Jump to content

The fundamental problem with PokeMMO economy


Recommended Posts

Yeah orange is on point. +1
 

I basically don't play this game much because i don't want to spend two hours a day doing e4 runs and hunting six boxes of breeders. it's just not for me, but there aren't many alternatives...

I just wanna play pvp over and over.

 

...but if i spend all my time in matchmaking, i basically do not get anything out of it, and cannot make more pokemon for more teams.

if you spend six hours logged in and actively playing, you should get some sort of tradeable value out of it, regardless of what it is you're actually doing in the game (except of course afk/chatting)

 

if pvp was a viable way to grind, i'd consider grinding that way.

Link to comment

The economy is the driving force behind me constantly playing on-and-off and I'll just mention some of the reasons off the top of my head

 

The wealth gap between competitive & casual players is astounding to me, and the fact that it's still difficult for competitive players to profit is unfortunate. With no real money sinks for the wealthy, and no indication of massively buffing PvP rewards, I don't see this changing unless they make massive changes to how everyone earns/spends money, which is unlikely. Even if you're not a PvP player, but you're a new casual player starting in 2021, you will likely never see the day where you have enough resources to obtain the most desired items in the game, due to how far the gap has become. I think this is pretty demotivating for a lot of people who aren't sure if they want to play long-term, and ends up pushing some away from the game, including myself at times.

 

On top of having very few money sinks, there are also very few items within the game that are truly desired long-term. Shiny Pokemon are luck-based and vanity items can be bought using real money, so there's really a lack of value for money at this point. This causes wealthy players to hold onto their money & dump it all into vanities, causing them to skyrocket in price & locking out everyone else from ever obtaining them.


I had suggested in the past that the seasonal PvP matchmaking vanities could be made more difficult to obtain, tradable, limited, and farmable (so if you already earned it, you can earn a 2nd) I thought this would give PvP players an opportunity to control some portion of the market, as PvE players constantly do with event/limited time items. This idea didn't seem too popular so I'm not sure how else we can fix the lack of value & money sinks in the game.

 

Link to comment
26 minutes ago, Paul said:

but you're a new casual player starting in 2021, you will likely never see the day where you have enough resources to obtain the most desired items in the game

I did some rough estimates to show how dogshit it is to earn money on this game as a casual player, and PvP players earn much less

 

Flaming Skull (for the sake of this argument) 200m

Gym Runs aprox. 250k per hour

800 total hours of nonstop gym running required

5 hours per day = 160 total days of nonstop gym running

(also not including the time it takes to complete multiple alt accounts)

 

and in 160 days the price of that item will likely increase again. I understand it's meant to be a rare & valuable item but my point is to show how demotivating it is to play this game long-term due to how agonizing it is to earn money. I'd love someone who plays a lot of MM to do this same math but with the amount of money they earn from PvP, - the amount they spend on making new teams.

 

and if my math is wrong it's 10 a.m. and I haven't slept yet

 

 

Link to comment

Yes +1 to everything you stated.

I won't write anything(Not worth wasting time) ... things are pretty clear, especially the Price gap paul said. New players can barely own good items. There's just alting left to nerf.

The only way for new players is to create alt and do boring money grind to own, buy something. New PvP players can never ever own(EVER even in dreams) good items, they can't even own a black plague(current price - 24m) with PvP skills.

6 minutes ago, Paul said:

200m

it's 600-700m In This moment. 

Link to comment

not to derail too much from the primary suggestion but yeah.

it's wild that the most viable way of farming money is "buy some limited items in gift shop and log out for five years".

untradeable seasonals, untradeable cosmetics, untradeable shinies, untradeable pvp everything...

but tradeable fucking limited vanities that you just buy for $5 in gift shop, afk a bit, and resell for jeff bezoz's net worth.

wack.

Link to comment
7 minutes ago, FighterChamp said:

it's 600-700m In This moment

I was looking at buying one the last time I was active and they were around 200, if this is true it just further shows the point I was trying to make. thanks for the correction 

 

Also didn't intend to take away from the OP mainly focusing on PvP, I saw it was posted in GD and assumed it was an open discussion. The issues with the economy go much further than just the PvP scene and thought I'd add some thoughts. 

