Why grinding for moves ruins the competitive game

[silytoad]

update: after my lost post I started hunting for a scarf. Now I found one.

That's 2 hours.

I would need 2 for Substitute = 4 hours of hunting. For one move!

Edited December 2, 2015 by silytoad

[RysPicz]

I would need 2 for Substitute = 4 hours of hunting. For one move!

You need 1 hour.

Make hoenn alt, go into dewford, grab the silk scarf. Shouldn't take more than 30 mins. Repeat over and over to get more silk scarfs. Devs are forcing us to make alts, so let's do that.

 

E: It gets worse.

 

 

This is a fucking outrage.

Edited December 2, 2015 by RysPicz

[codylramey]

My suggestion. Implement global trade and maybe raise the drop rate. Idk the vale of items now but i have been on trade chat a lot l8ly and there are some of the tutor items fo sale at a reasonable price. When we get global trade we will be able to go on there and see everyone who is selling these items and their prices (which are going to drop in the future as more ppl grind like the shard prices did). The ability to shop many different people and their prices at once should force the prices to drop even further.

Edited December 2, 2015 by codylramey

[KaynineXL]

My suggestion. Implement global trade and maybe raise the drop rate. Idk the vale of items now but i have been on trade chat a lot l8ly and there are some of the tutor items fo sale at a reasonable price. When we get global trade we will be able to go on there and see everyone who is selling these items and their prices (which are going to drop in the future as more ppl grind like the shard prices did). The ability to shop many different people and their prices at once should force the prices to drop even further.

You've said this over and over on multiple threads, they already said it's coming but this is not a fix for this issue as it is going to take a long time.. We need a quick fix for this because we're in a pretty terrible situation right now.

[Robofiend]

I bring this up time and time again but the Devs have a completely warped view of how hard this game should be to grind and regularly overcompensate by making the gameplay completely mind numbing. Grind for items so you can get moves? Grind for money to buy items? Grind for 45k BP to get event moves? What?

 

With each update come minor improvements (grinding BP isn't completely cancerous now, Hidden Power can be worked around, more moves and options become available) but they always come at the cost of player time and energy. There's nothing inherently fun about mindlessly killing things, and that's essentially all of the gameplay in PokeMMO outside of battling other people. For every 3 hours you spend playing in a tournament, getting haxed out in the third round and then watching the winner stall their way to first place, you're spending many more just preparing - and while the gift shinies are nice they're really no substitute for good gameplay.  

 

This game just isn't worth it right now (nor has it been for quite a while). Why on earth would you bother to:

1. Catch ~30 pokemon looking for good breeders

2. Grind for $100-$300k in braces, breeding, everstones - possibly more if you go for hidden powers.

3. Grind for 510 Evs or pay someone to do it, more cash grinding

4. Grind for items to buy move tutors

5. Grind for event moves

6. Option: wreck your hard earned EVs by rolling the dice on the hidden power guy

7. Grind your pokes up to 50, hope you don't accidentally evolve it or learn over a move or something.

 

There are always people who say "oh it's not that bad" but the relatively small size of the competitive community in this game speaks to how much of a pain it is for people to get into. The same people who defend these decisions come back in 3-6 months and either forum lurk indefinitely, log on exclusively for tournaments, or just disappear into other better games. Keeping people around should be a priority, not a nice side effect of making a game that caters to the tiny fraction of people with the free time and mental fortitude to grind heavily for pretty modest rewards.

 

There's almost no reason to get good at this game. It's not like LoL where being good equates to getting the best gear, reputation amongst other players and seeing your name in lights. The fact that there's no competitive ladder, no reward for passive PVP play and that even winning a tournament doesn't get you any closer to having a comp that you want makes it a huge labor for a pretty unreliable payoff. If you look at who wins tournaments you'll see that almost no one who started playing the game last year regularly does well: it's often older players who have lots of money from shinies or lucky eggs. With all the players who've started playing this game in the past year, there's a noticeable lack of people who are reasonably good at comp and can stomach the horrible pains of the devs constantly making things more tedious.

 

For instance, it's been literally years since I first pointed out how unbearable EV training is. The only noticeable changes are that now you can swap out EV grinding for paying a premium for vitamins - requiring you to grind even more cash by mindlessly killing the island 6 & 7 trainers. 

