Pokémon Trading and Level Cap

Suggestions and Contributions
1

:cherry_blossom: Hello there~

I know it has been brought up a few times before, but I wanted to bring it up again especially with Easter HC active right now. I want to suggest adding the ability to trade Pokémon between players. I also want to add to this level caps as well, which I’ll explain further on.

Before starting, I have read a few of the old suggestions on this topic and have seen some comments bringing this up. I know the official PMD games didn’t include trading, however, they also didn’t have multiplayer (yes I know you can rescue people online but it’s not the same as online MMO), they didn’t include the wide roster of mons that PMU does, they don’t have events like HC’s to recruit special event only mons, and until recently, you couldn’t shiny hunt in PMD.

Now with that out of the way, being able to trade Pokémon would be very beneficial to the player base, especially with many requesting it. The trade functionality will work in a way where both traders are required to trade a Pokémon to each other, or can trade a Pokémon for Poké. This function would make shiny hunting more convenient and safer! As of now, most players are aware of the bounty system when it comes to shiny hunting. Many do it for the reward, they find the shiny, log out and they then have to get someone in their guild as an escort for the player holding the bounty, which can take a while. However, even with recruitment items, failing a shiny is still possible! Yes, gifts are a thing, however they are still pricey or players will prioritize other event items. Now, if trading was added, players could cut out all that time it would take to hold a shiny, find an escort, and still have the shiny be possibly failed. With trading, the player who found the shiny can try to recruit it, and then afterwards trade it to the player holding the bounty for the reward money. It would make this exchange much less time consuming and much safer than the bounty process that is currently set up.

With HC’s, especially Easter, you are constantly hatching eggs during this event, meaning any shinies you hatch are yours and only yours, which can be disappointing. You may hatch a bunch of shinies you don’t want while going for the ones you do want. Many of us don’t want to just delete these shinies, so they end up sitting in our inventories to collect dust. As this happens, someone else may roll the shiny you wanted, but they didn’t want it. Being able to trade would allow players to swap their shinies with each other! This can lead to a positive connection with the players, as they helped each other out with getting what they both desired. I’ve noticed with HCs that some players get incredibly unlucky, and this leads to PMU burnout and depression when they keep pushing with little to no results. Being able to trade event mons/shinies would help push that burnout away with the community helping each other out in this regard.

Now onto my second suggestion, level locking, or level cap. This function would make it so people can’t just trade level 100’s to brand new players. The level of Pokémon of which you can trade would depend entirely on mission rank. Kind of like Gym Badge level unlocks. This would not only make it so you can’t just blast through the game on a new account, it’ll also make more players do more missions. They will be doing missions not only for rewards but to increase their rank to unlock the trade level caps as well.

Before some say this would ruin the economy or this is selfish, let me explain. The biggest part of PMU’s economy is driven from the shiny hunters and bounties. So it won’t ruin the economy when you are still paying for the shiny in the trade. It just makes the whole process less time consuming and risk free. The economy will also grow with the opportunity to buy/sell/trade fully trained mons as well, adding more reasons for players to train. To claim it’s a selfish suggestion is against the nature of Pokémon in general. Trading has always been a thing in Pokémon, it’s the main part of it, even TCG has trading in the name. To collect and trade! Trading isn’t only for your own gain, it’s to help others as well. It’s already been established that PMU has a lot of differences compared to PMD, so adding trading wouldn’t make it worse, it would make it better.

Now I’m well aware staff are very busy and this is merely a suggestion that has been brought up many times, but I and many others would love to see it implemented. We all want this game to grow!
(I would’ve include images of what an example trade preview would look like but I am unable to, I can provide them if asked by staff)

2

I totally agree with this! Another thing to mention is the risk of monster houses consuming shinies in standard dungeons, which is yes, while rare, has a trick to avoid it, could be devastating if it does happen. A step to prevent faulty game design from stopping progress is always a win in my book.

