Bunch of tips, remarks, suggestions ...

Sergth

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Hi, hello,
as we talked with Rigaudon few hours ago (you said you are lookng forward reading the tips, so here you go : D), here is few thing I would like to comment, sugest, or even just write in hope, somebody will at least think about it for a second to tell me, how bad it is : D No, just kiddong, so, lets start :

1) EXP rates and leveling.

I came from "unnamed web browser pokemon mmo", which was incredibely hard.... well, lets not say hard, because dhe difficulty came from riddiculously low EXP rate, so it took hours and hours and hours and hours of "left-right-left-right-left-right-clickAttack-clickFirstmove-repeat". No, really, it took days, weeks or even months if we are talking exping up whole party to get strong enough to battle some stronger gym leaders.

Here, here is it completely different. And I can say, much to easy. On handhelds, I always leave Viridian with about lvl 16 to 21, depending on mood, because it takes terrible time to exp up on such a low levels. Here, I was leaving Viridian with L37 Charizard, and it really didnt take so much time... Before Sabrina, I had L75 Chari, and when I was on my first steps in Johto, Char had L96.... All this without a significant random-encounter-training. Just progressing through trainers.
Well, I have a screenshot for you ... This is a screen from Goldenrod gym. My gyarados made 5 levels on 4 pre-trainers in about 4 minutes which takes the way through them... and I really would like to see original game, where you can do this :p
pkmn-levelup.png


I think, that the MMO should be little harder than original games to extend time people will stay in game... more faster the game will be, players will earlier finish the game and leave. But on the other hand, make it too hard and people will get bored with the endless "left-right-left-right-left-right-clickAttack-clickFirstmove-repeat" and will leave too...

2) Zone and trainers difficulty
Finished kanto, and then, Johto is like "I will go through and almost everything, what will attack me, slows me down". Yep, the second world is no challenge, doesn't matter if you are from Kanto and came to Johto or you are from Johto and came to Kanto. Really, defeating lvl 10 trainers with lvl 90-100 pokemon is not even funny ...

Here, I would like to suggest the change of approach for setting trainers and wild pokés.

As I think (and it is only what I think, in the end, it can be totally different :p ), all trainers have exactly preset the pokemons they have, like WHAT pokemon, WHAT level, maybe WHAT moves, EVs, and so on....
Also the areas for random encounter have probably set just some level range.

What I am suggesting, give every location and every trainer a "flag". This flag can be just a column in database, it can be a simple tiniInt, with a value of location, like Kanto is 0, Johto is 1 Honen is 3, Seviis are 4 ... it doen't matter the order, and the value itself does not say, what difficulty it is.
Then, set the trainers and random encounters as normal.
Also a player has somewhere in system stored, in which region he has started
And then, change the formula for levels when an encounter (wild or trainer) occurs.
When you are not in your ORIGINALL zone, a modifier will be used and you encounter stronger opponent without a need to set especial data for that trainer or location

Well, for better understanding, I will use some kind of pseudocode which will be much clearer. :p

Code:
INSTEAD OF USING THIS
private void StartEncounter (bool IsTrainerOrRandomEncounter, List PokemonsData){

Data data = CreateDataForEncounter(bool IsTrainerOrRandomEncounter, List PokemonsData); //returs lets say psedotype Data

StartEncounter(data);
}

USE THIS
private void StartEnhancedEncounter (List PlayerData, bool IsTrainerOrRandomEncounter, List PokemonsData){
int[] zonePlusLevels = {40, 50 ....};
Data data;
   if(PlayerData.PlayerFromRegion==PlayerData.CurrentMap.MapFlag) //if player is in Kanto and IS really in any Kanto map
   {
     data = CreateDataForEncounter(bool IsTrainerOrRandomEncounter, List PokemonsData);
     StartEncounter(data); //start preset encounter as it was
   }
   else{
      if((PlayerData.PlayerFromRegion==0 &&PlayerData.CurrentMap.MapFlag==1)||(PlayerData.PlayerFromRegion==1 &&PlayerData.CurrentMap.MapFlag==0){ data = CreateENHANCEDDataForEncounter(bool IsTrainerOrRandomEncounter, List PokemonsData, ZonePlusLevels[0] );} 

