Removal of /list

[Tecknician]

There's been a discussion among the staff for several years about the removal of the /list command.

So discuss.

 

[EcoWOLFrb]

Could you tell us the reasoning behind this in order for us to better form an opinion?

 

[LunaticJames]

More or less to see how players would cope and adapt if the command didn't exist.
So, how would you?

 

[Tecknician]

Could you tell us the reasoning behind this in order for us to better form an opinion?

Completely open ended discussion.

 

[KstersSlade]

Its helpful to know whats in the grass. Even if rarity may not show up, its still nice to see what you can catch. If anything it makes PWO better than the handhelds.

If it is removed, I see the wiki coming into use alot more.

I suggest connecting it to the pokedex with the client update, maybe /list doesnt do anything at first but once you see a poke it registers it in that /list.

 

[MeteoricMonkey9]

Kind of a pain for hunters if they don't know the pokes in a map, specially those you need to spend days to find

 

[CynicalChoco]

My personal opinions (sorry if this turns into a wall fo text or a rant).

At the moment in PWO players are spoonfed pretty much everything they could ever need to wonder about in the game - in terms of pokemon they can find out all the ever need to know by using a few commands, they will know exactly what pokemon are found on what map and how difficult it will be to find them. You might think this is good as a player but for the game it is bad, it kills player discussion - why do you need to ask when you can just have the game tell you itself, it turns people away from our commnity as they do not need to use the forums or the wiki or the playerdex as the game will tell you everything itself, they never even have to ask in chat about a pokemon they might want. It kills discovery, it kills hope, when everything is known there are no surprises there are no discoveries and everything is just left bland - it gets stale. That is the big problem I have with it (amongst other 'features' of the game currently) they all add up to cause a stale experience over time.

Looking into the player perspective, how many of you can say that you have based pokemon values from there 'rarity' tags? What is a Rare worth? A Very Rare? A Horribly Rare? Now add shinies to this, how many pokemon are valued by people based on being a S Rare or a S Very Rare? The market is stifled by these self imposed caps and while it may be a bit simplistic here and other factors like IVs and battle strength are used it cannot be argued that these tags add a pointless supply limit to certain pokemon because of these rates, rates given to players by the /list command. I can't say for certain but I feel that the rarity changes coming and the removal of the /list command would give a more dynamic market for players.

As a staff member I see the same thing every event in PWO - people will find out about the spawns the instant they are able to, they will buzz for a short time about whatever pokemon can be found and then everything goes into the same week or 2 week long grind for the HRs. Again I feel this is another stale aspect of the game, but if there was no way fo finding out the spawns beforehand what would it be like to walk into a new area not knowing what you could find. Wondering whether this pokemon could be the events HR, being the first person to find that rare pokemon would become something special, there is no predetermined pattern set for the event because you don't know what is going to happen, you don't even know if maybe, just maybe, there might still be that 1 rare pokemon that no one has found yet. Do you see the potential even a small change like this could bring? There would be people actively discussing what they think are the rare pokemon and which are the more common, people working out together things that were previously just given. A community effort brings a lot more to a game than an Umbreon spawn.

I'm going to go back to more points on staleness here, when people know the lists things get taking for granted - a spawn is updated and it just becomes 'oh, this pokemon is no longer common here'. Why can't changes be more interesting? Having players not know this could allow us to make small tweaks to maps that change rarities for certian pokemon during summer, unique spawns on maps could appear and someone may stumble upon something new. It allows us the possibility to make the game more dynamic and give benefits to exploring maps looking for new pokemon or places as you could not just /list viridian forest and see that bulbasaur had been added and the watch everyone flock to the map for it. You could not /list secret area 2 and find that this whole map exsisted and had cool pokes. Maybe we added a new hidden map, what would be better - a) finding out it was there by seeing it on /list zubat or b) be casually walking through diglett cave and see a whole in the ground, dropping you into a new underground cave system?

Tl;Dr - Read it please, and really I want to see some decent arguments to why keeping the command is a good idea.

 

[Julio~]

[glow=red]I can't imagine me hunting without know what will show to me up in the grass. At the moment I know where I can find each pokémon but if the spawns would be changed I would have no idea where hunt for specific pokémons. I think new players will have more difficult because they never played and won't know where hunt for once /list will be no longer a command. But if pokédex could store the pokémons locations the issue would be solved. Only removing /list command I think it's not good but if you give us another way to get pokémons locations is fine.[/glow]

 

[Chocobo7]

[glow=red] if you give us another way to get pokémons locations is fine.[/glow]

People. We have a chat, we have a forum and we have a wiki that are all free to use for all players. Also remember, if you used the pokedex then you would have to find and catch that pokemon to see its location anyway Just think back to the first time you played a pokemon game, did you have fun? Did you know where everything was beforehand?

 

[EcoWOLFrb]

From what I can understand the problem is with people knowing the rarity of pokemon and making judgments about value based on it. I find that knowing what I'm looking for is a valuable tool, otherwise you might be in the wrong area of something like the safari zone looking for something rare and never finding it because it isn't there. To fix this problem why not just list location without the rarity, much like it is now "Unknown". This would also allow staff to modify rarity without being screamed at by players over the slightest change. I can't see leaving it to where you have to consult the Wiki or a player assumption based thread about rarity to find out being a favorable action to take when it comes to the staff viewpoint though, imagine all of the bleeding noobs crying for clarification constantly about rarity.

 

[KstersSlade]

[glow=red] if you give us another way to get pokémons locations is fine.[/glow]

People. We have a chat, we have a forum and we have a wiki that are all free to use for all players. Also remember, if you used the pokedex then you would have to find and catch that pokemon to see its location anyway Just think back to the first time you played a pokemon game, did you have fun? Did you know where everything was beforehand?

