[@Kyu was Kyubey all the time? 😭]

[About Event Raids]

I think the idea of keeping more experienced people with experienced/better people in raids is a horrible idea and just results in a feedback loop where good players always get good teammates and bad players always get bad teammates.

[Make boss/raid abilities more documented when releasing them]

I've raised this criticism before going back to Halloween and Anniversary events, but I think the amount of random stuff that bosses/raid mons have been doing has been turning into a huge undocumented mess, and has been resulting in a huge lack of respect for player's time, and making the content or rewards for the associated events less accessible. Let me elaborate a bit more.

When going through the raid battles for the first time, there's been some random abilities that especially aren't apparent upon playing against these mons compared to vanilla mons. How am I supposed to know that Slaking has a group paralysis effect under 50%? How am I supposed to know that these mons eventually shrug off status effects, flinches, stat drops, etc? Can I transform into them? How is Torment supposed to work? Can I use imprison? Can use Shedninja, or count on some BS ability nullifying Wonder Guard?

The answer of course to all of this is to try the strategy, lose, then try out another one to find out that the boss isn't subject to a niche move interaction. I'd argue this isn't fun at all, and where a big lack of respect for player's time happens, and dissuades players from trying out certain kinds of content entirely. This is especially a larger problem with Raids, where you have 3 other real players working with you who absolutely could get mad that you're trying to "experiment with strategies" at the moment.

I get it that gimmic strats are trying to be avoided by creating a bunch of these special interactions/nullified moves, but I think the only thing that has been happening as a result of it is a very limited/uncreative way to approach the bosses, and just creating tedious difficulty.

There are frankly amazing guides like this that the community has invested a bunch of time into to document what each Pokemon does at what time. But an argument of mine is that the community shouldn't be having to do this, and this shit should really be written down from the start to respect player's time.

I think some really solid rules of what can/cannot be done to a boss, and their abilities, phases, etc should be part of patch notes, or at least be released by the developers when they come out.

[EVERY SHINY DIFFICULTY LIST]

6 hours ago, razimove said:

tier lists in general are absolutely pointless 

Tier lists are just for fun bro, if you don't like it, you absolutely can just not comment.

[Legendary ? Where ?]

2 hours ago, LeZenor said:

Only the rightful king of England could pull the sword out of the stone, does that mean all the unworthy, luckless, non-pve players are not deserving of finding their legendaries? If you catch my drift

Strange women lying in ponds distributing legendaries is no basis for a system of government.

[Legendary ? Where ?]

17 minutes ago, Sourcerer said:

Is this another "game is too hard" post? Is the OP also proficient in more than or equal to 19 programming languages and less than 70 something else?

Game too monotonous. Nobody in this thread is really arguing that the current way of getting legendaries is difficult, it's just boring as hell.

[Legendary ? Where ?]

5 hours ago, CanadaSorry said:

I still fail to see a problem with them adding new content that isnt exactly spoon fed. Some people get lucky, but for the most part, if you want the cool shit, you need to put the effort in, or just be lazy and buy it from the GTL. Much like shinies. 

 

OT or release. 

We're not exactly asking for spoon fed content here. We're fine with a meaningful and fun grind (I think a lot of people were much better with obtaining Shaymin, for example). I think we're all pretty clear in our arguments here that we want more engaging gameplay to obtain the legendaries other than biking left and right.

[Legendary ? Where ?]

26 minutes ago, CanadaSorry said:

 

If you think these mimic shiny hunting, you havent started shiny hunting beyond maybe free, close to pc, shunts

 

If you have shiny hunted in the past.....im unsure what the problem is. These arent supposed to be handed out like candy. Sorry if thats what you want....

Even if this is "less bad" shiny hunting and more in-line with vanilla Pokemon shiny hunting, there's a reason why a lot of competitive players don't mess with shiny hunting and stick to playing competitive; it's how mundane and awfully boring to just move left and right or spam sweet scent all day.

[Legendary ? Where ?]

1 minute ago, Seth said:

My intention was never for people to hunt shinies to increase their chances to catch a legendary - that would be stupid considering the difference in odds. It was just a thought, mainly to for example get rid of all the Rapidash/Tentacruel and alike from GTL, or the many complains about the Event Rewards stacking up in PC. The idea came in 2 minutes - just thought I wanted to share it here for people to discuss, so thank you for your input. 

Yep not needlessly trying to attack you like some people on this forum do. I think we're both in agreement though that something probably should be done to make them a little easier to obtain.

[Legendary ? Where ?]

1 hour ago, Seth said:

F.

