2024 plans: Round 2!

Please note that these are shortened lists that contain little explanation. For details, please review the full proposal. Phase 1: - The Lab will show how many Lab Reloaders you actually have. - The plan to add upgrades to reduce reloading cooldown is confirmed. - Base cost of Lab Reloaders will be 1k Interaction Points. Phase 1b: - New ranks will be added - Rank order will change - Prizes will be overhauled, and will largely focus on permanent upgrades for various features of the game. Among other things this includes permanent boosts to Shiny/Albino/Melan chances. - Relevant to Melanistic Hunting, the Long Chain Bonus is being reworked and is no longer tied to your Rank. Phase 2: - The Shelter Refresh cost will not be added. - Correspondingly, the values for the Adoption Budget have been re-scaled. - Adjustments will be made to try and reduce the number of reloads needed in the first place. - The cooldown (currently one second) on reloading the Shelter may be automatically and temporarily lengthened during times of heavy server load, particularly around Reset. Conversely it may be shortened during less busy times. Phase 3: - Compatibility calculations will be reworked. - Buff Ditto. Phase 4: - No changes. Phase 5: - You will be able to turn in specials you didn't hatch, but only after a relatively long cooldown. - The plan to add Referral-based δP gains will be kept, but the plan to drop Guest-based points will be scrapped. Both options will exist as means to gain δP. Phase 5b: - The plan to make Prehistoric fossils give more Gems on hatching Eggs is being reconsidered. There is no new plan yet. It may even become just a cosmetic-only mark, if a suitable alternative bonus cannot be found. Phase 6: - Party Interactions will count for more progress in breeding chances. Exact value to be determined. They will also give slightly more Credits on average. - Interaction Points will be rebalanced slightly, with Eggs yielding more IP, and "proper berry" interactions being more rewarding in Parties than Fields. - The "Get More" button on multi-profile interactions will be disabled while interactions are still being processed, reducing the possibility of them not being counted due to the browser loading a new page. - Adjustments will be made to the Clickback and "Open 10 online users" links to improve user experience. - Plans for changing Lucky Eggs or the EXP Share are on hold.

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 base cost will be 1k IP per Reloader, with bulk discounts for the bigger packs. 10x = 10k IP; 40x = 30k IP; 100x = 60k IP. - 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. - Add a permanent upgrade that reduces the 5 minute cooldown timer, allowing for more frequent free reloads of the Lab. Each item reduces the timer by 30 seconds, stacking up to twice. 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. - (Info) The Lab will show how many Lab Reloaders you have more clearly.

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. - New ranks: Collector; Ultra; Grandmaster; Complete - Rank order: Newbie, Beginner, Rookie, Junior, Collector, Senior, Superior, Ace, Elite, Champion, Master, Ultra, Grandmaster, Arceus, Complete Arceus Rank, instead of requiring a 100% complete EggDex and PokéDex, will 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! Prizes for rank upgrades will focus on permanent upgrades to various aspects of the game. This includes, but is not limited to: - Lab cooldown reduction (1 minute) - Extra Scour slots (potentially up to 3 more) - Accelerated Daycare breeding - Permanent boosts to Shiny, Albino and Melanistic chances These bonuses stack with any purchaseable upgrades that have similar effects. The Long Chain Bonus will no longer be affected by your Rank, it'll just be its own thing, and it will receive buffs across the board for improved strength and fewer eggs needed to be considered "long". This is your second reminder to please claim any unclaimed prizes from the current Rank system, on your Party page, as this new system will totally replace the old one. Unclaimed prizes from the old system will be lost!

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 2x their current count as budget (eg. Pass A would go from 24 adoptions to 48 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 "2x" 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! - 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 as a source of new stuff. - The system will monitor server load, and may lengthen or shorten the cooldown between reloads automatically based on activity, in order to reduce lag. The Shelter is currently the most lag-producing feature by far, due to the compounding effects of many users trying to access the same "pool" of data. By reducing how often the Shelter can be reloaded during heavy server load, the database will have more of an opportunity to keep up with demand. TL;DR: With the exception of using the Shelter exclusively for PokéDex completion, overall daily adopts will be at least as high as they currently are, for new and veteran players alike, without the RNG factor of the previous proposal's refresh cost. 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 Nature/IV hunting, chain-hunting Unown, or helping users who accidentally released something that they have enlisted help finding. All of these and more can be handled by this simple addition.

