XelaKebert

Trolls gonna troll. You heard incorrectly. The devs are very tight lipped about what they work on and when they release updates. So I will be just as surprised as anyone else if Johto were to come out tomorrow. Edit to add: Not on the dev team, but you definitely did not get correct info.

It's cleeeeeean.

What do you mean by Comfort Points?

You've missed the point of that topic entirely. The topic wasn't complaining about new players undercutting prices on higher priced listings, it was point out that there was suddenly a large influx of items like Amulet Coin at progressively lower prices, which is indeed concerning. You are using that as a means to justify holding a stance that something makes a difference in gameplay when it does not. It's not "what" the system was designed for but rather "who" the system was designed around. The system was designed to get players who are used to the vanilla games allowing you to level well beyond the level of the gym leaders and roll through with your starters to think more seriously about their team. Not necessarily in a means that makes them want to play competitive, but in a manner that prepares them for future content. As an example, look at the Pumpking event. If you were allowed to just smash through everything with your starter then that event would come as a very large shock to you given the higher difficulty of the boss. This is all stuff the devs have mentioned before. This part right here invalidates literally everything else you can say on the matter. Mere access to anything on the GTL does not imply intelligence on how to use it effectively. That is something acquired through active gameplay. You literally are saying GTL makes it easier but then saying, "6x31 doesn't equate to intelligence," but you can replace the 6x31 with literally anything on the GTL and it will still yield the same result. It completely defeats everything else you can say. Example: "Access to Choice Specs doesn't imply intelligence on how to use them." "Access to a level 50 Emboar doesn't imply intelligence." Repeat that over in your mind and internalize it. You've already acknowledged that the GTL doesn't actually make a difference.

You reached so far for your arguments you neglected the average user, which is what the system is designed around. Your average player isn't looking for those Pokemon and this is something you need to realize. You are making this argument on the basis that everyone has some high level knowledge of field abilities, what they do, and when they need them. This is quite simply false. Sure there is a segment of the playerbase that has that knowledge, but your average user isn't seeking those specific abilities out. I know what you meant by "anticipating the story" and you are quite frankly incorrect. You are making assumptions based on a small segment of the community instead of the community at large. You don't need 6x31 Pokemon to beat the storyline and they most certainly are /not/ cheap for your average user. In fact, your average user likely hasn't even looked at IVs and is using their 6x15 starter and 5 randoms they caught. The thought of picking up a 6x31 hasn't even crossed their mind at all. I've already made the same argument that IVs don't equate to intelligence, but you are arguing that access to them does. Just because you have access to something that can help you win, that doesn't mean you know how to use it to help you win. There is a difference here. Not to mention that not everyone is here because they know the original games. There are players who this is their first time experiencing a Pokemon game. You are over generalizing the population of the game. The AI is designed in such a way that it is reasonably challenging without being a major barrier to users who don't know comp. It's meant to get the average player with some exposure to the original games thinking about how to build their teams rather than using an overlevelled starter to bulldoze the gyms. What you are claiming about GTL access making things easier is absolutely false. You based that on a generalization of your own experience. I could make the same arguments from mine, but I won't because they wouldn't hold any water. Players with high level experience in Pokemon aren't the majority of the community, they are a small percentage. They are who your entire argument is based on. If you cared to do any surveying of casual players you'd find that the GTL itself makes no significant difference. The difference maker is knowledge. As players gain knowledge they will inevitably clear the game faster. The average players who are clearing faster are the ones who are learning and thinking on their feet regardless of whether or not they use the GTL. The sooner you realize that, the better.

It doesn't reduce the difficulty at all. Sure you can get abilities like Frisk and Flame Body through there, but you can also catch them yourself. It doesn't "anticipate the story" because the GTL is independent of the story itself. Just because you have access to a large variety of Pokemon and items that can be very helpful with the story, that doesn't mean you know how to use them and with the level caps in place based on your progress in your current region it certainly does not cheapen the storyline at all. Getting four badges may seem like a low bar for access to it, but it's far more reasonable than making you wait until post-E4. An average player is going to have some difficulty getting to that mark. Not too much, but it's definitely not like it was in the cartridges.

