Letters from home (Fluff)

[Matoka]

Pereiraa encouraged me to flesh out something I briefly touched on in another suggestion thread, so here we go:

 

Letters from home:

 

Roughly once a week (6+/-2days) IRL time (Provided you have played in said week, giving minor log in incentivisation) would trigger you to receive some mail from your Mother, or Professor Oak at random, giving seeing how you're doing, giving you so encouragement and warm fuzzies inside, well, as much as an Automated 2D character can do.

 

Attached to the mail would be minor goodies, as little tokens to keep you going, examples of the little goodies you could receive;

 

From Mom

• 3 Lum Berries ("remember to keep you, and your pokemon healthy on your journey, okay?")
• 3,500$ ("I thought I'd chip in a little to your living expenses, remember to budget well!")
• 8 Very XXXX Seeds ("I recently got more into my gardening! it's fun, you should give it a try too, home-grown always tastes nicer!")
• Vitamin ("I know you don't eat often, so please take some vitamins before you need to go see nurse joy again like when you didn't eat for a week!")

From Professor Oak & Birch

• 15 pokeballs ("To complete the Pokedex, you're going to need a lot of these, I hope they help!")
• Tiny Mushroom ("I have recently begun researching the mushrooms that grow atop wild Paras, let me know if you discover anything on your travels.")
• 5 Super Repels ("The chemical composition of these repels is fascinating- Ah, sorry, got carried away there. But these will prove useful, especially in caves...")

 

I deliberately chose items of little worth that would mostly be luxury but will still be appreciated none the less in my examples

This is no means a necessary change, But its a small thing to look forward to and it reminds us that we have people rooting for us on our journey.

 

Come on, who doesn't like the warm fuzzies?

 

Pros:

• Encouragement to log in on occasion (minor)
• Another renewable source of berries and seeds
• Warm fuzzies

Cons:

• Un-needed change, possibly not worth the time to implement
• may not be able to write copyrighted content in the letters, so may be limited on what they can contain.

[Kyu]

12 minutes ago, Matoka said:

Come on, who doesn't like the warm fuzzies?

 

Me. Free crap for nothing means people farm it with 100 characters.

 

It's not an awful idea if it's based on playtime or if it's triggerable after a goal. We've been looking for NPC-based mail messages to draw players to the mail system in the first place so it'll be considered anyway.

[Matoka]

Just now, Kyu said:

Me. Free crap for nothing means people farm it with 100 characters.

 

It's not an awful idea if it's based on playtime or if it's triggerable after a goal. We've been looking for NPC-based mail messages to draw players to the mail system in the first place so it'll be considered anyway.

I didn't think about the 100 player accounts farming. that's a good point.

 

Perhaps it could be trade disabled similarly to berries picked up off the floor across kanto? That seems like it would be a solution.

Or as you said based on playtime perhaps 2-3 hours spent playing is required to get the mail at the end of the week.

[R3TR0NIX]

11 hours ago, Kyu said:

Me. Free crap for nothing means people farm it with 100 characters.

 

It's not an awful idea if it's based on playtime or if it's triggerable after a goal. We've been looking for NPC-based mail messages to draw players to the mail system in the first place so it'll be considered anyway.

The award is hardly enough for it to satisfactory even after farming with 100 characters.. It's not even a good way to farm cash/resources. You can easily get that amount with just Island Running or Shard Farming or *insert almost every single possible efficient way to generate cash*. And those resources? You can easily get them off with the cash you just got from other efficient farming methods. And who even farms things with 100 characters!? It's a waste of time, and they are better off doing the other methods of "farming".

 

Even if someone does it, the pros in this suggestion in my opinion, severely outweighs the cons. I'm in for this suggestion.

 

Spoiler

"Inb4 it can get exploited/abused"

 

Edited May 9, 2016 by R3TR0NIX

[Kite]

Professor Birch/Oak rewards seem kinda...meh same as the one from your "mom" of course I don't expect things like Ultra Balls or Max Repels. But a lot of it I generally don't use myself.

[Matoka]

6 hours ago, R3TR0NIX said:

 

  Hide contents

"Inb4 it can get exploited/abused"

 

Kyu had a point, as with anything that is fairly low work it should have a counter measure to prevent exploitation.

Either being triggered by having something like 2 hours game time per week while you have 8 gym badges or something is a perfectly reasonable counter measure which allows us to still enjoy it without any negative consequences for genuine players.

 

Just because upsides outweigh the downsides doesn't mean we shouldn't think of a solution for said downsides.

 

5 hours ago, Kite said:

Professor Birch/Oak rewards seem kinda...meh same as the one from your "mom" of course I don't expect things like Ultra Balls or Max Repels. But a lot of it I generally don't use myself.