//If trainer is from KNATO and currently is in Johto, OR, if trainer is from JOHTO and currently is in Kanto, data prepared for encounter has a modifier by int[] zonePlusLevels 

      else (){} // here can be honen, if sometimes will be as starter region, then it should be decided, what other region will have difficulty +1 and what will have the difficulty +2

StartEncounter(data);
   }

}

provate Data CreateENHANCEDDataForEncounter(bool IsTrainerOrRandomEncounter, List PokemonsData, int ZonePlusLevels ){
Data data;
foreach (var level in PokemonsData) 
   {
   if(level+ZonePlusLevels<=100){level=level+ZonePlusLevels;}
   else{level=100;}
   }
foreach (var moves in PokemonsData) 
   {
   moves = SetFourLastMovesByLevelingUp(PokemonsData.IDofPokemon)
   }
foreach (var EVs in PokemonsData) 
   {
       foreach (var stat in Evs) 
        {
        stat = 85; //we set evs like from randomBattle, we dont want them weak :P
        }
   }
//process any other needed data
data = CreateDataForEncounter(bool IsTrainerOrRandomEncounter, List PokemonsData);

return data;

}



Thats it .. something like this will allow you to do a system modificators, without a need of setting multiple instances of NPCs and deciding, what NPC will player see depending on from what region he is. Like this, he will battle the same NPC, but with different stats. From this model, the gym leaders has to be excluded of course.

3) WARP zones aka enters/doors/ladders
I really didn't get, why the hell are all entrances one field away from where it should be. Better than describing it by words, I have another image for you.
warp-gates.png

In general, the client recognizes an arrow being pressed even while loading.
I thried it several times and you have to really get your hand out of the key really fast, or your character will do that one step ahead, in case of that walk-through-houses, can get you between the warp zone and the real entrance, in case of houses (and not only pokecenters), it can warp you back where did you come from, because it will do the step to the doors right before the map loads and warps you back in there.
This difference of doing the step or not doing the step is like 0,1 to 0,2sec of the key is being still held or not.

Very simmilar problem is with Ladders too, when you get into ladder, it will not warp you to the chunk where ladder is, but one chunk in direction where you came from. For example, in Mt.Moon It happend to me, that I ended up in the corner blocked between ladder, two black walls and a rock. I needed to warp back and approach the ladder form another direction to get to the other side...
And this is totally only about settings.
Same principle shares the teleport gates from Sabrinas gym, where you are warped to the corect chunk.
For leaving house, there this is also about setting, because for example cave entrances have the right chunk set.
And for left/right walk-through-building .. well, I cannot see the reason too, why the warp chunk cannot be at the entrance and not one chunk away.


4) [long term developing] Map editor

... I know that the staff has much work to do. How about to develop simple map editor for players, which will do an output of file per map with chunks and accessible (walking through flags) in a correct format for processing it into a client?
If there would be something like this, players can make rest of maps for you, like Hoenn, Sinoh, Unova, and other official, or recreations of maps from some "hacked roms", which were also amazing...
actually it has to have 4 simple functions.
-Add empty chunk
-fill chunk with part of texture
-add walk-through-walls
-save

rest of thing will have to to the staff, like correct indexing the maps, spawn warp gates, spawn npcs .....
If we talk about editor, also a designer of npc can be made .. name, sprite, text, or even battles ... all saved to compatibile output, which can be easily handled by staff and added into game

If this will be released, we can have a biggest playable world of all pokemon mmos shortly.


5) Money money money, should be funny ....

