I’ve been reading a lot about this game and it seems like everyone talks about it as it was the Holy Grail of the monster-catching rpg genre. I’ve done some research but i can’t find much, and i was just wondering why everyone loved this game so much. What features did it have that made it so special?.
I don’t really know. (I know, soooo helpful) Well, it was the Holy Grail of the RPG series. It…welll, i can’t really say. It was just amazing…It had pvp and arenas, personas, location based stuff, and yeah.
the thing making it different from the rest of the genre Ive seen was the location based radar. you found different monsters depending on weather, temperature, surrounding buildings, landscapes as well as time, month and season.
All features that can rather easily be added in Hunter Island, as well. Though we shouldn’t try to copy Geomon exactly. Let’s come up with some unique features that Geomon DIDN’T have 
So there were monsters that you couldn’t catch unless you were in a specific location?
Early in the game, yes. But later on, more and more seemed to… “leak” in.
For example, there was an ice walrus called Sedna. You couldn’t get sedna unless it was cold. But towards the end of the game they were EVERYWHERE… even in 100 degree fahrenheit weather.
Okay, maybe I exaggerated a little, but you get the idea.
There was trading, however, so you could get them through trade.
There was one thing I REALLY liked, and that was the unique esper (esper being the monsters) thing. EVERY esper had a different growth rate. Lower levels usually had a higher chance of getting higher max hp. A LOT of people looked for max prim (meaning the highest HP possible) and only a few got it. So that was why a lot of hardcore farmers didn’t get bored.
I got my dream of a classic piccio (one of the personas) and a max prim piccio, so… I’M SO HAPPY.
That sounds like a really cool way to keep people from getting all the monsters in just a few days.
Another thing that i find a little odd is the radar thing. Wasn’t that a little “limiting”? It’s hard to describe but it seems like it didn’t give many options. I mean, there was a story (i guess) but how did they make it work? Coming from Dragon island and Hunter Island i really can’t see how it would work without a map
You’re right. I don’t know how to explain it, but it was like… the world was our map.
Okay sorry that was cheesy LOL.
I suppose what made it exciting was that you never know what is under a blip. And you don’t know if that blip contains a common with ridiculously high HP or a legendary (those were the rarest) with low hp.
Ah, there were alphas too. Alphas were like differently coloured (and usually larger) versions of their normal counterpart and were really strong. You could defeat them and get personas, which you could apply to one of the normal ones to make look differently. Another thing to keep people busy, haha
I’ve watched a few videos and i’m getting what you mean, and it seems really cool. The thing is, what kind of missions did you have? Like “come back at night and look for [random monster]”, or “catch [another random monster] when you are near the sea” ? Because i can’t picture a storyline without an actual map
Geomon was actually more of a sandbox. You’re a recruit. You catch some espers. Oh wait, what’s this? It’s an infestation of a rattox! Go kill that Alpha Rattox! You killed it, hurray.
And basically you kept catching/chatting and then when you’re powerful enough, you fight someone to advance your rank.
That actually sounds quite lame, but believe me, it was better. I’m a terrible explainer but I never really got bored. I created some accounts and got them up to the top rank (Champion) so… :o
BUT in special events, AKA Christmas, Easter, etc they release personas and make a really cool story out of it. Remember the 2013-is-the-end-of-the-world hullabaloo? Well, they made a story out of that! LOL. I had to say, that was SO cool of them. They made up a story about how a snake esper was putting lies in people’s heads, so you were supposed to go out and kill the alphas of that snake esper to “save the world.” So awesome. SO. AWESOME.
One more thing before I get too excited. You know how devs something make mistakes? Well, one day they accidentally did a glitch and a TON of rares got leaked. So a 5* was as common as a 1* (stars signified rarity in Geomon, not power), but they said that these 5* (virgos) came down to Earth to fight out the kaldraks (which had been released just recently). So instead of panicking… they made a story out of it.
Gosh, so awesome. Haha
This actually reminds me of a really old game, AR Monster, probably one of the first i’ve played, that had a similar idea. Basically it would use your gps and your camera as the background as some sort of augmented reality, and the more monsters you killed, the more powerful you would become and obviously more powerful monsters would show up. It had me sitting on the toilet and spinning around at the same time to see what monsters where around me. Although i don’t think it had anything to do with your location or day/night time.
And actually this discussion made me realize something: is it possible that the reason why that game was so successful might be that farming was so well done? Because that’s why HI is kind of slipping away from me, now that i have everything i can have and all i have to do is just waiting for the weekly event.
I don’t wanna turn this thread into a suggestion page but shouldn’t the OM be a little more about farming instead of rushing to the end of a dungeon? Maybe releasing a new monster into the wild every now and then? Like “these 2 amazing arkadions are in [random area with 20 spots] for just 48 hours”. Because let’s be honest, the events here are over after 30 minutes. What about giving all the players a chance to get them but for a shorter period of time?
AR Monster sounds really cool.
And possibly. If you had to grind, you could grind AND be accomplishing something, I guess. AKA if you farm low levels on HI you’ll only be getting low levels until you get a hatchling. But in Geomon, you could farm for a rare and look for high hp espers as well. I know unique monsters were already suggested though, so…
I have to say, they ARE planning on releasing new arkadions into the wild. They won’t stop here. ^^
well, that’s reassuring. I was worried we would have been stuck with this system, but at the same time i know this game has just been released and i have faith in the developers.
By the way AR monster wasn’t that great. It was cool at first, but it’s just a game that dies after a few hours.
