2 suggestions, 1 topic.

[EcoWOLFrb]

I'd like to make some short suggestions:

1-Remove the happiness requirement for the outrage tutor.
Reasons:
-The outrage tutor quest, combined with the dragons den entry quest is sufficiently difficult for one simple move tutor.
-Most pokemon who use this tutor are already lv 99, why should they need to be trained additionally just to learn a move when the work has already been put in?
-Tutor moves have nothing to do with happiness in the real games, I know that this games goal isn't to be exactly like the handhelds, however I don't believe that negatively impacting content should be added onto the list of things to divert from the handhelds. Positive changes only please.
-Pokemon need to be re-trained because of the happiness if they change moves, even after they have ALREADY learned outrage once. IE: Charizard that has outrage already gets its moves changed on playerdex. Now he must be taught the tutor yet again, but since he's been used in battle his happiness has decreased, and must be trained again. Tedious and useless.

2- Now that brine has been fixed, we need surf to fill that gap. Introduce surf tutor or TM.
Reasons:
-Pretty self-explanitory, we really need it because scald isn't as powerful, and can't be learned by every pokemon that surf can. There's really no reason to use scald on fire types.
-No reason to not introduce it, it's been asked for for a while, wouldn't do any harm since I'm fairly sure there's no intent to make surf HM working as it does in the handhelds, and if there is it can be adapted to do so even after its introduction as a move.

 

[HitmonFonty]

All moves will be added to the game in time, we just don't want to plonk them in without forethought. We don't want to miss the chance to add something fun or challenging to the game, which the introduction of some TMs at least offers. HMs will also be considered but as they are not yet in place at all this again requires thought. I am not saying the thought or discussion slows down the process of getting things added, just that there is more to consider with adding Surf HM to the game than just the fact that water pokemon need it. HMs themselves need to be added to the game in some way shape or form as yet to be decided. Certainly worthy of a topic of its own.

As for the happiness aspect to quests, there does seem to be an issue here you are skirting around. If happiness is affected by PvP it shouldn't be. The only reason it would be would be that happiness should not be affected at all if you don't gain XP during a battle. Since that is impossible here since max level pokemon would never be able to increase happiness, the PvP aspect may have been forgotten. A lot of the issues you raised here would be solved if we made it so happiness doesn't change in PvP right?

 

[Nikola]

I believe that the issues is with the move learning system and with happiness gaining. If happiness gaining is applied when you faint opposing pokemon things would be more pleasant. Atm you only gain happiness by fainting wild or NPC Pokemon at 99, means you can't get say 5 points at 99 due to not being able to level up, so you only gain one. If your Pokemon fainted during the PvP battle its happiness will be reduced by 5 and if you kill opposing Pokemon you gain 0. In order to keep Pokemon max happy you can do 5 wild battles when your Pokemon lost battle against another player. Removing happiness from PvP would do the trick, however I do believe that pvp gaining should be applied mostly due to happiness based attacks. If you reach max happiness and start pvping, having max happiness after you lost few people makes no sense so I am more in favor or making Pokemon able to gain happiness when you faint opposing Pokemon.

As for Surf, I believe that only viable solution is proper system and mechanics behind it and other HMs. You don't want to redo the system 2 months after you introduced it. More problematic moves would be egg / breeding moves due to lack of proper breeding system. Making egg move tutor for example makes more sense them making HM tutor. I saw several games added egg move tutors to solve the problem. They all have one thing in common, lack of breeding system in their games. Breeding in MMO is something most of the developers will avoid due to system not being able to work for MMO standards. First because after they introduced the breeding in their games started to die to out as the economy experienced huge collapse and second, you get Pokemon awesome Pokemon doing minimum effort. Breeding is not hard to implement...30 mins of coding tops and sometime testing the update. However, the system itself is not going well alongside other features of MMO.

 

[mad30]

I believe pwo could make surf work similar to the handhelds.... With one little work around.

1) first release the hm in game.
2) rename the surfboard item to surf.
3) when you click the surf item it then checks to see if your active team has a pokemon that knows surf. If you do away you go accross the water.

 

[EcoWOLFrb]

All moves will be added to the game in time, we just don't want to plonk them in without forethought. We don't want to miss the chance to add something fun or challenging to the game, which the introduction of some TMs at least offers. HMs will also be considered but as they are not yet in place at all this again requires thought. I am not saying the thought or discussion slows down the process of getting things added, just that there is more to consider with adding Surf HM to the game than just the fact that water pokemon need it. HMs themselves need to be added to the game in some way shape or form as yet to be decided. Certainly worthy of a topic of its own.

As for the happiness aspect to quests, there does seem to be an issue here you are skirting around. If happiness is affected by PvP it shouldn't be. The only reason it would be would be that happiness should not be affected at all if you don't gain XP during a battle. Since that is impossible here since max level pokemon would never be able to increase happiness, the PvP aspect may have been forgotten. A lot of the issues you raised here would be solved if we made it so happiness doesn't change in PvP right?

