Egg exclusive recruits

Suggestions and Contributions
1

Hi!

A lot of pokémon have been stuck as egg exclusive recruits for many, many years. This was a nice concept, but I think with shinies being a thing these days, it’s a bit outdated. Shiny eggs are a thing as well now, as of Easter HC. But that makes me question, how would one even hunt these egg exclusive shinies? Rates are global for eggs, so they’re likely not going to be very good (considering a lot of eggs are easy to get, you don’t want easy global rates).

I think we need to find a solution for this problem, and not keep sleeping on it. All these recruits have been locked in a vault for 1.5 years after shinies released, not being able to be hunted. Here’s a quick list of egg exclusive recruits (apologies if I forgot any):

  • Shinx
  • Cubone
  • Munchlax
  • Lapras
  • Dedenne
  • Tyrogue
  • Wishiwashi
  • Turtonator
  • Meditite
  • Larvesta
  • Carnivine
  • Meowth
  • Igglybuff
  • Cleffa
  • Happiny
  • Espurr
  • Dewpider (only available egg+overworld)
  • Passimian
  • Oranguru
  • Dratini*
  • Gible*

In my opinion, I think we should make everything recruits, just like regular PMD games. Like, I wouldn’t know a better fix for this problem, unless egg specific shiny rates are possible to exist.

“But Levy, eggs will lose value from this!”

I actually don’t think they do. With shiny rates being added to eggs, I find myself picking up every egg I see in dungeons. Eggs actually have a LOT of value now. I prefer these pokémon being able to be shiny hunted, rather than locked up in eggs for more several years without a solution being found.

So yeah, if anyone has a better solution or a different take on this, feel free to give your opinion. If you do agree with me on this, I’m happy to hear as well (or just upvote).

*these pokémon are probably excluded from this discussion, but are listed because they’re also egg exclusives

2

I would definitely like to have most, if not, all of these Pokemon be somewhat placed in dungeons as recruits for sure. I’m not sure if too many people will like the idea of running Crescent Islet multiple times for a 5%(?) chance of a Lapras egg, then another RNG roll for it to be shiny. Or having to climb 55 floors of Starlit Lagoon to find Espurr Eggs on 6 floors which have such a low chance in general to contain Espurr themselves (from personal experience, having hunted at least 250 Starlit Eggs for it to only contain 1 Espurr). Having them added as normal recruits would benefit these Pokemon a lot.

With them added as recruits and keeping it in eggs as well, it gives you a two birds, one stone situation where you can hunt the certain mon in two ways.

I do hope these Pokemon do have a chance to be recruited normally in the near future, whether it’d be in the dungeon their eggs spawn or an entirely new dungeon.

3

v good post.

I don’t think we get anything out of keeping egg exclusive pokemon, and I honestly don’t see shiny hunting a specific pokemon via eggs taking off. Both recruiting and eggs serve a different purpose in my eyes, with recruiting being a way of hunting a specific shiny for yourself/for others with shiny bounties and all that, and shiny eggs being in the back, with one either getting the shiny pokemon they were hunting or just some other shiny.

I do think something should be done about Dratini and Gible, though. They’re finally able to be shiny ofc, but they share the same rate as any other egg. Which means that it’s abnormally low for what it takes to grind out their keys. (moreso Dratini, since Gible at least has the labyrinth for easier Rupi grinding). Is there any reason why they can’t just be turned into a recruit like the other key pokemon and given a shiny rate? (Other key pokemon are 1/20 I think? Can be a bit lower if people still want those two to be rarer or whatever, while not being crazy low for what it takes to get them atm.)

