Multiplayer Viability (Honey Gather & Shiny Odds)

Suggestions and Contributions
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I had a discussion in PMU’s General chat with other members about some ideas I had so I thought I’d post about them here.

Idea Concept: Party Viability

As of right now, the only time that playing in parties is actually worth it is if you’re training in groups or trying to take on strong dungeons as a group for an easier clear. Beyond this, parties are actually not worth it at all in late game, it’s simply easier to speedrun floors with MS or just 4x speed will do instead of waiting for others.

I’ve come up with some ideas on how to maybe increase party viability overall to maybe encourage users to participate in parties more WITHOUT making parties too much stronger than solo.

Important Note: I use the term “party” in this form post. Party refers to a GROUP, or each player (not each Pokemon!)

Multiplayer Shiny Rates

There’s a big issue where finding a shiny while in a party can leave a group conflicted to who’s going to attempt the shiny. Increasing the shiny chance while in a party could serve as one method to give parties more shinies to have an opportunity to recruit and maybe solve the issue of shinies potentially scaring players away from playing in parties. The rates SHOULDN’T be increased linearly based on player count but instead steadily increased based on the player count.

To clarify what I mean, take this as an example. Going into Happiness Lake you have a 1/300 chance to get a shiny IF the Pokemon is bidoof. In a party of 2, the chance increases 75% of the original rate (to clarify, this makes 1/300 into 1.75/300).

Extra Math: Flip the old equation into 300/1.75. The number you receive from this is the denominator with a numerator of 1 (in this case, 1/171.43 rounded). Not sure if the code allows for the equation 1.75/300 because decimals in fractions can be finicky so this should solve that.

Possible Rate Increases: drop 25% per each player that joins the party. For example, 1 player is 100% the normal rate, 2 players is 175%, 3 players is 225% and 4 players is 250% the original rate. Arguably, you could also increase it by 75% each time if you’d like to balance all party sizes and not punish parties for being bigger as much.

The only downside I’m aware of to this is some rare hunts may become easier than they were before but I believe with other reworks to money grind, honey grind, etc this will balance things out long term!

Speaking of a balance change to honey, there has been an issue with the demand of honey in the economy for quite some time now and after doing some research and estimates I decided to throw together an idea for how to possible decrease the demand of the honey by both raising the supply along with raising the value of honey. Some players have expressed issues with this concept before and claim that honey is easy to obtain but I believe it’s being obtained in the wrong ways and it’s not beginner friendly at all!

Idea Concept: Party Honey Gather & Rounded Honey Formula

Background Information: As of right now the best method in order to obtain honey is using a honey gather Pokemon to speedrun MM alt path and pick up valuable items along the way in order to sell them and buy honey off players (IF POSSIBLE, buy due to high demand finding a supplier is rough but if you have the time combee is a valuable merchant!) Additionally, having a level 100 run alt path MM will get you ~10 honey per run which can take ~6-9 minutes based on stair luck and your overall speed!

Having a HG party member isn’t even necessary if you don’t have one trained, picking up 2 star pieces or another comet shard IS MORE VALUABLE THAN THE HONEY YOU’VE GATHERED!

Overall, you could claim that combee is a useful money dump BUT it could also be argued that combee is the cause of a money gain in the first place. For players specifically looking to buy honey, they can take the quick route of farming MM alt path, buying honey and using it for another shiny run. With how easy the grind is, one or two money runs is enough to buy you a few pages of honey to run with and come back to get more after!

One solution is nerfing MM alt path, we all know this and it’s been discussed several times so FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS ARGUMENT, LETS AVOID DISCUSSING THE MM GRIND!

One solution I’ve come up with to help this issue is making Honey Gather more early game viable to new players using a rounding system for honey odds.

Honey Party Idea: using a more rounded system of honey could be the first step to benefiting newer players as the honey rates at lower levels are extremely low and it can take awhile for a new player to train a honey gather Pokemon unless it’s their first priority.

The math in this portion can be a little complex and overall hard to explain so if any further explanation is required please let me know!

Math: The current formula for honey can be simplified to =Level/400 which is roughly a 5% chance per floor after just obtaining a honey gather Pokemon (assuming you pick teddiursa which I believe to be around level 20). Overall this chance ISN’T awful but increasing that chance takes a lot of time and for a new player, a 20 floor dungeon could take up to half an hour! That’s 1 honey/h.

Instead I propose having a rounding system where we first take =Level/25 which gives the player a number 0-4. IF the number is 0 (meaning the level is below level 13), set that number to 1 instead!
From there we have the formula =1/(8/# Given). This will increase the overall rate that players should be receiving (late game levels included!)

