Temtems - A Failed Attempt At A Pokeclone

[Disc]

That updates screams "were not sure how to balance our economy, so we'll just add a money sink preemptively". And here I was thinking people said it was hard to earn money, but the devs clearly think theres too much money.

The problem is that Temtem sees players getting a lot of these items, and thinks that just moving the goal posts further away solves the problem. It doesn't, and it never will.

Temtem is an MMO - and even as it's playerbase fell, the games still had thousands of players at any one time. Chances are that, if you stacked up player's temtem encounters, so all their firsts were lined up, and all their seconds were, etc.? There would be shinies on most if not nearly all rows. Even at the lowest natural playercount - just over 5k - if they all had an encounter spontaneously generated at once, the chance it would include at least one Luma is still greater than 50%.

Making it worse, if you're money grinding, you're also shiny hunting. With there being only one grind, based on catches, players are essentially doing every grind in the game at once. This makes players get all the rewards together, rather than a few at a time. THIS is the core issue - that players are doing every grind in the game at once, so they have to make that unified grind as slow as possible.

Rather than moving the goal posts further and further away, split it up into different things. Make the best money-gaining method one based around PvP or rematching PvE trainers, so that players grinding money don't also get Luma chances. Nerf freetem at the same time. Now players have two choices on the grind. Options! Specialisation! It's barely a start, but barely a start is still a start.

 

[OddEyes]

EDIT:
Unrelated to this, I've just realised that Mangakamen straight up read the thread. How? Because he used one of my images for his video. Specifically, Happy Saku in a volcano. Here's the timestamp. I ain't mad, I think it's the first time something I've made made it to youtube.

Spoiler: MangaCopy

undefined

He's a lurker around here. He's alluded to Kiwi Farms in his vids a couple times - Sometimes as jokes, sometimes looking at information... he used to have his vids and such shared around here.

If you want credit for your image, send him a message, he'd probably be glad to give it to ya.

Honestly though, I never cared about that guy before and rarely ever watched his videos before, not because of the content of his videos, but because I wanted to stay far the fuck away from Furries, not knowing who is cool (Rags, somewhat) and who is degenerate (https://kiwifarms.net/forums/animal-control.83/) and I mean I mention Rags here, but he doesn't make it evident to ppl that he's a Furry, so there's no shame watching him. Other furries like Pkrussl and Digby I just can't, even if the stuff they make is okay.

He's not really a furry, I mean, I follow the guy a lot, and he just has a lot of avatars - heck, even in that temtem video he was just using his human avatar. I'd also like to point out that he was playing the game and I am in his discord, and I did point out a few things here to him, so... Blame me I guess.

 

[Disc]

He's a lurker around here. He's alluded to Kiwi Farms in his vids a couple times - Sometimes as jokes, sometimes looking at information... he used to have his vids and such shared around here.

If you want credit for your image, send him a message, he'd probably be glad to give it to ya.



He's not really a furry, I mean, the follow the guy a lot, and he just has a lot of avatars - heck, even in that temtem video he was just using his human avatar. I'd also like to point out that he was playing the game and I am in his discord, and I did point out a few things here to him, so... Blame me I guess.

Nah, I ain't mad at either of you. I'm more mad he stretched it out awfully than that he took a pic, to be honest. Far better things to get mad at in this thread alone.

Kamen, if you read this, I don't need a nod. I don't need to protect my reputation as the guy who took one picture of a Saku. I think I can live with going uncredited for that.

Anyway, on to the main topic - Crema and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Patch.

Look at all the awards. This one post got ten. I think it's safe to say this patch finally broke the uncritical pokemon hating blindness for a lot of people.

ブルプロCβT待機＠アフィサイトへの転載は禁止です。 on Twitter

“SaiCard before #Temtem”

twitter.com

Holy fuck.

The price increase for each successive set of 5 Saicards is nearly doubling the previous set. This means that the first set costs 3.5k, the second costs 6.5k, the third costs nearly 13k, the fourth costs nearly 25k, the fifth 48k, and the last one NINETY ONE THOUSAND PANSUN. That is 18000 fucking pansun for the 26th through 30th temcard.

What the fuck, Crema?

 

[OddEyes]

Nah, I ain't mad at either of you. I'm more mad he stretched it out awfully than that he took a pic, to be honest. Far better things to get mad at in this thread alone.

Kamen, if you read this, I don't need a nod. I don't need to protect my reputation as the guy who took one picture of a Saku. I think I can live with going uncredited for that.

Anyway, on to the main topic - Crema and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Patch.

View attachment 1149831

Look at all the awards. This one post got ten. I think it's safe to say this patch finally broke the uncritical pokemon hating blindness for a lot of people.