Please do not defile the glory of Spinda by using its name in the same sentence as speedrunning. Spinda is too good for speedruns. Spinda does slow runs.

Not implemented. It is unknown if there are plans to implement it or not.

Why not make the friend list and block list a config file stored locally? At that point you are limited by PC capacity for the most part. I'm sure there are other limitations to this idea, but the ability to essentially keep your list locally would allow you to add others to it without having to unblock someone if you run out of space. To prevent issues with players adding other players to harass them while they are online, if you add someone to your friend list who has you blocked, the block list overrides the friend list and the name gets dropped from your list.

There are too many points that I'll reach character limit before I can address all of them and I have no interest in multiposting to do so. 1) Scouting is hindered but not impossible. You just don't know if the information you can glean is going to be relevant to your next match or not. What this means is that you have an idea of what you /could/ still face. You then have the option to build for coverage for some of that and coverage for other unknowns or not. That's your choice at the end of the day. The ability to respond to less than complete information and still win is a critical skill you need for team building. 2) I've never once said scouting is lame and should be prevented. What I said is that scouting /should not make a difference in the flow of the tournament/. There is a big difference between saying it shouldn't exist at all and saying its impact should be lessened. Do not interpret this as me even remotely implying that tournaments where scouting can't be lessened are inferior or lame or any other negative description you can apply to them. Stop arguing against statements I've never made. 3) Scouting doesn't rely on all of your opponents using the same team, and it never has. That's just plain ridiculous if you think it does. What the old system allowed was for you to gain information on 2 distinct players. With this system you can't just stop at 2 players until later in the bracket. What this means is that you now have several different scenarios you have to look at along with your own match to set your team for the next round. I find it quite ridiculous that there are very skilled comp players in here who are saying that not being allowed to just stop at 2 players is hindering the meta. You all drive the meta, not the devs. Regardless of what system is put in place, if you aren't actively trying to innovate then you are contributing to stagnation. I will yield to a potential that the current system may hasten stagnation, but the only way to stop that is for you to stop playing safe. Which brings me to my next point. 4) The notion that this system encourages playing safe teams above others is completely false. I can't tell you how many times I've sat through matches where both players used similar teams before this was even a thing. It's ridiculous to say that this system has encouraged it when playing safe has always been the mantra when prizes are on the line. Nobody wants to lose in the first round with an unproven build, but everyone wants someone else to win the whole event with an unproven build. It's a vicious cycle, and the only ones responsible for it are /you/. Not the devs, not me, and definitely not the system. At the end of the day, you are the ones responsible for where the meta heads. 5) Comparing PokeMMO meta to Showdown Meta for Gens 3-4 is not an apt comparison. You aren't grinding for access to materials you need to build a team in Showdown so it stands to reason that players there will be more willing to play with risky builds. They don't lose anything other than time and maybe a bit of pride. If you lose with a risky build here you are out money, items, breeding fodder, and time. Team building in PokeMMO is a larger investment overall. Unless the devs decide to revert the system, which honestly wouldn't be terrible either, you need to adapt to the system. The only thing the devs can do is decide whether or not to keep this system. They can't force you to play teams that are less safe than others. That's your decision.

