Single post in A Change to the Egg Timer

I've seen a number of people having issues with the Egg Timer, and many of them seem to believe the solution would be to have the option to completely turn it off. However, I don't think that's a good solution. When the Egg Timer was first announced, I was so happy. A thing that would help eggs hatch over time, plus promoted interacting! Booyah! But I quickly realized that it's not great for active players. Just clicking my fields, as of right now a bit over 800 pokemon, builds it to level 6-ish, and I've noticed it creates a really bad feedback loop, especially for anyone who's SAM Hunting. To get more eggs, you need to click. But clicking ups your egg timer, which in turn hatches your eggs faster, which means you need more of them. In the past three days, I've ran through 60 Daycare passes a day, maybe more, and that's far faster than I can get money to buy them, especially since that's not the ONLY thing my money is going towards, what with buying Ubercharms and recharging Shiny Charms, along with participating in tournaments. Releasing eggs and adopting them from the shelter is a potential solution, but for exclusive/variant hunters, it's not the greatest idea. I'm only hunting Spinarark at the moment, and I've lost count of how many eggs I've released today, but even right after releasing 20 to the Shelter, it took me a half an hour just to fill my party. In the end, the egg timer has forced me to click more and make more interactions, but it's also made me click less people. I only click about three people nowadays because it's better for trying to make eggs, and the only people I click otherwise are the ones that clicked me first. It's actually made me less active overall on the site, from not going out and clicking a bunch of different people, to actively AVOIDING the pokerus holder. It's not even SAM Hunters either, I'd wager. Newer players are also hatching eggs faster, meaning they have to adopt eggs faster, and without higher shelter passes, they'll run out quickly on non-Shazi boost days and have to resort to the lab, which isn't always a great option, especially as time goes on. Granted, I don't have as much of a frame of reference for this, so I could be wrong, but it's speculation on my part. I have a couple of potential solutions, and I'll do my best to accurately describe them and their pros and cons. Interaction Points to Charge With this idea, the Egg Timer would use interaction points to level beyond the base, level 1. You could still use it without spending points, as the base Egg Timer works now, and higher levels would hatch eggs faster for that day. It wouldn't be like the Albino Radar in that you can level it up by one each day, more that you can chose what level you want it to be at for the day. For example, on days I work, I might charge it at a lower level, or not at all, because I can't check it much, but on days I don't have any plans, I could charge it to the max level, since I could be online a lot to hatch and replace eggs. -Pros: Would fix the feedback loop currently on the egg timer, and give more freedom and flexibility with using it, all while still promoting more interaction. -Cons: As the Albino Radar already exists and uses IP, it would force SAM hunters to chose between the two if they don't have enough points for both. Track By Number of Users Interacted with Instead of Individual Interactions As the Egg Timer works right now, Mass Clicking people with large stacked/sorted feilds is far more rewarding than other clicking methods, as exemplified by my statements about the feedback loop regarding SAM Hunting and breeding eggs. In this way, the Egg Timer would instead be based on how many DIFFERENT people you interacted with, perhaps with New Users counting as two instead of one to reward clicking them. -Pros: This would promote the clicking of more people rather than clicking more of individual fields, especially towards newer users who are less likely to have S&S feilds -Cons: May accidentally promote a habit of only clicking 1 pokemon/egg per person, I am not sure of the logistics of coding this sort of thing or the strain it would have on Sally Egg Timer Boosts An Egg Timer Boost is my name for an Item that would up the level of the Egg timer, and would work much like the DayCare EXP Booster. Everyone has a Level 1 Egg Timer by default and can buy EXP Boosters to level it up and have the Egg Timer give more EXP, and the Booster could be held by a Pokemon to temporarily disable that level, or sold on the market. -Pros: We already have a basis on how this could work with the DayCare EXP Booster, it would fix the feedback loop, and give another currency sink so not as much currency is building up and being shifted between players. -Cons: Doesn't promote interactions like the other two potential solutions I've suggested. Also would be a sharp change from how the Egg Timer currently works. Overall, I really, sincerely love the concept of the Egg Timer, and I do feel like promoting interaction isn't AS important with it due to the major aim being to help people who can't be on as much and therefore can't interact as much. I appreciate the good intentions behind this mechanic, but feel it needs some changes. As far as my experiences have gone, it's actually made my play expereince MORE stressful and made me interact with LESS people than before, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Thank you for your time.