ブルプロCβT待機＠アフィサイトへの転載は禁止です。 on Twitter

“SaiCard before #Temtem”

twitter.com

Holy fuck.

The price increase for each successive set of 5 Saicards is nearly doubling the previous set. This means that the first set costs 3.5k, the second costs 6.5k, the third costs nearly 13k, the fourth costs nearly 25k, the fifth 48k, and the last one NINETY ONE THOUSAND PANSUN. That is 18000 fucking pansun for the 26th through 30th temcard.

What the fuck, Crema?

Geez...

Actually, I wanted to bring up something interesting that I learned browsing through twitter, did you guys hear about that one guy who's already running an auction house on Twitch?

Twitch

Twitch is the world's leading video platform and community for gamers.

www.twitch.tv

The guy's already racked up over million Pansun in the game because he takes a cut from the profits. Although funny thing about Saipark the guy says it's a wet dream for luma hunters 3:29:47

But really unless you're this guy or other people who are running their own auction houses (beating Crema to the punch mind you cause they wanted to do this in game), you're looking at an excessive amount of grinding to get that.

BTW, I think it should be noted that the best temtem to catch for freetem is Shuire (if you're just doing catching and releasing) and that only nets you about 328 pansun. I've seen that probably the best way to grind is to go to the volcano area and catch Mastione - Since 1) it's near a healing/shopping center and 2) if you've got the right set up, you can catch the bugger with a regular tem card at around 80 percent of it's health. But that doesn't make this good in any manner.

 

[Niggernerd]

I like ones where you catch big titty anime girls

 

[Disc]

I decided to try out Saipark.

Walked there, got a frankly ridiculous number of encounters on the way, but whatever. There's a billboard here for Pay my 3500 entry fee, get five saicards, and walk in.

I'm here to do one thing - get an Oceara. I couldn't be assed to grind them in the cave, but hey, if they're convenient here, all the better. I got money to burn from the campaign.

After wandering around for a bit, I find two of them. I use a chain lightning, and one of them - despite being significantly lower level - takes significantly lower damage. So hey, that one's probably got good special defense. I lower their hp to the red, and start throwing cards.

FOUR OF MY FIVE CARDS FAIL. I catch the Oceara I wanted, and it did have a 50SV - but that was on the fourth card! I paid 3500 pansuns for LITERALLY ONE WATER HORSE.

The server goes down for maintenance and comes back up again. Nothing about the grind is fixed, just getting a few players unstuck.

I go to the guy who sells more temcard packs. He looks like a normal store owner.

He has three dialog options. For the player, these mean three things:
- 1: Buy a pack for the current price, with no double-check
- 2: Open up the general store
- 3: Walk away.

If you're mashing A (because you normally have to get through dialog to open up a store), that means that you're going to buy cards by accident. Great.

The second pack costs 6723. With the tweet posted earlier, we can now see the rate this week:
3500, 6723, 12915, 24811, 47661, 91557 for each successive set of cards.
6723/3500 = 1.921 multiplier on cost. This is reflected in the following cards as well. NEARLY FRIGGIN' DOUBLE FOR EACH SUCCESSIVE FIVER.

 

[Dumpster dived waifu]

View attachment 1149831

A pretty on point sentiment. The devs should absolutely have taken time to observe other mmos for where they succeeded or failed, and draw from that to be better.

Wow initially had a negative penalty to exp for players that played too much. After so many hours per week (or day, I cant remember) youd receive a lot less exp for everything. The devs wanted to encourage players to take a break from playing, but players saw this as a punishment for playing too much. Easy solution was to just reframe this penalty. Instead of a penalty for playing too much, youd get a "bonus" for not playing too much. The effect on exp was identical, but players didn't see this as a bad thing anymore. When FFXIV implemented an identical system, do you think they ignored what happened in wow and also called it a penalty? No, they saw the results and just skipped straight to bonus exp for taking a break.

You dont need to experience everything yourself, evaluate the market and use that knowledge to your game's/player's benefit.

 

[ChucklesTheJester]

You dont need to experience everything yourself, evaluate the market and use that knowledge to your game's/player's benefit.

But then they would have to want to strive to be a good game, and not just "Name filed off" Pokemon Knock off.

Higher chance the Next Mainline pokemon game is going to be fantastic, and not rushed, then the people who put pronouns in games non Ironicly, will care about not only making a good game, but one that not a shameless knockoff.

 

[Questionable Ceviche]

Why would they be releasing money sinks and "end game areas" when the game is still in Early Access? I was under the impression that not even all of the islands were available yet. Their economy and game management is totally broken.

