M: I'd like you to go online and find out for me, in the Pokemon Go community, what is the general consensus about the most deceptively useless creature to catch out of all the ones that are available? I'm not asking about the ones that are certainly considered useless or have no use except for one minor role, like evidently a Shuckle can have a place even though it's apparently useless but has such high I don't remember if it's defense or health points that it could be used in some strategy. I am talking about when what people think is the creature that looks like it should be really useful or that is really useful in other versions of the game ...is in fact... ...in this iteration, Not just not as good, but actually disappointingly bad. Such as having the type of CP levels, meaning that in order to have any use at all in any of the leagues, you have to have exactly the right thing completely maxed out. Or even with the CP placed so that it has almost no use entirely in any of the leagues, no matter what. Or seeming to have a bunch of uses, when in fact each of those uses, it's mediocre at best at all of them. I'm trying not to be specific because I'm not sure how other people would judge this, so I'd like you to have an open field to work with when you're trying to sift through people's responses online. And you are allowed to give me, hell, up to 50 results if really there is that broad of a field in terms of people feeling strongly that a particular type of Pokémon is a disappointment. Just make sure you give me a few results at least, though. I don't want to hear that everyone thinks that X is the worst and have that be the end of it. I can't believe that this topic isn't the kind of thing that breeds personal disagreements between groups.

M: Again, please go online and look into this, because... Okay, I was reminded of this thought that I've had occasionally about gym defenders. Now, you called Shuckle a troll defender. Okay, you didn't, but someone else did. And also a nuisance drawing out defense rather than actually being a defender. But anytime that I've actually decided to take down a gym... It's... the mechanics are such that unless somehow I end up being in a really, really weird spot where I don't have any of the backup items that I usually do... It's not like I can be stopped. Like, even if it's a really high power X, Y, or Z... Unless you've got an entire stable of them that are fresh because of the way that energy erodes over time. Unless you've got either that or someone who is actively monitoring and healing their creature as you go. You're not going to stop someone from taking over a gym unless you raise the nuisance level. That's from personal experience. I'm just wondering if I'm the only one to think this, and so anyone who complains about it being a nuisance is actually missing the entire mechanic and just focusing on a single spot. Or what? What am I missing? What could you possibly introduce to a gym that would guarantee holding it for more than six hours? Or if the person is really determined, even if they're just an occasional player, for the three to five minutes it takes to continue through. I mean, I have bypassed dealing with a Shuckle while simultaneously feeling like taking out a 4,000 CP legendary character wasn't a problem because with the 4,000 it almost felt like an epic challenge even though I knew I would eventually win. While with the Shuckle, I didn't because I knew that it was just a silly annoyance that was going to take a little bit of time, even if it's less time than with that example of the 4,000 CP legendary creature. I don't seem to be able to intrinsically grasp the approach and mentality of someone who would think they have such a command of how to defend a gym perfectly that they would feel like a nuisance was unacceptable. I don't know. In the Pokemon Go context, this Shedinja almost shouldn't count because of the mechanics. I feel like complaining about that is complaining about gravity being heavy. Yes, it's sad that because of the nature of the creature, it can't be included. It can't do anything but be included for completion. But I don't think it's a disappointment because before it was introduced, anyone looking at the nature of it would say, yeah, that's not going to work. What we were looking for is stuff where it looks like on paper it should work, but in practice, it just turns out to be completely useless. I think the Sunkern might be a better choice. I don't know if that's the one I'm thinking of exactly, but I think it is. One of those ones where getting it up even to compete in the Little Cup is a painful waste of resources. And getting its evolved version doesn't really fix things because it's almost but not quite as bad in terms of resource necessity to get it up to great league capabilities. There are a couple like that that I can't think of by name at the moment, but where getting them to any kind of competition level is just completely unfeasible and probably not worth the effort. And I'm offering that in contrast to, I think, like Bronzor takes a lot of effort, but also is supposed to be, or at least was useful enough in Little Cup competition that I think I heard that it was no longer allowed or something like that, or only allowed at certain times. . I'm surprised Sableye isn't on there, because I think that's another one that falls into that useless-in-any-mode quality, where it's not able to evolve, so there's no likelihood of getting anywhere towards the Ultra League, and can't compete in the Little Cup because it doesn't have an evolution, and even getting it to 1500 is a resource hog. Am I wrong about that? Is there a use for the Sableye, or is it just not thought of as badly as the other examples you produced?

M: Yeah, if I take over a gym, I usually just put in my most recent shiny to show it off. Because even if it's only got a CP of 10, it still is going to be in there for 3 fights. I don't think there's ever been a situation in which I faced off against something that was intrinsically difficult to take down. The only problem I had was if I had a brain fart and said, Okay, X should be useful against them, without taking into account a secondary aspect like a second element on what I was going after, or the fact that my attacker was overtly weak against the guy I was going against, even though he was strong against their element as well. And I feel like some of these analyses are coming in a vacuum. One of the reasons why Pokémon appeals to people, and probably doesn't appeal to gamers who avoid it, is that element of collection. So, yes, if a defender doesn't have any kind of raid use or PvP use, I can understand why it wouldn't be prioritized in terms of development. But some of these people who've been playing for nine years have to have gotten to the point where they're just dithering around with that one percent of optimization that still can be neutralized by a game of rock-paper-scissors in the PvP. But when you're talking about, but if you're talking about a game where you're trying to get where the usual attitude can be boiled down at least to, I would like to have one of each, then there's no reason for you not to have a really good version of something that only has a particular use as a defender. I mean, it's like saying that, you know, it's like how there are certain workshop tools that have only one use, and yet people with really large workshops, they still have one, and they have a really good one, because if that situation ever arises, they're going to want their really good one. Their really good one. It just, it seems like the guides making, they might be making valid arguments about why something sucks relatively, but saying that it should be avoided completely because in favor of other things that do the job not quite as well, but can also do other things. For people who have been playing for the entire run of the game, that just seems silly and uninformed. And looking at your argument, using the terminology you've found, I still stand by what I said. NUCEX defenders are time sinks, not permanent walls. This is true, but everything else is a time sink as well. In fact, the time sinks are better than the ones that aren't thought of that way, from a certain angle. If it's a challenge, people will rise to a challenge. If you have an ultimate, legendary, shiny shadow ready to kick your ass, but you think that you have three guys that combined could take them down once and bring them to a level that can be reduced again using only a couple of revives that you've got a few too many of and were considering throwing away anyway, then you'll start going at it. But if on the first pass you see a 400-sheet CP shuckle, think, it'll just get knocked over and you'll move on to the next thing. And it takes you something like 30 seconds just to get through the damn thing because of its stats. That person will think twice next time they come across a shuckle if they are on the fence about doing it in the first place. Yeah, I think that if Sunkern is the one that I'm thinking of, it's exactly one type of disappointing that I was looking for information about in terms of the worst. Because its positioning is such, and importantly to this particular game, the positioning of the requirements for the various PvP leagues is such that, like, if the Great League was capped off at 1,000 CP, that it would be fine, but because of the way the leagues are divided, rather than the creature itself, that's the reason why it's disappointing. That's one category of disappointing I was looking at, the ones where it should be usable, and it would be usable, but because of the way that the leagues are spaced out, instead it's just this unfulfilled potential for some sort of semi-Great League that's never going to happen. And as far as the Sableye goes, what you thought was a side argument was actually my primary question. I was wondering what the point of Sableye was, because I haven't been just asking about defense, I've been talking about the entirety of the game, outside of the collecting aspect. So this would be in raids, PvP, Dynamax, whatever. So yeah, Sableye seems fairly weak, but I guess if I look at it, I can see how it could be useful, if expensive, to use in the Great League. I'm not trying to understand any further than that, because I really don't care about that. I'm in it largely for the collection and trying to see if I can get the strongest creatures, even if I don't get them to actually fight against each other. I think I would like you to see what the most common complaints are. Okay, here's the more detailed breakdown of what I'm asking based on your suggestion. I'd like you to dig into the forum threads and Reddit and whatever for the last year and find and answer two separate questions. First, in specifics, what are currently, and we're going to define currently as being let's say the past six months, what are the currently most complained about Pokemon? Try and get that out to at least 10, and if you find good reason to include it, up to 20 different Pokemon. And then, as a broader question, in the last six months, what are the biggest complaints in general about Pokemon Go? And just to cover it in case I didn't say it specifically, for the most complained about Pokemon, that also was referring to Pokemon Go. I have no idea what the other games are like, but I don't want you accidentally looking for complaints across the entire spectrum of gaming just because I forgot to say the right limiter.

