Official Tournament Prizes

[fredrichnietze]

ok so first off, guys let not turn this into values discussion.

 

second the cost of making greatly increased in the last update. it used to be i could get a comp for 50-100k. now it always cost 300-1mil or sometimes more unless i am using old breeders which are very valuable. no new ways of making money were released. so the time invested to make a comp has increased greatly. 

 

now the misconception here is people in the competitive community are actually going out and making a lot of comps. but most people who play also have a life and played before the update. so they have all these old comps which they can use, or sell for money to make comps, or just not make comps and borrow stuff for tourneys form their team and friends. 

 

if you have not read "a yankee in king Arthur's court" or are not economist read this

[spoiler]

ok so what is value? if two people both have the same currency, and both make the same amount of money, but live in two different places where the prices for everything are different, do they make the same value wise? the answer is no. if you can buy 2 loaves a bread for 1$ in town A and 1 loaf for 2$ in town B then the people in town A are richer because the value of the currency is not the same in both towns.

when comparing the currency of the past with the currency of the future/present, you have to understand the value is rarely ever the same. you dont look at the numbers, you look at what you can do with those numbers. because in the end money is just a way to get people to do things for you. if 500k could get you 5-10 comps 1 year ago but now if can get you 1-2 comps then the value of the currency is not the same in the past and present. 

when talking about past and present values you dont look at the numbers alone, but instead look at what you could get for those numbers.

in old west in america you used to be able to buy a entire cow for 20$ USD. now that can buy you maybe 1/1000th of that cow.

 

this has been basic economics with sempai fred

[/spoiler]

[hr]

now the difficulty to make a comp went up, the time invested to make a comp went up, and then the value of the prizes(see spoiler) went down.

the results of this is a staler meta game where no lifers with medium amounts of skill can beat a very good player by just investing the large amounts of time the more skilled player cant or wont. i know more money making options are coming eventually, but until then this is a problem, unless you see it as "the way it should be".

[Viking]

I didn't read all you posts but i think the shiny gift was a VERY GOOD idea.

 

Imagine you win a shiny vulpix tradeable, you sell it for 60 000 000$.

If you won an official, it means you are a strong player and you have certainly some comps. What i mean is if you win a shiny tradeable you can buy some other stuff and become even stronger.

 

God! that give less chance to newborn players to win officials. 

 

And i think the shiny prize was made for help people to collect them, if it were not that they was certainly giving money prizes.

 

 

 

Fucking capitalists !

[RysPicz]

If we would have a "like" limit like in the old days, this thread would consume all of mine

 

Raai is right, and I really, really like Keith's idea about improving those "shiny comp gift" prizes. Currently prizes are shit enough that I would take BP rather than useless "shiny gift" comp that will rot in my box and I will have no use for it at all. Metagame constantly evolves and players need to create new comps to adapt to it, shitty semi-comps won't help any of us in that process.

 

Besides, this is really punishing for all of the new players that are not capable of winning a shiny Duskull, Surskit or w/e in a shitty gimmick, sell it and gain funds for the rest of his/ her competitive career.

[spoiler]I personally don't give a shit about prizes at all and they never were my aim during an official[spoiler]Shiny WEELEE is an exception[/spoiler][/spoiler]

[Darkshade]

now the misconception here is people in the competitive community are actually going out and making a lot of comps. but most people who play also have a life and played before the update. so they have all these old comps which they can use, or sell for money to make comps, or just not make comps and borrow stuff for tourneys form their team and friends. 

 

if you have not read "a yank. i know more money making options are coming eventually, but until then this is a problem, unless you see it as "the way it should be".

 

 

Besides, this is really punishing for all of the new players that are not capable of winning a shiny Duskull, Surskit or w/e in a shitty gimmick, sell it and gain funds for the rest of his/ her competitive career.

 

 

We don't think that a lack of ability to cover costs is "how it should be", but the solution is not to buff Official Event prizes to generate more money.

They are and never were meant to be used as a primary source of income, the money making methods you're referring to are intended to be changes or additions to game mechanics.

 

No, you should not be able to win one tournament and be set for the rest of your game career.

That's a pretty decent example as to why it is/was far too much.

Edited June 17, 2015 by Darkshade

[raaidn]

That's a pretty decent example as to why it is/was far too much.

>Implying the current prize system is to much. Inbefore lvl 100 rattata 1x31 as prize in future.

 

Also if your able to win officals on a regular basis, why shoudlnt this be a way of providing yourself with funds?

 

 

We don't think that a lack of ability to cover costs is "how it should be", but the solution is not to buff Official Event prizes to generate more money.

 

Well the event prizes we're nerfed to the ground at same time as breeding prices sky rocketed, so I hope you arent supprised about ppl complaining.

 

I can understand that is was a bit much, but then again it was you guys who chose to give away ridiculousness valueable shinies as prizes in gimmicks etc. But removing shiny tradeables altogether seems a bit over the edge from my pov.

 

All in all the community seem pretty united at the subject, so I hope some change is due

[Darkshade]

>Implying the current prize system is to much.