 

[OddEyes]

Why would they be releasing money sinks and "end game areas" when the game is still in Early Access? I was under the impression that not even all of the islands were available yet. Their economy and game management is totally broken.

It's because it's in Early Access - The fact that they released the game like it is, with only three islands and barely half the roster (available) you're gonna have much more limited content to have to work with.

And people like to complain that Pokemon SwSh have limited content, when Temtem pretty much has the exact same issue, but made worse due to the fact that they're releasing these clearly end-game materials early since it'll mess with the economy of the game, and Temtem's economy was already messed up.

 

[Questionable Ceviche]

It's because it's in Early Access - The fact that they released the game like it is, with only three islands and barely half the roster (available) you're gonna have much more limited content to have to work with.

And people like to complain that Pokemon SwSh have limited content, when Temtem pretty much has the exact same issue, but made worse due to the fact that they're releasing these clearly end-game materials early since it'll mess with the economy of the game, and Temtem's economy was already messed up.

If they're releasing what is supposed to be end game content right now, when the game isn't even finished, then the actual end game economy is going to be turbofucked.

It's either they released it too early, and without the sense of progression, the prices on items that players want don't make sense. Without the natural game progression of players making more money later on, of course these items are unattainably expensive. If the devs do intend for them to be this expensive this soon, then the actual prices on real post-game content when the full game comes out are going to be astronomical. I'm talking about Gaia Online levels of hyperinflation.

Is there a system in place for players to buy/trade temtem from each other? Nerfing the shiny rate does make a bit of sense in an ecosystem where thousands of players are all grinding at one time. It still sucks for all the individual players, though. They have to balance it to work for all the players as a cohesive group without punishing the individuals playing the game.

When MMOs were brand new to the market, this was a big experiment. It makes sense for developers to make mistakes with that when they didn't have prior experience. Graphical MMOs have been around for 20+ years now. I get that they're using these players as beta testers, and wonky balance is part of the early access gamble. The whole thing seems like they're in panic mode and don't know what to do. The Temtem devs don't have an excuse to bungle things this badly.

 

[robobobo]

Sure they do, inexperience and incompetence are excuses! Maybe not good excuses, but hey.

 

[OddEyes]

Is there a system in place for players to buy/trade temtem from each other? Nerfing the shiny rate does make a bit of sense in an ecosystem where thousands of players are all grinding at one time. It still sucks for all the individual players, though. They have to balance it to work for all the players as a cohesive group without punishing the individuals playing the game.

There is a trading system, and you can even trade items and money, however, the Luma Rate was already nerfed when compared to pokemon:

You have a MUCH better attempt of getting a Shiny pokemon than encountering a Luma Temtem, even with the added SaiPark, it still is way too low of a chance of actually encountering a Shiny Luma in comparison to a pokemon. All this is doing is just making the grind even worse than it actually is.

From reddit, there's this chart:

r/PlayTemtem - Statistical probability analysis of new Luma rates Before & After Patch 0.5.12!

67 votes and 30 comments so far on Reddit

www.reddit.com

As you can see, unless you're willing to grind impossibly long times in order to find one Luma, and that's not even a guarantee

 

[Disc]

There is a trading system, and you can even trade items and money, however, the Luma Rate was already nerfed when compared to pokemon:

View attachment 1153920

You have a MUCH better attempt of getting a Shiny pokemon than encountering a Luma Temtem, even with the added SaiPark, it still is way too low of a chance of actually encountering a Shiny Luma in comparison to a pokemon. All this is doing is just making the grind even worse than it actually is.

From reddit, there's this chart:
View attachment 1153922

r/PlayTemtem - Statistical probability analysis of new Luma rates Before & After Patch 0.5.12!

67 votes and 30 comments so far on Reddit

www.reddit.com

As you can see, unless you're willing to grind impossibly long times in order to find one Luma, and that's not even a guarantee

Two more details to hammer this in:
1: Lumas come with three maxed SVs (think genes for stats). Shinies only come with maxed IVs if the setup allows for it. So Lumas are better, right?
Nope.
Most shiny methods in recent games come with other grinds, that give increasingly high IV Pokémon over time. In addition, Pokemon has built up ways to fix a well-loved but crappy Pokémon’s stats, with Bottlecaps and Nature mints to turn them into a powerhouse. Temtems equivalent, Telomere Hacks, are MUCH slower and grinder.

The other thing is the Saipark rates aren’t accurate. Not all Temtem in the park get the boosted Luma rate - only the featured temtem, which in this case are 30% of all spawns. The math works out that even in the Saipark, getting Lumas is harder than before.