You are reading way too far into what I am saying. PSL has no means of controlling scouting. That doesn't make it bad or any less exciting. But scouting is still allowed, but it's harder to do. Which makes counter teaming more skill based. It absolutely does not. It means you know how to deal with that team specifically. That's literally all it means. There isn't creativity in counter teaming someone unless you do so with something completely off the wall, which nobody does in a tournament in the first place. No, it's to reduce the impact of scouting and emphasize skill over access to direct information. Instead of getting direct info on your next opponent you may have info on your next 5-6 possible opponents, which means building a robust team to deal with them and leaving very few gaps in coverage. Not necessarily. What is happening is that even if you still employ scouts, the info you need is distorted by extra info. With extra info you have an idea of what threats you could come up against. Distilling that info and using it to build a robust team to respond to what is likely to be out there is more key than knowing exactly what you are going up against. That, in itself, is a very important skill, and much more important that responding to direct information. By lack of resources, I am referring to a lack of scouts. There will always exist a gap in competitive resources such as Pokemon and items between a veteran player and a new player. You also assume that newer comp players are on resource rich teams. That may not be the case. You aren't reversing anything here to be completely honest. What you miss out here with the system is that direct information is only applicable to a single match. If you are still scouting to gather information, you are getting a larger picture of what is likely to be in play in future rounds. This means you can use that along with your performance in a given match to better adapt to the trends you are seeing. I'd argue that countering on a macro level is a much more important skill to have rather than relying on information that would only apply to a single match. You know just as well as I do that this notion is false. Every once in a while someone will bring something new to a tournament, but the vast majority will play with safe builds. Ones they know to be solid and reliable. This isn't anything new and you know that. It goes both ways. You act like playing it safe until you have another build you can rely on is a bad thing. If you're playing for a prize you want to have your best chances of winning. Playing with experimental builds isn't always the best way to achieve those ends. And your opponent is flying just as blind as you are. Nobody is being punished. You can have 10 well rounded teams the same as your opponent could also have 10 well rounded teams. If you decide to switch between rounds you are both playing a gamble. It's not a system without scouting. It's a system without direct information reporting. There is a difference, and even with scouting the meta has stagnated many times. As for the system not punishing players for being versatile, a single team player can only win so many times before someone else finds a way to break their team. Once that happens they have to make the choice of whether or not to make those investments. The higher up a player sits with a single team, the larger the target on them grows as other players work to innovate and break the team. If that player chooses to not make extra investments in additional, they are only hindering themselves long term. That is, and has always been, the nature of comp play. Regardless of whether or not scouting is easy to do, you cannot force a player to make additional investments to protect their standings. They rise and fall on their own doing.

No it's not and no removing it doesn't cheapen anything. Full stop. Scouting is an external factor that should be controlled. If a player who only has one team can beat a player who has multiple, not only are they better than said player, but they show more skill in being able to adapt a single team. This is objective fact. Simply having multiple teams doesn't guarantee a win the same as having a single solid team doesn't guarantee a win. However, a player who has only been able to muster resources to build a single solid team for their /first/ tournament shouldn't have their effort and time cheapened because other players can't win without scouting. It was like that even before this change and it was like that before automated tournaments were a thing. That's not something that is going to go away. Everyone is going to play the builds they know to be safe while experimenting elsewhere with other builds. Besides, it's not like you /can't/ scout. They made it harder for players to scout ahead. The information that could be gleaned from that would yield the sensible solution for you to simply build a well rounded team that is capable of responding to most threats. If you can't do that without scouting then that is a you problem. Scouts are, and always will be, external forces that have the ability to shift the course of the tournament.

Amnesia Brace does this with the limitation that the holder needs to be in the battle to gain EVs. It also splits the EXP gained by the number of Pokemon holding EXP Share. It's very nominal in how much it helps tbh. Lucky Egg helps more and has been made consumable to counteract the Exp boost.

Of course newer comp players will struggle, but the amount of time they struggle can be helped by keeping everyone blind as to who their opponent is. There is science in being able to win in a tournament as though it was the ladder system. While there is skill in counter-teaming, as pointed out, building a solid team that you can run for the whole tournament takes considerably more skill. Your access to scouts and extra teams should not be a factor in tournaments, ever. The skill comes in knowing how to run the team in different situations. Not every match is going to be cookie cutter. A skilled player with a single, solidly built team should not feel like their work gets cheapened because they got scouted and counter-teamed. There is less emphasis on skill when you know what your opponent is going run. The random system doesn't take away from that. You can still use a different team each round as long as it was in your battle box before the tourny, iirc. The point I've made is that not everyone can do that or prefers to do that. Their effort shouldn't be cheapened by an external factor that can be controlled. Remember that with this system, no player has an inherent advantage over the other in terms of prior knowledge. You know just as much about your opponent's team as they know about your team. The random system is a far cry better than the alternative to controlling scouting, which would be disabling spectating during tournaments.