 

is is referring to the propositions to raise it.

 

Also if your able to win officals on a regular basis, why shoudlnt this be a way of providing yourself with funds?

 

That in itself is fine, but being able to win one or two and be set for the rest of your time playing the game shows that it was a ridiculously high amount of money.

[fredrichnietze]

We don't think that a lack of ability to cover costs is "how it should be", but the solution is not to buff Official Event prizes to generate more money.

They are and never were meant to be used as a primary source of income, the money making methods you're referring to are intended to be changes or additions to game mechanics.

 

No, you should not be able to win one tournament and be set for the rest of your game career.

That's a pretty decent example as to why it is/was far too much.

im not sayin they should be primary, but how it is now is barely supplementary. i have hundreds of comps half of which are no longer viable. the way it is now winning a tourney will give you

• enough bp to give one move to one comp
• maaaaaybe a tradable shiny worth 1-3 comps
• a single shiny comp with decent iv's but no good hp, and you cant choose what comp or evo in several cases so it's likely to be a decoration
• enough items to maybe buy one comp or two after selling them all
• a tent or somthign similar which serves no purpose.

while this is great if you only want a trophy, this is significantly worse then it was before when you could win a tourney then go sell the shiny for enough cash to buy 5-10 comps fully ev'd and movesetted. 

 

now 5-10 comps wouldnt let you be set for life. but it would help you win tourney #2 maybe. and they would be around and usable for a while and then slowly one by one become unusable do to meta changes.

only if you were the top 1% of the top 1% of the top 1% could you win enough tourneys to mostly fund your comps. and even then you'd have to buy specific things and then breed because the top 0.001% dont use standard comps.

 

i dont think making it so you could win tourneys and never play is right, but i dont think the winning a tourney should be such a small thing.

 

annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd done with this thread. my 2 cents is said.

[Senile]

We don't think that a lack of ability to cover costs is "how it should be", but the solution is not to buff Official Event prizes to generate more money.

They are and never were meant to be used as a primary source of income, the money making methods you're referring to are intended to be changes or additions to game mechanics.

 

No, you should not be able to win one tournament and be set for the rest of your game career.

That's a pretty decent example as to why it is/was far too much.

Okay Darkshade, you've asked for it.

 

The endgame system in PokeMMO is currently broken. Like, straight up broken. The justifications used by staff for the current system, consequently, also make no sense. At least, they would if the systems existed in isolation, but the way everything is put together at the moment makes PokeMMO endgame a gigantic mess.

 

Let's start with your statement about official events not being a primary source of income, which brings up a question: Why not? I have never, in my life, played an MMO where the end game was also not the primary source of income. Once you reach cap in an MMO, what do you do? The high end content of course, such as raids. Usually you also do daily quests, assuming there are those; why are dailies used, exactly? They give players an incentive to keep logging onto the game regularly, while controlling the flow of whatever reward they give into the economy. It incentives players for logging in while allowing developers to more or less limit the flow of resources into the economy. It seems like a logical system, however, PokeMMO doesn't really have dailies. I do think that tournaments are a nice parallel; They're endgame content that incentives people logging in regularly to attend them...and that's where the analogy stops.

 

Daily quests have a promise of reward, and usually give a pretty decent reward. Tournaments in PokeMMO promise you nothing since only 1 person will actually get a prize for several hours of time, and I'm not even sure you could argue the prize is worth the time invested to play in the tournament. Let me repeat this; Not even accounting for the time that you spend making all your comps, getting items, etc., the 3+ hours you spend playing in a tournament, even if you win, is not a good return on investment for your time. Let's think about this; Comp gift shinies are worthless because 99% of them aren't worth playing. Why? Lack of certain moves, hidden power, and a mediocre EV spread is bad enough, but even for pokemon who don't have this issue you're faced by the massive obstacle of how easy it is to scout. Sure, you might not need a certain egg move on your shiny gift pokemon, but the fact it's a shiny gift pokemon tells your opponent you don't have it, so even if you didn't want it, you're at a disadvantage. Same applies to hidden power. 20k battle points? You're probably better off grinding the battle tower during the time you would have spent in the tournament. The reward might not be as much, but you're guaranteed a decent payout from the battle tower anyway, so it's still probably a better idea. I'm not even going to comment on the secret base decoration lmao.

 

As much as you like to compare comps to equipment in other games and PvP as the endgame, the analogy doesn't work. What kind of MMO has an endgame where the endgame content isn't where you get your rewards? Sure, there's shit like profession systems; "You need 500 shiny rocks you get from mining in the ogre's nose mine for 10 hours while having max mining to upgrade your Hambat", but really, what would a person who's doing endgame raids do? They'd do a fucking raid, get some loot, and sell that shit to buy some shiny rocks. Except we can't do that, because our high level endgame content offers no actual worthwhile reward for some reason, even if you win, which you will not a majority of the time.