 

Petition to turn in 2-3 shinies/random PvP mon rewards (Event Reward OT) to some random new npc to exceedingly increasing your chances to encounter legendaries in the wild during the month. 

I don't really think catching them should mimmic shiny hunting, nor should have any aspect of shiny hunting increase their odds.

 

There's a huge reason many of us just don't engage in shiny hunting. It's boring, tedious, and really only rewards you a cosmetic variant. The problem is that the birds and the dogs (and many future legendaries) are competitive staples that have to be acquired if you're interested in running a specific team. It essentially forces a lot of competitive players to basically shiny hunt, which is where a lot of annoyance comes from.

It'd be one thing if I spent 3 hours in a dungeon or some other sort of enriching in-game activity that was actually fun to achieve these legendaries. Biking left and right in a patch of grass for three to six hours is a hard sell for most people, especially those with lives.

[Roaming Legendaries FAQ]

I notice in the dex, it specified that Articuno was currently either currently roaming Kanto lands or Kanto seas.

 

I'm going to seriously pursue a Zapdos hunt this month, but I do have to ask a few questions:

 

1. If the dex specifies that the bird/dog is currently only catchable on land, it's absolutely a waste to go hunting on sea at that moment, correct?

 

2. When does that dex information (if it's roaming land or sea) change? Is the information as to where the beast is roaming consistent for any player, or is this player/client dependent?

 

3. Are there some suspicions that the legendary beast is actually roaming on a specific route at specific times? I've seen catching parties notably in Kanto on Island 5 trying to catch the birds.

 

4. What are some players thinking the encounter rate for the birds is at the moment?

 

 

[TEAM LËM XMAS HOLIDAY RAFFLE! 2023]

I would like to join!

[Enhancing The Forum - Remove (Edited) text from topics and replies]

Damn these sorts of comments are why users of forums for niche hobbies and games have a reputation for being insufferable assholes. Is this the only part of your life you have control of?

 

Regardless, I don't think removing the edit marker is a good idea.

 

 

[Petition to lower Name Change Contract & Makeover Kit price.]

1 minute ago, Gengarcello said:

We can't say that especially some scammers can even go further beyond.

 

 

Take note, for example, the collateral damage of [hypeRlink MinuTe blocked] money that affected other people unwittingly got from random trades.

Without going too much into detail, I can say from confidence that staff has the tools to hold anyone accountable trying to scam others around, and free name changes would probably be actually meaningless. I'm not sure if it's still the same, but any forms of scamming or real money trading are pretty much an instant ban.

This is a weird hill to die on.

[Petition to lower Name Change Contract & Makeover Kit price.]

3 hours ago, Gengarcello said:

By logic, changing names for free will make leeway for scammers to change identities

I can very much confirm that name changes mean absolutely nothing in terms of the tools staff deploy to punish scammers.

[Petition to lower Name Change Contract & Makeover Kit price.]

7 hours ago, Gengarcello said:

However you are giving free leeway to the scammers to shift skins.

I'm not sure what you mean by "shift" in this context.

[Petition to lower Name Change Contract & Makeover Kit price.]

Eh, I'm with OP on this one. Changing one's basic appearance (built in hairstyles, basic colors, etc) is such a basic and free feature in most (good) games. Having the feature locked behind a donate-able item frankly kind of sucks, and just reeks of poor monetization, and something players are desensitized to because "it's always been this way".

 

[Genuine question about this community (Economics)]

What I find interesting to me is that people sell less than the item's worth in RP. For example, if I buy an item for 1,000 RP, limited or not, it would not make much sense to price that item less than the price of a 1,000 voucher.

 

My thinking is this: There is a unique situation where gift shop only items can be purchased with RP points. While RP vouchers can help players obtain these items who never intend to donate, the reality is that someone had to fork over a donation and get their credit card to get those points in the first place. That honestly should be an incredibly advantageous position to set the price floor on the market, especially when trying to sell to players who don't have any RP points at all.

 

Yet, it seems like for literally every limited vanity, there are a shit ton of panic sellers that don't realize the inherent value that they're holding onto. I get it that demand is a factor in all of this, but IMO a lot of the community collectively doesn't hold the line to maintain price floors on paid cosmetics really well.

[Randoms Feedback / Discussion Thread]

I'm going to say this again, but sets where a Pokemon is using its opposite attacking stat that is normally its highest (Bellossom using Leaf Blade instead of Giga Drain, Rapidash using Flamethrower instead of Flare Blitz) does not feel good at all, especially when both special attacking AND normal attacking sets have the potential to be selected. It can be a guessing game for some Pokemon on what set they're going to run, and make some switch ins with mons like Blissey a gamble at times. It feels good to surprise someone with these weird sets, but I'd argue that the "net fun" of being at the receiving end of it outweighs its benefits and overall health to the tier.