There is a huge difference between items in usability/price
Basic things are ehtremely expensive related to income.
For example, yesterday, while looking for scrolls in Bell tower in Ecruteak, I spent 21 000 only for repels ...
Althrough Rigaudon said, that almost all prices are the same as on handhelds, which can be true, the income definitely is not. Trainers gives quite low amount of money and the pokemons too .. even there is some range of random money droped by encounter, it takes hundreds, and hundreds of encounters to get some solid money ..... which you will spend on one item ....
On handhelds, if you complete the game, the only solid income is from elite 4, or some trainers in firered/leafgreen while using VS. Seeker. But even only betaing alite four, which is quite easy in lategame (mosty routine with 1hit ko), it gives you enough money to buy stuff you need, even the more expensive ones, as hyper potions or full restores.

But in here? We are bankrup all the time. For progressing player, it is hard to keep your wallet over 40-50k .. you have some healing needs. You have some pokeballs needs, escape ropes, repells ... then a quest giver f***s you with "buy me something for 25k and I will give you nothing back", then you try to visit safari and you will give 4k for damn 13 minutes (well, try to beat as many wild pokemon to gain 4k for next entry ... lets go bet, after what time period you will smash the keyboard, if you will try to hunt some rarer thing in safari)

Not talking about bike... for 500K? Serouosly? I have fully finished kanto with almost every damn trainer beaten, now in half of Johto and still without a at leat chance to get one... still about 40-60k max depending on common things I need to buy

So .. my suggestion - increase the amount of money gained from pokemons. If you want to randomize it, do it. Do a base amount of gained many depending on level (higher pokemon, higher money) and then, it can have the random bnus part...


Also, some prices should be tweaked. Like the basic stuff - all potions, revives, all repells, ropes, status healers and pokeballs - all that things should be cheaper. On the other side, things like evolution stones or some selected TMs should be hard to get, rare, overpriced, if you want ...


6) Market place and other PlayerDex functions
Even I think I am quite a "technical" person, this current system is quite overcomplicated for me, so what then for a basic users...
For a single action like buying pokemon from auction you have to:

Log out.
Transfer money to some pesudobank system
find that pokemon
buy that pokemon
go to some Gamelink (or what do you call it)
hit one of the radiobuttons (which are actually without further laber, so If I did that, of yourse I hit the correct one for the third-last try)
do the stuff with collecting your stuff
log back in

Well, seriously?
A that "another online web based pokemon MMO" everyting is in client. Simple as much it can be. You will come, talk to nepc, go through offers, buy, pokemon/item transfered into your party/box/backpack. Simple, fast, fluent. For donation items, almost the same. Store included as a frame in game, only outgoing link is the link on donation page. Then, the donor points are shown ingame and you will buy things directy in game interface. Again. Simple, fast, fluent.
Move tutor. The same thing .. there, you will go to NPC, it will relearn the move .. done
Here, again. Logout, click through the system edit moves, send request, log in and then maybeeee....

So, my suggestion is simple. Do it more simple. Include it into the game, in the best case.
Much complicated systems you will have, less players will go play here.

7) Game client
This leads to another thought:
How about to recreate the game on web brower platform?
Well, I know you will say how difficult it is, how much invention and effort it will take, but consider this table:

ThingPWOUnnamed web browser mmo
Maps playable23
NPC scriptinggoodnearly does not exists
questsyeswhat are "quests"?
Weatheryesalways sun here, right?
day/nightyes"we never sleep"
graphical effectssufficientalmost none
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Client137MB standalone exe39 MB playable SWF via browser in Autoscript3
auction/donate/move systemexternal, overcomlicatedinternal, ingame, fast, nice
DifficultyEasy, excluding grinding money"Hard" as hell .. or better - log boredom while trining as hell
Staff attitudeFriendly, quick reactionsHey this skeleton is holding some parchment. -What does it say? - "Waiting for GM"
Population in everyday peaksmeh, about 110?Over 1300+

In general .. your game is far mor better, still, you have nearly no population. Why? Well ...
I will repeat myself,
a) I think because some very non-intuitive systems
b) client. Many people wants to play not only from their computer, or have more than one computer. Downloading the client this big and keeping it up to date can be unconfortable.

So the suggestion here is quite clear i think, isn't it?

