The PokeYen Conundrum

[DoubleJ]

The PokeYen Conundrum: A Story of Competitive Struggles.

 

A long time ago, there was a time when financial wealth came much easier to the players of PokeMMO. A time when comps didn't require hours and hours, and even days, of dedication just to be on par with the remainder of the competitive field. A time when Godly pokes weren't rejected or low-balled in trade chat because they were only 3x31, despite having 28+ in the other two stats. A time when breeding one poke didn't require 8 hours of money farming. 

 

Oh those were the days. The days when the competitive players could enjoy the game the way they wanted to play it, and not have to dedicate hours of mindlessness to Pay Day farming just to buy a few overpriced braces and a couple Everstones. 

 

I also remember a time when Shiny Traders and Competitive Players played this game cooperatively, and when tens of millions of PokeYen wasn't coveted by one player. 

 

I asked for an economy re-work a few months ago. What I got were a few changes that alleviated stress on obtaining battle points, but broke any and all opportunity to sell them for a reasonable amount of money worth the time invested. 

 

 

 

So PokeMMO, I ask you this: Will you find a way to fix the current economy to help competitive players?

 

 

My quick-fix recommendations include: 

 

1. Reduce the cost of breeding Braces

2. Reduce the cost of Ability Pills

3. Increase payouts from Official Tournaments (1M is just too little compared to the current demands of breeding)

 

My long-term ideas include:

 

1. Develop an auto-sell program where you can breed a pokemon, and trade it to an NPC for a set profit. Factors determining payout could be based on the following:

• Total sum of all ivs
• Species
• Appropriate nature
• 31 IV bonuses

This could create a reasonable market for players to base their player-to-player trades on, rather than just a shit-show like it is now. It would also provide an option for old, unwanted comps to be sold at a reasonable price. While this would be difficult to code (I think), I truly believe this would be a beneficial addition to the game.

 

2. While I haven't found a good way to do this that would undermine the game's development progress thus far, I think there should be a link made once again between Shiny Traders and Competitive Players. In the past, prize Shiny Pokemon were able to be traded, which enticed Shiny Traders to hand over their wads of cash to get their hands on something they otherwise weren't able to get. Idk how we'd do this with our current system, but I really can't appreciate a system that promotes players who give the least amount of time to this game a leg up. Comp players are grinding 24/7, while Shiny Traders log on just to trade among themselves or to chase a new shiny that was reportedly seen in the possession of an unknown player.  

 

So please, we out here struggling. Funds are dried up and breeders are long gone. The system is driving us away. 

Edited September 10, 2015 by DoubleJ

[Platoons]

LF rollback to 2014 breeding so the comp market is cheap as fuck and a 4x31 comp is 200k instead of 800k

[DoubleJ]

LF rollback to 2014 breeding so the comp market is cheap as fuck and a 4x31 comp is 200k instead of 800k

 

You don't get it. 

[Beldore]

In other MMOs they send you on "quests" and on completion of these quests they reward you with $$$ and other prizes. You could also kill some monsters or bosses and get rewards from slaying them. I think a system like this is what PokeMMO is lacking. We need a system that allows us to make money easily, grinding islands and selling some comps/dittos doesn't cut it. I think E4 should give us some money back as we win, we need the return of shinies being tradeable thats won in tourneys. I have no major solutions for money, but i think those two would at least give us some more ways to get $$$.

[DoubleJ]

In other MMOs they send you on "quests" and on completion of these quests they reward you with $$$ and other prizes. You could also kill some monsters or bosses and get rewards from slaying them. I think a system like this is what PokeMMO is lacking. We need a system that allows us to make money easily, grinding islands and selling some comps/dittos doesn't cut it. I think E4 should give us some money back as we win, we need the return of shinies being tradeable thats won in tourneys. I have no major solutions for money, but i think those two would at least give us some more ways to get $$$.

 

Agree 100%. Make the E4 harder, but provide like a 100k drop or something if you complete it. This only applies to the second time through ofc to avoid ruining a first time play-through. 

[Tritios]

Is it just me that is pretty fine with the way things are atm? Im breeding alot of comps, cheap ones tho. Like 2x31 and rest 20+...

yeah most of the time ingame is spent on Isle runs and item hunting. The grind is real tedious and boring as hell. But I sorta manage...
Also bringing back tradeable shinies in tourneys won't change much, at least not for plebs like me.. There is only a handful of people that would benefit from this and they would make soooooo much more.

