MOD ANNOUNCEMENT 5-EVA: that's one more than 4-eva

[indigo_league]

Hello, trainers! September and October were both wild months, but we hope this announcement finds you all well! No point in beating around the bush, so let’s just get right to it!



HOUSEKEEPING:

Here's the latest in our ongoing revamp/update/condense of the FAQ pages!

1. THE AURORA LEAGUE

After struggling with how to properly incorporate the Aurora League information into the main badge request page, we’ve decided to simply give the Aurora League and all related materials their very own page. This page has information on and links to all existing Aurora gyms, as well as details on how these gyms work and how to submit for one! All future Aurora League gym requests should be submitted here, and not on the Building Request page, where they were previously located! The Badge Request page has also been updated to include a link to the Aurora League page.

We'd love to see more sparkly new Gym Leaders, so if any characters with sixteen badges have been eying the Elite Four lately, go get 'em! We're rootin' for ya!

2. TEAM ROCKET

As the third major Trainer Class, Rockets now have their own corresponding Rockets 101 page!

It's located on the main navigation post (right under Breeding 101) and contains all the information formerly split between Rocket section of the Main FAQ and the extended Rocket FAQ. Now existing and incoming Rockets will have all the information they might need all in one place.

Accordingly, the Rocket Missions page has also been updated for greater clarity to match.

If anything listed on the pages severely contradicts the way you've been playing your Rocket character, don't worry! Just let us know and it should be fine.

3. NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS

The NPC page, previously located on the Extended FAQ, has now been updated to be a more comprehensive and informative list of characters that your characters share the world with. Included is information on everyday NPCs, Gym Leaders, the Elite Four, the Pokemon Professors, Rocket Admins, and a variety of others. This page will likely continue to be updated with NPCs as they become relevant.

RIDE PAGERS:

At long last, a decision on Ride Pagers outside of the Sevii Islands has been reached! First off, we'd like to apologize for the long delay on this particular mechanic. We had intended to have this announced way sooner, and hadn't expected as many urgent things to crop up when they did. But regardless, now Ride Pagers will again be ICly available throughout all regions, though Johto and Kanto will operate under slightly different rules than in the Sevii Islands!

While the majority of the votes were in favor of abolishing the mechanic outside of Sevii entirely, some very productive discussion sprung up in the comments of the poll, and a lot of people seemed to really like the idea of being able to summon their characters’ own HM Pokemon in areas where HM moves are necessary, rather than the rentals that were previously available. So after reading all your ideas, here's what we wound up going with!

Ride pagers have been brought to the mainland! In Johto and Kanto, characters will be able to purchase one of these devices for P50,000. Expensive, but that's the price for convenience. Thanks, capitalism.

Each Pager will have one registration slot corresponding to each HM. Trainers will be able to register a single Pokemon (which knows that HM) to each one-- unlike on the Sevii Islands, the summoned Pokemon will be their own, not rented Pokemon belonging to a service.

Once the Pokemon are registered, the pager will be able to summon that Pokemon from the PC to wherever their trainer is!

This will temporarily allow for a trainer to have seven of their Pokemon with them while traveling, so long as the HM in question is actively in use. So when your Hariyama is finished moving that huge boulder with Strength or you get off your Wailmer’s back when you reach land after Surfing, they’ll return to the system.

These Pokemon will not be able to battle while they have been summoned by the Pager. Unless returning to the system would actively endanger the trainer's life (ex: encountering a flock of wild Wingulls while flying on your paged Fly Braviary 50 feet in the air), the start of a battle will trigger the paged Pokemon's immediate return to the system. In the event of an emergency like in the example, the Pokemon will remain, but will refuse to battle and instead focus on reaching a location where it can safely return to the system without landing its trainer in trouble.

In the interest of not devaluing the Breeder perk of being able to use HMs without badges, Trainers utilizing the Ride Pager will still need to earn and outfit their Pokemon with the HM move in question before being able to use that slot on the Pager. The Pager will be for summoning Pokemon, NOT granting the ability to use the HM at all!

