Raichuforyou

There doesn't have to be a sink to encounter everything. It's ok.

Team preview that allows everyone to be aware of what's being brought in, with the capability of being able to go into your box and swap out anything if desired. A more intuitive chat that maybe even pops up specifically while you are doing the raid. I think 75% of random players don't realize there is a Link channel you can talk in or receive messages from. I'd imagine most have Global up by default. Ability to matchmake when you have 2-3 players already present in a link.

Admittedly on New Years I made a drinking game in random queue when players would make baffling decisions like this... It was a long night.

Hello all, I wanted to make a post here to kind of essentially vomit all my thoughts out while also getting some community input as to how raids are going. Engage at your own risk. I will likewise include a link to Reddit for a post of the same nature there as well: Reddit Before I get accusations that I hate the game and I'm just trying to knee-jerk baseless complaints: I used to staff for this game, have been playing it since 2013, and personally recommend to anyone that is semi-interested in Pokemon that this is the best way to have a Pokemon related experience. Before I have any criticisms for a lack of skill, I've gotten to the top 100 in OU, Doubles, and Randoms prior before, have two whole boxes of level 100 comps, and generally have been able to participate in past events that require fighting a very buffed up AI. These complaints have been brewing for a long time and have been contributing to a bad feeling I'm having when it comes to the direction of this game. I'll get it out to begin with that I think that the state of raids, bosses, or generally any intense AI fight has been growing increasingly frustrating to exist as our "endgame content" with a huge accessibility issue. While I want to welcome any sort of content that is highly skilled, and encourages MMO-like interaction with other members of the community, I can't help but feel like a lot of this content is increasingly being tailored towards a a higher spectrum of players who simply have an insane amount of resources to throw at and solve any problem. I'd like to first of all dispel a notion that these events are being tailored towards "highly skilled" players, and being able to complete them is indicative that one is a "highly skilled" player. They're not. Every time these events come out, there is generally an obfuscation of knowledge in terms of how to beat the bosses/raids. The meta eventually gets found out, and those with resources will rush to make or buy niche comps incredibly specific to these bosses or raids, or completely outfit their mons with brand new moves. I have a few general grievances with how this content is being handled. I'll try to limit it to just a few points: Resource-Driven Success vs. Actual Skill One of the biggest issues I see is that success in these events feels more about having a massive stockpile of resources rather than actual skill. Players with the time, money, or existing wealth to quickly breed or purchase specific Pokémon, moves, or items are at a huge advantage. For the average player, this creates a massive barrier to entry. The gameplay becomes less about strategy or skill and more about whether you’ve pre-farmed enough resources to throw at the event. This is even a problem for a person like myself who literally has 2 boxes of comp ready level 100 mons. This gets frustrating when you need to give your Blissey a completely specific set that is geared towards fighting a specific raid or boss monster. Not only does that cost resources, but there is again a cost to re-gear it up for competitive once again. You're not having to breed 5x31's, but the cost of having to have a level 100 Murkrow or a specific Sabelye set adds up. This gap also exacerbates the disparity between veteran players with stockpiles of cash and competitive Pokémon, and newer or more casual players who are left scrambling to participate. It feels like there’s a missing middle ground—content that’s accessible while still rewarding skill and effort over sheer resource availability. Lack of Communication and Accessibility These events often feel like puzzles, which could be fun, but the lack of communication about mechanics or effective strategies makes it unnecessarily frustrating. The community is left to figure things out through trial and error, which usually results in frustration for less-experienced players or those not plugged into community hubs like Discord or forums. Players shouldn’t need to hunt down niche meta guides just to feel like they can engage with this content. Being in a team, on the forums, or generally plugged in to this other content should be a reward to complete the content most efficiently as possible. It should not be a prerequisite to even have a shot at beating the content alone. On top of that, the AI mechanics often feel cheap rather than challenging—like they’re designed to invalidate most player strategies unless you build hyper-specific counters. This creates a “gatekeeping” effect, where only those who already have access to certain strategies or Pokémon can even attempt the content. Team Dependency and Solo Queue Accessibility While I enjoy the social aspect of MMO-like content, the dependency on forming or finding highly coordinated teams can be exhausting. Events often favor players who have established friend groups or guilds, making it harder for solo players to participate. The current random matchmaking system is a bit of a joke at the moment, and if anything seems like a small band-aid application to prevent criticism that the raids currently aren't 100% tailored to those that are in pre-existing groups. I have managed to do 3 Star raids in random queue. However, the level of coordination that is expected from players frankly is ridiculous when suggestion charts look like this, just to fight a Vanilluxe: I have no way to tell what Pokemon my soon to be teammates will be using. I don't know if I should be the one that should be bringing a Tailwind or Haze user. Hell, I have no way to even know that my other teammates are following some of these "community" guides, and if they're trying out some of these battles for the first time with their own strategies. Matchmaking with at least 1 or 2 other friends is impossible at the moment to even try and alleviate some of that stress. 4 stacks of players who have had the ability to communicate prior and organize what Pokemon they have to use are undoubtedly the kings of these events... But the baseline of what should be attempt-able should not start with what those groups are capable of achieving. They should get rewarded in terms of getting some of these rewards sooner and quicker than random queues, or people who play the game who aren't in the loop as to what are the working strategies. But I am afraid balance at the moment is pretty much only catered to these sort of groups, leading to more frustration if you're not one to participate in them. Punishing Mechanics for Non-Meta Strategies Honestly, one of the most annoying things about these raids and bosses is how hard they punish you for trying anything that’s not "meta." If you don’t show up with the exact Pokémon, movesets, or strategies that everyone says are required, you might as well not bother. It sucks all the fun out of trying to come up with your own solutions. I get that there’s always going to be an “optimal” way to do things, but it feels like the way these fights are set up forces everyone into the same narrow playstyle. Like, why even have hundreds of Pokémon to pick from if only a handful of them are actually useful? It’s not just frustrating for more serious players—it makes it way harder for casuals who just want to give these events a shot. Instead of rewarding creativity or letting people figure out their own way to win, the game’s basically like, “Nope, wrong answer. Come back when you’ve got the right comps.” For a game with so much variety and potential for different playstyles, this feels like such a wasted opportunity. There's some other issues I could bring up, such as these raids and their rewards being present for a limited time, the Suicune raid further exacerbating the resource and time issue, the fact that rewards such as Jirachi are ACTUALLY competitive staples and will most likely be seen on some OU teams moving forward. But regardless, these issues I'd argue are the most pervasive in terms of how bosses/raids have been handled ever since their introduction. While I’m all for challenging content and rewarding skillful play, the current structure of raids and boss fights increasingly feels inaccessible to many players. I'd like to hear your opinions on this as well, even if it's to tell me off that I'm actually wrong.

