Problems [ The awakening ]

[xPecT]

So here i want to talk about problems like pokemons spawn time , population decrease / survival of the server, economy and pwo as a whole.

Point 1 [Pokemons average spawn time]

Here we have tier 1,2,3,4 and 5.

"
Tier 1, marked as #1 - Easiest to find, will appear in under 20 minutes on average.
Tier 2, marked as #2 - Slightly more difficult. Should appear on average, 20 minutes to 1 hour apart.
Tier 3, marked as #3 - 1 to 5 hours average time between spawns.
Tier 4, marked as #4 - 5 to 15 hours average time between spawns.
Tier 5, marked as #5 - Anything over 15 hours average time between spawns.
"

I'm fine with Tier 1 to 3, but Tier 4 and Tier 5 take way to much time to catch. Remember that RNG is featured here so that in the people's Limit tending to infinite it will be over 15 hours for a player it might take 40 hours for me if i'm unlucky and 8 hours for you if you are really lucky and that begins the problem!

Remember that there are 2 types of people. Battles / Collectors / and people that Roleplay. Imagine you are a battler u search 40 hours for a pokemon , you find it and then oh hey it has wrong IVs...Apart from this (imagine that natures get implemented, u earch again for that Porygon you want and hey again he has good ivs but wrong nature. You search more 40 hours for it and he has good nature but this time bad ivs.)
So you just lose time and time and time without getting any joy. In the end you have 500+ hours played and you didn't accomplished anything you wanted.

And then you say " Oh well xPecT you can work your way down the road , get PDs and then buy the pokemons you really wish". WRONG


This won't happen again because 1 year ago +- token store had access to a lot of pokemons and now it doesn't have them. So before there were a bigger float of those pokemons because many of them were bought from token store and now you cannot. So less offer, less pokemons with good ivs,prices inflatuating exponentially, you losing time without achieving your goal.

Let's say you make the spawn times from Tier 4 and Tier 5 shortened for like 5-8 hours for Tier 4 and 8-15 hours for Tier 5.
Yes it will break the economy. Supply and Demand law. The more Supply there is the less the price will be.
And where is the problem anyway? You should not care about that because then at least people will have their pokes without the infinite grinding, the no life hunting without any results. That way at least no life hunting will actually produce results.

Let's be honest here people want to have fun and accomplish goals. Don't want to hunt 3 pokemons for 150 hours and then they have bad ivs and they can't even use them to the fullest.

A battler wants to battle, a collector wants to collect and a roleplayer just wants to have fun.
Here people like me(battlers) are most of the time in trade channel or in safari zone just because they want to make money so they can buy better pokes because hunting for them is not reliable. Its more reliable to be 24 hours in trade channel buying pokemons from new players that dont know the economy well and reselling stuff and winning 500k per day than hunting 24 hours for any pokemon.
In the end people like me end up not being battlers because they can't get the pokemons they want because hunting is nearly impossible here.

Point 2 [Population decrease]

As i said in the Point 1 , for that reason people lose the Joy of playing because they can't and they won't ever achieve their goals. And it's even harder for a new player. Like for example a new player registers today. If he gets membership and no life hunts he won't get much luck because Point 1 , Tier 4 and Tier 5 pokemons are too hard to get other than buying them from token store and a lot of pokes got removed from token store +- 1 year go. Point 2 Even if you get them the change of being bad IVs are much greater than being good ivs. And Point 3 if you get shiny commons they won't worth anything because they are "new IVs" .

So a new player trying to get fun for example being a battler won't have access to a team worth to play against any of the older players in less than, ill say average 500-1000 hours of pwo playing time.

So this for older players its quite cool. Even if their skills in battle are not that great they can always get keep getting +1 and +1 and +1 wins against much players that are virtually better than them just because they got lucky with the timing they joined PWO and since they will always have the better pokes that can complement their lack of skill in battle.

So then the new players becomes frustrated, for all the hunting that doesn't show success and for not being able to compete in tons of hours played with people that can be worse than him for example at battling strategy.

Then again you see a shiny Porygon or shiny Eevee or whatever with 28+ ivs that you won't ever be able to compete with that because again, the spawn times are too damn high and even if you no life for days or months most likely the probability of you getting a NON SHINY of that comparable stats will be less than 0.5
So you become frustrated and leave the game.
So if the new players keep leaving the game after they get 16 badges and few hours of playing after that because they realize they cant accomplish nothing the population decrease and why? Because eventually the very old players that are always of the " No changes should ever happen to the spawn system, that will break economy" opinion eventually become bored too and leave for the server "the one who should not be named" because at least there is not that much discrepancy there.
And yeah most of the very old players will have a saying on this because they were here since the beginning..it was because many of them that PWO is what it is now , blablabla. But they forget to realize that with these decisions they are not helping the server going forward but keeping it behind and only thinking about their own profit.

P.S: Then you can say, "oh wait just donate to the server buy like 1.000.000 tokens and sell them and you will get a lot of money so you can buy the better pokes out there." You realize what you are saying? This is a pokemon game that the only meaning of it is to have fun. To donate such quantities you must have a really solid work or be really rich at least if you leave in Europe to leave that in a game. And most of the people are teenagers / young adults that want to have fun. Not pay-to- win.

CONCLUSION: The way the things go Old players Leave + New players leave. There isn't a cycle of renewal of the players. Population decreases.

Part 3.1[The economy ]

So my dear loved economy.. People that like me that make their PWO lifes in trade channel to try someday to achieve the level of pokemons they need to be a battler. The economy was broken with the division of old ivs to new ivs. So old ivs worth much more and most of the older players are the ones who own them.
That makes them much richer than the players that joined in the "new iv" era. Plus you even had the Dovee scandall that affected economy as a whole too.
And the more people are leaving the server, the lower the population goes the economy becomes more and more broken without players having less and less of a chance to keep rolling in the buy and resell cycle.

Part 3.2[Pwo as a whole]

People want to have fun. People want to "have them all" or to "fight all day" . But without the conditions for that to happen people lose the interest and eventually leave. It might not be these changes but something has to be made. I love PWO and i want it to get better, and get much more active players again, so please take this as constructive criticism.

 

[Ricardo.L.]

I agree with all, even though new, like the PWO and realize my friends are leaving and the PWO needs to change.

 

[Black.Magician]

