NERFING WALL RUNNING:
The main complaints about wall running is that is extremely strong and does not interact with any of PMU’s other mechanics. Some folks kind of like the ability to be braindead, some folks don’t, and others just want to stop being pigeonholed into using the same teams over and over.
As such, PMU needs item and dungeon designs that are interactive in spite of wallrunning or PMU needs to find a way to fundamentally change the mechanics of the game so that wallrunning isn’t OP.
Potential solution:
Make players unable to run when they have 0 belly (can only walk), or something similar such as nullify additional speed boosts (can only run at default speed).
Consequence: New meta pokemon/teams will pop up, and this is an indirect nerf to shiny hunting since this is a nerf to speedrunning in general. See more about this below.
THE META THAT EMERGES AFTER WALLRUNNING IS NERFED:
Here is the trickier part.
The PMU community’s new meta would probably be composed of gem/globe abusers that have range and speed boost effects (be it ability and/or family items). This still leaves a majority of the pokemon roster in the dust. There’s no benefit to running low-range mons and/or low-speed mons. 4x bonuses and weather, alone, make a ton of mons comparably unviable. Other mons are prevented from breaching the glass ceiling due to family items or unfortunate abilities.
Potential solution(s):
Implement a chain-hunting system for shinies (that doesn’t increase chances only based on dungeon completion, since that still overly rewards speedrunning). This should happen regardless of if wallrunning stays superior imo, most games have a pity system for a reason.
[Chain system explanation: You would choose a pokemon species to shiny hunt. For example, let’s say Spearow. For every Spearow OR Fearow you faint, you get +1 to your “chain”. And every time you get that +1, your chance of encountering a shiny Spearow increases by just a tiny bit. That, or something similar in premise to this system. Maybe create an NPC that lets you redeem those chain points for a shiny of that species. My amazing MS Paint skills: Screenshot by Lightshot ]
Secondarily, PMU staff can also rebalance family items, gems, globes, and access to speed boosts. Bring down OP pokemon a bit, and lift up Pokemon that really need it. This diversifies teams that people can use, which further reduces that “stale” feeling.
SPECIFIC IMPLEMENTATION ORDER:
Nerf Wallrunning and implementing the shiny chain hunting system must be done simultaneously. After that, clean up the bugs and wait for the new “OP” pokemon teams to emerge. The team can then make balance changes to Pokemon by adjusting top tier items / family items and (if needed) any move ranges. On the side, keep an eye on dungeons in case some of them become too painful to run/farm repeatedly once wallrunning is nerfed - some folks are worried about Spectral Thicket being too painful.
This is a fairly elegant solution to fixing wallrunning, I think. Just being unable to sprint at 0 belly is something that, Imo, should have been implemented in PMU from Day 1.
The only reason nobody was complaining about it prior to the wallrunning meta is because it wasn’t something that needed to be implemented, since being on 0 belly rarely occurs after your first few dungeon runs. (In the sense that after your first couple runs, you likely have a couple apples you’re bringing with you already and managing your hunger. It also gets rid of people fainting from hunger because they “didn’t realize” they were dying of hunger. If they can’t sprint they’ll know something is up.)
I have a couple of clarifying questions (and suggestions) about this shiny point system- however its implemented. (Whether its a chain boost or a boost or a trade-in system, the same questions apply)
These questions stem from one main concern:
Depending on how the system works, this can either be incredibly broken and abusable, or not give enough points to balance out making shiny hunting rarer Pokemon still plausible.
1: Do the Pokemon you kill have to be recruitable?
You mentioned killing Spearow or Fearow to up your Spearow counter. Does the killed Fearow have to be recruitable? My big issue with this either way is that:
A: Making it so they have to be recruitable keeps hunting mons like starter Pokemon MUCH more difficult than they were prior to the wallrunning nerf.
Specifically: I want to hunt Treecko in MJ. If I have to kill SPECIFICALLY Treecko, those rarely spawn and therefore does not increase my chances to get Treecko very much at all. Because it is a rare spawn, making building the chain extremely difficult.
And B: If its ANY mon in the evolution tree, recruitable or unrecruitable, suddenly I’m killing dozens of Sceptiles and Grovyles every time I run MJ and my counter is going up like crazy. Not to mention all of the Pokemon who have even MORE spawns than those in their evo tree basically being free hunts you can do extremely quickly.
A shiny chain system like this would tank the value of a lot of shinies, while other, more difficult mons skyrocket.
Two potential solutions to this are either:
A: Make ALL mons from the evolution line (recruitable and unrecruitable) count, but scale them to the “difficulty” of a mon and the spawn rates of its evolutions. So to use Treecko as an example again, let’s say that because Grovyle and Sceptile are so easy to encounter in MJ, Treecko’s needed chain might be higher than a mon who has less of its evolutions spawn in the dungeons people hunt it in.
Or B: Make the opposite true, ONLY recruitable instances of that Pokemon count, and while the chain for Treecko might be 50, the chain for Spearow might be 1000. I’ve done MJ runs with 0 Treecko spawns, and they only spawn on 10 floors, so I think 50 is actually kind of a high number there if its ONLY counting recruitable Treecko. Meanwhile, Spearow is everywhere in many dungeons.
The biggest issue with this solution is that staff has to go through every Pokemon to decide what arbitrary chain number to set for it based on the location of the Pokemon and its evolution tree.
This could be made easier with option 2 where they only need to take into account where the Pokemon can be recruited and its spawn rate. This could even end up being based directly on stuff like spawn rate and dungeon level as well as recruitment floors.
Assuming there’s a system like that in place, we don’t run into issues of weird arbitrary numbers deciding each Pokemon that end up not making sense. If it’s all math, then it can also be done by a specific code meaning they don’t have to be individually input.
For example:
Chain = |# of Locations it spawns in (# Of Floors Pokemon Spawns on x (|Base RR| x 200) - Avg Level of Dungeon) |
(For those of you who don’t know, anything between these: || represents what’s called an Absolute Value. Absolute Value basically just takes away the negative in front of a number if there is one, and does nothing to positive numbers. This makes it so we don’t get negative chain numbers when we do Base RR x 200, or if a Pokemon’s chain would be negative. It’s not the most elegant solution, as it calcs mons with -4% RR as having 4% RR, but its the best solution I can think of.)
