Natures and Abilities

[EcoWOLFrb]

Now that it's been shown that it's possible for abilities to be implemented with the current client, I think it's high time to discuss how this should play out. There seems to be three options that everyone seems to pick from when it comes to how this will go down:

A- New pokemon that will caught will have random natures and abilities, existing pokemon will also be given random natures and abilities.
B- New pokemon that will caught will have random natures and abilities, existing pokemon will have their natures and abilities chosen by the owners, this will happen only once.
C- Both existing, and future pokemon will be able to change their natures, and abilities.


My thoughts on the matter are that Natures and abilities should be changeable on playerdex, just like we change moves. This should not be a temporary situation, this is how I believe an MMO should work if breeding is not in place. Let's go through what is wrong with both situation A, and B.

A- While having random, unchangeable natures and abilities are how it works in the handhelds, there is also breeding which lets you basically choose the end result. Further more, there would be a real disadvantage to people who have already purchased their pokemon with this option, as most would become much less effective in battle. Then people would have wasted countless hours trying to find the best pokemon possible for nothing, where as the pokemon with those natures and abilities would never have been purchased, or kept in the first place.

B- Same logic as the first one when it comes to handhelds and breeding, but this time instead of being unfair to older players, it's unfair to newer players. I can't see how it would be possible to say that older players can keep their pokemon and conveniently choose the best natures for them, while the newer players will have to hunt much longer to find the best pokemon possible, with those natures and abilities that the older players just got to choose.

So the first two options are pretty unfair to a large group of players in their own right. While option C is equal for all current, and future players. One might argue that being able to change them freely might defeat the purpose of implementing them at all, but the variety they add to battle would argue against that. Below are the main points that support option C:

- Fair to all players, does not increase or decrease the gap between newbies and vets
- Does not automatically devalue existing pokemon, or alienate any player.
- Fulfills one of the main goals of breeding, without adding it to the game, as it would be toxic to an MMO.
- Will add more variety to battle, certain people will pick different natures and abilities depending on strategy.
- Almost no one will be outraged by it, leaving a bad taste in people's mouth.

common arguments:​

- Since people will inevitably whine about how, if you have to pay to change the natures and abilities, it'll favor the wealthy, in turn turning into token seller hatred, I suggest making it free to change, or possibly enabling everyone to change the natures and abilities only when happiness is 100% since staff seems to like doing that.
- If the staff suggest that changing the natures or abilities should be a time consuming process, then in addition to the happiness, make a quest that refreshes every week or two, enabling you to choose only one pokemon to change.
- If people suggest that since PWO is an MMO, it should be more difficult than handhelds to get the best pokemon possible, I would rebuttal that in the handhelds it's very common to have perfect pokemon with all 31ivs, and the best natures and abilities through breeding. This is not nearly what I would consider an easy feat without breeding, so by nature PWO will be more difficult to get just because of the time it takes to find a pokemon with close to perfect ivs.
- Some people think that there is a gap that needs to be closed between the vets and newbies, and that randomizing older pokemons natures and abilities and disallowing them to be changed. What they don't realize is that every MMO has this gap, it's a natural thing, and that if they were to put in the same amount of time and effort, they too would be ahead of the newbies at that time. So while the gap doesn't need to be widened like in scenario A, it doesn't need to be closed like in B. Therefore C makes the most sense, while not foregoing progress for the sake a progress.
- Regarding the loss of opportunity for it to be more thrilling or exciting to hunt for not only ivs, but for natures and abilities as well... I think that it really would cross the border between exciting, and tedious. Not only that, but I don't feel it's worth it for that small bit of what some people would consider exciting is worth foregoing the effort that has been done, and personally insulting the players that have supported this game through thick and thin for so long.

This is an open discussion, please share your thoughts as long as they're constructive and positive.

 

[Zywa-Torpeda]

I think the most resonable option is B. Nature is nature, you got one, you shouldn't be able to change it. And about existing ones, it is good idea that owners would choose those one.

 

[Mr.Paleo]

C- Both existing, and future pokemon will be able to change their natures, and abilities.