4

Alright, I’ll respond to this-

I’m in full agreement with not only the original post, but the comments above. I really do not see a bad thing about egg exclusive Pokémon having being added a recruit in the same dungeon, or other dungeons, since it’ll give variety to being able to hunt certain Pokémon. Like Abra said, Lapras is easily going to be one of the worst hunts in the game with a 5%(I believe at least) egg drop from a boss of a dungeon you first have to run 28 floors of, remember to bring cut to use to get into the depths, do the depths, and then fight the boss at a chance of the egg, on top of the 1/? chance it needs to roll to end up shiny. Espurr is another great example that it is an egg, ON WALLS which means unless you have a trawl orb, requires a ghost type, mobile scarf, or extreme luck with getting a gummi effect, to get the egg, let alone its a 1% egg find iirc, AND its hidden too if I’m not mistaken? When it can’t even evolve yet due to complications with the evolution editor, I think it deserves a recruit, as well as the others. Dedenne is not all that great stats wise, but its stuck in a 5% egg in Deep Thunderstorm Forest, which again like Lapras, also has to roll the chance to be shiny. It allows egg exclusives to be able to be hunted in a different way, and even if they are added among other recruits, at least being able to hunt it and be able to gift it or just a chance at recruiting would help a bunch. Also like Elaye said, I really think that Dratini and Gible could maybe use a sort of honey spawn, and have a high rate like other key Pokémon, except maybe even better due to having to grind a currency to get the key.

All in all, egg exclusive Pokémon were nice to see and at least allowed Pokémon to be released, but now that egg shinies are a thing, egg rates being universal, will make some eggs so hard to hunt, that some people could potentially lose their mind. As someone who has been hunting Shiny Lapras in HC and have had no luck, I dread going to Crescent Islet Depths to hunt it after HC. Especially since shiny rates for eggs will be a lot more rare once it ends in a few hours. It won’t devalue eggs at all, in fact with shiny eggs I will be inclined to pick them up more often since you never know when you’ll hatch a shiny, but at the same time with how hard some egg exclusive Pokémon are to get, to them have to roll the chance for it to be shiny, I think they should also have a recruitable option.

5

-cracks knuckles- time to actually vent without fear of punishment.

before anything can change, we’ll need staff members that actually care about extending gameplay and making it feel rewarding. but staff don’t care about making things rewarding. they only care about “oh no players are leaving because there’s nothing to do! time to add something new that’s really just a different sprite that you get from the same mechanics!”

it’s the same principle as arcade games/old console games. instead of making more game, they just made a hard game so people would sink hours into getting good at beating it.

so yeah. years of salt finally expelled and i don’t care if i get punished for my opinion. i don’t play this crummy game anymore anyway.

6

I really apologize if you thought simply being disappointed with the general gameplay loop of the game would result in any sort of punishment - it won’t. This upsets me because my primary goal as a staff member (and of the staff team at large as well !) has been to encourage users to voice their frustrations to staff and to be comfortable doing so. For users to still feel like they might get punished for simply voicing an opinion represents to me that I have completely failed at this aspect, and will need to better evaluate why that is. Regardless, I highly encourage you to reach out to me to talk things through if you are willing. I genuinely try to do my best to listen, and I know I am not perfect, but I hope that it does come through that we do care about the players’ opinions on the game. Genuinely, the PMU staff team wants the same thing as its players - for PMU to be an enjoyable experience for all, and many changes have been made in pursuit of this goal.

That said, it might be best for me to offer some more transparency on what goes on behind the scenes when we make our decisions with shiny rates. Just to preface this whole spiel, I am not the one who directly sets shiny rates. However, I have seen the process and have personally worked with the staff members who have set them, so I will still try to explain it as best as I can.

There’s a lot that goes into deciding what to do with shinies, but I will boil it down to two basic considerations:

  1. Shiny hunting shouldn’t be something that tortures a person by being overly difficult for no reason. In other words, it shouldn’t be near impossible.
  2. We also want someone’s effort with shinies to feel like it means something to them and not trivialize the pursuit. This aspect is particularly hard because everyone has different opinions on what a “worthy” hunt entails, or on what a shiny even means to them.

Being the one to make a judgment call when you’re balancing these aspects is an insanely difficult situation to be in, and it entails a lot of work that often ends up thankless - any mistake in setting a rate tends to result in a lot of criticism. At the end of the day, not everyone will be pleased as well, as much as it pains us.

I do not mean this to say that we should be immune to any negative comments, but rather, I just want to say that we do not seek to punish players with our actions and we care a ton about making sure anything we do is done fairly. If you EVER feel any staff member is doing something to the contrary, report them immediately because a. I don’t know of any current staff member who would be okay with that behavior ever and b. it might just be a misunderstanding and we would want to resolve that asap.

