Game Quality of Life Changes

You have an idea for site or have a suggestion to make it better? Post here.
Post Reply
User avatar
ColarFX
Posts: 1655
Joined: October 9th, 2013, 12:27 pm
Location: Istanbul, Turkey

Game Quality of Life Changes

Post by ColarFX »

I was playing this game before the reset. I created my account in 2013 and left this game in 2015. 7 years later, here we are. I can't remember too much about old VA since my hiatus was so long, but if I were to compare the two, I'd definitely choose new VA. Even tho I cannot recall all the memories, what I can remember vividly is the community. There were much more active player than now. If they were to come now, I'm sure they'll be more active than lots of people atm. But we cannot bring them back. Since we cannot bring them back, I suggest we should keep new players to increase the community.

Right now I have enough time to click more than 20k a day. That makes 350ish eggs per day for me. Sometimes I get lucky and hatch 2/3 shinies. 5 days ago I hatched 5 shinies within the same day. Yesterday I couldn't hatch a shiny. Shiny ratio is enough for me. I had 50ish shinies in two years in the past, now I have 76. It took me 3 months to collect. And I'm pretty sure that the more you give your time to this game, the more shinies you will get.

Lets admit it most of us are playing this game to hatch shinies. The most wanted shiny: Eevee. I have two and wouldn't decline a third one. Let's say I'll play this game for 5 years without a break and I hatched 100 shiny eevees, I would not trade any of them. What about new players? What about people who cannot put enough time to play? At one point, not only new players but also current players will start to get bored. The shiny ratio is always a hot topic. Some people say it should stay the way it is now, and some want it to be upgraded. Even tho I'm fine with its current ratio, I say it should be upgraded. No, it HAS to be upgraded. The reason is:

-We should not lose new/common players. People who has not enough time to put on this game will leave this game sooner or later.
-When a new players starts, I'm pretty sure that if he/she gets something, they'll be more interested and want to play more.
-Shinies has different values. Let's say there is only one shiny sunkern in this game and 100 shiny vulpix. No one will care about shiny sunkern. So if we think "if shiny ratio is high and a lot of shinies start to hatch, value will be decreased", I don't agree with that.
-If someone has duplicate shinies, unless they collect that pokemon or it is their favourite one, they can trade it. I'm always trying to trade my duplicate shinies. This way not only I get another shiny but others too. That makes a more lively community.

Ofcourse increasing shiny raito has it's own pros and cons. But I think it has more pros than cons. The main reason of playing this game is collecting pokemons; especially shinies. So if people can hatch/get more shinies, the more they wanna play.

It's almost a week since Daycare opened. Some people got 3-4 eggs, some none. I had only 1 egg during this time. There were a lot of complain about it and yankees gave us the update. If I'm not wrong now we have %50 chance to get an egg from DC. Even with the increased chance, it is still so low. I mean, why should we wait so much for only 1 egg? The main reason for daycare is to get baby and shiny pokemons. I got only 1 egg till now, and I'm not sure when I'll get my second. How about people who couldn't get a single one? It's soooooooo frustrating. ATM I have 933,948 $. If I put all of my money, I can wait 18.678 hours without doing anything. That makes more than 2 years. But I don't wanna make this kind of investment. I don't know when I'll get my second egg and I'm pretty sure it won't be shiny.

-Increasing chance to get an egg is always an option.
-Why we can't breed more pairs at once? I think it would be way better to breed more couples at the same time.
-This kind of upgrades would make people to put more effort. They wanna play more so they can hatch their wish pokemons. Babies or shinies.

You can say "You are rich and you play more than me so you want to get more pokemons without much effort." This is not wrong. But don't forget. I won't be the only person who can benefit these updates. Yes, I may get more pokemons than you. But I'm already making progress and you are not! I'll always click more than you and that means I'll always be richer than you and get more shinies than you. And when I can't play this game, other active players will get ahead of me. This is not the reason why I want this kind of changes. I want this changes so YOU can too get something. If you are in love with shiny oddish but don't have something to offer, why whould you continiue in these circumstances? But if you have something, that can make you more interested to play. I was playing LoL, Valorant, CS:GO etc with my friends. But this is more fun for me because I love Pokemon.

