What is your opinion of the community?

[risefromruins]

I started playing the game on a separate account a few months back (name is not important) and I didn't use any special privileges to do well. I never bought membership, I never asked for help from experienced players to give me pokes/money, and I never QQ'd about it being hard.

I actually played the game.

I caught 1 HR pokemon, if you even consider Chansey to be a worthwhile HR, and I was not only able to trade just that ONE pokemon to make enough money to get a surfboard....I was even able to put together a decent battling team. FROM ONE HORRIBLY RARE POKEMON.

The game is not hard, it requires a little bit of work for sure, but it is not impossible to make money.

Before I made that account sometimes I would feel sympathy for players who had trouble getting a surfboard, but now after my experiences as a regular player....I feel no remorse whatsoever. If you put in a little time and do a little research on the forums, the game is easy.

Edit: One thing I will say is tough is making money from simply grinding pokemon. Things in game are priced relatively high compared to how much money you get from wild/trainer battles. But again, all that can be fixed by catching a rare pokemon.

The problem is that the "solution" is to rely on other people who already have money in order to make money. If you can't see how flawed that is, then of course you see no problem.

I really do not like that new players are required to trade in order to do anything. That is not a healthy environment, no matter which way you spin it. The problem is that there is no self-sustainable way to fund your own journey in your own way at your own pace. Sure it teaches/encourages people to trade (in theory at least), but it is an unnecessary hurdle that is decidedly not fun to some players (those that prefer solo play) and thus artificially alienates them.

Any system that relies on the following to work is a horrible system with no long-term health or life potential:
1. Luck (encountering then capturing rare Pokemon)
2. Other players (trading your first trophy away in order to advance)
3. Some people having more money than others

Yes you can fight NPCs and yes you can grind but we still lack any sort of actual economic balance. There's not enough to spend cash on, there's not enough cash to buy those things, and the only way to earn your cash is to grind in some way, shape or form. Finding a rare Pokemon is still going to be a grind most of the time. Yes, some people will always have more money than others in games, but our system RELIES on that, which is why it fails.

I personally see trading as an extremely important part of the game, and thus it is necessary to make it so that players learn to do so early on.

To name one, Diablo 3, is another game that you have to trade in if you want to get some good gear. If you don't....well then you can never be that great.

That being said, once the mart is implemented again things will get easier. The only thing else that will be needed to make the system work more "efficiently" would be to bump up the dropped money rate which will make it a bit easier for players to buy pokemon from the mart, thus making the game a bit more smooth.

The system may be flawed, but I have personally made it work on 3 separate accounts. I started from scratch 3 different times and became successful (if you can call it that).

It's not a hard concept, it just involves a little work.

Well, I'm relatively new to PWO, and I DO sometimes ask noob questions, but don't try to spam the chat with it, and I never ask to trade or sell because I don't have enough rep LOL. I do think the all chat ruins everything but yeah. I don't really think the community is good, but not bad if you compare it to the Sonic fanbase ("Sonic Adventure 3 will put Nintendo out of buisness!" HA HA HA, no) or the Pokemon community (sounds heavily ironic but I'm not referring to anyone on the board, it's just the competitive Pokemon players on Smogon, or the people who make GardevoirxHuman, LucarioxHuman or whatever fanfiction writers, and let's not forget, people who draw Pokemon

*shivers at the thought of my childhood ruined*).

There's nothing wrong with asking questions (it's actually my job to answer them lol), it's just some members of the community don't have patience to deal with new players. I'll admit that I'm guilty of losing my patience sometimes. As you can see by some of my previous posts in this thread, I'm big on doing things yourself and earning what you get. A lot of the answers to most "noob" questions can be found by simply reading what the NPC's on starter island have to say!

When people ask questions like, "Where do I get my first pokemon?" or "Where do I find Pikachu?" (Both questions that are adressed via NPC's on starter island), those are questions I do not enjoy answering. When someone asks about the literal reason neg xp occurs, or even when a NPC/Gym Leader can be rebattled (addressed on Starter Island, but not explained in its' entirety), the community should be more then willing to answer that. But instead, flaming occurs over every little question and the constant crying just gets old.