 

So, the "endgame content" has basically no reward. But what about the barrier to entry? Surely if competitive pokemon is to be the endgame equipment parallel that you describe Darkshade, it'd make sense that they require a fair amount of work to get? The answer is no, because of the previous point of tournaments offering basically no reward. Why? Well, riddle me this; Once you reach level cap in a game such as WoW, what do you do? The answer is that you start raiding. Why do you raid? To get better equipment. What does getting equipment let you do? Do harder raids. And so on. Comparing competitive pokemon to high end equipment in other MMOs doesn't work for this reason. How do you get better pokemon in PokeMMO? Engaging in a long, tedious grind that has absolutely nothing to do with the actual end game you want to do.

 

For other MMOs, once you reach cap, the grinding you're doing for the "endgame" is endgame content itself. While legendary equipment might be a pre-requisite for the hardest raids in the game, you build up for those raids by doing easier raids. In PokeMMO, it's more like "okay, you wanna do high level raids? go kill some boars for 50 hours and come back". The parallel which was drawn with the original breeding system of Pokemon being equipment you improve doesn't work, precisely because of the way you get the resources to improve those pokemon. It's not at all the same. We aren't doing "endgame content" to get pokmeon, we're intentionally engaging in a tedious, boring grind designed for no purpose other than to timegate us because of the absolute lack of real endgame content in the game other than the sparsely occuring tournament scene.

 

And now, my friends, we have arrived at why PokeMMO is fundamentally broken at the endgame. The grind to actually play the endgame isn't designed to be entertaining, it's designed for the explicit purpose of making things take time to obtain, not for any entertainment value. It exists for no reason other than to cost time for players, because of the logic that time should be wasted to get to the endgame. And this would be fine, if this grind was fun at all. It's okay for other MMOs to timegate players from the hardest raids by forcing them to play another raid 50 times first, because realistically, while the raids themselves are different, they're the same type of content. Sure, there might be no "practical" reason to stop a player from playing the mega hard dungeon at first other than wasting their time, but the other raids they're doing are also fun, and if they don't find that fun, they probably won't find the harder raid much fun either.

 

So, why are raids enjoyable? Aren't they the same "brainless grind" as we have in PokeMMO? Well, aside from requiring slightly more thinking and planning, raids touch upon the key experience that makes MMOs appeal to players, the cooperation. The many people working together to achieve one goal they can't on their own. That's the strength of MMOs as a genre. In PokeMMO, this doesn't exist, and it certainly doesn't exist when you're sitting around in an empty channel grinding for breeders to minimize lag because there's no benefit in other people being there, it just lags your client. The grind is in itself just tedious, and it doesn't have the strength of involving the cooperation of people to encourage players to stick through it, it's a purely single player grind with no end. Why do you think that new players can't even enter the tournament scene and have a shot without joining a bigger team first? Not only do they need help with getting the resources to make comps and the knowledge older players have, but the fact that not having team chat open to talk to people while doing this shit is fucking unbearable, and the regular chats are so shitty that they aren't acceptable either. The problem with PokeMMO is that you're designing it as if it's an MMO because you don't want "Firered Online", but you don't have the main strength of an MMO, which is where many people can work together for one objective. No group PvP, no raids, nothing, but you're designing it with the grind of an MMO. The only reason the grind of an MMO is tolerable is because people don't play MMOs for the gameplay, but for the people, but you're missing the people so the terrible gameplay is inexcusable.

 

And this is the critical design flaw in PokeMMO, and why people will always complain about the grind. It just so happens that the grind is so awful right now that people are especially mad about it. With that being said, I'm not done, because this design flaw is especially abhorrent in the context of how negatively it affects the competitive scene, because trust me, it really fucks it up.

 

So, let me start this by stating that Pokemon is the competitive game with the biggest barrier to entry that I have ever seen. It's absolutely disgusting. This isn't the fault of PokeMMO, it applies to regular pokemon as well; You need to learn how natures work, the existence of IV's/EV's, have an understanding of how egg moves work and chain breeding, and beyond these more complicated concepts all the basic stuff as well; each pokemon's abilities and what they do, type matchups, a rough knowledge of the base stats of each pokemon, and of course understanding what the fuck base stats are, and of course whatever bans/clauses are currently active in whatever format they're playing, plus there's all kinds of more subtle bits of knowledge such as burn cutting attack, secondary effects of moves, the % chance of various things to happen, etc. This is a massive amount of knowledge any would-be competitive pokemon player must learn before even beginning, which is what makes Pokemon have such a high barrier of entry competitively. PokeMMO basically looks at this, thinks about it for a moment, then stacks up even more shit that a new player must do in order to play. Sure, there's some minor improvements--listing EVs, IV's, and explaining natures upon mousing over them--which help, but there's also a bunch of other shit. Players have to figure out how event moves/tutor moves work, since we have them added in a pretty clear way which is never 100% explained. There's of course the breeding system, which a new player really isn't going to figure out exists until they try breeding and realize something's off, at which point they have to figure out how the fuck the system works, after which, they have to figure out the optimal way to use it. The grind for shards, for BP, chaining egg moves when parents die, and of course during all this you somehow have to keep up a steady supply of yen when you barely even know how to breed at this point.