Hinokazes made an amazing comment yesterday: "The raffle is already a pain, no need for the daycare to be another one. At this rate I'll have no choice to beg others to help me getting even just the babies when I should be able to get them myself..."

This comment is the reason why I'm wrting this post. Why would people continue to play with this kind of difficulty? At this rate, there won't be new players any more and old ones will start to lose their interest. This is a collection game. It shouldn't be so difficult. To hatch an egg I put 60 credits on it. That makes 720 for a batch of eggs. Some can get 2 shinies in their first batch and some don't get anything if they hatch 1000+ eggs. I know I know... It is RNG. But that doesn't mean we can play with it.

There are more topics we can discuss. Raffles, clicking promos, new events etc... But I won't talk about them since I know that admins know these issues and working on them. It's a difficult process. And I'm pretty happy that we are making some progress. But I want to be informed clearly about these steps. I don't wanna see a "things changed" comment in the future. I'm sure I'm not the only person in this game who wants that. This isn't a puzzle or mystery game that we should search for updates. If you watch a trailer from your favourite tv series, you'd get excited and can't wait to watch it.

I'm sorry if I made a mistake. English is not my main language and I wanted to express my feelings. I really love playing this game and I want to continue hatch more eggs and get more shinies. Share your thoughts about the future of VA. Let's discuss what is better for this community to not perish or stay same but continue to grow.

Edit:

I forgot about "unwanted pokemons" and "dragging pokemons to other boxes".

There are some pokemons nobody collects. Qwilfish, Sunkern, Natu, Phanpy etc. And there will be more in the future. Are they gonna sit and wait to be destroyed or can we use them more efficiently?

For example; let's create a game that for a week we can donate a certain pokemon. This pokemon can be determined by users. And ofcourse nobody will choose eevee, dratini, starters etc and their favourite pokemons. When a certain amount is reached, all participant can get a reward. Wheter it is an item or a pokemon. There can be a leaderboard too! The more you donate, the more rewards you can get. This way unwanted pokemons can be used. If you have another idea feel free to share.

And the most annoying thing in this game. It is so tiring to drag all pokemons to other boxes. And it takes so much time. When I go to "Move Virtuadopts around the boxes" section, if I could select a pokemon by name and the box I want all of them to go, would it not be amazing? If only I click on Bulbasaur on the list and it selects all bulbasaurs on that box and transfers them to the box I selected... It maybe a difficult feature but I think it would be amazing.
Last edited by ColarFX on September 27th, 2022, 10:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
AdoptableAdoptableAdoptableAdoptableAdoptable
User avatar
SchokoKitsune
Posts: 274
Joined: June 25th, 2011, 2:35 pm
Gender: Female

Re: Game Quality of Life Changes

Post by SchokoKitsune »

I haven't even read everything yet but I wanted to say this quickly: Thank you. Thank you for speaking up and putting my concerns into words.

Okay, now I'm done reading. The shiny odds don't neccesarily have to increase in my opinion, but I wouldn't mind mini-events that boost shiny odds or something like that. I'm a casual player with not much clicks and equally not so many hatched eggs, I've managed to get 2 Shinys in about 1650 eggs, which is fine. But could surely be better!

And oh, the daycare. Yes to most of the things.
Maybe make slots for more pairs like boxes, aka let us buy another "nest" for a fixed amount of money with a fixed amount of max nests. Because let's be honest, nobody uses the Daycare to level Mons 🙈
But my biggest concern is that there's currently no safety net that we know of. If the odds dislike you, you could still go weeks without one egg (as currently, slowly Happening to me)

I'll either edit this post with more stuff after work, or make another post depending on how many others will answer inbetween, but I had to get this off my chest.
User avatar
ColarFX
Posts: 1655
Joined: October 9th, 2013, 12:27 pm
Location: Istanbul, Turkey

Re: Game Quality of Life Changes

Post by ColarFX »