 

[PsychoticSylph]

It has its ups and downs,
at first I thought the community wasn't all that great.

I admit I can be a bit of a dunce.
I try my best to do some research before I ask a question but sometimes I have to ask when I can't find the answer.
And usually when I do most people seem to attack you for being a noob, or being dumb for not looking in the wiki etc.
Its really hurtful.
Maybe it was just my bad luck that I ran into the bullies of the community,
because I see that a lot of people like to help one another.

But because of the stern answers I was getting it made it very intimidating to be apart of social aspect of the game.

Newbies will always ask questions that have obvious answers posted everywhere,
but that doesn't give anyone the right to insult or yell at them.
Especially since I'm sure there are kids playing who may not have the experience with a game like this.
Kids just wanna play, & not really get into the technical forum stuff.

The community isn't all bad.. but its very difficult to give it a chance after you start off with a bad experience in chat.
Anyway, thats my opinion.
^-^​

 

[Glaceon01]

You just have to find the right people sylph

 

[PsychoticSylph]

I did
Naliorf saved me from the alley ways of the newbie section,
& put me into the nice and friend filled guilds world <3

Thats why I said I thought the community wasn't all that great 'at first'.​

 

[Guest]

I haven't really experinced it, but if someone tried to insult me for being a noob, I would say go back to Smogon and look up their stupid tier list.

 

[Chocobo7]

I dont mean any disrespect to the vets, and I understand that I haven't been around for very long. I'm just saying that the community is what we make of it. And I'd like to help make it better. I thank you for your opinion, and maby we can work together to make the community what it use to be, or better.

I think we have a winner!

But seriously, if people are saying that the community is worse because of a lack of talking or channels not being what they once were, then why not bring it back? Most people get their ideas of what it is based on what they see when they're online, if they see trading, they'll follow suit, if they see friendly talking, they'll be more likely to join in themselves. All it takes is for one or two people to make an effort and you'll start to see a domino effect as other people statr to see and pick it up too.

 

[Glaceon01]

Domino effect, now there's a historical term, nice use of words.

 

[Guest]

No Poll for this thread??....

Well,.. it is a nice community though...

 

[Guest]

I've only been playing for a short amount of time, but I generally find people in the chat helpful. I've noticed Professor.Oak is constantly helping people, and most of the time if you ask a question, someone is usually happy enough to answer. In turn I also try to return the favour as much as possible and help with anything I can.

But one thing that really gets to me about this particular community, and Zebra you were there when this happened to me, is when people call you out as a 'troll' for simply asking a question or trying to spark conversation.

More often than not I think people are on a constant mission to suck up and staff and try to look good here, because they have some little idea in their head that they are going to some how be rewarded. I find that this really takes away from the community because people are constantly pretending they're upset about silly little things and acting as if they have the right to enforce some in game law that doesn't exist to try and earn brownie points with staff.

Personally I think that if everyone was a little more relaxed about 'trolling' and were more open to just having a conversation, things would run a whole lot smoother. If you consider any kind of conversation trolling then perhaps you should just leave the channels, or only remain in the channels that are useful to you.

Anyways, all in all I think taking a bit of a sense of humour into the game really makes for a better community experience, and if more people were willing to just chat and have a laugh without the fear of people constantly harassing them for trolling then there would be far more activity in the chat.

 

[Derek]

Chocobo hit the nail on the head, as the expression goes. I loged on one day to see Proffesor.Oak hosting a hide and seek game for a 50k prize. People loved it, someone hosting a charity. So I follwed in his example, and hosted a few rounds here and there myself. And guess what happened...... I loged on the other day, and someone else was hosting a couple rounds, they were using pokemon they no longer needed ( or wanted ) as the prize. And again another day I saw someone who had won a few rounds from me, hosting hide and seek games. So as chocobo said they follow suit, their using spare money to help other players advance in the game. Its become like a little family, were all closer because of this. So I was wondering were do we go from here, what other ideas can we come up with to strenghten the community. I promise you others will follow in our footsteps......