This is the worst thing I can image. Natures of the new wild pokes should be always random. Also, in my opinion, all old pokes should obtain neutral natures.

PWO economy almost lay in ruins. Tokens for less than 1m per one? This has already happened. Now thousands of players are able to buy UC poke with shiny chance.

Everybody needs to have shiny addy/jolly drago to have fun? I don't think so.

 

[Zywa-Torpeda]

C- Both existing, and future pokemon will be able to change their natures, and abilities.

This is the worst thing I can image. Natures of the new wild pokes should be always random. Also, in my opinion, all old pokes should obtain neutral natures.

PWO economy almost lay in ruins. Tokens for less than 1m per one? This has already happened. Now thousands of players are able to buy UC poke with shiny chance.

Everybody needs to have shiny addy/jolly drago to have fun? I don't think so.

I deeply agree with my friend Mr.P, about new pokes, and need to reconsider my thougths about existing ones. I belive that random natures will be a good solution afterall.

 

[nemo55]

I like the idea of introducing abilities! However, I don't think natures has a place for PWO, doesn't fit the system, and some of the Pokemon are way too rare LOL it would take 1 year to find the ideal Dragonite, if not more lmao. Seriously though, it would bore people to death OR consume their precious lives. For that reason I'm saying no to natures.

In the case natures are introduced, the rarity system should strongly be reconsidered, like in the hand-helds. Making all the HR Pokemon to VR, the VR to Rare, and Rare to easy rare, commons will always be common...the reason I say this is because you got to factor in stat hunting, IVs and natures which is pretty darn time consuming. As for what Eco said, I do like his idea to a certain extent, maybe allowing a limit of 10-20 pokemon to be custom made by us players, the rest would get neutral nature (Hardy, Docile, Serious, Bashful, and Quirky). But adjusting everything ourselves is a little absurd. I believe that the Pokemon caught with the nature should stay that way and never be changed by players.

Therefore, I believe that there are far too many loop-holes and I just don't see natures working out...people would leave the game bored to death not finding the Pokemon if the rarity system is the way it is now. There is a reason why in hand-helds everything is so god damn easy to catch...because it IS time consuming to find the Pokemon with the ideal nature and IVs. Oh and I forgot to mention, you can also breed in hand-helds.

PWO needs to remember, this is there own game in a way, and they don't necessarily need to COPY everything. Do your own thing guys, maybe make up something different up, something NEW. But copying the handheld 100% doesn't work for MMO in my opinion. Maybe this is why Gamefreak won't release one, because of the reasons I listed above among many many more...Running a Pokemon MMO is tough man, tilts hat to all the staff!

Cheers!

 

[The-Predator]

option B, is the most reasonable way, nothing would happen if u cant find the perfect pokemon, even these days i havent seen the perfect dragonite (nemo´s example) and there are a lot of players still LF it, uber dragos, epic dragos would be out there as always finding the perfect IV and nature Dragonite would be extremely rare but still not impossible, I´d say yes for abilities/natures and my vote goes for option B

 

[nemo55]

option B, is the most reasonable way, nothing would happen if u cant find the perfect pokemon, even these days i havent seen the perfect dragonite (nemo´s example) and there are a lot of players still LF it, uber dragos, epic dragos would be out there as always finding the perfect IV and nature Dragonite would be extremely rare but still not impossible, I´d say yes for abilities/natures and my vote goes for option B

Of course, the greedy ******* would choose B. In all honesty natures doesn't work for me (shrug).

 

[nemo55]

I've had a little more time to think about this, and reassessing everything I have come to conclude that option C is probably the best option for an MMO environment..

 

[EcoWOLFrb]

You guys that say "this would be the worst thing for PWO" need to back these statements up with REASONS. Just because natures are random in handhelds doesn't mean it should be for PWO, it literally means nothing for you to just simply say this. The handhelds may have random natures, but it also has breeding, to where you can breed perfect iv pokemon, and perfect natures. So it doesn't matter in the handhelds if you find a perfect iv pokemon with a horrible nature, because you can just breed new pokemon that have those same ivs, but a beneficial nature. That is why, since PWO can not have breeding, I say that natures and abilities should be custom.

