Fizzy Bubbles Shop Discussions: Bi-Monthlies

[Lil'twick]

Alrighty so I was able to get the kinks worked out with the other mods the past few days, and thus here will be the official changes happening to the Adoption Center, that will be going live with this post and will be in the news!

-Advanced Care no longer is a thing. All Pokemon that enter the Adoption Center will be $200.
-New Pokemon can enter the Adoption Center at any level at or between 1 and 10.
-New Pokemon that enter the Adoption Center can have up to two Egg Moves.
-Pokemon will be discounted to $100 after being in the Adoption Center for three months. This change will go live at the start of their third month being there.
-Pokemon will be free for the last month they are in the Adoption Center before being Adopted by a NPC Trainer.
-Pokemon will be in the adoption center for a minimum of six months before they are adopted by NPC Trainers and removed from the AC. NPC Trainer adoptions will occur in January and July every year. Any Pokemon from December or earlier will be released in July, and any Pokemon from June or earlier will be released in January.
-Twice a calendar year, we will host BoGo Promotions. These will be around times when the AC is getting close to full up. As we already had one in March of this year, we will have one at some point later this year.
-New Adoptions will be posted in the Serebii news thread, in addition to being pinged in the Discord Announcement channels.

That's pretty much it. Thank you, everyone, for the feedback! We'll be announcing the next shop soon, so please stay tuned.

[Lil'twick]

Alright, so, we have decided that we will be working on Bi-Monthlies next. So, any thoughts, or suggestions, on how to improve the shop/service would be appreciated. The only thought I really have would be diversifying rewards or allowing you to claim each tier you qualify for. Besides that, please discuss!

[Ironthunder]

Prize Tiers:
• Tier 1- 3 Update Minimum Requirement: 3 Rare Candies or 2 Mysterious Gummis or 1 Enigma Egg or 1 Silver Umbra Coin
• Tier 2- 5 Update Minimum Requirement: 5 Rare Candies or 1 TM/TR or 1 Ability Capsule or 1 Type Egg or 1 Zone Egg
• Tier 3- 10 Update Minimum Requirement: 1 Heart Scale or 1 Shiny Spray or 1 Starter Egg or 1 Fossil Egg or 1 Baby Egg

So this is what it looks like atm.

First thoughts:
T1 is hilariously unbalanced. A random Pokemon, a random Shadow Pokemon... 3 levels or 10 bond. IMO it should be one of candies/gummis and one of umbra/enigma, or even making it just a choice of umbra or enigma and then you get the candies and gummis as standard. I think T1 needs to be the big lure tier if you want to get people actually updating.

T2: Random mon of a certain type, restricted random mon, a TM, 5 levels or an ability capsule. Honestly... 5 levels is alright but should be a fixed bit, one TM is very much not on a par with everything else, and I doubt the value of the ability capsule given almost everything comes without a declared ability. I'd cut the TM option because bluntly it is worthless by comparison to the two eggs or five candies, and maybe reshuffle the eggs as mentioned below.

T3: 10 levels/5 EM/MTs, fake-a-shiny, or one of three very niche egg pools. Spray and scale are fine, the egg pool needs overhauling for here. Starter/Fossil/Baby are some very narrow pools and there's a strong chance that people who get here would rather have had the option of a zone or type egg than one of these niche things. I'd swap this tier's eggs for T2's.

Claiming each tier you qualify for, fine by me. Might need to consider limiting the number of eggs you can grab, but that might just be me grouching.

So, by my test system:
T1: 3 Candies AND 2 Gummis AND EITHER Enigma Egg OR Silver Umbra.
T2: 5 Candies OR Baby Egg OR Starter Egg OR Fossil Egg OR Ability Capsule
T3: Scale OR Spray OR Zone Egg OR Type Egg.

I get there's probably going to be some backlash on the egg shuffles but bluntly the scale kind of outvalues everything else there due to how niche the egg pool options are.

[Gemini Spark]

Honestly, I think IT's on the right track here. The egg pools between 2 and 3 can be pretty flexible in my mind since I can think of people who may want something like Fossil Eggs more than Type Eggs, but again, I wouldn't mind that being played around with to see where that sticks. I am very much with IT on T1 being the initial incentive that gets people updating, plus being able to claim multiple tiers makes it fine to pick between each T2 and T3 option since we would already be getting multiple T1 rewards.

[Lil'twick]

Honestly, I do like a lot of what Iron has suggested, but the one thing I don't want to agree with is the switching of tier 2 and 3 eggs. While these eggs might be more niche, they are meant to be more desirable and exclusive eggs. As it stands, a starter egg has an equal or better chance to get a starter than trying to go through a type egg for it. Meanwhile, Fossil and Baby are more niche groups, but we are trying to have these targeted eggs as specific rewards for updaters. Type and Zone eggs are available from both LP Emporium and Slots already, so it doesn't make sense to work harder for something that is more easily available.

As for Tier 1, I do agree it does need some enticing options. However, I do want to point out that like... people who want to update are already updating. It is basically impossible to make people update who don't want to update. So, it needs to be a conscious decision by them to update in the first place, the rewards are very much just extras. I would like some current updaters' opinions on this.

[Ironthunder]

I can understand the niche eggs being more of a reward, but I think that they're almost too niche. Maybe having T3's egg options just be a choice of any of the currently-defined eggs (So Enigma, Type, Zone, Baby, Starter or Fossil) so that if you just don't want the baby/starter/fossil eggs you still have An Egg Option there rather than being hamstrung to either shiny spray or heart scale. Or, maybe we could consider trying to put together some alternate egg pools to go in that Baby/Starter/Fossil category (Maybe regional eggs or a "regional forms" egg?).

[Lil'twick]

I do think we can talk about more potential egg groups once the hatchery comes around, but those three groupings tend to be very high profile wants (we get at least one fossil or staryer egg per bi-month grabbed). Just because the groupings might not be partivularly enticing for some players, there still is the Heart Scale and Shiny Spray as well, both of which are high profile items.

[KingSalmon]

I will say that 6 breeding slots per year feels to me like it devalues basically any Egg Tier other than Enigma Eggs from which you can get UBs/Paradoxes, meaning if I really want a starter I can probably just ask around, but that's for another discussion. At the moment I feel more compelled to write updates for the regular ladder uber-rewards (still so far away though ^^") and Legend Points rather than what's on offer in the bimonthlies tbh.

I do think reward tiers stacking is appealing - levelling up is still a painfully slow process imo and extra ways to alleviate that are always welcome, sometimes more so than new ways to get even more Lv 1 Pokemon...

[ShadowDRGN]

So I will admit I've been having trouble thinking of anything to say other than just quoting and saying broad agrees/disagrees. For the most part the proposed changes to tier rewards work for me.

However, when I was thinking of Legend Adventure Points, a thought struck me: When I tally LAP, I'm already checking and verifying everyone's updates over the Bi-Monthly period, including updates that weren't logged. We did this specifically for parity between replies and updates in terms of earning points, as well as to avoid adding extra player-side bookkeeping to a new feature.

But because we do this, I'm wondering what purpose continuing to have ZU's log their Bi-Monthly Updates in order to gain rewards actually is. I don't actually use anyone's Bi-Monthly posts to help me with tallying LAP because if I did there's a chance I'd miss an update that wasn't logged, and with the compiled list it's pretty trivial to count how many updates someone's made within the period and issue reward tiers from there. It would mean that updators no longer have to double-log their updates, which could help reduce fatigue from bookkeeping.