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3

very cool and thoughtful suggestion, i very much agree with everything here, :wigglyjoy:

as additional limitation i may suggest, tho i know it may be pretty controversial to suggest;
it could be made so that shinys can only be traded with other shinys, to encourage people to shiny hunt themselfs instead of just grinding for money

and that keeps shinys in that sorta commodity that takes effort and time instead of just something to buy off of someone

4

Ah, I have some qualms about trading Pokemon - not so much about “being selfish” (honestly, cutting some of the steps in shiny bounties for convenience’s sake sounds nice), but instead in how abusable such a feature could potentially be, and how much work implementing such a feature could entail.

Yes, you covered level caps, but basing it on missions just adds even more incentive for people to powergrind their friends new to the game through mission ranks in higher-end dungeons like Harmonic Tower or Tanren Chambers.

Most recruits that people don’t want for themselves aren’t going to be trained, so the level cap isn’t going to stop people from trading over powerful/desirable mons. Especially notable is that as currently written, you could trade people evolved mons when they haven’t even completed Cliffside Relic yet. Imagine trading people a level 1 Togekiss (because it only uses items to evolve) fully outfitted with TMs and move tutor moves to curbstomp everything in its wake.

What’s to stop someone from trading their starter away? What happens if they’re allowed to do this as their only Pokemon, and receive nothing in return?

What’s to stop people from trading Pokemon while inside a dungeon? What happens if a temporary addition to a player’s team (mission escort or, worse, a summon from a Mystery Part) gets successfully traded?

What happens if an exploit gets discovered with Pokemon trading? This game is run by volunteers on a framework that, frankly, I think is being held together by duct tape and dreams. Would Pokemon trading have to be disabled if a major exploit gets found (like duping, or putting illegal moves on something, or trading an illegal mon, etc)? If so we’re kinda just back to square one with how things currently are.

I mean…on the surface I do like the suggestion with the arguments you’ve presented. Shiny dupes do feel underwhelming, I’m sure. And allowing someone who finds a random shiny to just recruit it now and sell it later to someone else who wants it more could help improve the flow of the game for those who love to grind.

But it just feels like there’s a lot more work that has to be accounted for when designing a new feature like this. I’m a bit more on the side of “improve accessibiliity for mons currently locked behind events by adding new dungeons or modifying existing ones”, at least for now.

Sorry for the rather bleak wall o’ text here, but I just thought I’d bring out some stuff that came up in my mind when I thought this post over.

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5

What’s to stop people from trading Pokemon while inside a dungeon? What happens if a temporary addition to a player’s team (mission escort or, worse, a summon from a Mystery Part) gets successfully traded?

This one’s an interesting point I want to ask about. Can you use the /trade function within the dungeon to trade items? If you cannot, then that means code exists for preventing trading within the dungeon, preventing escort Pokémon from being traded.

(Though it is funny to think about the exploits if someone somehow got a Gible or Dratini escort and was able to give everyone Gibles and Dratinis.)

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6

What if trading was locked behind a mission rank? If you needed Master or whatever to trade Pokémon, that would solve many of these potential exploits.

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7

I feel the potential exploits would still be there. It only further incentivizes new users to be carried through high-level dungeons and finish high-ranked missions by advanced users and get an early Master Rank before even getting through Cliffside Cave to gain evolution access.

If there was a restriction, it should be if the user has beaten it or recruited it in the Pokédex. That way, users must go through certain dungeons to obtain certain Pokémon. While users would still be able to give Pokémon great movesets through trading, they can only trade over the Pokémon that users have seen, preventing more broken Pokémon from being traded over. Also, it further incentivizes users to explore more dungeons to unlock these Pokémon for trading.

Though, of course, the biggest problem is “coding”, so there’s not really a perfect solution for this. Even my suggestion would need to consider if the Pokémon is registered through defeating them or just encountering them, then be able to read said encounter to know if it’s true or false. So working in the limitations of what PMU can provide, if trading Pokémon were possible, then I would still think rank-locking would not be a valid solution. I would instead have it either locked until completing a dungeon or having a trading station settled in Snowdin or Archford.

