So as being someone who has played pokemon on both this server and the main series extensively, I'm super happy you're beginning to add features to make the server like the main games, and I can't wait to see what's to come. I'm also more than happy to lend as much of my knowledge/advice as needed to successfully implement the new feature, breeding. First (for anyone who didn't know), I want to go over a few key points of breeding in the main series, as to avoid confusion.
How Breeding works in the main series:
1) Breeding happens when you place a male and female pokemon in the day care and leave them for a certain amount of time. If enough time has passed, an attendant outside the day care will give you an egg which, when hatched, gives you a level 1 pokemon at the bottom of the mother's evolution line. For instance, a Beedrill and Kakuna breeding would produce a Weedle.
2) There are 16 categories, called "egg groups", that each species of pokemon are put into, such as the Field Group, Human-like Group, or Flying Group. Each pokemon is in one or two of these groups, much like typing, and it determines which species a pokemon can breed with other than its own, such as Beedrill and Butterfree being able to breed due to them both being in the Bug Group. There are, however, 3 groups that are an exception to what is mentioned above, those being the Ditto Group, Undiscovered Group, and genderless pokemon. In the Ditto Group (what a surprise) is Ditto, and Ditto alone. Ditto has the special characteristic of being able to breed with (almost) any gender or species of pokemon, creating an egg of the other partner (this is the only way to create an egg of a genderless pokemon and the only scenario where the egg is of the male's gender). The only pokemon Ditto can't breed with are Ditto and pokemon in the Undiscovered Group. The Undiscovered Group contains all legendary pokemon, baby pokemon, Nidorino, and Nidoqueen (for some reason), and is the only group that cannot breed with any other pokemon. Genderless pokemon, as stated above, can only breed with Ditto, and currently only include Magnemite, Magneton, Staryu, Starmie, Voltorb, Electrode, and Porygon.
3) A pokemon hatched from an egg has several qualities. First, it will inherit 3 random IVs from each parent. Second, the baby is more likely to have its parent's ability than any other possible for its species, but cannot gain an ability not usually found on that pokemon (e.x. A Weedle hatched from an egg cannot gain the Compoundeyes ability from a Butterfree parent). Third, the hatched pokemon has a small (like, really small) chance to be shiny. Lastly, but most importantly, a baby pokemon can inherit moves in the following conditions:
- If both parents know a move that the baby can learn via leveling up, the pokemon will inherit that move.
- If the father knows any moves that are TMs that the baby is also compatible with, it will inherit the move. If a genderless pokemon breeds with Ditto, the resultant baby will inherit any compatible TM moves that the genderless non-Ditto pokemon parent knows.
- If the father or the mother knows any specific Egg Moves that the baby can learn, the baby will inherit the move. The Egg Moves that the baby can learn are species-specific, and are best googled if you want to know the info.
So, that's the basics of breeding in the games, so now let's talk about how breeding should work in Pokefind. Here's a few issues I thought of and solutions to solve them.
- Breeding can be used to clone rare pokemon. If the server were to follow the games, pokemon like Dratini or Larvitar could be breed for little to no cost and would remove the value/motivation of catching more than 1-2 of a rare pokemon. For this reason, I think that pokemon hatched from eggs should not be tradable. At the very least, this gives a reason for catching rare pokemon if they pop up.
- Even if they can't be traded, you can just keep hatching eggs to get the nature you want on a pokemon. If you can just continuously breed your Larvitars you caught with horrible natures, you can eventually get that adamant one everyone wants so much. I think that grinding for the perfect nature through breeding is a good thing, but it would probably be best regulated if hatching eggs took considerable amounts of time to hatch. In the main series, each egg has a certain amount of steps needed to hatch it, with magikarp being the lowest and rare pokemon like Dratini/Larvitar being the highest and most time-consuming to hatch. I think it would be a great idea to use those numbers on the server, even if the eggs end up being like Pokewars crates with a timer to hatch.
That's all the issues I can think of right now (feel free to tell me any more if you think of one), so now I want to talk about what I think should be brought over from the main series, without a doubt.
- Pokemon should inherit IVs as they do in the main series. I love this concept, as it adds a whole new reason to breed: to try to make the perfect IV pokemon you want. This also means that Aura/Shiny/Shadow pokemon greatly assist in this, since each parent passes down 3 of their IVs. Also, I think that pokemon should be allowed to inherit their Aura/Shiny/Shadow status, but only if those pokemon are un-tradable and bred with another Aura/Shiny/Shadow. It definitely should not be possible to get every single Shiny pokemon just by owning a Shiny Ditto.
- Pokemon should be able to inherit egg moves. Maybe this isn't clear how important this is to people who don't play pokemon competitively, but since most pokemon have 2 egg groups, egg moves can be passed through a chain to result in a pokemon learning a move it could never get otherwise. For instance, if a Togetic that learned Wish by leveling up passed that move onto a Pikachu, then that Pikachu passed that move onto Eevee, that Eevee could evolve into a Vaporeon knowing Wish, the only healing move Vaporeon can possibly learn. If Vaporeon has Wish, then suddenly it becomes one of the best tanks in the current games and can shut down most offensive pokemon that aren't prepared for Vaporeon. Tl;dr: We need egg moves.
- Legendary pokemon should not be able to breed. Come on, people. Why is this even a question? I wouldn't have mentioned it if so many people hadn't posted that legendaries can breed.
- Pokemon should keep the egg groups they have in the main series. I'm 99% sure this is what they're doing anyway, but egg groups are necessary to make sure breeding can't just be done with any two pokemon.
Okay, now onto the final part, the aspects of breeding that I would like to be implemented, but aren't entirely necessary.
- Breeding shouldn't have a super high cost. Even if it just costs coins, that's fine. I just don't want breeding to become another bundle put on the store. I really hope it becomes something that takes time to create the perfect pokemon, even if Aura/Shiny/Shadow pokemon help the process.
- I like the idea of running around to hatch eggs. I know it's harder to make than just slapping on a timer and calling it good, but it would reward people who actually spend a lot of time on the server rather than people who just check on it every day for 10 minutes.
- Breeding should reward people who invest a lot of time to hatch a good pokemon. In the main series, pretty much the only way to get a good pokemon was to breed it and put in a lot of time/effort. I'm just repeating myself now, but give the people who don't spend a lot of money a way to get good pokemon, even if it is a more tedious method.
- Breeding should have a super tiny chance to hatch a shiny. Okay, I know this one isn't gonna happen, but I can't just leave it out of my wish list here. I've spent so many hours breeding for Shiny pokemon in the main series and many people ask "Why would you waste so much time on that?", and the answer is the payoff. Not just the fact that successfully breeding for a shiny, well, gives you a shiny, but it's the knowledge of, "I did that. That pokemon is here because of my hard work and it looks pretty cool". It would make me so happy if it was possible to get a shiny from breeding on Pokefind. (And really, the donators can still have their Auras. Just let us at least have a chance for shinies, pretty please...)
Okay, well, that's my entire spheal (see what I did there?) about breeding. I hope developers see this and if not, I hope that it has at least informed you or given you ideas about this huge new feature announced today. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask me them and I'll do my best to answer them. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go level up my kits on Pokewars.
EDIT: Wow, I don't know if the devs actually looked at my post, but the thing about how pokemon from an egg shouldn't be tradable was actually put in! I'm really honored if it was my suggestion, but I can't wait to go try it out now! (I hope the shiny thing everyone else was asking for is put in too )
Last edited: Aug 26, 2017