PvP should not consume items

[NotMyWaifu]

Items like berries, gems, herbs, red card, eject button, focus sash and air balloon are currently consumed if they are used in PvP battles to help them retain value. I don't think they should be and I think the fact that they are is a detriment to the PvP scene.

 

PvP is a competitive environment and decision making is a vital part of that. Some items having an operating cost and some items not is something that will affect what items people decide to use. You can run a sitrus berry instead of leftovers, but is the difference worth the 1000 pokeyen every time it's used? That's not something that you should have to weigh in a competitive environment. Those decisions should only be made based on what strategy will suit your team best.

 

This disproportionately hurts new players. The game tells you nothing about items being consumed in PvP, so going in expecting them not to be consumed after the battle only to have that expectation subverted will be a universally negative experience for someone just getting started. There's already enough of a barrier to entry in making a team as is, this makes it worse. The actual cost of these items might also not be that low for these players which further adds to the frustration. If you just made a PvP team being told that you need to grind more to keep using it just sucks.

 

It disproportionally hurts doubles as a format. You can easily build whole singles teams without a single item that gets consumed. For doubles, not so much. Damage reducing berries, sitrus, sash, gems, they're all vital items in doubles. Teambuilding for doubles is more complex than singles, which again, already is enough of a barrier to entry as is. As a newer player trying to get into the format, I didn't really know why there were times where I just could not find any doubles games to spectate. That makes way more sense to me now. Why play a format where you could easily spend like 4k per battle just to lose when you can play singles for free?

 

It's just riddled with negative experiences that don't need to be there. Your opponent disconnects early after you use an item turn 1? Well now you're not getting BP, and you gotta pay for an item. You end up kind of wasting 1k if you didn't need the gem's extra damage. Losses are worse when they cost you a few thousand. The rewards from PvP don't really make up for the cost either when the big ticket items are untradable.

 

The benefits for the economy are mostly negligible. Yes, there's probably quite a large volume of these items being sinked through PvP. There are other things in place though that let these items retain value.

 

Gems have a price floor of 900 pokeyen, you can always sell them to the shop for a price not too far below what they're listed for on the GTL. A good 40 of them are also sinked to change hidden power types, which doesn't add value to all types of gems but it does for a fair few of them. They're perfectly suited for muscling through more difficult fights in the story, though for that to see widespread use it might need to be recommended more often.

 

Berries all have decent price floors as well. Sitrus and lum sell for 800, type damage reducing berries for 700, pinch berries for 550-600. Not to mention they have a fantastic sink in harvesting tools. If a berry becomes cheap enough, you can harvest seeds from them for a profit. Those seeds are then sinked to produce more berries, which will inevitably be sinked again later. Just anything that produces seeds for leppa berries is certain to retain value.

 

Items like sash, button and balloon are in a bit of an awkward spot though. They have a 100 pokeyen price floor which is nothing to write home about. They don't have alternative sinks on the scale of berries and gems. They also don't really fit into PvE as easily as gems. I recognize that something would need to be done to prevent these items from just becoming near worthless. It would be a substantial improvement just to see berries and gems not being consumed but I wouldn't want these items left behind either. A transitionary process can be handled lots of different ways. Their BP cost and price floor could be increased, a "permanent" version could be introduced which would ask players to sink several non-permanent ones, more of them could be sinked through move tutors. There are probably hundreds of good ways to deal with that, I wouldn't know the right solution to it but I have faith the devs will.

 

TL;DR:

• Consumable items being sinked increases the barrier to entry for PvP and can be a negative experience for newer players
• Doubles as a format is hurt disproportionately by this, as consumable items are more important there
• There is enough in place for berries and gems to retain value even if they aren't sinked in PvP battles, so that change can be made immediately
• Items like focus sash probably need a little more care if it's not okay for them to lose value for some time

[Poufilou]

Lol

 

Assuming you do spend 4k per battle (unrealistic) all the time (unrealistic) in doubles matches which are kinda short let's say 10 minutes, in 50 matches you spend 200k (unrealistic) for more than 8h doing exclusively PvP. 200k is what you make in 1h with the most common money making methods. I don't know what else to add... besides, with 50 matches you also probably get enough BP + rewards that would probably cover idk 1/4 of the expenses with 50/50 win rate... 

 

The only thing that was indeed impactful to PvP players were the gems, but they did changes in favour of PvP players (crafting more gems with same materials) and changes to favour acquisition of Mysterious gems (phenomenon last longer). 