8 ) Interface and functions tweaks


a) Battle log - I would prefer different coloring. Now it is one line white, one ine orange, one line white, one line orange... Far more better would be, if the log will be: white - my actions, orange enemy actions....

b) BACK button for FIGHT and BAG options would be great. It is like "Ok, I wanna cath it, but I have to make it weak first... -clicks fight ... oh wait, it is too dangerous, I will try to catch it like it is .... but ... how do I go back? I need to click one of the moves now? but I don't want to kill it!!!"
I think, only a few people will gat that "brilliant idea" to click anywhere else like to battle log or the battle animation part to go back....

c) PokéDex shoul show the data about area, if the pokemon was met as a wild pokemon (not as pokemon of trainer)

d) /commands should be added to command pool with simple 4-6 words description. Finding it on wiki is bad, not all commands you use often and time to time you want to know, what commands the game have

e) /faq should be added to command pool with otugoing link to topic on forums or on wiki, where the major thing will be written like:
There are no HMs,
There are shortcuts for some key items
Where to get info about evs
where to get bike
Auction/move tutor tutorials
How does membership work
and much more what you feel that is important

e) in welcome window (that blak with pokachu), there should be a warning and outgoing link to
FAQ
RULES

f) there should be a way, how to reorder items in backpack rather than order by name

g) key items should have own backpack pocket. To prevent an accidental escape rope click while trying to click fishing rod

h) When you balck out after battle, I think that it is better to be teleported to the nearest pokécenter instead of that you have visited last.
Quite bad, if you loose your battle and you will show on the other side of region.
Escape rome can be like it is now. To the last visited center

i) increase afk time before you get logged out. Peronally, I think, the game client can stay online about 15 minutes. Yes, this will be ok ... now someones give you a call and meanwile, your game friend thinks you went just offline... well, or something like that :p

j) in sole long lonk lists, like by kanto safari pokemon tips guy, there is "back" button only on first page of the list. If you will go "Show me more", there is go back button missing. It means, that if you are on X-th page, yu have to go back through all the previous ones to gat to the first and click on that back button. The back/end-dialogue button should be as the last position of every page of the list.

k) ALL chat channel should be set as default ... I will always forget to manually clik on another channel and I always send the SAY message to the "global" channel. SAY is used not very much, if you want to say something, you want to say it to people, not only to nearby NPCs : /

l) exp bar on top panel should not be filled with EXP form defeated pokemon, until this pokemon is not defeated. Now, it fills the exp bar nearly with the defeating attack, but the animation of battle is not over. EXP gain should be seen after the round is over.


9) Bugs
Althrough I know it shouldn't be here, it is whole topic about tweaks and thing, so I dont want to create special topic for this:

a) In some occasions, loginscreen music can persist into the game until it is rewritten by another music

b) in trainers battle, there are cries in bad order. Cry of your pokemon is played at the stat, when enemy trainer sprite is shown, and then, the enemy pokemons cry is played when your pokeball is thrown and your pokemon appears

c) sometimes after login, it can be rainy in caves

d) chat is sometimes not interactive while in combat (cannot switch tabs or click chat links)


Well, that's enough for now, I think it is long enough to read it instead of a fairytale for good night : P
 

Jinji

PWO's Resident Gengar
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The ironic thing regarding your first point is that the experience formulas were only recently changed, to account for the fact the ones originally used by our game ramped up experience in ways that didn't follow any official game's logic. You're actually now the second person I've heard say that levelling Pokémon is now too easy.

Your third point is something I've also noticed. This never used to happen before, and appears to be a bug introduced with a recent change to the ways maps are loaded and rendered in the game. For some reason, exact co-ordinate references seem to occasionally end up being a tile out, causing weird behaviour such as this. It's definitely a nuisance and something I'm sure our Developer team are or will be looking into.

For your fourth point, a Map Editor already exists - there should be a link to it on the same thread for downloading the client. Staff Mappers use the same editor to actually create the maps used by the game itself. There has actually been a publicly-available Map Editor pretty much all throughout PWO's life, though the exact nature and technology behind it has changed numerous times.

