Implement a Gender-Changing NPC

Suggestions and Contributions
1

Yep, we’re on this topic again.

The inclusion of a method that allows for the ability to change a Pokémon’s gender has been brought up countless times over the years, with many ideas thrown out there. This, however, is something I believe could finally solve this matter, and may even help with providing another solution for dealing with PMU’s current ‘abundance of Poke (money)’ issue. Which could be a win-win scenario for everyone.

The Method

An NPC (psychic-type conducting an experiment that requires your participation and funds maybe?) could be created in their own little house, that has the ability to change a Pokémon’s gender. Similar to Blissey’s egg hatching service. This should cost an absolute hefty amount of money. In my opinion, $100,000 (100k) would be a decent price, but that’s up for debate. Maybe the price could depend on the gender ratio of the Pokémon in question? Example would be a 50/50 split costing less, and a 88/11 split costing more. Or, just having a single fixed price.

The NPC could only be available during specific events, or it could be a permanent NPC within the world.

How would this benefit PMU?

  1. As mentioned above, this would add an additional ‘money sink’ into the game. Those who care about the gender of their Pokémon would be presented with two options. Either choose to pay the hefty price to change a specific mon’s gender, or continue to grind for it instead. It’s entirely up to the player which path they’d prefer.

  2. Certain Pokémon are locked behind currency (Dratini, Gible, Floral/Heart Key, etc), and require hours of grinding to obtain. For some players, it can be demotivating to finally recruit these mons, but not get their desired gender. The same scenario could be applied to shiny hunting.

The Complications

I’m no coder, and hold no knowledge on how difficult this NPC would be to implement. However, I imagine these factors would need to be considered:

  1. Pokémon that are 100% a specific gender cannot use the NPC (Rufflet line, Nidoran line, Hatenna line, etc).

  2. Pokémon that have major gender differences based on appearance or moveset wise cannot use the NPC (Litleo can use it, but Pyroar can’t. Espurr can use it, but Meowstic can’t. Frillish line cannot use it, etc). This is the most tricky issue, and could require some discussion.

Final Thoughts

This could finally solve the request of implementing a way to change a Pokémon’s gender. Looking over discussions of this topic, I’ve noticed the main ‘disagreeing points’ brought up have been, “I enjoy the challenge of finding Pokémon with a specific gender”, and “What’s the point? Gender doesn’t mean anything in PMU”.

However, I believe it’s important to provide players with options that could improve their experience, as some players would appreciate this. This would be a cosmetic and optional feature available to those who are willing to pay a hefty price. I’m assuming staff are busy with prioritizing more essential features to add within PMU. This is a suggestion that can hopefully be considered and implemented at a later point in time.

What do you all think about this? Do you believe this would be too complicated and/or is unnecessary? What would be an appropriate price for this?

2

I like this post :):):)

Gender change is trivial compared to a lot of other things… it’s “just a symbol” after all (But it means more to those of us who are kind of immersive with “being” certain pokemon) but god would I love this to be an available option. I would probably spend a lot of poke on it.

Besides this is the same game where staff adds disguises for regular pokemon … that people can just go and recruit themselves so you know… it’s not a stranger to having “pointless” things just for player’s whimsy.

Why not this?

I hope staff will consider it.

2 Likes
3

Agree, i think changing gender (within reason) can be a payabIe npc ^_^

pmu couId aIso use money sinks.

and whiIe i do agree for the most part, i wouId Iike to note that i think the npc shouId onIy Iimit usage for pokemon Iike nidoran espurr indindee. pokemon that are actuaIIy different pokemon with different movesets and pokedex entries.

pokemon that are mereIy cosmeticaIIy different (of which there are many); which incIudes the ones that are majorIy different such as jeIIicent and pyroar shouId stiII be aIIowed to change.

i think the gender change shouId cost at Ieast 15k
not something incredibIy cheap.

edit reworded for better cIarity

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4

i fully agree with this i do belive a npc to change gender would incredibly nice to have and could help give pmu so more money sinks!
of corse it should be EXTREMELY expensive like 500k or 1mil or something, that way it dosen’t “trivilize” the challenge of getting a different gendered mon, as hunting itself would be more preferable.
but this npc, or gender bending item or whatever form staff wishes to add it in, would help out some of the stuff you simply cannot ask a player to hunt again, such a shiny pokemon, dratini/gible, or HC exclusives

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5

Yeah, I also believe that Pokémon that purely have a cosmetic difference between gender should still be able to use the NPC, while disallowing mons that have moveset differences based on gender from using it. I guess it’ll just require a decent amount of testing, to ensure the gender difference is properly swapped when using the NPC (For example, Frillish successfully turning from the Female Pink sprite, to the Male Blue Sprite, and vice versa).

1 Like
6

As someone whose first lv100, an Altaria I’ve had since the early game and thus have a strong attachment to, is not the gender in-game that I see them as in my head, I’d love an addition like this.

He’s a cloud boi, dang it. Not a cloud girl :(

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7

i would really like this too tbh. i think it would be a good money sink and definitely be useful for people who have themed teams or base their teams off their OCs or something. +1 to this post!

for now, my temporary situation is to just remove the gender indicators in game for me altogether. it probably won’t satisfy everyone, but i found that it’s really helpful, as i don’t check what gender shinies i recruit are and since it doesn’t show, i just never know either way. so yeah for anyone who this can help, here’s my nonbinary pmu mod lol (just replace PMU.ttf in the Fonts folder of your game with this file)

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8

+1 on this. Good money sink and would really help for very annoying mon hunts when you don’t get the ideal gender you wanted.

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9

big +1 support on this one.

being able to evolve shiny pokemon (or pokemon in general) that require a specfic gender ratio to evolve would be helpful, especially since things like cute charm don’t exist to help you against the 11/88 gender ratio odds. If there was a way to increase your wild pokemon gender odds (like cute charm) this whole discussion would be another problem in of itself.

While I am bias towards this implementation as I do have a shiny salandit, I believe that either one of two things need to come from this - either cute charm is properly implemented or there is an NPC that can change a pokemon’s gender.

If neither of the above ideas are implemented, we will just be sat here at step one with money constantly being pumped into the economy from people paying for shiny pokemon that require a specified gender until they get it and then another person comes along and does the same.

That is all I have to say before I continue looping back on myself and parroting what I have already said.

2 Likes
10

make the npc a doublade, for no particular reason

11

In the spirit of discussion, i just want to import a point that was said in our discussions in one of the pmu discord servers (not the main)

“this gender npc wouId ironicaIIy end up not being a money sink”

this is due to the fact that it wiII cannibaIize the money sink of another npc: combee. good handfuI of pmu pIayers spend exhorbitant amounts of money at combee. if you remove the need to hunt for genders, u remove aII those combee saIes.

i’d Iove to see this further discussed/debated

12

and as was counter pointed to that, that would only happen if the price of the npc wasen’t high enough to make up for it,
if the gender swapped costed like 1mil, then i really doubt it would save players money as that would be around 800 honey worth of combee purchases.

and if that conversion still isn’t good enough then you know what you can do?
make the price of the npc 2mil. or 3 mil,

“that would make the npc really hard to utilize!” yeah that was the intention, to make hunting more preferable, this is a cop out option for those who can afford it and pokemon with unresonable gender/rarities to hunt for, it’s meant to be inacessible

there’s no reason to work under the impression this would be a affordable npc,
this npc can easily be the most expensive thing in the entire game and no one would complain, (apart from lazy people, who would complain about everything, and new players which this npc wouldn’t be desgined for)

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