Only calculate its highest DUNGEON RR. (Overworld spawns do not count for RR, unless its only spawn is in Overworld. In which case maybe it could just be Base RR x 200, Overworld spawns DO count for Number of Locations it spawns in)
For Treecko, it only spawns in MJ on floors 41-50, it’s base RR is 5% (or 5/100), and the level of MJ is 60 (on the wiki at least).
Which means its Chain = 1 (10 x (5/100 x 200) - 60) = 40
For Spearow, it spawns in the Overworld, Mt Skylift, and Jailbreak Tunnel.
In Mt Skylift, it has a 7.7% RR, appears on F 1-10, and, again according to wiki, the average level of Skylift is 30 (Because (40 + 20)/2 = 30)
Spearow’s Chain = 3 (10 x (7.7/100 x 200) - 30) = 372
I spent a really long time trying to come up with a decent calculation that actually gives higher numbers for easier Pokemon and Lower numbers for harder Pokemon. This is great for some Pokemon, but absolutely insane for others and I don’t know how to balance the maths other than like, putting a hard cap on the amount of dungeons that can count.
Here’s some other Pokemon at the biggest extremes, which have made me concerned:
Wingull, and Shellder both spawn in 7 Locations.
Wingull has the highest RR in Sandy Shallows at 12% and Spawns on 20 floors.
So Wingull’s Calc looks like this:
Chain = 7(20 x (12/100 x 200) - 50) = 3010
3010 kind of seems a bit much to max chain. If we cap the max number of dungeons counted to like, 3, then we’d get 1290 which is a little more reasonable for a mon that spawns very frequently.
Shellder has the highest RR in Crystal Ruins at 12.2%, and spawns on 10 floors.
So Shellder’s calc looks like this:
Chain = |7(10 x (12.2/100 x 200) - 35)| = 1463
Not nearly as bad as Wingull’s, I was expecting it to be worse, honestly.
On the low end of things, we have
Eevee. It spawns in 1 Dungeon (Friendship Forest) with a RR of 2.2%, and spawns on 2 floors.
Eevee’s Chain Calc = 1((2.2/100 x 200) -20)
Without Absolute Value, Eevee’s Chain is -15. This turns a hard to get Pokemon into an easy grind, which is, I think, probably the biggest flaw in my calculation and I cannot think of a solution for it.
2: When you’re in a party, do kills count for every player in the party?
Let’s say I’m running Skylift with a group of 3 people.
Person 1 is hunting Wingull, Person 2 is hunting Swablu, Person 3 is hunting Fletchling.
If Person 3 kills a Swablu, does Person 2’s count go up? What if all 3 of them are hunting the same Pokemon? If they’re all hunting Swablu do they ALL get a point?
This could either encourage or discourage running dungeons together depending on how it works. If kills count for all members, this encourages group shiny hunting where 4 people get together to hunt the same or different Pokemon, party up, and kill their targets.
If kills don’t count for all members, then this heavily discourages running together as someone could say “I’m hunting Swablu, please don’t kill any Swablu let me kill them” and that slows down the entire dungeon run, which tends to annoy people. On top of that, it makes it frustrating for the player who’s hunting the Pokemon as if they witness a team member accidentally kill a Swablu, they may get upset.
Personally, I’m a fan of running dungeons together and anything that makes that more optimal, I am a fan of, but I’m also a fan of balance and worry that it might be a little broken if party member kills count for every member.
3: Eggs.
Simply put, no matter your chain of a Pokemon, eggs will still be a problem. Without wallrunning, grinding for eggs in a dungeon becomes very difficult. Whether or not you’re shiny hunting with eggs, this is a massive nerf to people who are looking for them. (I am also a supporter of eggs getting higher shiny rates, to make them a genuinely plausible shiny hunting method.)
Adding onto your suggestion, I would like to say that I think the biggest way to fix the meta is to remove the weather limitation surrounding gems, globes, and crystals entirely, buffing basically the entire pool of Pokemon. One of the points you bring up is that the new meta would revolve around using high-range, high-speed mons. As long as gems, globes, and crystals continue to function under specific weather limitations, we will ALWAYS see very specific mons with high range and high speed be optimal. It will take less tweaking to less mons if we made these items non-weather specific.
As it is, it is incredibly limiting and making otherwise viable Pokemon unviable, while buffing the heck out of mons like Dragonite and Salamence who frankly don’t need to be more better than other Pokemon as they’re already pseudo legendaries. I think without wallrunning, Dnite becomes the new Noivern. Dragon/Flying functioning with Clear Rock, high stats and access to crazy crap like confusionless Outrage w/ Clarity Relic, Surf and EQ. We jump from one Dragon/Flying type to another. And that’s because Dragon/Flying types function at 4x speed with all of the buffs possible under clear weather, on top of that, Altaria- who is, kind of objectively, the best clear weather setter in the game- is ALSO dragon/flying type, meaning people’s supports can ALSO get the 4x speed boost if you needed to run around with it for some reason. Keeping with that, flying types are great against ground moves. Which have a ton of prevalence in Dynamo Sands, a high level dungeon that people like to run. Running SF with Dnite is also easy because it gets ice absorption via its family item, so you don’t need to worry about choosing between fire ice or electric with a nice clear rock. Nor do you have to worry about bringing a flying type to SF, because your carry is already flying.
Removing the limitation immediately makes every dual-type Pokemon with decent range just as viable as every other dual-type Pokemon with decent range, outside of stuff like BST, which we can’t change. The only thing we need to fix after that is the single-type Pokemon’s ability or lackthereof to 4x speed.
This makes every dual-type Pokemon viable with any other dual-type Pokemon in any weather. It makes Normal/Electric/Poison Pokemon able to run on teams again because they aren’t mega nerfed by being stuck with Cloudy Rock. Single-type Pokemon are the only ones who suffer here, and many of them (Sylveon, Florges, Rapidash, Magmortar, Typhlosion, etc) get family items that boost their speed in certain weather. The ones that don’t…? Well, that’s where the rebalancing fam items comes in. Could even make new ones for Pokemon like Absol who have no evolution and a singular family item.
