Is trading even going to be useful?
I’m sure everyone is excited for this new updates. The friends list should’ve been a feature on release, and they’re adding a social aspect of the game, which is much needed imo. But it is all supposed to be geared towards trading. My only issue is, when will a player who’s been around ~1yr (or since release, which is a large portion of the player base in my experience) ever trade? Unless you’re trading a Pokémon that someone doesn’t have, there’s almost no point to this system. Not to mention trades couldn’t just happen spontaneously given the stardust cost. You’re going to have to want a Pokémon for 90 days before you can have it b worth the cost. And you have to count on it not returning to raids or seeing one in the wild (depending on the species, of course).
So for me, this system only benefits new players, hell even new alt acc’s. It doesn’t affect the game that much. It just gives you bonuses for playing with the same ppl all the time, which is welcome.
The only way I see this being useful to an experienced trainer, is trading a legacy move/moveset. And even in that case, why would you trade it? What would you trade it for? I have a Shadow Claw Gengar, and I’m lvl 34 with a nearly full dex (except regionals, and no I wouldn’t trade for those for my Gengar).
Answers
The IV reroll sounds pretty useful, provided the range can be anywhere from crap to 100% IV no matter your original IV.
Let's say you caught a shiny CD mon with an event move. It has crappy IVs. You and a friend become best friends via trading presents / transfer fodder pokemon. Then you agree to trade your rare mons back and forth for several days (not sure how much max friendship trades would cost in stardust). Eventually both of you end up with 100% IV shiny CD moveset mons. May take ages but at least it is a way to make them stronger. However, I would have preferred training or breeding mechanics for IV increases.
Don't forget you also get candy for trading, so this back and forth trading could also be a way to convert dust to candies. We will have to wait and see, but I think niantic will limit it somehow, either by limiting the number of times a pokemon can be traded, or by increasing the dust cost every trade.
I think it could be a good idea to increase cost for each successive trade with the same Mon. This would make it harder to trade back and forth single Mons with a legacy moveset (provided that moveset is maintained). But it would still be possible to let say trade all the Larvitars that I have sent to the professor with my best friend in the hope that one of them would acquire a much better IV. Stardust cost will probably determine if this will be a viable strategy.
Indeed, since candy is my main limiter instead of dust (living inside a spawn area has its perks) i'd be glad to get more candy out of trades. I'm currently walking my shiny pupitar to evolve it because I've used all my candy on various tyranitars until I found a 93% normal one, just to get one that's going to be my best with double rock move.
I'll put some thoughts here instead of the other thread:
Before the raid locators went down, people might not see any good raids and see some interesting/valuable spawns instead and drive 5 to 15 miles to catch it...
If they drove to get it, they could easily to log onto another level 30+ account to also catch it. High level/IV Bagon/Ralts, etc.
Those other accounts probably aren't able to grind the 120 additional candies to evolve it, then the hundreds more candies to max it.
Trading an older "same spawn" non-legendary/non-shiny to the main account is something that is somewhat shady that is likely to happen...
However, there are no game breaking pokemon that would even fit into that cheap trade scenario. Trading a level 35 Rayquaza a different story...rare candy savings would be tremendous. Almost doubles the rare candy a main account can obtain at the cost of some stardust.
You are absolutely correct, multiaccounting increases the probability of collecting unique Mons in both or all accounts used, regardless of using scanners or not. All that is needed is checking IVs soon after collection and go back and collect Mon that you missed in the first instance with the other account. But trading does not make sense for unique high IV Mons, due to the reroll and lowered IV as a consequence.
I think it will be too expensive to trade shinies or legendaries back and forth in the hope of getting a really good IV. It also does not make sense to trade Mons that has been powered up with stardust as level will shuffle and likely be substantially reduced. What makes sense is to trade potentially useful Mons that hasn't been invested in and where costs are kept at a reasonable level, hoping that a beneficial reroll could give you a near-perfect IV (in one of your accounts if multi-accounting). A high friendship level that you will easily get by multiaccounting, increases the probability of obtaining Mons with better IVs during reroll.
Here's one scenario I can think of...
I believe Niantic is going to keep it simple; I would suspect that Level 1 evolution mons are going to have the same generally low stardust trade cost, made lower by friendship level.
So let's say you are working on your Tyranitar squad, and I am looking for enough candy to evolve say, a second decent Gardevoir. I send you a few Larvitars for some Ralts. I get some Larvitar candy as they go out the door in addition to your Ralts, and you get a few additional Larvitar to send to the grinder for candy. If the IVs on one turn out good, you have an evolution candidate.
As others have pointed out, you're spending dust to essentially create candies. I'm just of the opinion that with a high friendship level the stardust cost for non-legendaries isn't going to be onerous.
I may not be useful with the current battle system, but who knows how/if they will expand the battle system, and if so, trading may gain a purpose there (e.g. EV's, as seen from different 'candies' in Let's Go; courage candy, smart candy, quick candy, mighty candy, etc.) not to mention the possibility of having a totally different reworked battle system.
Right now, in terms of functionality, I agree. However, from a collection perspective, I disagree. As soon as it releases I'm going to try all that I can do outside of sexual favors to obtain a legacy psybeam chansey, acid muk, SC/Sludge WAVE gengar, etc.
To answer your second part, I was blessed to obtain 7 (five of which are 82%+) shadow claw gengars, and will be using those as fodder for other legacy movesets
I can actually see the 'friends' system creating it's own issues, from a 'social' aspect.
If I have a friend that is at work for a couple of hours, and I know they want to raid later, I might be inclined to decline raiding with random people until such time as I have an Ultra/Best friend around to give me better dps (resulting in more damage balls) on top of the extra balls I would gain from being friends.
Why would I bother raiding with randoms, who will out dps me due to their own friends bonus, guaranteeing I can't get maximum balls, when I will be much better off waiting and using my passes when I get the optimal benefits?
Raid groups have already become very cliquey in a lot of areas, and I can see this encouraging this type of behavior.
Rather than encouraging social behavior, in some places it may indeed have the reverse influence in some cases.
I am not trying to be intentionally negative - I do think trading/friends can be a good thing for the game. I am simply trying to look at it from all angles to see what impact it will have on the game and the community.
I think, the simple explanation will be that the friend bonuses will reinforce however type of gameplay a person has. For those who tend to think of getting ahead with dps and number of balls, even before the trading/friend system, they’d simply act the same or worse than before. those who are optimistic about the friendship bonuses will be the ones who’d see the most benefit on the friendship system.
The way I see it, in certain places, like small or Medium-sized cities, where forming a raid group is relatively harder than a big city like New York, players, whether those playing hard core or casually, will feel encouraged to make more friends because the “investment” they put in will pay off as damage bonuses that will allow more successful raids in the future. That’s because many of these cities, including where I play, have seen the number of raiding players dwindle from 20+ per raid to 5 to 10 per raid. We usually care less about dividing into teams because we simply do not have much of a choice.
Then again, the whole thing can change one person’s playing style. Like how those who moved from a different region can find him/herself being invited to raid with other players so that they can level-up the friendship status quickly. We have this one person who used to live in Asia, and moved to the US, and already, people are asking him to be their “best friend” so that they can trade regional pokemon with him in 3 months.
My daughter's fiancé's little brother lives in Tsibili, Georgia (country, not state), and plays. I'm in the US. He's coming here next week for the wedding, and I hope he catches at Tauros. I'm going to Georgia in September for a party, we should be best friends by then, and I hope I can trade him lots of my Tauross for his Mr. Mime's (or whatever regional is good for him,) and then come home and trade those for things I need. So a fair benefit for an established player.
