301 Posts

First off I wanna again say thank you to the Devs for bring in changes to the game to make it better. Out of all of it though so far I only see one back change. I can understand why you wanted to change it but let me explain why this might not be a good thing to have done.

ok I can understand not wanting to promote farming....but doesn't forcing leveling take away the players ability to level a Guardian as they wish? I suppose this also means the promised starting at level 1 for a Guardian won't happen...or it will be for a nominal fee because money is more important then players....

Say someone mistakenly sells off a Guardian and goes to get a new one to replace it. Since that's easier then opening a support ticket to reverse it. If you have it now set so someone has NO SAY over how the Guardian levels what is the incentive to play? They can't make a Guardian unlearn something and of course it forces them to spend money if there is a ability they want it to have that it was forced to unlearn by the computer it also takes away the players ability to unlock the two extra slots on learning new abilities so instead of being able to have it unlocked at 6 abilities they only get 4 randomly chosen by the computer....yeah because forcing people to pay money to get the Guardian the way they want will ALWAYS make customers happy....

oh yes and what about players who are above the evolution level of the Guardian? Will the Guardian automatically evolve since it was explained long ago in a post here about the benefits of catching Guardians early and leveling up versus catching them at a higher level and leveling and the bonuses they get after evolving versus waiting to evolve them? Say a player is level 16 and catches a level 10 Mooky. Mooky evolves at level 13. Since it will be forced to level 16 as that is the players level it will lose the benefits of the 3 levels of evolution it is losing....which is why it was promised by the Devs that you were working on a way to make it so people could choose to start a Guardian at level 1, again not holding my breathe on ever seeing that now.

Now before you say something like well people can use DJ Arts Tokens to buy Trainer Tokens you can buy 5 Trainer Tokens for 100 DJ Arts Tokens. Let's do some simple math here. 100 Trainer Tokens are needed to open a toll booth. 100 divided by 5 is 20. So you have to buy Tokens 20 times to get 100. That will cost 2000 DJ Arts Tokens. A person can earn up to 16 Tokens a day. Assuming the position that a player gets all 16 tokens daily it will take 125 days to earn the 2000 Tokens to buy the Trainer Tokens needed. That means over 4 months to open one area. Do you realistically think people will wait that long to get to an area if they can't afford to use real money to buy Trainer Tokens. That's just worse and goes beyond grinding to get tokens to advance if someone were to catch Guardians for the purpose of getting Tokens...say someone is level 16 and catches 3 Guardians to level up to sell. If it takes a week to get them each from level 16 to level 21. That will be 15 Tokens. If the person only has 3 spots free to do this it will take almost 2 months to be able to make the same advance however that is all provided they are able to get 3 Guardians from 16 to 21 weekly.

I DO understand you guys want to get the game into the black and out of the red but making people have to take an inordinate amount of time to get into places will not be a very helpful attention grabber. You want people to be addicted to the game and get more people to play you have to entice them to come and stay not come play until they get fed up and leave, which is what the history of the game has been so far people come and leave for multiple reasons including: not their kind of game, too much grinding to get things done, not enough content,(not true now but was a reason people left before the change) energy system was lacking....

Possible ways of making a compromise on this:
1. Daily limit on selling guardians (either you can sell a certain number of Guardians or you can sell up to a certain amount of tokens)
2. Make it so the first few levels of leveling will get more then one Token
3. Make it so if you level a Guardian more then 30 levels they get a set amount more Tokens
4. Milestone leveling if you level a Guardian 5 times you get 1 extra token, 10 gets 2, 15 gets 3 and so on so if you level a Guardian 7 times you get 8 Tokens and if you level a Guardian 16 times you get 19
5. Offer more Trainer Tokens or reduce the price on the Tokens in the DJ Arts store
6. Create a new way for people to earn Trainer Tokens.
7. Make the Guardian go through the level up process with the player when caught so they can decide what abilities get learned and if the player wants the extra slots unlocked or not and junk.


Here is a piece of advice from someone who has made TONS of money by this advice "Look after the customer and the business will take care of itself" this was said by Ray Kroc...who can argue with a man who's company as of 2009 makes 1.26 BILLION dollars a quarter and that number has risen since then too.....

63 Posts

ok im not sure if it is possible to code but one thing that might help with the leveling issue of guardians is to not let them go higher then what they are caught but they can go lower if trainer level is lower again not sure if that is possible or even feasible

301 Posts

Hi Peter,

First thank you for taking the time to respond, especially on your lunch break, you said a lot more then I am used to in responses and answered a bit more than I am used to seeing. Second excuse me for not getting a response back in here sooner to clarify a few things I only saw your response last night before bed and we spent the day at the ER today and that was honestly more important than a forum post, on the plus side it has given me extra time to mull it all over. Third I saw the newest updates for the game and so far they look good I haven't had a chance to really look at them yet though but look forward to it.

Now to clear up a few things. I'm not saying people can't open support tickets for such things just that I know lots of people won't for whatever reasons; they don't want to bother you folks with something they think is trivial and could take away from game development or it's the weekend and it would be faster to just grab a new one and level it up instead or they're embarrassed they made such a goof, just as a few examples. I know myself personally I wouldn't want to bother you guys over something so minor.