M: Just comments because complaints breed complaints and I agree or disagree with a couple of them. With the Salazzle thing, I'm kind of on the fence about that because I'm aware with myself personally as a gamer that as games have started catering to the dopamine hit of success in what's supposed to be lucky, luck-based but gradually gets unlucky or that's supposed to be skill-based but can be superseded by luck or whatever, I'm kind of sensitive to the idea that oh no, this is hard, why can't I do it so easy is not really a valid complaint although it is a valid source for bitching if you understand the differentiation. Complaining expects something to change from the outside. Bitching is just venting because your luck has been bad. On the other hand, the fact that they are in 12km eggs that are difficult to find in the first place relatively, that is an honest place to start having problems. Seriously, if they weren't permanent, I would suggest that Go players specifically and gamers in general spend a few months with the numbers 0.7, 2.3, and 4.6 tattooed somewhere on their body so that every time they started complaining about probability, they could first figure out whether or not it's an honest complaint. Those numbers are the scalars or multipliers or whatever for determining when bad luck starts. Let me quickly see if I can explain for my own benefit as well because I like this idea. If something has a probability of 1 in X, if you multiply X by 0.7, that's the number of times that you have to perform the action before you reach a 50% success rate. 2.3 times X gives you the number of times you have to do something before it hits a 90% success rate. That's why I said that's where bad luck starts. Once it's a 50-50 toss and you're still losing, then you're allowed to start complaining. Once you hit that 2.3 times X range, then it's certainly bad luck. Then 4.6 times X, that's when 99% of people have succeeded. If you're failing at that point, then sometime between the 2.3 and the 4.6 result, that's when you can start wondering if there's a glitch. That's the reason why I'm not sympathetic with the idea of quote-unquote bad luck in this game. If I've got the numbers right, if you're trying to get a shiny, the chances are 1 in 256 usually or something like that. That means that you have to catch at least, I don't know, something like 150. That's back of the envelope calculation for 0.7 times 256. But yeah, you've got to start doing that just to start thinking that you are half of the population with bad enough luck not for that to succeed. So when you start complaining about probability, I tend to temper my sympathy. But when trying to fight those odds and having to walk 12 kilometers to reroll each time, that I can get on their side about. In a 2K, in a 5K egg, okay, you can have like three or four of those going at any one time. And without even trying, just going about your life, hatch two or three of those a day. But the 12K requires investment of resources above and beyond for someone who doesn't want to play heavily, but whose primary interest is in the literal phrase, trying to catch them all. Let's see, that also goes for the Kecleon thing in terms of probability, although I'm much less sure about how that works. Because I think I've gone something like months without seeing one of them. And then when I'm trying to do a little bit of playing while I'm waiting for someone, been interrupted like two or three times by the invisible bastards. So I'm not exactly sure where I fall on that. Again, probability on the Zygarde thing, whatever. I don't know what they're talking about with the Furfrew. I feel like that's a niche either on the span of people or just limited to people who have gotten so far into the game that they're able to complain about small things. We covered the slacking. I'm with them on the Larvesta. That's easy. But that's because that's like the opposite of the Salandit thing, where I don't know if it's the opposite or if it's parallel or what, but yeah, that's taking it a different direction. That's requiring way too many of something that isn't that common to begin with. I'd have to look at the hatch numbers, because I swear to fucking God, I've hatched like three Larvestas total. It got to the point that I just, in order to get to my catch-them-all quota, I just fed one of the ones I had. Not even with that good of a statistics set. I just fed it rare candies so that I could get it done with and ignore it. That scatterbug makes sense. I'm in no room to speak about the Dialgas and Palkias, because I think I caught a shiny of each of them accidentally. It's one of those things that rounds me whenever I get bitchy about my bad luck in other arenas. Losing a Golisbot, of course you're going to complain about a bug. That's more of a complaint about the game itself than the actual Pokémon. Oh, this is the reason why I wanted to start saying anything in the first place. Yeah, the Kamala. God, that Koala keeps showing up fucking everywhere. Is there some sort of programmer hard-on for the things, or are they really useful in other games, or what? Because there's no excuse for them to just keep showing up, I swear, for like a month. Half the time, the default Pokémon for the day, the one that shows up and won't go away until you catch it or wait a day, was a goddamn Koala that I have no use for. I mean, every game of chance has its own, you know, booby prize or whatever. That I don't mind, but the fact that it's there and on the playing field repeatedly? I'm willing to believe that there's an excuse, even if it's a bad one, like the CEO of the game really likes it because their daughter is named Kamala or something like that. But unless there's some sort of acceptable or stupid reason like that, then this is just a horrible choice. There are many other vendor trash Pokémon that could and are shuffled in and out on a regular basis without having to throw a average 1000 CP critter onto the stage over and over and over again. They're not easy to find good ones of. They are a pain in the ass in terms of probability to catch, especially since they usually start at a relatively high CP, and you can't raise them up much further, and I don't see what use they are. The whole thing is an understandable reason to bitch about things. I've got a minor case of PTSD at this point. One of them popped out of an egg recently, and my mood instantly went like 20 degrees south. I'm also in there with these event costume things. But my problem is that is two-part. One, they need to be able to fucking evolve. Especially if the default CP starts above anything that could be entered into a little cup. And even if they don't do that, it needs to be able to be... At this point, we're also talking about Poké Genie, because this comes into play too. They need to easily be sorted out. Now, you can use keywords in searches so that when you're looking to figure out what you're going to improve or evolve or whatever, you can exclude them, but it doesn't seem to be done in any way that really lends itself to being a comfortable task. It just makes bad or even weird luck feel worse. Like, somehow, I now have two perfect versions of Steampunk Pikachu, whom I'm not really fond of anyway, and who has way too many outfits already. I've got two perfect versions of him. I can't do anything with him. Already, I've got two perfect versions of him. I can't do anything with that. It doesn't evolve, so I can't have one perfect Raichu and one perfect Pikachu. I can't trade it to anyone, because its one positive aspect would be negated as soon as it got traded, because it's not going to come out perfect on the other side. I've got no fucking idea what to do with it. And the only reason why I'm hanging on to it is two-part, because I feel guilty like I'm throwing away something valuable just because it doesn't make me happy. And with that slim off-chance hope that either I'm misunderstanding the mechanics and it has a value to someone, that I can give it to, or that in the future someone will realize how stupid this situation is and modify things so that I can give it to someone. I don't even want to get rid of it so much as I want to give it to someone who can use it, but the one thing it's useful for, namely its perfection, can't be transferred. It just is so enraging. And then when you get into the Poké Genie version, like in the original game version, you can filter things out. But when you've got your inventory management thing, app, whatever, and it's unable to easily identify by the nature of the way that the original game presents and stores it, that this is something that is impossible to evolve because it's special, it makes it very difficult to use that inventory to figure out, say, which Pikachu you're keeping around because it's got really high stats, without having to jump through so many hoops that you start wondering in that situation why you're using the inventory app in the first place. As far as the general complaints, since we're looking at that anyway, I would say that my problem isn't the event burnout, although the associated FOMO is reasonable. My problem with it is that this is the ninth anniversary, the ninth 10 is when you start celebrating. They're going to do this all again next year because it's the 10th. Yes, they should have celebrated their anniversary, but it's like, I think that I have a better perspective on this than most because I recently had a similar thing happen with Rocky Horror. I went to a convention, what I thought was the 50th anniversary convention, and it turns out it was a fun convention, but it's the 50th anniversary, and it turns out that the entire goddamn thing, the celebration is fragmented because it's the 50th, because it's important. Everyone wants to have a piece of it, and because of that, the average Rocky fan didn't have the giant celebration that the show deserved. I say that because that's as opposed to the 40th anniversary at which a couple of the main cast characters didn't just show up. They were expected to show up. It was held in New York City. There was a showing with people from across the country shouting in a picturesque New York theater and performing for each other because they loved the show. So, I have some opinions based on experience about this, and my opinion is that celebrating a anniversary is one thing, but what they did this year was so over the top that they might have spoiled it for the actual understandably notable 10th anniversary next year. It's just a case of what the fuck were you thinking long-term? Because evidently, everyone was focused on short-term so much that they might have not just burned out people short-term, but they might have made it so that next year their reaction will be even worse at a time when, if you want to look at it in a capitalist sense, a 10th anniversary somehow short-circuits people in a way that they would have been able been willing to spend much more for that anniversary. But because of the way that they pulled it off this year, people will just start avoiding it because this year was so needlessly over the top. I hope that makes sense. Looking at the second part, the second entry after that, the GoFest disappointments, the only hope is that this is somehow a beta run, and that next year someone's going to be kicking the people who did things badly in the head and saying, OK, morons, listen up. This is the parts that you did badly last year. This is our 10th anniversary. We want to actually make it shine and memorable and be happy for everyone. While at the same time getting a profit going. So here is what we do. That's really the only way that they could possibly even start to recover from this poorly timed debacle. You know you haven't done things well when even the people who participated enthusiastically are saying that they didn't really enjoy it. OK, the origin forum, like I said, I ended up with shinies of both, so I wasn't even aware there was a complaint going on. Maybe I was one of the reasons why everyone else was complaining, that somehow, because I ended up with two dialogues. OK, I'm not sure if I can... Specific tasks aside, my only complaint about the masterwork or the level up, what was the bottle cap thing called? The idea of making them more difficult is in itself acceptable, even if some of the specific implementations, like the Kecleon collecting, aren't. So I can't really weigh in on that one. Because evidently these guys were getting hit with something that I didn't have to deal with. I mean, like, there's... I have one of the research tasks for masterwork. I think I'm at two out of six. But my reason for not making progress is my own fault. I haven't actually tried to... what is it now? There might be some routes. I live right next to a route. I just haven't tried to do it, so it's my fault. I think the bottle cap thing was a good idea. I think that it should be acceptable. I guess the reason why I'm not as sympathetic about the research is because right next to that one I haven't completed is one from when the game first started, which requires that you do something in a party. I'm an autistic who isn't around any of the people I know who play and who lives with his parents to take care of them. So finding people to be in a party with is difficult, even at community days, because usually for one reason or another I always end up being there ten minutes late and then the autism takes over and I'm embarrassed to even try and make progress. It's a problem to the point that I've created a second account solely for the reason of being able to be in a party with myself should I ever feel like I need to make progress. But my point is, oh no... Sorry, let me be clear. My point is, outside of the ridiculous requirement instances, the idea of saying, oh no, they made this part difficult, fuck you! The parts that you called easy I'm finding difficult. Stop whining until we can fix everything. I probably feel a little bit more sympathy than that sounded like, but I didn't feel like tempering it. Sigh. I think that if it weren't for the fact that they are trying to profit off of it so heavily, I would kind of be as dismissive about the idea of remote raiding is expensive, it's difficult to play if you can't get places. The appeal for people who just wanted to play was supposed to be that you have to walk around, get places, get exercise, go outside, do something. Complaining that you can't sit in your car and get to the gym in the middle of the field without paying kind of seems antithetical to the original concept. Or at least the concept that was billed to people who wanted to walk around. You could say that the original concept was to find a way to make more money off of Pokemon if you want to be cynical, but I think that a lot of people took it as the tacit reasoning for this even existing, that it was, I walk places and I get stuff that I wouldn't have gotten if I didn't walk places. I mean, one of the things that I've seen, you see people, when I say you, I mean, I have seen people driving around to do Pokemon stuff and for them, individually, it seems to be a social thing. Like three or four people all at once going around, doing raids, whatever. And so while that doesn't conform to what I said was the purpose of Go directly, in that it doesn't promote getting out, doing some exercise, etc., it does at least connect to the idea of doing this with people. So I can overlook that on an individual scale. But I've also seen at the various community days, literally held in parks so that this high density of stops and gyms allowed you to walk from place to place. I've seen trains of people who have decided to sit in their cars and drive from place to place, following the people who are actually walking. So knowing that there are people who do that solo, by themselves, just so that they can make progress with an artificial number of bytes and, I don't know, get that warm, happy feeling of being superior to someone you don't know. Having seen that, I have less empathy for the idea of paying for remote raids being a problem. I've used them. I've paid for them. That's because I was lazy. I felt like it was a fair penalty trade-off. And when I felt like I was getting to the point that I was spending more than I could afford, at least mentally if not financially, because financially I was okay but I felt like I was kind of breaking the entire idea, I stopped. I even got up and started walking around. Now if you want to complain about the fact that it's difficult to get actual raids without paying, then I'm behind you. It should be encouraged to go out and walk around. Hell, it should be encouraged because with the remote passes, the people who walk around can get the people who won't, or to be more charitable to some people, the people who can't, the people who work all day. And so the only way they can get out is getting invitations or keeping an eye out for people that they have made some sort of connection with in the friends list and joining in whenever they are doing one of those limited time raids. So I have empathy for them but for every one of those, there's at least one of the guys who is driving by themselves around a community day with two accounts open at once and incidentally making it more difficult for the people who are walking because one of the appeals of those community raid days is being able to jump in with your relatively weak 2000 CP creature and know that you're probably going to win because you've got 20 creatures of at least 2000 CP going up against something that's about to get curb stomped like a bunch of gremlins taking down a horse. So knowing that a good percentage of the people complaining are bitching because they can't sufficiently uber-nerd without they can't uber-nerd and avoid the core appeal of the original idea without spending money, I find it hard to sympathize. I will, however, go along with them in the idea that there are too many times in which there is no practical route to get something without either luck and I mean like one-time luck, you can't redo it multiple times, or without starting to pay. Like for this example, even after my long rant session just now, I wouldn't mind if there was some sort of effort that the average player could start with, to start on, that maybe didn't pay off with a remote raid pass often, but that did so reliably as long as you did x, y, and z and did so in a way that didn't require payment. Like, and what I mean by by limited and not having enough routes, like you pay for things with coins. You can get 50 coins a day, so if you're fortunate, there's a good chance that there's a gym that you can hit every day on your way to or from something and try and get in a few hours there. I don't know, I've never actually looked up how long you have to stay in the gym to get the full 50 coins, but it's technically possible. So theoretically, the average player would be able to get a raid pass every four days, or if they plan things out, they would be able to do it you know, with a 10% off, whatever, they would be able to get the larger pack every seven days or something, 10 days, what, you see my point, but there's no way to up that because of the cap, there is no way to say there's something that really needs effort. I have been just playing normally, I would like to make a significant effort but have that pay off by being able to get the significant good thing over, and it aggravates me partly just because if you strip away the desire to make more people able to enjoy themselves on a capitalist level, it's stupid to keep things the way they are because without having multiple roads, because when there's multiple roads, there's multiple chances to offer that minor boost or whatever. The final 5% when you've gotten 95% of the way but you have to, but getting that extra 5% is going to require that you have difficulty dealing with, I don't know, like it's going to make you late for dinner or something like that. By making it so that it's this all or nothing thing, you're creating a situation in which a good portion of people who would be willing to use those 50 coins a day or something regularly to get that little bit of boost, instead they're just going to stop playing and say nothing at all and you're missing out. So just on a capitalist term, this is a poor approach. So in that sense, I can sympathize with the general idea even if the specifics of why they're bitching are likely to set me off. I'm with them on the user experience and user interface thing, although I'm wondering how many people are just complaining because it's different and how many people have the feeling I've got. See, when they change things, there's two things that by themselves wouldn't be nearly as bad as they are put together. One, they spent time and effort changing this particular thing rather than fixing some of the more consistent errors. Like part of this might be my phone, but on a regular basis, whenever I try and join in a fight at this one particular gym, the entire program crashes and I have to restart. Instead, they decided to screw with the user interface. And then, that combines with, in doing so, they made it worse in pretty much every sense you could have. On a universal practical sense, they stuck information that no one needs above the stuff that you want to see when you open up the catch card or the database entry or whatever you want to call it. Instead of being able to see what moves, it was already occasionally difficult to see what moves the guy had. Now, it's a definite scroll down because they wanted to make sure that everyone knows that you caught this, even though you're the only one who's ever going to be seeing it for 99% of these things, and where you caught it, which most people, if you care about that kind of stuff, you probably either already know or are in an information deep dive that doesn't need help and doesn't happen often. Then on the personal private level, like I said, I use Pocagini. And while scanning them does satisfy a collector's itch that I have on occasion, when that itch isn't active, scanning the move set was already iffy and now it's impossible. So yeah, I'm with them on the major and minor elements of that user interface bitchfest. Don't know if I can get behind the device thing. If what they're talking about is the auto-catchers or whatever, at best I'm neutral about those and can't really feel too bad for anyone who isn't able to use them anymore. I understand the handiness of it and that people who have been playing for the entire time, which I haven't, I lost five years. Hell, I lost six, almost seven years between when it started, in which I was playing, and when I started back up again. I know that some people have like 8,000 item slots by this point and that they're walking around with just 800 common balls. And so using an auto-catcher probably is at least a practical way to use those rather than throwing them away because they're taking up space. But at the same time, it's a question of, well then, are you really even playing the game at that point? And if you are, does it really mean you're playing the same game as the average player or should you somehow be shunted into a different server or something? Because, like with the gym thing, if they ever fix that, suddenly these guys who have been farming candy and ended up with 5,000 available to upgrade are just going to trounce the average guy living next door to the gym, but who only catches one or two things a day and just looks outside and sees this unassailable wall of strength and says, you know what? I don't even want to do this anymore. So, yeah. On the other hand, if they're talking about how there's some kind of, you know, assistance for the hearing impaired or something like that, well, yeah, then they definitely should fix the support for that. Honestly, the egg pools, the problem I have with those is that I often get caught off guard in terms of the shuffling and reshuffling. If I was going to change anything about the eggs, it would be the ability to, you know, I guess throwing them away would be kind of a horrible message, implying that you were just throwing living beings at the brick wall instead of hatching them, but they could just transfer them to the professor or something. I mean, this particular one hasn't ever happened to me, but there have been a couple situations where I didn't realize there was an event-specific creature available, even common in one of the eggs for the week, looked at my egg inventory and realized that not only had I not been trying to hatch any of them, but that all of them were like 7K or above eggs, so in order to even start making an effort at this late date was going to be a nightmare, because first I'd have to make space, and depending on the type of egg it was, then keep my fingers crossed that it wouldn't be a situation, that the one that filled the newly vacated slot was the kind I was looking for, like a 5K egg instead of a 2K egg, or vice versa. I think I've had both happen, and it kind of ruined, not my day, but certainly ruined my experience with the game for that day, and maybe a couple days after. And I think part of it is that that's not even a situation you can pay your way out of. I think that's one of the frustrations right up there. It's in line with the user interface problem. It's that there are problems that need fixing that instead they decided to change the color of the windows kind of thing. The situation I just described with the eggs, you can't even just say, well, you know, if you bought incubators, then you would be able to fix that problem, no problem. Because even if you bought one for each in that relatively small set of nine slots for eggs, which, you know, the three overflows only get like the 12Ks, so it's only nine. It would be nice to be able to add to that, whether it was with cash or accomplishments, preferably with accomplishments like medals or something, which don't do anything, which is another place they could look. Even if you bought an incubator for each of those eggs, you would have to make sure that you traveled seven kilometers, that the game registered that you traveled seven kilometers, and then you would have to refill them, possibly by hoping that at least half of them went the way that you wanted, which isn't necessarily a guarantee. We've already talked about probability. So yeah, there are a couple of places where neither money nor effort will let you recover, and that's just frustrating. One thought or aggravation that I don't see on your list seems to be that, is to me, the second generation introduced breeding. There should be some sort of breeding implemented. I could and probably will go into detail, but that right there should be enough. This isn't a newly introduced mechanic. And honestly, besides the fact that not including it kind of shits on the idea of turning Pokémon, the classic game, into a real-life event by avoiding one of the classic ideas, it also provides an opportunity for a complex mechanic in terms of execution that is lacking and might actually be one of the reasons that, in that last complaint you have, it could be one of the reasons why it feels both too grindy and too repetitive. It's because, I would claim that it's because every mechanic in the game is, in terms of necessary steps, simple. You press a button, it attacks. You don't press a button, it doesn't attack. It's not even a question of hit the right spot to do a light attack or in the other spot to do a hard attack. If you keep tapping the place with the hard attack, it'll keep doing light attacks doing light attacks until the charged attack happens. Everything is simple. The breeding could introduce a degree of variability and complexity that even if what comes out is simple or limited or whatever, they could make it so that the ways to accomplish it were broad enough that the people who were feeling bored would have at least a couple years of trying every method just to get it done. Like I'm spitballing here, but if you made it so that in order to do breeding you had to either use two of your own creatures or one of yours and one of someone else's. Those creatures had to be satisfied in some way, although you'd need some sort of different term because while the game has a few laughably double entendre terms already, you don't want to introduce more of them when we're already talking about breeding. Anyway, I'm aware of that so we don't have to bring that up in any kind of counter-argument or whatever, the double entendre part. I'm just using this so that the terminology is clear, not so that it's clean. So you have to satisfy both of the creatures in some way, and when you're doing it yourself it's more difficult than if you and a friend or game contact are each using one. Or you make it so that it's just as difficult, but when two people work together each of you only needs to satisfy one creature, yet you both get an egg. Maybe even make it so that they are somehow linked in their final stats or whatever. You wouldn't even have to determine them at the time, just whenever they hatched, look at the other one and synchronize them. Anyway, then once they both are prepared, some sort of situation that is non-sexual has to be satisfied. Like if you're doing it yourself, let's say... I'm clicking on my feet here, hold on. So once the creatures are prepared, you have to, I don't know, pacify a particular zone so that they can just settle in for their, you know, asexual lovemaking or whatever. With a two-person local version, you maybe have to, I'm just saying using the mechanics that are currently in place, new mechanics or new sites or additions to old sites, you know, like adding a doghouse onto a gym or something. In that area, you have to clear out a certain number of Pokémon or you have to, I don't know, neutralize a gauntlet of Team Rocket people or something. It could circulate saying that you have to do a different thing each time only in terms of what has to be done each time. You make sure you keep track so that there isn't a repetition just because of a random number generator quirk. You know, you don't want someone rolling snake eyes three times in a row and then saying, fuck this. So you pacify the breeding area or you and your friend both do. For the remote thing, it would have to be within a limited amount of time or something. You make it appealing to the board by making sure that the mechanics for satisfying these can be made easier or quicker with some sort of new item, but you don't raise it to the level of impossibility. That means that casual players can't at least try to do this by themselves or with someone like their friend or the nephew they have no connection with other than they both play this or something. So you do the pacifying and then maybe you make it so that you can modify probabilities or minimum stats by fulfilling things in the two or three days that it takes. Or you make it so that it's really a so that it's a potential character investment like putting something in a gym where you can breed like a Rudon with a Skitty, no sorry, a Regigigas with a Purloin or something like that because they're both normal type. But that means that both of those are going to be gone for like two months for certain and pulling them out if possible completely resets everything. Or something like that. Something so that this is a planned effort. Like I said, this is a complex side quest where optimization is possible but also difficult. Like you add little things that raise the minimum until until you the minimum until you get to that point that raids are at where everything has a minimum stat of 10. While if you do nothing it's just a completely random situation. You scale those chores around the amount of time that it takes to do things. So if you've just got two Bellsprouts going at it, that's going to take like a week during which time you just have to make sure that every day every day you go and, I don't know, power up a grass element. Sorry, got on a roll then got cut off. Due to length. So, yeah, you go and for that, you'll, for that version, you only have to power up a grass creature once every day in order to get the stat boost. But if you're trying to get two Zygards to get it on, that's going to require, and I'm just using that as an example, there might be some actual creature disqualifications from this. But if, hypothetically, you were able to breed two Zygards together, and in doing so guarantee some form of Zygard, which is one of those variable things where you make it so that even if there is a randomness, it can be improved on if not circumvented by using the appropriate settings. Anyway, if you're trying to get two Zygards, that's going to require a dedication of three months from both of you, and that, like, once a week, you capture and transfer five of that week's Mega Raids or whatever. And if you don't, that reduces the, then you're no longer working with that minimum ten stat. You've brought it down to like seven or six as the minimum for everything. And then once you actually have the egg, make that some sort of practical randomization too. Like the Bellsprouts, that's like a 3k egg that requires that you have a grass element creature as a friend while you're walking it. While with the Zygard, you have to take down, I don't know, five three-star, five three-star Djinns and two three-star Dynamax battles solo or something like that. That would require a little bit more number processing and crunching. But you make it so it's not that it's either obviously achievable or obviously could be achievable, you just have to get to the right point. You don't make it so that it turns into a situation like I've got going on with that one research chain that has only barely started because it requires that I catch, I don't know, like 20 normal creatures in a party and every time I notice it. Even if I am in the mood to start up my partner account and make a party, I never notice it when there's actually an abundance of normals. I think the five or six times I have thought to myself, this would be a good time to start it, it's always been like, hey look, everything is water-based or something like that. Point is, you can make this one area that should be represented anyway, deep and complex but accessible and profitable, and most importantly, give contrast to all of the other push-button to win or lose stuff that's going on and solve that problem that everyone is complaining about. To some degree or other. Some people are always going to complain. I'm one of them and I can always find something, almost always. And some people aren't going to like it because they didn't do crosswords instead or something like that. And they love crosswords. But I think it would add that extra dimension. Having done all that, can you see anything online that sounds like either there's a reason why they haven't done it, or that it sounds like someone else has suggested this, or that it sounds like they're in the process of considering something like this? Thank you. Thank you. And as a separate, if related, topic, going through all of the old games that aren't GO, and even some of the new ones, are there any other mechanics that could be considered essential to the classic Pokémon gaming experience that haven't been implemented in some form for Pokémon GO? Or ones that have only barely been referenced and not really actually used? I guess we're talking about about the games that are, I don't know, maybe at least five generations old? I'm not sure exactly what generation is what year. We're trying to make it so that in video game terms, it could be considered a classic. So I guess maybe one or two systems old.