I see the help channel ingame being flooded with
"where can I find this poke" So I dont know if thats the sort of interaction you were looking for. Some people will take to the wiki but I see alot going to the help channel.

 

[king1234]

Making the /list command and the rarity's completely unknown (Invisible) to players will add mystery when you encounter every Pokemon, you might end up killing the rarest Pokemon thinking its common, or catching a common thinking is rare.

When there was the "Price Check" topic, we used the rarity as one of the scale to rate the Pokemon price, now keeping the rate(rarity) away from the players (in secret) prices of the Pokemon will either raise or decrease due to the fact that not much people know what rate it is, they will have to decide on how much to spend based on its battle potential (When I mean battle potential i mean killing wild/owned Pokemon) instead of a criteria of the Pokemon either HR or Common.

 

[Julio~]

[glow=red] if you give us another way to get pokémons locations is fine.[/glow]

People. We have a chat, we have a forum and we have a wiki that are all free to use for all players. Also remember, if you used the pokedex then you would have to find and catch that pokemon to see its location anyway Just think back to the first time you played a pokemon game, did you have fun? Did you know where everything was beforehand?

[glow=red]I have only played pokémon games on emulators and PWO and It's not hard get its locations in the internet.

And yeah, I always take a look at the forums and wiki, which one is needing an update on some pages. But for now I think I would have no problem about removal of /list then.[/glow] ;D

 

[pokearcanine]

I disagree with the complete removal.In original games,after seeing a pokemon,you could know his location,so at the very last,let the usage of /list only for pokemons you have seen already

 

[filipy]

Its helpful to know whats in the grass. Even if rarity may not show up, its still nice to see what you can catch. If anything it makes PWO better than the handhelds.

If it is removed, I see the wiki coming into use alot more.

I suggest connecting it to the pokedex with the client update, maybe /list doesnt do anything at first but once you see a poke it registers it in that /list.

I fully agree :-[

 

[CheckeredZebra]

For games that have similar mechanics (monster lists, etc) there are alternate sites people use in conjuntion with the CTRL+F command. How do these options:

People. We have a chat, we have a forum and we have a wiki that are all free to use for all players.

...spoonfeed players any less than /list?
/list is just less clunky to use/doesn't depend on knowledgeable people that may or may not be online.

The wiki/chat/etc won't fulfill the goals you're aiming for because player discoveries/progress won't be recognized. If players DO decide to mark it down (via wiki/forums/whatever), new people are just going to use that source instead. In other words, your result will be a delayed spoonfeeding with a heaping of clunky interface.

If you're considering removing spawn guides to avoid the delay spoon-feeding, you'd get jerk players scamming other users. "Hey, is scyther hard to find here? It's hard to tell, the spawns are a little different from handhelds." "Uh not really. worth 5k. But I'll do a favor, give you 10k for it."

You can't avoid the spoonfeed through the methods you suggested.

As a staff member I see the same thing every event in PWO - people will find out about the spawns the instant they are able to, they will buzz for a short time about whatever pokemon can be found and then everything goes into the same week or 2 week long grind for the HRs.

That is because of how /list was implemented; simply change it. Don't go throwing out the baby with the dirty bath water. (I think that's how the saying goes). There's a lot you could do with the command...but here we are discussing its removal because it has issues. Just like everything else in this game.

But I (and somebody else) already knows something that will -without frustration- fix all of your issues listed.

I suggest connecting it to the pokedex with the client update, maybe /list doesnt do anything at first but once you see a poke it registers it in that /list.

My suggestion is similar, only you unlock each area's pokemon separately instead of as seen.
With this system, all of the problems listed go away. Examples of this edited command when in use:

---

/List Pikachu
Locations:
Viridian Forest
???
???

or
/list Mt Silver 5f
Golbat
Graveler
???
Onix
???
???
etc.

It also adds a fun "unlocking" system for players. Learning and finishing all of the ???s on a map could become a legitimate gameplay goal, or a progress marker/reminder that shows players how far they have come. Other players will cooperate to find out what spawns they are missing on a map...SPECIFICALLY with event areas. The first week or so would result in a large amount of cooperation between players. "Hey, I learned that Duskull is the VR for Dusk Town, do you know what the other one is?" "Yeah, Houndour. But I still haven't found out what the rare is, somehow, and I've been here for 40 minutes!"

Don't remove list, simply change it.

 

[Jinji]

Funnily enough, I was also planning to suggest the same type of unlocking system. I also had the idea that non-canonical areas (event locations like Winter Town for example) could have some sort of setting to never show in /list. This will probably require a server update, but I'd be willing to lend assistance in looking into the possibility.

 

[javier99]

Making these change could add some mystery to the game. But it's really annoying farming for hours for no purpose because you don't know what poke you can find which can waster players time and bored them.

 

[nickmen2]

I very painfully admit that removing the /list command could do amazing things to dynamic this game has. CynicalChoco pretty much nailed every point i could have covered.

But More Importantly, Why are we changing the system? why aren't we refining the one we have right now? Why aren't we working on fixing Broken Moves. Fixing broken moves could change the dynamic of this game much more than changing the /list command which could always be worked around by the wiki or things like it. It will give much more variety to pokemon's values.

 

[Tecknician]

I very painfully admit that removing the /list command could do amazing things to dynamic this game has. CynicalChoco pretty much nailed every point i could have covered.

But More Importantly, Why are we changing the system? why aren't we refining the one we have right now? Why aren't we working on fixing Broken Moves. Fixing broken moves could change the dynamic of this game much more than changing the /list command which could always be worked around by the wiki or things like it. It will give much more variety to pokemon's values.

Ones easy, the other is next to impossible atm. And while I have been improving some of the moves, I am not qualified to do what is needed for what you want.