There is a decent amount of frustration that has built up from waiting so long between move additions. I don't see any reason for extensive discussion, discussion shouldn't take weeks for a simple quest for earthquake, never mind a year. Something can be decided on relatively quickly as long as it's well thought out, it can sometimes take less than an hour or 2. There comes a time when thinking too much and being too careful delays progress and becomes more harmful than good.

That being said, I don't think this is necessarily the case when it comes to HMs, as they are a different being than simple TMs and tutor moves. Certain things can be decided on such as fly. I don't believe it would be healthier than a transit system to be able to fly willy nilly everywhere rather than pay for it in an MMO. Being that we already have surf boards, and it would be a simple change to conform it to fit like mad said, I don't see any harm coming from introducing it in some creative way, which like I said shouldn't take too long to figure out.

With regards to outrage, while fixing that aspect may help, it still doesn't rebuttal the other points I made, which I believe are enough to retract that requirement by themselves. Though that is more a matter of opinion I suppose.

 

[nemo55]

Well said Eco! ^-^

PWO administration just needs more hustle (someone with a whip) lol, see someone with talent in art... GRAB EM! MILK EM! DONE!

For example animations guy Reiatsu...also you can exploit more hidden talents of his once you get to know him more...OR a Spriter like MistyMayonaise, while she WAS at it, it would have been good to ask her if she would be willing to make Gym Leader sprites??

My point is, see an opportunity and conquer it! After all its a fan made game, so even a general fan who is "non-staff" can contribute"...current staff would just make it official. You guys need hustler mentality, the process of milking someone to death to become staff sucks too! So yaa, common sense here...knowing when to bend the rules for the games best interest and screw the process of milking...

Back on topic, HM Surf among other HMs like Cut, Flash, Fly..would be gladly welcomed to PWO. Of course, doesn't have to mimic exactly how handhelds work, but a workaround is always possible. 2-4hours of great discussion and brainstorming with a group of individuals and an idea can be set in place for implementing them. Something to consider in the near future...

 

[HitmonFonty]

PvP is different to wild battling in many ways. It is really the ultimate testing of your strategies as well as the training you've put into your team. As such each pokemon is part of that team, not fighting as an individual. Therefore its morale should not drop every time it takes a hit for the team, on the contrary it could be argued that it would improve just from being part of a team- a winning team especially. Overall this would be difficult to manage I'd say though, so for our purposes I think it would be better just to not include PvP in happiness at all.

Interesting proposal mad. There would still be the need to change the graphics of the surfboard to the specific pokemon that we are supposed to be surfing on however. If it's just a surfboard it would just be wrong, and if just a lapras every time sloppy I think. Otherwise this sounds good, but as you said it should also fit in with other HM mechanics, and Fly is one that staff have often said doesn't belong here due to us using a quite efficient transport system.

Eco as I said although additions need forethought and discussion before adding to the game, that is not usually the reason they are held up. We don't have coders sitting around doing nothing because we can't decide on something. Even when we had active scripters the opposite was the case- they always had a backlog of quests and fixes to work on. We are of course hoping that will change with 3 new scripters being trained right now and we'll be fighting hard to keep up with them. TMs are a priority as they are ready to go and just waiting inclusion into the game. The idea as you say, even for a good Earthquake quest for example, shouldn't take long, but the time builds up when there are 100 TMs or so and we have been working on releasing them as quickly as possible since they became available.

It may be as you say that it's more work than should be needed to raise the happiness of a level 99 pokemon to 100% even once, considering that in most cases that would have been done easily if we had had friendship before. But there are trades to consider as well, which should reset friendship back to 70 as well. If it's possible though to do it might be worth seeing if happiness of level max level pokemon is reset to a higher rate than 70 to begin with, maybe double that rate or even 200 which is what a pokemon caught in a friend ball starts at, as a one time thing. With the Outrage quest the problem does seem to lie more in the problems with having all your level 99 pokemon stuck at low happiness than with the requirement itself. Without the requirement for example a newly bought or traded dratini from the token store could be taught its most powerful attack at level 5 with no effort at all, just as one example.

 

[mad30]

Perhaps fonty but they were using lapras sprite for the first few generations and still think that would be an ok compromise til more functionality is possible.

 

[Merse]

I like both ideas.

 

[EcoWOLFrb]

PvP is different to wild battling in many ways. It is really the ultimate testing of your strategies as well as the training you've put into your team. As such each pokemon is part of that team, not fighting as an individual. Therefore its morale should not drop every time it takes a hit for the team, on the contrary it could be argued that it would improve just from being part of a team- a winning team especially. Overall this would be difficult to manage I'd say though, so for our purposes I think it would be better just to not include PvP in happiness at all.