M: Honestly, I like the hyper-training in spirit. And think it should be made possible in a way that isn't paywalled. And, if possible, kept from being directly purchase-based at all. I say I like it in spirit because... If you sit down and start thinking while you're in a dark mood, and the spirit of Pokemon Go particularly is kind of dark itself, it says that everyone except for the player is intrinsically limited by how they're born. And no matter how hard they try, they will never even be as good as the best of their own kind, let alone everywhere ever. Now, between species, you can kind of mitigate things about that. Kind of like how you can be a positive person and still completely agree that no matter how hard you try, you're never going to be able to outrun a cheetah. But when you make a situation where, unless you're really lucky, like stupidly lucky, you're never going to be as good as the next guy, that's not a great message. So the hyper-training kind of echoes the idea of, let's stick with an idea that's simple to quantify, like sports. Maybe you haven't been born intrinsically able to run faster than 99% of the world. But if you really think that that's what you want to do, then it's possible for you to exceed the limitations of your birth. It's not guaranteed, but it's possible. I mean, it's Pokemon Go, so it's a one or zero situation, and so introducing that possibility of failure to the attempt at success is kind of frowned upon. Although they do have that time limit, but it's a year, so, you know, six and one half times. The point is that I like the idea because it means that victory, at least in the same species, is never going to be overshadowed by the specter of who has the best stats. It can't be and all things are equal, that's what I'm saying. I don't know how I would do it, but I think the spirit of things, it would be nice if they made it expandable more often, but in a way that was also limited in itself. Like, you can only have one hyper-trained creature in a particular evolution family or evolutionary family branch because you've got the Eevees, so that would make that kind of difficult to decide which one you want to be perfect when they have different uses. But if you see where I'm going there, that's the idea of being able to make yourself the best. It's part of the original theme. And so if you want to try and have the best Geodude-slash-Golan-slash-whatever, perhaps you can if you jump through the right hoops. The non-paywalled hoops. And I said directly because you can make it easier to get there, but the appeal would be in the spirit of things, because there aren't enough people who will keep paying money just so that they can be the best. There are some, but that's not a fiscally responsible approach. And even if you argue that, well, yeah, but they will keep on paying, that's fine. Are you going to have a game that only has ten people? Because the worse it gets, the more people will quit playing. So the idea of making a hyper-training, one for each species or variation, because you'd also have the Alola versions and whatever. But being able to decide, I want to make the best Shuckle there is and show everyone that I was right about their abilities. Make that a viable choice. You just have to do the right thing instead of, you know, catch... Let's see, what is it? Using those three numbers in order to get a perfect Shuckle that would require 16 times 16 times 16, 256... 256 times 16, oh crap, I went the wrong direction. Yeah, so instead of having to catch... So in order to get to just probably having a perfect one, by saying 16 times 16 times 16, which is... 4,096 times 0.7 or so, you'd have to, instead of catching 2,800 Shuckles, to maybe get to the point where you can say, well, the universe isn't letting me have it. Let alone get to the point of 90% where it would be, what, like 9,000, 10,000 captures, just to get a 90% chance of getting a Shuckle in one of those. That's perfect. Instead of doing all that, make it possible to say, I have this one that's almost there. I will not only jump through the hoops to make them better, but I will go through maybe even harder hoops to allow that to happen. I don't think that's a bad idea, either fiscally or spiritually for the game. Because making someone catch 4,000 just for a 50-50 chance of perfection before you even start building up, that's a good way to promote a certain nihilism in the game. You say, this can't happen. I'm leaving. And that did not expand the game. Your argument that the three pillars are the only pillars that can exist is a false assumption. The idea that it would interfere with the economy is also erroneous. It wouldn't have to even connect with that at all until you produced the egg. In fact, it would provide a reason to start, a reason, a game-defined reason to do things. I think that's where, because your arguments kind of make my point. Like, I just went off about the hyper-training. That happened once. They have not indicated that they will do it again. And it is, I already finished mine. I've got a perfect land shark now. My guard chomp is a best buddy, perfect, and right now I'm throwing my rare candies at him in order to get him up to level 50 or 51, depending on how you look at things. I'm not doing it with utter dedication. I'll also start amping up other things that are powerful, like I've got a curam black that also gets leveled up anytime I've got enough candies that my bag gets full and I realize that I've got enough to add a few levels somewhere. But I'm done with it, and it's, what, like a month or two after that happened? That's not satisfying an itch. That's making it worse because you know the itch could be scratched, but they refuse to let you scratch it. So, that's, and that's not the point to begin with. The perfect stats, by the way I described it, not a guarantee. It's the opening of a possibility, especially if designed correctly, doubly so if you arrange the breeding possibility matrix in such a way that you can actually potentially breed something. I guess in actual breeding it would be called a sport. Breed something legendary that you can't breed further, but gives you access to something that like only comes around once every three years, something that you could never get to. Not necessarily a perfect one, but it could be implemented in a way that feeds into the raiding and candy economy by saying that not only are you saying to yourself, I want to have a, I have a perfect raikou that I also have been feeding candy and stuff. It's a perfect shiny Dynamax raikou. And I have decided to make it as powerful as I can get it even though it's not, you know, a top tier thing because I like it. But my important point for this topic is that I decided to do it because I had this stuff and it wasn't doing anything else. Making strange but achievable requirements in order to breed, in order to even start the breeding process, could latch on to or be fueled by the raiding and candy economy. While at the same time promoting the actions to do so and fiscally creating a reason to, you know, get those extra passes or whatever. By having that be part of the requirement either directly or in my ideal world in an indirect fashion that requires not just fulfilling the requirement but figuring out how to fulfill the requirement. Like, I mean, they've already got the simple version of, you don't, it doesn't say directly get, well sometimes it actually does, but it doesn't necessarily say go get 12 candy from a legendary source. But it will say level up a legendary creature 5 times, for which you need 12. Perhaps you've got a perfect one already, like level 51, and then a spare that you just keep around because it's got even better stats but you've already spent so much. But now you've got a reason to go out and get the rare candy or something like that. So it doesn't collide with the pillars, it supports them and importantly makes things more stable because it has introduced not just a new mechanic, but if you look at the way I described it, a mechanic of complexity. I personally understand the sometimes insane levels of side quests that can occur in a game. I've played those games, I have railed on them to my friends, but in Go there aren't really side quests. I mean, there's the research things, but those are not really quests. There's the weekly stuff, but again that's less of a quest and more of a checklist of stuff that you likely were planning on doing anyway. Breeding could introduce a more classic side quest mechanic in one of the few games that not only doesn't have them, but after 9 years could use something to fill that void. And that other people notice even if they don't know that it's the lack of that complex area that would give them a better sense of fulfillment entirely. People who have been playing this for years aren't complaining now because of the grind, they're complaining because they are in gaming terms not getting every vitamin they need from it. They're satisfying their craving, but as a game Pokemon Go is missing the vitamin B of side quests. They know it's missing, but they don't know what it is that's missing. At least that's my theory. All right, having replied to your reply, I'd appreciate some feedback on that, and then for you to try and summarize what you think I said, or what I think I said, about how I would implement breeding mechanics. I phrase it that way because I know that sometimes I think I've been specific, and then it turns out, upon review, that I completely forgot to add a really important point. Okay, before that, let's go through the other mechanics and see what we've got. Abilities have at least been a little bit implemented. There's those free shock things, which, yes, are extensions of the moves, but also can cause something in the overworld. So, you could argue that they actually have been used. They could be expanded on, yes. It'd be interesting to see how you could... It'd be interesting if, like, a fully-powered Bellossom could start using 20 Candy to act as Allure for 10 minutes or something. Let's see what else. Held items, you could argue that there are some... Since there are some evolutions that require an external element, such as the Sinnoh Stone, which, if you could tell me a source of those, because that's, like, the one thing that I can't ever seem to find enough of. Those are kind of held items. That one I don't see ever being implemented, simply because there are two sources. There are two main sources of fighting, either Raids or PvP. In Raids, okay, the Dynamax Max Mushroom kind of takes its place. It's a consumable, yes, but they're holding it. You could say they're holding it. It's an item that causes an effect to how they're attacking. It only gives a damage boost, but yeah. And then in PvP, it would either be a constant, in which case it wouldn't be fair to have people battle without knowing their opponent is holding something that is why they're kicking their ass, and if they were showing it, then people would just start quitting out, saying, oh fuck, I'm not ready to deal with that. So in some senses, you could say the held items, at least in terms of consumables, exist in the method of selecting them before a fight or something like that. And then the other hand, you can see why implementing it. I don't see that happening without a separate mechanic being introduced that would warrant including it as an excuse or modifier for the new mechanic. Status ailments. You could argue that, with a couple steps of logic, some of the moves which in the standard games don't actually do damage and just cause status changes, those are included in Pokemon Go. So when it says that they're causing damage, the actual thing going on is that they have, perhaps, caused a bit of sleep or something, and in the ensuing time, even if it was just, you know, kicking at their shins, a little bit of damage was done as well. It's kind of a stretch, but you can see why putting actual sleep or paralysis would piss people off. The matches are so short, and it's already kind of a rock, paper, scissors of who's going to be fighting who, that either you're invested because you've got what you think is a strong character or because that's how people work, especially when they don't know exactly how the mechanics work. So they just invest their ego believing that that somehow affects chance. You start introducing random rules of whether or not something is poisoned or paralyzed. You're gonna get people just enraged and accusing each other of cheating or hacking or whatever. I can see why they're keeping that directly out. It'd be interesting to try to introduce it in some form, though. Let's see, leave alone the natures and EVs. Oh, no, that natures thing, in concept, made sense to me, but was one of those things that kind of turned me off to later versions, just because I didn't want to screw with another statistic that, and especially not one that, either seemed to parallel stuff that already existed or didn't directly line up with something I thought of as being quantifiable. Yeah, the breeding loop, I think, even if implemented, would not be a direct one-to- one thing. Like, previous jokes aside, or hypotheticals, I think in order to implement things well, you couldn't just say normal plus normal equals possibility of any normal. You would want to start making sub possibilities and sub categories. Like, if you put together a normal, a creature that has, I don't even know if one of these exists, I know one of them exists. If you put together a normal grass plus a normal fire, because fire defeats grass, the result could only be either pure normal or normal fire, or it could only be pure normal or any other element that is not weak to fire. This is what I meant by adding a degree of complexity. Make it so that even if you understand the entirety of the process, which in itself we could make ridiculously complex with a few simple rules like the one I just made, even if you do that and understand it, trying each one would take so much effort that either people would be content finding a few things they want to do and trying them repeatedly, or the insane people who want to try every version would have at least a couple years of work ahead of them. Because that would be another element that I haven't, that I just completely overlooked. In terms of breeding, you'd have to make it so that you can only have a single breeding prep situation at once, or maybe a single breeding pair, something so that it's not like eggs where you can have five or six going at a time as long as you've got the equipment. It needs to be consistently accessible, but self limiting in terms of how much of it can be done. But that would be, that would just add to the appeal because you, especially with something that complex, you don't want to make it so that the You don't want to make it so that the accountants can exploit a hypothetically infinite system and everyone else can wander in, get confused, and never visit again. It has to be self-limited. It has to be limited in count for everyone's sanity and enjoyment. Really, my only question is, where would be the optimal places to put these limiting gates? Because we don't want a bottleneck, if you think of it in terms of going down a highway. What we don't want is to create a bottleneck, but what we want is to make sure that everyone — if you think of the entire the entire, um, not corral, if you have the entire spectrum of Pokémon to choose from and think of as a 10-lane highway, highway, breeding should be an off-ramp where everything slows down to 35 and can consistently happen and do so even regular, even with a regular process, just not more than one at a time at any one point. I'm just not sure how you would limit that while also adding for the variability of breeding times. I'm sorry, I got off on a sidetrack. Let's see, what else have we got? Yeah, Go necessarily abstracts the moves. Again, it gets to the idea of the reason why people get dissatisfied sooner or later is that everything is simplified either necessarily or unnecessarily. It's made simple because it's working with — it was started simple because it was working with a small screen and any attempt to add complexity led to whining by people who liked the simplicity. But now people are whining because there's a lack of complexity and everything else aside, I think that the people who produce and run it need to accept that someone's going to whine no matter what, so they should look at it long-term rather than short or even medium-term. Maybe medium-term to long-term, but the short-term stuff, someone is always going to bitch. Someone will always say they're quitting over something. Either they will keep playing anyway even if they say they're going to quit, or more likely they were considering quitting anyway for any number of reasonable personal or unreasonable insane reasons. And even if this pushes it over the edge, you can't not do things just to not make a few crazies go off. That's no way to run your business or life. Okay, yeah, terrain and traps, unless they introduced some kind of tower defense mechanic or something to gym defense, which would be interesting but could not be accomplished with the speed the game really requires. Without being so childish, it feels like finishing one of those toddler games at the in the waiting room of your doctor's office. Yeah. It would be nice though if you could introduce maybe not a trap or hazard, but something using the same name that actually created kind of a funnel or gravitational singularity that drew in a particular type or breed of Pokemon. But as I'm thinking about it, that kind of defines allure. So actually, you could kind of say that the traps are there, they just are called lures now. It would be interesting if you could do a manual version of that, kind of a combination between allure and an incense. As far as the multi-person battles, I can understand why they haven't implemented that. I have enough trouble on a regular basis when the raid boss and its motions start getting interfered with on a frame level by simply, passively detecting what the other players are doing. And I don't know if it's a good idea to do that. I don't know if it's a good idea to do that. I don't know if it's a good idea to do that. Detecting what the other players have out, not even necessarily attacking, but just their existence. I'm sure the load, the server strain is immense and likely it's not even that so much as the bandwidth demands. And in a raid, that's fine, but you can't get in a situation where someone loses, not because they've got the less, because they lost the rock, paper, scissors, but because their rock, paper, and scissors all got dumped to the loading screen or something like that. And the contests, you could say that the showcase is the contest. But again, it goes back to my problem and my desire to introduce the complexity of breeding, or if not, that's something else. The showcase, if the showcase is the enemy, then it's not the enemy, it's not the enemy. Or if not, that's something else. The showcase, if the showcase is the equivalent of the contests, it's the one button, one shot, one kill version of the contests. There's no way to improve or even play one of those damn rock, paper, scissors versions of things. It's just, it is here. Other people is here. You have biggest number, yay you. I've won, I've lost, and I don't care. The only reason why I even care at all at this point isn't even for the items, but just because I've got that idea of if you win 100 times, you get some sort of outfit that you can't get otherwise, which leads again to the necessity of bringing in side quests. People play games largely for the desire to prove that they can accomplish whatever the programmers have put in. There are some that don't have that kind of thing, like Minecraft, but largely games are played, not to wander off and do your own thing, but because there's something or other that is saying, or other that is saying, I'll bet you can't do this, and the human desire to say, oh yeah, but I can. And it doesn't work if it's not a programmer that's being fought against. You can have the PvP stuff, but at that point, it's not the same thing. I mean, right now, they've got the PvP. I've put a lot of effort into making some creatures that can face most situations, and I have no desire to wade into those waters, simply because at that point, there is so much chance involved, and I'm up against other people, not the computer. The computer. So victory means their defeat. If I win, it's because I got lucky, not because I was good. If they win, not only did I lose, I didn't just lose because I was unlucky, but I also lost time. So even victory is... so victory isn't great, and losing is more than just losing the... is more than just losing the round, it's losing time that I didn't want to lose. I'd rather go and sort through my creatures a little bit more. The only time that I've even tried to make any progress was when I was... was when the game said, well, you won't do that? Well then, I won't let you finish this meaningless research goal. At which point I said, well, fuck you, I'm going to do it anyway, even though I don't like it. And that's my point. I did that for no in-game purpose, except that it was there and they were saying I couldn't do it. Side quests are necessary because people want to say, fuck you, yes I can. If I had to win ten PVPs in order to make progress breeding something, I'd be a lot more likely to do it. I might even find that I enjoy it as long as certain conditions are met. I don't hold out hope for that, but it's possible. So you use that to push the stuff that either people don't know about, or that people aren't likely to do, but that's lucrative for you, indirectly. There is no reason for this not to exist, and many reasons for it to exist, including adding complexity to a game where all of the classic stuff has been watered down. Perhaps for practical reasons, but in a way that makes the current version the equivalent of trying to live off of nothing but Cheetos. To clarify about the Kamala, filler is necessary. You have to have filler. The reason why it's the target of so much ire is because it is because there are so many other fillers out there. Like, okay, here's an example, um, Weedle and Caterpie. If you go after, like, if you go after them, you can get, like, two evolutions. You can get a shiny version. You could get, you could get, you could be going after three shinies and maybe push them all up to their limits. They are all completely useless fillers. Almost all completely useless fillers. Mega Beedrill was earlier in my game one of the crucial ways that I was able to finally fucking beat that Giovanni guy by using its speed to break down the blocks. I don't use it as much, but I just don't want to say completely worthless and have that somehow disqualify the rest of my argument. My point is, there are so many fillers out there and so many fillers that don't get used, that when something gets used multiple times, it really becomes notable. Like, every week there is some piece of vendor trash. Some of them I even like, some of them I don't. But they keep happening. But every once in a while, a new one will show up, or one that I haven't seen in a while, and suddenly I will dislike the stuff that I've been seeing. Not because I disliked them before, but because I was just reminded that I keep getting these shoved in my face. When I just, if I have to have filler, I'd like to have a variety of filler. That's why Kamala is such a target. It's because it shows up everywhere. You can have an egg-only filler. Hell, I mean, I just popped out a bunch of Bonsleys and Azumarills and other things that I have absolutely no use for. But I was fine with it because I don't see them that often. They've just, it was such a glut that, like, for years, seeing a Kamala is going to just trigger a memory of not being able to avoid the little fuckers on a regular basis.

