HMD | September 2013

[these_balls]

EVALUATE MY BATTLING!

Trainer Tip: play nice and keep it civil.


things to keep in mind:
→ This is encouraged, not mandatory. We will not penalize you for not using it.
→ Feel free to link your personal HMDs if you would like, just in case someone doesn't want to use the mass HMD post.
→ this is more for actual critique and discussion. Please don't just blindly praise a person or just call them horrible. If someone's doing a wonderful job, you can tell them, just tell them why, or even where they're showing off bonus perks. If someone's doing a not-so-wonderful job, tell them why, give them things to improve on if you can. Examples, links, things that can give them something to work on. Meaning, no bashing, flaming, or nasty behavior. Please keep it civil.
→ Anonymous is turned on! But note: anonymous is a privilege, not a right. If it's being abused to bash players, please be sure to let one of us know and we'll step in or freeze threads if necessary. If anonymous is abused too much, it will be turned off for the next HMD.
→ Don't take this all too personally! Remember that roleplay is a game, and crit is supposed to help, not make you feel horribly. No one is perfect, we've all got room to improve. Please keep that in mind.

→ MOD/GAME HMD

Comments

MOD/GAME HMD

[these_balls]

Re: MOD/GAME HMD

[(Anonymous)]

It's a little belated. Okay a lot belated. But have you considered putting in a form of catch-up for new people coming into the game by way of their pokemon? For example, a new Rocket member comes in with their level 15 and level 5, and heads out to do Evil Rocket Things.

And inevitably encounters players who have been here longer and their full teams of level 100s. There is nothing that the Rocket can do to have a prayer of winning, never mind stealing their pokemon. This can be severely discouraging to any Rocket, or anyone at all who wants to do evil things. Just being clever and finding ways to 'get around it' doesn't help, not when you're faced with those kinds of odds. Cleverness only goes so far in a world where you can't even use a knife to defend yourself.

It's possible people who aren't planning evil have the same problem; it takes months for one pokemon to reach 100. Before that you might as well be a non-entity! And if you hatch an egg, that will be nice and strong when it grows up, it's still going to take three or four months before you can use it against all the older players and their full rosters of 100s.

[these_balls]

Hi, anon! Alex here. And it's never too belated, so don't worry!

If it's okay with you, can we talk a little more about your concern? I think it's a really good point (and admittedly one I hadn't thought of before, so thanks for bringing it up!), albeit one that might get a little complicated to address in a practical sense. You're right that the playing field can get pretty skewed when it comes to characters that have been here for a long time, and I can definitely see how that would be discouraging for newer players without the benefit of all that existing time investment.

Did you have any ideas on what sort of catch-up might help? From the way you describe it, it almost feels like it's less of a problem of levels in and of themselves, and more of a problem with too much reliance on a Pokemon team's power levels in the first place. Would you say that's a fair statement?