"Lucky Item" Shiny-Odds Bonus drop item, Shiny-Odds Pokemon Disposal NPC (using REP)

thunderclap

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An additional possible option: the trade-in guy could give Pd cash bonuses/bounties for certain pokemon. Not tokens please.. cash is what players crave and need. Don't know PWO stance on such prizes. I believe the code for that basically exists from the bird swarm though. Another optional prize could be eggs that grow into novel unreleased or token store pokes (with shiny chance plz if this ever happens) - half a dozen or a dozen mixed eggs would be a great prize, and erase any lasting p2w stigmas. As Rygar suggested. The pdex leaderboard code exists too already (great event that was).

In any case, this development (small amt of coding) would improve the framework for spur-of-the-moment themed swarms and mini-events, and seems straightforward enough

More on topic though, nothing in this whole thread should be THAT hard to make, I think, compared to economy benefits. I need to do a better job explaining all of it because even smart people like Isguros, Jobey and Klay don't get it. There must be a psychological theory/principle that explains why a small group of people cannot agree on anything.

The disposal NPC is a crucial element in both my scopes of suggestion, take note. It is to be used for controlling economic and pokenomic inflation. If the NPC is already there (or the asset exists to enable him during events or for those who find lucky item)... it makes the dream of cool monthly themed swarms more in reach.

Sorry for rambling - I meant for this post to be about 2 sentences and here we are. Not trying to sound unappreciative. Blue's frequent Playerdex updates are amazing, and we have some other great staff members who are dedicated but work in the shadows. I feel PWO is stagnating and declining.. and far too difficult to make a remotely good value-for-time proposition in particular for new players. So much impossible old wealth exists and hunting is hopeless if you aren't stunted in mathematical ability. I don't deny some pokes would decrease in value but everyone will benefit overall - from a more active economy, more interesting mart, and avenues for hope - the American Dream. Those who actively play, trade and hunt will benefit most, and active playing and trading is exact what this game needs. The NPC could sprinkle in some new pokes/content for scientific/testing purposes.

It's painfully clear only small changes/bonuses, thoughtfully crafted and agreed by a representative sample of players and staff can probably be good. That's all I wanted us to consider tho. nothing radical. PWO is a finely balanced econosystem.

But if it seems to you these ideas would make things too easy, I say, review the math, and work with me people!
 
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Klay

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hmm, because you complimented me and my boss, here some random thoughts:

could you make a quick summary of the suggestion as it is today? with pros and cons ofc
my memory is poopy as hell, and my laziness in front of 4 pages of posts just digivolved at its ultimate form

what i mostly dislike in your idea (at least what i remember of it) is giving that shiny chance while shinies are still all IVs 20+, while there's no reason for them to not be all IVs 0-31
shinies should be for collection purpose first, and eventually for pvp if they appear to be good enough for that

me not fan of swarms, they're just a first-aid bandage to hide staff have nothing to give us
and caused dumb dramas almost everytime they occurred
 

thunderclap

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Monthly swarms might be too often. Maybe every 3 months. They are a band-aid, but also fun. I'll work on a better summary.

Shiny IVs 0-31 might be better for limited edition novelty or different-colored shines with measurably easier odds. I'd prefer to not weaken regular shinies so drastically, uniformly or permanently. Maybe 15-31 or 10 at the very worst. I don't accept lower IVs without (avenues for) easier odds, and in that case we'd probably want some variant of Disposal NPC.
 
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justme1306

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then people will log in once every 3 months - that doesnt help pwo to have more players - easier odd will make rare shiny way cheaper which gonna hurt economy - as i said in another thread the only solution would be something that players will log in for - and swarms every 3 months doesnt - and yeah swarm are band-aid and fun and for now thats probably a solution - with mini events with tms - items and new pokemons
 

thunderclap

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Encounter rates were designed for when there were 200 players on the server 24/7. If you're worried my suggestions will make things too easy, look at the math in this thread again.
 

Prof.Rygar

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Shinies are a great IV sniffer since they always have 20+ stats. And honestly, from a battle perspective, that isn't even good enough. They need to be 26+ just to be useful. Without any way to breed and get good IVs like in the main games, we need a way to indicate if a wild pokemon is worth catching or should we run or faint it. A true dedicated IV sniffing item would be my dream come true and I could finally stop wasting my time. This item IS already in the official games, so release it here too.
 

whisMEAT

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Idk about that item but speed and hp can be predicted in. Range of 3-4iv with just what we have already now
 

Jobey

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Tbh I'm not convinced you read it the first time. You, smart Jobey, never seemed to understand any of it, of all people. :perplexed:
LOL tbh If I remember correctly though, I think I actually was for it for the most part, I think my main argument was that the increase was too much of a bonus, especially when stacked with MS. I may honestly read through it again some day, but doubtful. XD
 

thunderclap

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Small clarification to make things equally fair for everyone: The only pokemons that the disposal NPC should accept to be traded for luck points are pokes that are caught after this suggestion is implemented. Otherwise, to allow all pokemons, would unfairly profit old players who have like 9000 released pokes and 30 boxes full of junk to trade in.
 

