(I’d like to preface this post by saying that even though I’m part of staff team now, this post is purely my own opinion, not necessarily the stance of the staff team, and the intention of the post is to discuss and gather community opinions)
There are a lot of things to be discussed about the Heart Slate system, but here is something I feel that can have a short-term impact on the system.
The current cost of fusing a Heart Slate with your Mystery Part starts at 100k, and increases in increments of 100k, making combining the slates a very pricy task very quickly.
This, in my opinion, decentivizes fusing more than two or three slates for most people from what I’ve seen, as it’s simply not deemed worth that much money at a certain point. That point is reached quite quickly too, as multiple increments of 100k is still a lot of Poké for most players. There are many slates to gather within the game, and ‘‘excessive’’ ones now just sit in players’ storages after they’ve reached their limit, never seeing any use.
My opinion is that we should either make the slate fusions a flat cost, or significantly decrease the cost increments. I would love to hear your own opinions on it - do people agree with this, or do they think it’s still a worthwhile Poké sink as it currently is, looking mainly at the economy’s health? How many slates do you have fused yourself and what’s the ‘‘limit’’ for you?
Thank you in advance for responding and thinking with me.
My only Mystery Part with anything In It just has Jirachi and Shaymin. I guess there’s not really a limit for me given I don’t use my Mystery Part very often. But I think It should be a flat cost of 100k, there’s some slates I’d fuse Into my Part If I have extras If so. You end up paying too much for a Mythendary that may not be useful when you do summon It, and having a reason to summon It be situational anyway.
Edit: I also think people forget about Initially getting to the point where you can even fuse a slate In the first place. Depending on the Legendary/Mythical you really want It could be one of the more rare slates. A good handful of people actually haven’t done TC Normal 99 which Is the biggest obstacle next to getting Master Rank, but people are Inclined to do jobs anyway due to other things locked behind ranks. It feels like a Guide Dang It type of thing too, because unless someone told you or you looked It up I don’t think there’s any signs hinting you need to do all of this then go to an obscure house In an obscure area with one whole dungeon, to have the cost pile up on you after fusing just a few slates.
Yeah, you do raise a good point that it’s not a really intuitive series of events on its own (getting the mystery part and knowing how and where to fuse them). I think it might be worth including a few hints or pointers in the form of either interactables or NPCs along the way (perhaps a character or story in the TC Normal end room that speaks of a figure on the island that seeks out the slates, or something along the lines)
I’m 100% on the flat cost train, personally. Whether it be kept at 100k or bumped up to 150/200k I’m not particularly concerned; merely removing the scaling that punishes players for adding less optimal slates to their mystery parts is good enough for me.
Support, it baffles me this change requires such a discussion… it is doing the opposite job it was intended to do (being a money sink) by convincing people to not spend their money
I would not mind this change, I think a flat price of 100k/150k would be the best option. I feel like slates are used more as a trophy right now so I think punishing players with high costs is silly.
Also while on the topic I would not mind a dungeon that gives the mystery part some more purpose. Maybe like a required item idk just an off thought.