 

TL;DR:

 

   • Wtf

 

 

Edited September 14, 2022 by Poufilou

[NotMyWaifu]

15 hours ago, Poufilou said:

Assuming you do spend 4k per battle (unrealistic) all the time (unrealistic) in doubles matches which are kinda short let's say 10 minutes, in 50 matches you spend 200k (unrealistic) for more than 8h doing exclusively PvP. 200k is what you make in 1h with the most common money making methods. I don't know what else to add... besides, with 50 matches you also probably get enough BP + rewards that would probably cover idk 1/4 of the expenses with 50/50 win rate... 

 

The only thing that was indeed impactful to PvP players were the gems, but they did changes in favour of PvP players (crafting more gems with same materials) and changes to favour acquisition of Mysterious gems (phenomenon last longer).

My entire point is that it should cost nothing to operate a PvP team period. Not that these costs are somehow too high for anyone to grind for. Of course I can do gym reruns or a trainer rerun and get 200k in an hour, but there should just come a point where I am done grinding for a PvP team that I've already finished making. Gems and berries don't need PvP to sink them for them to retain value, the fact that they are sinked is not beneficial in any way shape or form. Of course you can compensate for the cost with the PvP rewards, but having to give up your rewards just to maintain your team doesn't sound very fun does it? Why do that for doubles when you don't have to for OU or randoms?

 

I also did not say that you will spend 4k per battle every battle, I said you could easily spend that much per battle. Which isn't unrealistic at all with how often consumable items are used in doubles. Crobat, hitmontop, salamence and scizor run a gem most of the time. A decent amount of tyranitars are holding a chople berry or focus sash. Mienshao and mamoswine are almost always sashed. Whimsicott, raichu, pelipper, chandelure and excadrill use one pretty often as well. Sitrus berry is commonly carried by rotom-w and blastoise and plenty of leftovers pokemon also see around 10% usage of sitrus as well. Having 4 consumable items on the same doubles team is not uncommon at all. You aren't necessarily going to use all 4 every single battle, but that isn't going to be a uncommon occurrence. I stand by that point.

[Poufilou]

19 minutes ago, NotMyWaifu said:

My entire point is that it should cost nothing to operate a PvP team period.

It's literally almost nothing, be honest, I think there are a lot of exaggerations here that are necessary for your arguments to be valid. Everything here costs money, its a MMO, if you play PvP you should be always grinding a little bit for money anyways since you need more comps, and the money that goes into consumable items is so negligible in a game where you need to grind at least some money most of the time. The balance between time spent playing PvP and time spent grinding for PvP is not at all weighted by item consumption, or matters so little compared to making the comps you need. The difference between an OU player and a Doubles player is far from being as huge as you try to make it, though I agree it can exists for someone spamming 500+ dubs games on ladder. But in the end, someone who plays more PvP will have to spend some time grinding too, it affects only people who play a lot PvP and not enough grinding. Idk, managing your resources is a basic thing in any MMO. 

 

Also some of these items have economy behind, with players making a lil bit of money farming them, this game's economy is already crap and I don't think removing niche markets that you can maybe have fun using is any good. 

[NotMyWaifu]

1 hour ago, Poufilou said:

It's literally almost nothing, be honest, I think there are a lot of exaggerations here that are necessary for your arguments to be valid. Everything here costs money, its a MMO, if you play PvP you should be always grinding a little bit for money anyways since you need more comps, and the money that goes into consumable items is so negligible in a game where you need to grind at least some money most of the time. The balance between time spent playing PvP and time spent grinding for PvP is not at all weighted by item consumption, or matters so little compared to making the comps you need. The difference between an OU player and a Doubles player is far from being as huge as you try to make it, though I agree it can exists for someone spamming 500+ dubs games on ladder. But in the end, someone who plays more PvP will have to spend some time grinding too, it affects only people who play a lot PvP and not enough grinding. Idk, managing your resources is a basic thing in any MMO.

You're still approaching this as if I'm saying the costs being high is the issue, which just isn't the case. I've already acknowledged you can just do a gym rerun and make up the cost, I don't know why you're asking me to do that a second time. Everything costs money once, not everything costs money every time you use it. Leftovers costs you money once but from there on out will never cost you anything ever again. Sitrus berry will cost you about 1k every time it is used in battle. That difference has no place in a competitive environment and I don't think this game being an MMO is a valid reason for it to be that way.