[SirYurop]

For the quest we can have a npc who ask for x pokemon w x nature...so we should go to the tall grass for get it, then trade it for some $$$...meanwhile we can payday the non x pokemon spawns or w some luck get some breeders, opinions????

im agree w add the e4 a payout

Idk how but we need a solution

[DrCraig]

I hate being poor. I'm always poor. The only way to not be poor is to put hours upon hours into grinding NPCs. I've never seen other MMOs make arguably the most important basic aspect of their game so damn grindy.

[Beldore]

Is it just me that is pretty fine with the way things are atm? Im breeding alot of comps, cheap ones tho. Like 2x31 and rest 20+...

yeah most of the time ingame is spent on Isle runs and item hunting. The grind is real tedious and boring as hell. But I sorta manage...
Also bringing back tradeable shinies in tourneys won't change much, at least not for plebs like me.. There is only a handful of people that would benefit from this and they would make soooooo much more.

That's true, only top tier players would really benefit from tradeable shinies. The moneysinks in the game is way too high, we shouldn't have to be poor most of the time.

[DoubleJ]

That's true, only top tier players would really benefit from tradeable shinies. The moneysinks in the game is way too high, we shouldn't have to be poor most of the time.

 

Oh but there is an answer here: We buy vanity items with real cash and resell them for in-game money!

[Bilburt]

The funny thing is they tried so hard to avoid this and yet it happend

Edit: while im not creative enough to think of solutions i agree that something needs to be done and not just because im lazy

Edited September 10, 2015 by Bilburt

[Beldore]

Oh but there is an answer here: We buy vanity items with real cash and resell them for in-game money!

Rip us people with no jobs, lets us go cri in the corner

[Gilan]

I don't agree with lowering prices. What needs to happen is that money making needs to become more "fun". That way more people will participate in the money making process.

I vote for Pokemon contests to have cash payouts once they are implemented

[Platoons]

The PokeYen Conundrum: A Story of Making Money

 

With our economy standing at how it currently is, there are ways to get money, but at the same time you ask yourself, "Do I really want to go through the hassle of this grind just to make such a little amount?" FUCK NO.

 

At first people may find the grind fun (paydaying, NPC running, Shard & Estone hunting) but after about 10-15 minutes you realize that the player is not getting paid high enough for the work being put in. NPC running makes about 90k without using payday, and you can run that every 6 hours, so lets say a dedicated player will run it twice a day. thats only 180k coming in daily for an hour of work each run through. On average, a UT that will keep up to standards with the current comp scene will cost around $250-400k, where a fully comped out poke(Ev trained, PP maxed, everything) will range from 500-700k. BUT WAIT, THERES MORE! DONT FORGET THE GENDERLESS POKES THAT GO UP TO OVER A MIL JUST FOR ONE. With the comp scene being a big part of this game and considering theres more PvP contests than anything, a new player would most likely want to join in with the comp scene. Oh wait, they have no money. Okay so they start NPC running, 180k a day, takes about 2 weeks to grind up enough money for a 6 poke team just NPC training. Not even thinking about the fact that theres on average 2-3 different movesets on each poke, so theres more money going into the pit just so they have a variety. 

 

Oh whats that? you want to breed your own comps? unlike before, that'll also cost you just as much in not only yen, but time put in to catch breeders or pokes to make breeders, then braces, stones, gender selection, and even the balls to put them in all start to add up. THE BEST PART IS, NOBODY CAN LEND BREEDERS BECAUSE THEY GET SLAUGHTERED AFTER YOU MAKE A BABY.

Thank you to Craig for his basic rundown on breeding comps

[spoiler]

The breeding process is way too tedious

Let's break down the steps to making 1 damn pokemon from scratch and then amplify this 6 times for a whole team.

 

>I want a Blastoise. Good thing I have a female squirtle starter. Time to find some water/monster breeders.

>I need to come up with breeders for HP, then HP/DEF, then HP/DEF/SATK and so on

>I mindlessly take 2 hours and get a good 2 boxes or so. Maybe I spent 10k or so on balls no problem.

>Now I must breed my wild catches for breeders

>1+ hour of breeding and over 100k spent on braces. Just to breed breeders. BREEDING BREEDERS.

>now I want to start on my squirtle

>oh no i need everstones, better go spend another hour just so I can get everstone.

>Time to breed everything

>another 1 hour and 75k spent on braces for all the ivs to pass

>oh, did I mention over 20k just to keep in female?  so another 100k stacked on there yay

>now i need to train it

>im faced with either 1. paying 190k for vitamins or spending 2hrs or so grinding Evs. Idk which sounds more fun yo

>cool now i simply have to level my comp which shouldnt take over an hour at all

Note: where am I getting this money from? grinding NPC trainers every 6 hours for 90k every chance I get, taking up over 2 hours of my time

 

>Cool now I have a good competitive blastoise and only exhuasted ALL of my resources and spent way too much time

>Time to make SIX MORE pokemon and then when im done time to make more sets etc.