 

Good MMO games have gameplay that is inherently fun/interesting. This game, after years of disgruntled forum lurkers (like me), pointing out how Sisyphean this game is without any non-competitive endgame or passive competitive rewards, continues to neglect glaring holes in it's viability - leading it to attract new players for a couple of months, let them struggle to build a team, and then say "fuckit" because the metagame changes and the stuff they built last month is no longer viable.

 

The devs really just don't care about the competitive experience and they seem to make it more and more obvious with each passing update. I'm even sure how I'd ever come back with this system - as someone with 1-3 hours per day to actually devote to playing a video game, the amount of time and energy it takes to play the game just doesn't add up to the reward in any way, shape or form.

 

/rant

[BurntZebra]

My suggestion. Implement global trade and maybe raise the drop rate. Idk the vale of items now but i have been on trade chat a lot l8ly and there are some of the tutor items fo sale at a reasonable price. When we get global trade we will be able to go on there and see everyone who is selling these items and their prices (which are going to drop in the future as more ppl grind like the shard prices did). The ability to shop many different people and their prices at once should force the prices to drop even further.

This won't work as the demand already exists. Its just the supply that is lacking. Buyers are many and sellers are few, and are only willing to sell the items for high prices. Making a more convenient trade method will not really affect the supply at all. The supply is the only issue. Look at everstones when they first became useful. It was very difficult to find any, then people saw grinding for them wasn't too horrible and I believe they increased the rates of everstones. Now there are multiple people that have a ton of everstones for sale and its pretty easy to get them for cheap/market value. 

[DrCraig]

Robofiend bible

>hey maybe Robofiend is right
>nah he can't be
>we are devs and he is not
>we must not show concern
>let us make minor fixes and make tiny mechanic changes to assert dominance Edited December 2, 2015 by DrCraig

[codylramey]

You've said this over and over on multiple threads, they already said it's coming but this is not a fix for this issue as it is going to take a long time.. We need a quick fix for this because we're in a pretty terrible situation right now.

I keep saying the same thing bc these threads keep popping up. I know the grind is unbearable, i will not grind half of the shit needed to comp. But i also recognize the Devs are aware of this and hopes that some things that have already been confirmed to be implemented and is prolly already in the works will solve or help to solve this problem. So I am just waiting it out until then and if the shit still sucks ill be here complaining with the rest of you.

 

 

This won't work as the demand already exists. Its just the supply that is lacking. Buyers are many and sellers are few, and are only willing to sell the items for high prices. Making a more convenient trade method will not really affect the supply at all. The supply is the only issue. Look at everstones when they first became useful. It was very difficult to find any, then people saw grinding for them wasn't too horrible and I believe they increased the rates of everstones. Now there are multiple people that have a ton of everstones for sale and its pretty easy to get them for cheap/market value. 

Thats not necessarily true. First of all the market for these things is relatively young (a lil over a month) so its to be expected. It also required a tool that a lot of ppl may not have, a pick up poke. It still has to prove itself to be a reliable money making opportunity b4 ppl will grind for profit so as time goes on and ppl see that these things are selling easily and for a good amount of pocket change more ppl will grind and drive the supply up and prices down. Your everstone example is a good example of all of this. All of this is ignoring the fact that i did say to maybe slightly increase the drop rate.

 

Also one big thing that your post seems to ignore is that with the added convince of selling items will come encouragement to... well.. sell items. If you can just stick an item in a shop and come back later and its replaced by money then it will be a huge encouragement for people, especially casuals, to do this as a way of making money. That alone should increase the supply. Not only that a big reason supply is so low right now is that at any given time there is only a portion of all of the item selling players actually online and selling their stuff. With global trade they will be selling their items side by side with all of the other players selling the same item. That should help to drive down the prices even w/o increased supply.

[Squirtle]

As I posted in another thread I believe that the new trade system we will implement will do wonders. It will not only bring some much needed convenience to searching and getting rid of items found while hunting but as Cody has stated there will be an increase in supply which I believe will bring about a decrease in price somewhat. Now it will most definitely be a case of supply and demand so if the demand goes up the price will as well and the added convenience might bring more demand for certain items.

