Money Sinks

[shy ♡]

There's a /lot/ of money floating around in the league and a limited number of things you can do with it. So, post if you have suggestions for things you'd like to be able to buy, or some sort of event, any sort of idea really?

 

[I liek Squirtles]

What about that Game Corner thing Mike had? Of course, I guess that would be implemented once the shops are back up.

Maybe some kind of pay-to-play Mega Stone event? The only redeeming thing for Megas would be the boosted speeds.

Berry grab bags like Blastoise had, or maybe the things could be expanded for all items. They could be priced at $10-$15, maybe.

 

[Eifie]

Let's hand out $500 Rupoors to MF and Kratos!

 

[Negrek]

I think having charity raffles now and again might be nice. Plenty of older players have pokemon and/or items they no longer want or will never use, and they could donate them to be used as prizes. Then the actual tickets for the raffle serve as money sinks.

It's not something you'd be able to do terribly often, but it could be fun once a year or so, maybe.

 

[Meowth]

I think having charity raffles now and again might be nice. Plenty of older players have pokemon and/or items they no longer want or will never use, and they could donate them to be used as prizes. Then the actual tickets for the raffle serve as money sinks.

It's not something you'd be able to do terribly often, but it could be fun once a year or so, maybe.

The problem being the ones with far too many unused Pokémon and items are the ones hoarding the most money.

Bringing back the Game Corner could help somewhat, since even a lot of people who wouldn't normally care to buy any more Pokémon used to have a few goes just to see what came up. The only potential problem is unless it was somehow integrated into the database I imagine it might make a lot of work for the organisers having to manually edit in people's winnings.

 

[Dragon]

I keep thinking about this like... people with a lot of money can just buy Pokemon and items whenever, so the reward would have to be something you can't normally buy. (Rare Candies could work, but rich people prob shouldn't be able to just buy EXP as they (we???) tend to already have a lot of Pokemon with EXP, right)

I think we should think of things that are cool to have, but not necessarily helpful in battle, like shiny Pokemon and such? Hidden ability Pokemon maybe, Pokemon with weird types or moves they're not supposed to have. Ribbons and custom Pokeballs and things that show up on an individual Pokemon's page! (Although a lot of this will be moot if sigthings come back, and it would give Zhorken even more stuff to do. Sorry, Zhorken.)

...uh otherwise, we could put a proportional tax system on db purchases? (So if you had $0-50 you would be taxed $0, if you had $51-100 you would be taxed $1, if you had $2331 you would be taxed $30 or something)

 

[Meowth]

Hidden ability Pokemon maybe

Having some sort of Hidden Ability Capsule available for ridiculous asbux would be pretty neat, there are a fair few Pokémon I'd like a HA on to go with whatever nickname reference I have in mind for them. That said it does have the potential to give those who can afford it an actual edge in battle, and giving the richer players access to things that make them more powerful (except a larger and more varied team because really that's just a given) than the less well-off is a road we should look to avoid going down.

 

[ultraviolet]

Pokemon with weird types or moves they're not supposed to have.

what if we sold TMs? :O That might be neat and probably not too hard to keep track of. They could be either permanent (with like, four slots/pokemon or something) or hold items. That would be really neat for pokemon that are cool but don't have huge movesets, and we could make them pretty expensive.

If we make TMs permanent instead of hold items, we could also charge a Move Deleter Service. :o We could have move tutors as well, for move that don't get TMs. We could set it up via the PRO and it would kinda work the same way as sig moves did but with way less work - it'd pretty much be a 'can vaporeon learn fly' kinda thing (yes/no answers).

 

[Knuddeluff]

It may be an absolute pain to programme, but a superfluous waste of money with no in-battle benefits would be something like accessories. Dressing your Pokémon up and such.

 

[Superbird]

I think we should think of things that are cool to have, but not necessarily helpful in battle, like shiny Pokemon and such?

It may be an absolute pain to programme, but a superfluous waste of money with no in-battle benefits would be something like accessories. Dressing your Pokémon up and such.

I thought that custom images were on the list of things to be added to the database eventually, like signature moves/attributes.

one way to stop people from getting so much money might be to lower ref pay? I mean, it's not gigantic already, but it certainly provides a much nicer income than that measly $3 allowance.

 

[Dragon]

Having some sort of Hidden Ability Capsule available for ridiculous asbux would be pretty neat, there are a fair few Pokémon I'd like a HA on to go with whatever nickname reference I have in mind for them. That said it does have the potential to give those who can afford it an actual edge in battle, and giving the richer players access to things that make them more powerful (except a larger and more varied team because really that's just a given) than the less well-off is a road we should look to avoid going down.

A Hidden Ability capsule would be super rad (my name suggestion for this is Horribly Radioactive Candy, if it ever becomes a thing) although I feel like it should be really limited in number? Like maybe one gets auctioned off every month or more (although I feel like that could still cause problems re: rich people grabbing all the cool stuff.) Maybe instead of capsules, we could have a limited number of HA Pokemon available for $$$ every month or so? And the stock could be randomized, so everyone doesn't just go for Protean Froakies or what have you.

what if we sold TMs? :O That might be neat and probably not too hard to keep track of. They could be either permanent (with like, four slots/pokemon or something) or hold items. That would be really neat for pokemon that are cool but don't have huge movesets, and we could make them pretty expensive.