 

I get that the several million pokeyen you could easily put into creating a team is more than you spend on upkeeping it for 500 battles. But those pokemon are a one and done type thing. You don't need to pay money for your 5x31 mon ever again once you have it. It doesn't have you do any sort of needless grinding for upkeep. I wouldn't mind paying a large sum of money to get rid of the upkeep permanently for myself, but it would just generally be better for everyone (especially new players) if it weren't there at all.

 

1 hour ago, Poufilou said:

Also some of these items have economy behind, with players making a lil bit of money farming them, this game's economy is already crap and I don't think removing niche markets that you can maybe have fun using is any good. 

I touched on this in the first post but I guess I'll just repeat it. It'll be completely fine for berries and gems, both have measures in place that do far more to let them retain value than PvP consuming them. If it's just those two types of items that would already improve things a massive amount. Items like sash shouldn't be left behind though, and just need a little more adjustment so as to not let them become worthless.

 

What niche markets would be removed? People could still farm berries for profit just fine, to my knowledge nobody farms gems for profit (could be wrong about this, just haven't seen anyone talk about it) and BP farming has plenty of other good value options available (breeding items are already better value than sashes anyway). I don't think the game's economy is crap at all either, it's the most solid out of any online pokemon game.

[Poufilou]

49 minutes ago, NotMyWaifu said:

That difference has no place in a competitive environment and I don't think this game being an MMO is a valid reason for it to be that way.

Why ? What is the reasoning behind this assessment ? And in what world do players have to do needless grinding for buying consumable items ? In what world is it a concern for new players ? Sorry but I still get the feeling you're invoking big reasons for a little issue that "playing the game" solve without any trouble caused to players. 

 

No one will sell sitrus/lum/dmg reducing berries if they aren't consumed during pvp. I agree gems would still sell because of hidden power mechanic. You can get sustain most other consumable with BP you earn battling as you said (and even make profit).

 

And before it comes to that, rewards being too low are another issue that has nothing to do with what you bring up, but more like time spent / rewarded situation (which is imo only an issue in tiers where it takes too long to find one battle). 

 

I don't want to push the argument further cos maybe people have things to say, ultimately there are things interesting to discuss about PvP sustainability and costs, especially with HA to come, but really, consumable items ? It just feels like picking the least important stuff and building it up to be some big issue that could be tackled otherwise. 

[Shioxm]

Just ran over this this too being confused why my white herbs and air balloons kept disappearing played most games without them. Be it cheap or not I still personally hate this as you can forget and being able to put your comp ready mons in a box with a full set and just leave them there is extremely convenient. These items being consumable tether you to a PC while you are doing PVP. I would rather pay 200k for a permanent pvp item than pay 1k for the same item many times.

 

Costs a lot of money or not, it´s an inconvenience that I do not see why it has to exist. Do people really make so much money with items that cost 1k? I´d argue that´s also insignificant for the seller. If you really want them to cost money you should at least be able to craft a permanent one with say 50-100 of each item. 100 would make it roughly fall in line with the most expensive pvp items being choice items. Ofc, it´s not that simple as who knows what 1 of those items is gonna sell for once you make it possible to craft a permanent one.

 

On 9/15/2022 at 6:38 PM, Poufilou said:

its a MMO, if you play PvP you should be always grinding a little bit for money anyways

Also disagree with this very strongly. I think ideally PvP in mmo's should be self sustainable without touching any other parts of the game once you got a decent comp and don´t s*ck. I agree that it´s less clear in Pokemon than in other mmo's as traditionally grinding up pokemon has been a core part of the game. Yet, take a look at retail pokemon. There is a reason why pvp players turn to cheating/exploiting the game to get their mons faster. You waste a lot of time that you could use to improve your play instead. I would think the people who play a tons of pvp are very different from those who like to breed pokemon, there isn´t necessarily an overlap. I don´t have any concrete data for this but my intuition would tell me that overlap probably becomes less the higher up the ladder you look.

[drewq]

18 minutes ago, Shioxm said:

I think ideally PvP in mmo's should be self sustainable without touching any other parts of the game once you got a decent comp and don´t s*ck. 

PvP has and never will be self sustainable if you play at a high level and care to do so for more than a month. 

Edited September 10, 2023 by drewq

[Grisaia]

The issue isn't that the items are consumed, the issue is that pvp rewards suck compared to other methods to make money. pvp payouts should be increased considerably.