For those worried about what this means for characters who have not yet earned the requisite badges, or who do not wish to train Pokemon that can learn the HMs: ferries are still available in most areas that require Surf and have no alternative routes, and are much cheaper than the Ride Pager! Likewise, the Warp function is still available to everyone who visits a given town regardless of what HMs they do or don't have the ability to use. Befriending other characters whose Pokemon can already use HM moves and traveling/hitching rides with them has also been a time-honored practice for newbies who can't yet use HMs themselves (many a new trainer has reached Goldenrod City by clinging to their friend's Pidgeot for dear life). Other than that, we still expect Trainer-class characters to take on the Gym Challenge in order to earn their HM moves!

AUGUST EVENT POLL:

Now that October's event is wrapping up, it's time for us to start planning events for the future!

With that in mind, it's also time to make some decisions regarding the Dog Days event in August. Many of you took time to let us know what you thought of the event, meaning we got a lot of valuable feedback that we want to keep close at hand while planning future events. The most frequently-expressed concern was that players felt let down by the abrupt ending and confusing characterization of the Legendaries, which left a lot of questions unanswered and felt very anticlimactic after everything that the characters had done during the lead-up. We agree! As we mentioned to several of you while responding, it was a very experimental plot for us, and it's clear that some elements worked and others did not.

We had a bigger story, involving the Legendaries and how they relate to one another, to tell than we wound up ultimately having time for. Our timeline was a little too ambitious, and we really dropped the ball in that regard. But in the interest of hopefully satisfying peoples' lingering curiosity, we also stated that we were going to offer a poll on what will come of the Dog Days event as it pertains to the game's running continuity.

There are a couple of ways we could take it, and we'd like to know what you, the players, think would be best!

1. One option is to take the unused/unrevealed story elements of Dog Days and build on them during future plots. This could help alleviate the lackluster feeling of the story's end a little (since it would be less of a conclusion and more of a 'To be continued'), and let us work on revealing things at an organic pace that we weren't able to achieve with the event as it was. We've already got a few future events in mind that could easily tie in to what was going on with Lugia and Ho-Oh, and would love to try our hand at doing them if you, the players, are up for it!

2. Then there's the second option: We know there were some strong opinions regarding this event, and we also know that for anyone who was left with a sour taste in their mouth, having this event drag on further might not be particularly fun. So in the interest of not harshing anybody's good time, we can also simply write a basic summary of the plot details that didn't wind up coming out in the duration of the plot (ie, what was really going on between Lugia and Ho-Oh, why the Beasts were acting so bratty, etc) and move on to other ideas with the lessons we've learned from both our successes and failures with The Dog Days of Summer.

Please let us know which option you think would be best over here, and we'd like to thank everybody again for your patience and passion for helping us make the game a better place. Your feedback is important!

THE ENABLE ME MEME

Last but not least, a quick little note! As per an excellent suggestion from a player, we will be starting to utilize enablemeplz as advertising for the game! We’ve put a post up over in ohmyarceus for people to put in requests for characters they’d like to see, and plan to make including those requests in the ad a regular occurrence.

Comments

[dreamsofahero]

That's your choice, but the mods didn't ask anyone to step back, in fact they specifically an explicitly said they don't want to discourage discussion, just made a request to keep it civil. If you'd prefer not to pursue the discussion further, that's fine, in which case I believe I made it clear why I'm unable to take certain of your points as they've been presented.

[meteorman]

Then let me be more plain: I stepped back because last night I was at the point where I felt I could no longer be civil as the mods had requested.

I have already answered your question about game size. I have stated that what I meant was it is a large size for the level of mod involvement you are suggesting is necessary in terms of monitoring events and providing NPC threads. I don't know how much more plain I can be or how many more ways I can restate that. I also should think it would be obvious I meant DWRP style murdergames like Foolish Mortals and the original Dangan Roleplay, not whatever 'teamnesia' is. If 55 people all post to an event, even if they all pair off with each other for one thread per person, that's still over 25 threads a mod needs to be constantly monitoring, and given the pace of this game and how long events stretch for that means having to check every single thread daily just on the off-chance they can post whatever plot-solving key info you want. I don't now how many more times I can explain myself or restate this. This has nothing to do with workload in terms of overhaul or list updating or any of your other gripes. It is a discussion point purely relating to event handling and frankly at this point I'm willing to let it go because the event's over and done with and it doesn't even matter anymore.

