baconcrispy

Yeah that's true, people do genuinely like the grind (part of the reason people play pokémon tbh) and it *is* part of playing the game. This game is by no means P2W, and that's a good thing. I think the whole issue is more about how rewarding the whole MMO experience feels. It feels great to invest time into something like building comps and see them finished, but it's kind of disheartening to see other players skip most of the process because they've spent real money on the game. I've seen similar concerns voiced before, but if it's only a small minority that have those concerns then I guess it isn't big enough of a problem to rework the current gift shop system.

I have no issues with donating to the game, it's reselling donated purchases for profit that's the problem. There's an imbalance in people spending hours to farm for comps and people who can just burn through IRL money to sell gift shop items and get comps instantly. Of course this doesn't affect PvP gameplay and you can still earn RP through PvP, but to even get to that point there's a huge time/yen investment whereas some players just flip gift shop items to cut out the middle man and get straight into PvP. My point is that players can skip a large portion of farming for most things by using real money to speed up the process (or just skip it entirely). Does it mean players are guaranteed a perfect comp from the GTL? No. Does it mean they're given an advantage in PvP? No. But it does mean that they can save so much time compared to other players who spend days before they're even ready to enter PvP with a viable team or players who spend ages grinding for that one hat on the GTL. I keep saying over and over that this has no impact on PvP, and you're right - it doesn't. What it affects is the PvE that players undergo to get yen for comps, vanities or whatever. They can either invest a huge amount of time through farming, breeding .etc, or they can use real money to get in-game yen and buy most (or all) of what they need on the GTL. I don't mind farming for yen to spend, but it's demotivating to know that players can essentially pay to skip a large bulk of farming while everyone else has (or chooses) to do it themselves. Again, nothing wrong with donating to the game, but the game's economy shouldn't be influenced by real money transactions. I'm not insisting that every comp player purchases their teams, but some players will do this since they can just resell items from the gift shop for yen. This doesn't change how useful/useless their team is, but donating money to the game gives players an external source of yen, reducing their time investment and drastically cutting down the time they spend team-building. The game is still fun and I'll play despite all of this, I just think the gift shop needs a rework to prevent real money from being a factor in how the in-game economy works.

Currently you can buy things like cosmetics, ocarinas, donator status and amnesia braces from the gift shop. I wouldn't be upset if these were exclusive to donors since they would have very little impact on the economy and are there for customisation or convenience. Gift shop vanities give players bragging rights for having donated to the game, and ocarinas/braces/donator status give small perks to make things easier for players. The problem is that some people don't use these items and immediately sell them for yen, and yen can be spent on almost anything including 5x31 comps that players have spent days breeding. Of course you could breed your own comps, but as you pointed out that involves a huge time and yen investment. And that's the problem. Some players can bypass this by simply buying comps from the GTL with yen from gift shop items. Breeders spend a lot of time on their comps so that they can use/sell them, so you would expect other players to either train their own comps or farm yen to purchase comps from the breeders and contribute to the game's economy. Donators on the other hand can spend a premium amount on gift shop items and flip them on the GTL to buy quick comps. This is great for players who are prepared to pay for shortcuts, but those who do not donate real money end up putting in far more hours to get the same results. Making future purchases of gift shop items untradeable would stop donators from having a real-life monetary advantage over players who invest time into getting their comps. Honestly, no idea.

It doesn't change the fact that players are able to bypass farming by selling gift shop items for yen and buying comps, but yes my issue is that some players can afford to do this when others cannot. The devs could fix this by making future purchases of gift shop items untradeable (like they used to be) but I know this would hurt the game's income from donations, which is why I encouraged any thoughts or solutions on the issue (maybe some alternative perks that wouldn't be directly convertible to yen). I agree that all players will still end up having to grind as throwing money at the game isn't a sustainable practice, but Player A with a huge disposable income will build a comp team in an hour whereas Player B could spend days getting to the same point. This doesn't hurt the economy, but it does make the effort put into farming seem a little pointless/unfair and makes the gift shop seem like an attractive pay-to-skip solution to farming.

I agree it isn't much, but getting paid $10/hr from an IRL job and converting it into 2m yen is better than mindlessly farming for hours in-game to get the same amount. Farming is such a waste of time if you can just pay to bypass it entirely, which makes it unfair on players who can't afford or choose not to donate. I know the game isn't pay-to-win, but it's still very much pay-to-advance-faster. Of course farming isn't fun, but why bother farming when you can buy your way out of it? I get that it's like this by design, but what's the point in farming if you can pay to avoid it altogether? If people value time over money and are given the option to skip the entire farming process by paying IRL money, which option sounds more appealing? Farming is easy, but so is making a quick donation and selling items on GTL. I haven't got anything against having paid donations since PokeMMO is F2P (and encourage them since the devs put years of work into the game), but being able to buy/sell gift shop items makes farming obsolete if you've got lots of IRL money to throw at the game. I doubt this thread will go anywhere since donations provide a lot of income for the game, but it's hard to justify spending hours farming when there's such an easy way to avoid it.

(Apologies in advance as I know this has been raised before, but it's still an issue that needs addressing) I did a quick check on prices for items on the gift shop and compared them to the same items on the GTL, and the conversion seems like the following: 100RP = $1 100RP = 200,000 yen In terms of time vs. money it seems way more efficient to buy RP with real cash, pick up a vanity and throw it on the GTL for some quick and easy yen than it does to spend countless hours rebattling gyms or making alts for berry farming. This isn't pay-to-win since it doesn't give players a PvP advantage, but donators are given a monetary advantage because they can get rich and build comp teams much faster than the average player (which in turn invalidates the effort players put into farming). The gift shop is mostly cosmetics and that's fine, but giving players the ability to convert real money into in-game yen just doesn't feel right. A solution could be to make future gift shop purchases untradeable (not items that have already been purchased since that would damage player trust), but I'm aware that these 'donations' help the devs to run the game and keep the lights on. I'm not an expert on the economy so any thoughts or solutions are welcome.

Adding a rom hack like Gaia could work since it only uses official mons from Gen 1-6, but Gen 6 content hasn't been added to PokeMMO yet (plus there's no clear indication if that will even happen / is possible with how the game currently works) As for Clover, no.

Only 8 encounters (got insanely lucky with this one)