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Well, what do you know. It's another rant post, isn't it? Well, kinda yes. Kinda no.

 

First of all, great job with the overall appearance with Unova update. This game truly looks and feels like an MMO. I think all the economic decisions and all the decisions made in this update have been fairly good and make sense for the most part. I can imagine implementing Unova storyline being very difficult and good job with it.

 

But there's something I kinda have to give my 2 cents about. My comp players' 2 cents.

 

What happened to Soon™? This was the first time ever a time for an update was announced in advance. And the result? Well, vast majority of the Unova moves and abilities aren't working how they're supposed to. In addition some previous Generation 3 moves have stopped working, such as Follow Me. I currently do not know what things are working and what aren't. Now, I'm not saying that making sure that every mechanic in such a complex environment as Pokemon is an easy task. Absolutely not. Everyone could obviously assume some things to not work in such a massive launch as a whole new generation of Pokemon, moves and abilities. But. When such a massive amount of things aren't working I can't help feeling that this update was a little bit rushed. And not just a little bit. Even though Soon™ is basically a meme in this game, I rather preferred a "Soon™" kind of an approach to the game than giving exact times and putting your back against the wall by trying to do as much as you can in such limited amount of time.

 

The competitive play in this game has got to fairly serious. By serious I don't mean like the good players are any "tryhard elitists" (well, sometimes they are) but rather that the competitive level play of this game is very high and people are really striving for the highest standard level of play they can. Even though obviously everyone plays comp for fun, it isn't just random button clicking and just observing the results. A large amount of the competitive players really put effort to come up with the best possible strategies for their teams. With such a large amount of mechanics that aren't working, this game becomes basically unplayable in a competitive viewpoint. The games essentially don't mean anything at this point, at least in my eyes. Where as I would honestly feel bad losing because of not knowing of what mechanics work and what doesn't, I also don't want to win a single game because my opponent doesn't know what works and what doesn't. I would not count that as a win. For me, that is not a competitive battle.

 

Again, it isn't just one types of moves or some specific moves that are not working which are reported, and shortly everyone knows about and we can go on with our lives like last 2 years in PokeMMO. The problem is that we don't know what works and what doesn't and that is competitively an absolute nightmare. For me not knowing what mechanics work in this game is equivalent for playing a sport without knowing its rules.

 

All I'm saying is that I'd hope this game would go back to the "Soon™" way of implementing things rather than forcing things out as soon as possible without having everything ready. I'm aware the large amount of the people playing this game aren't competitive players. For them this is the thing they've all been waiting for and the reason what brings them back to this game. That is fair enough, I can respect that. I just wanted to give the way I see things, who plays this game with a competitive interest. While as a player can never see the game from a developers perspective, a developer may never see the game from the player's perspective.

 

Have a wonderful day.

 

Spoiler

P.S. Can we get some kind of a thread to list everything that works and everything that doesn't? Like, whether it's a community thread or staff made I don't care but the fact Bug Report sub section is hidden like that prevents us from getting the necessary information.

 

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The only real issue I have with it turning out like this is the fact that we made tiers operating under assumptions that these things would be working. I don't think it's a problem having the region without everything working because I waited like 3 years for substitute to work but had a great time in that 3 years. Things just happened as they happened and it was a good time. But this time we had to make tiers beforehand, which I never really liked the idea of (although it was fun to do, so I wasn't particularly mad) and now that the update is here it feels even more stupid that we built the tiers at all because most of what we based things on doesn't exist. This time it came as a bad mix of "letting it happen as it happens" but also this thrown in sense of "don't put out something incomplete (game with no tiers)" and it ended up with this ridiculous mismatch. 

 

So I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't particularly agree with waiting to have the entire working gen 5 out. I love that we got the update even in this incomplete form, it's just that I feel that's the part that makes it offputting, at least competitively. 