 

PokeMMO has an even higher barrier of entry for comp than regular pokemon, but it doesn't take much of an initiative to help lower this wall other than the few luxuries I mentioned earlier. No real tutorial, not really pointing players towards the competitive scene, pretty much nothing, players have to figure things out themselves then participate in the infinite grind. And of course, even once these new players manage to make a (shitty) team of 6, they'll proudly march into Vermillion, lose, then realize that their team is shit and have to breed some new shit, except they still don't really know what's good. At this point, the only real way for a player to actually improve before just quitting because game2hard, is to join a large team with players that can teach them. At this point, they go through the massive grind again, make a halfway decent team, then decide to try to join a tournament. They fail at even joining the first few tournaments they try to participate in because all signups are filled 2 seconds after they start, but eventually they get into one, aaaaaaaaand they lose. They have to adjust their team, keep grinding new pokemon, etc.; Do you get the picture? They do this enough times, and they might win a tournament and get a shitty prize after spending shit tons of time in a tedious grind almost nobody enjoys. This is all just for learning one tier, by the way.

 

And you might have read that all and thought that it was fine, it shouldn't be easy to win a tournament. You're probably right. With that being said, look at that and ask yourself; why would anyone go through with all of that? Why would they have not just stopped playing 300 hours ago? If winning a tournament is supposed to be this difficult, then why is the prize worthless?

 

And that, my friends, is the long and short of the massive flaws in the game. Competitively, it is a mess, because the way the game is designed and what the game actually is clash in a way which is god awful. The barrier of entry is too high, the reward for getting past it is non-existent, and the actual grind that is the gameplay isn't enjoyable, nor is it designed to be from any perspective that I can see.

 

tl;dr: read it asshole

[Darkshade]

tl;dr: read it asshole

 

Skimmed a large majority of it.

 

Could have been summed up as "The end game content is not very good at the moment and this is why people see Offiical Tournaments as end game content".

 

I agree with you, but that's no excuse to buff tournaments up to compensate.

We undoubtedly need better end game content and hopefully the Battle Frontier should be a step towards that.

[Senile]

Skimmed a large majority of it.

 

Could have been summed up as "The end game content is not very good at the moment and this is why people see Offiical Tournaments as end game content".

 

I agree with you, but that's no excuse to buff tournaments up to compensate.

We undoubtedly need better end game content and hopefully the Battle Frontier should be a step towards that.

Nope, a small amount of it is actually elaborating on the problem of official prizes. I'm not saying to buff tournaments to compensate, I'm telling you that the entire endgame is completely broken. The battle frontier does pretty much nothing to fix that, as it isn't attacking the underlying issue of why the endgame is shit, which I elaborated on in my earlier post.

 

tl;dr: refer to my earlier tl;dr and try again

[SneaKyKhaLidA]

And darkshade you said before tourneys were giving out 70M a month but if 7 different players win thats 10M per player(unless bowser or frags hue)

 

And they can use that to help they're team buy comps or other stuff...and if you wanna do shiny comps(gifts) like everybody said why use a 25 attack rhydon thats shiny for example..When you have one that has 31 attack or a jolteon with 25 sp at with no good Hidden Power.. its pointless Unless you can decide the ivs(egg moves) etc.

 

Even as a shiny trader the trading scene has felt quite dead could be due to shiny gift comps..idk, could also give away Yen instead of shiny comps so you can use that to maybe buy comps..shinys..battle points...tms..everstones etc.

 

 

 

Also maybe give choice to the winner? if the prize can be tradable but no comp or non tradable + comp at least people who would want the gifts can or need money could choose the other choice.

Edited June 17, 2015 by SneaKyKhaLidA

[Gunthug]

knowledge

Damn, after reading that I'm starting to doubt whether this game is salvageable at all. Especially given DS's dismissive reply, which mimics the attitude of the majority of upper staff members

[ThinkNice]

Could have been summed up as "The end game content is not very good at the moment and this is why people see Offiical Tournaments as end game content".

Except that wasn't really the point.

[Kiliminati]

If they wanted to continue with the gift shiny system forever, then why not start making gift shiny eevees, starters, and other rares the norm? You literally cannot trade them, and as such they have absolutely no impact on the in-game economy.

 

"But Kili," you could say, "even though the amazing gift shinies can't be traded, having more in the game no matter what would ultimately decrease their value as they technically wouldn't be as rare." The thing is that desire and rarity go hand-in-hand; it's not as if players would all of a sudden stop wanting to buy shiny eevees or the like, as they are aesthetically appealing- fuck if it's extremely rare or not. Players can't even buy gift shinies; they can only buy legitimate ones. So if they really want that shiny gift charmander, they are going to have to pay the standard price for it... or continue to grind Mt. Ember and become one of the luckiest players on the server in the meantime. 