Also, the economy isn't necessarily broken, it's a free economy, it can't just be broken. There's honestly not that much wrong with the economy, there's not even half as much money as there used to be, that's why token prices are down. Money is literally twice as valuable as it was when tokens were 2-2.5m each. You're off your rocker if you think that everyone who can afford to buy a token pokemon will get a shiny one.

 

[lLieOn]

I like the idea of introducing abilities! However, I don't think natures has a place for PWO, doesn't fit the system, and some of the Pokemon are way too rare LOL it would take 1 year to find the ideal Dragonite, if not more lmao. Seriously though, it would bore people to death OR consume their precious lives. For that reason I'm saying no to natures.

In the case natures are introduced, the rarity system should strongly be reconsidered, like in the hand-helds. Making all the HR Pokemon to VR, the VR to Rare, and Rare to easy rare, commons will always be common...the reason I say this is because you got to factor in stat hunting, IVs and natures which is pretty darn time consuming. As for what Eco said, I do like his idea to a certain extent, maybe allowing a limit of 10-20 pokemon to be custom made by us players, the rest would get neutral nature (Hardy, Docile, Serious, Bashful, and Quirky). But adjusting everything ourselves is a little absurd. I believe that the Pokemon caught with the nature should stay that way and never be changed by players.

Therefore, I believe that there are far too many loop-holes and I just don't see natures working out...people would leave the game bored to death not finding the Pokemon if the rarity system is the way it is now. There is a reason why in hand-helds everything is so god damn easy to catch...because it IS time consuming to find the Pokemon with the ideal nature and IVs. Oh and I forgot to mention, you can also breed in hand-helds.

PWO needs to remember, this is there own game in a way, and they don't necessarily need to COPY everything. Do your own thing guys, maybe make up something different up, something NEW. But copying the handheld 100% doesn't work for MMO in my opinion. Maybe this is why Gamefreak won't release one, because of the reasons I listed above among many many more...Running a Pokemon MMO is tough man, tilts hat to all the staff!

Cheers!

I Agree with Nemo's opinion cant say much about this topic he already given the word what i want to say haha

 

[HOF69]

I'm in favor of option C for the reasons that Eco already pointed out. I'll explain in my own words:

First of all, natures and abilities would be great additions to the game (granted, I'm sure many abilities wouldn't be working at first due to limitations and other missing content). Natures in particular would be a very welcome update in my opinion because they add an element of surprise to the battle system. For example, if someone brings out a Dragonite as the system currently stands, you know that it can't have a higher speed than 194 initially (or 195 if it's lucky enough to be 32 IV speed). However, with the option of choosing a nature, you don't know which nature the Dragonite chose. Did it select a +speed nature, or a +attack nature? The battle system would involve more strategy and critical thinking.

Now, I'll explain why I think that ALL Pokemon (those not yet caught and those that already exist) should have the option to change their nature and ability as many times as they want. In the handhelds, the breeding system allows a player to hunt for just one characteristic of a Pokemon at a time. That is, you don't need to hunt for a Pokemon that has the perfect IVs, nature and ability all at once. You can hunt for each one separately and then breed those characteristics into the perfect Pokemon. However, as breeding does not exist in PWO and likely won't for the foreseeable future, the alternative is to allow players to choose the nature and ability they want via the Playerdex. This way, you only have to hunt for IVs on a Pokemon. I'm sure no one would prefer to hunt for all three characteristics at once; the odds of finding exactly what you want would be astronomical and a huge turnoff for many players. Furthermore, allowing the nature and ability of all Pokemon to be changed doesn't give favoritism to any one group of players. Everyone would have this option, and thus no one would feel disadvantaged. Also, as the battle system continues to evolve, people would be able to experiment with different natures and abilities to see what combos work best. Allowing us to change the nature and ability a limited number of times would be too restrictive in my opinion with the battle system still largely incomplete.

As for the idea of randomly generating natures and abilities without allowing anyone to choose what they want, this would be an update that would cause great uproar among the community, particularly among the veterans that have worked hard to accumulate what they currently own. In no way would I support this idea.