That said, for anyone who wishes to discuss this topic further, I highly encourage opening up a separate thread or even reach out to us directly so that we do not distract too far from the original suggestion! To respond to the initial thread topic and not throw anything too far off course - I (speaking for myself and not the staff team ofc) definitely think it is worth opening the discussion on ways to approach egg exclusivity, and while I would rather egg exclusives still be kept around in some way, I also understand that it isn’t necessarily pragmatic. For some Pokemon, there simply is not a great option around at the moment to give a valid hunt in the current form, and for some things on this list like Meditite/Cubone/Dedenne/etc., releasing them outside of egg exclusives is definitely possibility. I admittedly find the method of obtainment for Meditite, Cubone, and Dedenne a bit odd at the moment in general, especially with regards to rarity.

The staff team also knows that there’s a whole new complication when it comes to ID spawns that would also have to be looked at down the line as well. While not directly related to the original suggestion, I wanted to mention it to emphasize we’re always looking at and evaluating our methods, and will definitely consider the suggestion and see how we can best resolve the problem at hand, although it might not necessarily happen exactly as suggested.

6 Likes
7

At the risk of being a parrot, I definitely agree with everything posted here in regards to egg hunting vs recruits.
I think there is a usefulness in egg shinies as a mechanic, since they require less preparation than normal recruits (you don’t have to send a mon home, you don’t have to bait them out with honey, you don’t have to have recruit items), and they eliminate that secondary dice roll of recruiting that drives a lot of players up the wall.

However, there are a lot of advantages with recruiting shinies that outshine egg hunting. Being able to spawn multiple of a mon than appeared on the floor with honey, not needing inventory space, being able to share your shinies especially, and actually knowing what you’re looking at.

Personally I feel like even though having both is the clear preferred option, if I had to choose between the two I’d have every mon as a recruit rather than an egg. But of course eggs alongside regular recruits is the ideal option as it allows for multiple chances, routes and avenues at the same mon, and in the case of some dungeons, it expands the collections of mons that can be hunted it that dungeon.

1 Like
8

This topic is pretty well covered and explained. The only things I’ll like to add are:

1.- Have a “Friendly” amount of shiny chance for those eggs. indeed Lapras, Wishiwashi and others will be quite painful to shiny hunt from eggs if they are already hard to get (Same situation with recruitable shiny but that’s off topic) even more with specific, long and high effort to get one egg. Example Phione, it has 10% to be shiny, I think this egg exclusive recruits it needs this type of rates (or a bit higher for those that are still more rare and harder to get than Phione…).

2.- Balance way more the shiny rates of recruitable pokemon, make a rarity chart and value deeply watching (Don’t make it public, emotional pain can be seen that way…) and testing (play the dungeon) the odds not only when the shiny spawns (something related Seedlings commented earlier today), also it has to be seen how rare is to find and how many runs can take, I’m hunting a second shiny tepig to show this point. Because somehow I feel… the common recruits that are supposed to be more rare to spawn as shiny, they do like a rare recruit is supposed to do, and the rare recruits that are supposed to be more commonly to spawn as shiny, they do like a common recruit is supposed to do.

I think that way will make Shiny Recruits and Shiny Eggs worth with they own advantages and what they have to offer with.

9

@Kuma
1.- I literally just explained that this is the problem, and not the solution!! Eggs are global rates. If individual rates were a thing, it would’ve happened already, or a staff would’ve replied to any of our questions that this is possible.

And please stop bringing up phione on global and now in this thread, it’s not an actual egg pokémon.

My goal was to make it easier for both the community and Andy. So he doesn’t have to code all this stuff to make individual rates+the community being able to shiny hunt these pokémon without waiting another year or two.

2.- Why are you posting that here, it’s unrelated to the issues I’m posting in my thread ._.

