PTS Storyline Balancing Feedback Thread

[cloo]

Not much needs to be said, picked chiko on accident and it was a nightmare. Weak to almost everything and can get absolutely shredded by random trainers if not prepared, such as the trainer with the magby on the second route. In Sprout Tower the bellsprouts could destroy chikos, and I'd find myself running to the pc to heal after every fight, but one of the bellsprouts near the end, with Acid Spray, took multiple tries and strategies with gastly to beat. 

 

I only made it up to the third city, but keeping things balanced, especially for newer players, in the early game, is really important since if it's too hard, they might just drop the game. Good choice putting the starters early on as lure encounters though, definitely needed that, even if those aren't their final locations when the region releases. 

[caioxlive13]

2 minutes ago, cloo said:

Not much needs to be said, picked chiko on accident and it was a nightmare. Weak to almost everything and can get absolutely shredded by random trainers if not prepared, such as the trainer with the magby on the second route. In Sprout Tower the bellsprouts could destroy chikos, and I'd find myself running to the pc to heal after every fight, but one of the bellsprouts near the end, with Acid Spray, took multiple tries and strategies with gastly to beat. 

 

I only made it up to the third city, but keeping things balanced, especially for newer players, in the early game, is really important since if it's too hard, they might just drop the game. Good choice putting the starters early on as lure encounters though, definitely needed that, even if those aren't their final locations when the region releases. 

I'm f***, please say that at least one NPC gives a Gastly...

[cloo]

13 minutes ago, caioxlive13 said:

I'm f***, please say that at least one NPC gives a Gastly...

Can just catch one lol

[Critnix]

Okay, so this is just my experience, keep that in mind.

The balancing for the trainers and stuff is pretty fine for me, nothing hard at the start or the end, if you play it like me and others ofc. Even the E4 was pretty easy, but you should have a decent team and shouldt rush everything with like 2 mons. BUT there is one thing where I see a big problem for beginners, and who wouldve guessed, its whitney. Her Miltank is incredible strong, especially if you dont care about "wasting" time leveling your pokemons. I dont know why but her Miltank outspeeds everything, which is fine for the players who have all regions, because they can simply buy the stuff from the GTL, which beginners cannot because they wont have all the money for it. The problem I see there is that these new player, whjo maybe start their journey in Johto might get frustrated by that alot and be sooner or later like "yeah fuck this, way to hard for beginners, im out" and boom, one player lost. So maybe tweak her a bit down. 
Another thing is the gyarados "boss" fight. Its not a lie that this guy is an easy deal when you have atleast 1 grass or electro type pokemon in your team. It takes some hits and hes gone, also if you keep leveling your pokemons normally hes a bit to underleveled in my opinion, (keep in mind its only MY experience, others can be different).
But yeah the only major problem I see is Whitney for total beginners, who just started pokemmo in  Johto and have 0$ to buy anything on the GTL to make it alot easier to level etc. 

Edit: It is good, that Johto is harder than other regions. You really need to see what pokemon you're using in which fight and in what order. Thats alot of fun no question BUT I think for totall newbies who just go by the looks or popularity of specific pokemons some trainers/gyms can be frustrating. 

 

Edited June 11, 2023 by Critnix

[XanarchyNL]

Having completed the region here are my thoughts,
NPC teams lack a little variety in their stratergies, hypnosis is far too common in the mid game and is more of an annoyance than an actual challange.
The early game is a little too easy (particularly the first 2 leaders) for my liking but this certainly ramps up towards the late game

Leveling is certainly very slow but this will be fixed with horde implimentation

Feraligator is several magnitudes stronger than the other 2 starters

 

Edited June 11, 2023 by XanarchyNL

[MightyBoxer]

Team rocket HQ.during the double battle the dragonite from lance is too high level at 45.Should make it around 35 like the enemy or the fight is too easy.

[XanarchyNL]

3 minutes ago, MightyBoxer said:

Team rocket HQ.during the double battle the dragonite from lance is too high level at 45.Should make it around 35 like the enemy or the fight is too easy.

This is how it is in the base games as well, lance is meant to sweep

[MightyBoxer]

8 minutes ago, XanarchyNL said:

This is how it is in the base games as well, lance is meant to sweep

Thats why base games are terrible compared to pokemmo.When its that easy there is no fun.

He alredy is a cheater having a form that is not supposed to be possible at that level.

Edited June 11, 2023 by MightyBoxer

[Guest]

5 hours ago, caioxlive13 said:

I'm going to beat Johto with only gift mons on my alt, like i did on other regions, so the devs can say which gift mons are going to be in final release and which one would be removed?