Hunter Island is a solid game but it’s lacking in the community interaction department. Sure, there’s a PVP, but that’s either against random people (regular mode) or against someone which a person knows offsite (because how else would you get a GCID without being able to interact with other users?). Moreover, the help that a user can give to assist either friends or people on the forums is limited to advice given regarding missions, eggs and other aspects of the game. Users cannot offer any actual assistance (such as trading or breeding) regardless of their relationship with any other user.
Monsters also have no value other than their use in battle and collection and there’s not that much point in having monsters if people can’t casually show it off in a format other than screenshots. Humans put a value on community and status with regards to how much they want something. If you have a rare monster and want to show it off, what better a way than to put it where every other person can see it? HI misses out on capitalising on people parading their status - if your friend has something rare, you’d want it to. Right now, the only exposure people get to other people’s monsters is through PVP and through OMs. How many times have people come onto the forums asking how to get some special monster because someone else has it? In Geomon, people only needed to ask once and immediately through the app itself to get an answer. Fads also spread very quickly, people inapp immediately knew and anticipated it if something went on sale amongst other pieces of information. People you idolise getting special items and the community exploding over it is a pretty good way to advertise items people want to spend money on, in my opinion. And trading meant that it would potentially be possible for the devs to get multiple cuts of payment for a single item or monster as it changed hands multiple times. It also built up hype.
Of course, it is pretty obvious that time needed to be invested in moderation (trading was a pain, I got reports of scamming daily and didn’t have the power to replace monsters/items if they were stolen) and censoring inappropriate content but Geomon felt like a game in its own right and encouraged social interaction. Despite some subpar core gameplay (radar stuck in one region, lol) community interaction made up for it. People, I think, continued playing because they felt that they could actually trade up and obtain rare and exclusive items because they had access to the trading system. Regardless of whether they made IAPs or not.
Whether that’s true or not (in my humble opinion people would have spent more money on hopelessly trying to get rares) I don’t think it matters now. On HI a person knows their place in the pecking order. You can get strong monsters from the golden eggs, a few strong monsters from farming, strong monsters from the OM and strong monsters from PVP awards. Nothing more, nothing less. Which basically means that most people know that they’re never going to get strong monsters and casual players could just give up. Or farm for some of the more obtainable ones. And then give up.
On Geomon, I personally think lots of people kept playing because they thought that they had a chance of getting ultra rares because it meant that some random user, on a stroke of luck could get the rarest rare in the game from another user. Or trade up. There was also the option of gifting people things which I think is a big hole in HI especially when Christmas - the season of giving - is coming around. You can’t give anyone anything.
I can’t stress enough the concept of ownership. If you buy something or if you hunt for something, people like to think they own it. Owning something means that you can give it to other people or keep it for your collection. And battle with it. If a monster is stuck in your save file, I’m not sure if people, especially Pokemon players, will ever think of the game as ‘complete’ or a proper collection game. Obviously, holes in the game would be stressed if trading is implemented (e.g. one hacked Kamiwyrm could get cloned everywhere in a space of a few days) but ehh it doesn’t exactly hit every sweet spot in a perfect collection game if you know what I mean.
I get the fact that some people think the implementation of wonder/random trading would improve things, but personally, what’s the point? Randomness is exactly what the golden egg offers and the golden egg will have many better prizes than ‘wondertrading’ would have. And again, wondertrading is just as impersonal and arbitrary as the golden egg. It might as well be the golden egg because it’s as random as karma what you get from that sort of system.
I commend the developers on producing a functional and live PVP (lol, even the most famous games like Zenonia is missing it) with not that many bugs but no trading from a game people expect to be like Pokemon (where trading is one of the core functions) is a bit meh. Not many monster games have trading for the most obvious reasons, but it does mean consumers put it in the ‘nearly there, no trading but very good value for money’ basket instead of the ‘trading, very good value for money’ basket.
On Geomon, I personally think lots of people kept playing because they thought that they had a chance of getting ultra rares because it meant that some random user, on a stroke of luck could get the rarest rare in the game from another user.
I think you encapsulated a huge thing that kept Geomon fresh. You just never knew when something rare and valuable would show up on radar. This was further heightened by the Zodiacs which only appeared on full or new moon nights. Personally I played the game daily for a year and a half and didn’t quite get every monster in the game, but I came darn close. Only about 5 players in all had the whole set and I made the top 10. They prevented most players from catching them all by limiting how many you could keep in your vault at a time. Most players only kept their favorites. Multiples of them usually, for trading around.
HI does plan to have some new features coming in updates that hopefully keep things fresh but you also had a good point that pretty much everyone can have everything in the game eventually. Egg creatures aside. And once you have everything? What do you do then?
What I do commend HI on over DIB is the Grade. At least you aren’t done in HI until you get an S of everything right? Or give up and say meh, close enough.
Basically it was good because it kept you from having all the monsters unless you were extremely dedicated. Which is kinda what we have in HI except you can’t have the ones you’re missing because they’re not in the game yet.
One very cool feature that HI doesnt have is Alpha’s and personas
Yeah some of us from geomon came here because this game is like geomon except the cool things ( trading, catching non-stop, going to different places to find more )
It’s really fun but it closed down on 17 April 2013 
RIP
dont forget the new monsters every update, the ability to nickname, and personas and the customizable skill set! Oh and i almost forgot the wonderful community!
(btw im jjchen1)
Some of these things may get implemented in HI. We just don’t know yet.
And Sita, I disagree about the community. I’m forming some new friends in chat right here on the forum. I believe a chat feature is desired by the devs as well, in a future update.