SchokoKitsune wrote: September 27th, 2022, 9:54 am I haven't even read everything yet but I wanted to say this quickly: Thank you. Thank you for speaking up and putting my concerns into words.
And thank you for sharing your thoughts. I think every player on this game should speak their minds so we can make a progress. We don't have to agree on the same topic. There can be different ideas. There is no certain way in this world. But we can choose the best one for us by voicing our thoughts.
AdoptableAdoptableAdoptableAdoptableAdoptable
User avatar
AbsintusVeritas
Posts: 85
Joined: August 4th, 2018, 1:32 pm

Re: Game Quality of Life Changes

Post by AbsintusVeritas »

+1

I love VA for what it is. A game where I can combine two of my Special interests. It's heaven for an autistic brain like mine.

But it's hell at the same time. The Raffle is annoying because it's always the same people winning, and I think 6 hours is just to long.

The Daycare is even worse. Waiting days or even weeks for a single Egg destroys every fun. I had nightmares about eggs! (No. I really had) The check for an egg once an Egg is not enough and there should be a maximum amount of Time to get an egg. Even one day seems to much. Something like 6 hours would be perfect. I would hunt for shinys then. With the rates now I'll never use the DC for anything else then babymons.

Also, I don't like how we can just have one egg at the DC at a time. Sure, it's like that in the games but there I don't wait for hours to get an egg. I'm always afraid of getting an Egg over night and waisting money and time.

And there is one big, big, massive thing:

Our dear Dev needs to talk to us. Answer us. Or at least react in some way. It's not a great feeling when everything we say gets ignored or when we have to figure out everything on our own/ask for dripps of information x times.

I don't want VA to die again but I'm afraid that is what will happening if nothing changes drastically.
User avatar
Alive
Posts: 5495
Joined: January 30th, 2013, 5:26 pm
Location: confessional

Re: Game Quality of Life Changes

Post by Alive »

Agree on that. As for me, I'm still waiting for a chance to remove a pokemon from account and bring it back via codes. Idk if any of those wishes above will ever be implemented. But here and now we need a better working daycare for sure. It took me 2 months to hatch a shiny starter after ~200 eggs, so it gave me 3 eggs per day and that was perfect.
ColarFX wrote: September 27th, 2022, 9:35 am Hinokazes made an amazing comment yesterday: "The raffle is already a pain, no need for the daycare to be another one. (...)"
Quoting this was the third pain XD But as I pointed yesterday, this sentence sums up all of our thoughts.
(And btw Colar, go away, it's my favourite quote that Hinokazes wrote XD Claimed it first, go find yourself another one 🤭)
Spoiler:
Image
0 Rh(+)音隠れの里
Spoiler:
AdoptableAdoptable
In nomine patris et fillii et spiritus sancti
User avatar
Phantom Thief
Posts: 18
Joined: January 14th, 2016, 9:04 pm
Gender: Female
Location: France

Re: Game Quality of Life Changes

Post by Phantom Thief »

Never expected to be mentionned haha ! xD
But I'm glad to see others have similar thoughts about this.

This is just so wrong. The daycare was supposed to be something amazing, but in the end almost everone I saw so far are just frustrated with it, and some are like me and still at the wonderful amount of 0 egg obtained from it...

I already have to spent money for a raffle that is still at 1K+ tickets for just 2 promos, and I only buy 10 tickets (I feel for those trying with more and still having nothing u_u) because I don't want to spend too much on it until I think I may have a chance.
But for the daycare, it's just me and RNG, I don't have to think of other players because I'll be the only one getting that egg. But to get that egg, the game needs to cooperate and give one to me. And no, days of wait and thousands of money spent isn't fair for a single egg (or again, none at all ;-;). I don't know how much I spent so far because I didn't count (I just know it's over 2K), but I know some spent over 6K with the best chances possible and still got nothing. Something is VERY wrong and need to be done !

