Upcoming changes to S/A/M/D

In response to potential odd increasing, something that doesn't affect half of the distribution would be a "bad luck protection" system. Something that only kicks in if you've had poor luck (i.e hit a certain % threshold.) If the odds are 1/200, then after 138 failed shinies(50%), the chance becomes doubled. Then at 50% again (so 25%) or 67 more failed shinies at that new chance, it gets doubled increased again and so on and so forth. And of course, whatever order you choose to use as the threshold can be tweaked and changed as another balancing tool. That would put a cap on "unlucky-ness" without affecting luck too much. Though I'm not sure how feasible it is if you can't read your own code (been there >.>) Or make the 1/50 counter chance to increment occur after 200 attempts (which would be 1/x of whatever you're trying to hatch, shinies in this case) but keep the base odds untouched, that way, you can still get lucky with full odds, but have bad luck protection in addition rather than a replacement. Made a thread about it for feedback here as is custom to do for suggestions.

I want to weigh in with my own anecdotal experience because it's bothering me about how some people are choosing to explain themselves using Time (days/weeks/months) instead of Chain length or actual hatches, to determine their "luck" (read as randomly generated special hatches). This may give insight into how people feel about Time spent vs. Reward. I similarly addressed this in a previous post regarding the number of melan hatches on very long chains that are more expected to reap the reward rather than a lucky early hatch. Claiming that a person has hunted something for a week, for example, doesn't tell us any numbers. Did they max out their hatches each day or were they doing just 1 or 2 full parties a day (6 or 12 hatches)? For the Typerace I hunted Slugma. This sounds like a week, actually it was 9 days as I started the day before and continued through the Sunday after because of the Sei bonus. I ended my chain on 1500 hatches and got 8 shinies and 6 albinos overall. I used 1 shiny charm, on the Sei day that was the day after Typerace. I got 4 shinies on that day. The last being the 1439h. The 6 albinos were scattered around from using level 7 radar each day and have nothing to do with chain length. I did not use Z crystals, no uber, I have hypermode. Eight shinies in a "week" doesn't sound too bad right? It seems like it's roughly 1 a day. Except I got my first shiny at 503h. That was three days into my hunt. For some people, 503 hatches is over a week of Time because they don't do all of their hatches every day, they don't click enough to charge their radar fully, they use charms and hatch 30 things that day without anything to reward them for their mostly-idle-playing efforts. When I use a charm, on a double adopts day and hatch almost 300 eggs with no specials to show for it, that's equivalent to some people's entire week of playing. So when a regular day passes for me and I got no special in the 151 hatches I did, it was just 1 day, although my effort was large in terms of clicking. Time is not so much an issue for me as much as I was looking at a 700 chain with 4 total specials (2A/2S). The effort I put into that was immense despite it being just 4 days of time. Or those times when I did 300 hatches in a day with no specials that took me 30k+ interactions for the attempt. Sometimes you get an early shiny, or early melan. Sometimes you get nothing. This is just how RNG works, and pushing currency (real or virtual) into it won't guarantee nor make any noticeable difference to the personal experience over time. You can't bribe "Lady Luck" to appear early. Please note that this isn't a complaint, I just want to show the difference between how Time and Specials per hatches are very different experiences. Most of the complaints here are coming from people regarding "Time" in my opinion. (Same thing they bring up everywhere else about other things too. Always seems to be more about Time rather than the Odds/game balance/reward.)

The following is my opinion as a player and hunter, not a staff member. I'm just one data point, but I want to say that in my experience the hunt rates are "correct", meaning the number of shinies and albinos I am getting line up more or less with the expected values. If you want to check my numbers for yourself, I keep my current hunt statistics in my About Me and it's always updated. Not that I want to discount other people's experiences and luck, but personally I don't "feel" the variance (or lack of) because I tend to do long hunts and it averages out. (For the same reason, I don't care about random chance shinies at all and wouldn't see it as a loss if they were sacrificed to reduce variance.) I'm pretty sure there's a bias of both good luck and bad luck being over-reported. Just because people with normal luck don't say anything doesn't mean they don't exist and doesn't mean they don't influence the site stats, or the number of specials available on the market. I also kind of have to agree with Goatlady here, in the sense that the way that PFQ is set up, it rewards grinding (clicking) and frequent activity, just like many other online games. What you get out of the game depends on how much effort you put into it. Sure, it also depends on how much money you put into it (I mean all currencies, not just zc), but you can't ignore the effort component either. If you hatch more eggs, you get more specials. If you hatch more eggs per day, you get more specials per day, and your HM/Uber is more efficiently used. That's just how it is, regardless of how high or low the rates are. Now, we have some features which are more geared towards active players (like the Shelter Pass Star because if you don't visit or click often enough to hatch more than 80 a day, you don't really need it), some which are more geared towards passive players (Scour missions are the prime example because you literally can't do anything to make them faster or better except pick them up on time) and some which fall somewhere in between. If you want to make the argument that PFQ should have more features to cater towards passive players, or more features to cater towards short hunts, sure. But changing the rates alone doesn't address that, it would require a different sort of change.

