A Matter of Concern...

[DoubleJ]

I've never in my career seen this game so dead. 

 

@Kyu There might not be a playerbase left to admire this update. Gamebreaker bro. Please halp lift spirits. 

[Torinnnnn]

Hosting multi tier tour later cuz bored af

[notmudkip0]

 

[cchiovitti527]

Eving your own pokemon might make the time go by faster ;), or just be like me and hunt shinies until you go insane. 

[Gunthug]

In the past, I've always been one of staff's harshest critics as we creep into this kind of period, where there hasn't been a substantial update in upwards of a year (sometimes longer). But I'm having a hard time getting up in arms about it this time - maybe it's because I barely log in anymore. Or maybe its that Kyu especially, but others as well, have been super transparent with us about exactly what theyre working on, how much is left to be done, and when we can reasonably expect it.

 

Further, this is by far the biggest update this game has ever undergone. I'm not even sure at this point if I'll return to being a full time player once the update hits, IRL just makes that difficult. Despite that though, I've been extremely impressed with how the update drought has been handled this time around. JJ, you remember as well as I do how unbelievably difficult it was to even get 1 upper level staff member to give us even one shred of information about an upcoming update. People were absolutely laughed at when they asked for an ETA, and "no ETAs" became a meme. Now, we've got Kyu telling us almost completely without prompting that they're hoping to have it done in 2 months. We've come a long way

 

At this point, I don't think there's anything left that the devs can do - except keep on plugging away at the update

[Laz]

Welp, no tournaments to play.

My folks get banned for just trying to keep the game alive.

No PSL

No UU/NU matchmaking

We don't swing that way bro.

 

[fredrichnietze]

i blaim psl 8 teams of 8

[KaynineXL]

Last weekend there were literally 0 viable tournaments for European players.. I think there was like 1 at 4am in the morning.

 

In all my time playing, I've never seen that. I was available for most of last weekend for once, and each day I checked to see if there was a tournament and saw nothing. I didn't even bother to question it because I didn't care enough, but that surely is a big reason why many people just don't login now.

 

Oh and I guess that really only matters to the competitive players, so it probably doesn't effect the majority of their player base AKA the storyline noobs.

 

I blame @Kizhaz

[RysPicz]

52 minutes ago, Gunthug said:

In the past, I've always been one of staff's harshest critics

[razimove]

What kills this game is:

1) Bad organization by part of the SGM team, never announce something to then only bring news near 1 year after, NEVER.

2) You have Halloween/Christmas events, why can't there be some kind of event from time to time like that, just to keep the game active

3) 1 Tournament that is ok without 9 days, nobody really cares about CC tournaments, truth be told, they are garbage, and the reward is not even worth it most of the time.

4) No updates in the past besides tier changes which I'm thankful for, but definitely is not enough. 

5) PTS opened like what? 2 Times? Why not open it like twice/month so people can prepare and glance a bit at what's coming next? It was not enough, not nearly enough.
 

6) a MMO requires 2 things to stay active, pve and pvp, right now all we have is pvp and with shit automated rewards as part of tournaments, no HP reward on tournaments? Come on, don't make me laugh.

[Nawe]

1 minute ago, redspawn said:

6) a MMO requires 2 things to stay active, pve and pvp, right now all we have is pvp and with shit automated rewards as part of tournaments, no HP reward on tournaments? Come on, don't make me laugh.

my ingame life at this moment is beat the bf records, my ingame life is shit

[fredrichnietze]

27 minutes ago, redspawn said:

What kills this game is:

1) Bad organization by part of the SGM team, never announce something to then only bring news near 1 year after, NEVER.

2) You have Halloween/Christmas events, why can't there be some kind of event from time to time like that, just to keep the game active

3) 1 Tournament that is ok without 9 days, nobody really cares about CC tournaments, truth be told, they are garbage, and the reward is not even worth it most of the time.

4) No updates in the past besides tier changes which I'm thankful for, but definitely is not enough. 

5) PTS opened like what? 2 Times? Why not open it like twice/month so people can prepare and glance a bit at what's coming next? It was not enough, not nearly enough.
 

6) a MMO requires 2 things to stay active, pve and pvp, right now all we have is pvp and with shit automated rewards as part of tournaments, no HP reward on tournaments? Come on, don't make me laugh.

i would like to point out a problem. you complain due to the long time between updates, however you also complain about not enough events and pts which take a lot of dev time and slow down the updates. unless more developers join the team which staff has stated they do not want, or the current devs drop everything else in their life to program 24/7 (they arent slaves man and you dont pay them), then you are left with a limited amount of devs hours already being spent on thing A and you want them to do thing A faster but also add thing B and C. you are asking the wrong question here. you should ask for more devs OR for them to focus on the single most important thing.

 

if you ask for a lot of things and they actually do them then everything gets done slower. 

@Xatu

 

anywho TL:DR instead of just saying "i want this and i want it now", try to understand what you are asking and how it gets done. 

 

edit haha ninja'd you ds

 

Edited September 12, 2017 by fredrichnietze

[Darkshade]

25 minutes ago, redspawn said:

What kills this game is:

1) Bad organization by part of the SGM team, never announce something to then only bring news near 1 year after, NEVER.

What would you like them to announce, out of curiosity?

 

25 minutes ago, redspawn said:

2) You have Halloween/Christmas events, why can't there be some kind of event from time to time like that, just to keep the game active

Because creating these events takes both development time and an update, both of which are difficult when working on a huge new region.

 

25 minutes ago, redspawn said:

3) 1 Tournament that is ok without 9 days, nobody really cares about CC tournaments, truth be told, they are garbage, and the reward is not even worth it most of the time.

Why are they garbage? Due to the rewards?

 

25 minutes ago, redspawn said:

5) PTS opened like what? 2 Times? Why not open it like twice/month so people can prepare and glance a bit at what's coming next? It was not enough, not nearly enough.

We will likely be opening another PTS, and we do need help identifying bugs - but if we opened it so often people would be less excited for the update.

 

25 minutes ago, redspawn said:

6) a MMO requires 2 things to stay active, pve and pvp, right now all we have is pvp and with shit automated rewards as part of tournaments, no HP reward on tournaments? Come on, don't make me laugh.

We intend to work on further PvE content - why do you dislike the automated PvP tournaments?

In regards to the prize thing; it's something that has been on our list of bug reports for awhile, we've just been very busy - so apologies for not yet being able to fix that.

It's important that we make sure we spent our time wisely, as we do not want to delay this update and further than need be.

[Gilan]

The problem is clearly because they never implemented Johto.

[razimove]

Just now, Darkshade said:

What would you like them to announce, out of curiosity?

 

Because creating these events takes both development time and an update, both of which are difficult when working on a huge new region update.

 

Why are they garbage? Due to the rewards?

 

We will likely be opening another PTS, and we do need help identifying bugs - but if we opened it so often people would be less excited for the update.

 

We intend to work on further PvE content - why do you dislike the automated PvP tournaments - why do you dislike them?

In regards to the prize thing; it's something that has been on our list of bug reports for awhile, we've just been very busy - so apologies for not yet being able to fix that.

It's important that we make sure we spent our time wisely, as we do not want to delay this update and further than need be.

From bottom to top:

you guys are to late to be concern about PVE now, you've already lost your playerbase on it. Consider big games, lets say League Of Legends, why is PBE(PTS) open 24/7? Even when they have no new champ, nerf/buff, or new releases? Because it helps people to test new stuff, try out stuff they dont have on their main account, and indirectly help them find bugs.

The tours are garbage because of 2 things:
Reward wise, 800k is nothing rn, nor does it feel like you've 'won' anything, 800k in this game is little to nothing. This means the community lacks interest to be part of them, like you can see the amount of leftover spots in many.

Takes development time? News flash, owning a mmorpg requires a team able to work on multiple tasks at once. Kyu is not a one man army, you guys should help him or find someone who could. The big region update is only complicated because of the ridiculously small team pokemmo has, that I understand, and to be fair, I don't mind the waiting, but most are not like me. 

Announcements should be done within the right time, otherwise they create chaos, like what happened here, and then you are either forced to lie, to keep the community happy, which is a really bad business model, or consider telling the truth which is what you guys did and we're thankful for that, and risk people quitting and losing trust due to the time you guys are taking.


Now solutions for this:

Make Squirtle not give automated rewards, or if it does, consider using @Raederz suggestion on the forum so that people can at least change what they get.

Open PTS more times, not one more time, MORE TIMES, multiple times. Keep the player base happy and peaceful.

Consider a new tour reward, idk, like limited costumes instead of the 800k crappy one, give one of them on tour, yes, even including the really old ones, no they won't lose value, and it will keep people interested.

Consider placing less CC tournaments, and more official tournaments with shinies, even if garbage shinies, shinies attract people, people are like crows, they like shiny things.

About announcements, the only thing possible really is to find a balance, either you announce really early but with a release date, or closer to the release date but without one. That shows good team and time management, and that you guys actually know what you're doing.



 

[ShinyTeemo2]

I came back after 1.5 years and only thing that's changed is shiny prices and lower playerbase now. I used to remember when Vermillion or Viridian were full of people but now if I see 5 it's a good day.

[razimove]

15 minutes ago, fredrichnietze said:

i would like to point out a problem. you complain due to the long time between updates, however you also complain about not enough events and pts which take a lot of dev time and slow down the updates. unless more developers join the team which staff has stated they do not want, or the current devs drop everything else in their life to program 24/7 (they arent slaves man and you dont pay them), then you are left with a limited amount of devs hours already being spent on thing A and you want them to do thing A faster but also add thing B and C. you are asking the wrong question here. you should ask for more devs OR for them to focus on the single most important thing.

 

if you ask for a lot of things and they actually do them then everything gets done slower. 

@Xatu

 

anywho TL:DR instead of just saying "i want this and i want it now", try to understand what you are asking and how it gets done. 

I program for a living, I'm a web developer and currently working as a DB admin, I'm not asking for stuff, I understand it might take time to code some stuff, , I'm instead asking them to be more organized. If the develop team can't handle things, expand the team, I'm sure there are some more competent people out there. A team requires people able to perform a function, and if that function overflows, you require someone else to aid with it, if things get slow like they are right now, ridiculously slow, a game dies, look at a WAY bigger MMO, guild wars 2, they recently released the expansion, and you have no idea what goes into coding something like GW2 expansions are, they did that in the time it takes this team to adapt an existing generation to this game, and you know why? More brains and more resources, we do not need more resources, I believe ours are good enough, we lack is people into it. 

[Darkshade]

16 minutes ago, redspawn said:

From bottom to top:

you guys are to late to be concern about PVE now, you've already lost your playerbase on it. Consider big games, lets say League Of Legends, why is PBE(PTS) open 24/7? Even when they have no new champ, nerf/buff, or new releases? Because it helps people to test new stuff, try out stuff they dont have on their main account, and indirectly help them find bugs.
@Raederz

We're not too late - we have a brand new playerbase at our fingertips with the release of the update; and it's not that we can't add to the PvE content we have already.

 

16 minutes ago, redspawn said:

The tours are garbage because of 2 things:
Reward wise, 800k is nothing rn, nor does it feel like you've 'won' anything, 800k in this game is little to nothing. This means the community lacks interest to be part of them, like you can see the amount of leftover spots in many.
@Raederz

To me this says more about our economy than it does about the quality of our tournaments.

 

16 minutes ago, redspawn said:

Takes development time? News flash, owning a mmorpg requires a team able to work on multiple tasks at once. Kyu is not a one man army, you guys should help him or find someone who could. The big region update is only complicated because of the ridiculously small team pokemmo has, that I understand, and to be fair, I don't mind the waiting, but most are not like me. @Raederz
 

I take this one a little personally - Kyu isn't a one man army, he does get lots of assistance, especially from myself.

We are a team.

 

16 minutes ago, redspawn said:

Announcements should be done within the right time, otherwise they create chaos, like what happened here, and then you are either forced to lie, to keep the community happy, which is a really bad business model, or consider telling the truth which is what you guys did and we're thankful for that, and risk people quitting and losing trust due to the time you guys are taking.
@Raederz
 

I completely agree with your statements - but I'd still like to know what it is you'd like us to be announcing.

 

16 minutes ago, redspawn said:

Make Squirtle not give automated rewards, or if it does, consider using @Raederz suggestion on the forum so that people can at least change what they get.

I could see the former being met with some backlash, and the latter giving away more than we'd like to.

 

16 minutes ago, redspawn said:

@Raederz
Open PTS more times, not one more time, MORE TIMES, multiple times. Keep the player base happy and peaceful.

I've already explained why we can't/won't do this in the quantity that you'd like.

 

16 minutes ago, redspawn said:

@Raederz
Consider a new tour reward, idk, like limited costumes instead of the 800k crappy one, give one of them on tour, yes, even including the really old ones, no they won't lose value, and it will keep people interested.

It's not out of the question - but you need to understand limited costumes also take development time - specifically my development time in this instance.

 

16 minutes ago, redspawn said:

@RaederzConsider placing less CC tournaments, and more official tournaments with shinies, even if garbage shinies, shinies attract people, people are like crows, they like shiny things.

One of our concerns is giving away too many shinies or money in a month, and this could especially cause problems in our prize system - where we stagger prize species based on how long since they've last been given out.

 

16 minutes ago, redspawn said:

@Raederz
About announcements, the only thing possible really is to find a balance, either you announce really early but with a release date, or closer to the release date but without one. That shows good team and time management, and that you guys actually know what you're doing.

We don't have a concrete release date - we've already announced a potential release in '2 months', but we'd rather not officially put this up in social media before we can definitely say whether we can fully hit it.

 

I'd argue that not giving a concrete release date at this time shows that we know what we're doing more than giving one does, as we're transparent about the realistic possibility of problems coming up and causing delays.

If we came forward and said "2 months" and didn't hit it, you'd be calling us out for not knowing what we were doing then, too.

 

EDIT: Also sorry @Raederz, I couldn't easily remove your name from the quotes, so I just left it there.

 

[razimove]

@Darkshade I'll tag you just to not create huge walls.

Shinies as long as you dont give ultra rares, won't be meaningful to break the economy or the 'uniqueness' that some shinies have, trust me on this one.

About announcements, why don't you make some sort of blog posts, everytime you progress? Explaining what you are doing, and what you've accomplished so far? Idk man, a portfolio like blog is nice to have, it was thanks to one of those that I got the job I'm into. 

Why don't you make some stuff open source and let us contribute to it? I have some spare time, even during my job, I wouldn't mind for example to try and help. I'm not asking for cash, tittle, anything, I'm volunteering to help, just like I believe some would do.


If you guys don't mind, and I'm for real, check some VoDs, of some successful companies like Arena Net, check their Path of Fire expansion VoD, that one should be a good example, for you to understand a little better what I mean.

edit: Forgot to add this, sorry. It's a joke that someone gets a pokemon without chance of having Hidden Power of choice from a Tournament, and someone on a meaningless catch event gets one, it's literally a joke. 

Edited September 12, 2017 by redspawn

[Toupi]

4 minutes ago, redspawn said:

Consider a new tour reward, idk, like limited costumes instead of the 800k crappy one, give one of them on tour, yes, even including the really old ones, no they won't lose value, and it will keep people interested.

So aside from that 1idea, your solution for everything is work faster and harder becuse i said so? I don't have any insight on how devs spend their working hours but time it took them is nothing bizarre. Whiping lash because you can be angry user in internet is not something you should exercise, it's in bad manner bro.

Hey and look what i found when i typed "guild wars lazy devs" in google.

[razimove]

1 minute ago, Toupi said:

So aside from that 1idea, your solution for everything is work faster and harder becuse i said so? I don't have any insight on how devs spend their working hours but time it took them is nothing bizarre. Whiping lash because you can be angry user in internet is not something you should exercise, it's in bad manner bro.

Hey and look what i found when i typed "guild wars lazy devs" in google.

You should read the entire thread, before you say that. No I'm not asking them to work faster, I'm asking them to be more organized once again. more organized, and more people in the team working for a common goal = faster objectives done, that's a given, and a much needed one considering at times there's 4 people playing comp. UU and NU community is dead aswell since ages. Don't release stuff fast enough equals dead player base, dead player base equals no money to afford a server.

[Toupi]

2 minutes ago, redspawn said:

considering at times there's 4 people playing comp. UU and NU community is dead aswell since ages. Don't release stuff fast enough equals dead player base

The problem with this example is there was never a player base for NU and UU. OU was always more popular and I fail to see how releasing more stuff faster would help in this self feeding loop of OU popularity.

[Kyokatsu]

24 minutes ago, ShinyTeemo2 said:

I came back after 1.5 years and only thing that's changed is shiny prices and lower playerbase now. I used to remember when Vermillion or Viridian were full of people but now if I see 5 it's a good day.

people used to go to virdiian/vermilion to battle, which is pointless now with the pvp matchmaking

[Kamimiii]

Just one thing, I won't bother arguing about the reasons people tend to leave or lose interest in the game, just one thing : Do something to lower 5x31 pokemons costs, 5k braces, anything, it might fuck the economy for a while, but the update also will (with a ton of outdated comps without eggmoves and stuff), this is the biggest problem and every pvp player / noobs that like beautiful mons will agree with me on this point.

 

I've been breeding for people and myself for months, I'm really good at it, I'm prolly the fastest breeder in the whole game, or at least top 3. I've bred enough and discussed enough with people about breeding cost to assure you 200% that if you lower braces cost to 5k, you'll keep at least twice more players on the game when you release your baby. Nobody on the competitive scene right now is willing to grind for 250 other pokemons or idk how much there are w/o legendaries and stuff, some people started to sell their comps, some of my boys have 25M ready to spend on the update, right, this is 50 comps in the best case (unperfect + budget breeds), sometimes BP moves cost as much as the mon itself, sometimes it's the moveset. The competitive community is bored to spend 20 hours on the game to gather enough money to have 1 more comp, when even 500 is not enough to play the game for a long time without losing any interest into it.

 

I'm a tryhard, I've always been, I've optimized by gametime to earn as much as possible, and yet after 2k hours I am still 10k hours away of pure farm from having decent ressources.

 

I prolly repeated myself, if you point out some stuff I might be able to explain it better. But in a simple way : stop being GrindMMO even if it'll hurt economy for a while.

 

I brought 20 friends on the game and all of them quited when they realized the time and the money it takes to breed a comp, even if unperfect. I helped them, gave them Quagsire to grind everstones, the fastest way to grind when you don't have pokemons or don't know the game well, but yo, being a slave for 10 hours to breed a budget comp isn't acceptable.

 

Pokemon = solo

PokeMMO = interact with players -> FIGHT

 

Yet nobody is allowed to fight without grinding for hundreds, thousands of hours.

 

Time to save PokeMMO.

[Gilan]

1 hour ago, redspawn said:

Consider a new tour reward, idk, like limited costumes instead of the 800k crappy one, give one of them on tour, yes, even including the really old ones, no they won't lose value, and it will keep people interested.

I think you are seriously underplaying this. Just the fact that "Limited Time" would no longer really be true is enough to severely devalue these items.

 

And, if you start printing out Desu Labcoats Coloured, I would be livid.

 

So please no, just stick to new ones, not old ones if this idea is being considered.