2024 plans, updates and discussion

So first things first, why change things at all? As the game designer, I have been collecting data regarding the community and the game as a whole since its inception, and it's been clear to me that ensuring the long-term health of both requires an adjustment or six to even some core fundamentals of the game. When reading the following, please keep in mind that it is essential to remember that PFQ is a multiplayer game, and that changes are needed for the benefit of the playerbase as a whole, even if some changes might negatively impact your particular style of play. It is going to be impossible to please everyone. Most people will see some parts of these plans as "how did we survive without this?" and other parts as "how will I survive with this?" - I don't expect anyone to like all of these updates, nor dislike the entire package either. But I do strongly believe that - overall - these proposed changes will greatly benefit the community and the health of this game as a whole. These balance changes have been decided upon based on a massive amount of game data accumulated over multiple years of thousands of people's gameplay. It will affect the game's economy and shake things up, but when the dust settles I am confident that the game will be in a better place. Therefore, these updates are changes that I fully intend to bring to PFQ in some form. This thread is an opportunity for you to provide feedback on the direction we get there. This update is planned to be rolled out in multiple parts, so not too much will change at once. This does, however, mean that some benefits might not become apparent until updates further down come along to complete the picture, but we'll work through that together.

These updates are going out with imminent effect. - New Trainer Outfit options are coming very soon. 10 new hair colours, 5 new hairstyles, and 4 new outfits are being added to the selection. They just need some finishing touches. If all goes well it'll be out in the first weekend of January, we're just getting them finalised. Check back soon to show off some new styles! - New Referral Custom Sprites will be added January 1st. Long, long overdue, but I'm pleased to add not one, not two, but three new pairs of Custom Sprites for Referral bonuses. When a user signs up, they can put an existing user as the person who told them about PFQ. If that's you, you'll be notified and can track their progress in the early-game. Once they progress far enough in the game to unlock Mega Evolution - that is, having evolved 50 Pokémon in total - then they will be able to choose a Custom Sprite in addition to a GP bonus. You then receive the same GP bonus as well as the other member of the CS pair. Here are the new pairs you can get: Invite your friends to PFQ to get these CSes! - Additional, higher-value GP Vouchers will be available from January 1st. These higher value vouchers come with bigger discounts. 7,000 GP = 1,600 ZC (+75% more GP) 16,000 GP = 3,200 ZC (+100% more GP) 40,000 GP = 6,400 ZC (+150% more GP) As an aside, I have renamed the "3,000GP Voucher" to "3kGP Voucher", as these new ones will be "7k", "16k" and "40k" respectively. If you have used [item=3,000GP Voucher] in your shops etc. then the post will break until you update the post to the new name. - The "Online Chain" 5-day reward will be changed effective January 1st. Before: 10 GP; After: 10 ZC That's right. 10 Zophan Canisters. It is now possible to earn ZC for free, just by coming online. I will be interested to see how this update affects the game!

The Lab is very under-used. This aims to improve that by providing more usefulness to veteran players, as well as more upgrading potential. - Add 10 free Lab Reloads per day. Subsequent reloads will continue to require Lab Reloaders. - Lab Reloaders themselves will have their cost changed. Instead of costing GP, they will cost Interaction Points. The exact cost is to be determined, but will likely be moderate - not too cheap, not too expensive. - Add up to 4 more slots for Eggs, unlocked based on EggDex completion, for a total of 8 slots. This will give more chances to find the Eggs you are looking for with fewer reloads. - (Under consideration, not confirmed) Add a permanent upgrade that reduces the 5 minute cooldown timer, allowing for more frequent free reloads of the Lab. In addition to actual updates and upgrades, the Lab will provide some hints to help clarify certain points. - (Info) Add a note pointing to Fishing and Summoning as other means of getting more new Pokémon. Many users never realised that aquatic Pokémon do not appear in the Lab, and must be obtained elsewhere. The "intended" way is, of course, through Fishing and subsequent breeding to get the Eggs, though the Shelter does remain an option. Legends - perhaps obviously to most of us, but never explicitly stated by the game - do not appear in the Lab either. Fossils also don't appear; they must be revived from... well, fossils. - (Info) Add a note that Variants exist, using Alolan Vulpix as an example, and point to the DayCare as a means of getting them. Alternate form Eggs, such as regional variants, do not appear in the Lab. They must be bred by players. The Lab will explain this briefly.

