Pokémon Shuffle (Nintendo Used Pay Day!)

He is absolutely wrong in my view. Let's look at the issue of grinding. You get a turn every 30 minutes. Assume at the high end, you play it first at 7am and last at 11 pm, so the maximum number of turns you can play is 32 and each one of those turns is average 1 minute, so at best you will only play the game for 32 minutes a day. How is that exhaustive grinding? If you do the grinding, you are likely to get somewhere in the range of 7-9,000 coins a day, meaning you can tackle the hardest Pokemon every other day.

How is 32 minutes a day a terrible grind?

It is the game you go back to every couple of hours, play 4 turns and go back to doing something else. Yes, you need to spend coins for the hard stages, but if the game was easy, where would the challenge be? If you play a main Pokemon game and want to level up your Pokemon to 100, you are going to do a lot more grinding than that.

The game doesn't need you to spend money and it doesn't remotely force/coerce you to, it is entirely optional if you want to do it in a hurry. I have every Pokemon except the last couple of Ex Stages and haven't had to, or felt the need to spend a thing. I think the problems raised about the game are more to with personal tastes than the game itself.

Interesting posts!

It'll probably depend on how you value your time, I think, and if you don't pay anything, people don't like being forced to play a game in a certain way for purely monetary reasons (very different from how Animal Crossing limits progress).

What I don't really like is how you see people tend to judge an F2P game based on whether they can get through it without spending. Is it really worthwhile that 70% of players spend nothing? To me that just says that the majority of revenue is coming from a tiny percentage of players, which isn't healthy at all. It could be more evenly distributed amongst the playerbase.

Iwata acknowledged this at the last investor meeting, and I'm very interested in seeing how Nintendo can make mobile games that bring in excess of £17m a month (which is the amount DeNA is hoping for) without targeting the so-called "whales", or the biggest, addicted spenders, that a handful of F2P games are designed to target.

Fronk, I hate games that force you to spend money to keep playing. I avoid them like the plague and never play games on my phone. I find them to be hideous to my tastes. When Nintendo put their games on phones, I highly doubt I will be playing them. I don't even like DLC generally speaking, Mario Kart being an exception. If I wanted to download every DLC piece for a Disgaea game, mostly characters and outfits, it would cost me twice as much as the game did, but the game is complete, so I can ignore it.

I want my games to be complete when I buy them, with the exception of smart DLC that extends the game, not milks it. If I had the option to buy Shuffle and remove the times, I would, at let's say $20Au, as long as that meant I continued to get all future updates as part of it. Most of the time FtP isn't really free as near as I can figure it, but in the case of Shuffle, there hasn't been a moments need for me to buy anything, not even remotely. I almost feel guilty getting so many hours of free fun, knowing they won't get anything back, but that is what they offered.

I agree on the point that a FtP game shouldn't be judged on getting through on not having to spend money, it should be judged on how much fun it is to play (inevitably in conjunction with potential future outlays to keep playing) and let's face it, we all stop playing when we stop enjoying it, and that is what has happened to some people here and that is completely legitimate.

Aye, agreed with that. That's actually why I said what I did -- I think for some players the extra grind relative to previous stages will be more irksome depending on how they play the game and the time involved.

It still works perfect for me, making a couple of bus journeys a day I'm still enjoying it even if I have to grind (although Dialga can shove right off). It's definitely challenging later on and you'd be lucky to get anywhere without the power ups but if it's keeping me occupied on my journey I really can't complain l.

New Pokemon - yay. I easily got my Manetric challenge passed and the 10 new Pokemon and 3 Special Pokemon. Well, it took about 80,000 coins, but I got all of them. Now back to the Meowth grind for 9-10 days to get all my coins back for the next time I need it. There are some pretty decent Pokemon in the new group, especially Salamence, but the best is getting a Mega Bug for Heracross.

Now if only I could beat Genesect. Even with all the items and trying both Mega Aerodactyl and Gengar, with the whole team at Max (Heatran, Tyrannitar and Blaiziken), I haven't even gone close. I only need 3 S-ranks to open up Chesnaught, so I hope that one is a bit easier. Anyone beaten Genesect want to give me some pointers?