I know originally the special change was to help the economy so I'm just gonna come out and say it. I could give two cow licks about the economy. The fake economy can literally go into the toilet. The changes have not fixed the economy. DP prices are the lowest they've ever been. I dunno what shops are like but I wonder if people have seen an uptick in selling specials? Or if bc people don't have their own specials to sell now those old glut of specials are now not selling. Everyone is talking about rates and I agree. But the rates are a secondary conversation to what this was originally about that the economy was 'broken' and this was trying to boost it. If it didn't then what's it matter if rates are high or low? Now the low rates are just making a portion of the player base miserable. The economy didn't spring back at all. I still am buying shinies and albinos for 30/60pg from other players. If the rates haven't influenced what you were trying to fix why is it so hard to just put it back? These changes didn't fix anything. It just has made a lot of people unhappy and frustrated they can hatch 300+, 500+, 1000+ eggs and get literally NOTHING. I know its a grind game but not everyone has hours and hours and hours every day to grind out a game like this and have NOTHING to show for it. I play other grind games. I play a gatcha afk game and I play Destiny and I play Minecraft and other games that take A LONG TIME to get things you want. But all those games respect my time as a player. I can sink 5 hours into Destiny and get a gun or armor piece I want, I can level up, I can progress my character. In the gatcha game I can pull the lever and even if I don't get the sparkles I still get items I need to advance my play. What can I get sinking 3-7 hours a day into pfq depending on how fast I'm clicking/how much time I have to play? nothing That's really what is at the core of all these complaints. It isn't that we feel entitled, or that Niet is being mean, or that the economy needs help, or the rates are trash. Its that the game now does not respect our time, click, or hatch investments. Before the game rewarded our time investment with sparkles and a fun colored pokemon. Maybe it didn't happen every day. I def had dry spells where I went 1-3 days without a special but I knew it wouldn't be a 7 day dry spell, or a 500+ egg dryspell. Or a 1000+ egg dryspell. I knew sooner rather than later I'd get a special. Now its later rather than sooner and feels bad. I've stopped playing at all really except to come on and do my dailies. Sometimes barely even that. Because I just don't see the point anymore.

I have to agree with everything Xazz said here. Frankly, in my eyes it's not worth clicking for hours upon hours (for only half the userbase to click you back) and pay 12+ bucks for HM and UC each month where a special isn't even guaranteed anymore. I also personally feel if this change was implemented at the start of PFQ, nobody would have minded. Do this at PFNew and people will accept it. But now it's just a slap in the face for everyone that has put money, time and effort into this site only for nothing in return at all. I said it before to a friend but at this point, there's litterly no reason for me to be on this site, because the only way I can make any ZC at this point is to sell 8 Boxboxes a month to renew my HM and keep doing this every. bloody. month. And I know a lot of people feel the same but many don't actually speak up because they feel a) not heard and b) just don't see the reason to because nothing will change anyway.

It never was guaranteed, nor was it ever meant to be. I cannot emphasise this enough. I'm sorry that I turned a blind eye to the problem of excessive specials in the game for so many years. It should have been addressed nearly half a decade ago, but I have been struggling for at least that long. As a result, players have gotten used to the broken way of things, such that attempting to fix it now is more jarring than it should be.

Niet, you continue to say this, but if nothing is guaranteed then why does this site offer pay to win through real life currency? If I’m paying tangible money every month then there must be a reward or it’s flushing money down the toilet and is taking advantage of the player. It’s starting to feel to me like these nerfed rates are intended to make it harder to play in an effort to get more money, and that’s a terribly sad thing for me to think. But that’s genuinely what it feels like, now that the price is the same but the product is worse. Yes. S/A pokemon are a product that we’re essentially buying. I also completely agree that this is a made up game and the economy isn’t real. Heck, if the economy was such a key part of the game then why doesn’t zc become cheaper based on the market? It does not, which is why it shouldn’t matter what the imaginary specials market is doing—we’re still spending real currency here. It’s a slap in the face to have people pay and then change the rates halfway through an ubercharm or HM membership. Thus far this change has had tons of negative reactions (aside from the DP change which is fantastic) and I don’t see why it “must” happen and why the fictional economy determines gameplay when real money is at stake when trading specials is not the point (since there isn’t a ‘point’ and not everyone trades or sells specials). If the grind becomes harder, then make zc cheaper. And my point here isn’t ‘zc should be cheaper’—it’s that if we’re used to a certain level of product, making that product worse but keeping prices the same is a snub towards the consumer. As a side note, I do like the idea of the month-long shiny charm offered on the previous page. But not if the price goes up—because then again it’ll feel more like the worse rates are a cash grab. If, say, Uber and shiny charm swapped with no increase in price, that would be a very fun idea and I would definitely support that. And I still think the albino radar needs to be a 24 hour item, just like every other boost for a balanced game.

It... doesn't? I'm sorry you feel that way. PFQ makes sufficient money to stay afloat. If I wanted to make more money, I would be doing things like putting ads in the game, or making it a requirement to pay. But I don't. You might agree, but you would still be wrong. Because ZC is anchored by real-world currency. It functions similarly to a "reserve currency" in real-wordl economics. Its constant price is essential for it to function. While I wouldn't agree with the exact wording, I understand your point. This is why when substantial changes are made that would devalue things already paid for, compensation is evaluated and delivered. That is why Lucky Seals were made exchangeable for Legendary Seals, and why Shiny Charm Boxes could be turned in for roughly equivalent value.

Honestly I don't like the current rates either, but I'm a little bit more upset about how from the outside,it seems that staff doesn't seem to care too much that everyone is upset and wanting a change or to leave but as far as I do know you guys, meaning the staff and as gender neutral as possible, could be trying to plan something to make everyone happy. I'm just not sure how else to recommend a solution because it seems most solutions have been ignored or at least not acknowledged up to this point other than to point out how we all apparently have the wrong ideas about specials and "the point" of pfq.

I think the staff on here are really good. Just because they don't agree with the comments the players make does not mean that they are not listening. They listen and respond to most comments. I really enjoy this game and think that the shiny and albino rates are about right now. I get excited now by a special whereas before they were coming so often it was getting boring. Thank you Niet and other staff for a great game.