Forgive my few glib remarks about holding my breathe I was letting my sarcasm get the better of me I suppose mixed with previous posts that involved other Devs posts. *snicker* and just an FYI I can hold my breathe longer than the average person :D

Glad to hear that the leveling of Guardians that are caught is being looked into. More on this in a moment.

As far as the math goes it is right but you do bring up a new point actually. Trainer Tokens. When the game first opened up we had gold coins, trainer tokens, and jelly beans. Yes you do have several ways for people to get the Tokens however that change in the system in some ways is extremely beneficial to new players only. A lot of people when they first started playing the game would use them up on whatever thinking that they could get them again the next day fighting the trainers again. There are also others who used them up before new things were added to the store to buy with them. Now I'm not asking that you give everyone a bunch of tokens I just wished to point this advantage out for a new player vs the older players. Do what you wish with it. Now as far as the cost on the tolls goes I just know a lot of the people in the Facebook group had ranted about it a bit here and there for different reasons. A couple I recall are having to choose between potions for battle or getting through a toll booth, or having recently used up all their tokens on something and now they have to wait because of the sudden change.

I'm not saying you shouldn't try to make money just that from everything I've seen written by other players on FB itself that perhaps some changes are a bit costly/harsh. Honestly since I stalled my playing long ago on actually playing to advance at least until there was more content I don't know if I would spend Tokens to get into an area that is now a premium area unless several new areas were released. Side question since you mentioned that you reset your account is this possibly a feature that can be made available to the players as well without having to open a support ticket or anything? I know people can get the third starters now but I was just thinking maybe there are players out there who might be interested in resetting themselves to have a fresh start or to try things with a new starting line up. I'm sure you guys can figure out a way to make it so the trainer tokens that have been purchased are still there but anything earned in the game perhaps are forfeited. Just an idea.

Now as for my suggestions for a few of them I think I should have explained better so I'll try it again just for the ones that there is confusion on or I left something out to make it incomplete. For #3 it's more of a matter of a new suggestion to perhaps help

1. When I spoke of a daily limit I meant something reasonable like say 20-25 tokens a day perhaps. I don't think this would hurt a player who wants a change for their team. Also I meant this in the context of a level 10 person being able to still catch a level 4 Feng and it retain the level 4. What good if farming if you can't sell the Guardians faster then you can level them...You could also set this up maybe where the daily limit is different for different level players. For example a new player can only sell to get 5 tokens daily where a older player can do the 20-25 example I gave earlier.
2. I meant this in respect with the new change. Say you catch a level 4 Mooky and it goes up to your player level, say 10. Say the player levels the Mooky up to level 20. If they decide they want to sell it then they could get maybe 2 tokens for each of the first 2 levels it learned then 1 token after that. This would make a total of 12 Tokens that can be gained. With the old system with the same numbers a person would be able to gain 16 tokens. I know the 4 token difference isn't huge but it is still less. Also if you combine it with #1 it would not exacerbate the farming issue I don't think.
3. Two possible solution for the unintentional side effect. One option is to make it so a Guardian that doesn't use an attack can't get XP perhaps. The other option is to make it so a trainer can't enter an area with Guardians that are one hit wonders as well as maybe make it so that a player can't use a Guardian that is say more then 5 levels below what is being fought. And to keep someone from entering an area with a low team and switching to higher levels maybe if it isn't too hard add in some coding that kicks them to the nearest town automatically. I suppose the only problem then would be when someone buys a Guardian from the Centre or a Heroic Feng from the DJ Arts Store since they all start at level 1. I'll think on this since unless someone keeps a set of low level Guardians to make it so they can level up new Guardians they'd be stuck without a way to level up.
4. I'll use the current system to make it easier perhaps to understand. Catch a level 10 Treedle. Level it up to level 28. Here is how the milestones could work. for levels 1-5 that are earned, 11-15, the player gets 6 tokens. One for each level plus one more as a milestone for making it 5 levels. Then for the next levels 6-10 earned, levels 16-20, they get 7 more tokens one for each level and 2 more for working hard to get it up 10 levels. For levels 21-25 they earn 8 for leveling up 5 more time. One for each level plus 3 for working even more to get even higher levels. Plus 3 more for the levels 26-28 for a total of 24 tokens. The idea behind this is it could encourage players to not farm because it would take a LOT of time to train each Guardian up to make those milestones. If you don't want to make it bonus tokens you can also have it randomly generate an item, like potions or scrolls or the ilk as a bonus for leveling so far on a Guardian.
5. I was only talking specifically about the Tokens in the DJ Arts store in case that wasn't clear.
6. When I have some more free time perhaps I'll try to think of a few ideas for this to throw out there.
7. *holds breathe* :D

As for my quote all I was trying to say was listen to the players and stop looking at just the numbers. I said this because it has seemed as of late that at least one of the Devs only seems to care about the money. Again I do understand you guys work hard and should be compensated for it. Lord knows not have money to eat or have a place sucks and I would never wish it on anyone, even my worst enemies.

TLDR never in a million years would I not take the time to read an entire response that a Dev was kind enough to take the time out of their day to write. With that I will say thank you for taking the time to read this response and I bid you all good night been a long fun filled day in the ER now for sleep.

Lasy

oh and Josh if I understand what you're trying to say when someone catches a Guardian it can only be the same level as the Player now. Before if you caught something below the players level it kept that level and if it was higher it would drop down to the player level.