This table shows specific levels using the new formula in addition to the old formula.
Examples of Rates Table

BUT I’M NOT DONE! The formula has more to it AND can be simplified!

I had another idea to throw on top of this being a party honey gather system. The idea I had in mind was having it to where whenever you enter a new floor as a party, the honey gathers are triggered and if any player managed to trigger honey, anyone who is also using honey gather also gets honey. (This can only be triggered once per floor, NOT PER PERSON!) You can have this use the new player formula (take out the exponent) for each player as you move up a floor or you can either take the average or use the highest level HG in the party and add the exponent in (which I suggest as I don’t think it’ll be a huge boost, in fact it may nerf the high rates the high level Pokemon can have to prevent 4 HG party spamming and getting honey on practically every floor).

The formula I suggest is:
=(1/((7 + #HG in Party)/round(Level/25)))^(1/#HG in Party)

The Level used could be the average or the highest honey gather level in the party (the choice depends on balance preference, the average being more nerfed compared to taking the higher level).

Extra note, this formula works for both parties and as a solo player!

Table that Covers Rates Based On Party Count

I believe this covers it for what I’d like to cover in terms of a party revamp.

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I think this is a really good idea. I am worried that it might not be possible to implement, but it would be great if it was.

To add on to this, not only are party runs slower, they spawn less mons overall. I wish it didn’t feel like I was hindering myself by playing with a friend.

It’s a shame that, in a PMD MMO, it’s better to run solo for shinies ):

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i hold worry over giving boosted bonuses for just existing in a party, as it promotes afk grinding where you get 3 peoples just afk while a single person just goes to the stairs and allyswitch them in with no need for them to touch thier computers.

i also disagree with overall increasing the odds of getting honey, i do agree that it should be made better early game to let new players sell honey to late game players, but also boosting late game players is just wrong to me.
honey IS extremely easy to optian for late game player making even easier will just cause troubles,
it wouldn’t fix the lack of supply to meet demand because that’s not why people aren’t selling much honey, they aren’t selling it cause it’s a waste of poke and time to do so. they have no reason to sell honey apart from being nice.
it’s very easy with a 25% to get many pages of honey in a single run using a lv100 honey gatherer, but why would you?
and how does doubling said amount supposed to help?
giving me double of a item that’s just no worth selling isn’t gonna give me a reason to sell it.

there’s no supply because. there’s no need to make it.
you gain nothing from making honey.
so why would you make honey?
unless i wanna use it for my own project why would i go make honey? to sell it to people who demand a price that’s pityful?
upping the amount that is produced would only make it so people have less reasons to buy honey
it wouldn’t help the supply,
the only way to adress this is by giving a reason to sell honey to other players as there currently just isn’t one.

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While I understand your concerns, I think you’re completely missing the argument being made.

The increase to late game players is partially because it’s not even beneficial for late game players to use Honey gather which is exactly what you’re telling me. I’m trying to give a purpose to honey gather in late game rather than allowing money farming + combee be the best method for obtaining honey. Additionally not every player has a level 100 Honey gather Pokémon because it takes so much time to even grind the Pokémon to such a high level rather than speedrunning a money dungeon at level 70 and buying the honey at a faster pace.

You also claim that giving you double of an item that’s not worth selling isn’t giving you a reason to sell it. This is your opinion. The main purpose of this suggestion is for early game players to have better Honey gather access. You’re a late game player so if you don’t see the use for yourself, you’re looking the wrong direction.

You claim there’s no supply because there’s nothing yo gain from honey. That’s the ENTIRE PURPOSE OF THIS SUGGESTION, TO GIVE A BETTER PURPOSE BEHIND SELLING HONEY. Not going to clarify any more on this.

You claim that boosting the odds isn’t going to help the supply of honey but this… literally will?

Truthfully all of your argument miss the entire purpose of my suggestion or make no sense, sorry.

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What i’m trying to claim is that the production of honey is already enough to meet the demand,
people just aren’t selling it.
giving more honey to people is just gonna make people feel like honey is even more pointless

ironically i belive making the combee shop more expensive is gonna boost production of honey,
because players already have a good enough tool to make tons of honey in very little time they just aren’t using it, so making honey more expensive would make player make more to sell to others!
while directly buffing the rate at which they gain honey is gonna make players lower thier prices and in turn, make them stop gathering honey to sell

does that make sense?

currently the honey market is one of only few markets still up and working and your suggestion sounds like it would take it away because everyone would just have the ability to gain it extremely easily by themselves with really little effort :eeveesad:

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This statement is so true. If you have a level 100 ribombee, you can get 3 to 4 pages of honey in a matter of 2 tc fossil runs. There’s enough production, just that those who are using honey gather are saving for themselves to use (myself and my friend group include).