 

 

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2 minutes ago, Rigamorty said:

The only real issue I have with it turning out like this is the fact that we made tiers operating under assumptions that these things would be working. I don't think it's a problem having the region without everything working because I waited like 3 years for substitute to work but had a great time in that 3 years. Things just happened as they happened and it was a good time. But this time we had to make tiers beforehand, which I never really liked the idea of (although it was fun to do, so I wasn't particularly mad) and now that the update is here it feels even more stupid that we built the tiers at all because most of what we based things on doesn't exist. This time it came as a bad mix of "letting it happen as it happens" but also this thrown in sense of "don't put out something incomplete (game with no tiers)" and it ended up with this ridiculous mismatch. 

 

So I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't particularly agree with waiting to have the entire working gen 5 out. I love that we got the update even in this incomplete form, it's just that I feel that's the part that makes it offputting, at least competitively. 

 

 

Where as you're right this game has been fun while so many things weren't working, the thing is that we had no alternative. In that case if everything had to be ready before a release, we would not have any game to play. That's why it was perfectly reasonable to play a game that had still mechanics missing. The difference is that before this update we had an environment which worked (almost) perfectly in its current form and then it was replaced by something that is still highly in progress. That's what I as a competitive player don't exactly enjoy.

 

Absolutely agreed with the tiering thing, that makes tiers currently pretty much void.

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Here's probably the biggest part of the problem, in regards to the old moves and abilities.  There were something like 346 moves or something along those lines in gen 3, retesting every single one of those moves and making sure each of the little quirks associated with all of those mechanics work is a very significant undertaking. The process for me at least when I am doing these sorts of things, is reference Bulbapedia, cross-check with actual testing in the real games with said moves generational mechanics, try any other oddball mechanic that I can personally think of, try them all over again on MMO, then report any inconsistency. Doing that for every move would take a grand amount of time, so instead with the old moves it was opted to test 50 or so of them and go off the assumption if they still worked, most would. If anything else arose during play testing the region it could be dealt with as it came up. 

 

Anyway, typing this on my phone and this is about as long of a post as I can bear to make on it.

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First I wanna say I'm not what you could call a good representation of a competitive player so I can't comment that much in that regard

 

I do also feel a tad sad that a lot of new toys aren't working and Zoroark isn't added yet. and some moves are being weirdly, the update isn't perfect, I still like it but it does indeed have a lot to fix / improve upon.

 

HOWEVER: Part of me is happy that the PvP side isn't functioning 100% yet and X Y Z aren't implemented in terms of Abilities and Moves because that means I don't feel super rushed to pump out 50 new com pokemon in a few days, it gives me time to slowly breed them in preparation for when they work, and the ones I need immediately are fewer in number and therefore more reasonable to get out in time.

I definitely am on the side of "I wish everything worked" but I am just looking on the bright side of some things not being added yet, beside s it takes a while to get all the pokemon in order to breed with to begin with and level things up for egg moves, find TM's etc etc. 

Just looking on the bright side I guess.

(though the Tier lists meaning jack certainly isn't the best, e.g. stuff like good old Whimsicott for instance being in UU while Jumpluff is in NU despite Whimsicott being objectively worse without its ability for the most part etc)

Edited by Matoka
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so, I don't have a complete list or anything, but as far as I was told/am aware, here's what works and doesn't work:

 

Most moves work, with a few notable exceptions, such as Foul Play, Dragon Tail, & Growth no longer working.

 

No Gen 4 or 5 Abilities or Items AFAIK work. Magic Guard, Regen, Technician, etc.; Pretty sure none of that works. Specs/Scarf/Orb still work obviously, but Eviolite, Sash, Gems, etc. don't work.

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17 minutes ago, Senile said:

so, I don't have a complete list or anything, but as far as I was told/am aware, here's what works and doesn't work:

 

Most moves work, with a few notable exceptions, such as Foul Play, Dragon Tail, & Growth no longer working.

 

No Gen 4 or 5 Abilities or Items AFAIK work. Magic Guard, Regen, Technician, etc.; Pretty sure none of that works. Specs/Scarf/Orb still work obviously, but Eviolite, Sash, Gems, etc. don't work.

All the heard and alleged information about everything is more than welcome in this thread. Thanks a lot.

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I'd say having a master list of things that don't work would fix this issue.