First of all the things which i am going to say is just my personal experience, no hard feeling for any staff or player..
ok lets start then,
i will completely support him, the first and foremost thing that staff should keep in mind before setting the spawns and tiers is that, we all are no robot, everyone has a life outside game, and we come here to play, hunt and feel good, but my these comeback was worse, i have left the game in 2014, and come back in 2016 jan, hoping to hang out with everyone and may be hunt as before, but at the end of day i found spawn has made some which no one can easily achieve, i have played these game for 2 month after comeback maybe at-least 6-8hrs daily or more in off days, but what i got is a shiny nido male and spearow in 2 months after hunting like mads, and that too adding about snorlax was biggest news, i hunted for 190+ hrs for snorlax and no luck there, then i switch to eevee, and hunted approx 50-60 hrs there but again no luck, in between we got 2 event or contest, one was drawing contest that was nice tho, thumbs up for staff for that ( not happy with judgement tho). next was st patrick event or something like that where we run across the who poke world to complete the quest, really dissapointed with such a bad story line quest where we cannot even hunt, you really want to make good food, but you take spice out of them, if you just would have added a event map where we can go after completing the event would have been nice, (again a personal suggestion)
the main point of saying all these in past i used to hunt 5-8 hours and if it is a bad day then also i managed to get a shiny everyday, or in maximum i have caught like 5-6 per days, and suddenly after i came back i come hear nothing is changed, i personally am part of these game from beginning and has seen many phases, and you guys are saying that nothing is changed, there are many categories of players, like battler, non shiny collector, shiny collector and so on, i personally like collecting shiny, no probs on IVS you changed, will be somehow balanced in future, but the rate of shiny and t4 & t5 appearing in these game will collapse the games at some point, regarding to old player,( no offensive feeling as i am also one of you) we from our side will always feel that everything going on game is good, but from there perspective it just impossible to catch up with us in shorter time, but we have to understand that was way easier to get a shiny and rare pokes in our time than we are now, and thats not just fair for anyone, we have hunted like crazy for months with ms, but in return it was possible for us to get the money back for ms just by selling our caught stuff, but now here for 2 month, i personally can not event get the money back for my ms, and people are saying that nothing is changed, if nothing is changed then these game should have been in a growing stage in terms of players, but what i see is people tend to loose there interest or just become frustrated, in order to arrange to lineup things in these game, has somehow backfired, and instead of enlarging the economy is collapsing
another thing is if you are saying that economy will gradually held up, you are greatly mistaken, because if i categorize the game according to money there are 3 kind of players, lets call them upper class( rich), middle Class (somewhere in middle) and low class ( basically new players)
first upper class people, they have so much money too spend that they particular have an interest to play the game, or they rather love to spend in game, as they could afford them, and they had really worked hard to reach that place, grand salute to there dedication, love you all guys,
second come middle class peoples generally those players who catch good pokes, sell them, spend there money on Ms and always think in mind that they should catch something good, so that they could buy MS for next month or may be try to make there collection as everyone target too,, but seeing the current spawn rate ans appearing of shinies and t4, t5 and even t3 pokes, its hard for them to even recollect there money for MS, and that what has impacting the economy of game, because in older time if i purchased a MS for 6M at the end of month, i personally by selling make 5-6m and and again buy MS, these is the missing influ which the game is missing badly, people spend there money and at the end of month they hardly recollect 1-2m at the highest if they are lucky 3-4m (Saying about majority)
so these should be the thing which you should focus on,,,
third is low class people, they just dream to get good stuff try to hunt everything but after getting frustrated, they loose the will and quit the game,
the above mention people middle and low class people will be temporary in game always as there is no economy for them , they dont have a circulation of money with them, the thing which people spend on ms is so that they get good pokes and shinies, but the ms is not worth to have these days,,, so the only constant thing which game will have is old player as they have a circulation of money,
so if you want to recover the economy just correct the shiny and tiers of pokes, so that people could regain there money at the end of month if they do purchase there ms, thats the good way to strengthen the economy, as

 

[Rigaudon]

Some important information to know/consider before making any points:

*Catchable Pokemon were removed from the token store primarily due to overwhelming request by the playerbase. If enough people want it, those *can* be added back.

*We plan on implementing natures/abilities in a way that will allow them to be modified. This can bring a bit more variety/diversity to hunting and economic incentives that we never had before; I'm personally hesitant to do any extreme changes until this gets implemented and we see the effects on the game (especially to rarity). This would also mean that you won't be "stuck" with a Pokemon that has a bad nature and/or ability when hunting in the future.

*T5 is not harder than HR. Furthermore, T2-T4 is essentially what the VR range used to be. In this manner, OVERALL nothing was made harder than what
already existed in PWO. The total effort required of this system is equivalent to the previous common/rare/vr/hr system. The new system is just the old system reorganized. If there is any major economic difference, it is caused by people's assumptions of the system/only applies to a specific Pokemon, not the entire system itself.

---I will entertain discussion that states BOTH higher difficulties of these systems are harmful, but I will not be able to accept "HR is better than T5" because they are basically the same thing. Since nothing was really changed at the high tiers, nothing can be "reverted." However, if change is wanted, the impact created from the difference between "old" HR/T5 and "new" HR/T5 will have to be addressed in detail. What happens when you make things easier when they were harder for years before? What does that do to supply/demand and Pokemon values?

*Shiny rate has not changed from 1/8192 and 1/2048.

*Registered accounts/total users online is increasing on average, as of this post (even with no events present).

*The total money ingame was going down for the past 6 months.

*PWO's systems create room to grow/builds for the future almost exclusively.

Before making serious changes I will need to know that there is a problem with the system(s) as opposed to it being solely that people are failing to adapt to it/just not wanting to put in what really is a lot of effort we require by design for the game. The latter is a problem revolving around presenting the system in a way that people can grasp it eventually, as opposed to the system itself being flawed or exploitable.

It would also help to know specific examples of issues people are encountering. I realize the first post was pretty in-depth with cause and effect, however it is mostly the shadow of subjects I have already run into separately ingame and would discuss (or even bring up) in the chats. We would never dig into it enough for staff to change our stances on the topics (primarily out thoughts being that people need to put in effort to better understand the spawn system and for us as staff to get out more updates to create more market variety). This is a great opportunity for everyone to get really detailed/in-depth with these subjects.

More details for how people are trying to trade and what they are trying to sell/buy or why would be useful. I also need to know why people feel like T5 is harder when it is sometimes actually easier than the older system's worst offenders. I'm looking at you, Skarmory that took 200+ hours...in comparison, no T5 breaks 30ish hours.

I will also assume anyone responding knows about averages. If you don't, here's a dice example I give almost every single time I go ingame:

Spoiler: Dice Example

Every time you encounter a Pokemon in the game, you roll a bunch of "dice", so to speak. Each side on these several different dice do different things.

For example, the dice that determines if a Pokemon you see is shiny has 8,192 sides if you don't have membership. So, when you roll that dice, it has to land on ONE particular side for that Pokemon to appear shiny.
You get an encounter and roll several dice. You see a normal Rattata, which means it didn't land on that one specific side of dice. You run. Another battle! This time you see a shiny Pidgey. That means it landed on that one side! Hooray! Next time you roll it again...maybe on next encounter you will see something shiny, maybe not.

Now let's apply that basic ideal to Rarity Tiers. Imagine if billions of people over time roll a dice for which pokemon appears. How many rolls/how many hours will it take most of them to see a particular pokemon? Somebody might find that map's T5 in 10 minutes and another person might need over 100 hours, but most people out of those billions will see it in ... let's say 20 hours. That's how these averages for tiers work. You roll a dice, if it lands on a particular side then that's what you see. If a billion people roll a dice, what they normally see becomes the average. The average doesn't guarantee when you will find something. The game isn't "broken" if it takes you a bit longer to see a dratini than that average, it just means you're an outlier.

If people make suggestions or respond without taking all of the above into mind, staff can still take opinions into account...BUT, we cannot directly make any factually-based decisions based on opinions. AKA, if the above is not accepted or at least acknowledged, I simply can't do much with the post because at that point I'd be abandoning factual stats/etc and embracing "does this feel right". That approach might work on an individual level but does not when we're trying to balance for a "1,000+ people play a day" level.

tl;dr:
Here's some info you might find useful when discussing things + all suggestions/opinions must hold their own weight. Any suggestions have to follow through logically and in depth with how the feature/change would affect the game be it negative or positive.

 

[xPecT]

"*We plan on implementing natures/abilities in a way that will allow them to be modified. This can bring a bit more variety/diversity to hunting and economic incentives that we never had before; I'm personally hesitant to do any extreme changes until this gets implemented and we see the effects on the game (especially to rarity). This would also mean that you won't be "stuck" with a Pokemon that has a bad nature and/or ability when hunting in the future."

That's good news that im pleased to hear however i never stated that t5 is harder than HR what i said is that now that much of those were removed from token store and people have actually to hunt for them if they want to have them requires no lifing because the average time is too high.

