I'm pretty sure you guys have set all your story elements or ideas in stone but I'd like to make some suggestions just in case. The game should end with something epic. I was really touched by how good soul silver so I'd like to see something similar. Please don't end the game with the elite four. Add more plot quests, have us fight a really relevant and interesting character (like red's epic return in soul silver), or randomise the regions enough and pretend we're in a new area with more badges to collect. I don't mind what's done but extend the game far more than what we expect to be the end. That stuff I love from good RPGs.
We already have the ending semi planned out (Since it relates to the big, main legendary), and... well... Let's just say it'll be quite... deadly ;)
I think we'll end the main story a good amount of time before the elite 4/champion - They're all level 100, and that takes really long to reach and the gaps between levels get longer and longer. I'd prefer to not have too long delays between story quests, and those are unavoidable past a certain level. I think we'll probably end it around level 70 or earlier.
The Elite 4 and Champion will just simply be the top of the Arena and not as super special as the pokemon league. There are two issue with making something like Red in gold/silver.
The first is that since the Elite 4 / Champion are level 100, you have no real way to progress past them, to make the game harder after them (They're supposed to be the best, aren't they?)
The second is that we just simply don't have anything like Red we can reference yet. (If that fight had been just a random trainer with random high level pokemon, it would've been pretty lame, wouldn't it?)
But that just got me thinking... We need to create a memorable character :p
If you guys have ideas for a big post-game event or such a character, tell me :p
EDIT: There also aren't that many things that are set in stone. We've got a beginning, a relatively vague ending that can change if we get a better idea, and we have a few small ideas for the middle but we'll definitely need more.
All I have to say is that the current "series" of Doctor Who had some tasty twists, with river song and the face of boe. I also like Skyward Sword's ending bit. It was a good sad scene, her fall from godhood and that ever present impossible love story.
Just want you two to keep those IPs in mind when writing the story. How hard can that be, they are a part of your identity on this forum.
I don't know what the feel of the map is though, so I can't give sharper feedback until after beta.
I have to say, that bit of terrain you showed us was epic. LoL'd literally. I almost want it to stay. Almost.
So, no limit on money? Fair enough, just thought it was worth considering. I play Hardcore occasionally, so I know what my HC friends deal with.
I would love it if beating the Champion was a challenge, even after making a team specifically to counter his/her team. Seeing as s/he will be the 5th guy with a team full of 100's that we fight.
I think you could do a RED type Character after CHAMPION, it should be one of you Map Developers, Moz, Zelda, Almaity, ect. You each pick a set of Starmon for your team and the winner of the most rounds should be RED Character I think, Then that RED Character and his Team are set He should be the Level 100 Team and the Champion's team is level 90 or 95.
That would be AWESOME to fight one of you at the END, and it makes sense since you had access to the Arena and all Area's of the game first. That's how you reached the MASTER of the GAME like RED, because your journey in the WORLD was the first RECORDED in HISTORY. Like RED there may of been other's (Failed attempts at making a Pokemon Style Map in StarCraft II / StarCraft 2) but You're the first known to have MADE IT!
My Projects:
Sorted Multiplayer Leader Board
Card Shuffle Dialog Demo
Air Wars Mass
Blizzard Fan since Starcraft. The Single Player story is AMAZING IMO, I can't wait for the Expansions. In Warcraft 3 I only enjoy the Custom Maps scene (& Blizzards...
I would love it if beating the Champion was a challenge, even after making a team specifically to counter his/her team. Seeing as s/he will be the 5th guy with a team full of 100's that we fight.
Taken from our design/discussion document:
So... Those guys won't be messing around :P The conditions for using status ailments and defensive moves will probably have to be tweaked. If possible I'd like them to use specific combos as well (Like having a tank buff himself up and then baton pass out to something powerful. Or using a sustain-tank (two starmon (+their evolution chains) have a move set that will make them very good at tanking and healing themselves so that they can continue tanking), etc.
I want these guys to be really fucking hard. Beating the arena should be a big achievement, and not just something that is inevitably going to happen.
The Elite 4 will be themed as always, so it'll be a bit easier to counter them. The Champion will however have a powerful all-round team.
All I have to say is that the current "series" of Doctor Who had some tasty twists, with river song and the face of boe. ... Just want you two to keep those IPs in mind when writing the story. How hard can that be, they are a part of your identity on this forum.
I have a cat named after the Face of Boe... Just felt like sharing.
Also, I really miss Tennant and Barrowman :( (He's playing a somewhat important role in "Arrow" though =D)
Zelda and I have been going over ideas for potentially very interesting characters. One concept I came up with is currently just called "The Wanderer" (And honestly, I think I might keep it like that)
He's a character that will be very detached from the world and ongoing conflict between the good and bad guys, but you'll regularly find him and be able to talk to him.
He will tie in a lot into the backstory, he will be interested in finding out more about Starmon and their origins - Why did they crash on this planet, and more importantly, people only found escape pods, but where did the spaceship go?