 

Now we also understand that the current method for obtaining money in-game is quite monotonous which leads to pretty poor experience. What we will not do to the extent you wish is to drastically under cut the time it takes doing the same task or similar tasks because of that. We would much prefer to heighten the gameplay ability and enjoyment rather that make it quicker to obtain certain goals you are seeking. If the gameplay is more enjoyable I do not believe it will be such a tedius task to play the game in the fashion you are currently familiar with.

[DrCraig]

In a world of quick fixes, obtaining what we want faster seems like the best route. In a world where there has been no way of making grinding more enjoyable after 3 years, ya fucking right.

I have faith in you guys because I have no choice. The confidence makes me optimistic.
#Hope

[Robofiend]

As I posted in another thread I believe that the new trade system we will implement will do wonders. It will not only bring some much needed convenience to searching and getting rid of items found while hunting but as Cody has stated there will be an increase in supply which I believe will bring about a decrease in price somewhat. Now it will most definitely be a case of supply and demand so if the demand goes up the price will as well and the added convenience might bring more demand for certain items.

 

A better trade system would be an improvement but I'm not super convinced. It's not like a trade system is going to make people want to go dig around in the bushes for hours for a pittance of an item - the gameplay of farming just flat out sucks. And more importantly, even if it does happen that Sticks or Blackglasses or what have you become way more common because of item farmers (inb4 bots), it still doesn't change the fact that I have to grind for the money to buy those things. In either case - high prices are a secondary effect of the fact that the gameplay for both gold farming and item farming is relatively unbearable.

 

Now we also understand that the current method for obtaining money in-game is quite monotonous which leads to pretty poor experience. What we will not do to the extent you wish is to drastically under cut the time it takes doing the same task or similar tasks because of that. We would much prefer to heighten the gameplay ability and enjoyment rather that make it quicker to obtain certain goals you are seeking. If the gameplay is more enjoyable I do not believe it will be such a tedius task to play the game in the fashion you are currently familiar with.

 

But it's a complete mystery as to how this will ever change! We've been told, "we know this is monotonous but we can't just make the game easy" for near eons, but it's still a complete mystery to me where this "fun gameplay" is going to come from. As Senile pointed out in his mangnum opus, there just isn't incentive to do everything that the game expects us to do: it's all mindless and there aren't even great rewards for winning tournaments anymore.

 

I shouldn't have to point this out but: cartridge Pokemon doesn't offer fun gameplay, and you're kind of bound by that. It's not like Berry Farming, Pickup, Beauty Contests or any of the elements of the cartridge games will be any more "fun" that just spam battling trainers - it's just a series of mindless button mashing activities that require no mental energy and are thus unbearable. Granted, breeding is a relative success, but its contingent on me going out and button mashing for long enough to get the raw materials.

 

More frustrating than all of this is that the development team regularly overlooks the objectively best part of Pokemon, which could replace tedious, mindless gameplay: pvp competition. If I were rewarded with money for beating higher ranked players or Battle Points that could be used to buy more comps, I'd be a straight up addict, and so would most players. Beating people is fun. Hell, losing can even be fun. In either case, if I have to choose between mindlessly nuking enemies with my level 100 Persian and battling friends, enemies and teammates I'd surely choose the second. But of course, this is always cast aside by the devs as being prone to abuse. They seem to not have noticed that payday/pic up farming clearly are as well - and on a much grander scale. I don't think it's necessary for me to go into detail on ways to prevent abuse, as I've already done this a lot in past threads. It's not hard to think up ways to block players from continually battling the same person or playing for hours on end to farm as much reward as possible.

 

 

TL;DR:

 

PvP is pretty much the only "fun" part of Pokemon. It's the only gameplay that actually gets players excited and is the main reason for the existence of teams at this juncture. It's also the main reason that Pokemon exists as a game outside of 12 year olds who buy the cartridge, beat the story and then throw it in the trash 6 months later. Devs: the game you're making has a global competitive following and you're just standing there thinking of ways to implement berries.

 

Currently comp play is a total money pit: there's no ROI for my veritable army of comps - they're just going to sit in my PC and never do anything for me. Sure, I might get a comp shiny if I took the time to play countless tournaments, train a perfect team and manage all the grinding - but the non-transferability of those winnings makes me no better off than not playing at all... which is exactly what I've been doing since non-tradable tournament rewards were introduced. I'm not the only one who feels this way, and I'm sure future recruits to the game feel the same way.