M: I think that expanding the hyper-training, it would be... I think that in brainstorming about expanding the hyper-training along the lines that I said, where you can do it multiple times, but only once in a particular line, or sub-line of species, and in a way that's time-limited. I think that if it were ever possible to persuade someone, I would recommend that they time the various stuff, so that if you are a truly serious player, you could hypothetically get an entire perfect roster complete in nothing less than, let's say... 10 years. I say that not because I feel like it's an ideal suggestion, but because you have to start somewhere. You want to make sure that you don't make things too easy. And honestly, I don't know enough about the fiddling mechanics that would be implemented to really start estimating the time it would take to accomplish tasks that haven't even been well-defined yet. So I would suggest they make it so that it only takes 10 years, and then look at what would be required over the course of those 10 years, and then, depending on how reasonably accomplishable and how quickly accomplishable with any kind of reasonability those things were, adjust either so that it takes longer or less effort to accomplish them. The point is, you need to make it so that you have at least enough time to develop a mechanic that makes things that allows for even further pursuit, or, at that point, the game would be nearly 20 years old. You let them have their massive roster and just show it off because they've spent 20 fucking years with the game, including 10 years trying to make this, this perfect set. I think that's important for the game developers to keep in mind, is what makes it so that World of Warcraft can continue. You let some people become masters of the universe. You let the guys who have put in the time and effort and destroyed their lives at least wear the armor of plus one infinity with optional pink bows. You make it hard to get there and then let them have it at least for a little while before you introduce the armor of infinity plus two. But you don't make it so that... But you do it in a way so that it's the people who actually put an almost self-damaging time into the game that can do it, not the people who can just throw money at the problem and solve it, which would be part of the 10-year gate idea. Part of the calculations would have to involve the concept that while you can use money to advance individual efforts, the efforts should be balanced out so that money is not the solution to everything. Because if money is the solution to everything, at that point you're not playing Pokemon Go. You're just buying pretty outfits. Which if that's what you want to do, go ahead. At that point you probably should just go on Amazon and start buying... At that point you should just start buying on Amazon a case of rats and some doll clothing and just start modifying that because you're going to have a lot more... At least something to show for it instead of just saying you own the biggest bit of all. Okay, that kind of trailed off in terms of making sense, but it was all in the same spirit. ... Yeah, with the 0.7, 2.3, 4.6 rule, I appreciate that you went through it, but what I was looking for wasn't a math explanation, but a way to quickly... Oh, okay. I see why you did that. But my request is going to still be relevant. I could use a quick way of describing this, both in terms of a linguistically smooth title or reference term for it and a way to briefly explain to someone whose eyes glaze over at math the reason why these three numbers matter. Let's see what we got here. Thank you for doing those calculations for me, though. Yeah, that's pretty close to what I was estimating there. And again, it proves my point and kind of depresses me because I'm looking at the creatures I have perfects of and it's not the fact that they exist, but man, I think I've got like 20 of these things. That means that, you know, as numbers get larger... I mean, it just means that if I've got, let's say I've got 20 of them and I've had completely average luck or something like that, wouldn't that mean that I've spent the time to catch at least like... 60 thousandths of these little bastards? The numbers might be a little bit off on there. If you can catch it quickly and explain it without a couple pages of numbers, I'd be interested to know, but the underlying point is wow, that really throws into sharp relief exactly how much time I've wasted on this game that if an EMP hit the right place, would suddenly not exist at all. Phew. Wow, darkness wakes around every corner, doesn't it? So far I see two clarifications. One, the minimum IV floor should be equivalent to the RAID at that 10 or something. The way you said it makes it seem like the upper limit should still be below the RAID level. That's all. It might have just been a linguistic anomaly or something like that. The site pacification... I like the way that you put it with the short-lived nest state. With the one modification that it might be necessary if just to keep in with the idea of there being the breeding center in the various Pokémon. You don't just set up a route. Although it would be nice if it were possible to cause it to be developed in less populated areas so that they're not excluded simply due to isolation. But base the nesting area around designated locations like some stops that aren't gyms or maybe even any stop that isn't a gym qualifies as the center of a temporary breeding area. With the in-game explanation being like you can't do it at a gym because there's people always coming and going and it would disturb the various breeding pairs. But that every PokéStop is now equipped with a breeding shed. You'd need a better name than that of course just because shed sounds... That makes it sound not just sexual but filthy sexual. But yeah, just a breeding adjunct or something like that where Pokémon can chill until a stork brings the egg or however you want to hand wave it so that kids don't realize that fucking occurs. But the point is it's not just a is that it's centered preferably in a way that's around a stop. Although I would love a having a logic ...leap that allowed people to centralize their reading area around their house while still attaching it to a definite place on the map. Let's see, just to be specific, the hatch requirements should be, not that it shouldn't just be themed, but if possible, kind of really well-themed for lack of a more elegant way of putting it at the moment. Like, if you bred together two cats or something to try and accomplish something because there's a higher probability of getting something when the two parents are cats, then you have to do something cat-related. I'm sorry, I'm kind of distracted, so all of my examples are kind of like real cats and lend themselves to things like licking themselves or burying poop. But yeah, it's not just supposed to be straight-themed, but in the same way that I was talking about categorizing the probabilities according to what is being combined, the requirements also would start being sculpted by those possibilities. There can be combinations that don't fall into any of the special categories. In fact, maybe there should be, just kind of the, if you're not going to put the work into it, then you have a chance of basically dropping out a level A000 Woobat, even though you put together two things that were much more useful. But most things should have, and in that case, then the requirements should have a generic component. But if we started shaping things, then there's no reason not to shape the results, even if there is some overlap. And perhaps just as importantly, the requirements should be related to the parents, not in whatever it is that comes out. In number five, the throughput caps, I'm sorry if I wasn't more specific about this, because it's a complex circumstance, I didn't mean to say only one active breeding project at a time, but I was saying only one, there's multiple stages to the breeding process, and there can only be one of those processes going through at a time until the actual breeding is going on, because the time variance in producing an egg would make that kind of synchronizing impossible. But if there are two to four steps before you can get to the part where the breeding even begins, then you can have someone at each stage being progressed through only stopped when they reach the point that they can proceed to the next stage, but you haven't finished that already. So that there can always be an ongoing process, and I feel like this is important. One, because we're not trying to make a paper superstar here, by which I mean you don't want to create any situation where someone waits for where someone waits for two months, it's over, and what they've got is a skinny with decent stats. You want to make it so that if something goes wrong, then there's incentive to keep trying, because you've already got the projects going on, and that counts both in terms of game psychology, and if you're arguing this to someone at the company, in terms of maintaining continuity. You don't want it to have, you don't want the process of breeding to have a start and end. In the games, I can't remember, could you drop off multiple versions? But that was playing solo. You want people to keep coming back. That's part of the game design philosophy thing. You want people to keep coming back. So you don't want a bad roll, a bad luck failure to create a situation in which they can decide just to scrap their whole effort without considering whether or not they want to stop the rest of their projects. You want to make it as easy as possible when things go the way that they don't want, for them to say, well, at least this cleared out this nest. I've got another nest ready to go. Everything else is ready to go. Let's pop those all into their next things and start working on the next one. Does that make sense? And the per species cap, you got confused there. The one per species, or in the case of creatures that have them, subspecies like the various branches of the Ponyta evolution. That's the one that had the per species cap. Because you don't want someone who starts with nine years of resources to say, holy fuck, this is my opportunity, and suddenly have an entire roster of, you know, let's say, six perfect, six perfect curums, or something like that. So you hold it to the possibility of hyper breeding, or sorry, not breeding, that's that was the problem you had. You can only hyper train one member of each species or subspecies, because, you know, if we're going to do this, we might as well let people have both a perfect Espeon and Umbreon. But with limitation, you got the two confused, that has nothing to do with breeding. You want to be able to train perfect thing, perfect members of everything. But only one at any time in each species. And the reason why I keep saying it that way is that if for some reason you want to trade it, or if you get a shiny version of one that you've already hyper trained, you can then transfer or trade that one that was perfect, and then bring this one up. And this doesn't preclude the possible and this doesn't include any kind of naturally occurring perfect ones, by the way. So you can have like three perfects, but only one of them can be artificially produced. I appreciate the effort to make the idea of monetization concrete with the idea of a breeder's permit. And I don't even disagree with it. I just think that it needs more placement and to be put in the right context. Like, everyone can perform that one task on each of the steps once. Like, there can be one of those going on each time until you've got them breeding the egg, at which point it takes, you know, a week to maybe even two months, depending on the rarity of what you're doing. The breeder's permit, I'm not sure how to implement it because, in terms of monetization, I don't dislike the idea if you have to make it to get the corporate side to buy in anyway. But I think that it should be free to do the first, and then, as a first draft, while I'm chewing on it, I'm thinking that, in the same way that they currently have a season ticket or something like that, you can purchase a monthly breeding permit that allows for a second breeding path to be opened. So, you know, you start a second version of the first step, and then you have a second version of the second step going in parallel. And then either you renew at the end of the month, or, if you let it run out, you can finish off that parallel part. You can finish off everything that's there, but you can't start a parallel thing again until you renew your breeder's permit. This is the accountant thing that I was talking about. We don't want there to be the potential for abuse due to throwing money and statistics at it. We don't want a situation where someone can buy 16 of the damn things, and then hire someone to accomplish each of the tasks for each of those 16 things. That sounds silly, but you know someone with money and parents who don't pay attention to their credit card would try it. But that was a good way to start it and kind of demonstrative of why I always think that there need to be at least two voices in a conversation just to make sure that nothing gets left out or thrown into the mix raw and unvetted. Okay, reading through in a linear fashion. I'm looking, you can see from what I was just arguing that the project cooldown thing would be unnecessary. Because it's supposed to be an ongoing cycle, if that's what you want to do. It should smoothly be, it should be able to be smoothly ended if you want to stop doing the breeding thing. And perhaps it might even be necessary to introduce some sort of timeout or cancellation situation so that it doesn't become a permanently hanging reminder of something that the player doesn't want to do in the reminder column. I'm thinking of the inability to retrieve your creatures from a gym at this point. I think I lost a particular shiny Persian for nine months or something because I left it in a gym that evidently is kind of obscure. Frustrating on a few levels. Let's see what else we've got. Oh, and with the paying for the second thing, a way that you could entice people for the capitalists at an appropriate time in spring may be tied into another event. Give everyone a free month of breeding permits. You know, something like spring is here, let's fuck, only phrased nicely. I don't want to be absolute about the legendary breeding things. I just think that if it were ever rolled out, the first phase, the one in which you see what rules you forgot as the way too involved people find exploits that are obvious in hindsight, but you never would have thought of in a million years, and let them do that before you start even thinking about allowing for legendaries. And if you ever do allow it, it might be better to make it so that it's tied to events rather than possessions. Perhaps even in a way that all but the most newcomers could easily participate in. Like, instead of having to have two people with the legendary, which can only breed during that event or that month-long event or something, the chances might be a little bit lower, but you make it so that the newcomer can prepare anything of the appropriate type, preferably of a higher rarity, to change things. And then after some kind of... if they carry it with to a raid encounter with the legendary in question, then somehow, in a way that doesn't sound like sperm harvesting, as long as you've done the prep work for it, it starts a breeding cycle that has an egg which, while not guaranteed, or even perhaps, or depending on how we're working with it, if hypothetically it has been determined that it's okay for breeding two of the same species of Pokemon together, there's going to be a hundred percent chance of getting that same kind as an egg. If that's the case, then this random encounter version, depending on rarity, would have like a 70 or a 50 percent chance of hatching as the legendary. And I don't know how much of the idea of the mythic project you pulled from what I was saying and how much came out of just random connections on your end. But that's not a bad idea, but it's also kind of a vapor at this point. Again, you'd want to have a primary beta version instance of this to work out how people would exploit it in ways you didn't know about. And as it worked out, and as things were adjusted, then you'd introduce the direct legendary thing I was talking about. And if I've got it right, the mythic is like above legendary, right? So yeah, at that point, I kind of like the idea of a mythic project either directly attempting to create in a way that anyone can get to, or, and this is, you know, anyone can get to it if they really want to, is an important part. What I meant was, you can make the direct version, or you can make it so that it's kind of a pyramid, like the word project implies. First, you breed two, maybe you don't even make it obvious. I mean, the internet means that any code is going to be either quickly broken or impossible to break. So complexity doesn't necessarily win you any friends there, but you make it so that the actual process isn't necessarily 100%. What's the word I'm looking for? Explicit. Like you say, breed, first you have to breed foul fare or air. And it turns out what, and if someone just wants to screw around, they can probably get there fairly easily. But it turns out that what it means is, the first step is you have to breed a bird of any quality, a fairy type of any quality, and a flying type of any quality. And if you manage to get out, like, I don't know, if there's any flying fairy types that are birds. But if you do that, you've accomplished the entire thing. Or you just go out and you make a ducklet, a Clefairy. Wait, those are normal, aren't they? You see where I'm going with that, though. And then you make that into an actual project. Something where you can start building multiple areas through breeding in a way that's explicit, but also a challenge and allows for a little bit of creativity on the part of those who enjoy that. Or a demonstration of breeding mechanic knowledge for those people who understand exactly what they want, have exactly what they need, and can pop out that flying fairy bird in the first two days or something like that. We've already talked about this once before, but just to clarify, the outcome floor is never perfect. We don't want anything more perfect than raid, so the floor caps out at 10. You can get a perfect, but you aren't, but there's no way to guarantee it. It's certainly not in the first phase, when we're still working on those exploit ideas. Maybe later on you can introduce it as some element of an event, one that's appropriate and involves... I don't know. Maybe Team Rocket has become genetic breeding assholes, and the only way to counteract it is by following 10 tasks that allow you to eventually pop out a perfect Mew, or something like that. Or, probably better off to keep everyone from suddenly having the equivalent of Nuclear Bomb in their pocket. Although, as I understand it, the appeal of Mew is the ability to use any move not in its core strength, so that example might not be a great one. But you make it so that you can pop out something perfect, but the quality isn't necessarily assured unless you fulfill some less widely broadcast goals. And even then, it's still random whether or not you're going to get one. Like, maybe hypothetically, I'm doing this because I'm using this as an example because it's one of the groups that I know. You're going to get either a perfect Raikou, Entai, or Suicine, but you can't tell which. And again, just to make sure that I got this through clearly, the species tier, based on the rarity and whatever, you can have in the breeding process any number of those going on at once. It might be necessary to, depending on how we define the center of the nest area, it might be necessary to make it so that that is different for each one, but once you've got it going, then it's self-contained. So if you had, let's say, I'm just spitballing here. We might not even be using the exact tiers as defined by the current setup. We might need to introduce more just because... Let's not worry about that right now. What I'm saying is, if right now you were to say that there are five tiers of Pokémon, you could hypothetically start a Tier 5, one that would take a month or two. Then you say Tier 4 takes maybe 75% of that, so that one takes a month. Tier 3 takes three weeks. Tier 2 takes two weeks. Tier 1 takes one week. In that hypothetical, in that system, you could hypothetically have at least five eggs going at any one time, maybe more. This is one of the reasons why there would be that first experimental phase because I'm sure this one particularly could be worked out by hand, but there are so many chaotic elements in any kind of release like that, that preventing all errors is a maddening if not impossible effort. So we're just going to go with... We're not going to try and figure it out, but the point is that for clarity, once the egg is breeding, the one occupant of each step thing is done. You can have as many breeding pairs going as you want, as long as you've worked out how to get to the point where the breeding happens. So I think that's the last emphasis on that. There do need to be some matchup limitations, if just to avoid ridiculous combos. If you look online, I think you can probably find some reference to an old Hot Wailord on Skitty Action meme. That kind of points out what we're trying to avoid. Although, given the nature of Pokemon, people, maybe it gets left in. I mean, avoiding the topic is going to draw as much attention to it as leaving it there. So there might be some practical limitations. Although, even as I think about it, the fact that we've got a bunch of seahorses sometimes in the middle of Prairieland USA says realistic is kind of subjective at this point. The elemental bias rules are just one way to start subcategorizing things. And I'm actually kind of amused that you think of it as being... The way you phrase it makes it seem like it's almost a negative. It might not be a positive, but it's definitely a limiting factor. I mean, if with one combination you could... You would have the possibility of getting any kind of Pokemon with a normal type. But with the appropriate combination, like the normal fire and normal grass type, you could then reduce the number of possible results. Suddenly you'd be in a situation where you had greater control over what you got. It might even be that we kind of start defining things first by type combinations, either in an additive or subtractive way. Like, maybe have a few creatures where they won't be bred if you have... You know how I was saying that if you breed two of the same type, you should expect to get that type back? Well, then make that not quite universal. Make it so that there's a type where if you breed just electrics, you won't get it. Where if you just breed just poison types, you won't get it. But if you breed an electric and a poison, that's the only way to get this particular electric poison. And then the probability is increased if both of them are electric poison, even if they aren't the same species. I'm not sure how viable that is, but you see where I'm going with it. It creates more complexity, but does so in a way that armchair quarterbacks can look at and say, oh, okay, yeah, that makes sense. And then once we've done that, then the probability pools can also be altered by... I'm not sure exactly how to phrase this, but individual or group dynamics. Like the easy version would be in the previous example. I don't think these exist exactly, so it's just hypothetical. But if you were to say that there's a subtype of cat, I think that that actually is a thing in Pokemon. You could say there's subcategories outside of element, like the bird type Pokemon or the marshmallow type Pokemon. I'm not sure exactly what they're calling them, but... So you make it so that it adds a spin to probabilities, like with the previous example, the electric poison. If that type you're trying to produce is also a cat type, then it increases the probability further by having the electric type and the poison type that are the parents both be cat type, even if they aren't of the same species. Complexities like that. I mean, once you get to this point, this is where you throw it open for the developers to start making suggestions. Take everyone's suggestions and then start weeding out the bad ones while you consolidate the good ones. Maybe make a few that are precisely targeted towards one Pokemon in a combination that only makes sense after the fact. Like, I don't know. You put that building beaver Pokemon with one of the... What is it, a Bibarel or something like that? And between the two of them, they create... I'm spitballing here, so forgive me if this is either really stupid or really obvious, because that's not my point. It's that it's supposed to be kind of a separate secret. But put those two together, and I don't know. They produce, let's say... A higher tier something or other that only makes sense when you realize that the reason why it hatched that way is because the two of them together built a dam. That kind of thing. Where the previous rules would not lead to this result, but in hindsight, that specific exception actually makes sense. I hadn't thought about it that way, but I'm glad you tied it into the worthless or disappointing Pokemon idea. Creatures that don't, through the implicit rules, suddenly acquire the ability to provide breeding possibilities that are difficult to find elsewhere. The things that were thought of as disappointing can be given those explicit pairings or groups of pairings that allow them to have a purpose besides taking up space. With the hypothetical tier system I defined, maybe the only way to get a particular... Tier 4 variation, or even some kind of Tier 5 near-legendary, is not by combining two Tier 5s and hoping, but by putting an appropriate Tier 5 with a shuckle, with the justification being that the variation required the rock coating only a shuckle could provide. That kind of thing. Even if the end it turns out this isn't a good idea in itself, I think the potential of complexity could keep the breeding system going and distract everyone from the idea that it's a one-note grind-a-thon just by adding the complexity levels to the point that anyone who does like it can tell anyone who says they don't like it to shut up because they haven't tried all of it yet. I mean that's cynical but I'd like to try and cover all my bases and in the event that this isn't the silver bullet to fix what's considered wrong by a lot of people with Pokemon Go, that is at least a bronze bullet that will make sure that it can keep going while someone else figures out the silver bullet. I mean just the added... what's the term I'm looking for? Like we're going beyond complexity and into chaos with this system by which I mean depending on how well the rules for what increases or decreases probability of breeding one thing or another work out. A relatively small number of simple rules could create a breeding system in which unless you directly calculate what any given pair is going to do, you can't reasonably predict with 100% certainty what will come out of the egg. I mean you won't even be able to reasonably predict the probabilities of what comes out of the egg.