Don't play on a 800x600 resolution monitor

I think raids in their current state are really inaccessible. This has been ongoing since the 10th anniversary Boss, but I really want to stop having to breed hyper specific comps to deal with bosses/raids. I want to use my OU comps and actually have a shot at winning.

One of the best ways to get money in PokeMMO is volunteer for overtime at my job for the weekend. I'm not kidding. The time to yen ratio is much better favored for someone who works a minimum wage US job versus actually trying to make money within the game itself. I'm not going to comment on the aspect if orbs and watches are pay to win or not, but I suppose my comment is a critique of a deeper issue the the ability for one to sell RP items and vouchers.

I run Hyper-V on my main system to run virtual machines for various personal use. Obviously it is against the rules to run PokeMMO on a virtual machine, but I am wondering if there is anything that would accidentally flag me if I were running a VM but playing PokeMMO only on the host machine. I'd make this a support ticket, but just want to ask this publicly for the community to be aware of the answer.

I think accessibility is a huge issue right now for raids. People will give you options on the forums of "X raid monster is easy. Just coordinate with your team and bring these specific mons in this specific order and use moves in this specific order. Just make sure you're all in the same discord call while doing it". It kind of makes matchmaking for raids kind of useless if players need to use these hyper specific strategies to defeat them. Why would I ever enter matchmaking for a raid if I know I'm just going to lose and waste my time?

This is kind of what I imagined the average shiny hunter in PokeMMO to be like.

I'm seeing this 34 minutes from your comment being posted, good luck man

Why not set up during the anticipated protect turn and proceed to sweep the rest of your opponents team?

