2024 Update Phase 2: The Shelter

the shelter is where I got all of the site exclusives that I currently have, so they show up enough for it to matter to me. and some of the site exclusives cannot be bred with anything besides themselves, not even ditto worked sooooo... tell me how the daycare is gonna help with that?

While it has been made harder and is not intended for progression, it still exists. It's still there, and still technically usable. It just won't be as fast or efficient. You can still choose to progress with the Shelter. The changes mostly just illustrate two things — one, there's other features that are intended to be used for progression that some of us from my initial progression era largely ignored completely (2016, ask me if I knew where to get Tympole /lh (Fishing lol) No joke, I searched the Shelter *days* for that egg. Had I known the Fishing Hut had it easy, I'd have been spending my time more wisely by just fishing one up and going and breeding off an egg.); and two, hey, consider trading with other folks, it's a community game after all. Sure, maybe saying "it isn't intended to do that" isn't *the* most helpful thing in the world, but at the same time, telling Niet that you only want his game one way isn't gonna work either. As an example... Take my Tympole situation. How often do you see those eggs in the Shelter? What's the rarest or most frustrating non-Legend, non-Ditto, non-E/V egg to pull out of the Shelter, and what is or isn't a newer user going to know to do when they can't find it? Will the Fishing Hut even come to mind when they've hardly had exposure to it in the first place, when all they've known their whole experience was the Shelter and Lab? Tympole isn't in the Lab, I'll tell you that now, and it's probably still a hard Shelter find. These changes serve to help show people their resources to obtain things to begin with, so they can make these choices on their own. If they still choose to ignore it, choose not to trade, and do it the inefficient way, then that's for them to decide.

yeahh i gotta say i also agree. imo filling out the dex feels like a slog and isn’t super fun. as more things are added, it’s less new user friendly and more overwhelming. pfq seems more like an older user retention type of thing as filling out the dex grows more and more insurmountable.

small suggestion for niet. beside promoting the lab and fishing hut (the two main things i see being promoted with these changes) why not also promote wonder trading as a way to gex dexes and maybe even special s/a pokemon? i feel it's very under used by many on the site and as it works like a trade for pokemon that need to evo by trading this could help those users who don't like to talk to anyone on site for any kind of dexing help. i could say so much about what users are saying on this update but i don't feel up for that right now. i will say i love the update and think you did a good job making it do what you want for balance and giving us end game players more of a boost. the players already on site who have touched the old shelter are going to not like it and i can understand that but i think the real users to judge it are going to be those who joined the site after this update who know nothing of how it used to be. those new players will find other ways to fill there dexes and borrower higher passes if they want to use the shelter earlier then intended. you can also skip right to the x pass or star pass by buying it off of another player or the market place instead of unlocking and buying all the smaller passes first. as you don't need to own every pass just the highest one you want.

I do think sometimes it can be an impulse reaction for people to dislike when things change (Especially since the Shelter has worked in the former way for... as long as I can remember, really?) But I do agree with the worry that an update like this can make newer users struggle. Wanting users to rely more on things such as the lab, fishing hut, pokewalker (some folks would also rely on wonder trading technically too) for pokemon/eggs is fine but it also sounds like to me there's just not a lot of other options to gain pokemon/eggs, and it therefore can become monotonous. Which, of course, this is a clicker game after all, I'm not expecting you to like, add Subway Surfers to the side of the screen XD! But it sounds like it would be beneficial for there to be more options since this update since people are so used to relying on the shelter, having more than just a few options can help things become more engaging for players. This is just me just me spitballing ideas, and probably is just me being dorky, but There could be small random chance events that could happen where you have the opportunity to adopt Pokemon/Eggs, and the Pokemon/Eggs could have a chance to be ones you don't have already, granted they're not legendaries etc. But, overall regardless of my ideas I think in the best scenario there should be more alternatives that are similar to the fishing hut where you can adopt pokemon so people want to rely on the shelter less.

@nyancats: just to see if I understand your post correctly, you are suggesting that - in order to fix people's complaint about being pushed away from the one single feature in order to focus on other features - that I add even more features? That the solution to people not liking the fact that I'm encouraging people to use more of the game's features is to add still more? I'm not sure I follow the logic so I just wanted to ask!

Don't worry you're completely fine, I admit I struggle with wording so I apologize if I'm not very clear! 🤔 I don't want you to feel like you have to endlessly add more features, what I'm trying to say is that since you want more people to focus off of the Shelter for gaining Pokémon/Eggs, a benefit can be more spots in the game where you are able to gain them so they will focus away from the Shelter! I hope that makes sense! You shouldn't feel like you need to add new areas/locations or new overly complex things, I was just trying to offer some random ideas, where you can just add to pre existing things (for example gardening and scours), but I do understand that regardless of my intent that coding is coding and it's easier said than done (I have personally been there in my own adventures in coding haha 🥲)

I saw a few of them in the shelter today :-)

Slightly missing the point. It's kinda more of an [insert hard to get in the Shelter Pokemon here] thing. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

From what I've seen by reading through, not everyone's complaints have necessarily been "oh, I can't use the shelter enough this sucks," but more like, "I don't like the other features I have to use instead, this sucks." Not to say no one's saying the first, I just feel like this suggestion would be more geared towards the second complaint. Like the Fishing Hut. It's a feature that's not used by a lot of people, not /just/ because they could grab from the shelter instead, but because they dislike the mechanics of the fishing hut. To be honest, if I wasn't already at Arceus, that'd be my only complaint with this update. While some people have suggested revamping the Fishing Hut in some way or another, if no suitable update could be found, you could instead add another way to get some of the Pokemon found there, so they're not locked behind a fairly unpopular mechanic. Having different ways to obtain Pokemon outside of the Lab and the Fishing Hut would be nice. I think getting them while Scouring would be neat, and I think having an extra incentive to use the Garden would be nice too. Outside of Perfect Berries and Nectars(?) there's not really much to be gained from using the Garden, besides Events. If anything, I think adding a way to obtain Pokemon to these features would further incentivize new users to actually use them, which I think is kind of your whole point with this unless I'm mistaken? ^^; To have newer users actually use all the features on site?