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the_plateau2023-08-01 04:08 pm
indigo_league) wrote in the_plateau2023-08-01 04:08 pm
Entry tags:
Game update 08/2023
Hi all. It's been a while since we did one of these, but we've got some big changes for how the game will be run coming out, so please read this post attentively and if any questions exist afterwards, feel free to ask 'em.
Activity check
As you all know, Victory Road is an old game. And in its long life, both it and DWrp as a whole have seen many changes. We, as mods, try our best to keep the game dynamic and respond to the changing needs and playstyles of our userbase. After all, Victory Road is supposed to be a cosy, low stress game, and we really don’t want our silly pokemon times to put pressure on our players.
As part of this, what we’d like to do moving forward is to transition Victory Road into a Check-in Activity Check. This will mean there won’t be mandatory activity levels for people to reach each month. Instead, just letting us know whether you are still interested in playing will be enough.
We’ve got several reasons for doing this.
One reason is that we feel DWrp as a whole has shifted to a more low key manner of playing (at least within the niche of DWrp we occupy) as the userbase has aged. More games are moving over to check in activity checks, and from what we can see, that works just fine for them.
Another reason is that as Victory Road has aged, it has also left the spotlight more and more. We don’t mind this! If anything, this allows us to create such a relaxing, laid-back game. But if we are bluntly honest, it also means that in most cases, characters that are dropped will not be replaced. And if that is the case, does an activity check with an arbitrary comment requirement actually encourage activity, or does it push people to drop limiting an already small playerbase?
What we would like to do is try and answer that question by switching to a Check-in Activity Check system for the foreseeable future, at least. If we really see this doesn’t work, we are, of course, willing to revise our decision, but we’d like to try it out for several months, at the very least.
Of course, you might now wonder what will change for you as a player. Thankfully, the answer is… not all that much! Every month will still have an activity check, but instead of hunting down links to comments you did, you will just have to report in and let us know which of your characters you’d still like to play. Because of this change, the strike system will no longer exist. It will still remain possible to hiatus, but this will now act more as a courtesy announcement to us as mods and your fellow players rather than an indication you will not be making activity.
All the rest – applications, events, swarms, contests etc – won’t change one bit.
If you have any questions, we’ll be happy to answer them below, of course, but please make sure you read the rest of this game update first! We’ve got a few other little things too.
Badges
The thing with running an old game is that sometimes you realise you have rules that you… don’t really know why you still have them. And that they are really just sticking around because they were there before.
Point in case, our Elite team badge requirements.
If you are a trainer and going for those badges, you might have noticed that in order to challenge a gym leader’s elite team, you need a certain amount of badges. Even if you have plenty of level 100s already in stock, Zephyr still forces you to fight his level 30-35 team. Is he a masochist? We just don’t know!
Anyway, we’ve been discussing it and have come to the conclusion that we do not feel this particular rule still adds anything to the game. If anything, it keeps people from having an actual challenge.
So, from now on, your character will be able to challenge a gym’s elite team whenever they want, regardless of how many badges they have. However as an added incentive, fighting and defeating a gym’s elite team will net you double the prize money. The item prizes will be the same whether you defeat the regular or the elite team, but oh, those sweet sweet cash moneys.
Re-apps
Another thing we’ve taken a look at and like to change is our re-apps. Or to be more specific, what achievements carry over if you re-app a character you previously played.
And what we will be going with from now on is that any badges you had previously earned with that character, as well as any warp pads you had previously unlocked will still be available to you if you’d chose to reapp that character.
So if you were playing the character Tank Sobama, who had managed to obtain three badges and unlock all the warp pads up to Goldenrod City, but then unfortunately had to drop due to real life, if you ever choose to bring Tank back to the wonderful world of Victory Road, he’ll have those badges and warp pads to his name still.
Of course, you can still re-app a character as a complete clean slate if you’d rather do that. Perhaps it has been too long since you last played them, or maybe you’d like to go in a different direction this time, that’s all groovy. But the option to regain is there.
Naturally, this all only applies to the same person re-apping a character. If player B wants to app Tank instead, they will have to start completely fresh.