10

K. I apologize for suggesting and being honest!

11

Guys… Peace and love… Egg exclusive recruits is not a place to fight… :bulbasad: (Make Bulbasaur happy again and don’t fight UwU)

1 Like
12

Well, we had some progress, Espurr, Gible and Dratini are shiny huntable now, the final two by buying the really expensive key, but now they’re gone.
The rest are still stuck with the global shiny egg rate, however low it may be.

13

We’re here 8 months later and this thread feels like the biggest waste of time. We achieved some things, but that’s only the very minimum of what could be. Before I put in my negative thoughts, I would like to mainly thank Kirk for making -some- of these a recruit.

Anyway, most of this list is still locked in the vault, despite there being places to put recruits in. EVEN if it’s temporary and you put them in a different dungeon later on, no one would blink an eye. It’s crazy how we still have gen 1 pokémon like cubone and lapras only obtainable in eggs, despite introducing shiny hunting (they’re both in awkward spots too??).

The current HC has 1 recruit of this list in the dungeon. Are we supposed to wait a year or two to obtain something that’s available for 2 weeks? Or are you guys going to keep saying you’re still working on it? Cause I honestly doubt it.

2 Likes
14

Things take time, especially when considering this fangame is being run by volunteers. I do certainly think that at some point we’ll be able to set individual egg shiny rates, but until that happens, this is something we have to deal with.

And while we could make most of these into recruits without people batting too much of an eye, there’s an elephant in the room…or more specifically, about three of them:

  • Lapras
  • Wishiwashi
  • Larvesta

Those eggs specifically have a certain rarity/status to them that would make it difficult to justify having a recruit option available. The Dratini and Gible eggs also had a similar problem with their status, but I hope the solution we’ve put out there is acceptable for those.

I can at least bring up the others with the staff team, but for now, those three I listed probably aren’t going to see any improvements in the shorter term unfortunately. I also can’t promise any (prompt) action with the others as well, but I personally sympathize with you on this subject.

Hope your hunts go well in the meantime~

15

I appreciate you taking the time to respond to this thread, as it’s one I’ve actively been wanting to have some answer to. I have a few comments and questions on some of the points you made as well as a summarizing point of my own

I’d start here by saying that I think most people in the community (and likely all people active in this thread) value the time and energy of all the staff of this game, and certainly I hope nothing asked comes across as community ungratefulness. I do think though that “things take time” is kind of hard to hear for this specific issue, for a couple reasons.

First, I think it’s hard to wait and expect change on a problem when the problem has existed for so long. Naturally, I think 8 months (like Levy mentioned) is a reasonably long time to wait on a problem, but it’s also not even how long this one has existed. Most of the Pokémon on this list have been Pokémon in generations that were otherwise all shiny since shinies were even released to the game.

Second, it’s a little hard to gauge (at least from our perspective) how long this problem would actually take to resolve when most of the “it’ll take time” issues we’ve had have been programming related. Please excuse me if I say something that’s blatantly ignorant to the labor that goes into this task as I don’t have the same level of understanding of the processes necessary to make these changes, but it seems like in the past that the process of giving an unrecruitable Pokémon rates wasn’t very time intensive. One example of why I thought this was with Spectral Thicket, where someone found an unrecruitable shiny abra, and practically immediately after it was reported, all abras in spth had rates. From this perspective it’s difficult to see why, excluding the three Pokémon you mentioned (although I feel like wishiwashi might be a little questionable in that list), we couldn’t just have rates added to the remaining Pokémon who already have active sprites in other dungeons.

As much as I value and respect all the work that all the staff of this game do for us, there’s a crippling communication issue that feels hard to cope with on a problem as widely felt as this one. As much as I appreciate you taking the time for this response (and hope to see more conversation from staff in threads like this), it unfortunately didn’t have much to really address the issue of if and when outside of distinguishing between a few Pokémon in the heap and the promise that the topic would be brought up. Now if this was a recent issue or one with a low level of support, the message that it was going to be discussed would be extremely comforting to I think any reasonable person. This late in the game though, there’s really only a few things I personally can think. Either the problem has already reached a decision or stalemate and we just aren’t being told about it, the problem has been brought up but it’s been seen as a non/insignificant issue, or that (despite how often we’re told that these forum posts do get looked through by staff) this topic hasn’t been so much as glanced through by a majority of the people that could make a decision on it. None of these scenarios are especially good, and I hope there is some communication in the future to either prove them incorrect or move past them with some decision on the subject.