These are the gift pokemon I got. The dragonite evo after e4 so actually it's Dragonair before i beat e4.
I think they will all release them cuz i am the only one in PTS who use gift pokemon to finish the storyline.
I mean I am absolutely fine with using all gift pokemon. They are balance.
Using gift pokemon to play the game which need a lot basic knowledge about pokemon.
With discussing about the difficulty for new player, I don't think gift pokemon is a big or urgent discussion right now.

Sorry for bad English. I will talk about my thought when I am free.

Edited June 11, 2023 by Guest

[MrPurpleee]

Well I completed Johto and I didnt see any remarkable bugs, it was nicely done and was very fun to play. Thanks to the devs! Maybe the Battle IA was a little annoying: sleep, confused, poisoned, paralyzed... But challenging. Hope It comes officialy soon

[Rychell]

[Luizz]

Well, that's that:

 

Before we start, this is just my opinion based on my playthgough of the PTS with this particular 4 mon team and some of my impressions of the story are conditioned by my team selection so it might not be the same for other players. I'm just a random guy who doesn't know a thing about game development but has hundreds if not over a thousand hours spent on the Johto region and who knows all the ins and outs of a Johto playthrough. I hope that this very extensive review is of any help in creating the best possible Johto pokemmo experience. Anyway here's my thoughts on the PTS:

 

Story Battles:

I definitely agree with others in that Whitney's miltank was unbalanced. I especially didnt like the decision to give it a sitrus berry as opposed to a lum berry like in the originals. Sitrus just makes it survive for longer while lum berry has the purpose of discouraging cheesing it with status effects. The rest of the gym leaders felt adequate to me although I read a lot of comments in global about Bugsy being hard for the early game(I obviously had an easy time thanks to my starter).

 

Regarding the boss fights, gyarados felt a bit weak, maybe a bit underleveled and I did not enjoy the side magikarps. Perhaps a way to make them more interesting would be to make them not evolve immediately but in turn be a bit stronger, forcing you to choose between rushing the main one in 2 turns or taking the minions out first. As it was in the pts I was just able to one shot them with magical leaf from meganium and psychic from slowbro and it was tedious rather than challenging. The Ho-oh fight felt unfair because you 3v1 it and it will usually be on level with your team so it is very easy to dogpile it and not having any challenge. Maybe give it some eevolution minions as a reference to the fan theory about the sacred beasts, this would give this fight an unpredictable style since the enemy side would get some coverage but only from 2 out of 3 possible types at a time. That way you wouldnt know what to expect going in to the fight each time.

 

The elite 4 felt like a balanced challenge while maintaining a "canon" feeling, which didn't happen in the Lance fight.

Lance didn't feel like Lance because of the mon selection, which was weird, to say the least. In my fight, he led with Ampharos which was very surprising (I know about the lore of Ampharos being a dragon, Denryu and all) but it didnt feel like it belonged there, especially at the expense of the classic charizard. Going into the fight I also expected my Slowbro to do well with Blizzard (which ideally would have been ice beam as I'll go on in the move section) against the dragonite and whatever dragon types he had but, to my surprise he only had one dragonite and in using dragon gem draco meteor he became a sitting duck. So his ace wasnt an issue for me because he wasted it on my Slowbro and I understand the move is deadly to almost every other mon, but theoretically this item choice would allow for cheesing the fight by sacrificing something to it and then setting up something like a dragon dance gyarados which some people have already recommended using in chat.

His weird team choices resulted in the most unexpected outcome: my particularly speedy Meganium being the mvp of the fight securing four KOs against kingdra, gyarados, tyranitar thanks to chip damage and aerodactyl thanks to a lucky body slam paralysis. His original iconic charizard was missed as it would bring some needed type diversity to the team since my admittedly lucky fight led me to the following realization: 5 of his mons are neutral to grass, so together with the aforementioned setup opportunity would allow for people to sweep with only stab from a well trained Meganium, or more optimally, Bellossom (Hell, I almost did it with a suboptimally EV trained Meganium with no prior knowledge of the team and without using any boosting items or moves). I understand the drive to put Tyranitar on his team being the pseudolegendary of the region but him having two whole fully evolved pseudos in his team for his first fight felt a bit gratuitous (Tyranitar definitely fits well in his rematch team). My recommendation is to bring the team closer to his original selection of mons, ampharos definitely doesn't belong in this fight. I also get that you were trying to avoid the original situation of him having 3 dragonite and give the team more variety, but part of Lance's identity is literally the dragonite evolutionary line spam. Perhaps a middle term can be reached with a composition like this one:

-Dragonite ace

-Gyarados

-Aerodactyl

-Kingdra/Lapras

-Charizard/Arcanine

-A dragonair with a challenging build like bulky eviolite or a dragonite with a completely different moveset from the ace

 

NPC Trainers:

 