Naturally, there’s two camps:
1: Fuck that that’s too hard.
2: If you’re not willing to give up any concept of a social life to grind Lumas are you really a fan of this game? Insert one of “Its early access/MMOs need to be Grindy/go back to dopemon you shill”

Also, at their rate of releasing islands, the final one will probably be mid-2021. If having the servers online doesn’t slow them down. The current state IS endgame, for the foreseeable future. You don’t balance content around the state of players a year and a half into the future, because that’s impossible to predict.

 

[OddEyes]

Most shiny methods in recent games come with other grinds, that give increasingly high IV Pokémon over time. In addition, Pokemon has built up ways to fix a well-loved but crappy Pokémon’s stats, with Bottlecaps and Nature mints to turn them into a powerhouse. Temtems equivalent, Telomere Hacks, are MUCH slower and grinder.

Not to mention, extremely limited at this point. Take for example Telomere Hacks - SPD, you can only find 3 of them at this point in the game. Meanwhile, in pokemon, you can gain access to the items necessary to make a competitively viable pokemon in unlimited quantities.

Oh, and fun little side note, since I know you "love' Distant Kingdom, he did a video on Temtem, and in it, he praises the game (of course) and even made a very dumb statement: "Sword and Shield introduced the Escape Rope".

Not even kidding on that.

 

[Cod of War]

Guess I just imagined using an escape rope to exit Sprout Tower in Crystal.

 

[UnsufficentBoobage]

I wonder, if their itch to become the Big Monster-catching Thing was that strong, why couldn't they, Iunno, take to non-pokemon monster-based rpgs for inspiration? Like Azure Dreams*, or other stuff that wasn't popular simply cause of clunky interfaces, dumb plots or early 3D that makes you wanna run into the nearest sharp object face-first, but would've been amazing with a little bit more love put into it?
Why just take pokemon mechanics and make them shittier.

*yes, I am playing it right now, GBC one, why do you ask?

 

[Disc]

Not to mention, extremely limited at this point. Take for example Telomere Hacks - SPD, you can only find 3 of them at this point in the game. Meanwhile, in pokemon, you can gain access to the items necessary to make a competitively viable pokemon in unlimited quantities.

Oh, and fun little side note, since I know you "love' Distant Kingdom, he did a video on Temtem, and in it, he praises the game (of course) and even made a very dumb statement: "Sword and Shield introduced the Escape Rope".

Not even kidding on that.

I am going to need a source. That is a special kind of stupid.

He's posted some tweets about it before.

Jerm D. Kingdom on Twitter

“The Temtem gym leaders are actually sooooo hard. Don't remember the last time I got my shit mixed this badly 🤣 Majority of difficulty comes from the fact that the Leader isnt restricted to monotype and can have type coverage”

twitter.com

This was about his fight against the second dojo master, rawiri. For context, here's the two teams side-by-side.

Spoiler: DK vs. Rawiri

His post match - in other words, post any exp they get from the fight.

Would this fight be challenging? Sure, but not because it's a better-made game. It's because he has literally two good temtem, neither of which is particularly useful. His Ganki and Crystle - sorry, 'krisle' are the only ones even close to the strongest of Rawiri's team, and the others trail far behind.

Allergic Spread is a lot like Razor Leaf, in that it hits both opponents. So every turn a nature tem was out, they'd spam Allergic Spread and hit both of his temtem. So any water tem out would die.

Note that two of these temtem don't even have listed traits. But we're supposed to be super afraid of them.

krisle is weak to Fire Temtem, so obviously despite his high level, he's probably mostly useless. The other good one is Ganki, who doesn't have a good attack against the nature tems and is neutral to everyone else. So yeah, it's not a Temtem problem.

But that's not even the funniest part.

DK is claiming that the game is super hard when the very composition of his team tells me that he was cheesing the entire first island. If you're levelling equally, the enemies generally end up slightly higher level than you. But that's not what he's been doing. By the looks of it, he's been chain lightning-ing things, using the few electric types given to COMPLETELY cheese the first island. And even the other high levelled temtem - krisle the Crystle - resists and is super effective against electric and mental, which due to boss mons makes him the easy path on the first island.

If your temtem is overlevelled, they get less exp. So high level temtem won't get far ahead as much as levelling an equal team.

The hypocrisy is so delicious. The only reason this boss was as challenging as it was to him was because he likely completely stormed through the first island to the point of screwing up his own progression from overusing the temtem. But no, this game's difficulty is flawless obviously.

At least he has the ability to be consistent sometimes. He had a big go at Pokemon about bad scaling, and rightfully complains when Temtem does it too.