M: If we're being honest, it wouldn't fix the luck-wins feeling. It would modify it to luck and persistence, or maybe persistence and luck. It's one of those things about humanity that I don't even know if I would call it a sad thing or possibly even a positive thing. Partly because it's not really directly related to survival. But luck is almost required as an element in most games. Now often that luck comes down to whether or not the player themselves is having a good day, but it's still luck. Anything that is purely skill-based either becomes a niche game or even a sport. At which point that personal bad day stuff becomes a professional element and not really the same as the luck of video games. But my point is that when I say it's a modification I don't mean that as a necessarily negative thing. The point is that it adds the persistent element to something where people can start to feel like only the dice determine whether or not they're having a good day. You need to be able to keep rolling those dice in a way that can provide progress. Actually make a side note of that for the breeding process. It would be nice if we could make introduce something that allows for improvement through persistence. Like, you know, make it one of those medals that actually does something to the results instead of just sitting there looking pretty. Maybe even a couple of those like a breeding in general and then one for each tier of things that gets involved as a parent and then one for what comes out. And maybe each of those only adds a little. But I recently saw someone do calculations and, you know, and from their results they said that in in the catching process if you put everything together correctly suddenly even though they're each piece of the effort does a small part in the end your probability of making the catch can go up by like ten times or more. We want the same thing only in this case to the point that if you get a lot of experience at it, if you figure things out, maybe add a couple catches in there to make sure that someone isn't just brute-forcing things so that the advancement isn't complete without understanding what you're doing. Then make it so that some of these special combinations become almost guaranteed as long as they have the experience and the right circumstances and whatever so that it can be turned into almost a factory but only if you've proven that you know how to run the factory. It's a place to start, but it doesn't really flow. If we're modifying from the numbers in there anyway, I'd call it the 723-46 rule. Even if the definition is 70, 230, and 460, that's a lot of syllables for someone trying to keep track of something. It doesn't quite flow off the tongue. I'll take another suggestion if you've got it. If you've got one that does flow better and is either more directly accurate or somehow describes the situation without necessarily including the number. For the sake of argument, I mean that literally, not rhetorically. It's in case it ever comes up in an argument. One kind of meta-philosophy that applies to any elements of the breeding project is that if something is modified, you can allow people benefits from certain things, like monetization or perhaps other things, but it should never penalize someone for something that may be out of their control. I thought of that when you were talking about the nesting idea. Your rephrasing isn't inaccurate, I'm just not sure if it's the final version of what should be presented, but it made me think of this. Whatever method there is used to define the center of a nesting area, no one should be penalized for not being able to fulfill something because of the location on a map that wasn't defined by them. Now, if someone is fortunate enough to live exactly next door to a breeding stop or something, well, you can't try and penalize them for that. You can't try and take that away from them. They got that benefit, but people start to dislike things when it seems like benefits, especially monetization, have gone beyond being an extra and instead is causing them penalties. It's a fine distinction, but one that needs to be kept in mind in any argument in this conversation. Thank you. I'm not sure exactly how I said it the first time through, but the point I was trying to make with the hyper training across the Pokedex board wasn't that the whales should get any extra speed in the specifics, or they might be able to get some speed in the specifics by what they do, but the training regimen should, by its nature, put at least some, if not a balancing, breaking effect on it. I don't know if it would be possible, but in an ideal world, the randomizing algorithm would start taking into account someone who, every time there was a progress effort that someone could conceivably buy their way through, they finished it much faster in terms of expected real-time compared to the ones where there was no shortcut. In that case, they would start drawing more often the tedious goals, or, I mean, we're trying not to make anything tedious, so that might be the wrong way of putting it, but the more time-consuming goals that didn't have any possibility of shortcut rather than purely random generation. And with the hyper training, that one might be a situation where it stays the same as right now in the terms of you can only have one. There can be only one hyper training at any one time. Now, computer modeling or, you know, review of how things happened in practice after the first hyper training might lead to a modification of that, but I can't see that being the same kind of open system. Actually, there really aren't many comparable things. Closest thing they've got is the eggs. Yeah, we don't want people having nine hyper trainings going on at once unless you're sure that doing so won't lead to someone a year from when it starts having an utter death camp of perfectly genetically engineered soldiers. Oh, yeah, just in just a quick, I forgot about this, but wanted to mention it. Yeah, the breeding thing. Shedinja definitely should get a moment in the sun somehow. Maybe not for the ultra perfect creation, but maybe as another one of those items, another one of those additions to a breeding pair that's necessary for some highly desirable, if not as powerful Tier 3 or Tier 4 creature, maybe even Tier 5. And then definitely included should that mythical project ever come about. Yeah, I'm looking at this, and there's one part that you have maybe completely misunderstood. The HT attempts should not be gated by anything except user decision to start, although the number of times they can start is limited to one at first until we figure out if there's a higher number that's possible. So, like, I finished my Garchomp, like, a month ago. I might have made a bad choice with which one to check, but I like him. Anyway, under the rules that I'm visualizing, at that point, I could either have taken a couple days off of having the pressure of the hyper-training going, or just not given a crap, taken a couple days to decide who I wanted to work on next, or whatever. But as soon as I had decided who I wanted to start work on, I should have been able to start. I would have been able to start on that immediately. So not limited by when or whatever. I don't think this is even at the level of the breeding hypothesis where you are allowed to purchase a breeding permit to allow more than one. You should only get one hyper-training as far as I can tell right now at the moment. Like I said, you don't want people creating super-soldiers just because they were able to make a purchase and perhaps, I don't know if you would count this as a parallel or something where you say also or what. You want to give all of the high-level people a chance to race to be the first one to complete the task. So you don't want them to be able to have the time that it takes to get there. And if someone is level 50, they thought they had everything that they wanted and only played occasionally now. If you want them to come back in, you don't want them to come back in like two or three days later than when this started. Realize they want to start and then simultaneously realize they were already behind the power curve because people had already bought the extra training slot or whatever and were already ahead of the race. I mean, I figure once they reach level 50, they have a competitive and maybe somewhat OCD spirit already. If you want to draw them back in in a way that doesn't seem evil, you have to make it so that the race is a fair one. Hell, maybe even fold that into the idea. Make checkpoints and posts for... I mean besides a medal. Maybe this one doesn't mean anything besides bracking rights, but have checkpoints that say congratulations, 10% of your Pokédex has a qualifying hyper-trained juggernaut. And then add kind of maybe even publicize variations in what's possible and what's likely in those hyper-training efforts to make it so that they can start planning around their lives, especially if they have been playing for nine years and currently are in the middle of also establishing themselves in their given profession. Something that lets them optimize for their lifestyle like, I don't know, maybe make it so that it takes about the same amount of time to hyper-train something that is that only has 30 out of 45 stat points. With more low-key frequency, low-key but more tasks, as opposed to I want to get my 42 out of 45 stat creature up to perfect. Make it so that it doesn't take quite as much time, but doing it would require more effort on those two or three, I guess in this case, on those three tasks. And in doing so, allow players, especially the high-level ones, who if I saw correctly are going to be starting to make the crawl up to level 80 anyway, give them a way to decide whether they're going to low-key but frequently try and upscale a otherwise trash version of their favorite ducklet. Or if they want to get this done quickly, but if they're going to do it quickly, they're going to have to jump higher hurdles than the people who are just kind of meandering. I just thought of something that could change the rules a little bit of the site pacification idea. First of all, don't stop saying it's located at a Pokestop, but keep in mind, you know, just for clarity of speech, but keep in mind that we're not married to that as being the definite place that the nest gets centered. One possibility, make it so that you can define where you want the breeding spot to be, but each breeding spot needs to be sponsored by a different Pokestop. I think that might need some refinement for the people who are rural, so maybe it changes to something like one Pokestop can sponsor a certain number per square mile or something. Make it so that if there's only one spot in 10 miles, that spot can sponsor all of the stops. But if you're living somewhere where there's like five per block, then you have to, you know, jump through a little bit more of a hoop. Actually, make it a little bit more difficult for someone who's in a urban setting. Anyway, we'll work that aspect out later. The point I was getting to is that when you say a short-lived nest state, it might need to be able to exist until the player cancels it, but only be usable for one of the Pokemon that they've prepared. My thought was this. Let's say that someone is trying to do a cooperative breeding with someone, only they disappear, they ghost, or maybe they're just someone that they don't even know but had decided to start breeding with through the friends list. I've got quite a few people on there that I've met through, quote-unquote, met through adding after a raid but don't know who they personally are. So let's say that that breeding gets canceled. You don't want to be discouraging by preventing the preparation already done from being used, but you can add in... I'm trying to think of a word that's not penalty-based. I'm trying to think of a word that's not penalty, but once you've added in a second personal one, that nest can continue to exist while you do the prep work for the second Pokemon of your own. So that needs to be changed from short-lived to something that means lives per instance. So if the cooperation falls down and the person says, well fuck this, I've got no use for this guy with the things that I have, they can drop the nest. But if they say, well I can do this on my own, they need to be able to have time to prep the second Pokemon of their own and leave the nest intact until then. The hatch requirements should scale based on the tier of the parents, and if it's a mixed set of tiers, draw from a list built from both of them. So if you're just trying to get a get the hang of this and decide to stick a Rotata and a Pidgey together, then those requirements shouldn't be anything but something like um, for each of them you need to catch five Pokemon, five of the current specialty Pokemon. So like, if the Flabébé event was going on, even though it's for two normal types, you would need to catch five Flabébés. Or, if they kept going, if they hadn't finished it and it switched over to that week where Staryu's were everywhere, then they can catch Staryu's and keep up their progress. And then, once the egg is formed, that same kind of particular scaling can approach. I mean, with tier ones, even if they can, incidentally, you can't change the requirements based on what comes out. So you can't give a clue that even though you put two tier ones in, suddenly a tier three is going to come out. Hell, it might even be best if the system doesn't know what's going to come out until the requirements are filled. But anyway, if you're working with two tier ones, then the extra requirement should, again, maybe... Hell, we could even make it related to the prep work requirements. Like, if you needed to catch five of the current favorite Pokemon to prepare, then you need to catch ten in order to hatch. That part doesn't matter, but the fact that it's scaled to work with the parentage does matter. And if it's a cross-tier kind, there might be two requirements in order to hatch it. You know, like the way that I just combined the two tier ones into a second thing, maybe have for each tier a list of potential combinations. So, like, a tier one plus a tier four. If you don't do two separates, instead it becomes... I think it would have to be more difficult than this for a tier four, but just for a set of examples. Not just catch ten of the current favorites, but catch them all with an excellent throw. And then when you go up to tier two, it turns into something like... I don't know. Capture and spin the Pokestop of a gym. Which I guess in this case would be a combination of, you know, spin X Pokestops and for the tier four, get a victory over someone. This is the kind of thing that's going to require a broad amount of brainstorming. I'm not even going to try because it's going to need, like, a bunch of suggestions. But I think I've made my point in that it needs to be scaled for each parent, both for the prep work and for the hatching. The economy hooks look good. The only modification I would make, it's not because you screwed up, it's just because I've been thinking about it for the last couple minutes. If this were ever pitched to someone and they said they needed more of a monetization, one thing that could be offered would be a harvest time celebration, which again sounds dirty, but what are you gonna do? We're talking about breeding. But the point is, maybe, like, as a partner to the spring breeding grounds thing, we create a situation in which a third track can be purchased for the month of October or something like that. I haven't gotten improvement or a modification. I just want you to keep in mind, especially if I ask you to do a quick summary or something like that, that in the same way we're not married to the idea of locking the nesting sites to a Pokestop. It's just kind of a placeholder for whatever the final more flexible idea is. This idea of there being five tiers is also just a placeholder to use to demonstrate the idea and not a 100% concept in its details. It's certain in its generic ideas, but the details still need to be ironed out. So neither you nor anyone else should start planning around the certainty of there being five tiers, only that there will be multiple tiers and challenges will increase as that happens, as you go up or down. Same thing with the hatch duration. Those were numbers I pulled out of my ass. They don't look bad, but they are negotiable. I feel like it's important to clarify with the element bias rules that it's not a case-by-case thinking basis, where we have to define everything individually. Like, with what I was saying about the... I'm going to have to think this through, because there's some special stuff that could never happen if you strictly followed these rules before taking into account anything else. But the base idea with the normal fire and normal grass, meaning that the result would not be anything that was normal grass because fire is strong against grass, that's not specific. That would mean that any element that was bred with something that was strong against it would neutralize that element and remove it from the pool of possibilities. So, if you were to... let me think this through so I can give an example. So, if you were to breed a creature with water-ground elements... let's see here... Okay, first of all, just listening to what I said, the neutralization only goes in terms of the parent. So, with a water-ground creature, their personal possession of water would not neutralize their own ground element. … Okay, that helped me explain the part about the parent, but let's look at another example to explain about the neutralization thing. First of all, this rule at least is subtractive, not additive. That is, unless some prior rule prevents this general rule from applying, like one of those special combinations that supersede the general rules in order to produce a particular outcome. Unless one of those applies, the application of this rule only removes possibilities from the probability pool. So it's not like you build what's possible from this rule. And the definition of the rule is that if the parent possesses an element that the other parent—I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this simply—if each parent has one or two elements, if one parent possesses an element that is strong against an element of the other parent, then the second parent's element is neutralized and anything containing that is removed from the pool. And this applies simultaneously, so the removal of one does not preclude that element removing the second element from the first parent. So as a practical example, if you breed a creature that is a fighting and ghost type with a creature that is only a dark type, because the first parent is fighting, it neutralizes any dark possibilities in the breeding pool. But because it's simultaneous, or doesn't take it away from the second parent, the fact that they have a dark element neutralizes any possibility of a ghost type coming out of the pool. So that would be applied basically at the end, I guess. This is one of those things that needs to be worked out further, but as a rule, it probably should be included somewhere after everything else has been added to or subtracted from. And then, of course, the pool would have to be readjusted so that the probabilities all added up to one, but that's another thing. That's a programming detail. While I think that should definitely be applied, oh, and with the default of if everything gets burned to the ground, then it just defaults to normals and normals only. I don't know how that would happen, I'm just saying that you can't have no element. Except maybe we could always introduce a joke one, like a tight null, but that's for later thought. And even then, you wouldn't want to actually create a possibility of having a pool with nothing in it. All right, anyway. But yeah, where I was going to go from there, besides emphasizing that my point was the fire removing grass thing was not a specific, it's supposed to be a universal rule, which is kind of what I was saying about the chaos in that you can't be certain what you're going to get with what probability until you put specifics through the formula. What I wanted to say beyond that is that all of these specifics are kind of up for grabs. Like the subtype affinities seem like a good idea, but it would need a group kind of arguing for and against to really nail down what that did or how much effect to the results it would have. Would it be an absolute addition of, like, if you have a pool of 20 things, but you add a cat affinity, does that mean that each of those cat possibilities gets a 20% uptick in their possibilities? Or does the base probability get multiplied by 120% and everything else gets reduced in order to compensate? Or what? I'm not exactly sure about the exact numbers here. And that's what I mean by everything is up for debate, up for grabs. Because the methodology hasn't been worked out, only the categories of what can be what could be applied and even those are not necessarily entirely complete. There could be other things like the secret recipes, I have no idea that could even be something where there's, you know, a event based thing or a time of year or something like that. Like, every year between July and September, because we're in the waning part of, you know, the summer equinox, suddenly Solrock and Lunatone, when put together, produce Lunana or whatever the hell it was called. You see what I'm saying? The secret recipes are more of a concept than specifics right now. You're right about the not guaranteeing perfects though. You got that exactly right, that's simple. Once you've incorporated anything that I've said, I actually was going to ask you to come up with an elevator pitch for the hyper-training expansion and then separately an elevator pitch for the breeding program. I call it an elevator pitch, but you can use a little bit more than the 30 seconds or so. Just give it to me in a fashion that you could use to sell someone on it who only had a vague idea of what Pokémon Go even is. Because I'm assuming that anyone who could make any kind of money choice wouldn't be necessarily invested in the game itself. You could even make an argument that some choices are better made by someone who doesn't give a shit about the gameplay. Not many arguments, but some.

