Concerning the economy and the number of players

[Merse]

After two months of playing we're getting to see the pros and cons on PROs current situation as an MMO. As we all know, having a healthy market is a key point of a successful MMO as well as endgame content. Bellow I collect some things I think are key issues of PRO currently. And as this is a suggestion forum I try to suggest some solution too.

 

ISSUES:

 

1) There is no such thing as a "rare" Pokemon

I mean not one that is really sought-after. About 99% of Pokemon can be obtained at ease, with a mere few hours of hunting. What is the point of having 9 tiers of rarity if almost the same? Let's just face it, it doesn't matter if it's "abundant" or only "common". As long as it spawns by the dozens in every hour you spent hunting, nobody cares! Currently there are 3 kind of Pokemon in PRO: 1) commons (95% of Pokes), 2) somewhat rares (which can take a few hours to find, but no serious effort is needed) and 3) insanely rares (only a handful of Pokes and they are mostly only vanity pets)

The best examples are Dragon types. Dragon Pokemon are supposed to be extremely rare and even a bad one should be vendible easily. But during my time spent in the Dragons Den, I found at least one but usually more Dragon typse in every hour. My boxes are full of Bagons and Dragonairs and I can't sell them because there are so many!

Or there is the Abra line. Alakazam is the best Psychic type out there and a must-have for every strong PVP team. Yet, the market is crowded with them! It is so easy to find Abras that in every hour you can see an epic one with perfect nature for sale. That's not normal...

There is not a single Pokemon that would be widely on demand and would be difficult to find (maybe with the exception of Eevee, but it's only available in a safari zone). Pokes that are hyper-rare are vanity pets, not used in endgame at all...

In a healthy economy a useful Pokemon should always find its buyer, even if it has no 20+ IVs and perfect nature. Currently you can sell only epics with at least decent nature, or you you can't sell them at all (or only for a ridiculous price). Which is kind of understandable... Why would I spend my money on a decent Bagon, if I can catch one for myself in one hour? Literally, if you can't find someone who wants a Poke to stroll through Kanto or Johto, you might as well release your decent Pokes because nobody gonna pay for them.

 

2) Synchronize

Synchronize makes the situation described above even worse. As Pokemon with this ability are very easily obtainable, anyone with next to no investment can get one with the desired nature. Heck, people are selling Synchro Abras of every nature for 5k right now!

And with this ability working in 50% of the times, you can practically be sure, that if you catch a bunch of a certain species, some of them will have perfect nature, so you'll have something at least decent in your hands. All you had to do is to spend 5k and you basically granted yourself that you gonna find an at least decent one from the Poke you're hunting. This is only one step away from breeding, as with next to no investment you can grant yourself access to Pokemon with perfect nature.

 

3) Not enough membership content

This is one I'm sure I'm gonna be criticized about :)

Currently membership Pokemon are simply not worth the effort of hunting them. Any Pokemon that is not a vanity pet can be caught by non-members on at least one map. The two exceptions are Axew and Duskull, but anything else that is MS-only is basically pointless to have. It is very nice and admirable of the staff that they don't want to make the game P2W by making every Pokemon available for non-members, but it is killing the game on the long run. Why would a non-member spend money on a MS Poke if he can catch one with perfect nature easily for himself?

Member-only regions aren't worth much either. Sevii Islands are empty with nothing you couldn't get somewhere else. The DD special area has only a single Pokemon that can't be caught elsewhere. The only thing worth having is the basement of Pokemon Tower, but it's so deep down in that annoying maze (even with having the tutorial available it's tiresome and just plain pointless) that it's almost doesn't worth the effort...

In a healthy economy members would hunt for member-only Pokes so they can sell them to non-members. And non-members would hunt for some extremely rare Pokes to sell them to to the members.

 

4) No real endgame content

What should you do when you have beaten the Johto Elite 4?

Hunting for desired Pokes you don't have yet is not a big challenge as you can find anything easily. So usually you're stuck with filling up your Pokedex. But also thanks to the NPCs that give you some Pokes for free (Seriously, Mr. Mime for Abra and Lickitung for Tangela? Why not Khangaskan for a Pidgey?), it goes very quickly.

You could get to Love Island, but fulfilling the requirements takes only about 3 days to do. And the same is true about the Trainers Valley.

The Dragons Club and the Train system quest doesn't really gives you anything worth the effort.

Beating Red and the Pumpkin King means endless hours of pointless grinding - or it takes only a mere few hours of grinding if you spared up your rare candies.

And what do these endgame contents reward you with? Practically nothing...

Logically the way would be to improve your team, but you can't really do that either. Chances are that with your Synchro Abra you already have your team with perfect nature by the time you have beaten the E4. And as they are easily obtainable, most liekly they have nice IVs as well, so the best you can do is to go back and catch the same Pokes you already caught countless times, and find one that has slightly better ivs than your previous team member had. And most likely all of your other Pokes will be released as everybody does the same and nobody wants to buy an "only good" Poke.