How do you unlock Genesect? I'm at stage 170 I think and I've seen no sign of it popping up.


As for the new pokemon, caught all the new timed events on my first try which was nice, even better was finally beating and catching Milotic, holy smokes that stage was absolutely horrible. Like, honestly one of my most hated video game stages of all time, it was just horrible. Even with a bunch of purchased perks.

Athrun888 wrote:

How do you unlock Genesect?  I'm at stage 170 I think and I've seen no sign of it popping up.


As for the new pokemon, caught all the new timed events on my first try which was nice, even better was finally beating and catching Milotic, holy smokes that stage was absolutely horrible.  Like, honestly one of my most hated video game stages of all time, it was just horrible.  Even with a bunch of purchased perks.  

I believe Genesect was 180 S-ranks and Chesnaught is 191. I remember getting Milotic pretty easily, but only with all of the items, but it might have been that one where my daughter used all the items and it got stuck in a loop that ended in running out of turns. A couple of the new ones are pretty tough, but there is always seems to be at least one in every ten like that.

Ah that explains it then, I've only got Xerneas which a quick search tells me means I've s-ranked a hundred stages. I envy your easy time with Milotic, even after Mega Start and disruption delay I still had to burn a gem to secure it. On the bright side I also caught it so I never have to fight it again!

Well that Arceus is a pretty damn strong Pokemon. It starts at level 90. I just threw every item at it, caught it in 5 turns, got 50%. Looks like I will be using Arceus a lot in my team.

I'm still slumming it on Doublade. Seriously, there has to be a cheat code for this, it's impossible.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

I'm still slumming it on Doublade. Seriously, there has to be a cheat code for this, it's impossible.

There is. It is every item and some Great Balls.  That one cost me a lot of coins.  

Edit: Oh wait, I was thinking of the evolved type of further on, Stage 207. That one is way, way harder than Doublade, but I think I threw everything at that as well.

A heads up for those interested, several new events are running right now with the new patch. First there's a new competition for Mega Blaziken, you know the drill by now, a minute to get the highest score you can and ranking high enough gets you the gem.

Secondly the second Escalating Challenge is finally here, Cresselia, win five times for a +5 move, win ten times for a Disruption Delay, win 30 times for a Mega Start, and win fifty times for a Mega Speedup.

Finally there's a "Try Em Items" stage, where you get to take on Wobbufet with items that cost nothing. Items are added every monday, first item is Mega Start and the final item added will be Complexity -1.

Also the Hoenn weather trio are getting a rerun after Arceus Normal ends in four days, as a heads up.

Another PSA regarding a new event, the next Safari challenge is out and has seven new Pokemon to nab.  Phione, Furfrou, Staryu, Starmie, Gible, Gabite, and Garchomp.   I've already encountered Starmie, Furfrou, and Garchomp, managed to catch them to boot due to some obscene luck.  

Garchompite is also coming up on the seventh, so get Safari-ing!  

Oh, and Pignite is also up for the next two weeks, for those after a 100 percent catch catalogue.

Hello, is this thing on?
Am I all alone?
Is anyone there?


Darkrai escalation battle is on right now if anyone wants to take a shot at the coolest dark type in the franchise. I caught mine on level nine, currently at level 32 and still going strong, this might be the first time I get myself a Mega Speedup, Darkrai is pretty easy, especially if you have Mega Lucario.

Also the next stage is out, haven't quiet got to the end of the current one yet (too busy grinding and fighting Darkrai), but new EX stages and the next stage are out for those who want to get up to date.

I usually end up spending so much time in the special stages I forget about the regular ones, still waaaaay back at Steelix.

Also somewhere in the mid-30s on Darkrai, and yeah, it's the easiest escalation yet, though they usually make Level 50 a bit harder (did for Cresselia and... whoever the other one was) so we'll see.

Still, this is paradise compared to finding Phione in the last Safari...

Yeah Phione was absolute hell to find, the stories I've heard with people taking hundreds of hearts and not finding it are truly the stuff of nightmares.  I guess it was the price we had to pay for Phione to be useful.  

I haven't bothered with level 50 in the escalation battles, as soon as I have to start using items to do them I've hit the wall.