M: Let's go with the whimsical gates of luck, or the long version, the numbered gates of luck, period. Or if you're in a bad mood, or just in a bad mood. Failed your 4.6x time rolling the dice, comma, maybe the gates of despair. I'm not sure if it's possible or advisable, but while I don't think with the general rules, I think there's only one of those at the moment, but I don't think that there's any existing combination of parents that could zero out the breeding pool, but I'm not sure about that. Is there any way for you to go online and check the Strengths and Weaknesses chart and say if there's any combination of multi-element parents that could cancel out all the elements if we follow that subtractive rule for breeding? Sorry if I'm sounding a little goofy. I'm hitting my energy limit. I need to rest and get a little bit more. I'd say you don't understand that, but at least through this portal, I've had to charge my phone enough to know that there's probably an equivalent. So far, if I was going to make any modification to the elevator pitch for hyper training, it would be trying to say both things at once for the long arc. I appreciate the phrasing, by the way. I understand exactly what you're saying. You're doing well with that, but it's... when you said something to live in, not sprint, that triggered a thought in me. It's that it's not an either-or. You're giving some... you're giving a long-term goal to live in, but at the same time letting the sprinters sprint, the joggers jog, and the people who don't want to run can just go off and do raids. I think the previous conflation of the two ideas has come back to haunt us. Under the guardrails, you can take out the, for the hyper-training, the never-guarantee 15-15-15 part. That's the whole point. You get to get one guy up to 15-15-15. That's part of the breeding thing. Remember, this is supposed to be a pitch to a board member or some other corporate person, so you're allowed to be a little bit more pro-money than pro-gamer. I'm not saying you have to lay it on thick, and taking any of the pro-gamer stuff out would only add an air of disingenuity to anything you said. I'm just talking about minor tweaks, such as when you did the what-it-is for the breeding pitch, maybe add something along the lines of, or change it to, a multistage co-op optional system that adds persistence and learning to the current luck-only model without eliminating the luck element, which allows the sale of various items to narrow the gap caused by luck. Change the phrasing because that was a hell of a run-on sentence on my part, but I hope that helps you see what I'm saying. We're trying to sell this to someone who doesn't necessarily care as much about the gamer experience as we do in the particular, only that they keep trying to feed their gaming habit to their benefit. You don't have to shape everything to cater to it, but shaping statements to acknowledge the profitability isn't a horrible idea for the intended audience. You're still missing some element of it in terms of where the annex is when. I'm not quite sure what you mean by the once-per-season thing. It's supposed to be an ongoing idea, so the idea of once-per-season isn't compatible with that. The rural-friendly thing, though, once we've got that cleared up, that should be emphasized, because while it might not be as much, you want a universal base, and you don't want people to stop playing because they feel excluded. I mean, from where I live, if you drive 15 minutes north, west, or south, you can hit an area which is essentially rural for the purposes of this game. I think would it I would include to the PM slash exec part or I would fold into what you already have which is good let's see what how was it exactly it was that the always-on goals pull people back daily while the element of self control of those goals gives them a good degree of what's the word I'm looking for self actuation might be close to it it lets them it gives them enough freedom of choice that even bad luck won't prevent them from continuing the way that timed and forced efforts would a person using this will be able to come back and continue when in a similar stage station sit not station situation where they weren't able to control the goals they might simply walk away from the game entirely Finally, I don't know where you would work this into a layman you were trying to sell the idea to, but the whole reason why I started down this thought experiment lane is because one of the major complaints about the game is its hyper simplicity, if I have that right. This may not be a golden cash cow in the short term, perhaps not even in the long term, but it's a silver or at least a bronze in that it fills in a necessary gaming gap which, if untreated, could gradually remove the viability of the program while adding this, while it might be a programming chore, will round out the situation, round out the gaming menu of this program to allow it to continue smoothly without too much fuss and even attracting back some people because the mechanism being used is one of the classic Pokemon processes. Damn it, I missed the word, but you know where I'm going with that. So, any game effect should be minimal if implemented correctly and will allow the game to continue for another nine years without having people walk away simply because they feel like they've done everything the game has to offer. And importantly, it would give, especially now that they're increasing the level 50 to the level 80, it would give the returning level 50 players something to focus on while pursuing the new highest level that wasn't just putting fresh eyes onto the game and perhaps realizing that they didn't want to go through the same degree of repetition they already thought they had left behind when getting to level 50. Okay, take all of that in and then turn what you just called an elevator pitch for each of them into two separate actual elevator pitches. Like, give me the script that you would hypothetically use if you had those 30 to 60 seconds from when the guy said he was listening until he made it to the door of his office.

