Pokemon Masters

As someone who doesn't actually play the game and just checks out the datamines every month to see the cool new costumes this feels kinda ominous. I don't play gachashit in general so I have no real grasp on what the EoS warning signs are but the combination of a price hike and such underwhelming alts with no new Pokemon on an anniversary no less feels consistent with a relatively sudden budget cut. Major celebration flubs are bound to happen in these sorts of games (Beastless Gohan...), but if the rest of the units in the encroaching datamine are just as anticlimactic I'm officially gonna start worrying about the health of this game.
 
I'm an outsider looking in at this game, and I'm not going to judge anyone who does play it because Fire Emblem Heroes successfully held me hostage for many years, but damn, this anniversary is glaringly scummy. The increased pity rate, the blatant reskins, the new Multi role just completely breaking the character structure...

For comparison with FEH again, that game is blatantly shitty to its players too, but they did these things in piecemeal, because blatantly giving up on putting effort in and charging more for your trouble is a surefire way to make people mad and like their playtime isn't worthwhile. First came Legendary banners with 'better' rates, then came the overpriced FEH Pass subscription service, then came Emblem Heroes which are just reskins of old characters that you need to buff your entire roster. All of this and more was staggered out over the course of several years, because the Politoed notices if you're boiling the pot too quickly. To that end, I'm surprised that they've jumped the Sharpedo so quickly here,

The mere existence of a Pokemon gacha has always rubbed me the wrong way and I have no respect for the business model, and yet I'm still surprised to see an anniversary with such flagrant disregard for its players. My take, as a former FEH player: it's probably a good time to get out now, or at least stop spending money, especially if you've spent money on the game before. My limited gacha experience tells me that the developers never go back or respond to feedback after stuff like this unless it actually manages to hurt their wallets.
 
I'm not going to lie, whenever I see N with an Arceus attire I will go crazy for him. I'm sure some people will have had the same reaction to those three, and yet the mostly negative views should tell you something about the whole thing. Granted, I'm not an actively player anymore, just got back to it for Arven so I can have the whole Area Zero crew and I was curious for the story which has always been entertaining- specially with Volo now as a prominent figure. I think it's too obvious the new Multi role is not a good idea, and it hasn't even been that long since they introduced the Field and Sprint roles has it?

But probably the worst part is not having new Pokemon at all, really makes them feel even more like just costume alts (and makes Dragonite look funnily out of place). Shiny Mega Metagross would have also looked better with Steven's suit. But really, unlike other gachas like the mentioned FEH and Dokkan the main thing about Masters is not just the character but also its Pokemon partner isn't it? Maybe that's just my preference. But this really just screams they have found a way to re-release popular characters as stronger versions, even rarer than Masterfairs.

Not that my opinion matters that much since I don't put money into the game, and as long as the people who do find this justified and contonue to do so, it won't make a difference. But it's just curious how blatant this is.
 
I'm also a (current) FEH Player, and I don't have quite the same outlook on that game as seaking but my "outsider looking in" is...
I'm a bit surprised this seems to have caused such a huge stir in the community? When I saw the trailer go through my timeline I just went "ah, popular characters getting fancy outfits for the anniversary, makes sense" and "oh, an arceus arc? That's kinda neat thing to focus on".
To me it all just seemed par for the course. They don't even feel like pallet swaps to me and using their signature Pokemon didn't flip any switches since I've seen other pairs sometimes reuse the same ones. Also kind of felt like a "retrain" opportunity, in case those 3 Pokemon pairings fell out of favor even after all the grids and junk.

The fact these scouts have a higher pity rate is scummy, but I guess I'm also not surprised. Any time I've heard or looked at the pull stuff (pity or otherwise) in this game it's always seemed grosser than average.

Basically nothing seemed so drastic as to cause this backlash on this alone so I have to assume the actual issue here is its a straw on the back situation, and there's just been way more things going on for the last year that finally got people to snap?
 
Honestly, the game has been fairly generous with its pulls prior to this normally. 2% Featured rate on most banners is very generous, and while Master Fairs drop that to 1%, thats still above average for gacha games to my knowledge

The issue lately has been decreasing gem counts per month, going from mid-20ks every month with big months getting to 30k, potentially even 40k, but since around July last year, mid-20ks has been a good month and most months have been low-20k, with April getting a low of 19k. With this potentially compounding with higher pity counts, people being worried is realistic.

