Saric said:
with the addition of sevii and later hoenn
Buddy I was saying Hoenn was just around the corner as recently as 2012 and it still wasn't just around the corner despite it being partially mapped and worked on. Unless the limited map layer issue was corrected/improved there's no way Hoenn can exist correctly in PWO, let alone any other region originally developed after the year 2000.
Hoenn started being worked on in late 2009. It's now late 2017. It ain't happening without that map system overhaul, and I can name a few reasons why a developer would shudder over the thought of taking that on.
Saric said:
I don't see an issue with the existence of old IV shinies. There's currently only a few of those around, and of those few they are mostly just tier 1/common shinies that have no real place in the battling scene as of now.
The fact that they exist at all is what's problematic, in my opinion. Being scared of a near-term player backlash isn't really a good game development strategy, especially when an unbalanced or unfair advantage simply existing means that the majority of design concepts need to work around their existence. The fact that we're talking about shiny Pokemon IVs (or altered stats for shiny Pokemon at all) 8 years plus from the start of the conversation should be evidence enough on its own that they're problematic.
Getting cold feet about whether or not to pull the plug on something simply because some players make a bit of noise was something that I constantly had to battle with, and at times I was the only one on the staff willing to both acknowledge and push for action regarding normalizing shiny stats. There were plenty of times when people would acknowledge the problem but consider it something distant or unimportant, and plenty of times when people would acknowledge the problem but then would cave under pressure from noisy players.
Frankly, a cursory search of the Playerdex tells me that many of the loudest players don't even play the game anymore, so it would seem that the march of time has soundly defeated their argument all on its own -- no, altered shiny stats were not and are not good for the long term health of the game.
I definitely understand wanting to be careful about major updates that will have permanent impacts on the way in which players interact with the game or make their decisions, and I absolutely appreciate genuine criticism, constructive feedback, and even just whining from the players (whining still holds some truths), but basing decisions on whether or not you upset a fraction of competitive players is ludicrous, and for several reasons, the most important of which is that they have a heavy personal bias.
Obviously it's important to appreciate and acknowledge the hard work some of those players put into building their accounts, the amount of time and investment they put into their competitive records and reputations, and the support and loyalty they showed to the game over the course of months or years, but at the same time their goal (the preservation of their then-current competitive teams) was diametrically opposed to the long term health of the game.
Every game goes through balance cycles and maintaining a status quo for literal years for fear of some players becoming disgruntled and quitting is simply bogus logic and bad development. Again, most of those players have now quit (possibly due to boredom from a stagnant environment), so preserving their then-competitive teams is an obviously failed endeavor.
It bothers the hell out of me that I wasn't able to correct the issue once and for all nearly a decade ago due to push back from the team, especially when most of that push back came from either a place of fear or from not wanting to see their player friends quit (nepotism).
Saric said:
Personally, advising new players to do random battle instead gives them a chance to get a feel for battling and pvp in PWO. What we have here is different from the main games and battling simulators like pokemon showdown, and a lot of incoming new players are inexperienced in those as well.
The fact is that the battles here were never intended to be different, and that many efforts were made to ensure that as much emulation to the actual games as possible was reached. I personally dug through the database and manually updated every Pokemon and around 700 moves to make them functional, and Durham/Mad later went through and updated parts of the engine/used a script to automate further updates. If the engine isn't correct by now then yeah sure help players find a way to overcome that, but it represents a bigger problem looming on the horizon: how to acclimate veteran players to the new balance environment once the engine actually is repaired.
The highest priority possible should be in locating a developer or developers willing to make changes specifically to the core battle engine. I feel like having a few people (who properly notarize their work) work on it in bits and chunks is more likely to see progress/results than if the team seeks out a single "miracle" developer willing to work for free on something so difficult: reading through 9-10 year old game code written over a weekend, not notarized, edited by a dozen different people by this point? Not going to find someone willing to dump that evil on themselves without paying them a competitive rate, which the game obviously can't do.
It's a shame that it's still broken.
Saric said:
However this is pokemon, and at its core pokemon has always had an aspect of grinding, even moreso in an MMO format. It can take some time, but a new player (or a returning old one with a new account) can make their way through just fine (Just look at diesel).
While I agree with the general sentiment, I do believe that PWO could and can always strive for better. Even the core Nintendo titles have significantly reduced grind and increased player accessibility/quality of life over the generations, so to me it makes little sense to argue that an extended grind is favorable or generally okay.
At its core, Pokemon has also always been about battling with the team that you want to use, and traditionally only story has limited what you can do with your team by restricting the areas you can travel to. It isn't a game about grinding as much as it is a game about selection and puzzling -- even battles are essentially a memorization puzzle. I feel like focusing on that, making more Pokemon viable, competitive, and available, is more important than placing artificial obstacles in the way of player enjoyment.
Now I'm not saying let people do whatever they want instantly, because that
is boring, but arguing that Pokemon is chiefly a grind or an xp bar simulator is an extreme disservice to the franchise.
