The Truth

[Cjokerc]

Honesty is a hard thing to talk about. But, it also allows progress and development. This development can either be for the greater good, the worse or is simply geared for the select few. So, what is a fact? A fact is something that can be repeated, a million times and will always end with the same result.

 

This game is now pay to play. Fact.

 

My evidence is simple.

 

Earlier today, I was able to lay witness to a Gengar that was sold for 600k. This occurred about 8:30 pm central standard time. I thought to myself, how would an individual freely have 600k to throw away? Especially in a game where I can quickly assess that 30-50k can be made on victory road, just before the exit to the Elite 4, within 4-5 hours of solid gameplay. I currently have membership. (TAKE NOTE: This timeframe is DOUBLED for anyone without membership)

 

Membership Allows:

https://gyazo.com/de571953be46996d62c7dde51489ba9d

 

This is the reason I can make this amount of money in that amount of time. This process has been easy to repeat, as I have done so every day for a week just before I beat the Original Elite 4.

 

I then thought to myself, how much time would I have to spend to get 600k? Well, 600/50 is 12, that is 12 days. For all of you confused, that's 600k, divided by 50k, resulting in 12 days to accomplish.(TAKE NOTE: This timeframe is DOUBLED for anyone without membership) If you make 30k a day, that is 20 days of gametime. I then thought to myself, well how can I do that in 2 days? Or even 1?

 

This game currently allows you to purchase Membership or 100 coins in game with in game currency. Membership goes for around 175k to 200k. Suddenly, I can make 200k with 15 Dollars. With 15 dollars, that is 3 purchases of membership and selling it 3 times to other users for a grand total of 600k. If sold at 175k, that is selling membership 4 times. With this being said, I can easily spend 30 dollars a month on this game, and be able to purchase anyone's pokemon from the trade channel that I so choose. I can outbid anyone who even almost attempts to outbid me.

 

 

 

 

 

Further, I would also like to add this concept.

 

Membership currently allows:

https://gyazo.com/9ec3be4f3db312fc51c079e6c20386d4

https://gyazo.com/de571953be46996d62c7dde51489ba9d

 

What this means, is that I can spend 1 week playing this game, anyone who does not pay for membership will spend 2 weeks doing so, now that does not sound like much return effort right? This is true, however, once you start increasing this amount, it really is disheartening. My 6 months of effort, is your years worth of effort if you do not have membership. My 1 year of effort, will be your 2 years of effort if you do not have membership. My 3 years of effort will take you 6 years to accomplish.

 

I will give you one more value, my 10 years of effort, will be your 20 years of effort if you never purchase membership.

 

See, once you start increasing the values, it is incredibly eye opening and now incredibly disheartening to anyone who cannot afford membership.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, now that I have given everyone clear insight on how this game is pay to play. I am also a supervisor, as listed under my name, my manager explained to me once, and I will never forget this concept, but, he explained to me, that to be a good business man and really make it far. One should never point out a problem without also offering a solution. When a problem is pointed out, all your doing is showing yourself to be incompetent. Simply because, when someone is faced with a problem, their immediate reaction is protect themselves, just as anyone would, we are humans and that is in our nature, it is the single most true factor on why we even exist to this day. Without self preservation and a natural instinct to protect yourself(Deny, deflect, avoid responsibility) we would not be the most dominant thing on this planet nor would we have survived as a race/creature past a few years. I bring this up, because everyone who pays for membership will obviously offer reasons as to why I am incorrect, solely based on the reasons discussed in this paragraph.

 

 

The solution? Remove membership and all the benefits it creates, as well as the +25% experience from the coin shop.

 

 

 

What is the main issue that will stem from this other then the above listed benefits? A lack of funds for shane to continue running this game. So, obviously, This will be a hard concept to swallow. Unfortunately, this game was created by Nintendo, all rights to its contents are owned by another company and the only reason it exists here is due to a non profit agreement that Nintendo has in place to allow shane to have this game hosted on his server for us to play. I bring this up, because Nintendo wanted people like shane to struggle, making people financially struggle to do things like this creates the environment for people like shane to not continue with providing games like this. This is a strategic move by Nintendo to not allow people to freely play their creation which detours people from paying Nintendo money.

 

So, back to the resolution on how shane can continue to host this game with a sudden lack of funds to do so provided by us. Pokémon revolution can provide alternatives for purchase, such as, costumes for your character, name creation for pokemon, renaming your character, hats for your character, they can turn off the ability to have your first pokemon behind you, and allow that option to be purchase-able, purchased game content, like other regions(you might say, wait, that is where it becomes illegal, unfortunately, pokemon revolution is already in violation of this agreement if one so chooses to construed the concept, being that with paid membership you do get content upon purchase, such as membership only pokemon), shoes for your character, clothes for your pokemon?, momentary access to special areas, server wide benefits such as purchased experience increase for everyone on the server(like someone donating 1 dollar for 1 hour of server wide experience increase), purchased guild/clan content(like removing the ability to have a clan image above your character in game and making it purchase-able for a guild to do so, setting a limit on the member count and making additional/increasing the member count by purchase.)