At around the same time as the Lab updates, I will be rebalancing the Ranks system. To illustrate the need for this rebalancing, the Champion rank currently requires 420 EggDex and 900 PokéDex entries. That may seem like a lot, but the next rank up - Arceus rank - requires nearly 700 EggDex and over 1,600 PokéDex entries. That's roughly 40% of the entire completion range being "Champion Rank", not balanced at all! A few new ranks will be added, the existing ranks will be spread out a little more evenly, and Arceus rank will be changed. While details on the new ranks and exact values can wait, I'm sure you'd like to know what the plan is for Arceus rank! Arceus Rank, instead of requiring a 100% complete EggDex and PokéDex, will instead require 99% completion to give its Melanistic-boosting effects. Achieving 100% completion will continue to be recognised with a Trainer Card Star (permanently even as new content is added), and a cosmetic-only new "Complete" rank (revoked when new content is added until you achieve 100% again). As of this writing, this means you'd be able to miss about 7 EggDex and 16 PokéDex entries and still have Arceus rank. If you have 100% completion right now, you could skip out entirely on a Season or maybe even two of Tournaments and still benefit from the boost! But be careful, you will need to get the new entries sooner or later to keep your boost! Champion Rank won't be good enough for it - it was given a weaker version of the boost to alleviate the harshness of losing Arceus rank, but now that the Arceus rank itself has built-in leeway, Champion rank won't need to prop it up. Now, while I won't go into specific details about the new ranks or their exact distribution, one thing I will note is that the rank-up prizes given to you on the Party page will be changing, and as a result of that change everyone's progress through the prize list will be reset. This means that when the update goes out, existing players will be able to claim all of the new prizes for their rank. Please claim any unclaimed prizes soon. I know a lot of players are sitting on the 7-day free Hypermode prize, not claiming it because they want to save it for the optimal time. That's fine, but please make sure you claim it before this update goes out. (I don't have an exact date yet but I will announce it ahead of time - consider this an early warning, not your only warning)

The Shelter is not, and has never been, intended to be an easy way to shortcut the process of completing a user's PokéDex. The way the Shelter is currently used by many players is a workaround of the intended gameplay experience, resulting in the ability to complete the PokéDex while ignoring features such as Fishing, Fossil revival (if someone is shiny hunting that Fossil) or sometimes even the Summoning feature if a generous user releases their Legendary Eggs for people to find. It is, of course, a great community feature, and I do encourage people to drop things into the Shelter for lucky people to find. The issue I have is that it has become the place to get new Eggs, and has been greatly misunderstood by many users as a result. For example, a number of users have questioned why they can't find a particular Egg in the Shelter, only to be genuinely surprised to learn that the Shelter contents are released by other players and not just spawned in randomly. The updates to this feature will therefore be something of a nerf for newer users, but will be beneficial buffs for veteran users and hunters. - Expand "adoption count" into "adoption budget". The Passes will give about 10x their current count as budget (eg. Pass A would go from 24 adoptions to 240 budget points) The Passes themselves will, however, be rebalanced to better fit this new system. Most - possibly even all - of them will go up in strength. So for the rest of this section, use "10x" as a baseline estimate, but know that the real values will actually be somewhat higher. - Consumable items will be added to increase your Shelter Adoption Budget for the current day. Essentially like DayCare Passes for the Shelter, if there's a particular day where you play so much that you blow the budget, you can get more - but not infinitely. I haven't figured out the exact details yet, but it would for example be limited to where you can only go up to 150% of your regular budget. If that's still not enough budget, it's time to consider upgrading to a higher tier Shelter Pass! - Apply a small budget cost to Refreshing the Shelter. This will be relatively insignificant for veteran players with higher Passes, but for newer users this will make cycling the Shelter looking for free rare stuff more costly. - Adopting an Egg will cost slightly more than adopting a hatched Pokémon, due to the added benefits you receive from hatching an Egg yourself (gems, shiny hunt, wishforge progress etc.) - If a Pokémon or Egg is registered in your Dex then the cost to adopt will be notably cheaper. In-universe, this is because you have "proven yourself capable of handling this species". This will make it easier to use the Shelter as a supply of things you have and want more of, rather than a source of new stuff. TL;DR: With the exception of using the Shelter exclusively for PokéDex completion, overall daily adopts will be significantly higher than they currently are, for new and veteran players alike. As with the Lab update, there will be additional information provided in the Shelter. - An "Information" panel will be added, explaining the basic functionality of the Shelter. Honestly I'm surprised I never included one in the first place. It's really no surprise that newer players are confused about where Shelter contents come from if the game never explains it! So that'll be fixed. - Pokémon and Eggs will add a little extra information to the adoption screen, specifically it will show "Donated by ..." with the name of the player who released it to the Shelter. This can be useful for a number of reasons, including finding your own stuff, helping users who accidentally released something that they have enlisted help finding, or if for whatever interpersonal reason you really don't want to adopt something that belonged to a particular other user. All of these and more can be handled by this simple addition.