Once again, thank you for your response and for hopefully reading through my reply. If there is anything you wanted to add to my reply, or wanted to correct me on, please don’t hesistate.

6 Likes
16

I definitely fully agree with Drayden’s take on this situation. There is the fact that we could be underestimating how much time and effort it would take to resolve these issues, however, it should still be discussed. It is true that going in and fixing this problem could take up a lot of time - but it’s a little frustrating to not have this be addressed much in the span of 8 months. Forgive me if I sound arrogant or if I’m missing something important.

In my opinion, I believe that it should be prioritized to at least make a few Pokemon accessible in other dungeons. For example, Cubone could be recruitable in Undercity Catacombs. Lapras could be recruitable in IFW or IA. Shinx would fit well in Voltaic Rainforest too, perhaps? Heck, some Pokemon could just be made into SR recruits. Those are some simple changes that could be a great start to addressing this topic.

Although, that being said, I appreciate you taking the time to address this @Seedlings! I hope that something will come out of this and that some of these mons will be freed soon.:pray:

17

You have no idea when a solution is coming for individual egg shiny rates, and neither do I. I am the one looking for a way around, like a temporary solution. This way Andy doesn’t have to rush anything in with coding, giving him lots of space. While you’re telling us have to deal with it until then. What is “then”? Another few years? Have you even remotely tried to understand us? It’s been 2 years since we allowed shiny hunting. And 8 months since I made this thread. Gonna be really easy to say things take time!!!

Ah yes, the 3 mighty rare elephants in the pokémon world. They certainly need to be protected from being too common in this game. /s
There is PLENTIFUL of ways to make rare pokémon hard to get and still shiny huntable. Literally anything is more manageable than trying for an egg. I’m starting to think you’re basing everything off of your own perspective and not of the community’s.

I appreciate you’re finally taking a look at forum threads, but I also think you’re holding your own opinion very high, while all of us are giving really good arguments.

1 Like
18

Since this seems to have gotten brought back up, I’ll throw my two sense in. Thanks for responding btw Seeds.

While I do understand that all staff members are volunteers, Drayden brought up a good point. While things can take time, some things have been fixed and changed fairly quickly. The person who found the unrecruitable Shiny Abra was me. I pinged the staff team, Kirk responded within minutes, got on, and added a rate, and within literally 10-15 minutes the problem was not only solved, but a recruit rate was added to the Abra, and thus its now able to be recruited(as was intended as Kirk found out), but if a simple problem like that can be solved within 20 minutes, adding a recruit rate and shiny rate to some NPCs(i.e. the Lapras in Iceberg Frigid Waters) would take all of 5 minutes, coming from someone who has worked with the editors before. Even if an NPC has to be made for something like Larvesta, creating an NPC also does not take more than 5 minutes either. Especially, Lapras to me has absolutely no business being at the end of a dungeon that does not fit it at all, in egg only, AND that egg is behind a 5% drop from the boss that also requires cut on a Pokemon to be able to access the part to get, that if you don’t get the drop also would need dive to get quicker access back to the dungeon without using the Southern Sea rest point. Let alone if you get the egg, you also have to hope it ends up shiny, and if it doesn’t you have to repeat this lengthy process. Having options to recruit Pokemon ALONGSIDE it being in eggs is not a bad thing, as its options for people to hunt it the way they want to. Besides, if you didn’t want to keep things from being too common, these pokemon have also been featured in the past easter event(all 3 of Larvesta, Lapras, AND Wishiwashi) so them being not common is a bit farfetch’d at this point. Even if these Pokemon were made to be recruits in SRs I wouldn’t mind that type of method either.

Another point I want to bring up that I didn’t(and I’m putting in via edit) is that you can see how excited its made some people to hunt the egg exclusives. Take Shinx in the currently ongoing Halloween event. So many people have been putting bounties on Shinx in particular, and I know there have been a few people who wanted to hunt Shinx the minute people saw it in Arcade, all because of how its an egg exclusive recruit in an end-game dungeon, and its every 10 floors to pick up the eggs, and thats IF you hatch it amongst the 5-6 other Pokemon in those eggs, AND having to win the shiny chance too. Yet so many people have been after Shinx in this event. Adding an option that isn’t being an egg to shiny hunt something can also make people happy if they want said shinies.