(Wonder how this can all be justified IC? Turns out that for some strange reason, re-apped characters are assigned the same trainer ID, while fresh applicants get a new one. Arceus truly works in mysterious ways.)
Character Retirement
Now the last thing we’d like to talk about is less of a decision on our end, and more a topic of discussion.
In some games, it is possible for a player to retire a character. Generally this is done to a character that has been in the game for a very long time and has completed their own personal arcs. In this case, retiring the character means the character essentially becomes an NPC – they are still part of the world, can still be referenced, their impact is still felt and whatever projects they were working on are continuing. But the player in question doesn’t actively play the character any further.
Usually, the reason for doing this is that it can be incredibly hard to drop a character you’ve put such a long time into RPing, and who has made a wonderful home for themselves within a game, but at the same time, you come to a point where there might not be a lot of things left for your character to do. No more personal problems to resolve, no more crazy new things to get involved in.
Recently, we have gotten some questions about whether it would be possible to implement a mechanic like this in Victory Road as well. The upside to a mechanic like this would be that long-time players wouldn’t need to stress over losing years and years of development, but at the same time, by retiring a character, they could potentially free themselves up to try out new and different characters. Of course, potential concerns lay in how this would affect their CR and how do we decide which characters are ready for retirement.
We as mods are open to a mechanic like this being implemented in Victory Road, but we also realise that this isn’t anything like any of the mechanics the game currently has. And in addition, there is, of course, the question of how exactly to implement it if we do add it.
So, in this case, we’d like to ask you as a playerbase. Seeing as this is something that will affect everybody playing in the game, we’d like to know how you feel about this. Are you open to letting long-run characters retire, and if yes, do you feel it requires certain goals to have been met? Which ones? Should it simply be a case-by-case thing?
We’ve set up a short anonymous poll about this subject here but we also invite you to use this post as a place to brainstorm this particular subject. Please note that neither this poll nor the discussion in this post will immediately affect the game. This is just us brainstorming this potentially new option with all of you
And that is everything we have to share right now! Thank you for reading this post and playing in our little game. We hope these changes will contribute positively to the environment we are trying to build here, and of course, if you've got any questions, suggestions, or even just other stuff you'd like to share, feel free to
Activity check
As part of this, what we’d like to do moving forward is to transition Victory Road into a Check-in Activity Check. This will mean there won’t be mandatory activity levels for people to reach each month. Instead, just letting us know whether you are still interested in playing will be enough.
We’ve got several reasons for doing this.
One reason is that we feel DWrp as a whole has shifted to a more low key manner of playing (at least within the niche of DWrp we occupy) as the userbase has aged. More games are moving over to check in activity checks, and from what we can see, that works just fine for them.
Another reason is that as Victory Road has aged, it has also left the spotlight more and more. We don’t mind this! If anything, this allows us to create such a relaxing, laid-back game. But if we are bluntly honest, it also means that in most cases, characters that are dropped will not be replaced. And if that is the case, does an activity check with an arbitrary comment requirement actually encourage activity, or does it push people to drop limiting an already small playerbase?
What we would like to do is try and answer that question by switching to a Check-in Activity Check system for the foreseeable future, at least. If we really see this doesn’t work, we are, of course, willing to revise our decision, but we’d like to try it out for several months, at the very least.
Of course, you might now wonder what will change for you as a player. Thankfully, the answer is… not all that much! Every month will still have an activity check, but instead of hunting down links to comments you did, you will just have to report in and let us know which of your characters you’d still like to play. Because of this change, the strike system will no longer exist. It will still remain possible to hiatus, but this will now act more as a courtesy announcement to us as mods and your fellow players rather than an indication you will not be making activity.
All the rest – applications, events, swarms, contests etc – won’t change one bit.
If you have any questions, we’ll be happy to answer them below, of course, but please make sure you read the rest of this game update first! We’ve got a few other little things too.
Badges
Point in case, our Elite team badge requirements.
If you are a trainer and going for those badges, you might have noticed that in order to challenge a gym leader’s elite team, you need a certain amount of badges. Even if you have plenty of level 100s already in stock, Zephyr still forces you to fight his level 30-35 team. Is he a masochist? We just don’t know!