If let's say that for you to get an average 20+ pokemon IVs epic pokemon Tier 5 you have to catch 20 pokemons of those it would be what? 300 hours average?
Plus 300 hours of just moving right and left right and left, right and again left non stop. Not enjoying the rest of the game just to have a pokemon that is worth to being a battler. This hurts the battle system A LOT. Many pokemons of the meta are Tier 4 or Tier 5 and without epics being available for the most of the players here even if they try to use a lot of their time into trying to get them makes it unfair.(and here i'm not talking about new players having access to them but players that put more than 200 or 300 hours of their PWO playtime into it and can't get them because of the spawn times of those tiers are too high and then of course becoming frustrated). That's why most of the time i play random battles , even if i am a 2014 player that way i don't have to play with my pokemons and the battle becomes fair.

Plus even if you wanna buy those Tier 5 or Tier 4 epic pokes to make fair battles with older trainers you can't because they are not in the market ( playerdex mart or even trade) for months because older trainers know that now that you can't get them from token store they become priceless. So you have no choice , if you want to get a 50%/50% changes battle just by stats from IVs and EVs alone you will either have to hunt and get lucky with the 300hours average or wait for a friend of yours leave PWO and give you his pokemons.
And that takes the joy of playing a game if no matter what you do, you won't have a chance of playing fair and square against the older players.
I'm talking this as a battler, don't have opinion as a collector since i never been one and i don't like shinies.

And about the population decrease i don't know the exact stats but the average people online at every instant has decreased from 2014 till 2016 for sure. I don't have the numbers but i'm sure you can have them and you can realize this decrease too. Not talking about how much people logs in per day but talking about the average of online people at every minute. It may be around 170-180 if you can confirm. It's better to have 400people logging in per day and being online in average 6 hours each than 2000 ppl logging in per day and being online in average 5 minutes each. I'm sure you will be of the same opinion.

P.S: I know how the probability law works and i know that every time you find a pokemon in grass RNG will be applied but thanks for the explanation anyway

 

[Rigaudon]

xpect, my responses were to the world/anyone reading, not just your opening post. =P (Edit: To explain, many people do not know the information I provided above.)
Though, how familiar are you with natures/abilities and their impact in battle compared to IVs? Out of curiosity, do you play any battle simulators?

 

[xPecT]

Natures and abilities will make IVs have less impact but 31 speed IVs will always have impact. A Sweeper pokemon with 31 IVs speed with base level speed: 80 that uses 252 EVs on speed and hasty or naive nature against a pokemon with the same base level speed of 80 that uses 252 EVs speed and the same nature and 30 IVs speed. The rest of IVs wont matter so much but they will make a difference in some cases for stall teams the difference IN THE LIMIT of your pokemon getting 3KOed or 4KOed for example. Those calculations can be made via https://pokemonshowdown.com/damagecalc/
Example: i can say that a pokemon with a base speed of 85 against a pokemon of 80 base spd the IVs wont matter between 23 or 30 because he will always outspeed a pokemon with 80 base speed IF they have same nature for speed and same EVs on speed on that margin of IVs.

But now we are getting into offtopic so lets try to keep ourselfs in what's important and what's not

And i'm talking about the present. We have to base our decisions based on the present the past and the future not entirely in the future . Of course in the future IVs won't matter SO MUCH even if like i said they will in some cases. Especially speed will always be important . At the moment they are the most influential thing on battles this because pokemons only have access to first ability here.
Rig you might as well aggree with me that we can base our decisions purely for the future because otherwise the community might lose the interest and get "frustrated" like i stated above , right?

Because we never know how much time the things will take to be implemented like Natures and all the abilities only then the game would be more balanced in battles between the players, and even if you know how much time you estimate for those things to get implemented there's always things that don't go as we planned . In the meanwhile the state right now of the PVP system is terribly unbalanced and i think we can aggree on it that it's because of the reasons i mentioned above

 

[Zooks]

I think a big part of assumptions made by OP is just misguided experience in battling. 28+ivs of old shinys compared to 20+ in the newer ones really isn't that impactful in battles plain and simple. Just non shiny pokes with "enough" ivs in the correct places as well as proper ev training is more than enough to win the majority of battles here. You have to take in consideration many of the battlers on PWO haven't played a fully complete system with players that have been battling since gen 1 with years of experience on battlespot. I have to admit I don't battle much here but from what I have experienced is a general lack of knowledge in strategy/ev spread/prediction. You can easily aquire a full team of more than usable battlers and have double the win to loss ratio if you can do it right. 28+ and "max speed" that the PWO community covet so greatly are mainly just displays of wealth and high status to show off in chat, and hold a value that is extremely inflated compared to its usefulness versus any "lesser" iv pokemon. I feel that what newer players see is an older, wealthier player that has 3k+ hours played and a good win ratio displaying their godly pokemon in chat and think to themselves, "Wow, that guy has some cool high iv shinys, I'll never be able to compete with that", when more often than not, that veteran player just knows more about battling in PWO's current system than his opponents. A year ago I made a team of common pokemon with average ivs, a well thought out strategy and proper ev spreads and had doubled my wins vs losses. It had nothing to do with expensive pokes, rare/vr/hr discrepancy, or bad ivs. These commons that I used to battle with also took about 2 weeks of casual play to aquire, only caught by myself. I guarantee someone who has a full team of 31 iv hr-only pokes will lose to a very experienced player with only common pokes with worse ivs if they have more base game knowledge and great prediction ability, even though single battles at 6v6 do present their own set of imbalances compared to the more acccepted double battle 4v4 ruleset. In fact after the implementation of ability switching, I can foresee some pokemon that will be utterly unstoppable in a 6v6 single battle format and we will likely see the return of "b99 no slak", which we may have to consider a "ruleset" battle system that keeps a PvP stats record for competitive battles, and a battle system that does not simply for casual play - however that may be far in the future.

 

[HitmonFonty]

I would say that in 90-95% of cases we actually decreased the time, in some cases drastically, that it takes to catch the tier 3,4,5 pokemon in the game when going through each map in the Spawn Test Project. We made gastly common, eevee a realistic hunt and too many others to mention much easier during this project.

However we have to balance the individual effort required to the amount of players actually hunting the pokemon. If we use pikachu as an example- on tier 3 it can take anywhere between 1 and 5 hours average time. For an individual this could and does mean that many will find it easily every day even if only 100 players each play in the forest for 1 hour. On the flip side many will find it a lot harder and may have to search a lot more than 5 hours. This is unfortunate, but we did improve the chances to such an extent that most players who put a fair effort in before their first badge will actually have a very good chance of getting one.

If we made pikachu less than a 1 hour find then we would have 100 new pikachus in the game every day. That would be over a quarter of a million newly caught pikachu every year- just from new players- not even counting those who go back to the forest later to specifically hunt for it. And we have a lot more than 100 new accounts each day. I see that yesterday we had 250 new accounts registered and this is pretty much the norm.

Pikachu was not meant to be a common pokemon in the pokemon world- certainly not in these regions- and we try to keep to the general mythos of pokemon in our spawn rates. This goes both ways of course, so while we do feel we need to keep some pokemon at 15+ hours we also made changes like the one already mentioned- gastly becoming common like it was in the handhelds.

We have to consider the game as a whole when setting rarities, not just individuals. Increasing the rate of every pokemon drastically to help individual players find them faster will have major consequences to the game. We have done what we could in the spawn project to reduce the time for individuals as much as we possibly could without destroying the overall balance. If anyone believes however that there are certain pokemon that could benefit from another review we will always listen to the reasons for doing so.

Maybe the issue isn't the spawn system so much as there is no 'middle ground' here? You are either a beginner or you are facing the older, more experienced players that have had time to build up their teams. There is probably no sport that works that way, you work on your game and build your skills and while doing so you have the chance to advance into new leagues that will challenge you more. Some system that makes it easier to identify players that are in your own peer group I think would help here more than just making all the pokemon easier to find.