Overall the DayCare is in a good place, but cross-species breeding can be a pain - especially when one of the partners is Ditto. Additionally, 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! - Additional bonuses will be added, and existing penalties/bonuses will be tweaked, to the compatibility modifiers (eg. Happiness). The overall aim will be to buff these values, potentially enabling up to 150% compatibility, really allowing players to benefit from the double-egg chance. "Twin specials" could even start being a thing if the community decides to value them! - (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 only be able to trade in specials for δP that were not hatched by you after owning them for a period of time, likely one month minimum. 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 previous version of this proposal outright forbade turning in specials not hatched by you, but this raised some concerns about older collections. Now old collections can still have δP value, but the relatively long time needed in this proposal helps keep the two markets separate. - 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: - In addition to network-based "Guest interaction" Delta Points, Referrals will be able to grant you δP. 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. Alongside 10 Guest Interactions worth 5 δP each per day, the max will be 5 Referrers interacting with you for 10 δP each. This makes a total of up to 100 free δP daily. 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. Its current "additional Family bonus" boost is overpowered and disproportionately affects a very small selection of Eggs. The previous version of this proposal included having them provide additional Gems when hatching Eggs, however this plan has some serious flaws. In particular it means the "meta" would be to get a party ready to hatch using the regular Family Bonus, then swap out the Family member for a Prehistoric 'mon to get the Gem boost, then swap back. Overall it would be a significant hassle for basically no reason. I do not currently have a proposal for what could be done instead. It is possible that Prehistoric may just become a cosmetic mark, but I will continue to consider ideas. To give an example of an idea being considered, they could perhaps have a built-in boost to Scouring (they currently have a boosted chance of finding more Fossils, but this could be expanded). That being said, this might also be too powerful as it would make sending anything other than Prehistoric fossils on Scour missions sub-optimal. I will come back to this later.

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. Interactions provide many benefits, but Field clicks are significantly easier than Party clicks while providing mostly the same boosts and rewards. The optimal way to gain these is to find players who have 200+ fields full of stuff, and mass-click 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. In order to shift the balance a little more towards Party clicks, I'm considering the following adjustments: - (Info) Alternative interaction inputs, such as the built-in keyboard controls, will be explained in a new info panel. This already exists on the Fields page, but is missing from Profiles. - Party interactions will count for more progress in the Daycare's breeding cycles. How much more is not yet figured out, but anywhere between 2x and 3x seems like it could be reasonable. Field clicking should still be a perfectly valid option for breeding progress, but this should help Party clicks be a little more balanced in that regard. - Interactions currently give between 1 and 4 Credits each, weighted so that the average is 2 (not 2.5 as you might expect). Party interactions will have their weights adjusted to yield 3 Credits on average. - Interaction Points are awarded based on how much the Pokémon likes the berry you have given it, and Eggs give a fixed amount. Fields are a lot easier to organise by flavour preference than Parties are, resulting in an overwhelming difference in IP gain between Parties and Fields. In Fields the current average IP gain is around 6.5 per interaction (before bonuses), while in Parties it is only 4 points. Therefore, adjustments will be made to make "proper berry" interactions a bit less powerful for IP gain in Fields, but stronger in Parties to reward people who take the extra time to click the highlighted berry instead of just whatever's closest. - Sometimes if you click "Get more" before the interactions you've made on the last profile have been sent, they might not get sent. In the worst case they get sent but not fully processed yet. Therefore the "Get more" button will be disabled while interactions are still processing. To compensate for that, the default number of profiles in a single load will be raised, so that you don't have to "Get more" as often. - The "Clickback" and "Open 10" links (the latter of which will be renamed) will open more profiles at once. - "Clickback" will return users whose parties contain more things than the number of interactions you have made. For example, if you catch someone as they're changing their Party contents, you might just one-click the single hatched Pokémon they have there for the Family Bonus, and never click their next batch of Eggs they were working on getting. With this change, the system will see "1 click but 6 things in their party, you can click them more!" - "Open [online]" currently just "gives up" and dumps you on your own Profile if you have interacted with all online users. With this update, it will instead broaden the scope of "online" to start including "recently online", then "less recently online but still fairly active", and so on. If you manage to click everyone who's even remotely considered an "active user", then it'll finally drop you on your own Profile again. - Previous plans to change the EXP Share and Lucky Eggs are withdrawn for now.

I hope you are all enjoying the Phase 0 changes that have been released. I'm hoping to get Phase 1 out sometime in February, if all goes well with discussion and implementation of the plans. 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!