 

I agree with riga in the sense that the new tiers are a bit incoherent with the "real current" broken meta with broken moves.

 

And my worry is that players will have to learn this new broken meta. Ie the best possible teams and sets despite missing moves. And that they will slowly get introduced a few at a time, forcing players to constantly relearn the meta until full implementation.

 

So I think, if finishing everything is gonna take a long time, just do it all at once! And in the meantime just have a consistent "list of things that don't work", that doesn't change every few days.

 

That said, I do prefer "early access" to unova than "soontm" update cycles like OP refers. I'm basically a storyline player, and I think there's plenty of content to work with to the point you could afford to skip tourneys for a while. Just run story, breed, etc.

Edited by Eggplant
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12 hours ago, OrangeManiac said:

All I'm saying is that I'd hope this game would go back to the "Soon™" way of implementing things rather than forcing things out as soon as possible without having everything ready

On 11/11/2017 at 11:53 PM, DoctorPBC said:

I mean

 

rushing it > waiting almost 2 years for new content

2 hours ago, OrangeManiac said:

Yeah I saw there was a list during PTS but I didn't think it was applicable to whatever state the progress is in now.

j6EM3xk.png

 

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3 minutes ago, DoctorPBC said:

Not sure that meme works, but its 4am... Was happily not involved

 

Also difference between rushing content to spending 2 years and failing to implement key game features

The point is "after a while, it gets a bit dumb not to release, so we decided to go ahead with it because we figured we could get the important stuff done soon after." I just used your quote because I can recall you saying something along the lines of "reminder that it's been 1.5 years without any real content updates."

 

I think you'll all make it for a few weeks while we continue to work on items/moves. We know it's less than ideal, so is waiting another month for items/etc to get done. I don't think the complaints are unjustified or anything, but really, after a while we just had to yolo it

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3 hours ago, Kyu said:

The point is "after a while, it gets a bit dumb not to release, so we decided to go ahead with it because we figured we could get the important stuff done soon after." I just used your quote because I can recall you saying something along the lines of "reminder that it's been 1.5 years without any real content updates."

 

I think you'll all make it for a few weeks while we continue to work on items/moves. We know it's less than ideal, so is waiting another month for items/etc to get done. I don't think the complaints are unjustified or anything, but really, after a while we just had to yolo it

I do agree with your point, but can you at least tell us which abilities are working and what not? There's that thread for moves, but how about abilities?

But why would you even fix moves that will never be used, when the needed ones, aren't working? i.e. Pursuit and Follow me.

Edited by redspawn
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5 minutes ago, redspawn said:

I do agree with your point, but can you at least tell us which abilities are working and what not? There's that thread for moves, but how about abilities?

Was the ability introduced into PokeMMO with the latest update?

  • No: It probably works
  • Yes: It doesn't work.

 

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I don't even want to play the game right now, I was looking forward to using a lot of different things once the update hit but they either don't work or don't exist and likely won't be implemented for the rest of the game's lifetime. Can't even tutor working moves on some mons either since the tutors don't exist.

Maybe I shouldn't set my expectations so high, or have any at all.

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40 minutes ago, notmudkip0 said:

I don't even want to play the game right now, I was looking forward to using a lot of different things once the update hit but they either don't work or don't exist and likely won't be implemented for the rest of the game's lifetime. Can't even tutor working moves on some mons either since the tutors don't exist.

Maybe I shouldn't set my expectations so high, or have any at all.

Use this time to have a stress-free window where you don't feel you're missing out by spending time breeding and EV training the pokemon.

It probably won't take too-too long for them to add functionality for the various things, I get why it's disappointing but it lets you prepare in advance a lot more than we could before Unova was accessible.

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Making a list of what is working and what isn't is cool, but that is not the main issue for me. Without knowing when and what will be fixed, I have very little incentive to grind for comps since they might become outdated tomorrow, later, much later or never. I don't know if others feel the same way I do, but if they do, tiers will developped extremely slowly which is another reason why grinding for comps right now is a bad idea since the meta ain't stable at all and could change on a dime whenever an update hits us.

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