06-28-2017, 02:40 PM | #1 |
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Increasing the worth/value of Pokedollars
Since it seems to be a topic worth talking about, and no one is talking about it, I'll start.
Pokedollars are extremely undervalued in the current system. I think it says something when rare candies hold more sway over the 'economy' than actual money. That's a problem. So, to fix leveling while simultaneously devaluing rare candies so that they don't hold more sway than actual currency, see my post in the level up thread. Anyway, to increase money value, we need to address a few things. A. Make the Department Store more useful We can't even buy healing items right now outside of potions, and even then the only real things the store offers that people want are Pokeballs, maybe revives. The way to address this is to add way more purchase options - stock is simply too limited as it is. My suggestion is to really take more away from what the in-game department stores have to offer. If we introduced "Floors" or "Counters" to the store, we could expand its offerings. For instance, we could have a TM Counter, which offers a variety of purchasable, more "common" TMs from throughout all generations, priced in tiers between $2000 and $5000. Another option could be an Evolution Counter, which offers "common" elemental stones such as Water, Fire, Leaf, and Thunder, for $5000 each (PRICES not set, just a suggestion). There are plenty of other things we could implement too, and perhaps we could even find a use for the Vitamin items in FB. B. Buckle up - it's time for some price increases I hate to say it, and I know people won't like it, but part of the reason the 'economy' is weak is because some of the prices we pay for services are, quite frankly, too cheap. It should honestly cost more than it does to learn a MT move, and it should cost even more to learn unnatural moves. This would make these moves more desirable and actually mean that you need to think about how you spend your money, as well as bringing more "value" to Pokedollars as a whole. Because the MT is so cheap, no one gives a shit about throwing away a few bucks a week to learn a move. Adoptions are pretty stupidly cheap as well. But you increase the service fees, and you're damn right money is going to mean a lot more to people. I don't know what those prices should be, but the point itself stands. C. Options, options, options. While there is zero reason to flood FB with pointless stores (we don't need this to be a TessB shopping simulator again), options like Toy's idea for a Gacha shop give us more uses for our money, and also bring more value to the concept as a whole. A currency doesn't work if you don't have a use for it, which is ultimately why candies had far more value as a currency than money ever did: they gave levels, and levels were a really hard thing to come by when you went a month at a time without getting an update. So... when you start making it easier to level, and start making candies more common, and then give people more options for their money, then money becomes far more valuable. Anyway, I gotta run for now, but there was some discussion about this on Discord yesterday and I felt it was important to touch on some of the topics we talked about. Thoughts? |
06-28-2017, 02:46 PM | #2 |
The Uncultured One
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Honestly I think we should have more in the store, but equally buyable evo stones devalues Incog as a whole.
Personally, one thing I think could work is buyable Rare Candies. Both serves to give people a reason to keep the monies and also devalues the candies as a currency a bit more. Also we should probably re-activate the medicine cabinet bit in the Department Store. Actually sell Potions and whatnot.
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06-28-2017, 02:58 PM | #3 |
Sayonara Bye Bye
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I support buyable candies, but I might be in the minority here.
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06-28-2017, 03:05 PM | #4 |
Heistin'
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Seconding Tate. Buyable Candies would make the task of leveling seem less Herculean for newbies.
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06-28-2017, 03:15 PM | #5 |
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Yes but does this idea work in addition to the "candies 4 updates" proposal, or would it just be one or the other?
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06-28-2017, 03:25 PM | #6 |
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I would vote for buying candies over "candies for updates" because the latter complicates the system already in place, imo. If both solutions result in the same outcome, then I'd rather we just simplify the process.
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06-28-2017, 03:27 PM | #7 |
The Uncultured One
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Honestly I was never a fan of 'candies for updates', because as it stands the current update reward is practically a baseline- you feel like you 'have' to get 250 words otherwise it's not worth doing. Doing this just raises this bar of expectancy, and sometimes that's not really doable. Sometimes the updates that are necessary are quite short, such as when you have to angle for crucial information, or you're literally just throwing out some orders for the next round. Upping the bar of expectancy means there's going to be an arseload more fluff in posts, and I doubt that's worthwhile. Before you bring up the 'lower the limit', as it stands 250 is about right. Anything over 300 is probably edging into the guaranteed fluff zone.