Jerm D. Kingdom on Twitter

“NOOOO TemTem has shit scaling Feelsbadman 😩”

twitter.com

 

[ChucklesTheJester]

I am going to need a source. That is a special kind of stupid.

He's posted some tweets about it before.

Jerm D. Kingdom on Twitter

“The Temtem gym leaders are actually sooooo hard. Don't remember the last time I got my shit mixed this badly 🤣 Majority of difficulty comes from the fact that the Leader isnt restricted to monotype and can have type coverage”

twitter.com

This was about his fight against the second dojo master, rawiri. For context, here's the two teams side-by-side.

Spoiler: DK vs. Rawiri

View attachment 1154534
His post match - in other words, post any exp they get from the fight.

View attachment 1154537

Would this fight be challenging? Sure, but not because it's a better-made game. It's because he has literally two good temtem, neither of which is particularly useful. His Ganki and Crystle - sorry, 'krisle' are the only ones even close to the strongest of Rawiri's team, and the others trail far behind.

Allergic Spread is a lot like Razor Leaf, in that it hits both opponents. So every turn a nature tem was out, they'd spam Allergic Spread and hit both of his temtem. So any water tem out would die.

Note that two of these temtem don't even have listed traits. But we're supposed to be super afraid of them.

krisle is weak to Fire Temtem, so obviously despite his high level, he's probably mostly useless. The other good one is Ganki, who doesn't have a good attack against the nature tems and is neutral to everyone else. So yeah, it's not a Temtem problem.

But that's not even the funniest part.

DK is claiming that the game is super hard when the very composition of his team tells me that he was cheesing the entire first island. If you're levelling equally, the enemies generally end up slightly higher level than you. But that's not what he's been doing. By the looks of it, he's been chain lightning-ing things, using the few electric types given to COMPLETELY cheese the first island. And even the other high levelled temtem - krisle the Crystle - resists and is super effective against electric and mental, which due to boss mons makes him the easy path on the first island.

If your temtem is overlevelled, they get less exp. So high level temtem won't get far ahead as much as levelling an equal team.

The hypocrisy is so delicious. The only reason this boss was as challenging as it was to him was because he likely completely stormed through the first island to the point of screwing up his own progression from overusing the temtem. But no, this game's difficulty is flawless obviously.

At least he has the ability to be consistent sometimes. He had a big go at Pokemon about bad scaling, and rightfully complains when Temtem does it too.

Jerm D. Kingdom on Twitter

“NOOOO TemTem has shit scaling Feelsbadman 😩”

twitter.com

Wow that guys sucks,in more ways then one. I wonder if he going to keep sucking the temtem dick.

 

[OddEyes]

I am going to need a source. That is a special kind of stupid.

It's in his Temtem video. I'd get you the time code, but the guy is so boring to listen to that I'd fall asleep in my chair.

DK is claiming that the game is super hard when the very composition of his team tells me that he was cheesing the entire first island. If you're levelling equally, the enemies generally end up slightly higher level than you. But that's not what he's been doing. By the looks of it, he's been chain lightning-ing things, using the few electric types given to COMPLETELY cheese the first island.

To be fair, I do agree with MK that Chain Lightning is a good way to do some leveling up before you go to the second island (especially if you're searching for an Oceara)- And remember, you can't really get Nessla or abuse it until you get the surfboard so you're forced to just rely on Ganki since it's the only electric Temtem you can have until you face against the first Dojo Leader. And by then, you've already managed to get past most of the first Island's trials and tribulations.

Actually, now that I think about it, why would you even bring a level 15 Oceara to the Dojo in the first place? Like, it does it even have the Coward's Cape equipped for EXP with it? And you'd already know what kind of levels to at least expect by facing off against the first Tamer in the dojo - Since all the tamers have both Nature and Fire temtem that are well over level 20 as well as know exactly what types and what level range you'd be facing off against.

Hell, Oceara's bare minimum level you can get it at is Level 15 - What the Fuck was he even thinking!? It's obviously a Temtem that has NO training to it, so at this point, it's just dead weight. You'd expect him to have at least have it level up SOMEWHAT before going into a boss battle.

While you can cheese with the Chain Lightning with both Ganki and Nessla and get the healing benefit, It's not gonna do much against Rawiri's nature type opener (as well as his Luma). Hell, Wind doesn't even resist Nature types like how Flying resists grass in pokemon, so why in the world would you even start with Electric temtem? (assuming that this is how his team did open up with).

I think... He just sucks.

Hell, I have to wonder if he even bothered to get Noxious Bomb. Tuwai, Ganki, Barnshe (which would've been a better choice to bring to the battle), Kaku, Tateru, Fomu, and Pewki can all learn the move and it'd at least be a good against the pesky Nature types.