Pokemon MMO Literally.

[Traab]

Ok, this is going to be more than a little fantastic, and im making up the details as I go, so hear me out. One of the biggest problems with making a pokemon MMO is how the ever loving heck do you balance hundreds upon hundreds of pokemon in this type of setting as you act as a trainer and build up your crew? Its basically certain that either they will be boring bland identical classes with flavor text or at best type weaknesses and such, meaning every charmander type has a fire blast, every squirtle type has a water blast, every bulbasaur type a leaf blast that does the same damage and the only difference is what type it hurts more and the visual display, or there WILL be 95% of the choices being garbage and the remaining 5% will be the clear and obvious choices. So how to fix that? I got the idea from a pokemon fanfic I read where one of the legendary beasts decided he was going to do the pokemon league challenge himself. In his case he basically carried a ton of wooden signposts with him with various messages prewritten on them to tell the humans what he was up to but that part isnt important.

What is important is it gave me the idea for a pokemon based mmo where you play as one of a select group of pokemon choices. So instead of having 1247 pokemon to try and balance, it is a dozen or however many would be a good starting point, perhaps one per type. The other species being npcs. Sort of like the mystery dungeon game really. There is some sort of threat out there and you are a brave young, I dunno, magikarp, who wants to save the pokemon world. We have seen in the various anime that pokemon in the wild often do group together into what amounts to communities, so that covers the variation of cities that are in most mmo games, as well as giving us quest hubs to do various things. Reputation is a big deal as you can imagine most grass type communities will be a bit nervous if a magmar wants to wander through their territory. Also your choice of pokemon type will determine what you can or cant do effectively. Said magmar is going to have a rough time helping out the tentacruel who is stuck at the bottom on the lake. Said tentacruel would not be very effective reaching the flying type flocks who need help doing blah blah blah.

Leveling up would work like most other mmos. You unlock new abilities, get better at your old ones, and of course, eventually you get to evolve. You could even do a whole process with evolution, like unlocking the ability to do so whenever you want because you might want to stay a bulbasaur rather than be an ivysaur for some reason. Or wait till you can skip straight to venusaur. As for bad guys to fight, there can be other pokemon by themselves, the evil/controlled servants of whatever bad guy the game has, or even human trainers trying to catch you.

[Draconi Redfir]

my only request is more variety then your traditional three "grass fire water" starter pokemon.

let me start the game with a ralts, or an igglybuff, or a magikarp... or a weedle...


just, and first/baby-form pokemon would be great. maybe with some exceptions such as legendaries, ghosts, and dragons.

[Lord Raziere]

There are already pokemon MMOs made by fans. they're basically just pokemon sapphire/ruby or firered/leafgreen but with multiple people and no other changes. google them.

as for balance, well it sounds more like you want to make a mystery-dungeon kind of thing or just cut out the middleman and play the monster. which sounds cool. but at that point, why still call it pokemon? make it your own thing man, let pokemon just be an inspiration, get your own lore going, unless thats what your talking about, and the pokemon is being used in the figurative inspirational sense rather than a literal one in this hypothetical improvement on thing people have already done.

[deuterio12]

Ok, this is going to be more than a little fantastic, and im making up the details as I go, so hear me out. One of the biggest problems with making a pokemon MMO is how the ever loving heck do you balance hundreds upon hundreds of pokemon in this type of setting as you act as a trainer and build up your crew? Its basically certain that either they will be boring bland identical classes with flavor text or at best type weaknesses and such, meaning every charmander type has a fire blast, every squirtle type has a water blast, every bulbasaur type a leaf blast that does the same damage and the only difference is what type it hurts more and the visual display, or there WILL be 95% of the choices being garbage and the remaining 5% will be the clear and obvious choices. So how to fix that? I got the idea from a pokemon fanfic I read where one of the legendary beasts decided he was going to do the pokemon league challenge himself. In his case he basically carried a ton of wooden signposts with him with various messages prewritten on them to tell the humans what he was up to but that part isnt important.

What is important is it gave me the idea for a pokemon based mmo where you play as one of a select group of pokemon choices. So instead of having 1247 pokemon to try and balance, it is a dozen or however many would be a good starting point, perhaps one per type. The other species being npcs. Sort of like the mystery dungeon game really. There is some sort of threat out there and you are a brave young, I dunno, magikarp, who wants to save the pokemon world. We have seen in the various anime that pokemon in the wild often do group together into what amounts to communities, so that covers the variation of cities that are in most mmo games, as well as giving us quest hubs to do various things. Reputation is a big deal as you can imagine most grass type communities will be a bit nervous if a magmar wants to wander through their territory. Also your choice of pokemon type will determine what you can or cant do effectively. Said magmar is going to have a rough time helping out the tentacruel who is stuck at the bottom on the lake. Said tentacruel would not be very effective reaching the flying type flocks who need help doing blah blah blah.

Leveling up would work like most other mmos. You unlock new abilities, get better at your old ones, and of course, eventually you get to evolve. You could even do a whole process with evolution, like unlocking the ability to do so whenever you want because you might want to stay a bulbasaur rather than be an ivysaur for some reason. Or wait till you can skip straight to venusaur. As for bad guys to fight, there can be other pokemon by themselves, the evil/controlled servants of whatever bad guy the game has, or even human trainers trying to catch you.