Only a minor buff is really needed here. Overall the DayCare is in a good place. However, it could do with a lot more information! - Non-Hypermode users will be able to adopt up to 15 Eggs from the DayCare. Hypermode users will be able to adopt 30. Why 15 and not some multiple of 6? That's to gently guide players towards the "optimal" strategy of having 1 hatched individual of the species, to help look after 5 Eggs! - Getting a breeding chance over 100% - ie. (100+X)% - will yield an X% chance of yielding two Breeding Chances instead of one. More concrete example: two Arcanine with 110% total compatibility give a Growlithe Egg every time, plus a 10% chance of a second such Egg. Please note: some breeding pairs, such as pairs involving Exclusives or Ditto, don't always produce an Egg just because a breeding chance "succeeded". But still, with high enough compatibility, you will sometimes get two Breeding Chances, so you'll still benefit from this! - (QoL) Add a button to "fill party" with the specified Egg, rather than having to adopt repeatedly manually. Of course this does mean you'll have to make space in your Party first, rather than relying on the just-in-time move-to-field option that is currently given if you try to adopt an Egg when your Party is full. But if you adopt that pattern of doing things then you will be able to fill your Party with just two clicks: one to click the button, and one on the confirmation popup! - (QoL) Add a button to "release" all of the specified Egg. I don't personally know when such a button would be useful, but I've been asked for it so... let's do it. You will be able to release all of a particular kind of Egg that you currently have in your DayCare. - (Info) Explain that some Eggs can only be created in the DayCare. (Technically they can be found in the Shelter, but only if someone has created it in the DayCare first!) - (Info) Reiterate the hint about breeding methods producing "unexpected" results, with the suggestion of breeding an Alolan Pokémon with a Vulpix. - (Info) Add a tooltip to the Total Breeding Chance to show the calculation breakdown, emphasising that it is multiplicative (ie. +5% is a x1.05 multiplication) - (Info) This one will need some work on my end, but I would like for the DayCare to actually show exactly what breeding outcomes exist, rather than just the "may produce something unexpected" message. This will also affect things like breeding Exclusives, to illustrate that doing so is harder. Likewise breeding with Ditto will show a 50% chance of "no egg". - On the topic of Exclusives, their breeding rates will be significantly increased, making hunts a fair bit easier. Variants will also see their ratio improved (eg. breeding a Shinx and Buizel will yield more Shinxel than it currently does)

Alongside the DayCare update, the effect of Master Gemwish Badges on random IVs will be boosted. Remember that an IV of 0 is always possible, but with a maxed out Master Badge, IVs will be significantly higher than they are now. Continuing the theme of getting more information in the game, Ravyne's dialogue will include a comment about granting you a Trainer Card Star when you have all badges at Wishalloy or higher.

At the time, the Tutorial was sufficient. It introduced players to the game, with the very basic concept of making interactions to progress, and then it just dropped you into the main game to figure out the rest. The main issue is that so many features have since been added that the Tutorial really does not prepare you for. Consequently I will be reworking the entire process. - Create a "Story Event" for the tutorial, rather than relying on Lab dialogue to convey instructions. This will make Objectives much clearer. - Include Lab and Fields from the current tutorial, but remove the Shelter. Add steps for the DayCare, Fishing, Scouring and the Berry Garden to help understand more features. - All players will need to go through this new Tutorial when it is added, but it should be a breeze for existing players so you'll be able to pick up its rewards easily! Furthermore, the Task List is very much in need of some attention. Notably the prizes are kind of all over the place. Some give way too much, many give way too little. To be honest, the numbers are very much pulled out of thin air and did not receive the proper scrutiny that they deserved. Values will be tweaked and reworked. New objectives may be added for newer features as well.

