What do I need as a high level? Answer is pretty simple, I need more fun
There are few things that make gameplay kinda boring or even annoying, at least for me. I will try to point it out, give a little suggestion what could be changed or added, show what in my eyes could be improved.
1. Map rework and new respawns.
I see most of comments saying that we need new big and better respawns. But do we realy need them that much? We have many great places already added to our map, but most of them is forgotten and unused by players. We can ask for more, but in my opinion it is a vicious circle. We are getting new and better islands/respawns, but after few weeks people are bored of it once again and ask again for new and better resp. Here comes my suggestion:
how about we actually
nerf some of existing places, like 100+ grass, 135+ ice, 170+ dragon/ice, 130+ rampardos resp. And then
boost whole map with rework of exp stages? Places considered now as good or even too good, would get nerfed, and due to exp stages rework they would be unchanged at the end, but places which now are a little bit underrated, like most of 150+ areas, would get boosted so more people start using it again. Other possitive point in this change is that people will spread out on more old respawns, and those which are already overcrowded may become "normal" again.
I also had suggestion similar to what Sheeper suggested, adding transport method for free players, to travel to some islands. I think kanto Squirtle island near Lavender, Bulbasaur islands near Pewter and fire island near Cinnabar should be good enough to improve map for facc newcomers and attract them to stay for longer.
2. New quests
We need some new quests, but different than we have for now. We need something with decent storyline, and reward that will give us something else than just a box, a tm case, or access to resp. Random mega evo item? It is an option, but im scared of requirements since they should be realy big and it may end up as a dream for the most of people instead of a goal to be achieved. Maybe some kind of bonuses to our character, promotion quest comes to my mind but it is realy hard to balance reward and bonuses for it. The point is - we need a reward that actually can be only obtainable with this quest, something not tradeble so level 130 high donator can't get it in any way unless he start leveling.
3. Benefits of being high level
What is the benefit of being a high level now? More health, and speed. What it realy gives us? Almost nothing. Bosses one shot us anyway, if someone start to KS us on respawn, we can't outrun him and kill spot faster because time needed to lure pokemons and kill them is too long, even 50 lvls of advantage means nothing. I have a little suggestion for benefit people who keep playing on one character, or focus on playing the only one char. My logic is simple, I am high level, right? It means I have higher experience, as in real life, more experience you have in anything, the better you are with it. If I have more experience in leveling I should know leveling better and be able to use that knowledge to level up my pokemons faster. Sounds interesting? Let me explain my idea then. Starting at 101 we will gain an experience bonus for our pokemons.
Lv. 101 - 1% bonus exp
Lv. 126 - 2% bonus exp
Lv. 151 - 3% bonus exp
Lv. 171 - 4% bonus exp
Lv. 191 - 5% bonus exp
Lv. 206 - 6% bonus exp
Lv. 221 - 7% bonus exp
Lv. 231 - 8% bonus exp
Lv. 241 - 9% bonus exp
Lv. 251 - 10% bonus exp
Lv. 261 - 11% bonus exp
Lv. 271 - 12% bonus exp
Lv. 281 - 13% bonus exp
Lv. 291 - 14% bonus exp
Lv. 301 - 15% bonus exp - last stage (sorry Selasor)
4. Less randomness - more things rewarding our hard work - people are most likely interested in things which they are sure about the reward at the end.
* Looting things:
How many people have you seen going to the exact place, trying to loot a TM for weeks? Not many, but everything changed now, since we have TM Tasks almost everyone is working with it. It motivated many of my friends, me too, to move out of pvp, and start hunting again. Diversity of TM's is higher, prices doing down, everyone is happy.
Second part of looting I want to say something about is actually a Mega Evolution Stone. I'm happy to hear about new megas, but if you want to add them in the similar way we have it already - skip it and move to something else because it will be a fail. I don't want to be rude, and please don't get me wrong but loot rate of the stone is a bad joke. It looked fine, maybe even a little bit too easy, when it was released, people looted 4 or 5 stones in the first few weeks but then something happend. I don't know but seems like someone fucked up the loot rate and forgot to put one more zero in 0,...01 chance, after few stones looted pretty quickly it got "fixed" because nobody else looted it for next 11 months. Don't say nobody looted it because people are not hunting bosses, I'm not sure about platinum but I'm sure there are people on diamond and pearl who keep seeking bosses, I am one of them. Loot chance should be either changed or let us change 100-150 tokens +100 of boss items for a mega stone, for example 150 tokens + 100 demonic essence to get a Mega Blaziken stone, restricted to only once and one change per account, and of course make tokens and boss items untradable. It will probably take 2 years to kill Mega Blaziken 100 times, but this is still better than nothing. 3rd option is change the frequency of boss respawn to every 18-30h or something like that but I'm not sure if it going to change anything.