 

I will stop here on the suggestions, but as discussed above, I feel required to offer a complete resolution.

 

As it stands, all the online free to play pokemon games I have played, have 1 serious downfall. It honestly takes half a year to multiple years to obtain a team and level your pokemon just to make them viable for competition and even to progress through the game. The ONLY reason I play this online pokemon game is because it is relevantly easy to obtain the pokemon you want, and it only takes a week or so to level your team to competition status, EV's included. It can obviously take a whole lot longer to find the pokemon yourself. But this honestly only increases the timeframe by a few months or so realistically.

 

 

 

As it stands, I can honestly play this game for the first time, beat the 4th gym, and then sit there and sell membership/coins, I can then simply purchase the pokemon I want from anyone as they offer it in trade, and within a few days, to a few weeks, beat anyone I play against. All because of Real Money. This can easily be stopped. But, then you have to ask yourself, is this game actually for non profit use?

 

I will now post screenshots of what people pay per month to host a server.

 

https://gyazo.com/09822adf9e2b72e9cd3e2efcc6975220

https://gyazo.com/515be880e090587ac4478835787b5f4f

https://gyazo.com/96372d9fc629281714e4c3a0e9557179

https://gyazo.com/5f65a11f6c975610a3c874aba7a43e49

https://gyazo.com/401149e1d363ef66219ea8a1dfd2be33

 

 

Now, these are servers that are hosted by companies, cost ranges pretty far and apart. But what is huge to note is simple and is stated many times on the internet on thousands of forums.

 

https://gyazo.com/0c5fadcdca429aa6218563fd0d2573fd

 

If your hosting a game, on a server, it is insanely cheaper to own your own computer and and make that computer a server for your game. The cost to this setup depends on your internet provider. Currently at my cost, where I am located, enough bandwidth to cover 850 people will run me anywhere from 80$'s a month + 15$'s a month in electricity. That is 95$'s.

 

So what our funds go to, is to reduce that 120$ cost (increasing due to whatever idea). I have given many ideas to reduce that monthly cost. I also think that many other ideas can be created to appropriate a reduction in cost to this monthly concept.

 

What will be the best benefit under this concept if applied, is it will increase the staff's willingness to get creative, it will greatly increase the chances for people to be able to want to continue playing this game, for as long as they want without deterrence from the game itself, long lasting play from users will encourage each user with the capability to aide in the development of this game, it will slowly extract long time players from other online pokemon games. The environment as a whole will be beneficially to its players both immediately and overtime and for new users.

 

I am also done applying anymore thought to this. :)

[Leotosi]

" I can quickly assess that 30-50k can be made on victory road, just before the exit to the Elite 4, within 4-5 hours of solid gameplay"

 

[glow=red]Do u know there are better spots to grind money than that place?. i think u need to play the game more, ive done more than that money gridning in dragons den (ive had 550gold from a single pokemon) . i havent pay anything than pokedollars, have many epic pokemons and when i need money i go back to grind there (even while training u can do like 100-200k even more)[/glow]

 

 

"See, once you start increasing the values, it is incredibly eye opening and now incredibly disheartening to anyone who cannot afford membership."

 

[glow=red]anyone can buy membership from other players and then get the money back really fast while training (ive bought 2 already with pokedollars and have nothing to complain since is an investment)[/glow]

 

 

[glow=red]well about costs ill leave u this here since u are missing one of the most important cost in any business:[/glow]

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/opportunitycost.asp

 

[glow=red]this will become pay to play for u, if u instead of playing the game keep crying in the forum ;) enjoy the game, dont cry a river or ill have to grind magikarps in your tears[/glow]

[Mouchies]

The gengar deal was stupid in my opinion. You can find a gengar with 29-31 in speed and sp atk and have it do the same job. 15 more defense and hp or whatever should not give it a 500k price increase.

 

However, why in the world are you going off on prices and what not if you haven't even finished the game yet lmao? I can get 200k by just training pokemon up in dragon's den in just a couple hours or so. Albeit I have membership, but even halved that's still substantially better than what you were going off of.

 

Right now membership just decreases time of leveling and money gain. Unless you really want to make a ton of level 100s leveling is a non-factor considering you can get like 50k exp a poke in DD easy. Money can get you some nice pokes, so can hunting for them. I've found a few comp pokes in just a couple weeks.