 

And one other thing: If godlike gift shinies became the norm, the next problem that would arise would be "what prizes do we give out for the big tournaments then?"

 

Answer: Rare non-gift shinies (omg), customized competitive gift or non-gift shinies (I'm talking flawless HP Ice Jolteons and the like); really anything that has increased value.

Edited June 17, 2015 by Kiliminati

[raaidn]

Im so glad i started this thread

[ThinkNice]

I think Senile just killed this game tbh

[YettoDie]

When clonebreeding excisted the endgame was easier to get to, as the uts who werent perfect were avaliable for the masses. The really good ones were only affordable by the richer people. Makes sense they played for a while and should have access to better ived pokes. Nowadays the market is filled by selling 1x31 caught pokes OR 6x31 pokes which go for 3-4m as it isnt cheap to create them. With the current money sinks we have its next to impossible to cough up that amount of money.

 

As an older player who used to have a few boxes full of the leftovers from the clonebreeding it was quite 'cheap' to create new pokes. Now that source is running dry. It's basically a neccesety to run atleast 2 sets per comp since scouting excists. 

 

Now we get to the tournament part, we got our new team which took us 2 months to create. Wanting to sign up for our first tournament. Damn couldn't get in as the player spots are gone instantly. Try again next time. You finally get in as a new player, got first rounded by the better players. How is that fun. The tournament prizes are completely attrocious 20k battlepoints is grindable is close to 8 hours. A comp gift shiny is worth jack's shit as it is subpar to most comps. If we were able to sell those shiny comps, they certainly are worth more than their non shiny counterparts, atleast we have somewhat of a payback for the time we spend grinding/tournament. 

 

Darkshade you had it about Battle Frontier as endgame, I know completely unrelated to the tournament prizes. How the fuck is adding another massive grind any better, it surely won't improve the end game.

[Munya]

On these other mmos we are comparing to, theres usually a cost for entering a tournament, or raid, or whatever, provided you want to do well, in the form of consumables you don't get back.  Consumables that typically cost a fair bit of change, nothing like berries which are practically given to the player at 500 pokedollars or whatever isnignificant amount it is.

Before anybody say that making comps is the cost, you don't lose those when you lose or complete the tournament, they are a cost that you keep the value of plus the potential value of the tournament you enter.

The entire argument you should get back the cost of what it took to make the team, and some, is ridiculous, since you didn't lose that cost.

That said, I'm not against the idea of a pokedollar reward, but it need to be the equivalent to the BP reward.

[YettoDie]

On these other mmos we are comparing to, theres usually a cost for entering a tournament, or raid, or whatever, provided you want to do well, in the form of consumables you don't get back.  Consumables that typically cost a fair bit of change, nothing like berries which are practically given to the player at 500 pokedollars or whatever isnignificant amount it is.

Before anybody say that making comps is the cost, you don't lose those when you lose or complete the tournament, they are a cost that you keep the value of plus the potential value of the tournament you enter.

The entire argument you should get back the cost of what it took to make the team, and some, is ridiculous, since you didn't lose that cost.

That said, I'm not against the idea of a pokedollar reward, but it need to be the equivalent to the BP reward.

 

In other MMO's there might be a fee for entering a raid, lets say one million per person, you need 10 people for a raid, making it 10 million for the group, most of the time you succeed in that raid. The reward for the group might be 100 million. This is still better than investing 5k pokedollars for no gainz as the odds of winning a tournament is 1/32 or 1/64 for some.

[ThinkNice]

On these other mmos we are comparing to, theres usually a cost for entering a tournament, or raid, or whatever, provided you want to do well, in the form of consumables you don't get back.  Consumables that typically cost a fair bit of change, nothing like berries which are practically given to the player at 500 pokedollars or whatever isnignificant amount it is.

Before anybody say that making comps is the cost, you don't lose those when you lose or complete the tournament, they are a cost that you keep the value of plus the potential value of the tournament you enter.

The entire argument you should get back the cost of what it took to make the team, and some, is ridiculous, since you didn't lose that cost.

That said, I'm not against the idea of a pokedollar reward, but it need to be the equivalent to the BP reward.

Munya, Munya are going to back to making mindless arguments and putting words in our mouths? The prize of tournaments isn't even close to 1/20th of the investment we had to make to be successful in a tournament. Are we saying we need our time and effort rewarded back a 100%? No, but we are saying that the prizes right now are ridiculously low. I think this is time and time again the incapability of staff members comprehending the literal hell players have to go through to be a successful competitor and more importantly a consistent competitor. Senile's post reflects on all the different ingredients a player needs to consistently stay on top of the game.

 

The prize you have to pay to enter raids or tournaments in other MMOs is miniscule compared to the loot/prize you can win and you grind these components by actually playing the endgame. When we are grinding we aren't playing the endgame, we are grinding for the endgame and this grind right now doesn't stop. Even when reaching the endgame, it's simply not worth it here because of how self destructive our endgame is right now. Again explained in Senile's post.