Peoples reactions to the Arc Suits are mixed, some people dislike the repeat of a full on trainer/mon combination and the outfits (especially Cynthia) being so similar to the regular outfits leaves a bad taste in somes mouths, or at least mine. The big issue is the extra 9k gems required for a pity pull on these though, and thats the thing people are actually protesting
 
R_N said:
I'm also a (current) FEH Player, and I don't have quite the same outlook on that game as seaking but my "outsider looking in" is...
I'm a bit surprised this seems to have caused such a huge stir in the community? When I saw the trailer go through my timeline I just went "ah, popular characters getting fancy outfits for the anniversary, makes sense" and "oh, an arceus arc? That's kinda neat thing to focus on".
To me it all just seemed par for the course. They don't even feel like pallet swaps to me and using their signature Pokemon didn't flip any switches since I've seen other pairs sometimes reuse the same ones. Also kind of felt like a "retrain" opportunity, in case those 3 Pokemon pairings fell out of favor even after all the grids and junk.

The fact these scouts have a higher pity rate is scummy, but I guess I'm also not surprised. Any time I've heard or looked at the pull stuff (pity or otherwise) in this game it's always seemed grosser than average.

Basically nothing seemed so drastic as to cause this backlash on this alone so I have to assume the actual issue here is its a straw on the back situation, and there's just been way more things going on for the last year that finally got people to snap?
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Ok so basically imagine if Brave Alfonse kept his Great Talent shit but was a sword infantry, and Brave FRobin was a green tome infantry, and Brave Bernadetta was a colorless bow cav, and Brave Felix was... still a sword infantry somehow but actually one and not a cav in disguise like he is, and their outfits were basically a color swap from their base alt instead of being new (look up base Cynthia's EX color scheme to get the best sense of why it's. not great). That'd already get the playerbase riled up, and that's the equivalent of the outfit swap.

Now to help illustrate this, imagine if instead of FEH's practice of certain banners having higher/guaranteed focus rates, the rate on the celebratory banner was split 1% focus/7% non-focus, and billed as an 8% 5* banner. This is masterfairs in general, and continues here.

Then, to cap it off, the pity rate change is roughly the equivalent of going from needing 40 summons to 50 summons and the 3 non-focus limit was removed entirely. That's the specific gacha change going in here.

The new roles are a bit of a difficult thing to make equivalent here, but I guess the closest is to imagine that the new Brave units were specifically unable to inherit skills from a rearmed or attuned hero, but that's honestly somewhat light compared to how the lack of access to standard move candy types actually impacts a f2p or low spending player on the anniversary pairs. Hopefully this helps make it clearer.
 
Merritt said:
Ok so basically imagine if Brave Alfonse kept his Great Talent shit but was a sword infantry, and Brave FRobin was a green tome infantry, and Brave Bernadetta was a colorless bow cav, and Brave Felix was... still a sword infantry somehow but actually one and not a cav in disguise like he is, and their outfits were basically a color swap from their base alt instead of being new (look up base Cynthia's EX color scheme to get the best sense of why it's. not great). That'd already get the playerbase riled up, and that's the equivalent of the outfit swap.

Now to help illustrate this, imagine if instead of FEH's practice of certain banners having higher/guaranteed focus rates, the rate on the celebratory banner was split 1% focus/7% non-focus, and billed as an 8% 5* banner. This is masterfairs in general, and continues here.

Then, to cap it off, the pity rate change is roughly the equivalent of going from needing 40 summons to 50 summons and the 3 non-focus limit was removed entirely. That's the specific gacha change going in here.

The new roles are a bit of a difficult thing to make equivalent here, but I guess the closest is to imagine that the new Brave units were specifically unable to inherit skills from a rearmed or attuned hero, but that's honestly somewhat light compared to how the lack of access to standard move candy types actually impacts a f2p or low spending player on the anniversary pairs. Hopefully this helps make it clearer.
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Yeah this actually does help quite a bit, thank you.

CYL4 (House leaders & Lysithea) did get a bit of flack back in the day, but they at least had fairly distinct elements of their playstyle and aesthetics despite the weapon (& unit type, in Edelgard's case comparing to her Legendary variant) reuse.
 
In addition to the reasons mentioned already, one of the things that has incensed people is the announcement's phrasing of the increased threshold for pity pulls as

"You can earn up to 500 scout points"

as if scout points were useful for anything other than keeping track of how much you had to gamble on getting the featured unit(s).

This meme on the subreddit lampoons it well :P

https://www.reddit.com/r/PokemonMasters/comments/1f12b0r
 
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Coming back to this thread before I forget to post a completely outlandish plot twist prediction I can absolutely see happening because Pokémon Masters’s writing team is so inconsistent that they can only bother to study the source material and create compelling narratives half of the time

Dataminers have posted the first Chapter of the incredibly lazily named Arceus Arc a day early, like usual, and after watching that because I can’t be bothered to play the game as these greedy developers intended… I can absolutely see them pulling some anti-consumer BS and playing it off like Volo’s “Sinnoh Style” outfit was an Arc Suit this whole time for the sole purpose of the scoutable unit
 
I really hope not, I wanted to actually summon cosplayer Volo and his Origin Giratina.