2 Likes
19

Alrighty, I see people really want to engage on this topic, so I’ll do my best to keep going with this.

First things first, before I begin answering these latest posts - I do want to apologize if communication has been lackluster in the past. I’m going to do better going forward, and I’ll be making sure to discuss the important points with the rest of the staff so that we can do something about it as and when we feel it is needed for the game’s improvement.

One point that everybody seems to be bringing up is that it’s taking much longer than any of us would like. I know I said that “things take time” earlier, because I’ll freely admit I don’t know how long it will take for the underlying issue (egg shinies having the same static rate for all eggs) to have a better implementation ready, and the last thing I’d want is to rush the programming work.

In general, when plans are made to do something in a specific way, we try to stick to those plans and avoid temporary/janky workarounds (as it’d cause even more work to do later to clean things up). That’s probably why we’ve been roadblocked on this for a long time now, as this is a programming issue and PMU’s codebase can be difficult to work with.

But as with certain other issues, like evolution forms not quite being supported yet, we’ve occasionally done something to make a Pokemon accessible such as specially flagging Exeggcute in Sandy Shallows to evolve into Alolan Exeggutor or with Espurr/Rockruff evos. We are open to change our minds on this stuff if things aren’t moving fast enough.

So, after looking at this, and chatting with people on the subject, and thinking about how long it’s been (and how much longer it would probably take)…I think we’re more open to the idea of making egg exclusives have a recruit option somewhere. We’ve been discussing this internally and have come up with a number of ideas - several of which I’d like to see greenlit. And these changes to add/modify recruits in places is something that can be done fairly quickly when we know what needs done, as Drayden/Zappeh pointed out with the example of an unrecruitable shiny Abra in Spectral Thicket.

But we’re also taking the time to talk things out and get opinions and viewpoints shared before committing to changes; if things are changed too quickly, it might not have enough quality control to make sure that these changes make sense, and it’ll be difficult to undo a change that was committed to without making people upset. We don’t want to be rash about this, but we do want to work on this.

Now on to more specifics, since I’m sure you guys want to hear at least a bit about what we’re thinking about. I don’t want to say too much and spoil/promise stuff that’s still being discussed, but we’re looking at the list of egg-exclusives and brainstorming what we could do. Some of them are pretty straightforward, such as the Dewpider that’s already been added as a recruit to the three Lakes dungeons (which at some later point we’d like to just completely overhaul to give them more character/purpose, they feel rather empty and off-putting right now). Some are less straightforward, like the discussions we’ve had about Munchlax, Cleffa and Happiny (due to their status as baby/incense mons where they have an egg-related gimmick). Some actually had prior plans in place to be introduced in upcoming stuff we’ve been working on, but I won’t say which one(s) specifically here. There’s even been an idea proposed for Lapras specifically that has merit.

I can’t promise that we’ll get to the entire list, but some (more) changes may be coming shortly.

1 Like
20

It’s been a long while since this thread has been made so I wanted to go back and look at all the mons rescued from egg exclusivity, and all the ones still trapped

From this list we have recruits now for: Shinx(VR), Lapras(IFW), Dedenne(TF), Meditite(MS), Carnivine(MJ), Happiny(FF), Espurr(SL), and dewpider(Lakes)

It is also worth mentioning that this is not something staff have seemed to give up on, given how recent meditite was added to its own dungeon. That being said, I think it’s still important to make note of all the egg mons that have yet to be given their own recruits

  • Cubone
  • Munchlax
  • Tyrogue
  • Wishiwashi
  • Turtonator
  • Larvesta
  • Meowth
  • Igglybuff
  • Passimian
  • Oranguru
  • Dratini*
  • Gible*
    (Dratini and Gible being extremely special cases)

Hopefully these continue to be worked and ideally no other mons get added onto this list

4 Likes