My personal belief regarding the game's population is that it is not quantity that should be over-emphasised, but quality. I am personally fine with having a small amount of active players, if those players are the kind to be friendly, fun-loving, helpful and generally make a more pleasant and fun experience for everyone. Of course, having more players will always be the goal, but I prefer patience if a rushed approach would only attract a less desirable crowd. This having been said, it wasn't that long ago PWO was a far more popular game and it is clear competition has grown.

A new client is definitely something that would be appreciated by everyone, Staff and Players alike. While we have significantly improved the game by leaps and bounds even simply considering the last year alone, the use of legacy code in the client and outdated Direct3D systems really makes improvements a far more difficult job than it should be and also limits our overall reach. I personally am not as active a player of the game purely because I tend to boot Linux rather than Windows far more often now, and PWO does not support it. While there have been various attempts to redevelop the PWO client over its lifetime, they've all failed to gain momentum; and it is a major rod up our backside that such a job would be so large work that merely attempting it is beyond the scope of 99% of the people here, and as a non-profit venture it would not be possible to recruit anyone for the task either.

Thank you for the bug reports at the end - in general, we recommend such reports go to the Bug Report tool on the Playerdex, which is effectively a made-for-purpose tracker for such reports (a similar tool also exists for Suggestions). This is helpful both in keeping things organised and letting people know what has been reported before. Some of the things you have raised up here I definitely feel I have not been made aware of previously. Whether or not you subsequently use the tool to post these issues following my response to you, I thank you for raising the issues - it's good to see a player actually acknowledging the true meaning of "Beta Tester", which is still a title applied to all our players; and, even if it were not, the Staff should always be made aware of problems anyway to allow us to work on them later, no matter what the nature of the problem.
 

Sergth

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Ok, ok, I have rewritten it to the bugtracker :)

Also, more 2 things for you well, I amena for us .. you know :p

1) player visuality
In other MMOs, they have "fully customisable" characters. I know, that this would be hard to implement, because this game works with character images in different way.

BUT ... I have seen some players with Lance skin, which I would love to also have (So evil, I love it ^_^ ) .. who knows, maybe even pay for it... and I think, many players maybe too.
So this suggestion is simple.
For free, or for a fee, ingame or via some simple form on webpage on playerdex (there is already a radio button for this in "Character" section, allow us to select one of ingame available skins ... all or selected, it doesn't matter ... we have many of them here, green pkmn trainer, old man, poké engineer, cooker, Gary-like trainer and much more...
Just would be nicer, if everyone won't be the same

2) moves accesibility
As I said, Finished Kanto, now in Johto and havent found any TM .. that is wierd. I know some of them can be bough ingame, some of them maybe from Playerdex, but still, I would like to work witch greater pool than only with lvl-up autolearn... There are so many TMs ....
 

mad30

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Let me say this for number 5.

You are completely correct, however this was not something done intentionally. For the longest amount of time this game was very light on items. More or less just pokeball, potions, and evo items for repurchase able items. Then pwo SLOWLY added a few more items including escape ropes and TMs. Then at some point in the last 2 years, with new DEVS <3 there were a lot more items available in game.

However, very few (if any) additional quests and other ways to make money were added in game. This has lead to the problem we have now. Hopefully the staff will see this and add more quests for new players so they can afford more items. I believe at one point in time it was expected a player to have gross 100k after completing all 16 badges. As it currently stands, that needs to be increased.
 

HitmonFonty

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I am curious as to whether you used just your starter or had a team of pokemon to train up? Using just one, or even just 2 or 3 pokemon throughout the whole game will even unbalance the handhelds. I've done it myself a few times and it does give you some very OP pokemon, using up all the NPC XP that is designed to be distributed amongst a full team of pokemon at least.

In fact I opened up Pokemon Red not so long ago and had a little race going on between me and my son. He was using Pokemon Yellow and training all 3 starters along with his original starter pikachu which you can get all of in that game. I myself did the mew glitch and ONLY used mew from that point. My mew was level 65 I believe after beating the final gym, at which point we stopped and haven't picked up the 'race' again as yet.