 

[xPecT]

I think a big part of assumptions made by OP is just misguided experience in battling. 28+ivs of old shinys compared to 20+ in the newer ones really isn't that impactful in battles plain and simple. Just non shiny pokes with "enough" ivs in the correct places as well as proper ev training is more than enough to win the majority of battles here. You have to take in consideration many of the battlers on PWO haven't played a fully complete system with players that have been battling since gen 1 with years of experience on battlespot. I have to admit I don't battle much here but from what I have experienced is a general lack of knowledge in strategy/ev spread/prediction. You can easily aquire a full team of more than usable battlers and have double the win to loss ratio if you can do it right. 28+ and "max speed" that the PWO community covet so greatly are mainly just displays of wealth and high status to show off in chat, and hold a value that is extremely inflated compared to its usefulness versus any "lesser" iv pokemon. I feel that what newer players see is an older, wealthier player that has 3k+ hours played and a good win ratio displaying their godly pokemon in chat and think to themselves, "Wow, that guy has some cool high iv shinys, I'll never be able to compete with that", when more often than not, that veteran player just knows more about battling in PWO's current system than his opponents. A year ago I made a team of common pokemon with average ivs, a well thought out strategy and proper ev spreads and had doubled my wins vs losses. It had nothing to do with expensive pokes, rare/vr/hr discrepancy, or bad ivs. These commons that I used to battle with also took about 2 weeks of casual play to aquire, only caught by myself. I guarantee someone who has a full team of 31 iv hr-only pokes will lose to a very experienced player with only common pokes with worse ivs if they have more base game knowledge and great prediction ability, even though single battles at 6v6 do present their own set of imbalances compared to the more acccepted double battle 4v4 ruleset. In fact after the implementation of ability switching, I can foresee some pokemon that will be utterly unstoppable in a 6v6 single battle format and we will likely see the return of "b99 no slak", which we may have to consider a "ruleset" battle system that keeps a PvP stats record for competitive battles, and a battle system that does not simply for casual play - however that may be far in the future.

Thanks for your opinion Zooks. And yes shinies on battles OLD vs NEW wont matter much but that's not what i said. I'm not talking about casual battles against people that don't know how to play. I'm talking about battles against people that know how to play and researched the abilities that work here and not just copying SMOGON BW stuff just because its right. Of course in PWO things are different and since many many pokemons depends on the hidden abilities to be effective in battle Smogon will be wrong in most cases for PWO you just have to adapt yourself. But then again if you go with a meta team with bad IVs pokemon against a meta team with good IVs pokemon if your skill +- the same even if you are better you will surely lose 80%-90% of the games. So you you get refined to play weaker teams that are 1 tier down from meta like you said with commons and yes you will beat players that don't know how to play switch battles and that didn't researched the best way to work around only first ability being working here but then again when u play against people near your skill level you don't stand a chance most of the times because you are using teams weaker than meta.

And that occurs because you can't have decent pokes Tier 4 and Tier 5 like i said above. It was you that didn't understood the point of what i was saying. When Electrofreak was complaining about Ditto showing IVs of pokes after using transform why u think it was for?
Because IVs matter and you can make assumptions based on the lower IVs of the others person pokemon.


Example: If i know that your Tier 5 pokemon is not max speed i can put mine and you have to change pokemon just because i know the fact that yours is slower than mine and i will OHKO you. Example 31IV 252 EV speed nature Salamence 1v1.

Those minor things matter A LOT in battle if both the players know how to play. Because you are giving them information even before the fight begins.
For example: Me vs RandomNEWPLAYER. I have a max speed Jolteon in my team and he uses for example an Aerodactyl. both have 130 base speed but i know a priori that i'll be faster because 31 speed is really expensive for new or (1years old players) so i dont change pokemon and attack him.

And that goes back to the fact that Tier 4 and Tier 5 being no life type of difficulty to get.

Of course that most of people that start playing switch battles or never did any type of research on what works and what doesn't work on PWO will be defeatable by a common's team but the truth is that in a tournament where all the players can join. The decent players that have knowledge of how this works on PWO with good pokemons, will win against the very good players that don't have the same pokemon conditions. And this happens no matter which are your prediction skills. You are free to prove me otherwise anyway.
When the battles were no switch 90% was all about IVs and having good coverage and priority moves but now even if the IVs don't affect so much it affects the game. Not talking about shinies. I don't even have interest in them.
I don't want to win against people that have no knowledge how the battles work. I want to battle and have proper conditions to win against people that know how to play even if they play here for 3 or 4years +. Just having the conditions to that effect. That's all.

 

[xPecT]

I would say that in 90-95% of cases we actually decreased the time, in some cases drastically, that it takes to catch the tier 3,4,5 pokemon in the game when going through each map in the Spawn Test Project. We made gastly common, eevee a realistic hunt and too many others to mention much easier during this project.

However we have to balance the individual effort required to the amount of players actually hunting the pokemon. If we use pikachu as an example- on tier 3 it can take anywhere between 1 and 5 hours average time. For an individual this could and does mean that many will find it easily every day even if only 100 players each play in the forest for 1 hour. On the flip side many will find it a lot harder and may have to search a lot more than 5 hours. This is unfortunate, but we did improve the chances to such an extent that most players who put a fair effort in before their first badge will actually have a very good chance of getting one.

If we made pikachu less than a 1 hour find then we would have 100 new pikachus in the game every day. That would be over a quarter of a million newly caught pikachu every year- just from new players- not even counting those who go back to the forest later to specifically hunt for it. And we have a lot more than 100 new accounts each day. I see that yesterday we had 250 new accounts registered and this is pretty much the norm.

Pikachu was not meant to be a common pokemon in the pokemon world- certainly not in these regions- and we try to keep to the general mythos of pokemon in our spawn rates. This goes both ways of course, so while we do feel we need to keep some pokemon at 15+ hours we also made changes like the one already mentioned- gastly becoming common like it was in the handhelds.

We have to consider the game as a whole when setting rarities, not just individuals. Increasing the rate of every pokemon drastically to help individual players find them faster will have major consequences to the game. We have done what we could in the spawn project to reduce the time for individuals as much as we possibly could without destroying the overall balance. If anyone believes however that there are certain pokemon that could benefit from another review we will always listen to the reasons for doing so.

Maybe the issue isn't the spawn system so much as there is no 'middle ground' here? You are either a beginner or you are facing the older, more experienced players that have had time to build up their teams. There is probably no sport that works that way, you work on your game and build your skills and while doing so you have the chance to advance into new leagues that will challenge you more. Some system that makes it easier to identify players that are in your own peer group I think would help here more than just making all the pokemon easier to find.

The mid term that could make possible the battles between decent / good players being decided on skill and predictions more than just pokemon stats numbers would be reduce the Tier 5 meta battlers to Tier 4 and maybe divide the Tier 4 Between Tier 4.1 and Tier 4.2 between the differences of which ones are battlers and which are not adjusting a bit the respective timings. That is a suggestion. It always happens that no matter that our skill is still alike in battle the one with the meta teams with much betters numbers will win. By a tiny margin defined by those stats. Plus the supposition thingy that Electrofreak mentioned on some post is truly a problem.

And much of that revolves around Tier 5 being so hard to get now and because of their removal of token store too.

I'm not saying that i know exactly how much time the spawn rates should be shortened. Just that they should to be shortened to what you guys that have the statistics know that would be decent. Because the state it's in now it is a nolifing state that most of the time don't produce results
Thank you for your answer

 

[Zooks]

But then again if you go with a meta team with bad IVs pokemon against a meta team with good IVs pokemon if your skill +- the same even if you are better you will surely lose 80%-90% of the games. So you you get refined to play weaker teams that are 1 tier down from meta like you said with commons and yes you will beat players that don't know how to play switch battles and that didn't researched the best way to work around only first ability being working here but then again when u play against people near your skill level you don't stand a chance most of the times because you are using teams weaker than meta.