Until weather restrictions on crystals are removed, the meta will ALWAYS be biased towards dual types who fall under the same weather conditions, or mons that get boosted speed in certain weather with a family item, and the only amount of fam item balancing that would help that is if every mon that didnt fall under those conditions, got another family item that did that. And it would still not be balanced because I would assume they’d need to replace one of the existing family items with it, but it also wouldn’t be balanced if they just gave them an extra because then mons that already have them would feel shorted a family item.
One last edit to add:
A way to make single-type Pokemon work is that you could make it so having 2 of the same crystal in your inventory will activate twice.
You already have to buy 2 crystals for dual type mons. Buying 2 of the same crystal could just… activate twice if you have them in your bag. Problem solved, all mons get 4x speed.
Really awsome idea, the prevention of running while at 0 belly is simple, effective and the same downside being starving does in the the original pmd! so it makes a ton of sense!
The idea of adding a chain shop is really clever my simple solution would to just buff the shiny rate across the board but this makes shiny hunting pretty involved and interactive since you would have to go explore the dungeon to kill every last psyduck for that lovely shiny!
oh boy. where to start here, frankly, i will plainly state for anyone who wants a quick TLDR;
here we have a lot of self made problem that don’t actually exists, and are made up and don’t actually exist or affect anything,
but off to adress em individually;
This is completely false.
How is it much more difficult? with or without the system your still just looking for nothing but treeckos, because pokemons that are unreruictable don’t have a shiny rate. nothing changed. your still just looking for treeckos and grovayles are a complete and utter waste of your time and spawn chances, nothing changed.
this is very incorect, it would in fact most likely being the most balance and fairest system we ever seen, no pokemon would be easier or harder to grind then any pokemons because it is a actual tangable numble that can be easily upped or lower depending on the need, pokemon who’s hard to build chain on? give a low number! pokemon where you find plenty and easy to chain? give em a massive number!
balancing is a nonissue as the number is easily editable and effective, too many players start getting shiny buizels? time to double the points needed for it! nobody got a shiny larvitar in a month? time to crack down that number of points!, easy quick and effective.
this is a issue? this is already how the system works with shiny rates.
every pokemon is assigned individually each dungeon a arbitary shiny rate that feels correct to the staff and then adjusted over time as time goes on after release, this is litteraly the same thing they have been doing for over 12 years
there’s probably a tons of issue with your formula and i’m not smart enough pr have the time to go around search for all of them, but i can point out a obvious one, this dosen’t account for the amount of that pokemon that spawns.
it counts the floors it’s in but, not how often it spawns on those floors.
even tho eevee IS in just 2 floors, about 30 of them of them spawn on those floors, eevee is by FAR the most common then litteraly any other pokemon in the game, you are garanteed to see 100 times more eevees then you are going to see wingulls in a single run of each respective dungeons.
this is actually a really good point, this system would cause a lot of problems for party plays and make it very inconvient to run with other players and be reason for a lot mess with the system
Irrelevant,
eggs are already pretty much non shiny huntable in the current system, bringing them up does not make sense, they are not viable now and if they aren’t viable in another system dosen’t change anything. this is just how eggs works.
if eggs where to be made worth something in shiny hunting then bringing up this point then would make sense, but it dosen’t currently.
While i do not know how this would shake up the meta, maybe it is a idea worth considering if mobile walking is nerfed, what i can and will make notice here is the fact that you don’t really seem to understand how the meta works at all,
you point how nerfing wall walking will nerf noivern but buff salamance and dragonite and make them the new noivern.
this factually wrong, there’s no universe where dragonite will ever be better then noivern no matter what you nerf or buff, noivern will factually still be better then those two, he just simply has a better movepool and abilities, (while also be more easily optinable arguably), the same typing, the only downside being slightly less bulky, which is a non issue due to the game being based around not taking damage and it’s heavy long range options which you praised dragonite for, for some reason, even tho he sucks at long range. he’s physical. and you certantly don’t wanna go around using a non stab EQ.
with all due respect, your view on what’s good is so mistankly based around BST that you went to psudo legendarys even tho they are pretty often outshined by other pokemons, and you failed to mention the obvios god in the background; Excadrill who is already almost given noivern a run for his money, which noivern is barely keeping himself above due to his access to moonlight and frisk, while having nightmares every day at night that gamefreak is gonna give excadrill shore up in the next gen.
Much more difficult in the sense that with Wallrunning, shiny hunting is just going into a floor, listening for shiny sparkle, b-lining to stairs through the walls.
Without it, you actually have to navigate the floor, (which is not a bad thing) but it does make shiny hunting harder. It especially makes shiny hunting dungeons that are longer more difficult because the time you’re losing by removing wallrunning is compoundable. If it takes me like 30 seconds to clear a floor while wallrunning, but over a minute to clear it without, then over the course of a 60 floor dungeon, I am losing at least 30 minutes by removing wallrunning. The buff to shiny hunting should be equivalent to losing those minutes, and if it is not, then it is “much harder” in the sense that it is taking much more of my time.
This would be great if I had faith in the PMU team to actually implement something like that and keep on top of it with playtesting and such. I wanted to suggest a solution that requires very minimal editing from devs because of this.
I’m having a hard time processing if you’re being sarcastic or not. When I go to FF unless I’m honey spamming I see maybe… 2… 3 Eevee? Per run? I was running calculations based on information I have available to me, spawn rate is not one of those but would be a good idea to include in a calculation. I’d probably replace RR with Spawn Rate in the calc and adjust the multipliers if I had access to spawn rate information.
Which is why I personally think that party kills should count, even if it messes with the balance a little bit.
I was bringing it up because this post is just as much about wallrunning and the meta as it is shiny hunting.
If I’m running a dungeon to look for a specific Pokemon that spawns in eggs, (ex Mareanie in Mineral Cavern) finding eggs is going to be much slower without wallrunning. Whether or not you are there to shiny hunt with them is irrelevant. This is just a downside to removing wallrunning, just like how dungeons taking more time to complete in general is also technically a downside for a more balanced meta. I still think its important to bring up especially if boosting egg shiny rates was ever considered. I think this would be a good reason to boost them, since they cannot be collected as quickly with a nerf to wallrunning like this.