I don't think Showdown functions like this at all, and generally makes somewhat static sets that stick to the general strengths of a mon. I get the argument that putting both attacking and special attacking sets as options makes the gamemode more "random" but I don't think it achieves the right balance between randomness and strategic gameplay. In Showdown, randoms tends to prioritize unpredictability while still ensuring that the sets make sense within the framework of a Pokémon's natural strengths and weaknesses. This approach keeps battles interesting without compromising the overall integrity of the game.

[Pumpking Hard is the least fun I've had with this game so far]

I have about 3 friends who are pretty damn good at Showdown ladder (made it to top 100 on various different ladders) who I invited back to the game to try out Pumpking with me. They were interested at first, and tried out a couple of battles, but it became very apparent that they were just losing interest in terms of how undocumented the "rules" are against Pumpking. They tried a few times on easy mode, then one time on hard, and honestly all decided this probably wasn't worth it as they started to lose money throughout this whole process. It also became very apparent that this was just not fun for anyone involved. I eventually pointed out some cookie cutter sets that were shared on YouTube, but by that point everyone was so disillusioned by Pumpking and just wanted to play another game.

 

I don't really think this is a skill issue at all. There are definitely players that are beating Pumpking that are frankly pretty bad at PVP. Sure, it's pretty "easy" if you copy someone else's set, and play exactly how they're telling you to play, but does that actually make for a fun event at all?

[Halloween Event Design]

I disagree for cookies being rewarded for beating the boss as it turns into a feedback loop of Beating the boss > Getting rewards to help beat the boss > Beat the boss...... and so on. There are some comps in easy mode that still rely on the usage of cookies because we do not have the resources to blow money on incredibly specific comps to beat it with no items. I think they should be distributed pretty liberally for players of all skill levels to obtain them, and be able to use them in both easy and hard mode. But this can be entirely moot if it goes onto my second point:

 

It is getting frankly boring and annoying of having these bosses only attemptable by incredibly specific comps with very specific strategies. When people like me talk about the "difficulty" of the bosses, we're usually given a rebuttal of "It's not hard, just use 3 incredibly specific mons and look at this YouTube guide that shows you every exact moment when to use every specific move, item, and mon", and this regurgitated statement seems to be missing the point. It's frankly difficulty done wrong if it winds up on a community discovered strategy to solve the boss. In the end, it really comes across that the boss is really this inaccessible part of the event that can only be attempted by players who have the resources, and participate in places like the forums or are in a team.

[Are the Old Community Manager Players Returning?]

New updates are just fun for the game, there really isn't anything else to it.

 

I personally don't really have the time to be staff for the game anymore, but I do support the team.

[Ins't Pumking too Hard on Hard Mode?]

I'm going to say what I did last year, but the difficulty of Pumpking should not be reliant on how much you participate on the forums/in a team and crack the code on what is the most niche set of mons that plays most efficiently against the boss. Difficulty that is created through the obfuscation of knowledge and information is frankly lame as fuck, especially in an MMO setting where an attempt costs resources, alongside your tools. I think they're going the absolute wrong direction from the previous year, and as a result they're making a less accessible event. My ideal event would to have him be beatable by most doubles comps. It's just surprising that the same team that made the insanely fun Ho-Oh and Giratina battle is also churning out this.

 

If it's for economic concerns, then they need to neuter the pumpking gift bags, or the rate that you get special candy to fight Pumpking, instead of making the battle even harder. Frankly I don't want to participate in the hard mode battle against him at all, and I'm just going to sell my candy.

[Android Bans and Automation apps]

9 minutes ago, Doctor said:

Someone said Anydesk was giving them trouble, I think that's the only named app I've seen here

Anydesk is also the noted app in question that is seemingly giving me false positives. If that is the case... that is a bit disappointing. Anydesk is a very important tool.

I'm not a development guy at all, but I wonder if these blanket warnings/bans are being given out just because the accessibility service wants these two permissions:

[Android Bans and Automation apps]

Could we maybe get some information if the devs have found some positives with specifically named popular apps that may be triggering this notification to occur? It would help for end users help troubleshooting issues when we open tickets with you guys.

I also understand not wanting to blatantly point players in the direction of malicious cheating applications to try and download and see for themselves. But I'm just curious to see if there has been non-malicious applications that you guys are getting consistent reports on.