They are deliberately only minorly useful, they are deliberately made to not be enough to work off of by themselves, so as to make it where we don't just rely on these mail items and still invest in money sinks for pokeballs and repels, but all of them are of functional use in fairly common situations.
Then again if this was to be implemented I have no idea how Kyu and co would rebalance them so *Shrug* they may become better gifts or worse gifts. 

[Kite]

4 hours ago, Matoka said:

Kyu had a point, as with anything that is fairly low work it should have a counter measure to prevent exploitation.

Either being triggered by having something like 2 hours game time per week while you have 8 gym badges or something is a perfectly reasonable counter measure which allows us to still enjoy it without any negative consequences for genuine players.

 

Just because upsides outweigh the downsides doesn't mean we shouldn't think of a solution for said downsides.

 

They are deliberately only minorly useful, they are deliberately made to not be enough to work off of by themselves, so as to make it where we don't just rely on these mail items and still invest in money sinks for pokeballs and repels, but all of them are of functional use in fairly common situations.
Then again if this was to be implemented I have no idea how Kyu and co would rebalance them so *Shrug* they may become better gifts or worse gifts. 

How about the gifts work on a precentage. Say you have a 1% chance of getting say Random Vitamins (in a stack of say 5), 5% for Random berries (stack of say 5) 50% chance for Pokeballs. I mean using some of the ideas for gifts as an example This way it would be more or less futile to rely on the mail.

[Matoka]

Just now, Kite said:

How about the gifts work on a precentage. Say you have a 1% chance of getting say Random Vitamins (in a stack of say 5), 5% for Random berries (stack of say 5) 50% chance for Pokeballs. I mean using some of the ideas for gifts as an example This way it would be more or less futile to rely on the mail.

I don't think the items I suggested in their quantities are by any means to much and feel balanced, what you suggested seem inconsistent and would have the feeling of "Dammit, I got the pokeball one again" because it is so much more common, and so much more comparatively useless.

 

I think the issue was that they could be farmed by alt accounts and mail them to other accounts in theory, not that the items themselves were too strong.

[Kite]

Just now, Matoka said:

I don't think the items I suggested in their quantities are by any means to much and feel balanced, what you suggested seem inconsistent and would have the feeling of "Dammit, I got the pokeball one again" because it is so much more common, and so much more comparatively useless.

 

I think the issue was that they could be farmed by alt accounts and mail them to other accounts in theory, not that the items themselves were too strong.

The idea is meant to give off that feeling, so it would discourage players from farming it. however the quantities would need to be more than 1 otherwise (for me) it would feel like spam. (it'll feel like spam anyways but more so)

[Matoka]

12 minutes ago, Kite said:

The idea is meant to give off that feeling, so it would discourage players from farming it. however the quantities would need to be more than 1 otherwise (for me) it would feel like spam. (it'll feel like spam anyways but more so)

Solutions to prevent farming have already been discussed, which would be "Require X amount of playtime on account that week" or "Your gifts are untradeable items"

 

The level of nerf you described would be to the point where I don't think I would feel the need to even check my mailbox to see what I got.

[R3TR0NIX]

9 hours ago, Matoka said:

Kyu had a point, as with anything that is fairly low work it should have a counter measure to prevent exploitation.

Either being triggered by having something like 2 hours game time per week while you have 8 gym badges or something is a perfectly reasonable counter measure which allows us to still enjoy it without any negative consequences for genuine players.

 

Just because upsides outweigh the downsides doesn't mean we shouldn't think of a solution for said downsides.

 

They are deliberately only minorly useful, they are deliberately made to not be enough to work off of by themselves, so as to make it where we don't just rely on these mail items and still invest in money sinks for pokeballs and repels, but all of them are of functional use in fairly common situations.
Then again if this was to be implemented I have no idea how Kyu and co would rebalance them so *Shrug* they may become better gifts or worse gifts. 

Since when did I say we shouldn't think of a solution?!

[Matoka]

13 hours ago, R3TR0NIX said:

Since when did I say we shouldn't think of a solution?!

I never implied that you did say that, however, you dismissed the point of people farming it on alt accounts by saying

" The award is hardly enough for it to satisfactory even after farming with 100 characters.. It's not even a good way to farm cash/resources. "

and also said:
" Even if someone does it, the pros in this suggestion in my opinion, severely outweighs the cons. I'm in for this suggestion."

which gave me the impression you dismissed the need to address the cons, that is why I said what I said in response

[Kite]

On 5/9/2016 at 3:28 PM, Matoka said:

Solutions to prevent farming have already been discussed, which would be "Require X amount of playtime on account that week" or "Your gifts are untradeable items"

 

The level of nerf you described would be to the point where I don't think I would feel the need to even check my mailbox to see what I got.

I wouldn't even check the mailbox period. But if the icon blinks PokeMMO gonna get it e.e
 

However, you do not decide when a discussion is over when someone can throw their 2 cents in for more alternatives and options for the Devs to look at. You come off as that is the only way it can be done cause YOU like it and that you're not open to any other kind of ideas. Which is bad.