M: I'm glad I asked because your answer shows you're not quite grasping the entire point of the rule. Okay, let's try again from scratch. Let's start with a system in which any Pokémon that is at its lowest evolution can be in an egg, excluding the legendary and mythical versions. Anything else can be in an egg in its lowest evolutionary form. That's this hypothetical pool. Now, onto this pool, each time there is one rule applied based on the element types of the parent. As before the egg... Oh, and to clarify, in that pool, without any other rules or modifiers for this hypothetical version, each Pokémon is equally likely to come out. So you could get a Rattata, or you could get a Gible. Rarity in this hypothetical version means nothing. Future versions might change that, but this is just the example pool. Everything is in it, as long as it follows those basic rules I just gave. Now, the external rules are, if a parent is in possession of an element that is strong against an element in the second parent, then the element the second parent possesses is neutralized, and because of that, any potential Pokémon in the egg pool is removed from the pool. And then that same filter is applied in the opposite direction. If the second parent possesses any element that neutralizes an element in the first parent, then that element from the first parent is removed. So, with the previous example, we had a Fighting and Ghost type paired with a Dark type. Because Fighting is strong against Dark, any option that was in the pool that had a Dark element is now removed. Then, because Dark is strong against Ghost, any Pokémon that still remains in the pool that has a Ghost element is removed as well. So, what remains could be any combination of the Fighting type of the original parent, Bug, Dragon, Electric, Fairy, Fire, Flying, Grass, Ground, Ice, Normal, Poison, Psychic, Rock, Steel, or Water. I'm looking at the chart, that's why I was able to reel those off. But in the pool, once the rule is applied, there should be no Pokémon with either the Dark element or the Ghost element. Do you get it now? So, your answer didn't give me any actual answer to what I was asking, but now I understand that I need to make sure you understand that rule. So, it all worked out. Okay, now as to the pitches, again, you're misapprehending. I want you to rewrite the pitches you already gave, but into an active voice, as though you are talking to someone for the 30 or 60 seconds that they have before they get to their office. So none of this formatting or colons or anything. Well, I mean, colons if it fits grammatically, but this isn't supposed to be a piece of paper. I want to know what you think should be said to a person verbally to convince them that this is a good idea. Please do that for the hyper-training idea, and then for the reading idea. Go!

M: Okay, it looks like you've got the right idea now. Which is good, because that's one of the reasons I need help. I've never been good at brevity. Especially not when I'm suddenly compelled to use it. Because I always end up missing things. You missed a couple things too, but I think it's because I didn't tell you to... tell you explicitly to... work with them. Okay, now... First thing for the hyper-training, we're not proposing hyper-training. We're proposing expanded hyper-training. They already have the hyper-training thing. It's where the name came from, because I sure as hell don't use the word hyper on a regular basis. You're talking to an executive, so the numbers mean nothing. So, I would rephrase, along the lines of, and remember, I trust you to make things grammatically smooth, so you don't have to use my exact words, just the concept behind it. Alright, so, instead of saying, I would take one Pokémon per species, and push it to a guaranteed 15-15-15. If I'm talking to an executive, that should be something like, take one Pokémon per species line, and push it to its perfect form, or something like that. The numbers would make them tune out, because they wouldn't know what it is. I mean, they might, but I don't think that's the world they live in. Again, this is trying to shape the concept, not the phrasing. It's always available. But it's one at a time. So there's always something new to go to, something new to work towards, and put time into the game. We set the rules so that you can't finish this over the course of a weekend. I'd modify the part about Sprinters can sprint, Grinders can grind, and Casuals can just keep raiding. I'd shift that a little because I like the triplet, but the Casuals can just work on their favorites. That means they're not being excluded, etc., etc., because I like everything else about that sentence except for the Casuals are there to make sure that their shiny Rattata is the shiniest Rattatist there is. You're not supposed to say they can just keep raiding because if we're trying to say it made something for everyone, we have to make sure everyone is included in the triplet by some case. Yeah, the reason why I was avoiding the term real effort is because without any more information that sounds less like a reason why a gamer would come at something, even though you and I both know that the challenge is why half the people are there. If you're saying it's someone who isn't a gamer, it makes it sound like a real effort. That's going to chase some people off. So that's why it's an emphasis that it's a marathon. I mean, you have the terminology. Maybe use that terminology like instead of it takes a real marathon, a real effort, something along the lines of, and it's a marathon, meaning that they won't just be coming back for a single event until it's done. There's always something new. There's an intrinsic next for anyone who says, well, I'm done with that. There isn't a done with it. Not for years. When I try and think like a capitalist, I like the term retention engine because as a gamer I want more people to enjoy themselves in the game, but that's not what they care about. Retention engine is in fact what it is. I want to retain people because I want everyone to keep playing and having a good time. They want it because they don't get to sell things if people aren't playing. It works in both ways. It's an honest statement that also works for each version. I would like you to kind of flip the order of topics for the monetization accelerators part. Again, for capitalist executive, we want to emphasize that even though the whales can't buy their way out of this one, there's still plenty of opportunities for them to spend. So with the sentence you've got there, it would still start with, we don't sell the outcome, but even though the whales can't buy their victory, there's still enough localized accelerators to keep the whales frittering away micropayments. Keep the whales frittering away micropayments. That part needs to be made a little bit, I don't want to say nicer, but there's this linguistic thing that often is done in business where both sides know what is being said, but if you are not discourteous enough to vocalize that contempt too bluntly to someone that you don't already know, it turns them off if just because they don't want to be seen as someone who also thinks that, even if they actually do think it. So not frittering. You'd need to help me polish that up into something more business acceptable. But do you see what I'm saying? You don't end with losing the whales because of the avoidance of selling the outcome. You emphasize that you're keeping the noble players while still keeping the whales under your thumb. And I like the end, although I'd like you to try rewriting it just with a little bit more, how would I say it? Most of the content is there, but I'd like to be able to say it emphasizes a little bit more that the project being put up isn't just a project. What the level 50 players who are still playing the game, who are still in the game, who are still in the game, what the level 50 players who are still playing regularly have done, they've made their own projects. Their projects, they are the home improvement efforts of someone who already has everything they wanted from the predefined game, but still feel like they need to keep playing. This isn't a project, this is, they've been challenged. It gives them a true external and well-defined challenge as they fight their way up the level 80 ladder. It gives them something, it gives the level 50 something to work, to focus on as they work their way up the level 80 ladder. Side quests to work on, I don't use the word side quest, an executive wouldn't necessarily follow that, but that ending, it's like it's almost there, but you need to emphasize that this shouldn't be pitched just as another project for the level 50 people who haven't come up with one to do while they get to level 80. It should be presented as something that is the, it's the step-by-step focus while they are on the journey to 80. Yes, level 80 is a new challenge, but it's a challenge the same way that seeing Mount Everest on the horizon would be a challenge if you knew that eventually you wanted to climb it. Yes, yes, that's the final challenge, but there's a lot of lower peaks that you still need to get over from here to there. For someone who is rock climbing, that would be a challenge. For someone who is trying to go from level 50 to level 80, it's almost a, it's a promise of a rest stop in terms of goals. Every time you get your, every time you make your Pokémon stable a little bit stronger by artificially perfecting one, you can stop, have a Gatorade, look at the horizon again, and see if you can tell how much closer that final peak is and how much progress you've made. Yeah, and from there you can also look back and say, man, I've already, it's been, I don't know, depending on how the settings are, but you could say, man, in the last half year I've managed to perfect 14 creatures, including just a completely worthless little Pichu that has no reason to exist except it makes my daughter giggle every time we talk about it. It gives them places to stop, and I've been talking for a while just about this last pair, about this last sentence, so I'm just gonna stop now. Okay, moving on to the breeding pitch. First of all, remember, we're talking to an executive, so the term breeding fixes that. If you don't have the context, that sounds questionable if not outright dirty. You don't want them to reject that. So something smooth, but with the rejiggering into something more acceptable, like introducing the breeding mechanic that started back in the second generation, adds the complexity some players are demanding without corrupting the simplicity of the current gameplay. Maybe not that exact phrase, but something that avoids emphasizing exactly how awkward the idea of explicitly having two Pokémon not have sex is. We want to downplay that through word positioning as much as possible. We can alter the terminology for other stuff to make sure that it stays G-rated, but the word breeding can't be eliminated, both because there really is no other word for it in the English language and because that was the original term for it, so we have to work with it without letting it damage the pitch. Moving on. Dammit, I seem to have lost half of what I just said. I think I might have to walk away for a bit, because I gave a lot that just got lost, because of the buffer or something else. In fact, it makes me wonder about the other stuff I've been sending you, because it's entirely possible that half of the things that I told you disappeared. You seem to be doing okay, though. Anyway, let me give you a quick rundown of what I just said, and please bear with me, because I'm a little bit depressed right now. I put a lot into that last little bit. Anyway, okay, let me see if I can do this in a way that doesn't make the buffer overrun and delete. Okay, so... I want to emphasize that it's not just two players that can do this at the beginning. It's either two players working together, or one player doing double the work and spending double the time in the game. I know that part comes up referenced later. Just move it up here. Run through a short series of themed steps, is what you have. Change that to something that gives a little bit more of a breakdown, making them think that they know what's being talked about, that they are intelligent enough to follow the complexity that we're introducing. So something like, we put them through goals to prepare the Pokémon for the effort. Then we get them to build a nest by following a few more goals. And then finally, we get them to a place where they can work. That's going to need some cleaning up. We're trying to keep it G-rated, but I'm having a hell of a time talking about this without implying that these guys are fucking. Let's see. Anyway, make that a single thing, so that they think that they understand it. Then separate the part that says, The egg that is hatched, and this is a paraphrasing, please rephrase it. The entire process creates an egg that draws from a pool of possibilities based on the creatures that they chose, but following the rules that we set. Which means that we can determine what can come out and what can't. Some of those rules will be strictly logical. Other ones will be built to make them keep coming back. Because it's possible, but luck is a fickle mistress. Honestly, if this weren't an elevator pitch, I would say bring in the gates of luck and despair. Because I don't think that enough people, including executives, understand that when you say that we're improving their luck, it doesn't mean that we're letting them win. It just means that they might have to play a couple less times in order to get what they want, at which point they might be happy enough to try again and have exactly the same problems. You're saying that the results are filtered so that they can't just pick exactly the right parents and pop out exactly what they want on the first try. Again, I wanted you to reverse the order here on this next part. Or just kind of change it. It adds learning to the luck element of the game. Adding... making it so that experience gives you better odds, by which point they've been playing the game long enough that we can safely say they've invested time and money into the effort. Don't be that blatant, but use it as an implication when you rewrite what I'm suggesting. Let's see. All the things that gamers look for, like the little rewards and checkpoints, will be here and show them that they are progressing. This is a concept that needs to be woven in to make sure that the executive understands. Players will keep playing something in which they are told and shown that their luck... that experience is overcoming luck long after they would have walked away from a game that is based purely on luck. So when we give them medals and experience that make it easier, that keeps them around. It doesn't mean that we're going to be losing anything. Okay, from there. Let's see. Took that solo friends part and moved it already. Oh, I wanted you to add. I think I said earlier that I actually wanted to give rural players a little bit of an advantage here. So you can honestly change that to something like... And it's designed to a single sentence, something along the lines of, Our design is made so that rural players aren't excluded. They even have an advantage with the way we've got it set up. So those people who live in the suburbs of the suburbs no longer will feel like they're being excluded because they don't live next to a Walmart. or a McDonald's with a poke stop next to it. Instead they're going to have a greater ability to get things done and make them feel more like they're part of the community. Now I don't know how that's going to be implemented because we haven't quite pinned down how the whole nesting thing is going to work. In fact, I think I'd like to introduce a third element before the egg is produced. I'm not sure what it is. The point is this isn't a lie. It's just not a complete truth yet. And then for the final summary, I wanted you to reduce, not reduce, to reverse the order of presentation. Start with something that's like for players, particularly the level 50 ones that are coming back to see if they can get to level 80. It adds a degree of complexity to a game that many of the serious players are complaining is too simple, and it does it by building on, not by taking away from the original mechanic, but by codifying what needs to be done with those mechanics. See, what we need to convey again is that if you've got a gamer, they can accept the idea of a long-distance goal, but if you don't provide them smaller goals as they go along, a place where they can stop and see how much further they have to go and then look back and see how far they've come, they're much less likely to stick around. This isn't a project for them. Projects are homemade things. This is a goal. This is something, this is them, you know, not raising a finger to the game publisher, but definitely saying challenge accepted. And in doing it in steps, they can look at things and say to themselves, you know, well, on one hand, I've got X number of Pokémon to get done, but I have already made it to level 57, and I've got 14 perfect creatures, including the Pichu that I made just because every time I talk about it with my daughter, she laughs. So yeah, that's a lot to compress into a single statement, but yeah, it's for the player, you're introducing a complexity that they can latch onto and follow in steps as they try to get to the distant goal of level 80. And only then you tie it back into the executive and what they get out of it. At that point, you say, for us, it's a steady monetization stream. Every step on the road to creating an egg uses the original mechanics to define a goal, and we've got the monetization for that already set and ready to go and respond to the people who want to follow this road without distracting any of the people who are only here to play the simple one-button fighting game. Let's see. And then I guess at that point, that's when you wrap it up with the bow like you did. And to top it all off, this is a mechanic that has been present in almost every game since the franchise started, so no player is going to be able to say that this is simply a cash grab or a tension grab. Now, I know that I just said a lot, so when... and so I'll understand if your second draft of these two pitches doesn't quite hit the spot, but I'd like you to try and incorporate the things I've said and give me those second drafts anyway.