On the subject of npc trainers, like some other people said they definitely felt overreliant on cheese strats like hypnosis (that suspiciously almost never missed). Around the midpoint of the game the trainers started packing some very powerful coverage moves (+80 base power) while you as a player had access to very very few competent TMs. The npcs having coverage is a welcome change but the asymmetry of it is not in my opinion. Also some trainers had impossible movesets, that one guy with the 6 pikachus had one which knew extremespeed and one that knew frenzy plant (and presumably all other starter type ultimate moves) one thing is a trainer having coverage you're not expecting but a completely different thing is making it have coverage it shouldn't be possible to get on that mon. At least this didn't appear outside of this one particular meme trainer but we should be on the lookout for it. 
Npc trainers seemed to hit hard and I was expecting to counter it by using my tanky slowbro. To my surprise a lot of trainers used anti tank moves like super fang and toxic, and it is good that this measure exists to counter this particular strategy, ensuring the game is a challenge regardless of your playstyle.

 

Overall the npcs feel actually pretty balanced and outside of some anecdotal movesets. They bring enough variety so the player is never bored and this is a very good thing.

 

Level Curve and Pokemon Selection:

 

The early game felt a little bit grindy, even though that's to expect from pokemon, but I'm talking about a little bit more grindy than usual. During the first day of the PTS you could see a ton of people running back and forth the grass outside Fuchsia city, seemingly to no end and some of them even complained in chat about how tedious it was. Idk it might have been people trying to raise a team bigger than 3 before the first badge but I didn't have any issue with early leveling because I was using two mons at the time. I deliberately avoided grabbing the final 2 team members after around the 4th badge point as I usually do to make leveling faster and ensure I would have an exp lead on the story with minimal grinding all the way to the end. I understand this will not be an issue on the full release since we will hopefully have access to horde training which will make leveling and ev training during the story much less of a pain.

The level curve seems to work well and allows your team to be closer in level to where it should be before the e4 preventing some unnecessary grinding that sometimes needs to happen in vanilla HGSS. I cannot attest to how the level curve feels for a full team of 6 but I suspect grinding will be necessary even with the improved level curve which is totally fine.

 

The pokemon variety is remarkably good, having access very early to a lot of pokemon that you don't usually see in vanilla HGSS. It is SO good to have access to all 3 starters very early into the game, I encourage leaving them there for the final release or at least not moving their locations too far into the story. There are a few pokemon that I would have liked to see available earlier than they are, namely sneasel, ponyta and doduo but this is a very minor nitpick, they are also fine where they are. Changing the Goldenrod city trade from machop to mankey is fine and primeape is balanced, but machoke also works without evolving to machamp especially for the whitney fight, after all if the Sinnoh haunter trade is available, why not bring the Sinnoh abra and the Johto machop as well. A lot of people (me included) like collecting these gift mons and this machop trade is perhaps the most iconic in game trade in HGSS and it's a bit sad to see it replaced.

 

Moves and Items:

 

I also had an issue with the lack of move diversity because of two main reasons: first the lack of tm variety, the ability to buy tms outside of the mall and especially an All TM shop like in every other region and second the inability to relearn or tutor moves due to the heart scale farming opportunity (I was only able to find the hidden one on route 32). This won't be an issue for players with more regions in hand once Johto releases since we will have all of those resources from our previous playthroughs, but in the future when a player starts from scratch in the Johto region they really need to have access to a bigger TM shop before the league, maybe put it in Blackthorn city or maybe have it unlock at the Goldenrod mall once the player reaches 8 badges, This move diversity issue puts you into an even bigger disadvantage against the npc trainers.

 

About the items on the ground, if I understand correctly, some of them were removed in a patch a few hours into the PTS. I don't know if this is a permanent thing but it would have been nice to have access to some of those extra TMs or held items. Also the week siblings who give you a type boosting item each didn't rotate with the passing of in-server days, instead they were stuck on the magnet dude.

 

Its still a pretty big bummer than after exploring all of the available optional areas you're rewarded with little more than a few vitamins and healing items, and the occasional non optimal niche TM that you can't really use while the good items and tms are nowhere to be found or even bought without using other regions.

 

In summary, the big positives are the mon selection and the improved npc variety and level curve from the original game and the big negative is the poor variety in tm and item selection without outside help, and to a lesser extent, the off-theme Lance fight.

Once again, I hope that this review is helpful to the developers. Thank you guys for such an amazing job over the years and for finally bringing home the much requested Johto region.