Having two different standards on automated tournaments is not good design. A newer player could cut their teeth in CC but then be completely thrown off by the change in bracketing dipping into the standard tournaments. The reason why seats are randomized between rounds is to lessen the impact of scouting. Scouting leads to players being able to strictly counter-team a player, which lessens the impact of skill. While it takes some skill to know how to counter a given team, let alone use a given team. Not knowing who you are going to face in the next round means that you and your opponent are on equal footing as far as knowledge is concerned. Tournaments are tests of skill, not a display of who has the most resources. Having a system which gives an inherent advantage to players with more resources diminishes the impact of skill based plays. If you know your opponent only has a single team and have built a team to strictly counter them, it really doesn't take much skill at that point. Don't get me wrong, it still does take some skill, but it's diminished by the fact that your prior knowledge and access to more resources has given you more advantage.

Bingo, Normal and Shout have reasonable applications and should be used as such. Channel chat itself is great in theory, essentially a global chat for your channel, but a region based chat that functions like global would be great. Have the region based chat be the default for all players logging in unless they set it otherwise and have no badge requirement on it so new players can ask questions relative to their respective regions and get answers easier.

Staff tend to use that for local broadcast during events.

Oh how terrible. Surely it's not like changing Pokeballs is something that's been requested more than just that one instance.

No, there isn't support for that yet.

Considering you have no actual knowledge of how staff investigates RMT it's better that you not speak on difficulty. This isn't a valid argument to have spectating removed from the Halloween event either. Players try to RMT regardless of whether or not there is a seasonal event going on. Those players get banned when they are caught. Once they are banned, nothing comes from the assets that they gained because they are locked away. You are seriously grasping at straws here.

You get 3 battles in Striaton? I didn't know that.

A couple points to yield here. There is a legitimate argument that can be made for toggling spectating for your battles, but there are still issues with the idea. 1) The option can only work in PvE battles. There isn't a good way to reconcile the differences in PvP as some players prefer spectators while others don't. This is why PvP challenge dialog allows the option of making the match private when you send the request. The other player has to agree to this kind of match. Official tournaments are not likely to ever disallow spectators in any means so you are really asking for a means of blocking spectators in PvE. 2) Complaining about others "stealing" your team is quite honestly an illegitimate argument. As I've pointed out. The Pumpking existed well before there was an established Chinese community. Not once in the past 5 years has anyone every complained about their team and strategy being "stolen". This is honestly because the majority players don't care. The outcome of a PvE event that everyone has access to doesn't affect them in the least. Someone replicating your team has absolutely no effect on you in any manner. It is just as likely that someone used a strategy that had high success years ago that they adapted to the current changes. It is also just as likely that the means of reliably beating Pumpking without inducing sleep were already known prior to anyone in the Chinese community "discovered" them. It's the nature of the beast. Think of any team build. If you think it's original then it's probably already been thought of and used in the past. PokeMMO has been around for 8 years now. The odds of you coming up with a wholly original team are slim at best and non-existent at worst. This is the nature of the beast for any kind of strategy game. Pokemon as a franchise has existed for almost 30 years. Games that have been around that long are likely to have almost every viable strategy known in some manner. You are not going to have a wholly original strategy unless you make a brand new strategy game.

That's why you set the rate such that it's still more profitable to battle the Pumpking. The point isn't to negate the battle. The point is to give the candies an actual outlet after the event ends. This could be either a straight exchange for a reduced payout or by converting them to Spooky Candy. In either case the Special Candy has an outlet such that it no longer rots in your inventory. To be completely honest, allowing items that were made to be exchanged during an event no outlet after the event ends isn't very good design. The only exception being if a player does not have enough Spooky Candy to qualify for an exchange.

Are we going to roll back to the 4 badge Kanto days of PokeMMO?

Just know what you used and the moves alone does not guarantee success. You need to understand that. You also need to understand that Pumpking's typing progression has not changed since 2015. This means that you likely stumbled upon a strategy somebody else already knew about. The only players you seem to have an issue with are players who are new to the game because I can guarantee you that no veteran of the event is doing this. If someone is recording you battling without your permission, you ask them to stop, and they don't block them. That should stop them from being able to spectate you period unless my memory has failed me here. Last I recall, blocking someone removes you from their view of the overworld. Use the tools you have available.