Alternatively, you could have a small number of different chassis with different abilities but lots of different skins covering all pokemon and half of them being pikachu/charizard variants.

Alternatively alternatively, you could have keep differences to a minimum. So a sparrow and pidgey and all the normal bird pokemon mostly have the same abilities and stats with just one or two differences each.

[Psyren]

as for balance, well it sounds more like you want to make a mystery-dungeon kind of thing or just cut out the middleman and play the monster. which sounds cool. but at that point, why still call it pokemon?

Because "Pokemon" is a brand - it doesn't have to conform to a single style of play or a single set of a core mechanics (i.e. turn-based team vs. team RPG). Much like Go!, Pokken, Snap, and Let's Go! all have different mechanics than the "regular" games, but all are still "Pokemon."

[deuterio12]

Because "Pokemon" is a brand - it doesn't have to conform to a single style of play or a single set of a core mechanics (i.e. turn-based team vs. team RPG). Much like Go!, Pokken, Snap, and Let's Go! all have different mechanics than the "regular" games, but all are still "Pokemon."

Also Mystery Dungeon, tournament/colosseum and the new incoming mobile game where you collect both different pokémon and trainers for 3x3 team battes.

[Lord Raziere]

Because "Pokemon" is a brand - it doesn't have to conform to a single style of play or a single set of a core mechanics (i.e. turn-based team vs. team RPG). Much like Go!, Pokken, Snap, and Let's Go! all have different mechanics than the "regular" games, but all are still "Pokemon."

Yeah, but he isn't part of the pokemon company. just because your a fan doesn't mean you can't make something inspired by what you love that can go do its own thing, rather than keep being what is essentially a videogame version of a fan fic. even filing the serial numbers off shows some effort to tell your own story. yes I know its hypothetical, but come on. as long as we're speculating, we might as well speculate what lore you can have that is inspired by pokemon but not be pokemon itself in this pokemon MMO, that can enhance the experience further rather than just being an expansion of something else.

[Kitten Champion]

Just to point it out, there's Temtem, which is explicitly doing a Pokemon-style Creature Capture/Proxy Battle MMO that looks pretty good generally speaking.

[Traab]

my only request is more variety then your traditional three "grass fire water" starter pokemon.

let me start the game with a ralts, or an igglybuff, or a magikarp... or a weedle...


just, and first/baby-form pokemon would be great. maybe with some exceptions such as legendaries, ghosts, and dragons.

One option is a single entrant for each pokemon type to start with. So while you wouldnt be able to start as ANY pokemon, you could start as any TYPE. So aside from the three you mentioned, be an abra, or a swinub, or a machop etc etc etc. The hard part would be setting things up so everyone has a decent starting area to get the hang of things before they have to wander into the wide world to fight in areas they may not have the advantage in anymore. After all, it would kinda suck if your squirtle starts out trying to survive in the power station zone, or your oddish getting started at a volcano zone.

[Psyren]

Yeah, but he isn't part of the pokemon company. just because your a fan doesn't mean you can't make something inspired by what you love that can go do its own thing, rather than keep being what is essentially a videogame version of a fan fic. even filing the serial numbers off shows some effort to tell your own story. yes I know its hypothetical, but come on. as long as we're speculating, we might as well speculate what lore you can have that is inspired by pokemon but not be pokemon itself in this pokemon MMO, that can enhance the experience further rather than just being an expansion of something else.

I'm not really commenting on the OP's specific attempt, just saying that TPC themselves have recognized that stagnating around the same set of core mechanics doesn't help to grow the brand.

[Starwulf]

So how to fix that? I got the idea from a pokemon fanfic I read where one of the legendary beasts decided he was going to do the pokemon league challenge himself. In his case he basically carried a ton of wooden signposts with him with various messages prewritten on them to tell the humans what he was up to but that part isnt important.

What was the fanfic called, if you don't mind me asking? It sounds very interesting.

[Lord Raziere]

What was the fanfic called, if you don't mind me asking? It sounds very interesting.

Ashes of the Past.

you'll have get to Johto Arc for that though, it starts in Kanto.

[Vizzerdrix]

I mean, you already have pixelmon, and that is balanced. You'd do well to add crafting, and classes (strip them from the ttrpg), and side jobs for the players.

[Richardson]

Pokemon is a great game. I started to play recently, but I am delighted. She has so delayed me that I now do not even have time to work)

[Anonymouswizard]

There is some sort of threat out there and you are a brave young, I dunno, magikarp, who wants to save the pokemon world.

Even without the MMO part or other Pokémon, I'd play this. I can just imagine it, you're a Magikarp, the lowest of the low, and struggling to get the levels to evolve into Garydos, and so have to flop around the world until you finally come across a stone that allows you to assume a form suited to battling: Mega Makikarp (Splash now has a power of 1).


In all seriousness, a Spore-style MMO with player created creatures, or something along those lines sounds awesome. Let players create their own custom Pokémon... or actually no, we might find something even worse than that Electric Hedgehog Pokémon.

[Traab]

Ashes of the Past.

you'll have get to Johto Arc for that though, it starts in Kanto.

And too be fair it was more of a background thing, sort of a "Lets cut away from the main storyline to see what Raikou is up too!" I wouldnt want you to get too hopeful considering the story is VERY long (and VERY excellent) but has little to do with that part at all.