UnknownMan

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I like a lot of what is said. (This is my first time reading this fyi, and my background is I played back in like 2014, and then came back as new account in 2019)

I agree that you cant make the shiny rates too much higher because if every one is just hunting for themselves then yeah that is fine, but when you have an economy of 80+ active players that are all having the chance to catch shinys at such a high rate then the whole multiplayer part of the game is pointless. So I think the parallel is older players will never want the shiny chance to be bumped up because it de-values what they have and they know that the end goal is to have more players playing and once we get to more players playing, shinies will be getting found too easily (because all of these shinies were found before without the shiny chance being bumped up, so why change now?). And new players will always want the shiny chance bumped up because it gives them a better chance to get something that they dont have, makes the game easier, and the fear is that if the game is too difficult for new players to ever realistically become a part of the economy, then they will always just quit after 16 badges and it will be a never ending cycle of just no new pokes ever being caught in the current maps and old players just sitting around waiting for new material.

So I say the clovers is going to be a tough sell.

But I think something along what Thunderclap is saying about turning in pokes for shiny chance should be implemented. The big thing I have noticed is that back when there were tons of players online I felt the shiny rates with membership were fair. Now they feel unfair because not as many play anymore and so for example a shiny t2 poke: yeah I think it is unrealistic for me to expect to set out and find one without an immense amount of hunting (i.e. like 5 months like Ramen said or to get dumb lucky), but the real bummer (and why it feels like the shiny chance is really low now) is its not even really possible to buy one either. A couple of likely reasons for this are not enough players play, so none are being caught, because these shiny rates were more meant for a server with 100 people hunting all over and probably 10-20 people in one location. Now outside of events you are probably going to be all on your own hunting, so realistically these pokes are not being found anymore. It seems like every rare poke that is being traded on the market, is typically an old poke from years ago (outside of events). Which means nothing new is being caught. Another possible reason is along the lines of what thunderclap said; it is not possible for a new player to ever get the money or even to really get a lucky catch to get the money to buy any pokes of interest because these players with massive accounts are now affecting the economy between these smaller accounts. I am not saying that there should not be trading between massive accounts and smaller accounts but the economy really needs to be kept moving with small accounts selling mediocre poke to other small accounts who are interested in these mediocre pokemon (and medium size accounts to medium size accounts, etc.). The problem is there is none of that. The big accounts sell everything and set the price for everything so obviously they care about the price of poke that are going to make them millions but then the poke that they dont want to spend the time trying to peddle to players of interest to make 100k sell this poke for 2k and just assume whoever wants it can have it. But there is so much of that, that smaller accounts can no longer sell anything to other smaller accounts and keeps them at the mercy of whatever they can buy with their 80k-100k that they obtain beating the 16 gyms and then when they realize that they cant get anything else and cant sell anything, they quit.

While I will say a lot of these problems also stem from not having as consistent of an influx of players starting the game new, I think these massive accounts are killing the middle and lower economy because they just stockpile these pokes with nothing to do with them, and so now the economy consists essentially of either its a pokemon with perfect IV's and it has value to one of the big accounts or it is virtually worthless. It used to be that the pokes being traded had a gradual decline in price depending on attributes, but I think this is one of the biggest changes in the market from when I used to play to now, that makes it really tough to start out (and when I start out I mean become active in the marketplace, because I understand you can technically play this game forever and sell and buy nothing as a solo game, but I am going under the basis that this game's niche over emulators and pokemon games is the multiplayer battling, trade market, comradery, events, etc.; so my assumption is if you cant get started in these things then this game is no longer interesting and therefore new players will quit)

I really like Thunderclap's idea because it kind of takes the massive accounts out of the lower priced economy and allows new players to set more realistic prices and slowly build up the middle economy again. I think without adjustments like this I just dont think players will stick around. Before when I played, if you played even just 50 hrs you could at the very least catch something that might improve your account value by even 100k but now you could play 200+ hrs and will probably never catch something that would ever be worth more than 25k.

