Hi everyone, was talking a bit with a friend and It made me think a lot about PMU’s “Issues”.
There’s a lot I feel I want to say, I’m not good at organization of my words or words generally, but I want to get my thoughts on here because I’d like genuine feedback and discussion to ensue from this. This Isn’t another “there aren’t enough staff and they all suck anyway!!!” or “PMU Is old and needs Improvements which we all know anyway” or “random salt from grudges from 10 years ago” post. I often compare PMU to PMD, but for good reason. I think It’s time we start talking some sense.
The first thing I guess I want to talk about Is lack of “content”.
Let’s take a moment to realize that the majority of the content In real PMD games Is the story and dungeons. So, while a story In PMU would be great, let’s not get ahead of ourselves and assume It’s a big cure all. Don’t get me wrong It definitely would help A LOT for longevity and progression, but my point here Is that the story would eventually conclude, leaving all players In the same spot we are currently In anyways. How would the story be presented to players already In the end-game? etc.
I’ve played through BRT, EoS, PSMD, and RTDX. In progress of GTI but my 3DS broke, and we’re unlikely to get something like the Paradise anyway. Was there ever really any endgame besides more story? From my perspective PSMD’s was most fun. I enjoyed collecting the looplets and treasures, and there’s more of an Incentive to recruit everything because of how stuff Is recruited and because you can for once actually obtain Arceus when you connect all Pokémon. For the other games there’s recruiting legendaries but…you know. It’s true that you need Master Rank and to do TC first to use legendaries In PMU, except they aren’t worth using much at the moment. Beyond that, slates can be traded anyway and legendaries often had a place In the stories of PMD, but they’re just In random spots and sometimes HCs In PMU, usually new dungeons are centered around giving access to a certain legendary or recruit which kind of sucks but that’s how It Is as PMU Is a developing game. Not many people have Interest In completing the dex In PMU, but I guess It Is a thing you can do.
Getting max rank Is a goal everyone pursues at some point. Maybe If there was a feature unlocked for getting to Guildmaster. By the way, there would also be an Incentive to rank up more If we got Item rewards for doing so. On the topic of ranking up, the rate at which players get jobs Is brought up a lot. Currently, you get 1 new job on your board every time the In-game time changes. Each day cycle Is…12 hours. You’d only get to experience each time twice In a full real-life day. There’s also the fact that the server restarts mess with time. Guys and girls, you would not believe the genius Idea I have for this whole time ordeal.
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Make each day cycle 24 minutes ( or 48, even ). I’m serious, this will fix the Issue. It’s not too quick, and not too slow. If the rate people get high-rank missions would be a problem, just adjust the rates at which they appear? Even If that can’t be done at the moment, neither can literally anything I will suggest here, this Is all hypotheoretical things for the future. I heard the argument that “Players will just afk until they get good missions If the rate was Increased”—If that’s the main concern then the Issue Is not how fast missions spawn, It’s the quality of the missions. Usually, I actively encourage PMU to follow PMD ( mission points and ranks are based off EoS ), but If mission rewards are an Issue, change them. Should ranking up take weeks or should you rank up faster from playing and being online? Post-edit: What If the entire board refreshed on a time change Instead rather than a single new mission? That’d be more accurate to PMD In actuality.
“What about time-based Pokémon, you noob? You are nitpicking and biased, I win, bye-bye.”
I think It’s a good PMU-only feature. Mystic Coven, Dream Grove and Dynamo would lose their niche, and a lot of dawn/day, dusk/night spawns wouldn’t exist which add realism to Pokémon that are considered diurnal or nocturnal. This Is something we would have to lose for this change unless any of you noobs have better Ideas. There would be a lot more solutions to this If PMU was single player, but It Isn’t unfortunately. Maybe If time-based Pokémon reacted to moves or weather Instead, I don’t know. Because of this, lets throw my entire genius Idea out the window, Into a trash can, on top of a dumpster, that’s In flames. But really, If not for time-based Pokémon, each day not being 12 hours long would be pretty nice. I think having to wait too long or not having enough time are just going to be Issues with the Pokémon no matter what we do with time.