Link to comment
4 hours ago, noomuch said:

very happy with this, i think if they made Hidden Ability pills only obtainable through PVP and is tradable it might be a win-win situation...maybe?

...kind of.

in OP's philosophy, the PvP rewards would be things that are useful to PvE players.

And the items that are useful to PvP, like ability pills well, would be farmed by PvE players.

 

Since hidden abilities are required to play PvP, it would cause an infinite loop if they were a PvP reward. You'd just play pvp to improve your pvp more.

Thus, in OP's philosophy, hidden ability pills should be a PvE reward. (That said, i believe the devs have something else in mind for hidden abilities).

 

I think the shiny charms are probably the best example so far for a PvP reward that is useful to PvE players.

PvE lategame is basically: shiny hunting, money farming (e4/payday), berry farming, breeding.

Thus, anything that makes any of those easier would be a suitable reward for PvP. Shiny charms, amulet coins, lucky eggs, master balls, idk maybe like some fertilizers that instantly yield berries, whatever.

 

This way, pvp players get shiny charms etc and sell them to pve players.

pve players get high-iv comps, battle items, hidden abilities etc, and sell them to pvp players.

Link to comment

Yeah, I pretty much agree. The reason I was drawn to this game was A.) It's Pokemon, B.) It's Pokemon with many, IMO, sensible improvements to offer a much better experience than simply playing a regular emulator, and C.) there's an online component that, in theory, looks to add a lot to it. However, the more I see and learn about how the economy works, the less interested I am. I'd love to shoot for some of those fun cosmetic items, but if I could never afford them in my wildest dreams, unless I, too, become a prospector who funnels real money into pixels just to keep them out of the hands of the plebs for a big payout of Monopoly money down the road--which I would then sit on because...?

 

Wealth hoarding is a ticking time-bomb for any economy.

I could easily do that. I have the disposable income to do so. I will not, because it isn't fun. I'm here to wear cool, fake, pixel costumes on my fake, pixel character and make my cool, fake, pixel pets fight other people's pixel pets. And I feel like the state of the economy makes what feels like the core of the game somehow less doable. It interferes with the actual core features of the game.


Eventually, that's going to become too much for anyone to want to bother with.

Edited by AnRae
Link to comment

I grinded singles and doubles like a madman during quarantine due to suddenly getting a lot of time, and all that effort honestly didn't even recoup the costs of my 6 comps. I also tried avoiding using consumable items as well to increase my profit margins, and honestly it just wasn't worth it.

 

I also don't even use 5x31's lol.

 

Edited by Raichuforyou
Link to comment

First I want to say that I'm super grateful for new pvp system that allowed me to actually get games, improve at Pokemon while getting some fun rewards.

That's totally the right spirit. I would have surely dropped the game this year without the Sinnoh hype for new comps and all, if not for that system.

 

Warning : Bunch of irrelevant stuff/ideas to come, read at your own risk

 

Now the real talk. I'm 100% with Orange's suggestion and I'm surprised that BP items value didn't drop by a LARGE margin since most competitive players got a bunch of them now with all the BP that are in circulation and the free weekly rewards. Something "useful" for non PvP players has to be purchasable, currently outside crafting ingredients I don't see many options. The PvP economy relies on newer PvP players buying items to start laddering currently.

 

I see an infinite amount of solutions to answer this issue

›› Biweekly Rewards :

Change the "free comp" into a tradable breeder ticket for 3x31 mon of your choice or specific species could be a good start for example. 

And remove useless items such as heat rock, or at least reduce their frequency, give amulet coins instead for example, since those are required by PvE players idk 

 

›› BP Items :

Orange provided a relevant example with shiny charms, but you could also make that catchrate charms that last 12h for instance, that could be used when farming safari, or movement speed charms for people who want to move around faster on the map. Could be seeds "lootboxes" that give you random amounts of seeds to be sold to berry farmers, could be an item or charm that boosts the odds of uncommon/rare encounters in your areas to help hunters.

There are unlimited ways to design useful and not gamebreaking items.

 

›› Higher quality rewards :

Items in the same style as "Ocarina" could be designed that improve PvE QoL but are implemented via PvP rewards and harder to obtain (like only top X of each tier at the end of season ? or could be chosen over the seasonal vanity ? Idk there are ways). Some ideas that came to mind are like harvesting tools that never break when used, an item to water more areas at a time, an item that helps avoid trainer encounters for people who have their level cap at level 100 (we don't want scenario skips eheh)

 

I've been playing a "real" MMO past few weeks and that frustrated me to see all of the additional things a game can implement that this game isn't willing to. 