I've listened to feedback, and I've examined data, and I've made the data make sense with the feedback as best I can. Some of this is also based on a previous poll, where the results were incredibly close, a 47:53 split. As a result I'm making a bit of an executive decision to go ahead with the proposal, because I do genuinely believe it's the right course of action. Therefore, here are the plans: - You will not be able to trade in specials for δP that were not hatched by you. The biggest motivation for this is to properly separate out the "specials for collection" and the "specials for δP" markets. Previously these markets were forced to compete in the same space, because it was not possible to trade δP directly. Now you can, using the Vouchers, I would like to make these two very different markets be distinct. Consequently, you will buy specials because you want that particular special, not because you want to just toss it aside for points. Conversely, if you intend to buy δP, you will continue to be able to just buy δP, rather than gathering specials to turn in. - The value of trade-ins will be adjusted. Based on empirical data on the relative rarity of Shiny/Albino/Melan Pokémon, Melanistics will have their value nerfed by -10%; Shiny and Albino values will be buffed by +150%. This will make the Shinies and Albinos you get along the way to a Melan roughly equivalent in value to the Melan itself - statistically speaking. All three will be cost-effective, no single one will be over-powered. - Shedinja will be worth zero points. This reflects the cost involved in getting that Shedinja: zero. Shedinja is a "freebie" obtained when you evolve Nincada into Ninjask, and giving it any value at all on trade-in is not indicative of its worth. So that's the plan for δP from trade-ins. I also plan to totally overhaul the free source of δP: - Network-based "Guest interaction" Delta Points will be removed, and replaced with Referrals. Users that you have Referred can interact with you to give you δP, and likewise you can interact with them to give them δP too. Instead of 10 Guest Interactions worth 5 δP each per day, the max will be 5 Referrers interacting with you for 10 δP each. Both users must have a Holon Capacitor for this to work. Invite your friends and get them up to speed to take advantage of this update when it comes out!

Alongside the Delta update, but not directly related to Deltas, the Prehistoric bonus will be changed. Instead of providing an additional overpowered EXP bonus to Eggs of the same species, each Prehistoric Fossil in your Party will provide a percentage chance of increasing the number of Gems gained when hatching any Eggs (not just Eggs of their species). This makes them more useful in general, if Gems are a priority for you, but will of course come at the cost of taking up a Party slot.

The founding principle of PFQ has always been mutually helping each other to progress. Unfortunately I have made some decisions with certain features that run contrary to that principle. I would like to take some steps to redress that. These plans are still in early stages, and so aren't going to be as well-defined as phases above. I will come back to this and make further announcements as we get closer to this phase, so that further discussions can be had. Right now I just want to lay out my initial thoughts, and perhaps get some discussion started around it even at this early stage. A number of features strongly encourage mass-clicking. Mass-Click Weekend is an intentional case, but other features are more harmful to the game as a whole. Specifically things like the EXP Share and Lucky Eggs. The optimal way to use these is to find players who have 200+ fields full of stuff, and mass-clicking them exclusively. As a result, newer users struggle to make progress because all of the hardcore players are incentivised to ignore them. And even the users being mass-clicked have fields full of Lv100 Pokémon and so really don't benefit from being clicked further. Essentially, the EXP Share and Lucky Eggs fly in the face of mutual help. They are overwhelmingly self-help items, and do not fit in PFQ's intended philosophy. I'm considering adjusting them as follows: - Either make them only work on Party clicks, or make them significantly stronger when clicking Parties. - If made to work only on Party clicks, still make them significantly stronger so that fewer clicks are needed to get the full benefits. - Put some kind of soft-cap on the EXP Share in particular. Perhaps it can "charge up" either with time or with interactions you receive (or both!) to get its stronger effect, gradually decaying to a relatively low baseline until charged again. Making it charge with interactions received will encourage clicking a wider range of players to get Clickbacks! Again, these plans are quite vague at this time, just intended to get ideas flowing.

While I do not have a definite timeline for these updates at the moment, I would like to aim for putting out one Phase each month. Phase 0 is going out without much delay. It would be good to get Phase 1 out in February, and so on until Phase 6 drops in July. I will endeavour to provide at least a week's notice of a Phase being ready before it actually goes live, including further details of any adjustments that were made to the plan in the meantime. As mentioned at the start, I believe all of these updates will result in a healthier game overall. This does mean some features will be nerfed, others will be changed, and that can be scary. I believe, however, that it will all be worth it. I am open to questions and feedback on these plans. I will not, however, be open to comments such as "adding a toggle" for things where that would even make sense, or "outright cancel the plans" unless very good reason can be given. I look forward to having a fair-minded discussion with you about these plans, and working together to make PFQ even better. The mod team will be watching over this thread and collecting people's questions. Questions will be given consideration and answered properly, so don't expect rushed answers right away, but also please don't think we're ignoring you! I'm anticipating a lot of questions, we will do our best!

Please claim any unclaimed prizes soon. I know a lot of players are sitting on the 7-day free Hypermode prize, not claiming it because they want to save it for the optimal time. That's fine, but please make sure you claim it before this update goes out. (I don't have an exact date yet but I will announce it ahead of time - consider this an early warning, not your only warning)