 

[CheckeredZebra]

Well, that's why I was asking. What are we doing (be it positive or negative) to make others follow? From that, one can suggest changes.

Also I'm pretty invested in this community and knowing all of your opinions is important =P

 

[Saric]

There's a lot of things that I can say about it but i'll make it short.
To be overly blunt, I dislike it.
Now grant it having joined in 2008 I'm a bit biased, but it doesn't help that the majority of people are either clueless, or are clueless and refuse to learn how to do things or just flat out refuse to read.
Also I don't like the fact on how some of the newer people don't trust anyone's word except those who are in staff or who refuse to state their problem to anyone but staff.
Most are just stubborn really.
As for the staff as far as I can tell outside of the "helpers" and "moderators" and the GE's they all seem rather useless.
It'd just be nice for them to have something to show publicly that they're actually doing something rather than making it seem that they're just sitting there.
As for the DEV team they're rather useless as well. I never see any active and the whole DEV team in itself is a complete mess. They get recruited and do a few things for a few weeks then just drop off.
That's all that I can think of currently.

 

[Glaceon01]

We might have our differences and may not have the best past, but Saric at-least speaks truthfully. That I respect. The third staff member with some sense imo.

 

[GawertyXL]

saric isnt a staff member, hes a irc member with voice, big difference.

 

[Guest]

The community is nice i think.

 

[Ragus]

I'm one of many that could fill a book or two with the knowledge on pokemon that resides in my spiderweb filled head, I also consider myself to be a vet. With all that being said I still get a few players here and there calling me noob or just plain disagree with me, when I'm trying to help answer questions. I due believe that our community is better then what is was, but some people just want to argue to no end. I remember the term mini mod being thrown about all the time back in the day, but I haven't seen it mentioned even once now.

 

[mad30]

As for the staff as far as I can tell outside of the "helpers" and "moderators" and the GE's they all seem rather useless.
It'd just be nice for them to have something to show publicly that they're actually doing something rather than making it seem that they're just sitting there.

You see the work of these ppl more cuz their work you almost have to notice, however heres a list of work other groups have done that have been released in the past year.

Dragons den - mappers
Cerulean cave - mappers
Halloween event - mappers, crs, art
Christmas event - mappers, art, crs possible don't remember if their work made it in
Shiny sprits - art
New pdex/main website (images/concept released) - art


Likewise we have several projects going on that we haven't released yet, more info will be avaliable soon. Many of these projects I am heading and due to various reasons including the dos attacks, me leaving for the summer, and other higher priority concerns have been delayed that are planned to be released later.

For awhile we were down to 1 mapper, 1 cr and 1 active art person, that's when things started to slow down.

 

[mad30]

OH this needs to be bumped and re-examined. ill post my examination latter! win thread

 

[Peace-Enforcer]

I am one of those solo players and I don't help actively in game cause i have had some bad experiences while helping out some less experienced players.
Don't get me wrong i help players with advices but only via xat and players i believe are worth helping, so that made me get more involved in guild scene I'm happy to say I have been rewarded for my time with friends and a pleasant casual talk. Recommend it to anyone since i believe that "old times" talk spirit is preserved with in guilds and channels in game due to waves of new players just have more of an informative nature which might not be as bad with just few tweeks to behaviour, nothing that cant b solved with a good example.
How ever I do believe that if u want to change anything you just need to get your self involved (example: Hide 'N' Seek). PWO is a small game so just a few like minded players can make a difference. good luck and have fun!

Note: game is far from hard its just that players don't understand mechanics behind it and dont get involved enough to get informed

 

[TheWyatt2012]

There's always been a competitive aura within the community. Many of these people are looking for staff positions or have been banned in the past; or they're just simply rude. The only people that are respected are veterans and staff. I've heard from several people, including vets, that there have been some people who managed to get staff because they "mini-modded".

Not to mention the highly competitive economy we have in PWO. I personally think that the addition of gifting tokens has widened the gap between the people who spend money on the game and the people who don't.

And of course there's been drama. Corrine and Sarge as well as Zidonuke just to name a few instances. The community has grown to have a somewhat negative and competitive attitude.