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06-28-2017, 03:45 PM | #9 |
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I was only using example but they can be readjusted as people see fit. But you make a fair point about the dissonance between them. MT moves are too cheap. 150-300 is just too cheap to me. You want to increase the value of the currency, increase the value of the market itself. And considering how big of a deal the MT is, I am honestly a bit surprised it's as cheap as it is.
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06-28-2017, 03:48 PM | #10 |
プラスチック♡ラブ
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One way of driving up spending is to increase prices but why can't we just give more things to spend Pokemoney on? The intent is to make the dollar useful,
yeah? So why not make things at least relatively cheap and make it easier to buy more things? That way you get more spending and people get more of what they want: progression. I'm not against modest price increases but I think you should balance these choices with how quickly you want people to progress. |
06-28-2017, 04:16 PM | #11 | |
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06-28-2017, 05:03 PM | #12 |
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Will also point out that it would be foolish to increase prices too much at the moment. FB is active at the moment but there is a chance that we are experiencing a honeymoon period. Things seem cheap because currently people are making plenty of money from Zone replies and the like. If FB slows down then people will be updating and replying less, meaning less money coming in. We havent even added Boutique or TMs, I think once they come in the value of Pokedollars will rise.
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06-28-2017, 05:08 PM | #13 | |
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06-28-2017, 05:28 PM | #15 |
Barghest Barghest Barghe-
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We have.
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06-28-2017, 08:02 PM | #16 |
時の彼方へ
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One of the loudest and most frequent complaints over the past ten years has been that FB is too economized / is too much of an economics game / is ruined by players who channel Scrooge McDuck and make scrupulous deals that ruin the fun for others.
You guys need to seriously make your minds up. Do you want FB to be a game rid of economics, or do you want it to be one that is 100% committed to economization? Because you can definitely economize FB ... but to do so is going to shatter a lot of people's smiles. (spoiler tagging for off-topic and length, but if you're interested in FB & Economics then you might want to read on) Spoiler: show Focusing specifically on PokéDollars and their current valuation, I guess I would say that IMV a person should be able to make 1-2 "big accomplishments" with a reasonable application of effort and no more than one year's passage of time. Life is too short to be trying to say, "We want an Ultra Rare to be so hard to get you could play FB daily for ten straight years and never get one." That's just locking people's desires inside a cage and taunting them with them. I know I'm not an active player presently, but ... I really don't think it makes sense to ask players to play weekly for 2+ years before they can get their hands on a Growlithe or Cubone. If you allow legendary partnership, I feel like 2+ years is the benchmark that goes with that sort of accomplishment. Not, "I got my first shiny. " Not, "I got my first S-Rank want. "
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06-28-2017, 08:21 PM | #17 |
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I definitely do not want FB to be an economics-based game. Shopping Simulator 2012 was Tess' domain and how Tess did things. That is not how we need to do things, nor should it ever have been, as that is not what FB is about. FB is about going on adventures and catching and battling Pokemon (frequently, not once a month). However, we do have this entire sub-section of FB that does still exist, and it does still need addressing.