This game is supposed to be fun, but where's the fun when the money I get from clicking is just to get back the money I wasted in the raffle and daycare without getting anything from BOTH ? :/
I'm not someone that can click like crazy, my hands hurt easily, so it's common that I barely click, and sometimes I don't even click at all because I either let my hands rest, or I just don't want to (I'll not force myself to play if I don't want to after all :v). So this mean currently the money I get is just that : wasted in raffle and daycare, instead of going to items and boxes. While I'm used of it going to the void with the raffle, it shouldn't be the same for the daycare...


Anyway, for the things you proposed, Colar, I'm with you ! Same for those unwanted adopts ! (we NEED to be able to get rid of extras ! >.<). I'm to the point of being happy with anything as long as it make things for the better :'D

I'm legit scared to check people's boxes in case there's so many adopts in them it lags as hell if not worse (RIP for those that have to deal with CRASHES). And for collections, pages would be awesome to still be able to see our babies without lagging or crashing ! Other collection games have ways to get rid of unwanted pets, and still offering them to other players in a way (forever or for some time before they get deleted). They also have pages to prevent lag/crashes issues because to many things loading.
It'll not be possible to keep the data of every pets, it'll be too much weight and create issues after a certain time. It's not being a monster to delete them, it's just being reasonnable. Just think of it like a real life wild area where a specie have no predator and thrive like crazy, until they are so many of them they don't have food anymore and start dying.
Regulation is key for a good balance :)
I still think my idea of releasing them, have some time to adopt them back (yours or others, doesn't matter), then they disappear forever, is something that could help. But if others have different ideas, I'd be happy to hear them, and see how good we can think of a solution xD
I'm not english nor bilingual, so expect mistakes/misunderstanding
AdoptableAdoptableAdoptableAdoptableAdoptableAdoptableAdoptable
AdoptableAdoptableAdoptableAdoptableAdoptable
User avatar
SchokoKitsune
Posts: 274
Joined: June 25th, 2011, 2:35 pm
Gender: Female

Re: Game Quality of Life Changes

Post by SchokoKitsune »

Sooo, as I'm now finally having more time to write, I'll do so.

I think the two biggest problems Virtuadopt is currently facing are the fact that there's nothing (active and not frustrating) to do if you have your dex up to date, and that we are severly lacking in communication with the team, especially our developer.

Considering communication:
I, and I guess I can speak for most of the active community, dislike being left in the dark about things. I'm not twelve anymore, and even though some of us might have liked to scavenge for stuff and solve mysteries when we were younger, most of us don't have the time and/or patience for that anymore, so please, if you give us information, do so clearly. Tell us Ditto is usable for breeding in the Daycare, instead of saying "it does things", or if you want to keep the text daycare-dialogue-ish say something like "Your Adoptables seem more interested in Ditto than they did in old VA" or something. I beg you to tell us what changed, and not to tell us that "things changed" with whatever change comes next qwq

I also don't need daily updates or anything like that, but a regular (~bi-weekly to monthly, even every other month) update would be cool. I love the idea of the dev-diary, but I don't like the release periods so far. I know we all have a real life that can be stressful, so I wouldn't even mind if it was skipped every now and then, but a more frequent dev-diary could help to make the dev-diary-topics more active again. We can all see that the first dev-diary had a bunch of replies, because the refresh aka VA 2.0 was new, everybody was hyped, and we were all very happy in general about changes that were made to the Click Exchange and the migration of old, beloved Adopts that was on the horizon. Than, the next dev-diary happend about 5 months later. That's not terribly late, but all the new things that were mentiond in it also had their own little topics in the meantime, in which we engaged. Except from the Daycare, most new things didn't feel new anymore by the time the second dev-diary happend. Sure, they are new compared to what was in the last dev-diary, but we had commented on them already in their specific topics, so there wasn't much left to say. And saying something about future-sneak-peaks when they might change completely anyways just.. isn't something I like to do.

And just in general, Yankees, talk to us, please. Aka if there is a suggestion-topic with a lot of replies, please consider telling us if that's something you might work on in the future, if it's something that's unlikely, etc. pp. Or implement a like-system like a certain blue book with faces once did, so everyone - including the staff - can like suggestions they'd like to be part of the site if they don't feel like talking about it. So we can see that the suggestion was acknowledged, like for example Dragonclaws idea to finally make baby-pokemon evolvable.

