OK, let’s say Game Freak decides to take the plunge and finally give us the Pokémon MMO that so many people clamor for. It would be amazing! Or so we hope.
While obviously lots of things about a Pokémon MMO would be great, it’s kind of funny to think about the crappy things that could come with that hypothetical game, too. Can you imagine microtransactions in a Pokémon game, for example? Ugh.
Dorkly illustrates some of the drawbacks of a potential Pokémon MMO in the comic below, and you know what? I’d be willing to tolerate all that stuff for an official MMO anyway.
You can read more Dorkly comics here. And remember…it’s not like we’re so far off from a Pokemon MMO anyway.“
Comments
15 responses to “Maybe A Pokémon MMO Wouldn’t Be As Awesome As We Think”
That last pic doesn’t make sense… unless players can block other players with their bodies.
Some MMOs have that.
A better explanation would be how there are so many players crowding the nurse no one can interact with her to heal without using some sort of targeting command.
He doesn’t have HM01 Cut
I’ve often fantasised about a Pokemon MMO but in practice, it would be a horrible experience. Pokemon games are enjoyable because you’re the hero of your individual stories, those worlds exist for your benefit. A Pokemon MMO will be filled with hardcore min-maxers. In WoW, every balance patch is followed by millions bitching about the supposed under/over-powered nature of their class and multiply that complexity by hundreds of Pokemon.
Um, Pokemon as it stands is pretty hardcore at the top level, with breeding, IVs, EVs, natures. All of that comes together for competitive battling. So from a PvP point of view, it’s set. The real problem a pokemon MMO wouldn’t work is what you mentioned at the start. Pokemon as we’ve known it for the past decade is a strictly solo affair, there is next to no group experience. Co-operative play would be non existent unless they drastically change something. Even if they decide to flip over a decade of lore, the real problem is if they decide to do a MMO, they’d be killing off the handheld games forever.
Oh I know that scene exists, but it wouldn’t be enjoyable as a conventional MMO in the way people hope a Pokemon game might be. No one is going to run around with a hodge podge of Pokemon like in the anime, All the min-maxers are just going to have some combination of the same handful of competition Pokemon, like in the strip above.
You under-estimate the amount of people who don’t min-max in MMOs 🙂 MMOs are beautiful because the ones that are well done invite a variety of play styles, whether it be RP, playing dress up, end game PvE or PvP. A pokemon MMO can achieve RP, and dress up and PvP without a problem, just look at X and Y.
However, MMOs are also very social beasts, requiring group interactions beyond that of a one vs one battle, or trading. What a pokemon MMO would lack would be an equivalent of gathering a bunch of trainers to go explore some forest, cave, tower, what have you, and tackle the obstacles together. This element is crucial for a MMO. I can a think of a couple of ways Nintendo and gamefreak can go about this for the mechanics but it would require a massive evolution of the lore as we know it and essentially end the handheld games, which is the bigger problem as I mentioned.
A pokemon MMO designed carefully can work, but it’s likely not in Nintendo’s and us gamers’ best interests to do so in the long run.
Possibly, but RP servers are still niche as hell. I haven’t played WoW in a couple of expansions but back when I raided, there was only one or two ‘acceptable’ builds for each class, and a predetermined ‘best in class’ set of gear that you either had, or were working towards. Even the talent trees weren’t that diverse and depended greatly on whatever tree that flavour-of-the-month balance patch made slightly more powerful. In the competitive progression guilds, every player had 95% commonality with every character other of his class, because… numbers.
While min-maxers aren’t everyone, after a year or two, the curious fair-weather fans would have left and what’s left is just raiders and that doesn’t sound like a Pokemon game I want to play. Pallet Town swamped with dudes in legendaries to farm dailies just doesn’t sound like the ‘Pokemon’ experience most people expect.
Before LFR got introduced, the vast majority of WoW players had never stepped foot in a raid when it was current content. Even with the introduction of LFR, most those people are still running sub-optimal specs and are pretty casual players.
The problem honestly isn’t trainers having optimum teams of perfectly bred pokemon running around everywhere destroying the immersion of “casuals”, we already see this in online battles in X and Y. In WoW, there’s always been a good chunk of players who have stood idly in the capitals flashing their epics. The problem lies in how the pokemon experience isn’t designed around group play, and will never be without extensive reworking of their systems.
The systems that we see with X and Y, the introduction of O-Powers and instant connectivity outside of a pokemon center is more or less converging towards the MMO experience without actually turning the game into an MMO where everyone is on a single server (or some variant thereof). I expect the next gen titles will improve upon this further.
EDIT: I guess my point after all these posts is, yes a pokemon MMO likely won’t be what we expect, but not for the reasons the above strip implied.
I would just be happy with an open world Pokemon on something more powerful than a dorito.
yeah the next Nintendo handheld it will look better 😛
It won’t ever happen, sadly. Nintendo are in the stone-ages when it comes to viable online multi-player in any form. The Wii U mega patch before launch was last-minute networking patches that still give sub-par clunky online multi-player.
Not one of dorklys best… very doubtful Ninty would put in microtransactions to a pokemon MMO…
Micros would be in for HMs of players didn’t want to play for them (skip the story shortcut).
NPCs would be level ranged by section rather than static. Veredian forest for example would have level 5 – 15 trainers instead of all sitting around seven. (Until endgame, then they’d reset with the whole “I’ve gotten much stronger since our last match” and max stats etc.)
I’d also hazard that NPCs wouldn’t engage you, you’d have to engage them or keep walking.
I thought 2v2 matches were a thing? If not, I’ve seen it done solo, it’d be possible to pull off. Even with combo attacks.
On a less serious scale, I’d ruin ‘the lore’ by turning combat into a smash bros 64 like experience. Where everyone has [caried Pokemon] lives, when they lose they swap out until they have no more to use, damage done based on level (so a weak can be a strong, if they’re fast/lucky) and so on. I’d find that a lot less monotonous than that current battle.
You guys know that Pixelmon exists right? Minecraft + Pokemon. There are plenty of minecraft servers out there with lots of players catching pokemon. It has badges, pokemon, gyms etc