Single post in Dev Log 204

Continuing the subject of "starting over (again)", I wanted to take the opportunity to have another look at the fundamentals of the game, and see what if any changes I want to make there. The biggest thing I know I want to change is to shift away from mass-whatever. PFNew will avoid features that require massive amounts of clicks, hatches, time or money, and instead be geared towards a more casual scale. Here's why: PFQ is intended to be an ongoing, endless experience. Some of you have been here for near to or even over a decade. The problem is that there's only so much content, and with the events that encourage mass activity, you're very quickly going to run out of content. This leaves just maintaining Arceus rank when new tournaments or MCWs come out, and Melan hunting as the last things to do (besides just hanging out and socialising - that's not really part of the game, it's just a cool thing you can do) and both of those features can be quite frustrating. Consequently this leads to veteran users, the most dedicated players, feeling the the game only has frustration to offer. Not good. PFNew will aim to be more relaxed overall. No scramble to get things done, no rush, just do what you want at your own pace. Sure there will be events that require some activity but nothing quite so crazy as we have here. Naturally, the rest of the game will be balanced accordingly. So one idea I've had recently is related to interactions. The original intent of interactions is to help each other progress by mutual boosting. However, on PFQ, the current meta is one of activating a Lucky Egg, finding users with large numbers of fields, and mass-clicking them. This does not help the recipient of the interactions since their stuff is already Lv100 anyway. It doesn't help anyone else since they're not part of the meta. And really it goes against the whole sense of community that was originally intended. The shift of focus towards party interactions has helped a little bit, but not nearly enough. On PFNew I'm thinking of outright removing interactions with field Pokémon. I have already shown in previous screenshots that the party page will have a single button to click to interact with everything in that party. This is how I want things to play out. You interact with the user, not their Pokémon. The consequence of interacting is still the same: their party members get EXP. But once you have interacted with them, you can't do so again until it resets. Even if they change their party. Naturally this will involve further balancing, so the base cooldown on interacting will be one hour, rather than resetting at midnight server time. This includes yourself! The goal of this is to make the most efficient option be to interact with more players, and in return get more clickbacks. Another major thing I want to look at is the sheer number of features PFQ has. Yes it's cool to have so many things you can do, but many features only have one real use. The PokéWalker doesn't even have any real uses because I didn't want to gate things behind a feature that not everyone can use. So for PFNew I want to take a look at those features and really ensure that they form a part of the game, rather than just being bolted on without care for why. One major example would be having some features provide EXP to the Pokémon you use in them, or items that can provide some benefit elsewhere in the game. I don't have any specific details right now but these are the kinds of things I'm thinking about. One more thing, I'm playing with ideas to make the Fakemon be more like regular Pokémon. Having our own custom region that they belong to. I don't know how I'm going to do that yet but it feels like it would be nice. Among other things this means that we can offer Taiveret, Flarbat and Hydrark as starter choices! Ultimately, the biggest thing to remember is that I'm not just remaking PFQ. I'm making a new game entirely. So keep in mind that these "changes" are intentionally drastic. These are changes that would never work on PFQ, but if PFNew is designed with them from the start and balanced accordingly, then all will be well. Discuss!