 

This fear of making it easy on us will eventually lead to the end of this game (pun intended). Competitive Pokémon is never easy and even on simulators to be on the top of the league means grinding and I think most of you don't realize this. Metagames are incredibly dynamic on simulators and you have to constantly go with the flow, grind information, practice teams make endless small adjustments to a team until it's tournament worthy.

[Darkshade]

Nope, a small amount of it is actually elaborating on the problem of official prizes. I'm not saying to buff tournaments to compensate, I'm telling you that the entire endgame is completely broken. The battle frontier does pretty much nothing to fix that, as it isn't attacking the underlying issue of why the endgame is shit, which I elaborated on in my earlier post.

 

tl;dr: refer to my earlier tl;dr and try again

 

Okay Darkshade, you've asked for it.

 

The endgame system in PokeMMO is currently broken. Like, straight up broken. The justifications used by staff for the current system, consequently, also make no sense. At least, they would if the systems existed in isolation, but the way everything is put together at the moment makes PokeMMO endgame a gigantic mess.

 

Let's start with your statement about official events not being a primary source of income, which brings up a question: Why not? I have never, in my life, played an MMO where the end game was also not the primary source of income. Once you reach cap in an MMO, what do you do? The high end content of course, such as raids. Usually you also do daily quests, assuming there are those; why are dailies used, exactly? They give players an incentive to keep logging onto the game regularly, while controlling the flow of whatever reward they give into the economy. It incentives players for logging in while allowing developers to more or less limit the flow of resources into the economy. It seems like a logical system, however, PokeMMO doesn't really have dailies. I do think that tournaments are a nice parallel; They're endgame content that incentives people logging in regularly to attend them...and that's where the analogy stops.

 

Neither have I.

Official Events are not meant to be considered 'true' end game content, but rather an additional activity to do on the side with the chance of winning a prize.

These are things that exist in lots of MMOs but they're never ever designed to reward you with enough value to support the rest of your game career; not even the most prestigious ones.

 

Dailies on the other hand are a nice idea and likely something that we will implement in the future.

Dailies generally do not reward players with incredibly large amounts of money, they usually reward a set amount of exp that is slightly better than the usual time:exp ratio.

This is also done with money also, but again, never to the extent that tournaments give out money for.

 

The reason exp is generally more favourable is because it is account bound, and therefore it does not matter how many alternate accounts are created.

It makes little to no difference economically if somebody levels up faster than usual.

 

Daily quests have a promise of reward, and usually give a pretty decent reward. Tournaments in PokeMMO promise you nothing since only 1 person will actually get a prize for several hours of time, and I'm not even sure you could argue the prize is worth the time invested to play in the tournament. Let me repeat this; Not even accounting for the time that you spend making all your comps, getting items, etc., the 3+ hours you spend playing in a tournament, even if you win, is not a good return on investment for your time. Let's think about this; Comp gift shinies are worthless because 99% of them aren't worth playing. Why? Lack of certain moves, hidden power, and a mediocre EV spread is bad enough, but even for pokemon who don't have this issue you're faced by the massive obstacle of how easy it is to scout. Sure, you might not need a certain egg move on your shiny gift pokemon, but the fact it's a shiny gift pokemon tells your opponent you don't have it, so even if you didn't want it, you're at a disadvantage. Same applies to hidden power. 20k battle points? You're probably better off grinding the battle tower during the time you would have spent in the tournament. The reward might not be as much, but you're guaranteed a decent payout from the battle tower anyway, so it's still probably a better idea. I'm not even going to comment on the secret base decoration lmao.

 

Again, your time spent creating competitives is not something that is a benefit purely for Official Events, they're something that you use for the rest of the game.

 

Your criticism of the shiny competitive prizes is completely valid and may be something we address.

 

Secretbase Decorations are a choice, they're currently not obtainable through any other method and work as a trophy.

 

As much as you like to compare comps to equipment in other games and PvP as the endgame, the analogy doesn't work. What kind of MMO has an endgame where the endgame content isn't where you get your rewards? Sure, there's shit like profession systems; "You need 500 shiny rocks you get from mining in the ogre's nose mine for 10 hours while having max mining to upgrade your Hambat", but really, what would a person who's doing endgame raids do? They'd do a fucking raid, get some loot, and sell that shit to buy some shiny rocks. Except we can't do that, because our high level endgame content offers no actual worthwhile reward for some reason, even if you win, which you will not a majority of the time.

 

Once again; Official Events are not meant to considered the final 'end game'.

They may take this place currently due to our lack of supported PvP within game mechanics, but that is a problem with our current content and not anything to do with Official Events.

 

So, the "endgame content" has basically no reward. But what about the barrier to entry? Surely if competitive pokemon is to be the endgame equipment parallel that you describe Darkshade, it'd make sense that they require a fair amount of work to get? The answer is no, because of the previous point of tournaments offering basically no reward. Why? Well, riddle me this; Once you reach level cap in a game such as WoW, what do you do? The answer is that you start raiding. Why do you raid? To get better equipment. What does getting equipment let you do? Do harder raids. And so on. Comparing competitive pokemon to high end equipment in other MMOs doesn't work for this reason. How do you get better pokemon in PokeMMO? Engaging in a long, tedious grind that has absolutely nothing to do with the actual end game you want to do.