Yes, I agree about evolution stones. In fact, a question I asked about evolving Charjabug is still unanswered! I agree that there are little things that have fallen through the cracks and could do with a quick and dirty update, and I even like your idea about a 'goofs' page -- it would be incredibly helpful to have a centralized place for every inconsistency or point desperately in need of a quick addition, like the ice stone.

My main point here is and always has been your attitude and your general unwillingness to foster productive discussion in favor of nitpicking the mods to death and ensuring all the work you want them to do gets pushed back even more while they deal with addressing your nitpicking instead. Frankly if I were them I wouldn't ask for your help with this overhaul either in any capacity more official than posting to the suggested goofs page, with how you've been consistently so rude and condescending to them. It is great to want to help the game grow and improve, and I agree that it's good to voice frustrations and problems as they arise -- and I do, and have, and will continue to do so because the mods deserve fair and honest critique. But the way you go about giving your feedback is wholly unproductive and fosters a negative game environment OOC.

I think this is the point where we can no longer get anything productive out of this conversation. We're arguing about two different things and I don't think anything I say can reconcile that. I will reiterate my advice that you need to step back, take a deep breath, and realize that this is a game on the internet that people are playing in for fun. You are not owed anything. And if this game is frustrating you to the point where you need to behave in the manner you've been behaving, you may want to closely examine your reasons for staying at all.

[dreamsofahero]

It's... really not that large though even then? I don't see where you're getting that it's large for mod involvement, especially using murdergames (which tend to be plot/event heavy and thus extremely involved on the mods' part) as a comparison of something "smaller". And by "teamnesia" I mean the murdergames like Sabra La Tau, Kyriakos, and... I think there was another major one I'm forgetting, but games that both have large character casts (8 teams of 4-6 characters each is usually what they start with and it only goes up from there) combined with strict character limits (most players only play 1, maaaaybe 2 characters) with the result that the game is hugely skewed towards a high playerbase for the number of characters present.

But those games, as I said, skew to a low character to player ratio. We're dealing with fewer than 40 players total. And no one ever said the mods had to be monitoring each and every thread! I have no idea where you got this idea. Skimming threads at random, or having a check-in for people who want their threads considered, are entirely viable and recommended options. And in my experience from running participation-intensive events, it really doesn't take that much time to just periodically glance at the obviously active threads and pick a good spot to jump in. Part of event running typically implies that the person running either isn't participating, or is participating at a minimum, because their priority is, well, running said event.

That said, purely subjectively and based on past experience, monitoring ~25 threads or so for a time-limited event to occasionally pop in with periodic comments sounds downright easy. Easier for sure than having to actively be involved in about a dozen threads as some games I've been in before (such as IC Cry Wolf events) have required. So sorry, but I don't agree. At all. If the event is designed and intended to run without guidance? That's perfectly fine! But if the event requires NPC participation and interaction, it can't run without that part being done. If that's not feasible to do, then that sort of event probably isn't a good idea.

And yes, I've brought critique before. It's not meant to nitpick, but the problem is, many of the things that have been discussed before? Haven't been addressed. The bare minimums of game maintenance haven't always been met. I don't believe it's nitpicking to follow up on something like this, or to express my views if I'm particularly upset or frustrated with something, because if I say nothing, how will the mods know what their players feel? They aren't psychic, and I refuse to be that person who just whines in a personal journal/plurk/whatever about someone, without ever letting them know what bothers me and why or otherwise clearing up the situation.

And let me make it completely, 100% clear: I want this game to be successful. It's a great game that I've enjoyed for a long time, but it's also been suffering for a lot of reasons. Some of them have been fixed, others haven't. I don't think that staying quiet and suffering in silence is beneficial for me, or the mods, or the game as a whole. It doesn't guarantee that I'm necessarily right, but I can say for a fact that I know I'm not the only person who feels this way on the issue, as at least one player approached me in private about it after I made my initial comment.

I will note though, that while last night I was sleepy enough to shrug it off, looking back on this now, to be perfectly frank, your comments are coming across to me almost more like a personal attack rather than simply expressing disagreement. I'm going to go with the benefit of the doubt and assume that wasn't the intent, but I could certainly see it being construed as such. Again, my comments and feedback are ultimately directed towards the mods and no one else--others are free and welcome to add their agreement or disagreement to it and reasoning thereof, but it was only my intent to offer a critique and open discourse, no more and no less.