Lik I said, Arc suit N would make me go crazy as long as I still not have the base unit since it's one of my favourite characters with one of my favourote mons. But I also need to save for Kieran...
 
Well, Arc suit Cynthia released the other day, and the banner really is just a master fair banner with a 500 scout point threshold. No Pokefairs like the mix scout banner, and they can't even add any spotlights that won't get added to the ticket scouts till next anniversary because everything recent has been Pokefairs (though they are adding 3 new spotlights this month). On the one hand, I can see why they would want to make the super ultra busted units harder to get than Master Fairs, but it is telling that they opted to increase the pity threshold by 25% rather than lower the pull rate by an equivalent amount. But I wish they had done something more interesting than simply give the characters new outfits while pairing them with Pokemon they already had. Like, if these are Arceus-powered units they should have at least given the mons the Legends Arceus boss glow that Kleavor, etc., had.

Also lol at the free gems banner including move candy coins when you can only use yellow candies on Arc units.

I think I will skip (edit: most of) the arc units in favor of the more enticing master fair being released later in September, Lear and Gholdengo. Unfortunately, my goal to collect all ghost units means I may have to pull on one of Sawyer or Rachel + Gimmighoul, despite them not being very good. At least it sounds like we get one of the two for free.

Edit: I decided to pull for Steven after all since busted supports are always helpful and I don't have regular Steven. Too bad Arc Steven doesn't unlock lodge Steven (I mean, it's too bad any character's alt doesn't unlock the lodge invitation but extra annoying since I technically have Steven and Meragross now :P). I got it in 7 pulls, leaving me ~8k gems less than 3x regular pity.
 
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I made the terrible mistake of accidentally getting my brother into the game. Now he'a wondering what is the best BP free pair since we got a ticket, and honestly by now I have no idea. He wants Registeel, but maybe it would be kind of unnecesary with the new free Lillie (still can't believe she is free, trough I am more impressed with Oak and Nidorino's perfomance). Does anyone have any suggestions? For now he's only pulling for favourites, so until he doesn't have N and Zekrom he is just wasting his gems on his banner.
 
DrrT said:
I made the terrible mistake of accidentally getting my brother into the game. Now he'a wondering what is the best BP free pair since we got a ticket, and honestly by now I have no idea. He wants Registeel, but maybe it would be kind of unnecesary with the new free Lillie (still can't believe she is free, trough I am more impressed with Oak and Nidorino's perfomance). Does anyone have any suggestions?
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for the super BP tickets, I would say Dana & Regice for 1/5. Free access to Super Effective Up Next is pretty nice

for regular BP tickets, Morty & Mismagius is probably stop number 1 I'd recommend. His kit is simple but it's still quite effective, though he does want his 3/5 quite a lot
 
Just A Seaking said:
the new Multi role just completely breaking the character structure...
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Assuming you're referring to roles that "define" what a character is good at, those have been blurring for quite some time now. Not only with the addition of EX roles, but just the general kits of the newer units being more robust and having more options/abilities in general.
 
So my goal of having a complete ghost roster has really been burning through my gems this year.

Both summer pairs were ghosts (Gardenia/Dhelmise and Acerola/Jellicent), and then because SS Lear got Gholdengo (which is steel, but I did pull for) it meant Rachel and Sawyer got the Gimmighoul forms. While we got a free ticket for one of the two at random, to get the other I had to pull on the variety banner. I got Sawyer from the ticket and then 2 more copies on the banner, and I had to go all the way to pity to get Rachel .

Then, I scrounged up enough paid gems using Google survey money to pull on the costume select scouts, and I went for Fall Morty and Tea Party Lilly (one of them at the expense of Steven and Stoutland, which is more useful for damage challenges). Didn't luck out and get Fall Acerola either, which is currently my only missing ghost pair.

In addition to SS Lear I also pulled on Arc Steven and Metagross, which thankfully did not take me all the way to the disgusting 500 scout point pity.
In the end, I managed to get out of anniversary with 1 full regular pity ready to go for Halloween.

The October datamine came out last night, and as with the last few years, only one of the Halloween pairs is actually ghost in Masters, and it's the second best ghost, so I will be pulling for it. Hoping I luck out and get it in the first pull or two so that I can also pull for the other Halloween pair, which is a ghost but is given its other type for this sync pair, so while I like to also collect ghost mons even if they're not ghost type in Masters, they're less of a priority unless they're favorites like Dragapult and Blacephalon. (Being vague in case anyone cares about datamine spoilers here).

