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I read the whole post and all, and I feel like new mechanics solely for balancing the exclusive Items Is unnecessary. Hear me out pls.
So I genuinely believe the best solution to this Is simply making the obtainment of them how It Is In the real games; through the swap shop. Not only because of my bad opinion of wanting PMU to be more like PMD but I really think It’s the most reasonable and simple change.
I’m going to briefly break this down. So, silks are balanced right now In my onion. They’re not guaranteed or anything and most are only In one dungeon ( Blue Silk Is In like, 4 dungeons though technically, jesus christ ). You need to use a consumable Item to have a chance at one anyway.
Silk + dust Is the only problem here, since dusts are so easy to obtain when they actually have no business being so, and I don’t think anyone realized that In the progress of PMU’s development. Just for an example, about 3 types of dusts can be found very commonly hidden In Boggy Wastes after a certain point. And of course Sky Fortress, you have a chance to find the dust of the respective type of the section you’re In + Flying always. That’s literally 10 types.
I am absolutely certain one of the only reasons this wouldn’t be Ideal Is because dusts are so easily obtained. That would need to be fixed. Like In PMD, dusts being exclusive to missions does not sound bad at all and from my memory I think I remember hearing that this was the case In the past, when 8-9* TC missions originally worked. Obviously they shouldn’t be exclusive to TC missions but them being exclusive to higher rank missions sounds fine to me.
But, you’re probably thinking, silk + dust Is still 2 ez. I don’t exactly disagree. I said dusts need to be rarer ( and silks might need to be too If this change became a thing It won’t ), but of course that doesn’t fix the Issue of how many people already have, right? Well sir or ma’ams that’s where I’m stumped.
So so so, what If to make a Gem or Crystal In the case of PMU, you’d also need the respective Plate and/or band of the type. No one cares about bands so I don’t even know where most are obtained ( I know that they aren’t In convenient spots for most of them though ). And I know that all plates except for a select few are exclusive to TC 99 paths. Draco Plate Is In DD end box, Icicle Plate Is a CC boss drop, Pixie Plate Is In MM or something. For the Plates, unless they were made more accessible I think that’s a bit excessive, unless they were added to the swap shop crafting chain.
It could maybe go: Dust/Band/Silk = Plate > Dust/Band/Silk/Plate = Gem or Crystal > Dust/Band/Silk/Plate/Gem/Crystal > Globe
I’m such a gosh dang genius aren’t I So you’d need to have two dusts, two silks, and two bands to create a Gem or Crystal. Is that still too easy? Perhaps. I mean we could make It more tedious and have It need the power-boosting Items too ( or plates could just not be craftable, would add a market for them ). But this Is tied to progression at least? Sorta? Maybe.
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But that’s enough of my silly Idea. My very first sentence summed up my opinion on this “Explorer Tokens” Idea but I’ll still actually comment on some things.
higher-tier missions are flooding the game with things like dusts and evolution items, many of which are being pumped in faster than they are used up, to the point most people just immediately vendor them to Kecleon. The excess of some of these items may not be entirely the fault of mission rewards, but I believe their impact is often overlooked.
Yes, and I touched on this with dusts at least earlier. I mean all I have to really comment on this Is that staff should change the rewards. More Poke rewards or Items like Gold Ribbons would be nice.
Ultimately, I think the items Ludicolo sells should be things like hats and music items; right now there are 3 measly vanity items in his shop, but we’ve been introducing plenty of new disguise and music items as time has gone by. Perhaps some already created ones could find a home here? Or maybe he needs an entirely new stock? Either way, the rewards from attending weekly events should definitely be fun, but they don’t need to be mechanically significant in dungeon crawling to do that.
This was one of the only things I agreed with. Even If not either of our didiot Ideas, this goes without saying… All of the fun Items are exclusive to the seasonal shops or HCs. In addition to music Items and cosmetics IKEA Items would fit nicely there.
Bottled mission messages are something which I’ve suggested in another thread, having been inspired by Kirk’s idea for a functionally-identical “mission token”; using a bottled message generates a mission of a specific rank in a random eligible dungeon you have completed, and then adds it to your job list.
The cost of a bottled mission will be high enough as to guarantee a net loss of explorer tokens; by choosing to buy one, you are re-investing your tokens into more explorer points at the cost of your tokens. Whether or not bottled messages would be tradeable is up for debate, but I personally lean no as to avoid them being dumped on newer players and rocketing them through explorer rank progression rather than letting them work towards that goal themselves.
Additionally, it’s probably for the best missions obtained from a bottled message cannot be shared with other players like ones from the mission board can, otherwise that skews their price math in a way that would either be exploitable by groups or penalize solo players.
You suggested this so people don’t have a hard time ranking up right? But like, wouldn’t a more simple solution just be to make It so new missions appear more often? Like 5 or 10 minutes or so? Am I being delusional for thinking this Is pretty much all that should be needed to be done? If this was the case, maybe then bottled messages could spawn at Exbel’s coast at time change but other than that I don’t see why It needs to be such a complicated thing. Additionally I’d love to see NPCs have missions In Spinda’s Cafe like In EoS.