It is true that everything is in perspective; if everything is cheap then everything is differentiated on a cheaper scale and everything is fine, but when you have no differentiation in the bottom market (because again the massive accounts set the price) and then you hit a certain near impossible to catch by yourself iv spread and all of a sudden it is a part of the high end market, then there is no longer a challenge to work towards or a steady progression to make you feel like you are successfully completing the game. The game as is, is you can successfully catch or buy pretty much any pokemon with bad to mediocre ivs with no effort at all, but will never be able to move beyond that unless you make that 1 in a million catch. Which again, to catch a pokemon with these kind of ivs should take months and years as it is end game material. Unfortunately this is not on a realistic time scale for a player looking to find the game interesting, so think there needs to be something more enticing to keep a player playing rather than the fact of the only interesting thing you can find requires months and years to find. The idea is not to make hard things easier to catch so that lower players still have no leverage (because the bigger accounts are big for a reason, they usually play the most and are the best hunters), the goal should be to make the lower to mid range pokes more desirable to new players, while making another aspect of the game more desirable to the older accounts rather than selling lower to mid range pokes for irrelevant amounts of pd.

The factor I really like about TC's idea is it is trading something that is worth nothing to big accounts into something (that is artificial value so it is not inflating the market) but is now increasing the value of account and value of low to medium catches for smaller accounts. So while trading in an S raticate for shiny chance would have more value to an end game player. To a player starting out, the pd is a big deal and hunting for hours and even days and to end up only finding an s raticate, it is a huge help for them to have that s raticate go up in value on the trade market and to sell it for pd rather than trading in for shiny chance.

The key to this working is that the s rares, s VR's, and S HR's cannot become nerfed in value too much otherwise Jobey's fear of everyone having every shiny will come true. The key has got to be that the increased chance is enough to entice the massive accounts to throw away shiny and non shiny pokes that are irrelevant to them and in its place is an opportunity to win big. But "the house" always has to end up winning. The game has to swallow up more poke than it spits out, which this is just going to have to come with tweaking the percentages obviously. I do not know exact numbers but I would start at a small number and if it is not making a difference maybe consider bumping it up. If anyone is good at doing the math on a macro scale, maybe come up with different possibilities like if we bump up the shiny chance by 5% or 10% or whatever the number is, how many more shiny encounters occur when 5 people are hunting in the area, 10 people, etc. there has to be a happy medium where people want to get rid of low economy pokes but everyone isnt ending up with t3 shinies (just a better chance to ;). Another idea I had been mulling over (kind of a spinoff of this topic) also is how to get new players buying and selling with new players. Because most of the buying and selling is done on the playerdex now (which is different from back in 2014 when everything was sold in the trade channel). But most new players seem to not know about the playerdex or never log onto it, or just dont get it, and trade channel is usually not doing anything so it is tough for a new player to get in contact with other new players for potential buying or selling. Idk if there should be more of a push for the players to learn how to use the playerdex, a push to join a guild where someone might help them, or if there should be a trade channel meant for new players, idk. Any thoughts on this?

This is again I believe an idea that is more beneficial obviously to new players and the lower economy. I would like to think that this would benefit the higher end economy but there is no possible way to boost the lower and not nerf the top a little. I think in the end though, this solution would have a better impact than most as at its core its not necessarily a direct 1:1 giving money from the top to the bottom but is allowing the top to gamble with what was previously dead commodity into an opportunity to win big while giving the bottom economy more value.

I think in the end anyways, the only way to keep big accounts interested is to add more gameplay (new maps, pokes, events, etc.) and while no one wants their account's value to be nerfed I think the big accounts don't care as much about the current value as they would just like something new and interesting to play. So this change would not be a major impact for the upper tier as I think a lot would be annoyed if they trade in a bunch of poke for shiny chance and didnt get the shiny that they want, but I think this change to the economy will have a massively positive impact for new and middle of the road players while it will have a minimally negative impact on end game players (who in the end are really just waiting around for new content anyways). I know the fear is that when the new content comes all of these big accounts want to have enough value to buy everything that they cant catch themselves but I dont think a change like this will have a major impact on the value of their accounts as they are mostly throwing away value that is minimal in comparison to the total value of their account (but again, what they are throwing away will have a much larger value impact on a smaller account). I think it will give them a little bit of new material to get excited about (higher chance for shiny) and would hopefully have a huge impact on the new and middle players so that the economy gets more activity and the game overall gets more activity.

Overall, I liked the post, hope you get some more conversation on this TC!