The idea behind revamping Pokedollars is to make them useful, because right now they really just aren't. You buy your Pokeballs, you buy your move tutor stuff, you might buy some boutique stuff. Why do we have this system if it's not going to be used beyond maybe a small handful of things? The idea here is to simply offer more items to buy. Why aren't potions enabled yet? Why doesn't the store sell other items you would find in any of the seven regions' main department stores, including more niche items, TMs, etc? By offering these as options, you are giving the money itself more value, and you are giving more people more actual practical options to spend their money on. Another thing is TessB ran incredibly slow, as you pointed out. That isn't the case now. The entire proposal and all of the ideas I've touched on thus far are meant to directly address pretty much everything you covered in your spoiler box. The whole idea is to find a way to devalue candies, making them less important by "flooding the market" with them, either via update rewards or by I guess buying them at the store, which then takes this focus off of candies as a currency and this thing that people hoard to use for leverage purposes in trades. Doing this would also directly address the issue of level-up drought which many people experience, especially those who haven't been around for years and years picking up a candy every Monday and sitting on it. This gives players the chance to level up their Pokemon to a reasonable level for adventuring while also taking away this focus on candies that the actual money system itself should have had all this time. Why have a currency if a. something else is serving as a more valuable currency, and b. there's only a handful of things people want to buy anyway? And to address the point about how hard it was to find certain Pokemon, we are already working to address this issue. I don't think it's perfect, but the Shrine of the Third Eye allows players to go on record with what Pokemon they want to obtain to build their dream team. If you can go to a specific location in the games looking for a specific Pokemon, well... honestly, why can't you do that in FB too? It's rude to outright try and get your updater to get you to run into that Pokemon, but the SotTE, for all its faults, allows some leverage in terms of quietly saying "This is what I'd like to have, and if I don't run into these in my adventure, that's fine, but if I do then I would be extremely happy!" So really... I think a lot of us are really trying to take all of the areas of the game that made it not fun under Tess and address the problems directly where they hurt the most, and your spoiler box covered a good deal of the problems we are trying to fix. Talking about fixing the "economy" by employing some changes does not mean I want to make Shopping Simulator 2017, far from it. I am just trying to get us to discuss ways to fix the broken system by making money actually mean something, feel like it's actually valuable and useful, and also simultaneously taking this obsession off of rare candies as a system by making them easier to access + making it easier for players to level when they otherwise can't. |
06-28-2017, 09:02 PM | #18 |
時の彼方へ
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Kinda all OT dollar-wise :\ , but very relevant economy-wise ...
Spoiler: show Dollar-wise, I've not much else to say other than, I don't think you need to worry too much about inventing uses for people to spend their dollars on. It's perfectly acceptable to only have 30 to 50 uses for a fictional currency, especially when purchases aren't going to be made more frequently than once per month. If it were the video games, it'd be one thing, but in FB, the rate at which you consume Escape Ropes and Super Potions is so low as to make it pointless to have them. I guess what you could do, what this conversation might steer into ... would be to be harsher updaters. I'm serious. For potions to have any merit, there has to be:
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06-28-2017, 09:40 PM | #19 | |
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FWIW, since I've been hearing that there are people who are jealous of my Candy stash, if there's anyone who's in dire need of Levels right now then I wouldn't mind gifting them some Candies. I may joke about "guarding" my hoard, but I'd honestly be happy to share wealth. As Talon stated, I've spent most of my Coins just buying Pokémon as presents for other players, so please feel free to ask on the Candy front as well. Frankly I don't care if Candies are completely devalued. It's more of a personal milestone marker than anything for me at this point. One of my mild long-term goals is to reach 1,000 Candies just to say I've made that achievement. That's all. I think the more major issue right now is Move distribution. Levels don't really mean much in FB where Battle experience is relative and everything is scaled to the Updatee's favor (unless it's PvP), especially now that P.C. slots are no longer unlocked by them. It's the variety of Moveset options that gives RPers flexibility for richer story flavor. (Heck, going by game logic you could just spam the same STAB/SE Move over and over again, but that would get old in an RP environment pretty rapidly.) I've been lax when it comes to Levels lately which is why I haven't been making much use of the Daycare, but I just decided to drop my Zigzagoon off since I want her to learn a specific Move I may want to use in my Incognito Isle Adventure. And looking now at the team I've submitted for the CG event, I am a bit concerned about my Budew's lack of usable Moves (even though Attacks/Stats weren't required for sign-ups). This is another reason why I advocate for the ability to teach non-natural Moves to 'mons, and general greater availability of TMs/other avenues of gaining access to more Moves. (Heck, without unlimited TM compatibility my Wynaut would likely not have gotten nearly as much RP mileage as he has, nor even Delibird as my Starter for that matter.) Memory Berries were also a great asset in this regard, along with other giveaway opportunities. You could argue Levels also play a role in Evolution, and I agree that is a factor; but I assume most players want to develop their Pokémon for a while first before Evolving them anyway, which requires time to build up that bond and in the meantime obtain the means necessary in order to boost them to the right Level. Having a diverse Movepool set to prevent initial forays into Zones from getting stale, however, is a much more imminent problem that newbies would have to face IMO. I remember I once had a new Updatee who wouldn't use any of the Shops despite my urgings, just in order to give them more material to work with, and even though their writing was excellent they didn't last in the game very long. I can only assume they did get bored
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06-28-2017, 09:58 PM | #20 |
Sayonara Bye Bye
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Move variety is absolutely the key factor. Speaking as someone with a largely underlevelled team, it isn't the levels themselves or even the evolutions which I lust after, but the access to the movepool which levelling up unlocks.