I think you are misjudging the true effectiveness of ivs. If you are truly using a team to battle that have 1-15 ivs in its important spots then yes, you are going to play at a huge advantage to 28+, what I'm talking about is 20+ in the correct places which honestly isn't that much of a commitment to go looking for, in an mmo aspect. A well constructed team with average ivs will not lose 80-90% of the time vs pokemon that are nearly maxed, there are too many variables to take in account, not just ivs. You can't just hop into a game like this and expect to be at the top, however if you play smart all the tools are available to beat anybody. Go around and ask the players around at least the 2000 win to 500 loss ratio yourself. Also you must understand how much pokemon is based on rng, even at the highest level (global) play on competitive handhelds - many of the top tier players will all say how much luck factors in achieving success. This is mainly because of the mechanics given to us ie: accuracy, critital hits, moves with a random set of turns/effects like nearly all status effects and moves like swagger.

And that occurs because you can't have decent pokes Tier 4 and Tier 5 like i said above. It was you that didn't understood the point of what i was saying. When Electrofreak was complaining about Ditto showing IVs of pokes after using transform why u think it was for?

I understand what you are saying, however I just don't fully agree with it. Yes knowing your opponents ivs will give you an advantage, however the calculations that would make that useful during a battle will literally never happen, other than the speed IV which I can explain.

Because IVs matter and you can make assumptions based on the lower IVs of the others person pokemon.
Example: If i know that your Tier 5 pokemon is not max speed i can put mine and you have to change pokemon just because i know the fact that yours is slower than mine and i will OHKO you. Example 31IV 252 EV speed nature Salamence 1v1.
Those minor things matter A LOT in battle if both the players know how to play. Because you are giving them information even before the fight begins.
For example: Me vs RandomNEWPLAYER. I have a max speed Jolteon in my team and he uses for example an Aerodactyl. both have 130 base speed but i know a priori that i'll be faster because 31 speed is really expensive for new or (1years old players) so i dont change pokemon and attack him

I appreciate the argument you are trying to make but from what I'm understanding, this further brings out my point of inexperience in technical aspects of the game. Let's say you bring out that max speed jolteon vs's a 22 speed aero, the player with the aero can make two choices here - take the risk of knowing the jolt MAY be faster than him, or switching out. This is where a huge part of battling comes in - prediction making. The same scenario could be applied in an actual battlespot 1800+ ranked game vs a mirror matched high speed poke with a Jolly nature, against the same poke with a Modest nature.

I will quote this again:

Those minor things matter A LOT in battle if both the players know how to play. Because you are giving them information even before the fight begins.

It's standard in competitive battling outside of PWO to know all 6 pokemon your opponent is bringing into battle (outside of moveset/evs), and selecting the 4 best pokemon you feel will go against their team. It's also standard in the highest levels of play that matches are never best of 1, but at least best of 3 - that makes it so the next 2 games you play with your opponent, much of the knowledge you have gathered from the initial battle is available for both players - turning battles into intelligent mind games.

And that goes back to the fact that Tier 4 and Tier 5 being no life type of difficulty to get.

You are judging success in battles on the basis that tier 4 and tier 5 pokemon that have good ivs are a must have. I feel this is wrong, and just because a pokemon has a high tier attached to it's name doesn't make it better than a common.

Keeping tier 5 difficult to acquire adds longevity to the game. I'd rather not see PWO flooded with what were once sought after and rare pokemon, just to see the game turn into a battle simulator, because there are more complete options out there. While player battles are an important part of any pokemon game, this is still an MMO after all. This factor is extremely appealing to why I've been here for such a long time and choose to stay.I like to see those players, proud of that Dragonite they caught after many game hours of hard work and get to show off to their friends.

 

[Electrofreak]

My post has nothing to do with anything you suggest here. My post merely reflected knowledge availability. This does not mean IVs do in fact matter to a large degree. I have a post elsewhere on that. The ditto problem only matters in contexts of speed on pokemon people would choose to not link in chat. The rest of the IV knowledge does not matter all that much.

It is the right of the owner of a pokemon to not have the IVs of that pokemon broadcast to the world due to a broken (overpowered in this context) game mechanic. That is the bottom line if why the ditto thing was mentioned, nothing more nothing less. It creates a toxic environment where scouting becomes a huge problem if we were to ever get tournaments. Friends would make alternate accounts just to spam dittos and check out opposing people's pokemon before those said tournaments. It is just bad design to have that in a MMO environment.

As far as proving you wrong, all you do is assert things without data. You can't refute an opinion in the same way because it is subjective by nature. If you want to make a claim from the standpoint of reason you have to have an objective basis for your analysis. I have made many posts about the math of why what you are claiming just outright isn't true. The only stat you could even begin to complain about is speed, but anything truly rare is already difficult to find in high-speed varieties with other good ivs in the other areas. If you wish to critically think and proceed with a critique of speed from a reasonable standpoint, then please go ahead with your numbers/data/case studies or whatever else.

If you just want to sit there and say you don't like this but have no realistic sense of how that translates into the mathematics of damage calculation, don't expect anyone to take you seriously other than people who just want to complain because they want immediate gratification. This is not a battle simulator.




Edit: If you are also going to quote me about the salamence, please put it in quotations so that others do not assume you are making an argument yourself instead of just taking mine out of proper context as you currently are.

 

[Harp]

This lovely thread here just fillls me with joy. Not the good kind though. But alas, on to the conversation at hand.

Let's look at Point One: T5's. The argument at hand that you're giving me that T4's and T5's are too difficult to find unless you are a no lifer and even if you are able to find them, the IVs you may get are not what you would want or desire so the time put into this are wasted minutes so making them easier may break the economy but at least the player will be happy. I feel this is incorrect. This is RNG like you stated. Your random numbers are not occurring as often as you would like. You can't say that things take too long when you point out that you used to find a shiny a day sometimes 5 or 6 when that system hasn't been touched. The system was re-organized like Rig stated further down. It's the same system that was made easier to understand. One of my friends found two Eevees in two days. I haven't found one in 250+ hours because that is how RNG works. It's not a flawed or incorrect system. It's fair unbiased chance.

Secondly, IVs. IVs do not matter except in certain special situations which you stated below such in stall wars or speed tiers. I will agree with Zooks that 1-15 vs 28, does matter but 20+ is not a big deal. Example, Gyarados with 31 IV with 168 EVs out speeds Jolteon after one Dragon Dance. If the IV was lower than that I would just invest more into Speed than originally. Wow. Look. I'm able to do what I wanted to before of outspeeding Jolteon. Cool. No way. You bring up specific situations like Sala vs Sala with 252 Speed and 31 IV. There are so many other factors to include though. Is the Sala scarfed negating my investment anyways? Did it have Intimidate or Moxie? Did someone EV their Sala to withstand an attack and KO back? Will I get max or min damage? You don't bring up any of these points at all which imo are worth waaaaay more talking about. I will agree that maybe certain Pokemon should be made purchasable again and I don't see the harm in having them back in the Token Store if the playerbase wants them and the Staff okays it.

Third, Who cares about breaking the economy? ....wut. I'm sorry but that is just an unintelligent point. The economy matters. It is a huge factor in this game that was glitched and is finally recovering after OVER 5 YEARS. And you wanna destroy all the work put forth for that? That is selfish. Point blank selfish. The Staff trying to "please the playerbase" is what got us into nearly all of PWO's problems that we have now. That mentality is destructive and flawed in every sense of that word. Let me state again for the people in the back,

Pleasing the playerbase with no disregard of the repercussions of the impact of those actions is a flawed and destructive mentality that cause nearly all of PWOs problems that are trying to be fixed now.