With that out of the way one thing I see no one mention for some reason Is the 99 floor dungeons that reset your level and moves, and limit you to 1 team member In PMD. It would be great to have dungeons like Zero Isle. Wonder and Miracle Chests, Golden Masks and Amber Tears could only be gotten from the Zero Isle dungeons In the Explorers games as well as a lot of the silks and some legendary family Items. The current staff have fortunately been trying to alleviate the Inflation of the exp and recruit rate Items In PMU, but the damage has been done already. Sure, Sky Fortress Is 99 floors and you have to beat It 3 times first, but then you can go to Garden each time afterwards and It can be rushed easily. Meanwhile you can’t really speedrun a level 1 dungeon? Do you see where I’m getting at with this? And yet, level 1 dungeons are exclusive to events for some reason. They— from at least my perspective, have a lot of potential to make players have to put In more effort to get strong Items.
I got this Idea randomly while typing everything else but assuming Wynaut/Wobbuffet and Spinda ever get functions, what If you could make a drink that enhances a certain stat for a dungeon run? And could even boost your attack speed or movement speed rarely. It’d be one boost for one dungeon run until you made another drink so I can’t see It being broken and of course you’d have to use consumables for the drinks. I just thought It’d be a fun thing and helpful when training something weak, since IQ doesn’t exist, literally and figuratively /shot ( but I honestly would encourage It be added If the skills were able to be rebalanced ). Prize Tickets would be a way for people to get rid of excess Items, but things like revs, apples and stuff are actually a lot less common In the first 2 PMD games than PMU. I feel like In the 3D games Items are much more common. Even disregarding speedrunning, because PMU Is real-time dungeons generally take less time when not training. 30 floor dungeons are considered pretty long In the actual games. 60 Is a standard for “long dungeons” In PMU even though that’d be pretty Insane for real PMD.
Another thing I want to touch on, Is the big boy debate recently: Mobile Scarfing. I’m unsure how effective the Mobile Scarf Is In the real games, a big part of this Is because I literally never had one. They are way too common In PMU, and need to be much rarer.
It really, really doesn’t help that they are In the one dungeon that people constantly run for Poke. You guys like making random changes, can you randomly remove Mobile Scarves from Mt. Moon pls?
I think one of the best solutions would be to make It so they cannot pass through walls. Ghosts would still be able to, rather than making walls not passable although maybe walls can be Impassible In certain dungeons? It was like that In PSMD. Items In the walls are a real thing In the games; Another thing nobody talks about: breaking dungeon walls. It wouldn’t be a viable speedrun strat probably, but there were moves that could break walls, and explosions do so too ( and destroy Items, yikes ). There’s also orbs, Wands, and an IQ skill that do It. One-Room Orbs are In PMU but that’s the only slice of the cake we get for that mechanic. It’s also worth noting that wall Items are not visible In PMD like they are In PMU, but, X-Ray Specs showed all Items and enemies on the minimap. It would be really cool to see Specs ( and technically the Charm too ) buffed to do that. They didn’t before because for years the minimap was just not In the game. X-Ray Specs blank the minimap since It’s not programmed to only fill what the entire screen shows when there’s not darkness ( dungeons without darkness show the whole floor on the minimap ).
“What about shiny hunting, you dumb stupid? Stupid dumb and stupid.”
If dungeons take longer to run, just…………………………………………………………………Increase the shiny rates? Like, right? And this Is what Honey Is for. Will things really change? It’s better for the economy. Using a Tight Belt with 4x speed Is still completely viable—more than ever now that Trip Traps have been changed. ( Not related but I wish monster houses were like PMDs tbh. There’s some Items In dungeons that are exclusive to monster houses I think, like TMs showed up In them a lot. They just tend to have a lot of Items which Is cool. I think the floor should just enter the blinking state when the player encounters one should they ever change to be In generated floors. )
Uh, on another note, I realized I feel like boss drops are a weird mechanic when I mentioned using a Tight Belt. It makes sense on paper, but maybe not for ultra useful Items? Random wild Pokémon dropping certain things Is fine but Mewtwo being able to drop a GM doesn’t even make sense. Neither did Mew dropping a MC, and still It drops a WC. Why can Deoxys drop a Tight Belt and Exp. All among the other Items that make sense? ( You know what would be dope and make sense though? If It could drop an Item that lets you change Its form when summoned. ) A lot of things In PMU were done just because, even as late as 2018. There’s no rhyme, no reason. Because of past didiot staff mistakes, we have Sky Fortress, Seafloor Ruins, and everything needs to get a remake Instead of us getting new dungeons that aren’t HC. Although I’m starved for new permanent dungeons, I don’t feel It’s healthy we keep making random things that don’t tie In at all cause eventually we’ll run out of legendaries and most of them are In dungeons just for the sake of making them accessible somehow.
