp perspective. You are arguing with comp sets and ivs / natures that u can find in smogon that consider everything is available easily. but when everybody has too settle for lower tier stuff, that lower tier stuff will get quite decent. I mean at the end of the day people who play this game choose this over like for example pure battle simulators like Showdown. The Question is why? Probably cause they like the idea of a pokemon game working like an MMO - and in EVERY mmo you get your face smashed by somebody with high gear compared to your low gear. So you work your way up. save up wealth to buy eventually the better stuff and improve.

 

I know this is hard to make a pure comp player ever agree with, but why do they play an mmo in the first place then ._.

[Fredrichnietze]

1/32 of 31 iv since 0 is also a possibility.

 

and thats 1/100 x 1/32 x 9/32(att) x 1/2 x encounter % which we all know is below 1% but lets say 1% for arguments sake (also ignoring catch/run rate)

you get the answer of

4.39453125e-7 or 0.0000000439453125e which in a fraction is a 1/439,453,125 of finding a jolly marvel scale x/23-31/x/x/x/31 dratini

 

assuming 1% encounter rate, 1% hidden ability rate, 100% catch rate, and ignoring ALL other iv's which actually matter because thats what makes dnite so bulky.

 

and ofc this problem is not just for dnite.

[Sanchez]

meh cant edit in this forum either <.<

 

well i dont think its as worse as u pointing it out, i already bought some comps that have those horrible encounterrates that u pointed out with a decent nature and all ivs 23+. i dont think they will ever be buffed to 5-10% encounter, maybe slightly tho, cause they want to keep it with the idea of an mmo with "high end gear" and lower valuable stuff. there are plenty of things that a comp player by heart wont like in this game, but making comps easy accessible made other pokemon online mmos crash totally. i already had my rant about the idea of having legendaries only as one timers for the comp scene, but apparently they wont be allowed in ranked play anyways. i kinda like the idea of having hard to get comps, i know that pure comp players wont like that, but they at least give a long time goal in the end.

 

All IVs 23+ don't matter if the IV that matters isn't 31, or if the nature isn't the right one, or if the ability is wrong. 10% is too much, sure, but 5% is already pretty low, it's 1/20 encounters. It's fine having rare stuff, like I said, it's not fine to make it so hard to find that you'll never find a good one.

 

If it is kept as it is, I wouldn't be surprised if stuff like Dragonite never saw play, and instead more common stuff with the right IVs did. I know I'd rather use common, weaker (in theory) pokemon, with the IVs in the right place, because I know that they will out speed and one shot the shitty Dragonites, or take 4 hits instead of 3 the shitty Blissey would, and so on. You get my point, surely.

When you will notice trace do not works will throw yourself to the window.This is a not funny thing.

Actually the game isnt prepared to competitive.And there are many things to do before that.I just dont expect nothing about competitive in a few months.Which means the spawn rate probably prevail.

But this is a mmo.

And this things will happen.

 

That Dragonite sucks, to be honest. It has Inner Focus, which means that it's ability is pretty much nothing. It will get oneshot by any pokemon that knows Ice Shard. It's Adamant and 25atk, which is decent, but only has 19 speed IVs, which means it will be out sped by any other Dragonite that is Jolly/Timid with over 10 IVs in it, and since it's also a base 80 speed, it gets out sped by the majority of the OU tier.

That Dragonite doesn't work neither as a revenge killer, for being too slow, nor as a setup, because they'll just switch in anything with an Ice move or Ice Shard and one shot it.

 

I understand the game isn't ready for competitive. But it will never be if these issues don't start getting tackled soon.

 

Now change your mind and forget about Showdown and breeding, here you need to catch or buy these pokes to counter this.With no breeding system and useless Ditto.Will be easy.

Idk if you play another pokemon online like this,but the rate about dratini is the same or even better.

[Skazord]

i get your points, but i think u see it TOO MUCH from a comp perspective. You are arguing with comp sets and ivs / natures that u can find in smogon that consider everything is available easily. but when everybody has too settle for lower tier stuff, that lower tier stuff will get quite decent. I mean at the end of the day people who play this game choose this over like for example pure battle simulators like Showdown. The Question is why? Probably cause they like the idea of a pokemon game working like an MMO - and in EVERY mmo you get your face smashed by somebody with high gear compared to your low gear. So you work your way up. save up wealth to buy eventually the better stuff and improve.

 

I know this is hard to make a pure comp player ever agree with, but why do they play an mmo in the first place then ._.

 

I actually gave a lot of free byes. I only considered a single IV, which is often considered the most important one, speed. The reason I considered it is, because if you don't care about speed, or don't have perfect speed, someone else will, which makes your pokemon worse in a competitive scene. 31 isn't easy to get, but it's a standard for someone that plans to be competitive. Because if you aren't, someone else will be, and beat you at it.

 

MMOs are good for competitive play because no one has perfect pokemon. But even with imperfect ones, you have to settle for something, that something is what you strive for. And right now, that something is just too damn hard to get, near impossible I'd say.

 

3 people on my team were looking for Sandiles (or something, don't remember) for 3 straight hours yesterday, all at the same time, and they didn't see a single one. This isn't an issue that affects only competitive players. If 3 players can't find a single one in 3 hours, how will normal players even find a single one by themselves? Not even considering any competitive stuff.

 

The rates need to be fixed. Anything under 1% for NFEs is not okay.