Point Two: Population Decrease: The new Shiny IVs vs Old Shiny IVs is something that has been made up by the community as a whole. The only thing old Shinies have over them is the ones that have a 32 IV. Other than that, there's no difference. Having 20+ stat guranteed is worth a lot and people REFUSE to accept that as a thing. This goes back to the statement of how the community is what created the disparity between the two. You state that getting T4 and T5 now with worst IVs is a greater chance. This is wrong. Buying it vs catching it doesn't make a difference in IVs. I will say that buying them you have a greater chance of encountering/obtaining them and that increases your chances overall. Explain how they are worse now and I'll entertain this.

Second point of interest, battling and the economy. I'm sure this has been stated over and over...and over. Again and again. You can make a great Pokemon team using T3 and below which you AGREED you had NO PROBLEM with the encounter rates. Growlithe, Gastly, Abra, Rhyhorn, Staryu, Tauros, Pineco, Shellder, Pikachu, Zubat, Tentacool, Magikarp, etc etc are all T3 and below and are powerful Pokemon to use. You could beat multiple teams if you put your mind to it. Yes, you'll have to devote time to. Funny, huh? How people who are new to something have to devote time and effort into being as good as someone who was here before. Shocking, I know.

The thing you need to consider about why our population is down is there is competition now. Back in 2008 there wasn't really any competition, now there is. I don't have an idea to gain people or change it or whatever but I will agree that the middle ground between new and old is essentially non-existant.


Point Three: Economics. Why am I talking about this when you said yourself that you don't care? That's kind of dumb to say you don't care about something and then bring it up as a point later on. Well, whatever. To restate New vs Old is something that the community did. They put worth in one thing over the other. If I catch a Shiny and it's 28/30/31/28/30/29, it's still worth the same as the old one. It's just another case of RNG where getting those stats like before is more difficult. Period. Personally, I think a lot of people are greedy and overvalue stuff and people still pay for it because they have an idea of " Well, I guess that's the price ". People overall refuse to lower prices and devalue their stuff from my time I've spent in this game.

That is my response to this and thank you for reading - All Hail The Queen

 

[talha.k]

TL;DR
Rarest pokemon in game should be catchable at least once per 8-10hrs in my opinion so everyone gets a solid chance at things.

_
20 IVs vs 28 IVs not being a 'big deal' =/= it does not matter.

First of all I want to point out that new shiny IVs being 20+ as opposed to 28+old doesn't really matter much for me, I could always use a non shiny, I don't really care. Except for the fact that new and old players have not had the same playing grounds. Yes, with every MMO older players will have advantage compared to the newer ones; but I haven't seen many MMOs which provide different playing conditions for new/old players. And don't give me the "we made Gastly common" argument, it's pointless. There are some examples I could give in the exact opposite way, such as Clefairy now being a T4... Anyways, my main point here is that older players who did nothing but sat on their money will always have the upper hand because they had an inflated market and of course, shinies.

There's also the fact that new players have to pay for old staffs' and glitchers' (?) abuses in the system. Bike costs 500k because you guys want to drain money out of the economy, but this only means that new players have to hunt their arses off, find a Pokemon which a wealthy player would buy etc. Same with transportation system. These two being "luxury" does not mean that they aren't needed. I shouldn't have to find a good Pokemon and sell it to buy these items, I should be able to grind for it for 3-4 days (or more...). But that is not the case here. New players shouldn't have to be the ones paying for everything that's happened in the past.

Also;
IVs do matter, there's a reason why they're in the game in the first place. Yes natures will have more of an effect on Pokemon performance; but there are many (not 'certain special situations' which happen rarely) situations where you would NEED that extra IV. 1 IV could take the win from one side, give it to the other. And I'm sure this would happen in so many cases. Plus, backing the "IVs don't matter much" argument up with natures is pointless because they don't exist in PWO yet. PWO does have a working IV system as well as battle system, and I'm playing THAT at the moment. Not a system without even an expected date.
This is not about the 20+ vs 28+ shinies thing... It's about hunting rare pokemon and finding one after 40hrs with bad IVs.

I'm looking at you, Skarmory that took 200+ hours...in comparison, no T5 breaks 30ish hours.

If I did not understand this wrong, you mean the upper limit for T5s is 30hrs-ish. I call BS. Most of my tier 5s have taken me at least 45hrs to find, my second last one took me more than 200h. "Personal experience =/= general experience" yes, I know... But "No T5 breaks 30ish hrs" means "you are guaranteed to get a T5 in 30hrs of hunting", correct me if I'm wrong. Also there are more people who say that Tier 5s take 30+hrs to find. (Or they may be the ones who speak up, complaints tend to be heard more).

About the last "poll" or "feedback form" you had on PWO's Twitter which no one (exaggerated of course, just pointing out because there are potential people who will hit me on this) ever visits except for downtimes. Why did you have to do that there? Put it in the game so you have more reliable results. Put it on Playerdex, make it inaccessible unless you complete the form. Why Twitter? 19/20 people I spoke to had no idea about this poll. And 16 of them didn't even bother completing it after they found out. (Estimated numbers, I can assure u they're realistic though)...

Another thing I would like to point out is about the common staff argument of "more people register, more people login, more numbers"... 1500 people (?) logging in per day =/= 1500 people playing the game. I'm sure a lot of them are ALT accounts, old players checking if there's any changes which may make them return, people like Fadoka who log in, speak to people they know etc, new players who would most likely quit when they find out a bike costs 500k, or in a better situation, ask others "what to do" after 16 gyms, see it pointless and leave... Obviously there will be those who stay and all, but online number at peak hours still barely goes over 200 and drops down to 60-80 during non peak.

Personally, I love this game a lot. I had 250hrs 4 months ago when I returned, now I have around 1200hrs... But looking back at those times and seeing that I am still unable to build THE team I want (FYI, the team I planned has 2xTier 5 one of which I had caught during Occult event [or else I would only have 1 tier 5 in this team] 1xTier 3, 2xTier 2, 1x Tier 1) makes me feel gutted. (Edit: I do actually have an alternative to that team with 1 less tier 5, 1 more tier 1. My point still remains though) I did try to change this team up a lot, but I still did need certain pokes which I probably will never get... Please don't tell me "you can make a full team of tier 1-2s and be competitive", because your tactics =/= my tactics. And (example) Weavile =/= Mamoswine.

TL;DR
Rarest pokemon in game should be catchable at least once per 8-10hrs in my opinion so everyone gets a solid chance at things.

I'm sadly losing my hopes in PWO day by day even while I'm trying so hard not to do so...

 

[I.Am]

Typical casual player. Dude, you need to hunt 23 hours per day, 50 minutes sleep, 5 minutes eat / drink and 5 minutes shower to increase your chance to get bad IV HR / Tier 100 pokes. Seriously, they need to reduce the tier 5 timer spawn to every 2 to 3 hours so people wont die to starvation, boringness or over nerdness ( whatever that means ).

 

[xPecT]

This lovely thread here just fillls me with joy. Not the good kind though. But alas, on to the conversation at hand.

Let's look at Point One: T5's. The argument at hand that you're giving me that T4's and T5's are too difficult to find unless you are a no lifer and even if you are able to find them, the IVs you may get are not what you would want or desire so the time put into this are wasted minutes so making them easier may break the economy but at least the player will be happy. I feel this is incorrect. This is RNG like you stated. Your random numbers are not occurring as often as you would like. You can't say that things take too long when you point out that you used to find a shiny a day sometimes 5 or 6 when that system hasn't been touched. The system was re-organized like Rig stated further down. It's the same system that was made easier to understand. One of my friends found two Eevees in two days. I haven't found one in 250+ hours because that is how RNG works. It's not a flawed or incorrect system. It's fair unbiased chance.