 

TL:DR: Whitney fight hard, Lance team weird, npcs and wild mons good, item and tm variety very poor

[ambaG]

I beat the entire region with a crobat with acrobatics and u turn and my typhlosion (which i didnt even use much aside from the first gym and the steel gym). I believe the level cap after beating the first gym was 22, which allows you to just be able to evolve a zubat into golbat which was good enough at that point in the game, and after the next level cap increase u can evolve it into crobat with ease. getting a crobat that soon was absolutely busted, having great moves like hypnosis, leech life, acrobatics, u turn... I was able to beat whitney on my first try with it. red gyarados died in 3 acrobatics hits, and it one shotted the entire e4 aside from Lance (who i had 4 sac mons and spammed items on my crobat). the only trouble i had aside from lance was at the steel gym, and i had a typhlosion for that so it just took a bit of grinding to level it up. otherwise like 90 percent of the region i one tricked with crobat

[Rache]

Thank you to everyone who responded and who will after this, it's greatly appreciated.

 

22 hours ago, ScizoMonkey said:

Do you mean they don't exist in PokeMMO code? Or even in the original games?

 

And a last question (not Johto related) what about the haxx regarding alphas? 

Because I often use 6 flash on them and they still keep hitting every turn.

They don't exist at all in MMO and to my knowledge don't exist anywhere in the originals either, it's just easier to remember cases of bad luck than good luck.

 

Alphas have some resistances to a few cheese strategies, accuracy drops are one of them. They still work, but not as well.

 

22 hours ago, keirama said:

hello rache. I want to know if they could increase the difficulty in the johto gyms, that the leaders play doubles or single but that they have 4 or 6 pokes. Because how is it a Desired region? They could make it more difficult to advance to enjoy the Region a little better. It would be a real challenge and nothing more.

The storylines are balanced to be somewhat challenging for casual players with non-optimal teams. Making them difficult for veteran players or changing up the battle format is likely to be offputting for a lot of newer players. There's a chance that we'll consider a hard or NG+ mode in the future, but it'll be a long time away if it ends up happening.

 

21 hours ago, Enlightt said:

My most notable example of an easy sweep was Morty at Gym 4 in Ecruteak City. Using Feraligator at level cap (31?), I was able to one shot every single mon in that gym including the leaders Gengar with purely using Crunch.

This gym ended up being a tough one to balance. In my own playtesting with extremely average teams, he was very difficult with a team of 6 (levels 17/25/25/25/25/26), to the point that the Gengar ended up needing to be adamant + minimum IVs/EVs to feel reasonable. A fully evolved starter with a super effective move has an easy time with this fight, but Shadow Ball being mandatory on its moveset (it's the gym TM) combined with its high special attack and speed makes it OHKO-2HKO a lot of first and middle evolutions which struggle to do much back to it. It's very scary if you're not overleveled.

 

His team was intended to be a level higher though (27/27/29), it looks like the PTS is using slightly outdated builds.

 

20 hours ago, pokemonmaster69 said:

lastly the e4 was very easy i'm not sure if it was intentional or not but you were able to save your progress when u wiped so you would just basically throw yourself at the battles until you lose. ii beat will first try > wiped on koga > beat koga > wiped on bruno > beat bruno > wiped on karen > beat karen > wiped on lance > beat lance. i remeber karen being harder than lance but again probably because of my team composition (at that point feraligator, magnezone, gengar, and a lvl 42 donphan that didnt do mch). i guess at the end of it all you can say that you maybe would have beaten them had the healing after every member mechanic been in place

This isn't intentional, they'll function like other regions do for the live release.

 

20 hours ago, cloo said:

Not much needs to be said, picked chiko on accident and it was a nightmare. Weak to almost everything and can get absolutely shredded by random trainers if not prepared, such as the trainer with the magby on the second route. In Sprout Tower the bellsprouts could destroy chikos, and I'd find myself running to the pc to heal after every fight, but one of the bellsprouts near the end, with Acid Spray, took multiple tries and strategies with gastly to beat. 

 

I only made it up to the third city, but keeping things balanced, especially for newer players, in the early game, is really important since if it's too hard, they might just drop the game. Good choice putting the starters early on as lure encounters though, definitely needed that, even if those aren't their final locations when the region releases. 

The region is very mean to it by default unfortunately, there's not much I can do to make it even close to being as good as the other starters. It has a lot of trouble on its own so it really needs early teammates, any of the various flying or normal types on the early routes will make a playthrough with it feel a lot better.

 

The Magby might beat you if you're on low HP, trying to rush on minimum battles, or get very unlucky with a turn 1 burn, but it's not threatening enough to really wall players at this point in the game. It's adamant with 5 IVs across the board, so Chikorita pretty easily wins the 1v1 if it's lv9. If Chikorita is lv8, it deals 14-18 damage (Magby has 19HP) which a weak wild catch can then finish off. If lv8 Chikorita wins the speed tie on turn 3, it also wins matchup entirely. Multiple Potions are given early on as well, so there are a lot of options to handle it. 

 

The lure locations for the starters are final.