 

[/spoiler]

 

What we need to have is an NPC payout of almost 3x if not more than what it is already with the standards that pokemon are at. Some above have mentioned to implement "fun" ways of making money on here, but in reality, when something gets repeated over and over, it becomes stale and boring such as all the current money making methods. No matter what gets implemented, its just going to grow boring so theres no point to make a new way when the devs can just increase payout so the original money methods can at least be worth it in the long run.

Edited September 10, 2015 by Platoons

[Beldore]

I had an idea, why don't we use the battle frontier to make some yen. When we talk to the NPC we could get the option to battle for yen or BP. The higher the streak the more yen you receive. This could be tweaked too if it causes problems, but it's better than grinding islands for a measly 90k after 2 hours.

[Bilburt]

I had an idea, why don't we use the battle frontier to make some yen. When we talk to the NPC we could get the option to battle for yen or BP. The higher the streak the more yen you receive. This could be tweaked too if it causes problems, but it's better than grinding islands for a measly 90k after 2 hours.

decent idea gives a "fun" way of making money
But this doesnt help those who are starting to breed with "bad" pokes they wouldnt come far and the payout wouldnt be worth the effort

[Beldore]

decent idea gives a "fun" way of making money
But this doesnt help those who are starting to breed with "bad" pokes they wouldnt come far and the payout wouldnt be worth the effort

gives them money faster than grinding for days to buy a decent breeder. This was just an idea to make yen not breed comps. I do see your point tho, i think they just need to reduce the cost of braces, make everstones buyable (maybe only a few per day/week?) and reduce the cost of gender selection imo.

[Bilburt]

gives them money faster than grinding for days to buy a decent breeder. This was just an idea to make yen not breed comps. I do see your point tho, i think they just need to reduce the cost of braces, make everstones buyable (maybe only a few per day/week?) and reduce the cost of gender selection imo.

Yep i see where you are coming from because with he confirmation of iv's didnt lower prices at all made it less time consuming to breed but sadly didnt affect prices

[suigin]

Make the vitamin sell price 4900$ so you can buy them with battle points but sell them for money (It'd help reduce the oversaturation of Choice Bands in the market).

Make Selphie (Island 5 npc) ask to see certain specific pokemon with specific levels every day and make it so she gives you a lot of money for it

Rework the Trainer Tower into a money making place since right now it's not worth getting BP there

Add the Trick House and make it work as a money making place too.

 

Just the first one would be good enough imo.

[Toast]

Make the vitamin sell price 4900$ so you can buy them with battle points but sell them for money (It'd help reduce the oversaturation of Choice Bands in the market).

Make Selphie (Island 5 npc) ask to see certain specific pokemon with specific levels every day and make it so she gives you a lot of money for it

Rework the Trainer Tower into a money making place since right now it's not worth getting BP there

Add the Trick House and make it work as a money making place too.

 

Just the first one would be good enough imo.

buy vitamins for 3650

sell for 4900

???

profit

[Gilan]

So, to sum up the current situation: we find that either the breeding Pokeyen costs are too high, or we can't get enough Pokeyen (they are not one in the same). Currently, we find that we don't have enough pokeyen, because when we have the funds, we can breed really fast thanks to confirmed IV's.

 

A couple of people have suggested the lowering of breeding costs (in terms of yen). The issue with this, is that it would allow for even faster breeding rates, and would still require the same amount of boring money grind we do today (until you have bred every single combination of pokemon that you would want). It would change, for example, Bob going from breeding 2 comps every week and spending 10 hours of grinding, to Bob breeding 3 comps every week and still spending 10 hours of grinding. So, in my opinion, lowering the cost of breeding wouldn't solve the core issue (that the current money grind is bad gameplay and hinders the rest of the game).

 

 

However, if you can actually make money grinding "fun" then you will solve, or significantly alleviate, the core issue. Now, when I say "fun" I mean that you're actually playing the game; you're engaged in it and your attention is not divided to something else. It doesn't necessarily mean you "enjoy" the game, cause if you don't enjoy it, then PokeMMO isn't for you. So, what things should you be rewarded with cash? In my opinion, like I've already stated, Pokemon contests, preferably PvP would be a good way. I don't think it would be easily exploitable, and it would be something fresh that would take a while to get stale. People would come up with the best move sets and everything. Would be a whole new meta game. However, it's hard to predict that, and I might very well be wrong.