Secondly, IVs. IVs do not matter except in certain special situations which you stated below such in stall wars or speed tiers. I will agree with Zooks that 1-15 vs 28, does matter but 20+ is not a big deal. Example, Gyarados with 31 IV with 168 EVs out speeds Jolteon after one Dragon Dance. If the IV was lower than that I would just invest more into Speed than originally. Wow. Look. I'm able to do what I wanted to before of outspeeding Jolteon. Cool. No way. You bring up specific situations like Sala vs Sala with 252 Speed and 31 IV. There are so many other factors to include though. Is the Sala scarfed negating my investment anyways? Did it have Intimidate or Moxie? Did someone EV their Sala to withstand an attack and KO back? Will I get max or min damage? You don't bring up any of these points at all which imo are worth waaaaay more talking about. I will agree that maybe certain Pokemon should be made purchasable again and I don't see the harm in having them back in the Token Store if the playerbase wants them and the Staff okays it.

Third, Who cares about breaking the economy? ....wut. I'm sorry but that is just an unintelligent point. The economy matters. It is a huge factor in this game that was glitched and is finally recovering after OVER 5 YEARS. And you wanna destroy all the work put forth for that? That is selfish. Point blank selfish. The Staff trying to "please the playerbase" is what got us into nearly all of PWO's problems that we have now. That mentality is destructive and flawed in every sense of that word. Let me state again for the people in the back,

Pleasing the playerbase with no disregard of the repercussions of the impact of those actions is a flawed and destructive mentality that cause nearly all of PWOs problems that are trying to be fixed now.

Point Two: Population Decrease: The new Shiny IVs vs Old Shiny IVs is something that has been made up by the community as a whole. The only thing old Shinies have over them is the ones that have a 32 IV. Other than that, there's no difference. Having 20+ stat guranteed is worth a lot and people REFUSE to accept that as a thing. This goes back to the statement of how the community is what created the disparity between the two. You state that getting T4 and T5 now with worst IVs is a greater chance. This is wrong. Buying it vs catching it doesn't make a difference in IVs. I will say that buying them you have a greater chance of encountering/obtaining them and that increases your chances overall. Explain how they are worse now and I'll entertain this.

Second point of interest, battling and the economy. I'm sure this has been stated over and over...and over. Again and again. You can make a great Pokemon team using T3 and below which you AGREED you had NO PROBLEM with the encounter rates. Growlithe, Gastly, Abra, Rhyhorn, Staryu, Tauros, Pineco, Shellder, Pikachu, Zubat, Tentacool, Magikarp, etc etc are all T3 and below and are powerful Pokemon to use. You could beat multiple teams if you put your mind to it. Yes, you'll have to devote time to. Funny, huh? How people who are new to something have to devote time and effort into being as good as someone who was here before. Shocking, I know.

The thing you need to consider about why our population is down is there is competition now. Back in 2008 there wasn't really any competition, now there is. I don't have an idea to gain people or change it or whatever but I will agree that the middle ground between new and old is essentially non-existant.


Point Three: Economics. Why am I talking about this when you said yourself that you don't care? That's kind of dumb to say you don't care about something and then bring it up as a point later on. Well, whatever. To restate New vs Old is something that the community did. They put worth in one thing over the other. If I catch a Shiny and it's 28/30/31/28/30/29, it's still worth the same as the old one. It's just another case of RNG where getting those stats like before is more difficult. Period. Personally, I think a lot of people are greedy and overvalue stuff and people still pay for it because they have an idea of " Well, I guess that's the price ". People overall refuse to lower prices and devalue their stuff from my time I've spent in this game.

That is my response to this and thank you for reading - All Hail The Queen

I will only respond to the things addressed to me:

Point 1

"Is the Sala scarfed negating my investment anyways? Did it have Intimidate or Moxie? Did someone EV their Sala to withstand an attack and KO back? Will I get max or min damage? You don't bring up any of these points at all which imo are worth waaaaay more talking about."

With all the due respect, what the hell are you talking about ?... Here you only have first abilities so Salamence won't have Moxie that is a hidden ability. So scarfed Salamences are much less impactant here than they are in handhelds and that kills variety. of options that makes you assume that all Salas use Life Orb on them. EVs wasted on defense for Salamence that is purely a sweeper? I can bring this up but i would prefer talk to someone that at least have an idea of what he is talking about...
Oh by the way can you show me the 2 Eevees that your friend caught in just 2 days? Proof or it didn't happened. That would be some extreme case of RNG that would happen to 1 player in 64 millions or so.

Point 2

"One of my friends found two Eevees in two days. I haven't found one in 250+ hours because that is how RNG works. It's not a flawed or incorrect system. It's fair unbiased chance."

Very fair ! So imagine that you want to play with a Jolteon in your team (that is very normal nowadays because Jolteon is one of the fastest special sweepers and has STAB on his electric type making it one of the best special sweepers of the game). You start playing PWO, get all the badges in 30 hours or so of playing time and now you want to make a decent team to battle other players. So you decide to go to safari zone, and as you said you get unlucky and after 250+ hours you still don't have the pokemon you are searching for. So 30hours+ to explore nearly all the content of the game and 250hours+ to hunt for a pokemon and don't even get it plus the thing that if you get it the changes that will be ineffective on battle are kinda decent (remember that a less than 23 speed Jolteon will get outsped by the likes of base 125 speed pokemon like Weavile.)

Point 3

" Economics. Why am I talking about this when you said yourself that you don't care? That's kind of dumb to say you don't care about something and then bring it up as a point later on. Well, whatever. To restate New vs Old is something that the community did. They put worth in one thing over the other. If I catch a Shiny and it's 28/30/31/28/30/29, it's still worth the same as the old one. It's just another case of RNG where getting those stats like before is more difficult. Period. Personally, I think a lot of people are greedy and overvalue stuff and people still pay for it because they have an idea of " Well, I guess that's the price ". People overall refuse to lower prices and devalue their stuff from my time I've spent in this game. "

I said that the effect of minor changes on the economy would be sacrificed for "thre greater good" of having more fairness in the battle system.
So you didn't got my point there...

Yes people are greedy and overvalue stuff and people still pay BECAUSE they have no means of nolifing to get one or those pokemons are getting rarer.
Example: If you see a Porygon with good IVs on playermart and you have some money you will buy it no matter the cost because again hunting him is nearly impossible. And the flux of rare pokemons is getting smaller and smaller so since hunting is almost impossible you try to buy them. And if buying is not possible also you become without options.

Zooks clearly had his opinion and i respect it, it was well-founded in your case all i see is an old player trying to protect his advantage over new players ( considering new players from 2014 to 2016) because in his time he had some privileges that are nowhere to be found now like higher population online ingame per minute , access to buying pokemons from token store ( generating and higher float of Tier 5 and Tier 4 pokemons ) , and old shinies ( tho like i said i don't see any problems in shinies at the moment think they are better now that they were at 28+ that should never existed) .

You talk about selfishness but let's be fair, you are one that is selfish enough to reject anything that can put in cause the advantage you have to new players.
You talk about selfishness but you are the selfish here. How can you argue that if you don't even know the battle system of PWO well.
Don't think this as a personal attack. It isn't. It's just defining what is truth and what is not.

P.S: Even the high level of scamming that we encounter here in PWO is a repercussion of the difficulty of getting the things you want. So people become frustrated and the only solution they see to get what they want is by crime, in this case in PWO, scamming.
And yeah don't take me wrong, scamming exists and will always exist no matter what since some people will always go the easy way but again here there is too much because a small group of people that decide to go through the right path sometimes get frustrated with this being so difficult and then decides to go through the easy way not thinking in the repercussions.

 

[xPecT]

My post has nothing to do with anything you suggest here. My post merely reflected knowledge availability. This does not mean IVs do in fact matter to a large degree. I have a post elsewhere on that. The ditto problem only matters in contexts of speed on pokemon people would choose to not link in chat. The rest of the IV knowledge does not matter all that much.