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8

I’m neither opposed or unopposed. I see some pros and cons that people have already highlighted here or in the past

BUT I DO WANNA SAY

there is a middle ground:

what if we merely allow trades of EGGS

add a new npc that costs 1000 (or more) to see what’s inside the egg. or at least if it’s shiny or not

then allow eggs to be tradeable.

boom now we have a gold sink. and we’re not too worried about game breaking/altering trades for new players.

i also dont think this would be difficult to implement

9

Pretty sure whether a pokemon is shiny or not is rolled by the game after it hatches, not when the egg is spawned.

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10

Late, but yes, this is how it works. I know this as there used to be a method of re-rolling an egg hatch if it wasn’t shiny. This is why the mystery egg now disappears at the start of the egg hatching dialogue, rather than the end of it.

So yeah, unless that code gets changed, there’s no way to know if a mystery egg contains a shiny or not until it’s already hatched. I believe the only info it has predetermined is what species it will be.

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11

why cant there be a place to go to trade mons in tanren

and only make it so 0 exp mons can be traded

ya ppl are gonna drag new ppl to tanren but from what ive heard about ppls kindness thats normal anyway

and ya if you rly want to you could send an 80 mon to someone that just joined a week ago but at that point if youre that dedicated to getting something exactly to the next level ppl should be allowed

might make pmu speedruns a thing

12

Eh…yeah, locking trading behind an explorer rank would probably be a solid call if this were to be seriously considered, but I don’t think I’d want that to necessarily be Master rank. But definitely nothing lower than Gold rank (Bronze/Silver ranks are pretty readily achieved). Maybe trading for normal mons at Gold rank, and shiny mons at Master rank? I think that sounds decently balanced while remaining relatively accessible and open for newer players to try trading for their favorite mons after putting in some effort to get their explorer rank up.

(I’d also probably level cap trades to the highest level each player has achieved in their assembly, just in case powerleveling through mission ranks becomes a common thing again.)

I am, however, still worried about actual exploits that could be discovered. We’ve had to deal with quite a few exploits and bugs in the past - heck, I mentioned one in my post right above this reply. There was also an exploit with the egg move tutor at one point causing it to be relocated to Togetic’s Refuge for a time. And me being staff in the past has made me realize just how janky and broken this game can REALLY get at times (having to rescue players from cutscene softlocks, etc etc). I appreciate having PMU as a diamond in the rough, but it’s really rough around the edges sometimes…

For sure, a player should never be able to do anything to remove their chosen starter (recruit ID #0 internally, as programmers start counting from 0, of course). There’s already code in place to prevent ever releasing that Pokemon; I’m sure there’d also be something in place to prevent trading it away too.

Additionally, I’m sure that a simple check could be made to prevent trading temporary recruits, too. I’m pretty sure all of these have negative recruit IDs internally, signifying their temporary nature. Likely could be done with the same check that’d be used for preventing trades with a player’s starter.

Beyond that, uh…I mean, code does exist to modify an existing recruit slot in the assembly (of course, via staff-only commands), but I’m not sure just how cleanly that’d carry over to adjusting player data when trading mons. There’s a pretty fair amount of data in there…species, form, gender, shiny, level + exp, 4 slots of move data…and that’s all just the visible parts.

I wouldn’t expect anything like this to happen within, say, the next year even IF staff are on board with this. I’d really prefer the effort going into smoothing out other parts of the game, like natively remappable controls, resizable window resolution, improving the really rough-looking UI, maybe even a few of the other features players have been asking for like the renaming service that used to exist with Mr. Mime in Tanren City, or an accessible means to learn legacy moves with Legacy Tokens. The means of acquiring Pokemon for the time being is probably okay, by comparison.

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13

Writing out a response to this, not to cause arguments, but to pick apart these points, like friendly debate.

-“,but instead how abusable such a feature could potentially be.”

Yes I agree this function can be abusable 100%, however if we are going on that route, trading in the main-line Pokemon games is extremely abusable as well.

Trading in the Pokemon games is mostly for those that want certain Pokemon for many reasons. These range from,

  • Pokedex Completion - in PMU’s case, someone could be doing a live pokedex and want to “collect them all”.
  • Specific Pokemon - many want their favorite mons and with how many Pokemon are locked behind late game dungeons, special events, keys, etc., it can make it upsetting to go through the game without ones you want.
  • Time Saving - we all know how long training can take, and some just don’t have the time or patience for it, I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with friends giving new friends trained mons to help them get into the game better.