19 hours ago, Critnix said:

I dont know why but her Miltank outspeeds everything,

It has 100 base speed, it's faster than it looks.

 

19 hours ago, Critnix said:

Another thing is the gyarados "boss" fight. Its not a lie that this guy is an easy deal when you have atleast 1 grass or electro type pokemon in your team. It takes some hits and hes gone, also if you keep leveling your pokemons normally hes a bit to underleveled in my opinion, (keep in mind its only MY experience, others can be different).

This one's pretty similar to the Gengar mentioned above, it's easy if you have the right team for it but pretty hard if you don't. Spreading exp across a team of 6 and none of them carrying electric moves makes beating it pretty close.

 

Level doesn't really mean anything in a boss fight, they're balanced around their extremely high base stats.

 

16 hours ago, MightyBoxer said:

Team rocket HQ.during the double battle the dragonite from lance is too high level at 45.Should make it around 35 like the enemy or the fight is too easy.

This fight is easy for thematic purposes, it's there to show you how much stronger he is than you and everyone around you.

 

19 hours ago, XanarchyNL said:

NPC teams lack a little variety in their stratergies, hypnosis is far too common in the mid game and is more of an annoyance than an actual challange.
 

I'll tone down the early-game statuses, I can see how this is a bit unfun. A lot of early-game species learn these moves at very early levels.

 

10 hours ago, Luizz said:

The Ho-oh fight felt unfair because you 3v1 it and it will usually be on level with your team so it is very easy to dogpile it and not having any challenge. Maybe give it some eevolution minions as a reference to the fan theory about the sacred beasts, this would give this fight an unpredictable style since the enemy side would get some coverage but only from 2 out of 3 possible types at a time. That way you wouldnt know what to expect going in to the fight each time.

This boss fight is incomplete, it'll be more interesting for the live release.

 

10 hours ago, Luizz said:

The elite 4 felt like a balanced challenge while maintaining a "canon" feeling, which didn't happen in the Lance fight.

Lance didn't feel like Lance because of the mon selection, which was weird, to say the least. In my fight, he led with Ampharos which was very surprising (I know about the lore of Ampharos being a dragon, Denryu and all) but it didnt feel like it belonged there, especially at the expense of the classic charizard.

The Charizard was replaced as it was removed from the regional dex. We don't intend to make starters obtainable outside of their main regions, and bringing in a foreign species isn't very suitable either.

 

The Ampharos was included due to its relation to the dragon type ("Denryu" as you mentioned, + dragon-type mega) and its basis in canon. It also has valuable synergy with the rest of his team. It provides a much-needed electric resist, its weakness to ground is well covered by his many flying types, and offensively it's a solid answer to water types carrying ice moves. Its Focus Blast hits many of the rock types that threaten the rest of his team as well.

 

10 hours ago, Luizz said:

to my surprise he only had one dragonite and in using dragon gem draco meteor he became a sitting duck. So his ace wasnt an issue for me because he wasted it on my Slowbro and I understand the move is deadly to almost every other mon, but theoretically this item choice would allow for cheesing the fight by sacrificing something to it and then setting up something like a dragon dance gyarados which some people have already recommended using in chat.

Its other moves are Dragon Claw, Fire Punch, and ExtremeSpeed. Draco Meteor is its big nuke, but it isn't helpless against most opponents after using it.

 

10 hours ago, Luizz said:

His weird team choices resulted in the most unexpected outcome: my particularly speedy Meganium being the mvp of the fight securing four KOs against kingdra, gyarados, tyranitar thanks to chip damage and aerodactyl thanks to a lucky body slam paralysis. His original iconic charizard was missed as it would bring some needed type diversity to the team since my admittedly lucky fight led me to the following realization: 5 of his mons are neutral to grass, so together with the aforementioned setup opportunity would allow for people to sweep with only stab from a well trained Meganium, or more optimally, Bellossom

Meganium having a good matchup in at least one major battle is a good thing, it's terrible compared to the other starters for most of the region.

 

10 hours ago, Luizz said:

I understand the drive to put Tyranitar on his team being the pseudolegendary of the region but him having two whole fully evolved pseudos in his team for his first fight felt a bit gratuitous (Tyranitar definitely fits well in his rematch team). My recommendation is to bring the team closer to his original selection of mons, ampharos definitely doesn't belong in this fight. I also get that you were trying to avoid the original situation of him having 3 dragonite and give the team more variety, but part of Lance's identity is literally the dragonite evolutionary line spam. Perhaps a middle term can be reached with a composition like this one:

-Dragonite ace

-Gyarados

-Aerodactyl

-Kingdra/Lapras

-Charizard/Arcanine

-A dragonair with a challenging build like bulky eviolite or a dragonite with a completely different moveset from the ace

 

I don't feel that two pseudos is unfair, his original team contained three.