Nothing to do:
As soon as your dex is as progressed as possible, there's not really much to do anymore. Which was fine at first, because we just had the refresh. Sure, you can always hatch more Adopts - but sometimes, that is not motivating/rewarding enough to check VA every day, and click daily. Then, we got the Raffle - I love that, I loved the Promos that have been in it so far. I didn't love that the Season-Switch from Summer to Autumn wasn't mentioned anywhere, so maybe that could be changed in the future. Either some kind of timer on the Raffle page when we are getting close to a content-switch, or at least a mention on the front page when it has happend, please? And, as seen in my suggestion topic about it, I don't really like the way Shinys were handled, but I really didn't mean that Shinys should be taken out of the Raffle Pool completely, which is what it currently feels like 🙈

Then, everybody was very hyped about the arrival of the daycare - and most of us felt like we were hitting a brick wall, because the only thing we wanted the Daycare for (breeding) was kind of not working. Aka, for most players, it seems like eggs take ages to appear, and the hype was gone quite fast because it was replaced by frustration. I appreciate that we have texts that show us how compatible two Pokemon are, and I love that chances were upped in comparision to old VA, but I feel like we should get some kind of "pity system" or "safety net" to get more eggs. Or maybe bring the clicking-progress-bar back that could be filled up with clicking to give us a 100% chance at least on perfect matches ("getting along great")? I know changes like that don't happen over night, and that's fine - just inform us if you'd consider doing it, if you're working on it, and possibly an estimated timeframe, so we can choose to try with the not so great odds or save our money and wait until there's a way to get at least one guaranteed egg every day. [One egg a day feels too little, tbh, because everything else on the site moves way faster thanks to the sonic-speed-Click-Exchange, but one specific-mon-egg a day would at least be a good start compared to the current "you might have to wait over a week if you're unlucky, and pls pay upfront"! ._."]

Anyways, both of these things, despite their "problems", are something to do. But they are passive things, and you need ingame currency for them, which you have to click for. Which is fine, but sometimes you don't feel like clicking, or you can't click a lot because your wrists hurt. So, what do you do then? You probably go play something else, even though you might have wanted to play on VA. Small daily quests, or a minigame could help with that, because it's active stuff that would reward you directly, and not passive stuff that you have to work for and might still get nothing out of it. I'd assume that these things aren't easy to implement bug-free as well, so same as with potential daycare changes goes here: doesn't have to happen yet, but knowing it will happen in x days/weeks/months would already be greatly appreciated. I'd also be fine with timeframes moving up, because reallife happens, bugs might happen, and so on, but I'd appreciate if the community was involved a little more.

More:
There's so much more that could be said, because there's so much potential for improvements, but the most important things were mentioned already. I'd especially love a way to get rid of unwanted adopts at some point, and up until then a page-system for boxes, so that big accounts are accessable and playable, even if you don't have the fastest internet-connection or the best hardware. "Getting rid of adopts" could range from simply releasing them/deleting them to trading them into a currency that could then be used for a variety of things, for example trading them in against old promos, or credits, or something. Maybe a voucher for 24 hours free daycare, possibilities are endless!

[Multiselect for moving adopts would save my wrists, aka THAT would be a whole lot of quality of life. Collecting and trading for a whole bunch of mons just.. hurts when you have to move them one by one afterwards, but leaving them in the main box without pages would make everything crash in a few weeks... xD]

And, because I just thought about that again: I'd love to help the site, but I don't have the time (and energy) to commit myself to something forever. Aka I would've loved to apply as a writer, but only for a limited time/a specific event, because I don't know if future-me will still have time to write, or energy to come up with creative stories. Maybe there could be contests about writing stories/texts to specific keywords given by the staff, a few weeks prior to an event, and then the best texts are used for that event / the best writer out of those submissions could be "contracted" for just that one event? Nothing wrong with taking a permanent writer as well, tho! The more, the merrier, right?
Post Reply