Also of potential note in the datamine is that Serena and Zygarde will be the Master fair rerun at the end of the month, which I saw someone say is a pretty quick rerun. Possible sign of impending PZA news? Just DeNA hoping to temp people who didn't do well in the recent dragon/ground high score event? Who knows.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PokemonMasters/comments/1fppq80/v_2480_datamine_discussion
 
Saw they're adding Dexio & Sina in the new update and it's so weird to see the XY outfits of the pair but in proper proportions

dexio.png

sina.png
 
We also got a system of upgrades that is heavily pay to win, to the point that literally everything else in the update could be perfect (it isn't) and the update would still be bad imo

So yeah, fun
 
Mex said:
We also got a system of upgrades that is heavily pay to win, to the point that literally everything else in the update could be perfect (it isn't) and the update would still be bad imo

So yeah, fun
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I did see that note on serebii about "super awakenings" and thought "there is no way that's a change anyone wanted, likes or is implemented well" so sad to see I was right on that.
 
To go more in depth on that, to unlock a Super Awakening you need Super Awakening candy

To get Super Awakening candy, you have two options

1: Exchange move candy for them, at a 1:1 exchange, instead of using them for their usual purpose of being the way of increasing a pair's move level without having to pull for dupes.
2. Pull on new Pokefair banners to get them through the reward system, at an exchange of 15,000 gems for one (or 30,000 for 2 if you're so inclined). With the average gem count being in the low 20,000s.

Needless to say, this update is for the 1% of players that spend significantly on the game and can afford to use that many resources on it, and the upgrade system is also making every class of unit that was formerly stronger than pokefairs feel almost like a joke in comparison
 
I'm in two minds:

1. I hope the game dies because I think gacha should be illegal, and the game in general just feels badly designed. I think the gameplay is pretty bad.

2. If the game dies that means the people's money that they spent goes down the toilet, and people could get fired.

Tbh the better scenario in the first place would be to have devs on a non-gacha game and for legislation against this kind of shit. But also I think Masters was never really a good idea. I can't lie, I'd play the shit out of like, a PMD gacha or something. It's funny to me how TPC will do gacha with anything except the Pokemon themselves, though.
 
ant4456 said:
I'm in two minds:

1. I hope the game dies because I think gacha should be illegal, and the game in general just feels badly designed. I think the gameplay is pretty bad.

2. If the game dies that means the people's money that they spent goes down the toilet, and people could get fired.

Tbh the better scenario in the first place would be to have devs on a non-gacha game and for legislation against this kind of shit. But also I think Masters was never really a good idea. I can't lie, I'd play the shit out of like, a PMD gacha or something. It's funny to me how TPC will do gacha with anything except the Pokemon themselves, though.
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Well, for what it's worth, I imagine that if Masters ever does goes down a lot of the people who work on it just get put onto a different -likely still a gacha- mobile project. DeNA in particular makes a lot of these things, I imagine there's always something to put someone on.
Some would likely still get the boot, but also that's for any game. not everyone necessarily stays on forever. Could be contractors too. Honestly wonder how many people who started work on the game (or any given gacha) are still working on the same game at this juncture...

And they have done gacha with the Pokemon as thing to gacha. I believe Pokemon Duel was entirely gacha for the Pokemon, even if they were presented as figurines. I guess that's pretty similar to Pocket -you're getting the pokemon as cards- but close enough, I think.
Cafe Remix I believe kiiiiinda is a gacha in that the Pokemon that show up are semi-random but you can use acorns to reroll them

I thought the mobile rumble game also did some gacha elements but that was using diamonds as energy gates. I guess just as well since iirc it did the same thing Pokemon Picross (& a few other Nintendo "F2P" titles at the time) did where it had a cap on how much you could buy before it just gave you everything.

Putting it out like this I guess they like there always being a "gimmick" (its a figurine, its a card, its a party guest, it's a partner Pokemon, etc) so they can just keep varying how they offer you randomized Pokemon for currencies.
 
To quote my last post:

RocketSurgery said:
So my goal of having a complete ghost roster has really been burning through my gems this year.
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Flutter mane/Iono and Frosslass/Shauntal have brought me below 1 full pity for the first time in ages, and just when I thought I'd get a break after Halloween to save up gems again we find out they're releasing Chandelure/Ingo and Annihilape/Eri! Arrrgh. (Frosslass/Shauntal and Annihilape/Eri are ice and fighting pairs, respectively, not ghost, but as secondary goals I try to pull for ghost mons and Halloween pairs too).

I might have to roll the dice on Ingo being part of a triple banner down the line. Annihilape is a bit more appealing for being a fighting support, which I could use more than a sprint/tech Chandelure that only does damage if the opponent is statused.

As for superawakening, it sounds similar to the sync grid energy increase: something I am going to use to further power up Marshadow/Korrina and then ignore because of the resource investment it requires.
 
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