You’re right on that one, it’s been a while since I’ve played PMU, and I’m still playing catchup. I haven’t done teambuilding around the current meta and the only 4x Speed typings I really knew of prior were Dragon/Flying, the other Crystals I have to look in to. I had also totally disregarded Sandstorm because the rock for it damages your non-Steel/Ground/Rock team members, Excadrill never crossed my mind once because I have personally tried to forget it exists, lol. I don’t usually like using Pokemon I don’t like aesthetically, and I don’t really like weather in Pokemon in general, so running Clear Weather presented itself to me as my best option.
I just disagree with you here. Dragonite feels better to use than Noivern does, to me. I like Outrage better than most super-long-range options. Noivern hits like a wet paper towel with Draco Meteor and misses 90% of the time, which I have not experienced otherwise. Perhaps my Noivern just hates me, lol.
Dnite being a sponge is also good, because there are going to be times where damage is unavoidable and not only does Noivern hit like a wet paper towel, he about has the durability of one, too.
When it comes to Noivern, wallrunning with frisk and moonlight make him what he is. Which I don’t think you’d argue with as you mentioned its barely keeping itself above Excadrill with those things. Without being able to zoom through walls, Noivern can’t take a hit, and sucks at dealing damage, which makes the Excadrill you mentioned easily outclass him at that point, with or without the access to healing, because healing becomes irrelevant the second you remove wallrunning as a meta option. (Unless I’m missing something, at least.)
BST (including stat distribution) matters, a little bit at the very least. Noivern feels terrible to play (to me) because that SpAtk of 97 is good when his Draco Meteors actually hit, but never as good as my Gardevoir’s (base 125 spatk) hyper voice that hits more often due to sparkle rock accuracy boost (I think it boosts acc with the rock? If I’m wrong then I’m just lucky lol) . And her hyper voice isn’t even STAB.
Obviously I am preaching to the choir here, but when I take a look at Excadrill, what jumps out at me immediately is an amazing defensive typing in Steel/Ground, an Evasion-boosting Fam item that synergizes with its crystals, Water absorption with its fam item, ground immunity with a terra globe, leaving only 2 weaknesses in Fire and Fighting, and it covers fire easily with ground-type moves like EQ. Ground and Electric immunity makes it great in DS and it can also clear the fairies in Mt.Moon by virtue of being a steel type.
Its base 135 ATK outranks Dnite’s 134 base Atk as well. By one point, but yeah, you’re absolutely right that Exca is better than Dnite in a lot of aspects.
I think one of the biggest things you’re not giving enough credit to is being able to take a hit, though. Yes “Dont get hit” is optimal, but there are situations where taking a hit is almost mandatory. Monster houses, bosses, a mon suddenly using beatup. If you dont have your gem, getting paralyzed and having to back off or power through it to make room to heal. Time and time again, my Noivern has gotten absolutely destroyed in scenarios like that.
Taking a hit can also be applied to being immune or absorbing that hit. So I would consider Exca’s water, poison, electric, and ground immunities (along with grass if you wanna get the globe for ground types despite it being neutral to grass) ‘taking a hit’. Its pretty good HP pool of 110 helps with that, too. It’s insane that Exca is outright IMMUNE to 5 types with all of its globes and fam items. On top of that, it resists 9 of the other 13, giving us a grand total of 14 out of 18 types that Excadrill can take a hit from easily.
To clarify, I went to Dnite because I have experience with Dnite and I went to Psudos because many of them are Dragon/Flying types, and those, along with Sylveon, are the only 4x speed mons I have played with. When asked, I will be the first to admit I am not well-versed in the meta. I tend to play with what feels comfortable to me (Noivern does not) rather than what is the most optimal, so I can only speculate with the knowledge I have, which is admittedly limited.
Hi wish. Thanks for putting so much thought and time into your reply, I love a good back-and-forth.
Honestly, the shiny chain system and its details are worth their own very lengthy forum topic. You already pointed out a few complications I also considered, but I had to leave them out of the main text. After all, exactly how to tackle the 3 major systems/balances in this post could fill in a novel…but I mostly wanted to come up with a potential roadmap that could conceptually fix some fundamental design flaws players have been stuck with for years.
Since PMU itself has some absolutely crazy limitations (due to its nature of being a passion project with haphazard coding foundations), I can’t say there is a win/win system implementation for shiny chaining. In a worst case scenario, I’d hope a manually adjusted quest system would at least be possible, but ideally this would be something automated.
For the top two potential issues of chaining you brought up (that of hunting in groups and if unrecruitable spawn fainting also counts), I have some surface level takes, but it does require some background info from me.
Background: MMO economies are bonkers, and frankly Pokemon games/creature games tend to make the downsides of MMO economies worse. There’s been discussion in this game about the devaluation of Poke and how items / spawns have powercrept over time…and really that’s just a part of a larger pattern. There’s a reason why MMOs that have trading/auction houses/etc have to have bullcrap grind times, because items and assets accumulate and can even outlast the lifespan of the accounts that obtained them. Obviously this can create supply & demand issues long term unless there are money / asset sinks. I’ve spent a very very very long time having to wrestle with this crap because I’ve been on MMO staff before elsewhere.
But very luckily, PMU doesn’t have to face the lion’s share of that problem. Yes, shiny bounty hunting exists, but once recruited a shiny is tied to an account forever. It can’t be passed around like items and poke can, so any pokemon “asset” can only exist within a vacuum. So any potential mistakes made with shiny rates will have less of a chance to do long-term damage.
My takes (which aren’t set in stone):
I’d rather have shinies in this game be more forgiving than not, within reason. I value player-to-player interaction in an MMO since it is gameplay “content” that is technically infinite. Dungeon runs alone don’t = dungeon runs with friends. So the more often gameplay can fundamentally encourage interaction without requiring it, the better.
So shiny chaining in groups should be efficient, if possible to implement. Ideally we don’t make it -so- much easier that nobody bothers to do stuff independently, though. At first glance I’d recommend having the party host determine which shiny chain species is active. For example: Player 1 is chaining swablu, player 2 is chaining spearow, player 3 is chaining wingull. They all join a party that is hosted by Player 1. While in Player 1’s party, contributions only count toward swablu. It makes things faster (since 3 players can cover all corners of a map quickly), but not obscenely faster by making skylift chains for swablu+spearow+wingull ALL valid.