The big difference would be that my mew was only level 7 when it is caught above Cerulean City using that glitch and misses out on all the NPCs prior to that. I would be interested to know however how long you did actually spend in the starting area as level 37 should have taken quite a while to achieve even just for one pokemon- that should certainly not have happened just fighting NPCs.

My usual method is to train more than a team- up to 9 or 10 or even more pokemon which I switch about- and though that can be a challenge, the game provides for it. I'm talking both PWO and handhelds here, the distribution of XP should allow for at least one full team.

I will add here that the current spawn levels were carefully considered and tested not too long ago in a game-wide spawn project which is now nearly complete- having on the Dragon's Den and Mt. Silver and surrounds to go. However as mentioned there has been some tweaking of the XP system since then which may have impacted on it. It is my intention to go through the game again to test the overall XP gain for myself since as has been mentioned this isn't the first time it's been commented on recently that the level gains are too easy now.
 

Sergth

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Well, one afternoon - few hours ... I was like about L15 when I started a topic about EVs for charmander .. then I went to the secret spot in viridian froest and there, the magics happens ... I trained up all my EVs - attack from goldeen and then sp. attacks from oddishs .. then some more training and viola .... charizard is here ...

But I am little bit crazy in this. Every single original game, I completed with the starter pokemon only (except the yellow), playing the style 1 hit KO., so it takes an initial effort to have a clear, not disturbed progress.

However. The time spent on lvl 37 charizard was not so high compared to getting level about 17 to 21 on handhelds before battling the first gym.

Also, very funny thing is Johto here in my progress.
I bought about L40 gyarados. Fine deal, you can catch similar gyara about L40 on route between Kanto and Johto.
This gyarados was trained on some random encounters up to the level of first Johto gym.
And then ... it was trained ONLY by gym pre-trainers and sometimes gym leaders (if it didnt died on some pre-trainer, then it is chari time) and some minor trainers outside (but their max level ever was like 25, meh) and after finishing the last gym leader in Johto, my gyara was L 96 ...

Meanwhile, my Chari also reached the 100.
Well, that is almost 2 lvl100 only by some minor random encounters and every trainer in kanto and few trainers in Johto and Johto leaders.

Show me the original game, where you can do this....

I remember especially on my progress on Silver game (because this run I didnt played on handheld or PC emu, but on emu on old Nokia 6300), where I have finished the game - Johto, Kanto and Elite4 with about L77 Meganium. And I have to say, that in original Silver, there is kanto much harder. Here, Johto for me was like .. meh... only gym leaders was worthy for my attention.
Than, on that Silver game, it took quite a few runs through elite4 to get in on L100
Here, no elite 4 no repeating hard fights, still I have 2 L100 (almost) just by going through the trainers...

Well, sorry, but 100-150k experieces from a single pokemon si quite high reward, don't you think?




But when speaking about dividing the EXP.... It is not working quite good. There shoud be a 50/50 reward, or 33/33/33 reward and so on...
but here, it is like 5/1 reward ... so the chance of exping up a pokemon by switching in battle are pretty low, just because the swithched-out pokemon will gain sh....
 

DotA.Eternity

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Jinji said:
Your third point is something I've also noticed. This never used to happen before, and appears to be a bug introduced with a recent change



The not-hitting-warp-point-head-on thing has been around for years, as well as the having-to-step-off-a-warp-point-in order-to-re-enter-it thing. I'm not sure if I every encountered warping/re-warping bug before, though.
 

I.Am

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Dude, get a life. Yes, lot of thing in this game doesnt make sense like money you mentioned and will remain no sense until the end of sense time. You dont sense me? Now go grind sense.
 

DotA.Eternity

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I.Am said:
Dude, get a life. Yes, lot of thing in this game doesnt make sense like money you mentioned and will remain no sense until the end of sense time. You dont sense me? Now go grind sense.

This seemed unneccessarily rude.
 
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