Hello, members of the PMU community. My name is Zekko, and I have been a player for about 3 years now - some may know me, some may not. But even so, I wish that you will take the time to read this post, as it will go over a few topics I have been mulling over for a long time.
Pokemon Mystery Universe is a wonderful game. It has reinvigorated my love for Pokemon, and I am sure that many other players have a soft spot for it as well. However, despite the many, many highlights that I can touch on in response to how great the game itself is, there is one glaring flaw that I wish to address - the purpose of other towns.
Grassroot Town has been given a lot of attention. It has everything a player may need, including ease of access for newbies, a congregation spot for all players to hang out, definite locations for comoddities and tasks (such as opening boxes, cleaning items, the like), and a plaza that hosts weekly events, if not more. However, the over-attention to this town, and the lack of attention given to other towns, means that they are entirely neglected - I, myself, only go to different towns because of the items they sell. If you take that aspect away and put it into Grassroot, there’s virtually no reason at all to spend any time in these other beautiful places.
I especially want to point to towns that are not immediately accessible from Fly spots, such as Frigid Heights or Silversail. Why would anyone want to spend their time at any of those places when they offer virtually nothing? What purpose do they have to begin with, other than decoration? Taking them away would make no difference to the player.
I would like to tether a few lines of reasoning together, in hope that I can provide a coherent narrative as to what can be done to increase player interactions at other spots.
First and foremost, it would be ideal if a message board (request board, in other terms) be placed in each and every town. My reasoning for this is simple - hypothetically, if I have been running dungeons in Tanren, and focus my time solely on Tanren, I have to go BACK to Grassroot in order to check if I have any missions to do. It would be much easier if I could simply respawn in Tanren, saying I set my spawn there, and just walked outside, checked the board, then went back to what I was doing. It would create a lot less hassle, while also encouraging players to linger while they wait for cycle changes.
Secondly, many of the towns have no driving factor as to why one should visit them. From what I have ascertained over the course of my play time, Grassroot is the hub for events, is the only town that has the swap cauldron, updates during the times of year, and has a seasonal shop. There are also a few games in Grassroot, even though people don’t normally play them. While I do not wish for these areas to be spread thin across the world, it would be ideal if one could create ways to draw interest from other players, such as minigames or bargain sale shops that rotate their stock on occassion. To add on to why this would be a good idea, if newer players hear that certain attractions are availible in other areas (ones that do not hinder their gameplay experience, but rather are simply for fun or optional lines of progression), then it would possibly spur them to work towards that specific location, simply besides accessing more dungeons. An example idea would include Silversail - maybe you can put in a bunch of berries to make a specialized kind of drink, which has various effects depending on the berry (possibly a one at a time kind of thing, to create less hassle when coding).
Another idea, simply for fun, is to expand on the other town’s design. Grassroot as the most going for it, with plenty of places to hang out on a player’s off time. Winden has a town hall, but it is VERY barren. Frigid Heights has a library, but we can’t read any of the stories. Just their titles. Tanren City has an underground mini plaza, but there’s still nothing to it. It would be interesting if more spaces in these areas could be erected, such as cafes, gag shops, plushie stores, decoration stores (items that are purely meant to put in your house for flair). In Frigid Heights, perhaps put in a observatory/planetarium. Maybe, somewhere, there can be a building that has a detailed timeline of each region’s lore, so we can learn more about the land we are playing on.
These are my thoughts. I do thank you for your time, and I wish you a wonderful day.