Next - recruitable spawns only, or also non-recruitable? I’d say aim for recruitable only, for two main reasons. Mostly I’d recommend this because the game was not designed for nonrecruitable pokemon to suddenly count toward a recruitment goal, and there’s going to be ridiculous edge cases (as you discovered). Second, for rare spawns, it doesn’t destroy speedrunning as a viable stat, and players will have to choose between running up dungeon floors or working up toward their “pity” counter. ;) This lets rare shinies stay rare, does not require much if any manual value tweaking from staff, and doesn’t let honey-based hunting completely break the system (which makes “rare” pokemon like eevee suddenly spawn commonly, as mentioned before).
Moving on to rebalancing mons:
I really do think family items are the key, here. I don’t actually want to destroy wall-walking/speedrunning hunting methods, I just want two things:
Make interacting with the game (dungeon running) equally as valuable as not interacting with the game (wallrunning), or at least require some tradeoffs.
Have significantly more mons and team archetypes be similarly viable compared to whatever is “meta”, in order to encourage diversity and personal flair.
I know we can’t make all mons equally balanced. For one, this is a unique game based on an established franchise. To achieve this would not only be a herculean task, it would also require veering away from the source material more significantly than I’d be comfortable with.
I’d have to ponder and discuss weather effects being tied to gems/globes more to determine if unpairing it from weather would be better than buffing other weather types + mons available within those archetypes. What can be done with Fog that’s interesting? Or will it have to remain abandoned once weather is unpaired from gems?
Overall I don’t see why we can’t (at minimum) add PMU-unique family items on top of family items the mons already have. Specifically with effects those mons may desperately need, such as a better type immunity option, better ability effect, etc. It would only require pasting established coding segments and a wiki update, which is a very low labor cost. Especially for something that would be this beneficial.
Since labor is a bottleneck for PMU development, the only significant coding need would be shiny chaining, with the other two ‘big’ changes requiring little implementation. So I’m hoping the majority of my first post is both plausible and rational.
For me, personally, the only other stuff that would need work is the mission distribution system, fixing (or at least duct taping) the “give up” bug upon fainting, and memory leaks/lag issues. PMU would be a solid little collect-a-thon at that point.
Of course, this is a change I’ve been thinking about for a while too so having a thread about it is encouraging to say the least. I was considering posting my own, and then you did, which is great!
I think conversations about how it’s implemented are important as just saying “Yeah chaining a shiny should be a thing” is kind of mostly agreeable for a lot of the community, but the how is what people will likely argue over the most.
I don’t doubt they could fill a novel, but I do think its important for people- especially developers who may come here if this suggestion is something that people want- to have this conversation because if it’s already talked out, that makes implementation as easy as it can be without someone doing the coding for them. “The community wants something like this, these are the complications, this is what’s possible with the code.”
I agree with this 200%. PMU does a poor job of balancing dungeon running alone with dungeon running with friends, especially with wallrunning. Even if all of your friends can also wallrun, it will always be more efficient to just go it alone because you don’t have to wait for anyone and you don’t have to communicate. Those things make dungeon runs slower, and if we can have anything to make dungeons more rewarding for running with multiple people, I think it should be implemented.
For me, this first glance definitely seems like a middle-of-the-road option, but I worry about how much it actually would encourage dungeon running together since, effectively, the reward is for one person (the party leader).
Let’s add a 4th person to this dungeon run, as well. They are also hunting Swablu, like P1. Does their count go up when killing Swablu in this party? If not, then it isn’t efficient for them to be running with this group at all. But if it does, that encourages people to match chains so they all get points towards a specific shiny.
Which leads to another question-
If I’m hunting Swablu and I have a good chain going, and I switch my chain, does that break my chain or do my points freeze and continue to accumulate when I switch back?
The main reason this becomes a problem if chains get ‘broken’ is that many Pokemon only appear during one or two times of day assuming its ONLY recruitable Pokemon. (For example: Treecko again) If it’s not Dusk/Night, I can’t increase my Treecko chain, meaning I probably want to hunt something else, but if I switch my chain and it breaks, then I’m essentially disincentivized from playing PMU during Dawn/Day hours since I can’t do my hunt- or any other hunts because if I switch my chain breaks.
Chains also stop being quite as problematic if its not “Get X points and guarantee a shiny” and instead “Get X Points and your shiny rate gets to like 1/100 until you encounter a shiny”. Or something of the like. It would even stop something like, say, Eevee, having a small chain being a problem. Because even if you encounter 30 Eevee in a run with honey, its not like you’ve guaranteed your Eevee, just made it massively more likely to encounter a shiny. I would also assume there is something in place (outside of wind) to prevent dungeon runs from being super long and grindy.
I.E. You can’t sit there, kill Eevee over and over again, get lucky with a shiny, and immediately jump back into a new Eevee chain. You have to go re-visit the chain NPC to start up your chain again.
True, I was thinking that as well. I’d also rather have lower chain rates for rarer Pokemon than higher rates with evolution lines counting. It kind of muddies the rarity if their evo lines count as well.
Honestly, I hate speedrunning dungeons with wallrunners. So I’m not the best advocate for speedrunning like that. Personally, I think speedrunning for rare Pokemon is the worst possible feeling ever, because the dopamine hit of a shiny sparkle takes much longer than it is worth. I think the time investment for hunting one pokemon should yeild the same results for hunting other Pokemon.
For example, if the average player can kill 5 Treecko in an hour, and 100 Spearow in an hour (Without using wallrunning, honey, or 4x speed as a baseline. I am talking about your average player, potentially with 2x Speed MAX) then the %age chance of getting a shiny should increase the exact same after killing 5 Treecko as it does for 100 Spearow. The rarity of Treecko vs Spearow is still the same, but the chain fluctuates to give you the same amount of boost for the same amount of time investment, on average.
Obviously this kind of data is not just… widely available. It would probably need to be guesstimated or tested and tweaked over time as its implemented.
Alternatively, you could use spawn rates of the Pokemon within the calculation, and make the calculation do something that makes Pokemon that have lower spawn rates have lower chains. I don’t have access to spawn rates, so I was using recruitment rate in my calculation.
Very transparently, I DO want to destroy wall-walking methods, but not speedrunning as a whole. I think wallrunning is broken and that the ability to wallrun at 4x speed is insane- so much so that one of the fixes I’d been thinking of in my head was that instead of making 0 hunger destroy your ability to sprint, you just go back to 1x speed once you’re in a wall, period. Doesn’t stop you from sprinting if you have the means to, but it does stop you from being 4x in the wall, at all.