And I know it sounds like I'm ragging on the big accounts in the game, but I'm not, I love you all! I know a bunch of yall host events, give pokes to new players and endure so many endless questions about the game and just try to help everyone. I just thought this was a good idea, but dont want to offend anyone with my opinion:)

-UM
 
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civilian

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Bringing in more shinies will not revive economy. Older players has no shortage of cash in hand, but there are not many pokemon they don't have. Therefore, i think lucky item doesn't even need to include a shiny chance boost, extra reward money will do just fine on its own or it can be collected and used for purchasing some premium-like features i.e. lucky item choice can be added in token stores as an alternative payment method. Tokenstore features would have two different price tag as in "30day membership cost:6000tk/60clovers" (numbers are decided by the droprate so it wouldn't be too easy or too hard)

However, back to my starting point. More shinies will help nothing eventhough it's a great excitement for newplayers. That excitement will only last untill they realise their shiny rat worthes nothing in market. For this reason, i believe adding a disposal method would be more beneficial both for old and new players alike. I would love to use such a disposal method and it woud make shiny hunt more valuable. Only then giving out small membership perks would mean something.

Overall, it's a good idea. I'm only worried if it becomes too easy and tokenstore are no longer needed or it is too hard that it doesn't motivate any newbies to stay in game.

Oh and also, after reading UnknownMan's comment i got really struck by one thing he wrote that is " But "the house" always has to end up winning. The game has to swallow up more poke than it spits out". What else is better than gambling to make 'the house' win. A slot machine could be introduced to gamble away our accumulated points from getting rid of unwanted pokemons. As result we might get a range of items from potions to ms giftcards. That would be awesome if it could work without affecting item market.
 
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Jinji

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...And now you know why I've been calling for PWO to implement a Game Corner for over five years. There just wasn't really enough power to create truly "random" gameplay prior to the implementation of Lua; and even now, we're still basically limited to simple dialogue-based games. There's no ability to load custom graphics to the screen with current PWO client code, which makes ideal concepts like a slot machine practically impossible at this time.
 

thunderclap

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Staff have shown they believe free memberships to be a good thing, but Towel can't do it all by himself forever. Time for some Lucky Item drops!
 

Jobey

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*thinks of a random post*
If a plantain and jalapeno have a kid, is that a banana pepper?
 

AberrantSpectre

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I really appreciate your efforts on these ideas,
but also think that making the game easy will not change things over the long term.

Some things have to be difficult just because this is an online game (long term game).
For example mini events have been discussed many times,
and some members made the experience,
but this did not increase the number of current players or prevented some from leaving the game,
Surely there will be more players in the event, but as soon as the event is over everything will return to normal.

Another thing that was pointed out for a long time was the fact that it was difficult to train the Pokémons
and the waiting time when losing a battle with a jym leader,
the system has been updated and now training a pokemon is much easier than before
and gym leaders can be re battled immediately.
This seems to be something that will keep new players considering that they will not have much difficulty in progressing in the game,
but many of them end up leaving as soon as they acquire the 16 badges.

I think the concept of economics is more complex than that, make things easier?
(that would kill the economy) considering the fact that people buy things they can not get
or think it would take an insane time to get. (This is a base of the economy).
Now imagine if everyone could get things for themselves there would be no more economy!
The whole economy secret is in Emergence.

For example:
1. Players who are more apt to hunt can sell some things that they get
2. players with more ability to trade tend to buy and resell/trade
3. Collectors and battlers tend to sell cheaply if they find something better to replace
4. Some players are more talented in arts, and can sell their works
5. Also players who create unofficial events with cost of entry

These are good factors to make the game economy run smoothly.
Considering a population with all these potentialities to move the economy
it is no longer necessary to invest in short-term solutions.

I think we all agree that adding new regions is one of the most important tasks
(most players leave because they already have most of the things they want,
or because they are sick of the current maps, or you simply do not have more time to play)
Add to the remaining regions is something positive that can make the game go back to being what it was,
Also something to consider is the fact that it is impossible to keep all the players,
people will always have reasons to leave simply because this is a game that has no end,
but people have their limits.

The most important thing is to have fun while playing.



The only reason I think something similar can be implemented is to enable players who have never had MS
have a chance to have this privilege,
(this item will only work for players who have never had MS installed on their account).

Or a similar time-based system to add legendary pokémons,
something like pokémons are available to capture in cities randomly per day.
if any player captures the pokémon then it will no longer be available,
and he can stay with the pokemons a defined time or a random time,
then the pokémon will escape, after a while it will again be found randomly in cities and captured.


Agree 100% on every part besides legendary pokes idea
 
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