 

For other MMOs, once you reach cap, the grinding you're doing for the "endgame" is endgame content itself. While legendary equipment might be a pre-requisite for the hardest raids in the game, you build up for those raids by doing easier raids. In PokeMMO, it's more like "okay, you wanna do high level raids? go kill some boars for 50 hours and come back". The parallel which was drawn with the original breeding system of Pokemon being equipment you improve doesn't work, precisely because of the way you get the resources to improve those pokemon. It's not at all the same. We aren't doing "endgame content" to get pokmeon, we're intentionally engaging in a tedious, boring grind designed for no purpose other than to timegate us because of the absolute lack of real endgame content in the game other than the sparsely occuring tournament scene.

 

Yes, We don't have any substantial end game content.

This is something we are aware of and are attempting to create, but Official Tournaments are not intended to be a placeholder for that.

That would be a very poor excuse for gameplay, I agree.

 

So, why are raids enjoyable? Aren't they the same "brainless grind" as we have in PokeMMO? Well, aside from requiring slightly more thinking and planning, raids touch upon the key experience that makes MMOs appeal to players, the cooperation. The many people working together to achieve one goal they can't on their own. That's the strength of MMOs as a genre. In PokeMMO, this doesn't exist, and it certainly doesn't exist when you're sitting around in an empty channel grinding for breeders to minimize lag because there's no benefit in other people being there, it just lags your client. The grind is in itself just tedious, and it doesn't have the strength of involving the cooperation of people to encourage players to stick through it, it's a purely single player grind with no end. Why do you think that new players can't even enter the tournament scene and have a shot without joining a bigger team first? Not only do they need help with getting the resources to make comps and the knowledge older players have, but the fact that not having team chat open to talk to people while doing this shit is fucking unbearable, and the regular chats are so shitty that they aren't acceptable either. The problem with PokeMMO is that you're designing it as if it's an MMO because you don't want "Firered Online", but you don't have the main strength of an MMO, which is where many people can work together for one objective. No group PvP, no raids, nothing, but you're designing it with the grind of an MMO. The only reason the grind of an MMO is tolerable is because people don't play MMOs for the gameplay, but for the people, but you're missing the people so the terrible gameplay is inexcusable.

 

And this is the critical design flaw in PokeMMO, and why people will always complain about the grind. It just so happens that the grind is so awful right now that people are especially mad about it. With that being said, I'm not done, because this design flaw is especially abhorrent in the context of how negatively it affects the competitive scene, because trust me, it really fucks it up.

 

Almost all MMOs are a single player experience shared with many other players.

You're always aiming to improve your character whilst trading away material to others who need them in return for something you are able to use.

Yes, there are things we lack which bring people together - such as joint dungeons, where players band together to achieve a particular goal whilst earning materials they need for themselves.

We do plan on doing these things, we're designing things for the long run not just for how it is now.

With that in mind it's an awful idea to jump the gun and introduce things 'temporarily' whilst the rest of the end game is missing as by the time it is here it's already become half-broken.

 

I understand that this is especially problematic for the competitive scene as we have no real PvP support outside of that of the top of the PC; and that does not see much, and for good reasons.

 

Awhile ago I drew up some concepts for PvP aspects for the Battle Frontier.

They are likely not something that will make it into this update, but certainly something that could be considered "end game", alongside the planned legendary dungeons.

 

 

So, let me start this by stating that Pokemon is the competitive game with the biggest barrier to entry that I have ever seen. It's absolutely disgusting. This isn't the fault of PokeMMO, it applies to regular pokemon as well; You need to learn how natures work, the existence of IV's/EV's, have an understanding of how egg moves work and chain breeding, and beyond these more complicated concepts all the basic stuff as well; each pokemon's abilities and what they do, type matchups, a rough knowledge of the base stats of each pokemon, and of course understanding what the fuck base stats are, and of course whatever bans/clauses are currently active in whatever format they're playing, plus there's all kinds of more subtle bits of knowledge such as burn cutting attack, secondary effects of moves, the % chance of various things to happen, etc. This is a massive amount of knowledge any would-be competitive pokemon player must learn before even beginning, which is what makes Pokemon have such a high barrier of entry competitively. PokeMMO basically looks at this, thinks about it for a moment, then stacks up even more shit that a new player must do in order to play. Sure, there's some minor improvements--listing EVs, IV's, and explaining natures upon mousing over them--which help, but there's also a bunch of other shit. Players have to figure out how event moves/tutor moves work, since we have them added in a pretty clear way which is never 100% explained. There's of course the breeding system, which a new player really isn't going to figure out exists until they try breeding and realize something's off, at which point they have to figure out how the fuck the system works, after which, they have to figure out the optimal way to use it. The grind for shards, for BP, chaining egg moves when parents die, and of course during all this you somehow have to keep up a steady supply of yen when you barely even know how to breed at this point.