 

Someone else has suggested to create automatic in-game tournaments with cash payouts. I know these are already confirmed (the cash payout thing is unconfirmed to my knowledge, though).

 

You could also add cash to the Pickup ability? (though that's not necessarily "fun")

 

Pokemon's gameplay consists of: Battling, Catching, Breeding, and Trading

 

If the devs can come up with more gameplay options (*cough* Dungeons *cough*) then perhaps the methods of making money would become diverse enough that you could essentially never become bored (though unlikely).

 

 

But, so what Gilan? Great, there would be new ways of making the same amount of money I currently make today. I don't see how that would help.

 

Well, two things:

1. With a more diverse pool of ways to make money, you will spend a longer amount of time making money overall, per day. So, even though you'll be making money at the same rate, the diverse pool will encourage you to spend a longer amount of time doing it. So you will end up making more.

2. Some people, like Frags, refuse to partake in the grindfest that is today. If "fun" minigames are introduced to provide a new way to make cash, then these players would become more inclined to partake in the system. With that fact, and what was said in the 1st point, the amount of money on the system scale would increase dramatically.

 

If the amount of money on the system scale increases, individual players would realize this effect when they trade. Players would be able to sell their assets with greater ease (essentially the liquidity of all items and pokemon would increase). With this increase in the liquidity of your assets, you'll notice that obtaining the funds to breed and do other things becomes easier.

 

 

 

So, what I'm saying, if I'm saying anything, is that those who think that lowering the cost of breeding would solve the overall issue are wrong. Players need to endure until the devs can actually sit down and create the content that is needed to solve the issue, because what we have access to right now can't.

 

 

One more thing. I don't play this game anymore, so take what I said with a little grain of salt. I still think what I said is totally valid, though.

[Beldore]

I'm all for introducing mini games to make some yen. Just make it actually worth doing it , i don't wanna play it for 2hrs and only make 90k. I still think using the battle frontier or trainer tower to make some yen is a "fun" way to make money too.

[Gilan]

Also, LF Cody here, if you were to put a trading hub into the game that was accessible at around the 3rd or 4th gym, permanent players would be able to siphon out some of the money from players who run through the storyline then quit. That would be a nice influx of cash.

[Murcielago]

Nothing needs to be changed IMO.  Players should be breeding and trading smarter.  I know this won't be well received but its true.  A perfect 6x31 with perfect nature (complete vanity at this point) shouldn't be practical to get. 

 

ie:

 

catch ditto vs paying for them

 

be cool with good IV and nature (98% perfect vs 100% perfect) etc...

 

Its really not that hard.

Edited September 11, 2015 by Murcielago

[DrCraig]

Regarding the costs of breeding utilities like you said JJ, I completely agree. The costs for breeding are ridiculous. Sure a "15k Brace" and a "5k gender select" seem like reasonable prices. Hell, they look cheap right? Wrong. I was just in the situation where I am breeding a breeder, the usual grind bullshit I love. I put time into catching both wild pokemon and breed them together for 30k in braces and 5k for the gender. I just spent 35k to make one breeder. Only one breeder which I am going to have to combine with another to just kill it off. 35k for 1 egg? That's such garbage.

 

Let's make a hypothetical scenario:

 

I breed an egg

Total Cost: 35k

 

Let's assume th average trainer payout is 4k

*Which it is not, they give you chump change

 

So let's do maths. 35/4=8.75

So it takes me approximately 9 trainers to earn enough yen to make one egg. ONE. 

This is assuming 4k payout each.

 

That is absolutely ridiculous that I need to spend the time to beat 9 NPCs to earn enough money to make one egg. You can not tell me there are plenty of NPCs either because there are not. You can only battle every 6 hours and most of the PCs only give 2k or even less anyway. That's complete garbage.

 

The value of money and value of goods to purchase have some terrible relationship. Money is tough to earn and tough to keep. Yen is such a necessity, yet it is impossible to maintain a sufficient amount.

[Kizhaz]

I've skimmed most of this, a lot is a bit tldr. I agree with making the e4 give a payout reward in both regions and having the BF a choice between bp or money payout. I don't think we should just reduce the braces and leave it at that, in fact if we get better payout options I'd be happy to leave them as is. It's the grind for cash that needs to be fixed so that gameplay isn't tedious. In fact a suggestion I remember from ages ago was implementing the Lady in the house up on Resort Gorgeous to ask you to catch a certain pokemon and she'll reward with cash, this could help those not into battling to make some money more easily, it's basically like an official catching contest.

 

Trade hub isn't coming until Hoenn is complete so that will take a while for our trades to be easier, but these options listed above I feel could be more than placeholders in the time being, that way we don't rely on trading to make money