 

[Tjolf]

tbh, i always hated natures in pokemon. hunting a pokemon with good iv's is hard enough for me, having to find the right iv's AND the right nature is just too much for me personally.

if natures and abilities were to be introduced however, i would definately vote to give existing pokemon either neutral natures or random natures and new caught pokemon random, without the ability to change the nature. letting the veterans choose the perfect nature for their existing pokemon while letting new found natures be random would be incredibly unfair, its not even funny. theres 25 different natures out there. after finding a "perfect" iv pokemon, new players would have to hope to get that 1 perfect nature out of 25 natures in total, that would be 4% chance to get the perfect nature, maybe 10 or 20% to get a decent nature and everything else is a -more or less- crappy nature. handing that 4% chance to the veterans for free for every single one of their pokemons would be way over the top, even though they would obviously love it. all the old existing pokes are worth way more again and all the new found pokes are worth way less again, same discussion as we still have with the shiny iv change, just way more drastic because it concerns every single pokemon and not only the shinies.

that other option with having old and new players choose the nature for every single pokemon - new and old - i dont really see the point in that. almost everyone is going to end up picking the same natures for the same pokemon. makes no difference if there are no natures or if everyone has the same nature really.

TBH, i would really prefer to see a couple of the broken moves fixed or just some more work towards hoenn.
i couldnt care less about natures or abilities.

 

[EcoWOLFrb]

While I would definitely prefer other updates as opposed to Natures and Abilities, like what you mentioned Tjolf, I'm afraid the indications have already been given that it's coming. One of the points of this topic is to give the staff a feel of player opinion so they're not left in the dark. I'd argue against your point regarding people choosing the same natures however. I think if someone has say, a dragonite with lower speed, they would probably choose to raise attack or even defense (without mutiscale) if they knew they weren't going to be outspeeding anything, same thing with kingdra and gyara, they might choose attack over speed depending on how they intend to use them. Some people would choose speed, some would choose spatk with jolteon or gengar. These are actual decisions that, just like how your point of view on natures and abilities differs from mine, are totally a matter of opinion and will vary from person to person.

 

[Merse]

I prefer option B but with certain limitations. How about getting a random ability for every Poke and give everyone as many change as many Pokes he/she has. The ability change would give a random new ability to the selected Pokemon. You could waste your changes on one Pokemon to get the perfect nature, or just try to get new abilities for those who got something completely useless.

 

[EcoWOLFrb]

Merse, please explain why you feel that way. It's one thing to make a suggestion as to how things should be done, it's another say why it should be done. That way people can judge what logic makes more sense to them, not just the option.

 

[HOF69]

tbh, i always hated natures in pokemon. hunting a pokemon with good iv's is hard enough for me, having to find the right iv's AND the right nature is just too much for me personally.

And it is because of this difficulty of hunting IVs, nature and ability all at the same time that natures and abilities should not simply be randomized without giving players the option to change them. Like them or not, natures and abilities will eventually arrive in PWO.

if natures and abilities were to be introduced however, i would definately vote to give existing pokemon either neutral natures or random natures and new caught pokemon random, without the ability to change the nature. letting the veterans choose the perfect nature for their existing pokemon while letting new found natures be random would be incredibly unfair, its not even funny. theres 25 different natures out there. after finding a "perfect" iv pokemon, new players would have to hope to get that 1 perfect nature out of 25 natures in total, that would be 4% chance to get the perfect nature, maybe 10 or 20% to get a decent nature and everything else is a -more or less- crappy nature. handing that 4% chance to the veterans for free for every single one of their pokemons would be way over the top, even though they would obviously love it. all the old existing pokes are worth way more again and all the new found pokes are worth way less again, same discussion as we still have with the shiny iv change, just way more drastic because it concerns every single pokemon and not only the shinies.