 

I did consider Lapras in place of Ampharos, but that only compounds the team's rock and electric weaknesses while not offering much in return as he already has multiple water types. Arcanine is a much weirder choice - I understand the justification, but it's extremely loose and most players will just see a dog. 

 

I try to avoid Eviolite in story builds, it confuses people.

 

 

10 hours ago, Luizz said:

Also some trainers had impossible movesets, that one guy with the 6 pikachus had one which knew extremespeed and one that knew frenzy plant (and presumably all other starter type ultimate moves) one thing is a trainer having coverage you're not expecting but a completely different thing is making it have coverage it shouldn't be possible to get on that mon. At least this didn't appear outside of this one particular meme trainer but we should be on the lookout for it. 

No trainer in this game has impossible moves. Access to event and egg moves is the gimmick of the PokeFan class, Pikachu can learn ExtremeSpeed and Petal Dance legitimately.

Another PokeFan has a Smeargle with Frenzy Plant (which is balanced by its terrible stats), I'm assuming you mixed the two of them up here.

 

 

10 hours ago, Luizz said:

I also had an issue with the lack of move diversity because of two main reasons: first the lack of tm variety, the ability to buy tms outside of the mall and especially an All TM shop like in every other region and second the inability to relearn or tutor moves due to the heart scale farming opportunity (I was only able to find the hidden one on route 32).

If you started soon after the PTS launched, you likely missed some of the TM replacements, some more interesting moves were made available throughout the storyline (elemental punches etc).

 

The all-TM-shop and various tutors haven't been implemented yet, but will be before launch. We'll probably throw in a Heart Scale farming location somewhere too.

 

On 6/10/2023 at 5:38 AM, SpectreSoul said:

The Onyx+Phanphy hiker in union cave devastates Quilava teams. With this starter you pretty much are required to catch either a belsprout(tower), a tentacool (in R32) or a Goldeen (in union cave).

It isn't a mandatory trainer though, so you can just walk around it.

A few of the early-game rock types will be removed or leveled down a bit, but not by much. Facing a type disadvantage should be encouragement to pick up another party member.

 

 

On 6/11/2023 at 5:05 AM, RysPicz said:

One thing I would like to ask, is considering max obedience level from 54 to 55 or 56 on the final badge. This would allow people to use their Dragonites/ Tyranitars, both species are not easy to raise and Larvitar isn't easy to find either in the region and I feel that players might feel rewarded with ability to use the mon itself after sacrificing themselves to actually finding and raising one, unless that level cap was set specifically not to allow the fully grown pseudo legends.

This is a pretty reasonable request.

[kenjimAd]

The Johto PTS is Great & i want to Play in Live Server so Bad before it's Full Server! XD

 

The Issues i got as Bug Found are:

 

1.) Music Volume is Higher than Sound Volume as Equally 100 & i want to Nerf the Music Volume Down because everytime i've keep Encountering the Wild Pokémons, the Roar Pokémon Sound Volume 100 was Low while The Music Volume 100 is still Loud.

 

2.) The Nudging from NPC got Bugged as my Character Flew Further & The Glitch on Screen keeps Appearing until it's Stop & i want to Improve the Nudging soon in Live Release.

 

3.) I'm really Disappointing about Trade Evo my Onix as Gifted Pokémon from the Trade looking for Bellsprout Guy & i want to Evolved it into Steelix so Bad then i've been wasted my $8-9K just to Buy or Trade this Metal Coat in order to Evolve it & that's the problem. Pls make the Gift Pokémon Disabled on my Onix as Untradeabled before Enabling it into Steelix by Trading to Devs/Mods Only & Not from Other Players too.

 

That's all i got from a Feedback! Thnx for letting us Playing in Johto PTS & unfortunately i only made it to 8 Gym Badges & I beat Shalpha Gyarados Boss Fight too.

 

Edited June 12, 2023 by kenjimAd
Just in Time before PTS Closed!

[SlanyuS]

Ok, I swear to god that Miltank is broken. I paraflinched it and it didn't get paralyzed/flinched a single time. I tried to badly poison it with 6 Golbats and after 3 tries, none of the poison fangs poisoned. I tried to sand attack it and at -6 acc it only missed the full power Rollout after sweeping me. I tried to attract it and it didnt fell in love a single time. I got immobilized 13 turns in a row and then flinched 3 more turns too. I'm either way too fkin unlucky or its RNG seed is weird.

 

EDIT:Also some of the early hikers at union cave was borderline impossible to beat with Quilava teams and forces you to catch and train a mon if you haven't which is annoying.

Edited June 12, 2023 by SlanyuS
I forgot to add something

[Enlightt]

2 hours ago, SlanyuS said:

EDIT:Also some of the early hikers at union cave was borderline impossible to beat with Quilava teams and forces you to catch and train a mon if you haven't which is annoying.

