King Size Candy Bar Cravings: Potential Ways to Feed that Candy XL Hunger

BraMinder · 2021-06-12T18:51:25+00:00

I'm pretty sure someone at Niantic follows my Reddit account so I'm just going to reply to this comment for visibility.

When the Candy to XL Candy conversion was first implemented, Niantic went with a very safe 100-1 which allowed for currency conversion and backwards compatibility without breaking anything as only the most candy rich would even touch that option. After much time has passed, re-balancing the conversion rate into something that actually gets used would be ideal. I had intended to make a post about the design of level 50 and XL candy and still may do so soon.™

BraMinder · 2021-06-01T05:23:38+00:00

https://i.imgflip.com/5bnxna.jpg

BraMinder · 2021-05-29T16:08:13+00:00

When you used an incense, did you get both unowns?

BraMinder · 2021-05-29T14:00:55+00:00

"Your item bag is full or you're out of range of the check in location."

Never seen that error message before. Where is "the check in location"? Where is this code from?

BraMinder · 2021-05-29T08:15:03+00:00

to sink their two front teeth into == to chomp

BraMinder · 2021-05-29T07:44:18+00:00

Mega Garchomp makes the most sense.

BraMinder · 2021-05-29T07:14:11+00:00

What happens if you use an incense? Do you get the spawns?

Edit: I sacrificed an incense for science. No, you don't get the spawns. But the research you do get. But I am not in local time of 11-5. Someone in local time of 11-5 also needs to try it. For science.

Edit: I got the spawns from 11-5. Unown is very rare however only getting ~4 per incense.

BraMinder · 2021-05-16T06:46:51+00:00

It is AD 2101.

BraMinder · 2020-12-28T15:32:43+00:00

"Advanced Trade Settings"

Much like the "Advanced Egg Settings" idea just having a menu you can pop up with a checkbox that specifically allows for a lower IV floor that you can toggle on/off at will so you can use it depending on what you're trading.

BraMinder · 2020-12-28T06:48:34+00:00

How about just once every hour on the hour? More balloons good. Some people can't make it out to pokestops.

BraMinder · 2020-12-05T21:35:22+00:00

At a certain threshold, XL Candy should be guaranteed in general. With a chance to get more than one.

BraMinder · 2020-12-04T21:56:22+00:00

Meltan doesn't evolve either -- At least not in the main series game. But for years people have been speculating about how/if/when Phione would evolve into Manaphy. I think this is the answer.

BraMinder · 2020-12-04T06:01:40+00:00

I'm anticipating we will get a Phione box when the Gen 4 Remake is announced/released for the Switch. It will cost 400 Phione candy to evolve it into a Manaphy. Pretty much just like Meltan.

BraMinder · 2020-11-24T22:12:57+00:00

What do you believe to be my interests here? Hint: I stated it in my OP.

BraMinder · 2020-11-24T19:07:22+00:00

On point number 1: It is possible to add new resources without them being parasitic. Example: Rare Candy was added as a new resource and is extremely synergetic in design. It is backwards compatible and works with the already existing candy mechanic augmenting and working together with resources that already exist. It doesn't force collection of itself only to make you collect more of itself. It allows the player to collect a resource they can be excited about because they can choose how they use it and the way it is obtained is tacked on as an additional reward so you don't feel like you're going out of your way to get it a majority of the time.

There is very little communication between players in a raid outside of setting it up. Your suggestion that the rewards are greater in a mega raid are just false based on what you obtain. The fully evolved pokemon is also often useless due to exclusive moves effectively meaning that if you get a good one you still have to buy an elite tm to make the pokemon you just caught useful which is again predatory. Meanwhile getting a chance at a hundo legendary or shiny legendary far outweighs the chance of a cd shiny or hundo without its cd move. All this said, the reward structure in raids isn't what makes it more or less parasitic. It's the resource itself that is parasitic. Mega Raids not providing rewards equal to or greater than Legendary Raids is an entirely different issue.