Not necessary. Those who are currently buying honey either don’t want to grind the levels for honey gather or think it’s not worth the effort. Raising the price of combee shop won’t change the player market as much, as the price is already set as a “normal”.

Laughs in TC carry runs. Ribombee is super useful not only in hc but in general. And if you can snag yourself spots in TC carry runs and just afk with ribombee, or heck just run t-specs with ribombee, it is VERY beneficial, even at late game.

Are you sure this will happen? Again, as Superscemo mention, many of us are not selling it simply because we need to use it. Those who are selling honey usually have excess or don’t really need it. At that point it’s no longer consider of if it’s not enough honey production, or just motivation wise.

Despite the multiplayer rates and stuff sounds very amazing on paper, this will ultimately break the economy, in a bad way. One of the ways you have to consider are tc carry runs. These runs are usually the most efficient way in generating honey, and I run them like 2 to 3 times a day, getting well over 6 pages of honey every run across 4 players. Increasing the multiplayer viability only makes these runs worse. Most important is that it really won’t motivate people to run together in parties. Most of the time party runs are usually for training purposes, or helping out a guild mate. If we were to grind for stuff, speed running solo is usually the fastest way, and the multiplayer really won’t be in play at all.

Your formula suggested also seems to not really help beginning. Rather than completely adjusting the entire percentage and stuff, I would much rather have a lesser of a range than 0.25% to 25%. I personally think that even if you are at level 1, you should have at least 5% (with exception of hc, just disable that ability), and top out at around 25%, this solves the issue that beginners having a hard time getting honey, without really breaking the economy with honey overdose, and if you look at the history of PMU, you would see how a slight tweak of percentage on 1 item breaks everything.

Edit:
I can 100% assure you that honey production are WAY more than sufficient. Just a very simple example, despite only doing around 2 hours of PMU grinding a day, or around 2 tc fossil runs (around 70F), is already enough for a 4 party FF run.

Edit 2:
Rather than looking at how we can increase the honey production, I think a better issue to address is honey distribution. We really shouldn’t rely on honey gather for majority of the honey market. Takes other supplies such as revs, ether, food; or money as example, there are designated places for people to grind. Honey, on the other hand, really isnt. In fact, if anything I think that honey gather needs a nerf. 25% at level 100 is just way too strong. But knowing PMU, having a dungeon made specific for 1 item isn’t really a solution.

I think that there’s many missed opportunity with the white flute. Instead of being a broken item, or just simply giving you the ability honey gather, you could make it so it gives the floor 2 or 3 extra spawn, or simply give a boosted illuminate (or however you spell it, the ability that increase floor spawn rate). Not only does this solve the entire no motivation for honey issue, it also gives the item a purpose, while not as strong as honey, still a very decent option.

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You’re literally claiming that production meets demand BUT it doesn’t get sold because you’re using it for yourself. This means production DOESNT meet demand. Maybe for high level players sure.

I’m not gonna even bother responding to this reply as it’s a waste of my own time at this point. The entire purpose behind this suggestion is to boost Honey supply (ESPECIALLY FOR EARLY GAME PLAYERS) in order to meet the markets demand, NOT YOUR OWN PERSONAL DEMAND. This has been looked over by both of your replies and if you’re failing to see my argument it’s not worth more than 3 tries to try explaining it again and again.

The rate I suggested was merely a suggestion to get the idea across, not guaranteed rates. It was there to serve as an example.

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Lemme rephrase this. I never said production meets demand, but rather saying that honey gather is simply already very strong at this state. I did state, in fact, that something still has to be done about this whole situation, but it shouldn’t be based off just honey gather.

If you look at my post, I also agree with you that early game honey is lacking, and I also agree that is something that needs to be look at. But I simply do not agree that boosted honey gather’s rate across the board will do help with this.

The whole issue is that there’s no motivation for people to grind honey to sell. The only reason why honey are being sold are usually byproducts of someone bringing in honey gather along for something else, either like extra spaces in MM, or grinding for specific items. This is the issue that we need to address, which is giving a motivation for people to actually hunt honey.

Boosting honey supply, in fact, should only affect lower levels, and that was what I was trying to say. topping out at 25% is already way to strong, just that it’s not being reflected on the lower end, which is, again, why I suggested a baseline of somewhere like 1 to 5% at level 1.

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