It is the right of the owner of a pokemon to not have the IVs of that pokemon broadcast to the world due to a broken (overpowered in this context) game mechanic. That is the bottom line if why the ditto thing was mentioned, nothing more nothing less. It creates a toxic environment where scouting becomes a huge problem if we were to ever get tournaments. Friends would make alternate accounts just to spam dittos and check out opposing people's pokemon before those said tournaments. It is just bad design to have that in a MMO environment.

As far as proving you wrong, all you do is assert things without data. You can't refute an opinion in the same way because it is subjective by nature. If you want to make a claim from the standpoint of reason you have to have an objective basis for your analysis. I have made many posts about the math of why what you are claiming just outright isn't true. The only stat you could even begin to complain about is speed, but anything truly rare is already difficult to find in high-speed varieties with other good ivs in the other areas. If you wish to critically think and proceed with a critique of speed from a reasonable standpoint, then please go ahead with your numbers/data/case studies or whatever else.

If you just want to sit there and say you don't like this but have no realistic sense of how that translates into the mathematics of damage calculation, don't expect anyone to take you seriously other than people who just want to complain because they want immediate gratification. This is not a battle simulator.




Edit: If you are also going to quote me about the salamence, please put it in quotations so that others do not assume you are making an argument yourself instead of just taking mine out of proper context as you currently are.

You didn't understood my point... Maybe i didn't explained what i wanted to say with your quote in a proper manner.
You aggree that scouting is a problem right?
You give information to the player that will be used against you in a future battle.
Think of this as indirect scouting based on the system of Tier 5 and Tier 4 PWO has.
You make /info of the player , you see that he is a recent player so you assume ( and you will be most of the times right) that he hasn't max speed pokemons of those tiers and you can abuse that information into your own profit...
That's the only thing why i mentioned you there. I guess you will aggree with me in that part or maybe you won't because you got mad because of me quoting you out of context, still here you have.
And again like i said above the most influential IV is speed...the others will influentiate in specific cases like i said too for example in stall teams whether you get 3KOed or 4KOed just based purely on IVs defensive stats.
To make a global analysis with most of the pokemons involved would require a tremendous amount of time and i would need help.

Example: IVs do matter. Jolteon in a rain team can use Thunder with 100% accuracy. My Salamence is epic except special defense that has 6.

I have 100% of probability to get OHKOed by a Thunder of a Jolteon with 29 or+ Spattack wearing a choice specs.
http://i.imgur.com/g1m9FK6.png

If i had let's say 29 special defense the probability of the OHKO would be 25% and thats a lot of a difference so IVs do matter.
http://i.imgur.com/oAvcThe.png

And yeah you can say that this is a niche pick and one of a kind case but these cases do happen in battle! And speed IVs much more especially in the 80 base speed range that is disputed by a lot of pokemons

 

[Rigaudon]

"you are guaranteed to get a T5 in 30hrs of hunting", correct me if I'm wrong.

The tier description hours are based on the averages of many many many many many players, not a personal experience. So yes, this statement is incorrect.

"Somebody might find that map's T5 in 10 minutes and another person might need over 100 hours, but most people out of those billions will see it in ... let's say 20 hours. That's how these averages for tiers work."

For the poll, we had about 229 respondents, which is enough for a decent sample size. I believe it was advertised ingame as well. The results were very split/inconsistent, aside from the fact that most people were somewhat satisfied with the system. I think that, for other questions, people did not understand what we were asking very well, as the other results seemed sporadic or were based on difficulty when we were asking if the tiers felt defined. (Does this feel like a T1? T2? Or do the ranges feel like they are overlapping?)

---

Here you only have first abilities

Plus, backing the "IVs don't matter much" argument up with natures is pointless because they don't exist in PWO yet. PWO does have a working IV system as well as battle system, and I'm playing THAT at the moment. Not a system without even an expected date.

I am going to reiterate that PWO is building for the future, and I cannot take points that state "but we don't have that right now" at full value. I've said this ingame and I will say this here: There are likely no quick solutions to the poor design decisions PWO put up with for years that won't create potentially more horrible problems on their own.

We can't have everything right now because updating takes time, and duct taping leaking pipes instead of taking the *time* to fix them properly is, as Harp says, what got PWO here in the first place, and I refuse to return to those times after having to deal with them for years and years. I will only accept logic based on PWO's health in the future unless I am given temporary fixes that don't do much more than fix whatever is on the table. So for example completely lowering the economic ceiling by having everything jump down to T4 at max would have huge effects spanning years. Therefore, this particular suggestion would have to work for PWO for the indefinite future in your supporting points.

We are trying to create a system that will work without additional pain once implemented; one that works together as seamlessly as possible, including with the nasty pieces of design left from the past. Right now I am leaning toward the hope that natures/abilities implemented in an intelligent way will solve several of the woes brought up in this topic; a 15+ IV Pokemon should go from "useless" to usable. Implementing a different system because natures/abilities aren't here right now means that when we do introduce abilities/natures, we become stuck with two systems working together that weren't built to co-exist. That creates problems. This is not mentioning the other half of people that will complain that we dipped down the top rarity rates because "now the market is entirely deflated, I used to be able to sell a [whatever] for [insert $$$ here] but now the price ceiling is lower!" Why should we pick one side of the playerbase over the other when there could be a viable, much less painful solution in the future? Is the change necessary for us to have to answer to such complaints/hard questions day in and day out? This is what staff have to be convinced of and struggle with each other every day. "Is [x] solution better than [y] solution? Why? What will that do to the future? Which is best with the future in mind? Would that be fun? What will that do to the economy? Will we design ourselves in a corner and have to redo a bunch of stuff later, otherwise it will be hard to expand?"

It has even come full circle on this topic: "PWO is too pay to win! Remove Pokemon from the TS store because it's not fair we spend a lot of time hunting just for some guy to buy everything! Riot riot!" I obliged. Then now I'm looking at this topic with an implied (but not the main point) of "Return TS Pokemon to the store! We're having to spend a lot of time hunting everything!"

Obviously between the two there's just a problem with TS Pokemon in general, but you can see just how well a temporary adjustment worked out, right? Not very.

Edit: To clarify, this suggestion needs to take abilities/natures/more held items, etc. into full consideration. The effects this would have on the economy needs an in-depth look especially. We'd also have to decide how difficult we want PWO to be and if T5 really is "too hard" to the point of it not being fun in general; for example, Zooks likes the difficulty and xpect/talha seem like they do not. How should we decide on that?

 

[HitmonFonty]

If I did not understand this wrong, you mean the upper limit for T5s is 30hrs-ish. I call BS. Most of my tier 5s have taken me at least 45hrs to find, my second last one took me more than 200h. "Personal experience =/= general experience" yes, I know... But "No T5 breaks 30ish hrs" means "you are guaranteed to get a T5 in 30hrs of hunting", correct me if I'm wrong. Also there are more people who say that Tier 5s take 30+hrs to find. (Or they may be the ones who speak up, complaints tend to be heard more).

This is completely wrong. If a T5 pokemon has an average of 30 hours hunting time- that is NOT a guarantee of finding one in 30 hours. We have endevoured to make this as clear as possible. Average means that if you spend 30,000 hours hunting there then you are quite likely to end up with 1 "T5, 30 hour average" pokemon for every 30 hours of hunting there, but if you only spend a comparatively short time there your finding even one depends entirely on your luck.

Sometimes we'll find the pokemon fast, sometimes slow but the longer your hunt is the more that the average will mean something. For us (players) it is just a ballpark figure that represents our chances. If we find one faster we can consider ourselves lucky, slower unlucky- and we can look at the tiers and make a decision about how long we want to spend on a given map. We can decide based on the tier given for the pokemon we want to hunt whether we want to try our luck for a while or not.

There is no other meaning to the tiers, they are definitely not a guarantee.