Edited December 3, 2015 by Robofiend

[LuisPocho]

 Now it will most definitely be a case of supply and demand so if the demand goes up the price will as well and the added convenience might bring more demand for certain items.

 

those are great news and may work a bit but...

I feel like people are missing something... in MMOs its hard to see prices being affected by demand, the price logic in videogames is "How hard it is to get?"...

if it is hard to get, then it´s expensive, is it easy to get? then its cheap... those items are being sold 100k because everybody knows it may take like 2 hours to get one, not because there are too few of them in the market




the supply and demand logic works in markets with competition (a looot of competition) "so many people are selling everstone for 20k, but I want to sell mine asap, gonna sell it for 19k" and the effects of this competition have a limit... then the items get an standart price (like a metagame?) and the competition stops. Come on, havent you read Lennin´s books?

[RysPicz]

Robo hit the nail on the head. It is not about a trading system you are or are not going to implement. It is all about mindless grind that game has to offer and nothing really much outside of it. Honestly the main reason why I even bother logging in outside of tournamentd are my friends, my teammates. I am more than sure that a big wmount of other players feels totally the same. I know players who log in just to chat and do nothing productive in the game.
Trading system is just a nice addition but what we really need are items and easier access to them. 150k per one item when I need 2 is a fucking outrage, so is spending 3-4 hours to find one myself. Same goes with evtrain. It took me 4 days to evtrain 4 pokes in atk, speed and hp. While also using some vitamins to speed it up. Oh and also making these comps took me like a month. Soon I will be on holiday and I will try to record how much time and money I spent making one decent comp. Then I am going to ask you, devs, a question: would you enjoy it yourself.
E: pardon my typos, am on phone Edited December 3, 2015 by RysPicz

[OldKeith]

I appreciate the comment from the higher-ups, although it does not really promise much. The trade hub impact is just speculation, and I doubt it will do much t unclog this tedious grind. In addition, until you provide this magically pleasant gameplay experience, why not make it easier for players to obtain these items? What's wrong with getting a stick every 10, 15 or 20 wild encounters?

 

And now, this is important, especially with an update around the corner. By mistake or not, the original point behind this topic was completely dodged by Squirtle: the rigidity of teambuilding, the never-changing comp. How are we supposed to experiment in tournaments and get usage stats if it is virtually impossible to change sets without a great cost behind it? Is that not going to be addressed at all?

[codylramey]

The devs have already laid out their plans for the future of this game in another thread

 

First; balance breeding. This was largely done with narrowed IVs as, at the time, narrowing IVs was the longest most tedious grind of the game. It is still expensive as all hell to breed because of brace prices but the devs are hoping that the trade hub and easy access to 3-4x breeders will help change that. Wont help the 31 seekers much as 3-4x 31 pokes are rare to find in the wild and would be expensive on the market.

 

Second, fix economy. This will largely be done by the auto trade system. But also tweeking drop rates on items n such will probably be a thing. But it is really hard to tell what the drop rate on items should be if we dont have a trade hub imo. Maybe that is why they implemented the items for tutors thing early, so they can go ahead and test and tweek the drop rates. Although i think more ppl will farm when trade hub comes out so test results now may not be all that accurate so idk.

 

Third, fix comp. This is going to be done with auto battle system, ladder system, and auto tournies, and auto usage stats. This will help fix the "lack of reward" there is to all of the grind we do. There has also been hints at a pvp reward system which will hopefully transform into money for comp players.

 

A lot of the shit you guys are complaining about is going to be addressed in updates. If the trade hub doesnt help ease the grind then they will do something else that will. But we wont know until we test the trade hub. Also you guys have to remember that this item for moves system is new, when they implement anything new they always make it harder than it ends up being in the end. Look at shards, breeding, new breeding, and battle points. All of that sucked worse than it does now when it was first implemented, While some of that shit still kind of sucks the devs and I are hoping the trade hub helps that. But again we wont know until we test it and if it doesnt i am confident that the devs will do something to address it.