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07-01-2017, 02:43 PM | #21 |
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In the same vein as other discussions, my opinion is not based on what others wrote because I haven't read any of it extensively. But my two cents on the matter, without going into too much detail:
Currently, $ is earned at a much faster pace than it is spent. This stems from a lack of spending choices and excessively low prices of what is already on offer. This is me enumerating the issues that everyone already knows exist because I'm good at it. More spending venues would be nice; remember that the point of rewarding $ for RP posts is meant as an incentive to keep posting, but if there's nothing to spend it on then it's a moot point and updating Bank logs becomes a chore of link-management with little payoff. At the same time, we want to avoid having this become a shopping simulator again. I think we need to maximize the Dept Store we already have (which atm is more of a roadside stand) and perhaps, to that effect, there were merits to Tess's idea of a rotating section of stock that was changed every now and then with appealing stuff. She had Pokemon up for sale, perhaps we could have limited editions of nice trinkets like Leftovers or Life Orbs? If we did, the price would have to match the usefulness of the item and the fact that it was a temporary feature - nothing like the current Tutor prices, for sure. Another thing I'd like to propose would be a limited selection of TMs up for sale as well, but with jacked-up prices for two reasons: all Pokémon can learn all TMs right now, so it makes them more valuable, and maybe... we can make TMs permanent items like in the current games? It's an idea I'd like you to consider: it makes TMs all the more valuable, since they are reusable and universal, and as such we could easily charge higher prices for them, which would make for an extra money outlet (make them non-tradeable Key Items to avoid chain-trading for instance). The TM selection could be rotational as well, if you'd like, to keep things fresh. This renewal of stock could tie in with Zone Shops, an idea proposed earlier on Discord, which could have special items and would only be accessible during adventures, with stocks different from the one at the general Dept Store. All in all, the current pace at which we earn $ seems reasonable since updaters are active, so with an increase in offer and product quality, we could have expensive stuff worth working towards.
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07-01-2017, 06:23 PM | #22 | |
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07-01-2017, 08:00 PM | #23 |
Barghest Barghest Barghe-
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I will say this (and I believe my opinion is shared by the other mods, although they can contradict me here if they wish) about TMs: at the current, there is no chance they will be reusable. Reusable TMs currently mean "Have the ability to teach any of your Pokemon you own or will ever own this move" and I would rather see you put in the effort for 20 Explosion TMs than just get one and never worry about it again.
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07-02-2017, 06:40 AM | #24 |
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I understand your reasoning, though I personally would infinitely prefer reusable over universal TMs, I won't argue. Any opinion on the rest of the suggestions?
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07-02-2017, 07:10 AM | #25 |
The Uncultured One
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I'm all for buyable TMs on rotation, but equally universal TMs are part of what makes Fizzby fun.
To reiterate, I'd say put a rotation of TMs up for sale and actually selling the medical stuff would be handy. Medical stuff does have a use, although as to the need for some of the higher-tier potions I'm not entirely sure: Pokemon get battered in adventures, or you come across a wounded mon in an adventure, pop a heal on them to brighten them back up. Gives them a purpose. If necessary I'd say maybe up MT prices a bit (I was personally thinking along the lines of $200/$600), but that might be a bit eh.
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