[Crazyping12]

let me tell you a fact.. you would make more money than those who sell ms if you spend your day in blackthorn city fishing(and thats only the easiest way) .. once you said victory road i knew that u didnt well calcualte the incomes a player can make .. you can make 500k+ per day if u grind all day in blackthron. so lets say a player sells 3 ms per day which would be like 450-600k and i dont rly think someone stupid enough to waste money on a game everyday which means a player wouldnt sell 3 ms everyday in a week which means i can make way more money in a week than someone that sells ms.. so its not a matter if this is a pay to win game its a matter of players choice.. why would i spend money in a game if i can make more without paying real money ... tradable ms was put in game for those players who cant afford it or cant buy it with real money for some reasons.. and honestly if u made this topic because some guy payed 600k for a gastly.. i will just let you know that ppl has around 10m withoout selling ms. there is tons of ways to make money for example i never grind and i made around 3m just from hunting and trades and thats just because i hate grinding, so how much would i make if i grind + hunt. im suggesting for u to reconsider ur facts :p

[M4sterj0e]

This is my take on PRO membership and the coin shop.

 

1. In PRO, as with other Pokemon games, the economy is only half the game. The other half is PvP. It doesn't matter what your bank looks like if you suck Weedle at battling.

 

2. Pay-to-win mechanics help students and employed people to compete in game wealth with those who have more time on their hands to play. A completely free-to-play game will discourage the former from investing a heavy amount of time and effort into it, only for them to fight a losing battle against the hardcore grinders. Also, with the recent modification of membership into an item, it's more possible for penniless players to afford membership and coins through hard-earned pokedollars. As a player who'd rather not spend real money atm on this game, I'm actually enjoying this win-win situation.

 

3. Victory Road is poop compared to Dragon's Den when it comes to pokedollar profit and experience gains. A non-member player spending 4-5 hours in Dragon's Den, according to calculations a friend of mine made, will make approximately 100-125k pokedollars. This is not even including the potential pokedollar profit from the experience gained through battle, since lv90-100 Pokemon can be sold for quite a bit compared to their UT counterparts.

 

4. Doing away with membership benefits is not smart for an up-and-coming game like PRO. Pay-to-win is a necessary evil to support Shane and his project. If players are unloading gratuitous amounts of bills into the game, it just adds to the potential success of PRO. Remember that this game is in beta development and that we're all beta testers.

[Justroman]

>Farms money on victory road

Im gonna sound hella rude but this part killed the whole thing for me. I read that, saw the wall of text and just skipped to the end to see if it got better. The nail in the coffin was that a comp team takes a week to prepare. Now if you're wanting extremely good pokemon with near perfect IV's sure it might take a week. However, I've EV trained 3 things and gotten them to level 100 all in a day at dragon den its just so fast, not to mention all the money farmed while doing that.

 

Tl;dr : Complete something before you critic it. If you stop at the halfway point of course things wont be optimal.

[Sesshomaru]

if u make only 600k in 12 days you should reconsider your ways of making money lol, i already blasted like 3mill on comps and NEVER sold membership so far

[Bullseye]

he is right about 1 thing ...pay towin is almost true (u pay real money to get poke$ and then buy good pokes)..BUT anyone do what he wants with his money and the game need some cash to stay up and running and have this awesome team to fix bugs and implement more stuff... this game SHOULDNT be charity , people who work should get something in return . And some pay money to get poke$ without farming (maybe no time,or they have a busy job ) .

 

you suggest them to ask money for the game and a monthly fee like the big companies do? cuz i dont see how can someone keep this game up and running just with its own money

[Orihara]

I can see where you're coming from and the reason of your frustration, but you're missing a few points in here.

As far as definition goes. The game is not Pay to Win, since you can finish the game without having MS and can be on equal terms if you're good at trading and other aspects that can grant you ingame currency.

Most of the misconception is the MS only areas, do they give an extra advantage to players? Not really, only a handful of pokemons. Which are going to be available to everyone by the time we have more regions to fit them in.

All the donations are being used for paying the server costs, nothing more.

MS doesn't give that much of an extra benefits to players, only increased exp and money payout aside from extra content.

[Thor]

I would suggest you aftually get further in the game.

 

PRO was designed to be hard at the start but get easier as the game goes on. This is just a fact of life. Rich people will get more than poorer people. This isnt a new concept to grasp this happens everywhere in life.

 

PRO is a pay-to-enhance game, not pay to win. We dont force people to pay if they dont want to, u just gotta make a little bit more effort in playing.

 

So what if you're not able to play it as much as others? I have a job, i also spend a lot of time drawing new tiles, scripting and i spend time at the gym. But i still manage to make an effort ingame as a player.

 

'The truth' juet sounds like 1 kid ranting because he is falling behind other people.