 

5) Illogical trading prohibition further cripples the trade

Even if you manage to strike a deal, the illogical trade restriction rule often prevents you from doing it. Currently you can't trade Pokes CAUGHT in Johto before you got the 8th badge in Kanto and vice versa. Unfortunately however, a very significant part of Pokemon can be caught in both regions. I tried to sell a Ralts and a Growlithe the other day to two guys. Both Poeks are available in both regions, but unfortunately that particular Ralts was caught in Kanto and the buyer didn't beat Claire yet, and that particular Growlithe was caught in Johto and its buyer was still in Kanto. The game doesn't indicate at all where the Poke was caught, so you have no idea if the buyer can actually get it or not until you try to trade it! Or you can write notes about every Poke - which I did not...

 

 

EFFECTS:

As an effect of the causes above Pokemon market is virtually non-existing. Very few transaction, with huge oversupply and next to no demand. Only shinys and epics with perfect nature have any chance of finding a buyer with the occasional transactions of random Pokemon to help newcomers to flash through the regions.

And as there is not really anything worth hunting for, and no endgame contents, the player count of the game is imploded in the last week. One week ago you could barely log in on a weekend day, now there are several places available on the server all day.

 

 

SOLUTIONS:

So after telling you that PRO is horrible in every possible way (sarcasm :P ), let's see what we could do about it.

1) Completely revise the rarity system, make every Pokemon much harder to find, especially Pokemon on high demand like Abra, Bagon, Skarmory, Swablu, Lapras or Dragonair.

2) Close the Dragons Den! Not completely, but either make it Members-only, or at least make us do the Dragons Club quest to get in at all!

3) More members-only content! The Dragons Den, Johto Safari, Lake Rage (with some special spawns) etc. could become MS_only, or the Sevii Islands should get lots of extra spawns. And make more Pokes MS-only, Pokes like starters and maybe Eevee, or Heracross. The point is that they should be sought-after and inspire members to hunt them and trade them for other Pokes they don't have time to hunt themselves.

4) Revise the trade rule! Instead of the place of the Pokemon CAUGHT the place where the Pokemon is AVAILABE should count (so as Growlithe is available in both regions, it should be tradeable between regions regardless of where it was caught)

5) Reduce the effect of Synchronize from 50% to at least 20%. It makes endgame actions take longer and also opens the market for not-perfect natured Pokes.

 

 

And now it's your turn to tell me I'm stupid and don't understand how an MMO works :Angel:

You may agree with me too if you wish :P

 

 

TLDR:

It is too easy to find even the most sought-after Pokemon currently so nobody gonna buy one on the market, making it practically dead. Being easy and cheap to get a Synchro Poke makes things worse as Pokemon with perfect nature are abundant. And the fact that there are very little truly members-only content kills the possibility of members hutning for MS Pokes and trade it for other rares caught by non-members. And finally with the lack of endgame content, the almost rewardless endgame quests and the fact that you can very easily build up a very strong team because you can catch anything with little effort, had lead to the implosion of the playerbase in the last week.

[Phunny]

In my opinion you have some valid concerns.

 

The game is still in development, and more content is to come as the beta progresses. One thing that you mentioned jumped out at me in a bad way. I do not think that making the dragon's den a members only zone, or adding additional members only zones, is the way to resolve any issues. Rather, it will divide the playerbase and the advantage gained from donating will border on pay to win.

 

Additionally, I do think you have a good point about rare pokemon. Other than shiny pokemon, most pokemon aren't rare. A solution to this would be to make some pokemon more difficult to obtain. I agree that introducing quests to gain access to premium areas (as in great areas; not members-only areas) is a great idea. Not only will this mean that some pokemon are rarer than others, but it will also generate end-game content for players. The main issue with this would be that players at the endgame have an advantage over new and mid-game players, but I suppose that acts as motivation for players to reach the end game.

 

I just think that the game as a whole is a difficult beast to balance. If pokemon are too rare, players will be unhappy. If there aren't rare pokemon, people will lose motivation. Perhaps these issues could be dealt with by introducing a new feature, similar to digsites but with pokemon traps. Something that can't be grinded, but instead requires long-term dedication and a little bit of luck.

 

I'm interested to read the feedback and suggestions from other players.

[Eldra]

Some valid points, but I'd like to share some of my few cents:

 

1) Yes. It is arguable that, theoretically, Synchronize might be ruining the current market economy, but simply looking at the facts, at the current economy we could tell that competitive pokemon that have the right nature and great ivs are still valued highly (sometimes too highly as one could argue). Let's choose Abra/Alakazam, for instance, since you mentioned it on your first point. Yes, there are tons of abra out there, some with great natures and stats, but that's simply because the market has high demand and thus high number of people farming at the particular spot. An aside, I would contend that Starmie is a much greater psychic-type pokemon than Alakazam due to its bulk, synergy, and ability to rapid spin, but that's not the point here. Back to alakazam, as you have stated, "it is so easy to find Abras that in every hour you can see an epic one with perfect nature for sale". That is definitely not true, unless if your definition of "epic" is simply anything "usable", which is again subjective, and simply means that you might need to raise your standard. A timid 31 Speed 25+ Special Attack, all other relevent stats above 20+ is still extremely rare, could probably be sold for over 500k, and let's not even go into the ability, since everyone should know that Alakazam desperately need the hidden ability "Magic Guard" to be on par with other offenses, and that in the game the chance of encounter one with said ability is rumored at 1-5%. Same goes with your typical politoed, slowbro, ninetails, most of which are futile without their hidden ability. Let's suppose the chance of encountering an abra is, conservatively speaking, 1%. With a timid synchronize lead, that would make it 0.5% of being potentially a timid abra you are encountering. Since conservatively speaking 3% of the encounters are hidden ability, that would make it 0.015%. And that 0.015% is only the probability of seeing a timid abra with magic guard--unless you have the RNG god on your shoulder, you know that it would require perhaps dozens or hundreds of encounter to find something that fit a competitive standard. And still, you insist that it is common?