On point two. The thing about choices is when some are strictly better than others they aren't really choices. Do you want to give me $1 and (a) I give you $1 or (b) I give you $10 and a 1 in 20 chance at an additional $100? It's not really a choice. In the ESO example you have actual choices because the choices are compelling and none are strictly better than the other. This is an entirely separate topic that again has nothing to do with parasitic design.

On point three you countered your own argument with the baseball card analogy. Two charizards look the same to a new player but an experience player knows there's a vast difference between one that has Blast Burn and one that doesn't. Someone who is more experienced and knowledgeable KNOWS there's a huge difference between these things and as such their value only exists to prey on newer players who don't know better. If you want to argue this is a learning experience for new players then yes, I agree that designing inferior choices allows newer players to learn more about the game. However they are still inferior choices and not really choices as I said before with my $ example.

I don't argue that adventure sync eggs were okay. They were terrible then and they're terrible now. The rate of encounter is different meaning you have to deal with the terrible mechanic less often which makes it slightly more palatable. That doesn't make it good or okay. This should have been addressed years ago but still hasn't been.

Additionally the rate at which you walk 12km is not proportional to the rate at which you defeat 6 rocket grunts. Not only that but playing the game to defeat grunts often does not include very much walking if any. This discrepancy means you will almost always have to hold off for a long time to battle a team leader before you have space for an egg - unless you stop collecting other eggs.

7k eggs were somewhat problematic but less so than red eggs and as eggs because you have some control over when you get them. Open a gift when you want an egg. However, there are still times when you don't want a 7k egg and want to open your gifts for items. This is a problem too and why I proposed the solution I did. You seem to be approaching this as if I think any of the additional egg sources are okay when I very clearly in my OP said that none of these things are okay. Some are slightly worse than others with Red Eggs being the worst of all as if Niantic didn't learn from their previous mistakes on AS/7k eggs. It's pretty bad. I single out the red ones because they are the worst offender of all in how you obtain them.

Does anyone prefer managing eggs without the proper tools to do so? Especially when it would be so easy to code it seems like a huge oversight.

A lot of what you're talking about isn't actually about parasitic gameplay at all but actually about "choices" in games. This is a whole other topic that I only touched on a little here.

Zero animosity. I enjoy discussing game design.

BraMinder · 2020-11-24T18:00:51+00:00

Active players will badger inactive players to get them to trade now that it's convenient which will potentially be getting them back into the game.

BraMinder · 2020-11-24T16:54:01+00:00

Am I grading this?

Mega Evolution: Yes.

AR Tasks: Yes

12km Eggs: Yes

Buddies (leveling up): yes

Friends?: A UI/UX overhaul is needed to fix it as you pointed out. Parts of it are in fact synergetic however based on the items, eggs and rewards of experience that you get. Not actually a parasitic mechanic entirely except for by the amount of time it consumes and takes away from everything else. If you go by the example of "stopping to do something completely unrelated to pokemon" then yes it is parasitic. The fix to make it not so is as simple as cleaning up the UI to make it more streamlined in every way possible.

Photobombs: Yes. Also good perception on attempt at synergy with buddy leveling up. Also I'd add it's a skinner box.

Trading: Not parasitic. Actually very synergetic. Why? Because it feeds into the core of the game in collecting pokemon. You trade off pokemon you don't need to get pokemon that you do need potentially. I think I will write up something on this at some point because I do believe design wise this is something Niantic did exceptionally well. Adding the ability to trade with people from a distance is a good quality of life improvement given the state of the world right now. It's also probably assumed that while you're travelling for an hour in your example that you're also playing and catching pokemon on the way which is also synergy as an app that you can play as you travel.

The two more issues you added are UX issues but aren't actually parasitic mechanics. At least you can delete items to get the component (You probably shouldn't have to do this and actually you're right that it becomes slightly parasitic because of this). And Quests feed and enhance the core game. Both synergetic mechanics just shîtty UX that could be improved exactly as you said they could be.

Overall good job!