Hell you could even make guild content with specific items needed to unlock that for some of them you could only obtain via PVP, like having to improve team size for more space (allowing more members basically), having to unlock permanent buffs like 1% gold or exp gains boost for all members, or breeding time reductions etc etc.

1 % shiny rate permanent boost POG

If "Team upgrades" really existed and you could get them at Team Tournaments, it would even hype this event further and Luke would stop complaining about TT rewards (maybe)

 

Outside the memes, I think there's really something to be done on the "item" aspect of the game, most consumables in the current state are worthless cause either too expensive (shiny charm is a pure speculation product, net value isn't quite worth 300k for 1h of better odds) OR just being straight up worthless (BP charm when you're not even sure to find matches for a whole hour and barely get you anything for the 25k you payed if you do, unless you manage to get 12 "5 minutes wins" which is impossible) 

 

TL;DR Add (new) better QoL or consumable items that the non PvP players would want and give proper rewards to higher ladder rankings / hard grinding (or team content lol)

Link to comment
On 5/19/2021 at 6:16 PM, RysPicz said:

As much as I agree with everything that you said, that much I also know that this thread won't get a single resposne from staff, just like the one with hax items

Yep, seems like you called this one perfectly.

 

Personally, I'd respect it if someone in staff explained me why I'm completely wrong here but we're not even getting that. But then at the same time there's no one from staff saying that at least some of these points I made or someone else made in this thread are legitimate concerns. I understand these things are hard and making decisions in such large scale is difficult. But sharing an opinion at least gives feedback whether the visions of community and staff are even remotely on the same path. Instead, it's a complete radio silence.

Link to comment

++++++++++++++ 1

I've been playing this game for like 2 or 3 years, coming with some hype and dropping for months every time, and during this experience the competitive side of the game was the only thing that made me still logging in after ending all the regions E4. This is the real endgame for A LOT of people. What I felt after knowing that I would have to do repetitive and braindead gym runs everyday in order do build my teams, instead of playing the competitive game that I was wondering to, was that it has no point for me to waste precious two hours of my day, everyday, just to farm money.

 

I want to have some fun on my own way and be rewarded for playing this way. I know that some people really enjoy the farm side of the game, but this actual state of the game just make me less interested of playing it.

I'm really proud of the engagement of everyone that posted here, it's a really important subject to discuss and we need to make the staff to feel our feelings this way.

Link to comment
Just now, lucam12 said:

++++++++++++++ 1

I've been playing this game for like 2 or 3 years, coming with some hype and dropping for months every time, and during this experience the competitive side of the game was the only thing that made me still logging in after ending all the regions E4. This is the real endgame for A LOT of people. What I felt after knowing that I would have to do repetitive and braindead gym runs everyday in order do build my teams, instead of playing the competitive game that I was wondering to, was that it has no point for me to waste precious two hours of my day, everyday, just to farm money.

 

I want to have some fun on my own way and be rewarded for playing this way. I know that some people really enjoy the farm side of the game, but this actual state of the game just make me less interested of playing it.

I'm really proud of the engagement of everyone that posted here, it's a really important subject to discuss and we need to make the staff to feel our feelings this way.

Forgot to say that I totally agree with the points you've been posting, good job everyone!

Link to comment
On 5/21/2021 at 3:17 PM, TohnR said:

And remove useless items such as heat rock, or at least reduce their frequency, give amulet coins instead for example, since those are required by PvE players idk 

Not only this, but making some of the items tradable will make them a lot more appealing, as you can retrieve some cash from them like red cards, etc, even if it's little, it would be more than what it currently is. They could also introduce common used moves TMs into the reward pools instead of those heat rocks etc, or even braces or 3-5 everstones for example

Link to comment
On 5/21/2021 at 6:35 AM, ThinkNicer said:

What do you mean Orange??? You don't like paying around 10k every time you play a Doubles game? Slowly losing money on Gems and Sitrus berries is the true endgame of mmo

We are actually looking to improve the state of gems and what they cost in terms of PvP in a future update.

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.