 

PokeMMO has an even higher barrier of entry for comp than regular pokemon, but it doesn't take much of an initiative to help lower this wall other than the few luxuries I mentioned earlier. No real tutorial, not really pointing players towards the competitive scene, pretty much nothing, players have to figure things out themselves then participate in the infinite grind. And of course, even once these new players manage to make a (shitty) team of 6, they'll proudly march into Vermillion, lose, then realize that their team is shit and have to breed some new shit, except they still don't really know what's good. At this point, the only real way for a player to actually improve before just quitting because game2hard, is to join a large team with players that can teach them. At this point, they go through the massive grind again, make a halfway decent team, then decide to try to join a tournament. They fail at even joining the first few tournaments they try to participate in because all signups are filled 2 seconds after they start, but eventually they get into one, aaaaaaaaand they lose. They have to adjust their team, keep grinding new pokemon, etc.; Do you get the picture? They do this enough times, and they might win a tournament and get a shitty prize after spending shit tons of time in a tedious grind almost nobody enjoys. This is all just for learning one tier, by the way.

 

I do think that we need better explanation into IVs/EVs/Egg Moves etc. and we plan on doing some of this with the creation of a UI to display the potential that a baby created via breeding has.

There are many other things that need explanations such as the benefits of EVs and how they are obtained and so on.

 

These are just some of the things that we currently lack support for.

 

Optimally we'd like support in game for explanations on tier changes, better PvP support with announcements for automated tournaments and a way of introducing non-competitive players into PvP.

 

This may be where the Battle Frontier eventually comes in.

 

 

And you might have read that all and thought that it was fine, it shouldn't be easy to win a tournament. You're probably right. With that being said, look at that and ask yourself; why would anyone go through with all of that? Why would they have not just stopped playing 300 hours ago? If winning a tournament is supposed to be this difficult, then why is the prize worthless?

 

And that, my friends, is the long and short of the massive flaws in the game. Competitively, it is a mess, because the way the game is designed and what the game actually is clash in a way which is god awful. The barrier of entry is too high, the reward for getting past it is non-existent, and the actual grind that is the gameplay isn't enjoyable, nor is it designed to be from any perspective that I can see.

 

tl;dr: read it asshole

 

I already agree with your point on the competitive gift shinies but the 'worth' is meant to be in use, not necessarily the amount of money it is able to generate.

 

 

Darkshade you had it about Battle Frontier as endgame, I know completely unrelated to the tournament prizes. How the fuck is adding another massive grind any better, it surely won't improve the end game.

 

The Battle Frontier will hopefully bring many new PvP aspects that can be utilized by competitive players and non competitive players alike.

I'd share some of the concept with you, but unfortunately they have not been fully discussed internally so I'm unable to present them.

 

End game content is meant to take advantage of the best aspects of the game and reward players for spending the time they invested into it with entertainment.

That's the goal we'd like to aim for.

 

 

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That took quite some time to respond to, unfortunately it has cut into some of my hat creation time.

Dasu gon' b mad.

[YettoDie]

The Battle Frontier will hopefully bring many new PvP aspects that can be utilized by competitive players and non competitive players alike.

I'd share some of the concept with you, but unfortunately they have not been fully discussed internally so I'm unable to present them.

 

End game content is meant to take advantage of the best aspects of the game and reward players for spending the time they invested into it with entertainment.

That's the goal we'd like to aim for.

 

 

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That took quite some time to respond to, unfortunately it has cut into some of my hat creation time.

Dasu gon' b mad.

 

If and when this awesome concept of the Battle Frontier will be implemented then it still takes a massive amount of time to get comps while getting these awesome BP in return, making it even a harder job as it is PvP wise so the payout is not 100%. The grind for comps is just way too time consuming, for noobs and older players.

 

As for you "sacreficing" your hat making time, you are reading viable feedback from the community. Yet you are disregarding all aspects of what are being told, if the majority of the community dislikes something do something about it instead of thinking of shitty excuses. A market where comps are basically worthless is still a shit ton better than having to pay 3m for each of them. Yes, yes I understand the comp scene is only a small percentage of the complete scene, we still purchase these hats directly or indirectly.

[ThinkNice]

So you are saying tournaments are not the endgame, then what the fuck are we even playing this for.

[Arimanius]

So you are saying tournaments are not the endgame, then what the fuck are we even playing this for.

I think he means official events but a working PVP System as a future thing will be an end game content

[Darkshade]

So you are saying tournaments are not the endgame, then what the fuck are we even playing this for.

 

If you had read my post you would understand that's not what I am attempting to get across.

 

I am saying Official Events are not intended to be the end game content that we intend on implementing into the game as 'end game content'.

 

Tournaments themselves are definitely end game content, Official Event tournaments being used as final end game content is a bad excuse for lack of gameplay

 

 

I think he means official events but a working PVP System as a future thing will be an end game content

 

Arimanius is correct.