That's the point of being in type disadvantage situations.

[Johnwaynee]

Looking good so far. I read lots of complaints about beeing handicapped with certain starters but thats just normal and shouldnt really matter. Thats the nature of the game itself to encourage the customer to go and catch/train some pokemon.

When you pick charmander kanto and go to brock or/and rock tunnel with it (without anything you catched beforehand) you have the same situation.

Miltank discussion was foreseeable but pretty much already 'the' ultimate boss in the original games.

 

#freejohto

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 12, 2023 by Johnwaynee

[PokeInspired]

The largest source of difficulty for me was the lack of hoardes to grind exp off of. I was consistently underleveled throughout most of the region. Johto as it is right now is the hardest region to start off on. I went to mahogany first since I wanted to see the gyarados boss fight. I really enjoyed the gyarados boss fight that one has handled real well. The Ho-oh boss fight seemed a little underpowered compared to everything else around it at that point in the region. A major gripe i did have was being blindsided that when you are facing the e4 you don't get healed after each fight like in the other regions on the live server. My team for the PTS was Meganium, Scizor, Gengar, Arcanine, Gyarados, and Mamoswine. I also used the gift onix until it got replaced with the sudowoodo, then sudowoodo got replaced my mamoswine. I feel like with an easier time grinding mons the region will be better for a first region. 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Johnwaynee said:

Looking good so far. I read lots of complaints about beeing handicapped with certain starters but thats just normal and shouldnt really matter. Thats the nature of the game itself to encourage the customer to go and catch/train some pokemon.

When you pick charmander kanto and go to brock or/and rock tunnel with it (without anything you catched beforehand) you have the same situation.

Miltank discussion was foreseeable but pretty much already 'the' ultimate boss in the original games.

 

#freejohto

 

 

 

 

 

Totally agree.
I was so worried about my broken English to join this discussion so I just read and consider to not comment.
Glad to see this comment and how Rache replying people.

After reading all comment, I found that most of the people used to share their feeling by blaming the target but not think about any part they could improved.
I remember Rache reply me in PTS global chat about the discussion is mainly for new player.
I agree with that but the question I didn't tell was: Then why do we have level cap?
This is a contradiction.
What I see from people is, they want to change how strong Miltank it is but not really like to spend more time to learn about Miltank.
The different between " Learn to beat " and " Beat to learn "

For learn to beat.
You may do some research about Miltank or you don't even have to. Just keep lose to her and do some bookmark. It cost time but at least not costing your money.
Miltank only be female. She is fast as base speed 100. Always hit with physical attack and weak to against de-buffing.
so that's mean:
1. if my poke is male, she will use attract with high possibility. If my poke is female she may start attack.
2. She have no poison or move like superfang against tank so we can avoid to outspeed her but tank her damage by using some tanky poke.
3. With 2. Physical Defender is good to do the debuff job, For example, Onix Rock tomb/Screech, Geodude Sand storm/Mud-slap, Bayleef PoisonPowder/Growl etc.
4. Gastly Cruse/Will-O-Wisp/Poison Gas/Hypnosis, Skiploom Leech Seed, Flaaffy Cotton Spore/ Thunder Wave.

Catching a Drowzee to trade NPC's mankey for fighting type.
or even spend moeny to buy X-Attack and X-Speed for a female tanky pokemon. Buffing her and One-shot the Miltank. The most non-thinking method which I think should be nerf by increase in price.
etc.
So I can do different strategy every time I want to beat Whitney.
That's what " learn to beat " mean. It's mean you do research. Know yourself and know your enemy.

" Beat to learn " means you don't have much knowledge about it so you try to have some experience.
Which mean you are new. Even if you play pokemon like ten years, you are new.
If i can do " learn to beat ", even I just play one month. I can still telling people about how i understand to play.
So yes, the difficulty is absolutely fine. I am so appreciate to Rache cuz he really think a lot for new player which is so deserves of people respect.
but I still gotta say, player who can't beat it is not about difficulty. It's just about what level you're in.





This is not 100% correct. I can even outargue myself. So what define the answer?
It's depend on what's the game designing axis of Devs. Which mean " how they want the game be like ".
That's why I point out "Level cap" and said it's contradiction.
Level cap seems like a message from devs about " Think again if you found this was hard ".
You don't really ask player about difficulty when you have level cap because it's not symmetrically with your message.
It's like I stab you and asking "how do you feel"?
I am not talking about remove Level cap or people should not complaining.
I mean the difficulty should be a topic about the whole game, not just only Johto region.
After these years, We see a lot of change about PokeMMO. If we really do care about new player, maybe we should start a new method for them.
and yes. I am sorry about right now I am going to be off topic. It's may not about the difficulty of Johto storyline.