I think the idea of keeping more experienced people with experienced/better people in raids is a horrible idea and just results in a feedback loop where good players always get good teammates and bad players always get bad teammates.

I've raised this criticism before going back to Halloween and Anniversary events, but I think the amount of random stuff that bosses/raid mons have been doing has been turning into a huge undocumented mess, and has been resulting in a huge lack of respect for player's time, and making the content or rewards for the associated events less accessible. Let me elaborate a bit more. When going through the raid battles for the first time, there's been some random abilities that especially aren't apparent upon playing against these mons compared to vanilla mons. How am I supposed to know that Slaking has a group paralysis effect under 50%? How am I supposed to know that these mons eventually shrug off status effects, flinches, stat drops, etc? Can I transform into them? How is Torment supposed to work? Can I use imprison? Can use Shedninja, or count on some BS ability nullifying Wonder Guard? The answer of course to all of this is to try the strategy, lose, then try out another one to find out that the boss isn't subject to a niche move interaction. I'd argue this isn't fun at all, and where a big lack of respect for player's time happens, and dissuades players from trying out certain kinds of content entirely. This is especially a larger problem with Raids, where you have 3 other real players working with you who absolutely could get mad that you're trying to "experiment with strategies" at the moment. I get it that gimmic strats are trying to be avoided by creating a bunch of these special interactions/nullified moves, but I think the only thing that has been happening as a result of it is a very limited/uncreative way to approach the bosses, and just creating tedious difficulty. There are frankly amazing guides like this that the community has invested a bunch of time into to document what each Pokemon does at what time. But an argument of mine is that the community shouldn't be having to do this, and this shit should really be written down from the start to respect player's time. I think some really solid rules of what can/cannot be done to a boss, and their abilities, phases, etc should be part of patch notes, or at least be released by the developers when they come out.

Tier lists are just for fun bro, if you don't like it, you absolutely can just not comment.

Strange women lying in ponds distributing legendaries is no basis for a system of government.

Game too monotonous. Nobody in this thread is really arguing that the current way of getting legendaries is difficult, it's just boring as hell.

We're not exactly asking for spoon fed content here. We're fine with a meaningful and fun grind (I think a lot of people were much better with obtaining Shaymin, for example). I think we're all pretty clear in our arguments here that we want more engaging gameplay to obtain the legendaries other than biking left and right.

Even if this is "less bad" shiny hunting and more in-line with vanilla Pokemon shiny hunting, there's a reason why a lot of competitive players don't mess with shiny hunting and stick to playing competitive; it's how mundane and awfully boring to just move left and right or spam sweet scent all day.

Yep not needlessly trying to attack you like some people on this forum do. I think we're both in agreement though that something probably should be done to make them a little easier to obtain.

I don't really think catching them should mimmic shiny hunting, nor should have any aspect of shiny hunting increase their odds. There's a huge reason many of us just don't engage in shiny hunting. It's boring, tedious, and really only rewards you a cosmetic variant. The problem is that the birds and the dogs (and many future legendaries) are competitive staples that have to be acquired if you're interested in running a specific team. It essentially forces a lot of competitive players to basically shiny hunt, which is where a lot of annoyance comes from. It'd be one thing if I spent 3 hours in a dungeon or some other sort of enriching in-game activity that was actually fun to achieve these legendaries. Biking left and right in a patch of grass for three to six hours is a hard sell for most people, especially those with lives.

I notice in the dex, it specified that Articuno was currently either currently roaming Kanto lands or Kanto seas. I'm going to seriously pursue a Zapdos hunt this month, but I do have to ask a few questions: 1. If the dex specifies that the bird/dog is currently only catchable on land, it's absolutely a waste to go hunting on sea at that moment, correct? 2. When does that dex information (if it's roaming land or sea) change? Is the information as to where the beast is roaming consistent for any player, or is this player/client dependent? 3. Are there some suspicions that the legendary beast is actually roaming on a specific route at specific times? I've seen catching parties notably in Kanto on Island 5 trying to catch the birds. 4. What are some players thinking the encounter rate for the birds is at the moment?

I would like to join!

Damn these sorts of comments are why users of forums for niche hobbies and games have a reputation for being insufferable assholes. Is this the only part of your life you have control of? Regardless, I don't think removing the edit marker is a good idea.