Why don't Nintendo make a Pokémon MMO?

[Shauna]

I disagree and think that it could work. :3

[Dat Matt]

From what I'm seeing having one character using several attacks works.

For Pokemon, having your character control up to 6 individual pokemon each with 4 abilities would get too crowded. You'd need to specifically focus on a single pokemon learning all the attacks and for 721 possible combinations for that I don't see that working.

For MOBA, having a base pokemon like bulbasaur have it's 4 basic moves (Vine Whip, Leach Seed, Razor Leaf, Solarbeam) and having the option to evolve at levels 6 and 11 sounds like a far more conceivable idea.

[Shauna]

One Pokemon at a time, duh. :3 No controlling all 6 at once.

I am struggling to see how this could fail.

[Dat Matt]

If I'm right, in FFXIV your one dude can learn everything. Having access to all the Pokemon would be super restrictive as you'd need to change between all of the 1st stage evolution pokemon and evolve them during the game. For pokemon related to gen one alone there are around 80 which is a huge number to consider if you want to do everything.

You could have the access the same idea in a Moba, but focus on one pokemon family for a short period which means you don't need to flesh out a 5+ hour campaign for each.

[Shauna]

But... you do all that in regular Pokemon. I don't know how this will somehow stop an MMO working.
Also just because FF14 does it one way doesn't mean they can't tweak the system to allow better utilisation of the Pokemon system.

[Dat Matt]

Shauna and I had an indepth discussion about this outside of your forum nonsense. Here's the findings

1. Shauna is a butt
2. This probably could work
3. The Battle system vs traditional MMO battles would need a complete overhaul.

Idea we ended up saying is that you'd run around in the field as "Trainer" and engage in battles when you decide that you want to. Then you send out a pokemon to fight and it turns into an action environment within a parameter. Your pokemon will then have access to all the moves it learned up to the point capping 10 attacks. The turn based battle system would be removed and instead an action based timed attack system would need to be used like the black mage class in FFXIV.

I still think it would be confusing juggling potentially 60 different attacks in an action based environment, but I'm conceding that it's possible this might work.

[Slothy]

Because MMOs suck.

This is certainly a big hurdle to one ever happening, but the real answer to why there isn't one and likely never will be one is because Nintendo still doesn't understand the internet.

[Freya]

Guys. We already have mmo Pokemon. It's pet battling in WoW. I have three in my team and I kick my brothers ass each time unless he cheats.

[Del Murder]

It's because they're stupid.

[Scotty_ffgamer]

I've never been too keen on the Pokemon MMO idea. I'd be interested to see them do one, though.

One of my coworkers and I were discussing what a Zelda universe MMO could be like though, and our ideas sounded pretty glorious.