Anyway, we’ve been discussing it and have come to the conclusion that we do not feel this particular rule still adds anything to the game. If anything, it keeps people from having an actual challenge.
So, from now on, your character will be able to challenge a gym’s elite team whenever they want, regardless of how many badges they have. However as an added incentive, fighting and defeating a gym’s elite team will net you double the prize money. The item prizes will be the same whether you defeat the regular or the elite team, but oh, those sweet sweet cash moneys.
Re-apps
And what we will be going with from now on is that any badges you had previously earned with that character, as well as any warp pads you had previously unlocked will still be available to you if you’d chose to reapp that character.
So if you were playing the character Tank Sobama, who had managed to obtain three badges and unlock all the warp pads up to Goldenrod City, but then unfortunately had to drop due to real life, if you ever choose to bring Tank back to the wonderful world of Victory Road, he’ll have those badges and warp pads to his name still.
Of course, you can still re-app a character as a complete clean slate if you’d rather do that. Perhaps it has been too long since you last played them, or maybe you’d like to go in a different direction this time, that’s all groovy. But the option to regain is there.
Naturally, this all only applies to the same person re-apping a character. If player B wants to app Tank instead, they will have to start completely fresh.
(Wonder how this can all be justified IC? Turns out that for some strange reason, re-apped characters are assigned the same trainer ID, while fresh applicants get a new one. Arceus truly works in mysterious ways.)
Character Retirement
In some games, it is possible for a player to retire a character. Generally this is done to a character that has been in the game for a very long time and has completed their own personal arcs. In this case, retiring the character means the character essentially becomes an NPC – they are still part of the world, can still be referenced, their impact is still felt and whatever projects they were working on are continuing. But the player in question doesn’t actively play the character any further.
Usually, the reason for doing this is that it can be incredibly hard to drop a character you’ve put such a long time into RPing, and who has made a wonderful home for themselves within a game, but at the same time, you come to a point where there might not be a lot of things left for your character to do. No more personal problems to resolve, no more crazy new things to get involved in.
Recently, we have gotten some questions about whether it would be possible to implement a mechanic like this in Victory Road as well. The upside to a mechanic like this would be that long-time players wouldn’t need to stress over losing years and years of development, but at the same time, by retiring a character, they could potentially free themselves up to try out new and different characters. Of course, potential concerns lay in how this would affect their CR and how do we decide which characters are ready for retirement.
We as mods are open to a mechanic like this being implemented in Victory Road, but we also realise that this isn’t anything like any of the mechanics the game currently has. And in addition, there is, of course, the question of how exactly to implement it if we do add it.
So, in this case, we’d like to ask you as a playerbase. Seeing as this is something that will affect everybody playing in the game, we’d like to know how you feel about this. Are you open to letting long-run characters retire, and if yes, do you feel it requires certain goals to have been met? Which ones? Should it simply be a case-by-case thing?
We’ve set up a short anonymous poll about this subject here but we also invite you to use this post as a place to brainstorm this particular subject. Please note that neither this poll nor the discussion in this post will immediately affect the game. This is just us brainstorming this potentially new option with all of you
And that is everything we have to share right now! Thank you for reading this post and playing in our little game. We hope these changes will contribute positively to the environment we are trying to build here, and of course, if you've got any questions, suggestions, or even just other stuff you'd like to share, feel free to
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Also, thank you so much for check-in AC. Even if it's just a trial, it'll make things pretty good. I'm imagining that it'll be like. Hiatuses will just be in case you can't make it to check-in, as well? (Like: 'oh im gonna be on a nature journey for the beginning of next month so i can't prod at things')
....................considering re-apping an old-ass character again now that i know i can just use him when i have the energy
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(yes I'm asking about Angel. We know this)
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I'm not familiar with how character retirement works in other games, I admit, so I'll leave that to people who have actual opinions about it.
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Thank you for allowing the game to evolve along with its playerbase. I know a lot of other people in situations not unlike my own that are going to appreciate this was well.
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Thank you guys so much for the changes, and for working so hard to make the game fun and relaxing for everyone.
Just wanted to double check: will there still be a warning list for check-ins?
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