As long as wall-running methods exist, late game runs are a high barrier for entry where you have to spend weeks grinding events to get crystals, recruit the “right” Pokemon, and spend a long time doing Tanren Mines before you can move on to doing Mt.Moon for grinding, and I think those grinds in and of themselves are problematic in the sense that speedrunning Mt.Moon (and other high poke yield dungeons) has utterly destroyed the economy and newbies are just being handed everything because there is little value to Poke and specific items anymore.
I miss when player-run shops had more than rev seeds and honeys, and were more prominent. I miss when Family Items were worth something. As kind and amazing as the community is to be gifting everything, I just want stuff to have value again. I want to see TMs, Dusts, and a wide variety of items in shops again, instead of them all just being given out for free because people can’t be bothered with the varying amounts of Poke they’re worth.
The loop is sad and depressing and as a guild founder I see it happen over and over again:
New person joins, gets given everything they need to get established, gets run through cut, gets picked up by a guild who helps them through the entire game (usually the ones who help them at the beginning recruit them, funny how that happens- I’m guilty of this too), grinds for a bit, gets burnt out and leaves. Some stay in order to help new newbies after grinding a bit, or stay for the community the guild has.
Sorry to say but the gameplay loop of PMU isn’t actually collectathon, it’s mega boosting all of the new players, making friends with them, and feeling almost parent-like pride as you watch them grow up, and then feeling sad when they leave because you just subjected them to the same exact gameplay and burnout loop that you’re experiencing, except without the means to help others like you’re able to.
One day, all of us will leave at our own pace, and we will be replaced by people who will also grind newbies to end game, who will eventually also leave. And that is why PMU gets like 30-40 people at once, on max. The cycle repeats. Until the gameplay loops in end game get fixed to prevent how massive of a problem burnout has become in our community or until everyone gets burnt out and loses hope all at once and newbies arrive to a ghost town.
I’m active here on the forums and in my own guild discord, but on PMU itself? I did one run earlier today in TC and I couldn’t do anything more than that. I’m here on the forums because I’m looking for change that I fear falls repeatedly on deaf ears, or only upon the ears of people who can do nothing about it.
1: I think not interacting with the game, if still viable at all, should require massive tradeoffs. I heard someone suggest a time system for increasing rewards based on time spent in the dungeon, but that encourages people to max out the time they spend in the dungeon, or to speedrun and wait on the final floor, or rewards people for being “bad” at the dungeon vs being “good” at the dungeon and a whole host of other issues.
Another thing we could try is scaling reward chances based on the amount of enemies killed in the dungeon. Wallrunners tend to avoid enemies rather than killing them, so if dungeon rewards happened to scale based on percentage of enemies spawned vs killed that might be a good idea. But it would require a revamp of how the end box system works which is another thing entirely. It’s complicated and I do not know how I’d fix the issue.
2: Yes! I’ve been saying this for a while but I think all mons should be viable, even if not equally balanced. Obviously some Pokemon will be better than others, but I use Gardevoir as my main, and it doesn’t get 4x Speed.
Honestly, I do not find much appealing in weather as a whole. Fog and Cloudy were never meant to be ‘good’ weather types as made evident by the fact they have nothing that sets them outside of orbs. Buffing certain weathers also does nothing for mons that are suffering because they are single type or a dual type with crystals in different weathers. I should not have to choose between running Heat Rock or Sparkle Rock with my Sylveon because its family item and crystals/gems/globes work under sun but sparkle rock gives 2x speed and an accuracy boost (if im right about sparkle rock giving the acc boost from sparkle weather). I should be able to run both.
Right now a lot of fairies are split down the middle wanting to run Sparkle Rock vs Heat Rock and I just don’t think it should be a problem. We should all just be able to run C9 or Clear Rock and be done with it. Rocks that induce the effects of hail and sandstorm damage non ice or non steel/ground/rock types respectively, which ruins their synergy with Pokemon outside of those types. Not to mention icy rock doesn’t boost accuracy of blizzard like hail does, while giving its negative effect of damaging non-ice-types in your party which is ridiculous. If you’re going to damage my non-ice-types, I should get the blizzard accuracy!
If you want to buff weather and make the weather rocks a good and interesting mechanic, buff them outside of having to rely on the crystals and such for people wanting to use them. I genuinely think buffing weather and adding unique concepts to it is a good idea, but they should not be mandatory to build your ‘meta’ Pokemon.
The biggest problem with adding fam items to mons that need the boost, is that then we ALSO need to add fam items to mons that HAVE the boost and would be shorted. Which means that a ton of Pokemon get new family items and a ton of mons get nothing, we’d probably end up having to commit to giving EVERY Pokemon Line another family item, and then it would still be unfair because then we still run into stuff like “None of the Eeveelutions get a type absorption fam item, they need one”, and do we give both Gallade AND Gardevoir both another family item? Wouldn’t really be right to give one and not the other. If Garde got an item that matched its Fairy OR Psychic Crystal (Sun or Fog- and probably Psychic bc it shares a type with Gallade) I still would be running Sparkle Rock, so that would be worthless to me. Fairy type users get shafted because their weather (Sparkle) already gives them 2x Speed and is not represented in their Crystal/Gem/Globe (Which are Sun). Meaning I can’t run Gem, Globe or Crystal AND Sparkle Rock, ever.
Also, Gallade and Garde’s family items apply to each other, so who are we giving the speed boost? If neither, and we made Gallade absorb bug and Gardevoir absorb steel with their new fam items, suddenly Gallade and Gardevoir both absorb Ghost, Bug, Steel, AND Poison with all of their fam items.
If both, and Garde gets one for fairy and Gallade gets one for fighting, then since they work with each other, suddenly both of them get 2x speed in clear and sunny weather.
If one of them, who do we give it to, and what type should it work under? If Gallade gets it for clear weather, then what does Garde get?
I really think that giving certain Pokemon lines who’s dual typings either dont match the Crystals, or is single-type, access to more family items just to boost them isn’t a great solution and kind of begins to clog the inventory even more. If both Gallade and Garde got another fam item, that’s 2 more slots I need for fam items and I already have 5 for the whole line. I think it’d be better to just make having multiple copies of a crystal be able to work twice for single-types, and removing the weather restriction on them so that dual types can use both crystals of their type.