If we make TMs permanent instead of hold items, we could also charge a Move Deleter Service. :o We could have move tutors as well, for move that don't get TMs. We could set it up via the PRO and it would kinda work the same way as sig moves did but with way less work - it'd pretty much be a 'can vaporeon learn fly' kinda thing (yes/no answers).

I really really like this, actually! 4 permanent slots per Pokemon fits with the flavour of the games too, kinda, and maybe every once in a while we could auction off something weird like a Volt Tackle TM to the highest bidder. (Although at the same time, I think this was also kind of the point of Kratos' business so they'd be out of a job?)

 

[Meowth]

one way to stop people from getting so much money might be to lower ref pay? I mean, it's not gigantic already, but it certainly provides a much nicer income than that measly $3 allowance.

Perhaps that or just make allowance unavailable to refs, because seriously what ref needs a measly $3 a week when they can make thrice that with a single reffing. The only reason I even pick it up every week is because the button's right there when I go to cash in reffings.

We could consider it some kind of Asber unemployment benefit or something!

A Hidden Ability capsule would be super rad (my name suggestion for this is Horribly Radioactive Candy, if it ever becomes a thing) although I feel like it should be really limited in number? Like maybe one gets auctioned off every month or more (although I feel like that could still cause problems re: rich people grabbing all the cool stuff.) Maybe instead of capsules, we could have a limited number of HA Pokemon available for $$$ every month or so? And the stock could be randomized, so everyone doesn't just go for Protean Froakies or what have you.

I dunno, I'd still like the ability to choose what Pokémon I actually get. Otherwise you'd probably just get people holding off until the HA Pokémon they want comes round and it doesn't really achieve anything.

Maybe allow each member one HA Pokémon of their choice per month for a hefty price tag, perhaps tacking on a bit more if the ability is something OP like Protean or Gale Wings.

 

[Zekrom_B0lt]

Mega Stones could be a nice added thing


& maybe shiny pokemon could work

+ hidden abillitys

 

[Eta Carinae]

I think giving out Shinies is the best idea, simply because they don't effect battling at all, while still being something that everyone could appreciate. Like Sang said, having a bigger and better team is a given, and I don't really think your ability to ref should give you many advantages beyond that. I'd also be in favour of lowering ref pay as well, but that doesn't really offer a solution to the people with huge bank accounts right now.

For me, this is all a dream. I've never been able to keep more than $100 here without spending it recklessly (Why do I buy so many single-stage Pokemon I'll never uuuuuuuse).

 

[ultraviolet]

Honestly I don't really see why we'd start charging for Shiny pokemon when they were readily available in the last league - all you would have to do is just use a shiny sprite in your pokemon profile and that was all there was to it. I kind of figured it wasn't a thing in the db already just because it hadn't been implemented yet, but I could be wrong.

 

[Wargle]

I don't have a terribly large amount of pokemon or money. (ok maybe pokemon) but I think any idea that lets a richer player access something tangibly beneficial like TM's or Hidden Abilities is essentially punishing people who are new, aren't refs, and more expensive starter pokemon.

I'm also not really a big fan on "taxes". where would this money go? Just disappear? Because now that's punishing ref and players who have been here more.


tl;dr this is hard without punishing either poor or rich players unfairly

 

[Wargle]

Honestly I don't really see why we'd start charging for Shiny pokemon when they were readily available in the last league - all you would have to do is just use a shiny sprite in your pokemon profile and that was all there was to it. I kind of figured it wasn't a thing in the db already just because it hadn't been implemented yet, but I could be wrong.

This was my thinking too.

 

[I liek Squirtles]

Well, how about this?
Assign shinies the same rate of appearing as they do in the games. However, if you have a lot of money, you can pay a good chunk of it to get a slightly higher chance of a shiny.

 

[Negrek]

Well, if the idea isn't to design a general money sink and rather something specifically designed to suck money out of people who have a lot and not much to spend it on, you're ultimately going to run into the problem of either setting things up so that rich players get better stuff than poor players or where you're charging for something that was previously free. Something like a lottery is a little better in that there's at least the potential for a less-rich player to win something really good off it, but the veteran player is always going to be at a big advantage because they can just jam $500 into tickets to get some multiples of what they want. Or you could set it up so that rich people can't buy substantially more entries than poor people--at which point it's no longer a sink that actively moves money away from rich people the way you want.

I agree that making customization a pay-for option (e.g. by making shinies the prize for some kind of lottery) is kind of lame, since that's always been free in the past, but it's probably a better option than putting actual battle-useful items/attributes/etc. behind a paywall if you're concerned with rich people getting too much of an advantage.

An alternative would be more "experience"-oriented services, i.e. rather than paying for a good of some kind you get access to an experience. Dragon's Den was basically this; iirc you didn't get anything particularly special for winning--the point was that the battle was an unusual/fun challenge. More shops along those lines might solve your problem, provided people generally were interested in visiting them.

What ultimately is the problem of certain players having much more money than others? Just that you're frustrated you can't do anything but buy more mon/items with it, and you already have all the mon/items you want?

 

[Wargle]

Just remember guys, making shinies and abilities buyable makes us no better than EA. And we're way above that.

I actually don't see the need to spend my money. there's nothing I really want at the moment, unless I feel the urge to waste it on a new pokemon I won't use, but other than that I don't want to spend any money because I don't earn it that fast so it means more to me.

The christmas list helped a little, so maybe that again/