 

I dont agree with everything the devs do. I dont like that they arent more open about the development process, after all we are all alpha testers and i think we deserve a better look into where they are in developing the next update and what we can expect from it. But when ETAs arent met or everything that was said to be expected in the next update doesnt make it then people rage. I also dont like the big updates over longer periods of time thing. I like quick fixes and small updates with little things even if its just bug fixes (narrowed IVs when that was a thing to worry about). But what you guys are asking for a quick fix for is a system that the devs plan on having it be the main system. They have already implemented what they see as the system they want for the games move tutor system. Why did they implement it now as opposed to with the trade hub? I have no idea, dont necessarily agree with that decision. But its done and asking them to go back on it now would be asking them to make an update just to go backwards on the development process. They can change the drop rates for temporary convenience but that could cause problems in the future when they try to decrease the drop rates again.

 

Anyway thats just my thoughts on this whole thing. I am one of those people who go in and out of this game. Sometimes its due to RL stresses and just general business, sometimes its due to my not being able to bear the grind required to play this game. But I dont complain because i know this game is incomplete. I also know a lot of the things all of us want are coming in the future. I dont like the wait any more than anyone else does but i dont see the wait times going down anytime soon. So the only thing I and the rest of you can do is play the game, or not play the game until later, or not play the game ever again. We can voice our opinions on the forums and thats fine, but at a certain point you have to realize that the devs know the problems with this game and they plan on trying to fix them. You just have to be patient.

Edited December 3, 2015 by codylramey

[Arimanius]

First; balance breeding. This was largely done with narrowed IVs as, at the time, narrowing IVs was the longest most tedious grind of the game. It is still expensive as all hell to breed because of brace prices but the devs are hoping that the trade hub and easy access to 3-4x breeders will help change that. Wont help the 31 seekers much as 3-4x 31 pokes are rare to find in the wild and would be expensive on the market.

For me this is working fine right now, with the hub and everything I think breeding is pretty good, with exceptions like the nidos and almost no used wurmple and volbeat and illumise which need to be fixed
 

Second, fix economy. This will largely be done by the auto trade system. But also tweeking drop rates on items n such will probably be a thing. But it is really hard to tell what the drop rate on items should be if we dont have a trade hub imo. Maybe that is why they implemented the items for tutors thing early, so they can go ahead and test and tweek the drop rates. Although i think more ppl will farm when trade hub comes out so test results now may not be all that accurate so idk.

I think that with this exact current rates we will have the same problem cause the thing is u don't get so much items with pick up + the shit u get, I've spent all of my pps linoone (65 pokemons) getting 0, 1 or 2 items which are shit anyway so sometimes u have to be REALLY lucky to find what ur looking for with pick up, besides they're against removing the shitty items from the special spots where u can find items for tutor moves just because new players won't be able to find those items in those places like if when I start the game the first thing I will do is farm with pick up randomly..
 

Third, fix comp. This is going to be done with auto battle system, ladder system, and auto tournies, and auto usage stats. This will help fix the "lack of reward" there is to all of the grind we do. There has also been hints at a pvp reward system which will hopefully transform into money for comp players.

Well after the trade system and that is done I think this is what comes next, they've said they plan to use the other battle frontier buildings for that, we still don't know how but I think this is the next step, I'm happy with current tournaments but yeah I know we have to have an automated system but current tournaments are the reason why I can wait for this

 

 

A lot of the shit you guys are complaining about is going to be addressed in updates. If the trade hub doesnt help ease the grind then they will do something else that will. But we wont know until we test the trade hub. Also you guys have to remember that this item for moves system is new, when they implement anything new they always make it harder than it ends up being in the end. Look at shards, breeding, new breeding, and battle points. All of that sucked worse than it does now when it was first implemented, While some of that shit still kind of sucks the devs and I are hoping the trade hub helps that. But again we wont know until we test it and if it doesnt i am confident that the devs will do something to address it.