* Catching:
We could, and we were complaining a lot about bonus not working, it is all clear now, we got a good change we are happy with. We can be kinda sure that if we stay in the same place, trying to catch something, we will eventually do it. The only thing I would suggest to change in it, is the missing bonus chance for some pokemons. Cloned Ninetales, Cloned Dragonite, Rotoms, price of first two is pretty clear, Rotoms are still going down, but maybe after few more weeks it can be added too. And of course Shinies. Would be great if we had bonus when we throw 500+/- UB's or RB's. If any of you want to tell me that it can't be done because it will be easily abused, please go and prove me, try to throw 500 balls on any Shiny with your own hands and then come and say it again.
5. Stop fighting people, start supporting them
This is probably the most important of what I want to say. I feel like staff is sometimes overthinking and seeing abusers too often - perfect example is the change of exp stages that happend over one year ago. What was the real reason of it? More people getting closer to lvl 200, or maybe many people "abusing" it by leveling multiple noob chars to 130 just to get rewards. We don't know, but we all suffered to this change. I almost stopped playing because I got too bored of slow leveling. I got to level 200 in 1 year and in next 9 months I got only 6 lvls, it means something, since I am leveling focused player. I probably would leave this game if I didn't had my guildmates, and my stupid challenge to catch all cloneds. Many people stopped leveling, because they feel like after level 130 or 150 it is too boring and kinda pointless. They only level up while doing tasks, or if they find a realy nice pokemon for them, and want to level it up, they are not intended to level up their character anymore. If we look at any other game, what is the reaction of staff, when they see their players leveling faster and faster, breaking some limits with every day? Some of games are trying to nerf it, put limits and make players slow down, this is what happening in PA. But in my opinion it is a wrong way. Most of games trying to upgrade gameplay, give more and better things to give high lvl players something to do. Why should we get punished because we love leveling up?
We could be watching similar situation in Tibia, years ago, when high level mages were hitting 1.5-1.6k with SD rune and started to level up too fast, or people leveling their lvl 20 noob mages with SD runes or knights with the best weapon. It all got nerfed, runes and weapons with level restriction, no more physical dmg with runes, dmg calculating formula changed to rely on magic level more and making char lvl almost non factor. But people didn't give up, they found out that they still can get crazy exp by spamming massive AOE spells, like having 4kk exp per hour with lvl 300 mage. It got nerfed as well because staff added cooldown for spells, it made many players leave the game, or start botting because leveling by my own hands was boring. It changed, they see that fighting high lvl people, or let's say it - no lifes, is pointless. They started improving h-lvl gameplay, and started looking for what is needed for players. Players were leveling solo a lot so they added bonus for leveling in party, with different vocation to motivate people to level up together. They are still adding better and better respawns, they don't care if someone go and get 2kk exp/h there, they let it be this way.
What I'm trying to say is that maybe we should move on to the new era of playing, without hidden bariers. Preferences of new generation players changed, people are not looking for challenging games, they look for games where they can chill out and have fun with friends. Make game a little bit easier, I'm not saying you should throw things for free, or make people getting everything in few days, but working 1 or 2 years to get a thing is not something we enjoy. Hope you understand me, because it is hard to describe it. And sorry for comparing PA to Tibia, but I can see big similarity.
Thats all for now from me, something could be changed in PvP, but since I'm not any good at it and I'm not interested in it anymore I won't try to pretend that I can say something usefull, I better leave it for people who are dueling more. I'm sure that I forgot about something but I can't remember it now, nevermind.
The last thing, I'm glad to see staff working on relationship between staff - community, thats realy good. Keep it up, keep up all the great work you are doing in last months or even last year. I hope we can make PA great again together.
