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)