Removing these restrictions is a lot less time consuming in the coding aspect, and in the research aspect, even if all of the things that are given are copy/paste abilities.
I think if we do a family item addition or buff for Pokemon, it should not be based on their ability to have speed in dungeons. It should be based on, outside of 4x speed, what kind of thing they would benefit from the most, and be given to Pokemon who NEED the boost instead of just being given to all Pokemon.
For example, Whimsicott gets a family item that makes it heal from poison type moves. Makes sense, especially with that 4x weakness, except the fairy-type globe makes it immune to poison moves, making the globe a waste of money, and making other fairy types that get immunity to steel in their family items inherently ‘better’ because then the globe works for them as well and they’re getting 2 immunities. (Except it doesn’t because fairy types don’t get to run sparkle rock which should be optimal for them, which loops back to removing the restrictions on gems/crystals/globes being a good idea.)
Funny you mention a Mission Rework, since I made a thread for it not too long ago which got a bit of traction. Would love to continue on that discussion as well tbh.
Honestly, each problem PMU has links into all of its other problems, and the code is such a mess that it causes problems because fixing one thing could very well break other things.
quotes aren’t cooperating with me for whatever reason, so you’re getting the bolded copy/paste treatment.
Which leads to another question-
If I’m hunting Swablu and I have a good chain going, and I switch my chain, does that break my chain or do my points freeze and continue to accumulate when I switch back?
I’m answering out of order on purpose. The solution is definitely “points freeze/pause”. In the dumb ms paint picture I had a value list next to the names - probably not feasible with PMU’s limitations, but the intention is there. I don’t see why the system can’t be a table of data that keeps track of progress, with the only thing able to “reset” the counter being a shiny version of what’s being actively hunted. After all, we have to track which things the player is hunting, if they are fainting the correct things to get the +1, etc. We already have a similar display with guilds, only it lists a player’s name and their last active date.
Behind-the-scenes, the most complex element about such as system would prooobably be:
tracking individual shiny rate boosts per species
in consideration of whatever the native dungeon rate is
while ignoring non-active shiny chain bonuses
then figuring out shiny bonuses to prioritize during co-op runs (for simplicity, we probably want this to be the host).
For obvious reasons, I don’t recommend this system be very intense for players themselves; fainting other pokemon probably shouldn’t punish the player’s chain. This game isn’t made for threading the needle like that. It also just makes co-op unbearable.
Let’s add a 4th person to this dungeon run, as well. They are also hunting Swablu, like P1. Does their count go up when killing Swablu in this party?
I’d presume so, for quite a few reasons. Everyone should probably (temporarily) have their active hunt be the host’s as well, so their progress isn’t lost. Or would a situation that lets you hunt one Pokemon per player not be as obscenely strong as I think it would be? The latter would also be pretty complex coding-wise. If one player has a Torchic chain and another has a Houndour chain in a dungeon has both spawns, does it just choose the highest chain values and apply those to everyone’s shiny rates? This just makes things messier coding-wise and more abuseable imo, so having rates be determined by the host seems much more feasible, logistically.
Otherwise we get fun abuse cases where players co-op to circumvent a recruitable shiny from breaking anyone’s chain and still keeping a chain’s shiny bonus rates…right?
Or (and I’m just thinking as I type) should we allow other chains to increase, but not apply the chain’s shiny boost rates of anyone except the host? That way players can make faster progress in groups quickly, but at the expense of actually using those fast rates at the same time. Then you’d have 4-man skylift runs where they keep swapping who the host is, right? But then we’d also have issues where all 4 players pick Swablu, get x4 the points per swablu kill, and then constantly swap hosts to keep a steady stream of shiny swablus coming. Ugh…
There’s gotta be something more elegant than just basing it off the host, but I think all those other cases are abuseable. We might not have any choice EXCEPT to be in the “middle of the road”. Not without making a chain system more of a nightmare to implement than it already would is.
Alternatively, you could use spawn rates of the Pokemon within the calculation, and make the calculation do something that makes Pokemon that have lower spawn rates have lower chains.
This doesn’t account for issues like limited-daytime spawns, SR recruitables (which themselves are pretty problematic imo), etc.
The biggest problem with adding fam items to mons that need the boost, is that then we ALSO need to add fam items to mons that HAVE the boost and would be shorted.
Why would we have to make all of the family items even? Those mons don’t need the help and are already strong. This game fundamentally differs from the mainline games in so many ways that it requires its own mini-website (to keep track of moves, gems, etc). What’s one more thing that’s uneven/moderately different if it benefits the game massively?
As you noticed, the real problem with family items comes down to how Pokemon FORMS are categorized. Right now, Ninetails and Alola Ninetales share regular Ninetales’ family item. Which means Alola Nine becomes immune/heals from…water. lol. And then there’s your gallade/garde split issue.
Therefore the gameplay of gems/globes would indeed have to be approached first, and -then- family item changes would have to buff the stragglers (within limitations). Like, poor Buneary who is stuck with Klutz. And the redundant cases you already mentioned where fam items + globes overlap.
Sorry to say but the gameplay loop of PMU isn’t actually collectathon, it’s mega boosting all of the new players, making friends with them, and feeling almost parent-like pride as you watch them grow up, and then feeling sad when they leave because you just subjected them to the same exact gameplay and burnout loop that you’re experiencing, except without the means to help others like you’re able to.
Ain’t that the truth. Check out my sporadic post history on this forum account LOL. I tend to play hard for a year and then disappear for 2.
The discussion about poke devaluing, item-power-creep, and low player retention is (in my opinion) its own entire can of worms even if there’s some overlap with the goals of this topic and doing some damage-control with these problems.
Every game has a shelf life. The problem comes when the new blood coming in doesn’t properly replace or supplement existing vets.
