Wow, it's been about two pages since I've done a proper radar post. There's a lot in the works, but much of it is new content (
like facilities, mainly) that doesn't really constitute a rework of anything players are invested heavily into. This radar will focus on things that players already possess:
JC Work
We're hoping to, alongside the launch of Safari (if testing goes well), do a pass of JC costs and pay across the game to bring things into parity. JC costs post-Gen 9 have been kind of... dartboard in their methodology. The priority was to get content out first and worry about JC later, but later has become now and we can't kick this can down the road forever.
Our process will be something like this:
- Assign a JC value to every prize that a venue can award a player. (TC, RC, experience, Pokemon, and so on.)
- Assign each facility challenge a JC cost based on the rewards offered.
- Challenges that are expected to be longer (in real time) get to be more JC-efficient than faster challenges.
- Challenges that are PvP get to be more JC-efficient than PvE challenges.
- Assign the challenge a JC payout, based on desirability.
- Easier-to-ref challenges will destroy a little net JC, while harder-to-ref challenges will generate a little net JC.
I'm sure none of this sounds too shocking so far. One thing that may rock the boat a little is that we might increase JC costs and pay in lockstep, to give ourselves a little more granularity. This doesn't affect how things fit together, but it can impact any JC stockpile you may have, so we recommend burning your existing JC before it "depreciates".
Balance Patches
I'm sure players have seen me or other moderators refer to an upcoming balance pass, at least obliquely. Now that the shape of the patch has become clearer, I thought I'd set expectations around it. The patch is much like previous Pokemon, ability, and item changes... But all pushed together into one multi-post patch. Due to the sheer size, it's been referred to as "Season 2".
Said patch is slated for December 16 — the one-year anniversary of Gen 9 BBP. (Or somewhere in the neighborhood of that date. This is still BBP, after all.) It brushes up most remaining unloved targets for balance, while bringing the very best mons in line with their immediate competition — don't want to overpromise on this one. This also marks our first big pass for item balance, targeting problematic sources of damage creep such as (the good) Choice items and Shell Bell. It also also marks the large-scale implementation of Attack Aid, Defense Aid, Bonus-Proof, and Defense-Proof in lots of interesting places; which will have ramifications for how we itemize going forward. All of the squeaky wheels that I can think of off-hand are in here. It's big!
Which brings me to a preference question. Some players like playing a slightly newer version of the game every month, while others maybe want to play more than a single match before some part of the game is revised. There was a period over this summer where we were getting patches in less than four weeks, with Pokemon, condition, and other system changes. How fast is too fast? How slow is too slow?
This question doesn't really include corrections, which will happen whenever they're needed, like how I'm about to make Sleep Talk not auto-fail when you order it into an opponent who is about to Spore you, but hasn't yet. Those are fairly different from what constitutes a balance pass, or system change. (Though, I'm loathe to name all these types of things, and then have to remember what everything is named going forward.)
This post got a bit long, so I'll end it here with a quick slice of our near-term to-do list:
- Pinnacle Raids: "The Fundamental Elemental Procession", "The Cataclysmic Clashing Colossi", and "The Source of the Enigma"
- November 2023 challenge (minor) Event
- Leveling Habitats: "Howling Pack Valley", "Canvas of the Scar Artist", and "The Path of Conveyed Flowers"
- 2-Trek Safari Habitats, and 2v2 Realgam Sims, to mirror the "Normal" and "Hard" divide between Raid types.
- Pinnacle Safaris: " Ancient Herald of World Peace"
- The Battle Tree, The Battle Pike, and ??? are still all steadily under construction.