-“, and how much work implementing such a feature could entail.”

As this was a suggestion, I do not expect such a feature to be added as most don’t get added anyway. The devs are busy and yes, trying to add such a big feature like trading would most likely take a lot of time and work, and with PMU’s spaghetti code, it would be very difficult. I don’t know much about coding games, but I’ve taken a course before for coding websites and it was a lot of work and the slightest things would mess up the entire code.

-“Yes, you covered level caps, but basing it on missions just adds even more incentive for people to power grind their friends new to the game through mission ranks in higher-end dungeons like Harmonic Tower or Tanren Chambers.”

So with this one, the level caps would be based on Mission Rank as I said above in my suggestion. The examples you gave, Harmonic Tower and Tanren Chambers, for HT you need Surf to get there first, which would mean the new friends would have to be at least lv20-30, so at that point, grinding for those missions/rank would kind of make sense to do? If these new friends are genuinely wanting to play the game and have gotten to that point, then wanting to grind missions/ranks shouldn’t be an issue. As for Tanren Chambers, you have to get to Tanren first, which again these new friends would still have to have leveled up a bit to get there or at least know more about the game. They’ll usually need Fly to get there faster after unlocking Tanren through Tanren Tunnel, meaning they’ll have to climb Skylift at some point. In my opinion, if you are putting this much effort into getting new friends onto PMU to be able to trade then clearly they will want to continue playing and not just be dragged through the whole game. It still takes a while to get to Guildmaster Rank, which for level caps, it’d make sense to have lv80-100 be locked at that level. Could also be lv60-100 to make it harder.

-”Most recruits that people don’t want for themselves aren’t going to be trained, so the level cap isn’t going to stop people from trading over powerful/desirable mons. Especially notable is that as currently written, you could trade people evolved mons when they haven’t even completed Cliffside Relic yet. Imagine trading people a level 1 Togekiss (because it only uses items to evolve) fully outfitted with TMs and move tutor moves to curbstomp everything in its wake.”

The ability to trade recruits can be locked behind the first or second guild rank, or you could even try to have it locked till after completing Cliffside. That way you can’t immediately trade off your starter or get overpowered lv1 evolved mons. Yes, I’m aware of many mons that can be fully evolved at lv1 from items. However, even if a new player was to get that level 1 Togekiss with the best moves on it, it’s still lv1. They will still have to train it, it can still get KO’d fairly easily as PMU is real time fights opposed to PMD’s turn based ones.

And no, the level cap won’t stop people from trading untrained/low-leveled desirable/powerful mons. That’s the point. People trade to get things that they want that they can’t get. PMU has many popular/desirable Pokemon locked behind endgame/HCs. Someone wants to start as a Noibat because it’s their favorite? Trading allows that instead of having to grind so far just to traverse through SF for a small possibility it spawns. Someone wants to start out as a Galarian Ponyta? It’s locked to anniversary HC, trading allows this instead of waiting for the possibility of another anniversary HC.

For a game that allows players to be able to switch their “starter” for their favorite mons, a LOT of favorite mons are locked to late game/ HC events.

Yes, making these event exclusive mons obtainable in new dungeons would help, but that’s ONLY for those mons. Not the end game ones. Once you get to the end game and finally get your fav mon, it’s already pointless, as you will have to train that mon to match your current team’s level and then what. If you already beat most things just to get that Pokemon then you are left there with nothing much to do after.

-“What’s to stop someone from trading their starter away? What happens if they’re allowed to do this as their only Pokemon, and receive nothing in return?

Trade Locking can be added to prevent this. Items in game are locked from being sold, dropped, lost and traded. The Pokemon you start the game with already can’t be released, so adding trade locking to them would just make sense. Treat them as untradable items, like event tokens for example.

-”What’s to stop people from trading Pokemon while inside a dungeon? What happens if a temporary addition to a player’s team (mission escort or, worse, a summon from a Mystery Part) gets successfully traded?”

You aren’t able to trade in dungeons period. So I don’t believe this would be an issue.