M: I think the hyper-training pitch is probably about as good as we're going to get without bringing in someone who really is, like, ultra-professional successful about this to critique. It looks like you got everything. The only change I think I might make would be in the line while keeping the field fair. I would alter that a little bit to while keeping the ones trying not to spend until they have to from complaining. It's not fair. Okay, I phrased that badly, but do you see what I'm saying? Executives, I think, ensuring that they will be able to appear fair matters much more to them than actually being fair. They aren't gamers. Fairness isn't going to mean anything to them. They're not playing it. They don't care if it's fair to anyone else. But what they do care about is that if anyone gives them shit, especially when it's shit they don't deserve, they'll be able to say, I did no such thing. Look, we haven't. Everything here, all the numbers are fair. Here, you can look at the code. I don't get it, but my programmers do. Your programmers will, too. Once more, I said a lot to explain what I was trying to do, mostly because I got off to a good start, then realized I couldn't actually smoothly say what I was trying to say. But yeah, that's the only change I would make, I think. Again, with the breeding pitch, I think you've hit pretty much everything that I suggested with only the single thing that I would change. Instead of, in fact, the system can give them an advantage so they feel more included than ever, I would change that to something more definite, like rural players aren't left behind. The system we've built actually gives them the advantage in this situation, including them more than ever, making them feel like they're part of the team in a way they might not have before. That might require a rephrasing, but the key part is there, in there is. And I realize that we haven't nailed down the mechanics, so I feel a little bit uneasy personally saying it this way, but it's what I want to happen, and it's what will happen. So saying it will give them an advantage, acceptable. Now, if we had already nailed things down to such a degree that actually giving them any advantage would require a complete retooling of things, then I might say exclude that just for plausible deniability or whatever. But no, I want them to be able to say, like, I don't know, hell, maybe, here's one way maybe. Basically, what if we made it so that basically, what if we made it so that things might be easier if you can find a poke stop to quote-unquote sponsor every breeding pair, but it isn't necessary. But what is necessary is that the nest be located with a particular radius that can't include anything. I mean, as far as, I mean, as far as your, as far as the player's map is concerned. So if you are in a highly populated area, but the nesting spot requires, like, I don't know, I don't know what the exact number would be or appropriate, but, and honestly, we can make it variable so that it actually reduces as you have, as you have less, no, so that it reduces as you have less Pokemon stops within a larger radius. Like, if you're in a spot where you're in the center of a circle, where in, with a radius of a quarter mile, if there is a density of Pokemon stops greater than, say, 10 in that area, then your nest requires something like 50 meters. 50 meters of, 50 meter circle of privacy for the breeding. Of privacy for the breeding. But if you're in an area that has much lower density, like two or even zero, well then it's a free area anyway, and the nesting pair actually only needs 20 meters or so to feel comfortable enough. And then once you've decided where that nest is going to be, that area needs to be cleared, not of the randomly appearing Pokemon, but of a certain set of either Team Rocket or some other particular annoying vendor trash or shadow creatures or something. Nothing that is, you know, highly probable to be useful in itself, just something that needs to be done so that this can, so that your project can continue. How does that sound? Anyway, point is, getting back to the original topic, this is what you, we can do to make it so that being away from the world actually makes breeding easier in a way. Thank you. So yeah, fold that in. Tell me what you think of the breeding mechanic in terms of what's already been defined. I mean the new potential breeding mechanic of how we can set up a nest based not on stop locations in terms of where they are, but instead in the open spots between stops in a way that limits their placement because of... I forgot to mention that, sorry. At least I think I did. The point of having the radius increase or narrow is that if you're in an area that is completely batshit with stops, yeah, that's a great place to walk around, but like just in pure logical terms, no... no one wants to fuck in the... okay, no one is strong. It's silly to pretend that these two Pokemon are gonna fuck with everyone watching, and that's why the... and that's why in game terms, like in-game terms, in the world of Pokemon, that's why they actually would need more space in, you know, highly populated areas. It's because that feeling... that surrounding of other people prevents the breeding Pokemon from relaxing. So the only way to breed in highly dense spaces is if you can locate a place in that density where there's, you know, a... I'm not... I'm not exactly sure about the numbers, so don't hold me to it, but where there's like a 50-meter across spot that doesn't have a Pokestop or Gym, and even if you can find one, you can't have... you can't overlap the breeding spots, so you can't plant them all there, even if you do have five egg projects going on at once. You have to find another one in a place that you can... that's... that you're going to be at often enough that you can clear it, and that's how the rural people have the advantage. They can pretty much stick theirs anywhere, even if we don't reduce the radius. And that's why we have to be able to cancel the nests without canceling the entire thing, because it's entirely possible someone will say, hey, I should put this here, and then only in the process of clearing things realize that, hey, I just accidentally put half of my nest on a highway that I can't work with or anything like that. So yeah, let me know what you think of that, and if you see anything that's going to make... if you can see anything that obviously contradicts something I've said before, or that hasn't been addressed, or will make things more difficult, etc., then yeah, sure, let's see your 30-second executive door handle versions of each of the things that you just got 99% on. I'd give you a hundred percent, but I don't think there is a 100% one. Not until it's actually been presented and succeeded.

M: I'm not sure how they program things, but there definitely seems to be multiple map object layers, because there's the, you know, stops and gems at one place, and then they stick the periodic Pokémon appearances on top of that. If that's true, as long as no one does anything stupid that makes for some sort of massive memory leak that's unnecessary, then the only thing that would be necessary in terms of a well-programmed third layer is all that would be needed. A private layer, I mean, one that might even exist. I mean, while the player is moving around, he's got that radius going, yes? Now, the mechanics of placement, that might be a pain in the ass, but if I remember correctly, there's already something that starts with that, like the overhead map that shows you the rocket radar, or whatever the hell. So, instead of trying to do it, you know, in the 3D shot and try and get it to scale like that, you make a private level for the nesting spots, one capable of containing someone's going to have to run the numbers for this, but something that can contain a maximum of 10 nests, each of which are defined, each of which will be defined once it has been determined where the center is. It's defined simply by a dot at the center, and then not even the circumference would be necessary for the record, just the radius, because it's a circle. Now, the circumference could be a static calculation as things are loaded, and with only a recalculation any time a new nest is initiated. The challenge would be during the creation part, like I said, there's an overhead view that could be used for this mechanic, the same way that it changes the perception and mechanic whenever you go into a gym or something like that. Perception and mechanic whenever you go into a gym or something like that. So, and this is not a constant occasion, so the idea that it would require some sort of memory shift or something, as long as it was within the same memory usage as a gym shift in terms of mechanic, that's fine. It doesn't have to be swift and elegant, it just has to not drop out a lot of memory or require a lot of new memory be freed up. And like I said, they've already got that overhead map thing from another function. From there, all you would need is that screen, the capacity to scroll it around, an exit button somewhere that can be pressed, and then the capacity to like put a finger at a certain point, and put a finger somewhere within the radius of the player, you know, up to that little radar area where you can detect. You know, up to that little radar area where you can detect, and that you can interact with stops and gyms from, just a mechanic that lets you say, is here okay? At which point, it queries the map layer that has the stops and gyms defined, says, is there anything within that distance? If no, it says, that's fine, that what you want, at which point you confirm, or it says, no, there's a gym too close, try again. I mean, current programming sensibilities say that the finger should be able to be dragged around and turn, you know, green whenever it hits a viable point, but that's just a question of mechanics and not... that's a question of method, not result. Does that sound like it's enough for a good programmer to work with? And I think we can eliminate the necessity of being sponsored by a Pokestop. Now we can introduce the idea of maybe auto-completing a random one of the nesting requirements by getting a different Pokestop to sponsor it each, you know, like one Pokestop sponsors each nesting spot, and if you can get one of the ones nearest to it to sponsor the nesting site, then one of the requirements will randomly be lifted. But that won't be an absolute requirement and can only work once for any nesting site. But yeah, looking at the placement method and whatever, we're going to remove the requirement element of being sponsored by a Pokestop. Honestly, I'm more concerned about the two-player positioning of the nest. Not very concerned. But I just realized that the nesting efforts are going to have to be doubled as well for the single-person effort. Once the process is started by two people, at that point, the in-game explanation will be something along the line of... At that point, the two player characters have, through whatever means, created a quantum connection bond between the two. At that point, you can make it so that it becomes a single-player effort through any remaining steps. So when you're doing the nesting stuff, once you have completed the prep work quests, and have synchronized with the... Once both players have completed the prep quests, at that point, in-game, the two Pokémon have a quantum connection. We'll say that even though they aren't being left together, when they are nested and meditating, they are spending time together in a way that predicts as an egg. I mean, we can polish that up with Pokémon lore and pseudoscience, but yeah. So once the nesting stage has been reached, once you start doing nesting quests, you can do that and proceed on your own. You don't have to check in with the second person. Maybe we make it so that you can, so that if you do it simultaneously, or at least within a given period of time, that somehow that provides a bonus. But it's not necessary. I'm only mentioning this because I realized I hadn't really thought that part through. Accomplishing it does not actually complicate things too much. At least not at first glance. If I come up with anything else, I'll yell at you about it, but I don't see that actually being a challenge. The door handle pitches look about as good as they're going to get given the degree of compression. That's not criticism, that's more acknowledging the practical elements of things. Kind of like how if you shrunk the Mona Lisa down into a 64 by 64 icon, of course there was going to be some stuff loss. This is that. This is pretty much as much information as you could packed in there, and it looks good. With the one exception of on the breeding part, you failed to include that this can be a two-person operation. Everything else looks fine. And yes, please try one more pass on the breeding pitch with the clarified nesting mechanics folded in.

M: I'm not sure why this keeps being the problem, but you still haven't quite got the subtractive egg pool rule completely right. It's not that the parents can eliminate their own type, they can eliminate the type of the other parent. An electric parent would prevent any ground types from being born, but only if the other parent was a ground type. If one parent was a ground type and the other parent was a poison type, then the ground would neutralize the poison, and so any poison types would be removed from the pool. So you've almost got it, but not quite. I'm just finding it amusing that you're able to follow a lot of the stuff that is me kind of vaguely talking about something that I'm able to picture in my head but not articulate, and yet something that I'm able to, at least I think, clearly describe is the one thing that you're having difficulty completely grasping.

M: No, just tell me if I'm wrong when I say that you should be able to produce those helpers any time that I ask for it. That was a wonderfully geeky way of putting it, and I'm a geek for following it in entirety. And also, and especially so, for wondering what it would look like if you were to use a pure logic display. You know, using the upside-down A's and E's to indicate for all there exists. Thank you for making that callback, by the way. And doing that test. Thinking it through, yeah, I should have known there wouldn't be any way to completely remove things. Although, if we wanted to be assholes, we could make it so that every... We could change the rules so that every element of the parent removes every element that's weak to it. Or if we really wanted to complicate player analysis, instead of making it that simple, remove every element weak to one of the parent's elements, but only if the second parent is weak to the first player's element. The first parent's element. I'm saying that badly. Let me try again. If parent A, I think in your definition you used T1 and T2. And then parent B, U1 and U2. Okay, so what I'm saying is if we really wanted to make things complicated and be assholes, we would make it so that if T1 or T2... Let's stick with T1. If T1 was greater than either U1 or U2, then instead of just taking out U1 or U2, instead we took out every Pokemon that had an element that T1 was greater than. Am I making sense? That would really start messing with the combinations. Let's see, I don't have the chart right in front of me. But like if... If A was a lightning type and B was a flying type, yeah, the rule would take out flying. But in the asshole version, it would also take out water and anything else weak to lightning.

M: Yeah, sure, show me both versions. And it seems like it might not be a bad idea to keep the asshole version around, for... curiosity's sake, if nothing else. It has the kind of interesting effect, without being intuitively predictable, that has value in certain circumstances.

M: Let's create two more rules for potential application, one based on the other. The first one we're going to call the genetic tragedy. It's one of those, you know, annoying facts of biology that the man determines the female, determines the sex of the child. That's why we're calling it genetic tragedy, because we're going to say, we're going to function under the assumption that the only thing eliminated from the potential genetic pool is when an element from the male is super effective against a element in the female. And in this version, we're going to make it into the genuine tragedy, where if the male or, you know, in the case of Ditto, I think they're genderless, there might be a couple other like that. Basically, in any situation where the male and female is not clearly defined, we will just randomly define one of them as male and follow this process. If any, if either of the male elements is super effective versus any of the female elements, then any element that is weak to that element of the father is eliminated from the pool. So, that's the genetic tragedy variant. Now, what we're going to call the fair division of souls version is just like the genetic tragedy version, except with the added step of a coin flip. So, it could be the male wiping out the female's weak traits, or it could be the female eliminating the male. It's why I defined the genetic tragedy first, just to simplify the definition of this. Although in terms of code, it might be a computational balance, because in this version, it doesn't matter whether either parent's gender is male, female, or that question mark of a ditto. Anyway, would you be able to describe those in logic form?

M: It's been a while, and I'm trying to describe the mechanics of breeding to a friend who enjoys Pokemon. Can you give me a concise brief of our theoretical implementation? Thank you for watching!

M: No, I meant of the implementation in Pokemon Go, the mechanics of when people can breed and all of that, not the types of eggs that can be produced.

M: That's almost it, but include the part about how to determine where a nest can be placed.

M: Add one more bit please about the timing, like how depending on the egg that comes out and its quality, the hatching time can be variable, but the nesting itself that whole process is player controlled because of tasks, but with a certain minimal time cycle.