This is a great example of over thinking. Some things really don't need an in-depth explanation, or flawless reasoning in this MMO. Things that make practical sense should be applied over far-fetched lore that in reality, will never draw question regardless as long as it's not irritating like the outrage happiness requirement. No one will ever need, or care to know why this particular flower grows on a certain part of the map and not another. I'm not saying I disagree with the logic displayed here, I agree that PVP shouldn't effect happiness, and I don't debate the logic you stated, I just think it's unnecessary to need to have that sort of logic.

Interesting proposal mad. There would still be the need to change the graphics of the surfboard to the specific pokemon that we are supposed to be surfing on however. If it's just a surfboard it would just be wrong, and if just a lapras every time sloppy I think. Otherwise this sounds good, but as you said it should also fit in with other HM mechanics, and Fly is one that staff have often said doesn't belong here due to us using a quite efficient transport system.

Why is this a problem? Why not just have it be the surfboard or the lapras, and update the system when possible? Why wait to implement something that is much needed because of such a small problem as the pokemon being used not appearing as the pokemon you're surfing on? Since when are PWO's standards so high that surfing on a lapras like in the first gens is unacceptable?

Eco as I said although additions need forethought and discussion before adding to the game, that is not usually the reason they are held up. We don't have coders sitting around doing nothing because we can't decide on something. Even when we had active scripters the opposite was the case- they always had a backlog of quests and fixes to work on. We are of course hoping that will change with 3 new scripters being trained right now and we'll be fighting hard to keep up with them. TMs are a priority as they are ready to go and just waiting inclusion into the game. The idea as you say, even for a good Earthquake quest for example, shouldn't take long, but the time builds up when there are 100 TMs or so and we have been working on releasing them as quickly as possible since they became available.

I don't mean to be rude or call you out on it, but honestly they haven't been worked on "releasing them as quickly as possible since they became available". IF they were, most of the important TMs would have been out 6 months ago. There was undoubtedly enough resources to at least get the 8-10 most asked for done with quest material if it was absolutely needed, and perhaps add in some fillers too. And I'm not saying that it's your responsibility to pump out whatever players ask for, but I mean when we're promised the most important TMs would be out by summer I'd at least hope for that to come to fruition.

It may be as you say that it's more work than should be needed to raise the happiness of a level 99 pokemon to 100% even once, considering that in most cases that would have been done easily if we had had friendship before. But there are trades to consider as well, which should reset friendship back to 70 as well. If it's possible though to do it might be worth seeing if happiness of level max level pokemon is reset to a higher rate than 70 to begin with, maybe double that rate or even 200 which is what a pokemon caught in a friend ball starts at, as a one time thing. With the Outrage quest the problem does seem to lie more in the problems with having all your level 99 pokemon stuck at low happiness than with the requirement itself. Without the requirement for example a newly bought or traded dratini from the token store could be taught its most powerful attack at level 5 with no effort at all, just as one example.

I just want to touch on that last point. If I'm able to teach a growlithe or a charmeleon flamethrower at low levels, what's the big deal with outrage? Why is this one quest the exception? I don't get it.

It's late, I hope we can expand on this later with more detailed responses

 

[HitmonFonty]

The surf thing isn't a problem at all, just discussing it. I'm inclined to agree it would be good to have it the way made suggested- and even better if it could be the way I suggested with us riding the correct pokemon. However we do need to consider HM mechanics before bringing them out. It may not be a big issue that players see Surf working and expect Fly because of it, but it's something to just keep in mind. It would be very neat to have all HMs working the same way here as they do in the handhelds but consistency isn't everything and we will probably need to look at each HM on a case by case basis. This may mean Surf becomes very much like the handhelds as mad suggests and remains a HM, but maybe Fly is 'downgraded' to being just a TM.

Maybe that's over thinking things like you said I was about happiness in PvP, but if we under think them we could be releasing something that effects the game badly but for some reason stays there anyway for years to come. Not like that hasn't happened before.

I would say Outrage is an exceptional move. Though it is possible we are treating it too exceptionally.

And yes we have been working on TMs constantly since they came out, but the people working on them has changed due to real life issues and leaving staff etc. We will get there.

 

[EcoWOLFrb]

And yes we have been working on TMs constantly since they came out, but the people working on them has changed due to real life issues and leaving staff etc. We will get there.

Respectfully disagree here. I realize that teck left who was one of the main people working on TMs, but there were situations where they could have been added much quicker but were put off because of wanting to add them in a way to keep players interested and keep the battle system changing over time, and/or a lack of quest content for them, because for the good TMs there's this feeling that they must have quest content or some fitting place for it to be released because of lore or something. That's all well and good, if it was being released in a timely manner, however when something happens like the server being shut down and manually removing moves from pokemon because of a uncontrolled release of TMs that wasn't exactly how you wanted, it becomes an extremely unnecessary case of prolonging progress. This is how unintentional damage happens, prolonging progress because of short handedness, and an inability to implement things exactly how you intend to.

If this sounds harsh, I really don't mean to step on toes. I know staff try to do their best with what they have, but human mistakes happen.