I think the things needed to keep established players in the game is a shorter (but still critical) list than what’s needed to keep newer players invested. For new players the question “what to do next” is always confusing. Family item effects? Recruits? The next set of dungeons to visit? Knowing the answer to those questions requires using outside resources like 90% of the time unless somebody else is literally holding your hand. But that’s already well known, lol.
i just had a thought, what’s the issue with allowing all players to raise their shiny chain from all people in the party?
like i player2 is chaining houndour, why shouldn’t player1 houndour kills not count?
it’s not like. party runs spawn more pokemons. your seeing the same amount of houndours you would see if you ran alone or not. it dosen’t change. so what’s actually the issue? it’s faster to kill everything with a party of 4? i guess. but not that much faster, it’s a little faster which i think it’s a good motivator to do party runs actually.
and if you are like: “well this increases 4 chains at the same time cause player1 is hunting jumpluffs while 2 is houndours and 3 oddish and 4 is ekans, that’s 4 chains in a single run” you may think!, but. it would have been 4 chains at once regardless. cause all 4 could have run the dungeon by themselfs alone at the same time and all 4 chains would have progressed at once, so there isn’t actually a difference is there
all you guys with your big long posts, sorry my post doesn’t really contribute as much but fwiw I think the current PMU meta being 4x speed + healing + wall run is suuuuuuper unfun and I that making 0 belly forcing you to walk would make the game a lot funner tbh. I feel like the current meta of PMU is way too easy and mindless for endgame players.
Actually you’re right. It wouldn’t be unbalanced at all if chains increased at once, its only very slightly faster to kill all enemies on a floor, and that is counterbalanced by the fact that multiplayer runs are almost always slower in general than when playing by yourself. So with a run of 4 people, all Pokemon killed should count towards the chains of people running.
Even with the case that like, oh everyone is running Houndour and you get 4 chains going at once, running the dungeon separately but all at once until max chain could still get you grinding Houndour very quickly, that’s true but it could still be true if you all ran separately until a high chain and then met up to grind the actual houndour spawn with honey or something until everyone got one. It’d just be better and encourage multiplayer runs more if all chains could progress at once.
This method could also improve shiny bounty hunting, let’s say you have a Pokemon that you’re hunting for somebody else, and you’re at a very high chain with it. This person could come into your run with you and you could honey-spam to try to get the Pokemon without needing a guild escort for it, which makes solo shiny bounties an actual thing you can do.
Also I was thinking about the chain rate and it could be a very simple like… Spawn Rate for the dungeon it appears the most in (or its average spawn rate across all dungeons) multiplied by a certain number. Like if the spawn rate is 1/100 Pokemon for one pokemon but 1/10 pokemon for another, then you’d just do something like multiply by 5000 to get a chain number. 1/100 x 5000 = 50, 1/10 x 5000 = 500, easy scaling rate of chain difficulty without any stupidly complicated math like what I was suggesting earlier. I just didn’t have access to spawn rate so I didn’t even think to include it.
If everyone ran the same pokemon, I think you’d have an abuse case.
Example: 4 people are hunting only swablu. 2 of those people are on an alt account or, perhaps, just doing a favor for a friend.
For every 1 swablu anyone faints, the count goes up by +4. But what happens when a shiny swablu shows up?
-If the counter resets for everyone once a shiny swablu appears, that’s fine.
-But if the counter resets for the whole party after a shiny swablu is recruited or fainted (not just appears), then this is potentially exploitable.
-If the counter only resets for the person who recruited/faints it, this is also exploitable.
Somebody with a high chain count could simply leave the party/log out when a shiny swablu appears, and then lets somebody else recruit it. This bypasses the chain reset. Anyone who didn’t get their count reset then logs back in again and can resume the dungeon with a high count, indefinitely.
i was working under the impression shiny chains gave you currency to spend to buy the shiny later of sorts. not raise the chances of them spawning,
if they do raise the chances of a shiny spawning then yes, there would party exploits that could happens.
especially considering this issue where if the chains is only consumed for who interacts with the shiny means that all chains are basically infinite, as once you do run into a shiny. you do the simple trick of logging off and letting another player get it. mass giving away shinys,
so the chain will have to be deleted on the shiny spawning.
because that would be douable in single player running too, using the same concept of guild meet ups that is being used for selling bounties,
it would be possible for someone to make a “shiny fennekin alt” where he just extends his chains to millions of fennekin actively avoiding fainting the shiny so he can raise it to the point of basically always spawning shiny fennekins and just give them away to all their friends.
so yeah. it would have to be reset on the shiny simply spawning at all on a fundamental level.
Okay, I’ll move forward on the assumption that this is a “currency”/consumable point system. While PMU has a lot of those already, I think using it here has the most benefits (specifically, making multiplayer runs beneficial or at least at-par). It doesn’t have to be a physical item, just something that gets tracked.
Honestly, I am not a fan of guaranteed shinies or pity systems on shinies in any aspect, unless there is a randomness factor involved elsewhere. You should always be able to get lucky with a shiny and get it early, but also be able to be unlucky and go for a while at max chain without getting it.
Similarly to main game, you are never guaranteed a shiny. Knowing that I will get a shiny eventually removes all of the anticipation for it. If I go into a place with the knowledge “I only need to kill a certain amount of these to guarantee my shiny” its less of an “exciting hunt” where my chances go up and up to encounter the shiny I want, and more of an “annoying grind” where I have to kill a certain amount of Pokemon to grind out being able to get the shiny. The only way I would be okay with a currency system like this, is if you couldn’t trade the shiny you spawn whatsoever- like if the shiny just goes directly into your assembly and you can’t give it to somebody else, which I also think is bad because it removes the aspect of this that would help the shiny pokemon market.
I would be fine with Shiny Pity on hatching Mystery Eggs, after hatching x amount of eggs without a shiny, the next one is always a shiny, but you can never guarantee the Pokemon from that egg, unless its one of the few Pokemon you can get from eggs that ONLY have one Pokemon in it (Lapras and Larvesta being 2 off the top of my head). But you also can’t trade eggs or Pokemon from it, which makes the Shiny Pity system there more tolerable since you have to put that effort in yourself and can’t rely on someone else to do it for you.
I was working under the impression that shiny chains do not give you any currency or track anything to ‘spend’.
The idea would be that your % chance of spawning a shiny goes up as your increase your chain. If everyone is running the same chain in a dungeon, the person with the highest chain gets their chain reset upon the shiny spawning. If 2 people have the same chain, it resets the person who is higher in the party. If Player 2 and Player 4 both have the same chain, Player 2’s chain gets reset because they were added to the party first.
If this shiny chain system works like a currency/consumable point system to guarantee you a shiny, I cannot support it.