For me, 5 regions in a Pokemon MMO game which is a lot.
I am not sure about if we can do it or not.
We can try to let all new player have no Level cap when they doing first or second region.
Also no boating to other region until they finish the storyline. No trading or breeding either.
This is for player who have never play Pokemon game before and PokeMMO is their first pokemon adventure game in life.
Once they finish this/these region, they can now try other region but with level cap.
You may also want them to finish one or two more region to open their trade or breeding system.
Player can also boat to other region after first/second regions when they beat the 4th gym of other region.
My English is broken so I can't describe more detail about it and I don't want to off topic too much.
You already understand what the method I talking about. It's letting new player to learn about the game but to restrict old player start a new game to spread resource.

That's it.
My apology to Johnwaynee .
Quoting you but what i did was talking my thought.
I gave up to comment becuase I think Rache did a good job. There is nothing more I want from him.
After reading your comment I just wrote.
Even there is no horde in PTS. I still do the EV training.
This is my stupid action to tell that I accept any change from devs. I love this game and I understand how hard to be a Devs.

Edited June 12, 2023 by Guest

[YaGiC]

Ok guys, if you chose Chikorita as starter like me... i know your pain. 

This is SO hard to play with this pokemon, the early game is really really HARD but doable, you will end up spamming Tackle as the only viable source of damage cause most of pokemon are Fly or Grass type (with poison attacks ofc) until... Bugsy is impossible if you only leveld up Bayleef so you will have to grind another pokemon. I mean, he just spam U-turn on his 3 full evolved pokemon, in the real game, he only has Scyther as main difficulty for a Bayleef user, here its EVERY pokemon...

And finally, after you beat the Rival and Bugsy, the game begins to be a little bit easier for Bayleef players but in the end, this pokemon (and grass type) are kinda weak most of the time or just useless.

I was playing with a friend with a Cyndaquil, he just destroyed the game without having to build a real team. 

 

I know in every game, starters are like "one is weak early but with a good late"... there, it's the first time i just gave up on my starter cause you cant play with it at all, early, and late... he's just bad and with trainer's buffs... bruh!!

This is my personal opinion but you should kinda change something for casual players who wants to play with this pokemon, maybe increasing random pokemon's exp/level in grass before Bugsy so players can level up their others pokemon faster idk.

 

 

I did 8 badges with a combo of Ursaring & Gyarados (after Whitney) and this duo just destroyed the game so i havnt met REAL difficulties or overtuned fights (even Whitney, i just OneTried her with teddiursa) so except for the Chikorita's problem, the game sounds fun but still challenging 

 

Had fun playing Johto overall

Edited June 12, 2023 by YaGiC

[Rache]

7 hours ago, YaGiC said:

This is my personal opinion but you should kinda change something for casual players who wants to play with this pokemon, maybe increasing random pokemon's exp/level in grass before Bugsy so players can level up their others pokemon faster idk.

It doesn't make Chikorita good, but the wilds around the gym will be bumped up a bit for players who haven't picked up another party member by the time they've reached the gym.

[ahoyahoy]

I'd like to know if the test server has been permanently shut down，pls

[CanadaSorry]

21 hours ago, Rache said:

but that only compounds the team's rock and electric weaknesses while not offering much in return

 

 

I speak for Lapras only:

 

 

*sad lapras noises*

[Negumiko]

On 6/10/2023 at 9:28 PM, ScizoMonkey said:

Guys, I think we have to talk about the 3rd gym.

 

I have played PokeMMO since 2013, I have done many storylines on many different accounts.

I have completed Kanto in Nuzlocke, Kanto + Hoenn on bug monotype, Sinnoh on Ghost monotype, Unova on Water monotype, Kanto on water monotype + only gift Pokemons, right now I am doing a Ditto only challenge in Hoenn.  

You guys can check on my YouTube channel I am not lying. 

 

I know how difficult PokeMMO is, I enjoy the difficulty and even the not totally fair AI hax, but this one, this Miltank.

 

It feels worse than an alpha, only level 25 but outspeed level 29. It feels like it has 31 in all IVs + 252 in all EVs.

I tried to play Miltank in PvP in the past and this is definitely boosted.

 

Too fast, too strong, too tanky.

 

And also the accuracy looks boosted like an alpha, the love mechanic is either glitched or OP, and and evasion of the Miltank feels off too.

 

I tried many different strats, hyper fang, poison point, statik, flash, spore, fighting type moves, etc.

 

At the end I just had to use X defend, Potion, X attack and keep pushing until it worked.

 

But this Miltank does feel unbalanced

 

Miltank was easy for me, I crushed it with a Geodude. Whitney felt to easy in this test server.