 

2) A beyond-ridiculous encounter rate for popular OU pokemon, e.g. Dragonite, Salamence, and Ttar, would easily corrupt the competitive scene since there would be a severe lack of balance where either the majority of people no longer plan teams specifically to counter those popular picks, where whoever has one of the three has an absolute advantage over others, or those would simply be banned in the spirit of being fair to all players. Neither are great solutions to competitively-minded players, in my opinion. Ultimately, aside from shiny traders and causal players, the market and the game dynamics are set chiefly by competitive players and I personally do not think that limiting the viability of pokemon to use on the competitive scene is a great idea.

 

3) "Chances are that with your Synchro Abra you already have your team with perfect nature by the time you have beaten the E4. And as they are easily obtainable, most likely they have nice IVs as well..." I would highly advice you to look into what exactly is competitively viable by high standards. The end-game content, aside from new updates with new content, etc., is naturally PVP/tournaments, as with most mainstream mmorpgs/mmo in general. PVE is always great but is seldom satisfying for an end-game goal, due to the limits of artificial intelligence. I'm sure the developers have in mind how to develop that foundation, and we would simply need to give them some time. Also, legendaries are said to be implemented to be EXTREMELY RARE (there, you have the extremely rare pokemon), so that's another end game should you decide to go on that path.

 

 

Not trying to sound belligerent, but I'm simply a rather blunt person and write what I think. Apologies for lack of manners :)

[Pretentious]

Thank you for your suggestions.

 

1. As I'm sure you're aware, Pokemon were much more rare when this game began. I personally preferred the old spawn method, but we transitioned to an easier one based on suggestions/complaints from players. This debate will continue forever.

 

2. Same as above. Originally Synchronize wasn't in game. It was added later in response to the low spawn rates. After the spawn rates were increased, Synchronize was left in game.

 

3. I won't even respond to this. Any suggestions which give unfair MS advantages are not considered.

 

4. We're working on it. ;D Content creation takes a long time, and we're still working through the few remaining bug issues we have with current content.

 

5. This is a side-effect of making things region specific. Look at it this way, restriction-free trading is an end-game advantage.

[Eleaten]

I don't agree that finding Pokemon should be part of the end-game. There already is an end-game, it's competitive battling.

 

If you make finding Pokemon take days, weeks, or months (you did not specify how much more 'rare' they should be made until you are personally satisfied with the rates), then the difficulty in finding a 'decent' competitive Pokemon (or maybe even just one with the right nature) would be compounded.

 

Related to my point above, your Synchronize nerf only looks at the most common Pokemon. Imagine if it takes one week to catch a 'rare' Pokemon . Now imagine repeating the process ~5 times to get one with just the right nature, ignoring IVs. Personally, I would quit if I needed to spend hours everyday over the course of one month in the same area to get one Pokemon.

 

Furthermore, some of your claims that you use to back up your statements don't really make sense.

"Dragon Pokemon are supposed to be extremely rare and even a bad one should be vendible easily."

Compared to other Pokemon you can find on the map, they ARE rare. Just not as rare as you'd like them to be? Even a bad one should be vendible easily, why? (Because "My boxes are full of Bagons and Dragonairs and I can't sell them"?)

 

"It is so easy to find Abras that in every hour you can see an epic one with perfect nature for sale. That's not normal..."

Epic is an entirely subjective phrase. There are many people in the game that classify their Pokemon as 'epic' without even considering the nature. Furthermore, it's only 'not normal' in the sense that you dislike it. What are you comparing 'normal' to? "All sought-after Pokemon should be rare" is not 'normal', considering in many other Pokemon games there ARE common Pokemon that make good competitive battlers.

 

"All you had to do is to spend 5k and you basically granted yourself that you gonna find an at least decent one from the Poke you're hunting."

Please don't use the price other people set as a biased example to back up your points. First of all, it is not reliable enough to assume that someone will be selling every nature Abra for 5k to anyone that wants one whenever. Secondly, I could rip off an unsuspecting player by buying their rare candies for 1k. Should I use that in my examples?

[Doomthegoon]

Im not a member so... Yeah

I disagree with some of your opinion regarding the advantages of a member should got

But, i agree with some of your opinion regarding about how the rarity system work

Maybe the PRO can tweak the rarity system a bit, and make rare pokemon, well, rare

That's all i have to say have a nice sunday :Smile: