Jump to content

Really not liking level caps


Weedle

Recommended Posts

Just now, Gunthug said:

Darkshade posts a 9 paragraph response and you're still on with this "all anyone ever says is git gud" bullshit? You must really love being the victim. This game is so unfair to you!!!

This is detrimental to the discussion at hand and entirely unneeded. You are the cancer of pokemmo, quit trying to bait people into being more angry.

Link to comment
2 minutes ago, Feralcaw said:

This is detrimental to the discussion at hand and entirely unneeded. You are the cancer of pokemmo, quit trying to bait people into being more angry.

The guy came into this thread with a massive "not trying to offend but you all are dumbasses" rant and has proceeded to attack and belittle every poster who disagrees with him. You can handle people like him however you want, but until you get that mod tag stop trying to be the tone police 

Edited by Gunthug
Link to comment
5 minutes ago, atlasstar said:

It's no use, the mods and devs want the changes, so telling them anything otherwise as Kyu has said very clearly is not going to change anything. He clearly did not read anything or cares about the opinions or experience of the players. I've seen plenty of "why not just have the option there, have the second battle harder". And the response to probably the most reasonable change I've seen is always just "get better at how it is now" or "no, we aren't going to change anything"

We're really not making a casual game, so, tough luck I guess. I like hard strategy games, so that's what we made. I know it's a little too hard right now, which is why we're buffing everything which isn't builds. We don't want to make the builds easier, and we already give players a significant advantage through leveling ahead of NPCs, the near unlimited use of healing items in-battle, and the ability to straight-up revive everything in-battle.

 

If, after all that, we still have issues with the general difficulty of the game, sure, we'll consider reducing the difficulty of the builds. But you're sitting there getting mad about something which isn't even done so I can't really take your reply seriously. Sorry.

Link to comment
1 minute ago, Kyu said:

We're really not making a casual game, so, tough luck I guess. I like hard strategy games, so that's what we made. I know it's a little too hard right now, which is why we're buffing everything which isn't builds. We don't want to make the builds easier, and we already give players a significant advantage through leveling ahead of NPCs, the near unlimited use of healing items in-battle, and the ability to straight-up revive everything in-battle.

 

If, after all that, we still have issues with the general difficulty of the game, sure, we'll consider reducing the difficulty of the builds. But you're sitting there getting mad about something which isn't even done so I can't really take your reply seriously. Sorry.

Question, where do you consider the significance of the casual audience to be? It seems like ingame choices are being made more and more unfriendly for what could be a decent chunk of the playerbase, and if I understand, Pokemmo needs everyone it can get right now due to the fact that its numbers honestly haven't been the best after it initially launched.

Link to comment
2 minutes ago, Raichu4u said:

Question, where do you consider the significance of the casual audience to be? It seems like ingame choices are being made more and more unfriendly for what could be a decent chunk of the playerbase, and if I understand, Pokemmo needs everyone it can get right now due to the fact that its numbers honestly haven't been the best after it initially launched.

this post is rife with completely baseless assumptions, but I'll address it anyways. What do super casual players really contribute to the game? They come, they play storyline, then they leave. Casual players have the potential to stick around longer and become dedicated players, yes, but the ones who are likely to do this are also likely to, you know, actually try and get better at the game

Link to comment
9 hours ago, Raichu4u said:

Question, where do you consider the significance of the casual audience to be? It seems like ingame choices are being made more and more unfriendly for what could be a decent chunk of the playerbase, and if I understand, Pokemmo needs everyone it can get right now due to the fact that its numbers honestly haven't been the best after it initially launched.

The end-game is never going to be easier than the bosses which are Gym Leaders. So with that being noted:

 

10 hours ago, XelaKebert said:

There is one problem though if the players are still learning basic game mechanics by the time they reach end game content then the storyline itself has failed to fulfill its obligations in teaching the players how to play the game. 

that is the summary of the problem. Do we create a storyline where the difficulty tries to represent the brick wall which we place at the end of the game, or do we create a storyline where "casuals" have a grand old time, hit the brick wall, and then never come back because they have no idea what to do due to us failing to prepare them?

 

I don't think that an MMO is the type of game which is playable by everyone, because there are fundamental differences between PokeMMO and portable console games. It's not even something you can "win" in a traditional sense. So, with that being noted, I think we'd be doing a disservice to our audience by making the basic game not representative of the end-game and the level of knowledge/time which is required to play it.

Edited by Kyu
Link to comment
29 minutes ago, Kyu said:

We're really not making a casual game, so, tough luck I guess. I like hard strategy games, so that's what we made. I know it's a little too hard right now, which is why we're buffing everything which isn't builds. We don't want to make the builds easier, and we already give players a significant advantage through leveling ahead of NPCs, the near unlimited use of healing items in-battle, and the ability to straight-up revive everything in-battle.

 

If, after all that, we still have issues with the general difficulty of the game, sure, we'll consider reducing the difficulty of the builds. But you're sitting there getting mad about something which isn't even done so I can't really take your reply seriously. Sorry.

I would like to address that I said I was mad at the beginning of this and tried to avoid that kind of behavior after that first post

 But this is a much more reasonable post than the first one, although I have to disagree with your comments about items and reviving everything.

Money is really not that common, esp if you're looking at revives and hyper/max potions.

You did comment that there are changes going out to improve item output and money, but how does that help people who have already gone through the new region?

Maybe absolutely new players, but then it comes back to the difficulty curve.

I'm agreeing with Raichu that I just don't see the logic behind these choices.

If it really just comes down to "it's my game, i'll make it how I like it", that's fine, but it's obviously going to alienate people who don't share your taste, and you said as much.

As for the mmo part of it, the part I personally see as important is the chatting, battling, teams, and player interactions in general. My opinion is that this advanced strategy that players should be working towards is not as important as an accessible experience for the common player.

I'm also sorry you felt I was just getting mad, I can assure I'm not upset, just more concerned about what I more saw now but see as a difficult direction for the game and it's players.

 

 

It makes sense that there would be confusion and some dissent over big changes like this, and I did overreact to some of it.

Link to comment
10 minutes ago, Gunthug said:

this post is rife with completely baseless assumptions, but I'll address it anyways. What do super casual players really contribute to the game? They come, they play storyline, then they leave. Casual players have the potential to stick around longer and become dedicated players, yes, but the ones who are likely to do this are also likely to, you know, actually try and get better at the game

But you're also getting more people to spread information about the game and increase popularity. If I remember, one of the highest moment of PokeMMOO's numbers is when it was just kind of basegame Kanto/Hoenn with nothing too modified of pre-elite 4.

 

I understand the capture of a casual player isn't as good as someone who aims to play competitively. But there is still a value to having a game that id accessable by both casual and competitive players.

Link to comment

Completely agree with this, this is why the main game of FF or WoW are completely accessible to anyone who wants to pick it up, but if you do want to do the dungeons or raiding you can choose to.

The main game doesn't have a difficulty shift towards them either, it's simply a different experience for competitive players.

Link to comment
5 minutes ago, Raichu4u said:

But you're also getting more people to spread information about the game and increase popularity. If I remember, one of the highest moment of PokeMMOO's numbers is when it was just kind of basegame Kanto/Hoenn with nothing too modified of pre-elite 4.

 

I understand the capture of a casual player isn't as good as someone who aims to play competitively. But there is still a value to having a game that id accessable by both casual and competitive players.

The devs dont really need casuals to spread info about the game and increase popularity, this game has very reserved advertising as it is and that's not by accident. Where could you possibly be getting that information about the "highest moment of PokeMMOO's numbers?" You don't have access to login statistics so I have a feeling youre just completely making it up. 

Link to comment
Just now, Toupi said:

You can still do it without even beating E4

With the level limit, part of the game is very literally locked behind the e4. And this includes trading and battling because you'd need to surpass that level cap.

In a way limits breeding as well, because a lot of the pseudos evolve around the level cap, I know for a fact Hydreigon is impossible to evolve or use.

Link to comment
33 minutes ago, Kyu said:

We're really not making a casual game, so, tough luck I guess. I like hard strategy games, so that's what we made. I know it's a little too hard right now, which is why we're buffing everything which isn't builds. We don't want to make the builds easier, and we already give players a significant advantage through leveling ahead of NPCs, the near unlimited use of healing items in-battle, and the ability to straight-up revive everything in-battle.

 

If, after all that, we still have issues with the general difficulty of the game, sure, we'll consider reducing the difficulty of the builds. But you're sitting there getting mad about something which isn't even done so I can't really take your reply seriously. Sorry.

For me, in terms of feedback, the AI is moderately predictable but sometimes it will just behave what appears to be erratically, on the level of "Why would you stay in, you have something that completely walls this and you have swapped into it before against my poke" kinda deals, it can lead to fairly aggravating situations where you have planned something out but what feels irrational on the AI's part ends up screwing you over.

are the AI built to mind games us or are they just slightly random in their decision making even though they are heavily likely to do something reasonable like swap a water absorb poke in on a water type that is spamming surf etc?

Also, this second point will probably be unable to be of much use until probably Sinnoh or even Johto (xd) far into the future, but maybe if you wanted to give new players better understanding of strategy in the end-game you could have then use some rough archetypes per gym and have NPC's leading up to that gym refer to their playstyle and what kinds of things they are weak against.

Examples maybe being like you bump into 2 NPC's discussing:
"The Gym leader in XXX city likes to lead off with Toxic Spikes! I kept having to deal being poisoned each time I sent a Pokemon out to battle!"
"Oh? How did you manage to beat him then? You said you got their badge."
"Simple, I sent out my Poison Type pokemon! they cleared up the Toxic Spikes no problem!"

Or other similar things, none of the story line fights really tutorialise things like Entry Hazards, Stall teams, different competitive items etc, they are very loose guides to how to have a varied good team in general and it does it better than the handhelds but maybe some day you guys could try putting in stuff like:

Gym leader likes Entry Hazards immediately after getting Defog TM which can then be tutorialized to remove entry hazards in competitive play (instead of just being for making it easier to see in Sinnoh) as well as Rapid Spin if they have it, maybe one gym leader (Or Barry) could be obsessed with putting Choice Scarf on everything which would help players learn how to deal with choice pokemon, thinking about how to trick them into locking into moves that they can abuse etc.

Even things like Resto-Chesto, Trick Room, Focus Sash + Destiny Bond etc, all with moderation of course, but I feel like these would be the kinds of things you'd want to also try to introduce over the course of a region if you wanted to teach people about competitive play a bit more.
 

Edited by Matoka
Link to comment
1 minute ago, Matoka said:

For me, in terms of feedback, the AI is moderately predictable but sometimes it will just behave what appears to be erratically, on the level of "Why would you stay in, you have something that completely walls this and you have swapped into it before against my poke" kinda deals, it can lead to fairly aggravating situations where you have planned something out but what feels irrational on the AI's part ends up screwing you over.

are the AI built to mind games us or are they just slightly random in their decision making even though they are heavily likely to do something reasonable like swap a water absorb poke in on a water type that is spamming surf etc?

There is currently a bug with one of the AIs checks regarding switch-ins.

We aim to fix this in a later patch.

Link to comment

Why keep the base game format if it's going to deviate in difficulty but not in gameplay? If I'm still limited by badges, why have it be harder to access the mmo content?

For example, I can't train Pokemon freely/breed/trade or travel to different locations without beating the base game, but now the base game has a higher difficulty to access those things. For an mmo style game this seems counter intuitive.

And I do take back the things I said that are being worked on, I simply didn't have that information before.

Link to comment
20 minutes ago, atlasstar said:

 But this is a much more reasonable post than the first one, although I have to disagree with your comments about items and reviving everything.

Money is really not that common, esp if you're looking at revives and hyper/max potions.

Well, we sprinkle Nuggets around like they're candy at the moment, but if it's not good enough, we'll make it better I guess. There's a pretty high incentive to "100%" the region with visible/hidden items (although the latter is completely reliant on guides due to ItemFinder literally never working), but if players refuse to do it, then I can buff the initial Gym Leader payouts I suppose.

 

Quote

You did comment that there are changes going out to improve item output and money, but how does that help people who have already gone through the new region?

Maybe absolutely new players, but then it comes back to the difficulty curve.

It doesn't. If players have already cleared a region, then the only thing which really changes is that their untradeable items are now unlocked for sale. If we lost players due to the high difficulty and buggy overworld, then oh well, that's our fault and there's nothing we can really do to change it. We'll just keep trying to improve it for the next batch of players.

 

Quote

I'm agreeing with Raichu that I just don't see the logic behind these choices.

The problem is that the end-game is so difficult compared to the storyline that we have severe issues with end-game adoption. We've seen it for years, we know it's an issue, and we think it's primarily because the storyline doesn't represent the difficulty of the end-game and the lack of general end-game content. For example, with existing end-game content like the Battle Frontier being much more difficult than the "normal" Emerald storyline, players very often got stuck in a place where they couldn't complete the Battle Frontier, and they were stuck grinding out trainer rematches in Kanto/Hoenn until they could build a team which could beat it. Then they got frustrated when they saw the amount of BP required to obtain some simple moves/items, and the list goes on.

 

Quote

As for the mmo part of it, the part I personally see as important is the chatting, battling, teams, and player interactions in general. My opinion is that this advanced strategy that players should be working towards is not as important as an accessible experience for the common player.

I agree that the social aspects of the game are something we're lacking on at the moment, and they're a priority over the next month or two. Unfortunately, people got really mad about money and breeding, so we had to fix that first.

 

With regards to 'advanced strategy', I don't think the storyline requires the depth of the end-game. I've already listed the advantages we give, but our failure to teach players hidden mechanics like STAB via the UI is also something we're working on. I think a lot of the perceived difficulty is unfamiliarity with underlying mechanics of the game (as well as the much easier expectations of PvE set up by B/W as an NDS game), but we'll see.

Edited by Kyu
Link to comment
7 minutes ago, Kyu said:

Well, we sprinkle Nuggets around like they're candy at the moment, but if it's not good enough, we'll make it better I guess. There's a pretty high incentive to "100%" the region with visible/hidden items (although the latter is completely reliant on guides due to ItemFinder literally never working), but if players refuse to do it, then I can buff the initial Gym Leader payouts I suppose.

 

It doesn't. If players have already cleared a region, then the only thing which really changes is that their untradeable items are now unlocked for sale. If we lost players due to the high difficulty and buggy overworld, then oh well, that's our fault and there's nothing we can really do to change it. We'll just keep trying to improve it for the next batch of players.

 

The problem is that the end-game is so difficult compared to the storyline that we have severe issues with end-game adoption. We've seen it for years, we know it's an issue, and we think it's primarily because the storyline doesn't represent the difficulty of the end-game and the lack of general end-game content. For example, with existing end-game content like the Battle Frontier being much more difficult than the "normal" Emerald storyline, players very often got stuck in a place where they couldn't complete the Battle Frontier, and they were stuck grinding out trainer rematches in Kanto/Hoenn until they could build a team which could beat it. Then they got frustrated when they saw the amount of BP required to obtain some simple moves/items, and the list goes on.

 

I agree that the social aspects of the game are something we're lacking on at the moment, and they're a priority over the next month or two. Unfortunately, people got really mad about money and breeding, so we had to fix that first.

 

With regards to 'advanced strategy', I don't think the storyline requires the depth of the end-game. I've already listed the advantages we give, but our failure to teach players hidden mechanics like STAB via the UI is also something we're working on. I think a lot of the perceived difficulty is unfamiliarity with underlying mechanics of the game, but we'll see.

I* am very happy to hear these things are being worked on, knowing more has helped me understand the situation much better.

Something that could use some balance when the dev team is more free to work on changes is that as someone who knows how STAB/type adv/move coverage/etc works I still don't understand how having them be IV'd EV'd or so meta/comp is useful.

The E4 have moves that are se against their own type, which I don't see a reason for, you already addressed the switching which is obv a bug they switch out way too much lol

And the IVs/EVs are where I'm esp confused. This is the only option I could see as "artificial difficulty" because it just ups the effectiveness of the pokemon while the player has to do all of it manually.

I see this as one of the things you'd change to balance them better. But I have def been calmed as far as the changes go, since I know changes are already being rolled out.

edit: I forgot to say, I don't think the item spread is really bad. I got plenty of things to sell, but the items are simply too expensive with how much you currently earn.

Edited by atlasstar
Link to comment
12 minutes ago, Matoka said:

For me, in terms of feedback, the AI is moderately predictable but sometimes it will just behave what appears to be erratically, on the level of "Why would you stay in, you have something that completely walls this and you have swapped into it before against my poke" kinda deals, it can lead to fairly aggravating situations where you have planned something out but what feels irrational on the AI's part ends up screwing you over.

are the AI built to mind games us or are they just slightly random in their decision making even though they are heavily likely to do something reasonable like swap a water absorb poke in on a water type that is spamming surf etc?

No, they're not really randomized right now. It's just buggy.

12 minutes ago, Matoka said:

Also, this second point will probably be unable to be of much use until probably Sinnoh or even Johto (xd) far into the future, but maybe if you wanted to give new players better understanding of strategy in the end-game you could have then use some rough archetypes per gym and have NPC's leading up to that gym refer to their playstyle and what kinds of things they are weak against.

Examples maybe being like you bump into 2 NPC's discussing:
"The Gym leader in XXX city likes to lead off with Toxic Spikes! I kept having to deal being poisoned each time I sent a Pokemon out to battle!"
"Oh? How did you manage to beat him then? You said you got their badge."
"Simple, I sent out my Poison Type pokemon! they cleared up the Toxic Spikes no problem!"

Or other similar things, none of the story line fights really tutorialise things like Entry Hazards, Stall teams, different competitive items etc, they are very loose guides to how to have a varied good team in general and it does it better than the handhelds but maybe some day you guys could try putting in stuff like:

Gym leader likes Entry Hazards immediately after getting Defog TM which can then be tutorialized to remove entry hazards in competitive play (instead of just being for making it easier to see in Sinnoh) as well as Rapid Spin if they have it, maybe one gym leader (Or Barry) could be obsessed with putting Choice Scarf on everything which would help players learn how to deal with choice pokemon, thinking about how to trick them into locking into moves that they can abuse etc.

Even things like Resto-Chesto, Trick Room, Focus Sash + Destiny Bond etc, all with moderation of course, but I feel like these would be the kinds of things you'd want to also try to introduce over the course of a region if you wanted to teach people about competitive play a bit more.
 

People don't even know how to handle typings or how to weigh healing item purchases, I don't think they can cope with actual strategy yet

Link to comment
1 minute ago, Kyu said:

People don't even know how to handle typings or how to weigh healing item purchases, I don't think they can cope with actual strategy yet

I mean, I guess? maybe one day though...

At the very least I feel like players should be exposed to Stealth Rock or Trick Room once in story mode, even if you aren't beating them over their head on how they can be used, seeing them used would likely make new players wonder exactly how they work and could encourage reading up about them perhaps, plus they aren't going to force the player to lose if they don't play entirely around.

I guess walk before you can run kinda deal with this thing though is the better choice.

Link to comment
10 minutes ago, atlasstar said:

Something that could use some balance when the dev team is more free to work on changes is that as someone who knows how STAB/type adv/move coverage/etc works I still don't understand how having them be IV'd EV'd or so meta/comp is useful.

 

And the IVs/EVs are where I'm esp confused. This is the only option I could see as "artificial difficulty" because it just ups the effectiveness of the pokemon while the player has to do all of it manually.

I agree that IVs are artificial difficulty, and it's done that way due to the significant boosts that overleveling gives you. It's also because the AI is too simplistic to handle mechanics like afflicting conditions properly right now.

 

I don't necessarily agree that EVs are artificial difficulty, because the game encourages players to go fight wild encounters when they get "stuck", which boosts their stats passively. Although I guess you could argue that the typing requirements being changed on every gym encourages people to move on to different parties every Gym.

 

Either way, the bullet sponge mechanics are to compensate for other flaws in the game, and they'll probably be toned down when the AI is made better.

 

10 minutes ago, atlasstar said:

edit: I forgot to say, I don't think the item spread is really bad. I got plenty of things to sell, but the items are simply too expensive with how much you currently earn.

Are you referring to NPC sourced items like Revives/Hyper Potions/Balls, or are you referring to player-sourced items which are obtainable via Crafting?

Link to comment
18 minutes ago, Kyu said:

I agree that IVs are artificial difficulty, and it's done that way due to the significant boosts that overleveling gives you. It's also because the AI is too simplistic to handle mechanics like afflicting conditions properly right now.

 

I don't necessarily agree that EVs are artificial difficulty, because the game encourages players to go fight wild encounters when they get "stuck", which boosts their stats passively. Although I guess you could argue that the typing requirements being changed on every gym encourages people to move on to different parties every Gym.

 

Either way, the bullet sponge mechanics are to compensate for other flaws in the game, and they'll probably be toned down when the AI is made better.

 

Are you referring to NPC sourced items like Revives/Hyper Potions/Balls, or are you referring to player-sourced items which are obtainable via Crafting?

NPC buyable items, the rest is fine for the most part.

Now that you can't overlevel maybe it would be better to remove the IVs EVs or tone them down, of course later on when changes are being made.

And possibly change npc movesets, since some of them are uh, very strange even thinking competitively

Edited by atlasstar
Link to comment
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

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