 

Well I don't remember how was shard drops at the beginning but I'm pretty sure this never changed if only they remove the items like deepseascales out of chinchou, lanturn and more important fucking relicanths and remove the hard stones out of corsolas and maybe increase the rates by 5% or so of the green shards and red shards this could be better cause we complain about the current tutor moves going for 100-150k but green shards are 45k each so u need 135k for a green shard move too

 

 

I dont agree with everything the devs do. I dont like that they arent more open about the development process, after all we are all alpha testers and i think we deserve a better look into where they are in developing the next update and what we can expect from it. But when ETAs arent met or everything that was said to be expected in the next update doesnt make it then people rage. I also dont like the big updates over longer periods of time thing. I like quick fixes and small updates with little things even if its just bug fixes (narrowed IVs when that was a thing to worry about). But what you guys are asking for a quick fix for is a system that the devs plan on having it be the main system. They have already implemented what they see as the system they want for the games move tutor system. Why did they implement it now as opposed to with the trade hub? I have no idea, dont necessarily agree with that decision. But its done and asking them to go back on it now would be asking them to make an update just to go backwards on the development process. They can change the drop rates for temporary convenience but that could cause problems in the future when they try to decrease the drop rates again.

 

Well I do agree they shouldn't give ETAs cause yeah people goes savage when they can't make it for that but progress, things they're working on, those things should be spoken about cause like u said we're testers and we play this game cause we like it and we would like to be better. I mean I have a lot of faith in this game and I like it but yeah there are things that are wrong and sometimes devs don't say anything about them we don't come here to complain just for fun, it's because we want to make the game better and sometimes it seems like they don't listen or just don't care, anyway let's see how this will result and I hope they're open to changes if nothing changes with the trade hub

[Darkshade]

To be honest, Cody is pretty on point with this one.

 

Quickfixes are rarely the answer, and harmful in the long-term.

 

 

Also the methodology behind implementing the item-for-move tutor mechanic before the implementation of the Global Trade Hub was to test the rates without it so we could make an educated guess as to how they would mesh with the trade hub when it was.

 

It also allows for a better start for the implementation of the trade hub, as during the time it has not been implemented and the system has required these items, they have been removed from the game - meaning the amount of items found in the initial implementation of the trade hub will mostly reflect those recently farmed, instead of the ones that had been sitting in peoples inventories over time - this allows us to better gauge whether the difficulty is where it needs to be.

[Robofiend]

Quickfixes are rarely the answer, and harmful in the long-term.

 

I don't think anyone here is talking about quickfixes, we're talking about the fact that nearly every aspect of the game is a grind that players get sick of. 

[Darkshade]

I don't think anyone here is talking about quickfixes, we're talking about the fact that nearly every aspect of the game is a grind that players get sick of. 

 

Quickfixes are implied with the requests to adjust the rates in addition to the explanation as to why we don't wish to jump the gun to do that.

 

As I've stated above; we don't necessarily disagree, but it's too soon to consider adjusting said rates with a new trade system on the way and very little information as to how this will affect the open availability of these items.

[BigShotJoe]

I've been playing this game for nearly 3 years. I have 11 comp pokemon. I rarely even battle anymore. The only reason I even play anymore is the people in my team. The game is pretty much terrible apart from the community (for the most part). For a lot of people, myself included, this game has become little more than a colorful chatroom.

[LuisPocho]

I've been playing this game for nearly 3 years. I have 11 comp pokemon. I rarely even battle anymore. The only reason I even play anymore is the people in my team. The game is pretty much terrible apart from the community (for the most part). For a lot of people, myself included, this game has become little more than a colorful chatroom.

I understand what you are pointing at but... if you dont even enjoy battle, your problem wont be solved by fixing the economy

[BigShotJoe]

I understand what you are pointing at but... if you dont even enjoy battle, your problem wont be solved by fixing the economy

I enjoy the battling, it just gets tiresome because it hardly changes. It doesn't take long at all for people to find the most effective or generally useful sets when a new factor (Pokemon, item, move, etc...) is introduced. Because of this, people rarely try new or niche sets to add variety. I believe that allowing people to to obtain resources more easily would help fix this. Of course, it could potentially cause a myriad of other issues that have been stated by many other people on many other threads. Obviously, the key is to find a balance between all these factors. That's what takes so long.

[NikhilR]

At this point, even I would sell a stick for 100k or more given how fucking time consuming and grindworthy it is. How much grind does this game require? Grind breeders, grind money to breed these breeders and then grind for each move. Great fucking job. 

 

Good luck with that trade hub if no one's going to be farming for that shit. 

Edited December 13, 2015 by NikhilR

[codylramey]

The devs are down for changing the rate should they need to be changed. They always make stuff too hard at first. Patience my friend, things will be better soon™

[OldKeith]

they brainwashed cody