I completely agree that the existing Pokemon should not be the only ones allowed to change their nature and ability; this would be extremely unfair to new players that don't have a bunch of great Pokemon already like veterans do. However, on the flip side, it would also be extremely unfair to the veterans to randomize natures and abilities and essentially ruin all of their hard work (some of which is years in the making). New players obviously wouldn't mind, but the veterans most certainly would care if their great Pokemon that they either worked very hard to find or spent a lot of money to acquire were suddenly "nerfed" by being given a poor nature or ability (or both). As such, there's only one way to make everyone happy: allow everyone to be able to change the nature and ability of a Pokemon.

that other option with having old and new players choose the nature for every single pokemon - new and old - i dont really see the point in that. almost everyone is going to end up picking the same natures for the same pokemon. makes no difference if there are no natures or if everyone has the same nature really.

On the contrary; natures could make a significant difference as Eco already pointed out in a previous post. You wouldn't know for certain what nature a Pokemon has chosen. While you could certainly narrow it down to a few possibilities, not knowing exactly which nature a Pokemon has makes PWO more strategic than it is now. As an example, right now a max speed Starmie is always faster than a max speed Gengar. If that Starmie has Psychic (I'm assuming this TM will eventually be released again), it's capable of OHKOing Gengar with ease. However, if natures are released and that same Gengar is already in battle, did it choose a +special attack or +speed nature? If it chose +speed, and your Starmie chose +special attack, then that Gengar will now outspeed (and be able to OHKO) Starmie, so do you risk bringing in Starmie at all? It's small scenarios like this that could drastically change the way people think and battle.

 

[nemo55]

Yup, I gotta say having a working battle system like in showdown would be OFF THE CHAIN!!! Customizing your own natures and abilities via Playerdex would be SUPER COOL and ULTIMATELY MAKE THIS GAME A HIT! If everything plays out this way, I expect this game to go through the roof in popularity and regain its status as the best Pokemon MMO to exist! ^-^

This way hunting for Pokemon the way they are now with the same rarities will remain the same. Market wise, Pokemon will still be able to be sold based on IV's like they are today. However, with the mindset of what you can do with natures and abilities..

I believe this is the only way for this MMO to work it out, anything else would lead to problems I stated in my first post on this topic.

 

[Merse]

Merse, please explain why you feel that way. It's one thing to make a suggestion as to how things should be done, it's another say why it should be done. That way people can judge what logic makes more sense to them, not just the option.

According to my somewhat limited experience both natures and abilities can highly influence the value of a Pokemon. They could make it into an excellent battler, or they could render it virtually worthless. These features can almost completely overwrite or negate the importance of IVs.
As I see, there are three categories for both abilities and natures. 1) those which match both your Pokemon and your style perfectly and they they boost the battle value of the Pokemon. 2) the "meh"s, which doesn't really add up to the Pokemon's value. They could be useful sometimes, they could be not in some other cases. 3) the bad, which lower key stats of your Pokemon or which work directly against the strategy that can be used with that Pokemon.

Those Pokemon which we have, especially those which currently are considered valuable are carefully selected for their combat capabilities. Sometimes you spent thousands of hours to get that Pokemon either by hunting for it or by hunting and selling to get enough money to buy it. I feel that cursing those Pokemon with a randomly given bad ability and/or nature (which render them to almost worthless) would fall into the same category as wiping your character. It would be unreasonable and disrespectful for those who put a huge effort into this game.
On the other hand, I don't think it would be reasonable to allow players to carefully select the best abilities and natures for their Pokemon. They are already strong due their IVs, now pairing that up with natures and abilities would make them almost legendary. That would be an unreasonable advantage for veterans.

As a compromise I thought that you could get a certain number of nature and ability change, but you wouldn't be in control of the change itself. This way, you could get a new characteristic for your Pokemon if it is really bad, but you might consider not to risk a randomized change if the characteristic is somewhat useful.

 

[Kitrica]

Should be option B. People have spent so much time hunting their pokes, and to give them a random nature that could make whatever they currently have useless is unfair.

 

[Sanven]

I believe the ability which one pokemon should have should be there(its not random in handhelds i believe unless pokemon has more than one ability), if there are more than one abilities, then it should be random (admit it, we dont want easy games)..!!!
Otherwise like Charizard having ability Overgrow is ridiculous..!!!
And when more updates will come, there can be hidden ability, which means two abilities at once..