Neonidas

I think another problem is making things counter intuitive and adding grinding for the sake of grinding, on top of all the other grinding. At some point it's just painfully tedious. For example, I think an item putting people on a ticking clock in a mad rush to get as much money as possible within an hour is counter to the game's design. A slow paced, casual, ideally social game, with competitive play in tournaments with people as an option. They of course don't have to use it, but they'll feel like they're missing out on not only the increased multiplier of the new coin, but the old multiplier they always had with the old one. And they'll be right, if they don't use it, and most other people do, they could potentially be getting less than they've ever gotten, and people doing profitable routes quickly could be getting more than they've ever gotten. Meaning the other people have more wealth, so prices could go up, but these people will have less, so the prices could be more unreasonable. And of course static prices in the game are the same, so now TM's and potions and such can seem even more expensive. Not to mention the nerf to berries and seeds as a moneymaking option, which is also in a way, a nerf to pickup as well. Now, people can log out, and they won't have to worry about losing time on the amulet coin, but that's their option. Rush for an hour straight, or log off. You can't sit around and talk to people, you can't take a break and watch something on YouTube, anything you do during that time period while logged on will seem like wasting time, which is wasting money, which is opposite to the point of the amulet coin. The grinding on top of grinding, is that people were already grinding for money fighting trainers and later gym leaders again. Now they have to grind meowths, either through using a pokemon with steal or covet that won't kill them and getting lucky, or catching them, and getting lucky. But this grinding doesn't serve any purpose other than allowing you to then do the actual grinding which is for money. This adds more time required for the daily grinding, and more tedium because hoping for meowths, hoping they have the item, then stealing from them or catching them is a lot less interesting than fighting trainers or gym leaders. And I think people have a certain tolerance for grinding, especially unengaging and seemingly unnecessary grinding, before they just stop playing a game, especially a game they're not really that invested in, meaning new players. It's not that the amulet coin grinding is that bad, it's that it's adding to what was already there, which might be the straw that broke the camel's back. You do have the option of buying it, but spending money on something, in order to get a bit more money for a certain amount of time isn't very attractive. More to the point, if the prices stabilize to about twenty thousand, that could end up being a loss to a newer player, or at the very least eat into the profits so much it's not really worth buying, which then necessitates grinding for them in order to grind for money. Whereas long time players who know the most profitable routes they can do within an hour, and are dedicated enough to want to grind for an hour straight, can possibly make more money than ever before, while the newer players make less than they ever would have. Which makes getting started into the late game, specifically tournaments, even more difficult, because prices for things they need could go higher, while they could have even less. And remember, this is in addition to EV grinding they have to do to be competitive. Breeding for good IV's and natures, hoping they get a lucky catch, or purchasing pokemon on the market, or probably a mixture of all three. Then acquiring the items they need, either through late game grinding, or through purchasing on the market. Then building up a large enough team and collection of items in order to be able to compete in these tournaments and actually have a chance of winning. If someone was interested in pvp, and maybe even just rushed through the story in order to get to it, they'll be spending a lot of time grinding in order to really be competitive, and this particular change just made it more so. Not to mention making the game seem more inflexible by introducing timers into the equation for grinding money. There are also the previously implemented changes to the base game. People will already likely be turned off by certain choices that seem to have been put in just for the sake of more grinding as opposed to the original pokemon games. Breeding for instance, having the parents disappear, is already a change to the original game, which is just there to make it harder to get more pokemon, and to prevent people from purchasing cheap pokemon with perfect stats and natures. This however makes it harder for people trying to get into competitive play, and makes no real difference for people only playing pve, because they don't really need perfect pokemon for that anyway, and they'll probably stop playing after they've done everything in the story anyway, so they don't really have any need for the competitive pokemon. It could be said that grinding for the perfect pokemon and building up your team is something to do in itself, and that if they could easily acquire the pokemon they might as well just play pokemon showdown. Which is true to some degree, which is why I'm not arguing to change breeding. But my point is, at some point, you make too much unnecessary grinding, and people just lose interest. Different people with have different thresholds for what is or isn't too much, but at some point it becomes too much for too many people. On top of all this, people have a finite amount of time they can spend playing games, and/or are willing to spend playing one particular game. Now obviously you want people to play an mmo for a long time, not all day, but ideally over a long period of time over months and years, and for this game, you would then want them to financially support it in order to continue playing it. And if they have played it that long, they're more likely to be willing to spend money on it to support it. That's why you have timers on fighting trainers and gym leaders, you want them to come on for a while each day to grind, compete in tournaments, talk to friends, etc. And you want them to keep coming back each day in order to do it, which is why you have a cooldown on fighting trainers and gym leaders. But when the game seems arbitrary and removed far enough from the core gameplay, when it seems arbitrary and only placed there for the sake of having it, it can seem like people are doing tedious chores in order to play the actual game. Now sure, a lot of the aspects of the game, like any rpg could be looked at that way, but at some point when it gets far enough removed from the core gameplay, it becomes easier to notice. Especially when there's no in-game reason for things operating the way they do, and they can only be explained from a real world point of view as part of the game design. The obvious example would be trainers and gym battles. Okay, they need time to get ready again, or they'll only accept so many fights so often, fair enough. Makes sense. Your amulet coin being activated for an hour long boost then disappearing doesn't really make sense from an in-game perspective, or rather using in-game logic. Which can take people out of the game and make people think more about the mechanics governing it, and feel more like they're doing arbitrary work rather than playing a game. Back to the thing about the finite amount of time to play games. People play games for enjoyment, they do it in their free time after work or school, or on their days off. They don't want to feel like they're doing chores. They might want to feel like they're working toward something in an enjoyable manner. But they don't want to feeling like they're doing tedious, mind numbing chores in order to play the actual game. At some point it can feel like that's all it is, and people will just wonder, why am I even playing? And then of course they're likely to leave and play something else. This is kind of how it seems grinding for amulet coins in order to grind for money, in order to use the money for something you want or need, in order to actually play the game. At some point the grinding becomes excessive and far enough removed from the core gameplay that it becomes tedious and just seems painful. It's also possible new players in the future won't know about this, the amulet coin changes I mean, and won't feel like they're missing out. They might think that's just some special thing you do late game for more money. But the prices in-game will stay the same, and the prices on the market could get higher if it does get more profitable for longtime players, and new players won't even get as much starting cash from completing the story as they used to, because they won't have the amulet coin for the increased profit from all the trainer battles throughout the story. Which makes breaking into late game pvp content even more difficult. By difficult, of course I mean more time consuming. And the grind, the tedium of the grind, the weird out of place systems, and the arbitrary nature of the systems will be noticed by new players. It might seem pointless to only talk about new players instead of longtime players, the core people supporting the game. But this is an mmo, if the game loses too many people, eventually the core players will have nothing to do, and leave as well, since all they'll really have at that point is the social aspect of the game as well as pvp. As well as not bringing in and hooking new players to become long time players willing to support the game, because they lost interest before they could become invested like the current core players. I'm not sure if this change is so major that it will be the thing to push it too far, and I doubt it'll get changed back anyway, I'm more just speaking about the general game design and possible future updates.