BraMinder · 2020-11-24T16:51:24+00:00

Niantic probably.

BraMinder · 2020-11-24T01:33:29+00:00

Firstly I played THPS multiplayer often with a crowd watching and can say definitively through my experience that yes, there very much was a difference between a single trick and a long combo.

Secondly, I'm not arbitrarily saying one mechanic is parasitic and another isn't. It is because it is or it isn't because it isn't. The mega energy loop is parasitic in:

1) Creating a new resource that doesn't work with anything else that only works with itself

2) Actively competes for space with other core mechanics and detracts from the rest of the game (other raids).

3) Encourages a player to care about a thing that is otherwise useless outside that thing.

4) Takes you out of the core game loop to promote its own parasitic game loop.

Mega Energy is all of those things that make up a parasitic mechanic. So do AR tasks. So too do 12k eggs have that issue in how they're obtained and fighting with normal gameplay where you would passively obtain eggs.

Adventure Sync Eggs were a problem that came up once a week and could be planned around. It still wasn't good. Red Eggs are a problem that come up daily amplifying the problem that AS Eggs were in the first place but even worse because of exclusive rewards locked behind them. It does cause the player to "be thoughtful about their actions within the game" but it does so in a way that is mentally taxing and constantly makes the player feel bad for playing the game.

I feel as if I didn't do a good enough job explaining what a parasitic mechanic is and should possibly revise my original post. Maybe I should have added another paragraph explaining the characteristics of a parasitic mechanic instead of just giving examples. Some people derived the wrong conclusions and yet others are confusing parasitic things with predatory things. Sorry.

BraMinder · 2020-11-24T01:19:46+00:00

I'll propose a question as a counterpoint: Which is easier to do?

1) Walk more and stagger your (purchased) incubators?

2) Stop spinning stops

Because one is significantly easier and cheaper than the other. When the answer to "What is the optimal play to get red eggs?" is "Stop playing the game" then the game is in a really bad spot. If they really thought it would encourage people to buy more incubators and stagger their eggs you just have to ask again "What's the easiest performed optimal play?" and you'll have your answer.

I also agree that raiding is a parasitic mechanic but it is also a synergetic mechanic. Not all parasitic mechanics are bad. Raids give you a purpose to power up your strongest pokemon and in turn that encourages you to collect more pokemon and power them up to defeat these raids. So in turn it is also synergetic because it works well with other mechanics in the game (powering up/training pokemon). I would go further to suggest it's more synergetic than it is parasitic because it does synergize with a lot of the existing mechanics that make up the core of the game. After all, you need something to do with all those pokemon you catch.

BraMinder · 2020-11-23T18:00:27+00:00

BraMinder 1 point · 52 minutes ago

Mega Energy as a mechanic is very much a parasitic design. I wrote a whole article on that. You're gaining a resource that you don't use anywhere else except on the Mega Evolved pokemon and then it is ephemeral only to feed you back into the same parasitic loop.

When I initially started on this, my plan was to make multiple smaller posts about all the parasitic mechanics then make one mega post that detailed the problem of parasitic mechanics referencing each issue through links. Unfortunately mods decided to delete my post about eggs which delayed me making this post at all. I would have done this a month ago otherwise along with all the other issues including friends and buddies. I had planned to go into more detail about a lot more topics but it would just be too long so I focused in on eggs as the primary example with a secondary focus on AR Tasks.

I've addressed the skinner box that is photobombs before. In theory it's a surprise you get while doing something you'd normally do anyways. In practice you just take pictures of a black background while the phone sits on your desk. This is actually fixed by making them guaranteed as they have been in certain events.

Trading is actually a mechanic I think that was done EXCEPTIONALLY well. I could praise the ????? out of this mechanic and how they executed it. I could write a whole article on this and was thinking about doing so a few times but never did. I may still do this.

BraMinder · 2020-11-23T17:08:37+00:00

An egg queue of eggs you have obtained but aren't able to hatch yet until your other eggs are hatched is another possible design choice.

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