-”What happens if an exploit gets discovered with Pokemon trading? This game is run by volunteers on a framework that, frankly, I think is being held together by duct tape and dreams. Would Pokemon trading have to be disabled if a major exploit gets found (like duping, or putting illegal moves on something, or trading an illegal mon, etc)? If so we’re kinda just back to square one with how things currently are.”

I fully expect some sort of exploiting to happen, as you said, the framework is very fragile. If that happens, then it’s something to learn from and fix. Trial and error is a common way to go through with new functions. If this stuff happens and is found out about, I would think they can track what is duped/illegal and remove it. And no, I don’t think trading should be disabled due to exploits, it can be temp turned off to try to fix those issues. I’m going to be 100% honest, this is a fangame, not a mainline Pokemon game. Banning the exploiters is a thing. Make punishments against exploiters harsher.

-”But it just feels like there’s a lot more work that has to be accounted for when designing a new feature like this. I’m a bit more on the side of “improve accessibility for mons currently locked behind events by adding new dungeons or modifying existing ones”, at least for now.”

Yes, most new features for games bring lots of work, that’s just how it goes. As much as I agree that they should improve accessibility for the mons locked behind events, it still won’t change much since a lot of popular mons get shoved to the endgame of PMU and for Easter HC, it will still be the same issue of people hatching dupe shinies or shinies they don’t want while going for something they do want. High inaccessibility drives off most players. And for the starters being locked to end game dungeons, I started as a Skitty because I didn’t expect most of the starters to be locked. If I had known I would’ve started as an Eevee. Not many will think to look up things before hand, especially if they aren’t having friends who play already bring them into PMU.

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14

Also to answer this, no you cannot use the /trade function in dungeons! So yes there is code to prevent this.

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15

As I mentioned for level caps, yes trading would be locked behind ranks. The whole function shouldn’t be locked at a high rank though, because this would make more new players want to be just carried through to get the mons they want. The way I thought of it would be certain level ranges would be locked behind ranks, with it being completely locked at Normal. So as a mock example,

  • Normal Locked
  • Bronze Lv1-10
  • Silver Lv10-15
  • Gold Lv15-20
  • Diamond Lv20-25
  • Super Lv25-30
  • Ultra Lv30-35
  • Hyper Lv35-40
  • Master Lv45-50
  • Master* Lv50-55
  • Master** Lv55-60
  • Master*** Lv60-65
  • Guildmaster Lv70+
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16

Scaling trading via rank does sound good, but I kind of disagree with the level spread in your mock example. I feel like the levels shouldn’t go up by 5 each rank, but instead cap around Master rank. If I were to scale it, I would do it as such.

  • Normal Lv1-5
  • Bronze Lv6-15
  • Silver Lv16-25
  • Gold Lv26-35
  • Diamond Lv36-45
  • Super Lv46-55
  • Ultra Lv56-70
  • Hyper Lv71-90
  • Master Lv91-100

Still, I feel like things could be hammered out. As mentioned, anyone can have anyone carry them through dungeons. However, it should probably be more balanced around the base of a normal playthrough instead where they won’t get randomly carried through dungeons. I know that, without myself getting carried, it took me around a year or so to get Master Rank, and that was pre-mission nerf. Which is also why I’m a little iffy about locking it behind rank due to how you have to AFK for missions, which created this whole “trade missions” and “get carried to succeed” fiasco, but I digress.

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17

My mock levels were one example, I do like your level scaling here too, though maybe still have Normal be trade locked just so they are obligated to at least get to Bronze before they can trade.

So like,

  • Normal Trade Locked
  • Bronze Lv1-5
  • Silver Lv6-15
  • Gold Lv16-25
  • Diamond Lv26-35
  • Super Lv36-45
  • Ultra Lv46-55
  • Hyper Lv56-70
  • Master Lv71-90
  • Guildmaster Lv91-100

But either way, it would keep it mostly balanced so you can’t just get a lv100 right after going through the beginning of the game. There’s nothing stopping anyone from power grinding their accounts for anything really, so to let that be a hinder on adding trading to the game wouldn’t be right in my opinion.

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