Weekly events should be retired besides auctions probably, so staff can put more time Into other things. With how things are now, week-long events were a great change so people of all timezones can participate, but they also feel soulless and less fun, and as said before, the Items we participate In these events for shouldn’t be obtained this way. I’d prefer more stuff like mapping contests and even another dungeon contest, on the condition the dungeon actually gets made ( vote for something less complicated next time guys ). Obtaining Event Tokens from things like HCs which continue to happen and have more purpose than the weekly events feels better, to me.
I’d recommend reading this post that got Ignored by everyone else:
Gems, Crystals and Globes were covered In the topic linked above too—my first post kind of sucks but my point boiled down to “They should follow the PMD method of obtainment” which would be perfectly fine but Instead my Idea sucks just because PMU’s Inflation Is already bad. I can’t stress enough how less OP Gems would be If status conditions just wore off when you switched floors. I understand It’s not a change that could be made easily right now, but still why does It kinda get Ignored when mentioned? Do we want to change It or not, do we think It would be better? And If not, why? Tell me why, am I just nothing but a heartache? A mistake? Did you never want to hear me say I wanted It this way? This has got to be changed If In the future level 1 99F dungeons do get created. Gems mostly sucked In the Explorers games, because weather sucked and status conditions actually went away. I genuinely believe we overthink about solutions, and try our hardest to not think about the source material. We think outside the box, rather than Inside. “PMU Is Its own thing”, except It Isn’t. If It was, Is that a good thing? It’s not just a Pokémon MMO, It’s advertised as a PMD MMO. It doesn’t have to follow PMD down to a T, there are several unique twists to the gameplay that PMU adds, although some were necessary due to being real-time rather than turn-based. But I’m In belief that straying too far away from the core of PMU Is going to lead to Issues.
It took a decade for Eevee to be added as a starter, and I’m glad that It Is now Included, but there was a lot of hesitation without any good reason given. A lot of people who joined since the change haven’t picked Eevee as a starter, so even If It was chosen a lot that’s just a really biased reason to not Include something. This was 2 years ago now, so It’s not entirely necessary to bring It up, but It serves as an example of how we do our best to avoid real PMD traits. Picking a starter Is the first thing you do, and Eevee Is an Iconic PMD starter. Even If people don’t want to pick It, It brings comfort being able to say “oh cool, this game has all the starters!”. It’d be a different situation If PMU had say, only the main series starters. But It Included some of the PMD ones and Pokemon that weren’t even starters, so that wasn’t an excuse for this. Not having any PMD starters would be weird, PMD having more variety Is part of what makes It unique and cool to the main series.
At this point It all makes me wonder If PMD works as an MMO. No one wants a reset of progress, but I feel like with how much needs to be done, maybe PMU should be put offline publicly for a while so multiple major changes can be done ( maybe It can open for HCs ). As It Is right now, people can still “abuse” op stuff before anything can be done ( no one really talks about that either, lol ), which obviously Isn’t good and we’ll have people at the top because they used these mechanics before they were nerfed. People are going to keep getting Event Token Items this way, which adds to the problem. It’s like the original creators of PMU and also some people who were staff In the past or want to apply forgot that this Is supposed to be a PMD game. It’s not from staff, but when I’ve gotten told “It doesn’t have to follow PMD” It feels like a bad excuse to disregard suggestions one doesn’t agree with or doesn’t want to do. There’s nothing wrong when PMU doesn’t follow PMD, yet It feels like there’s something wrong when It does. Of course for something like legendaries It’s a valid reason ( depending on who you ask ), but for other things we have to consider everything besides how the PMD games do It. So why Is this?
It’s 5:40 AM, I’ve been typing this for like 4 hours. I’m tired, and without the perspective of other people, I won’t be able to see the flaws with my points If I didn’t mention them already. My goal Isn’t supposed to talk down or pressure staff or anyone, I’m just looking for legitimate arguments, and to try to expose new logic and Ideas. I’m aware that like many suggestions, what I mentioned here can’t happen anytime soon. I know that. But I am asking for personal opinions of people; does what I say suck or does It not? You don’t have to speak for the staff team, speak for yourself.