He will recognize the player as someone who wants to become the best, and will offer to fight a "fair fight" against him to help him measure his skill. Not sure whether its feasible, but we can maybe analyse the fight and have him give useful feedback to the player.
The reason I put "Fair fight" into quotes was because I want him to really stand out, and will probably have him use different, unique moves and mechanics. Those will likely include a different way of releasing starmon (No capture cores/pokeballs), sending out level 100 starmon and then reducing their level to match the player, and having a unique unavailable starmon (Which I will try to tie into the previous two "mechanics" and his overall storyline)
We already mentioned that we want the player to visit a starmon drop pod site at some point, and I definitely want to somehow tie the character into that.
As for twists, we have what I think is a very interesting idea for the main antagonist (Cipher boss) and a situation with him that I can guarantee will hit people right in the feels. Also, we don't want the story to be too black and white, and Cipher will consist of people with varying motivations, some very noble while others aren't.
I'm also planning on a sidequest chain involving a mercenary you can team up with, and I can probably whip up a decent story for him as well.
Generally, for suggestions, I think a lot of random ideas can be incorporated. We haven't set much in stone yet. Also, "dark" ideas are acceptable - as we said a few times already, this won't be a game for little kids. I do a lot of writing in my spare time as a hobby (Can give links if anyone is interested) and generally dislike avoiding dark/bloody/deadly stuff just for the sake of avoiding it. But on the other hand I won't include it just for the sake of including it. If a situation makes casualties/injuries plausible/unavoidable, expect them.
Currently the Arena Champion, Elite Four, Milestone Trainers are pretty much blank slates. The Arena is a place of diplomatic immunity/peace (Nobody will ever be banned from participation or arrested during it. That doesn't stop the cops from standing outside its doors to catch criminals though.), which means those guys aren't good guys by default. The Arena champ is a good guy to some degree though (When it comes to the Arena, he is 100% neutral. In his free time/outside the Arena he will side with the good guys)
We don't have any plans for most NPCs yet (Doctors/Starcenter staff, main item shop dude(s), any other cool NPC that we can have, etc.)
Oh, and one small update on the rival stuff: We decided to drop my idea about having multiple different rival personalities. The rival will be the same for every player with the same alignment (So technically seen its 2 rivals, seeing as he will always play the opposite side of the quest chain than the player. So if the player goes dark side, the rival will be one of the good guys and vice versa)
ok, I got super distracted while writing this by discussing more and more ideas I got with Zelda :p
Thanks for the posts regarding this - They really made me think harder about this and I'm getting some amazing ideas ;)
EDIT: Dammit, someone posted while I was writing, and I didnt check to make sure my post went through >.>
The issue with a Red like character is that Red is a character from a previous game (and also sort of from the anime of said game :p ). There'd be very few people who'd recognize us and have the feeling that that character is special, so it wouldnt compare at all to RED. And I also dont wanna lower the level of the elite 4 and the champ - They are supposed to be some of the very best, the final challenge to overcome to become recognized as a true master. There may be better trainers than the Champion because they did not accept the full-time position of champion, but there aren't many.
Hi, guys, long time no see... Wait... Can I say that through the computer?
Anyway, I was wondering two things:
1:Are you guys still taking requests for side stories and/or special events?
2:And are you making one of those cemetery- like places? Yaknow, pokemon tower, celestial tower, old ceatau, lost tower, etc.
EDIT: Also, please tell me what, if anything, you are accepting requests for these days.
Ps. Can anyone link me to a good place with elemental model packs?
I'd like to extend on DaFunk's idea. The dev team should be made memorable characters. That was really interesting from DaFunk saying that you guys will likely make the first successful pokemon project.
Heh, we'll see. We're all going to referenced in the game somehow or another. As you've already seen, moz is an explorer with his own sidequest chain. We have a couple ideas for where we'll put myself and TheAlmaity, but nothing solid yet. :)
Are you guys still taking requests for side stories and/or special events?
And are you making one of those cemetery- like places? Yaknow, pokemon tower, celestial tower, old ceatau, lost tower, etc. EDIT: Also, please tell me what, if anything, you are accepting requests for these days.
If you want to throw ideas for sidequests at us, I'll chuck them in our idea box. But I think we've got what we need idea-wise for the alpha, we just need to actually get the quests into the game.
And yes, we will have a ghost-type zone. It's going to be a sort of "haunted woods" type area. It's not going to be ready for the alpha but once it's been terrained we'll put up some screenshots. It's a pretty cool idea for a zone, I can't wait to see how it turns out :)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Feel free to Send me a PM if you have any questions/concerns!
I really like the idea about the Dev Team as trainers, we'll see how and if we implement that. As Zelda said, we already had some small plans for this, but those can easily be changed.
Ello again :) I guess Zelda answered the rest already, but for Elemental model packs, I assume you mean elemental creatures? (Living tornadoes and stuff) Find the WoW model packs/requests thread(s) here on mapster, there might be some in there.
Those are good ideas :)
The second one can be easily used for the Rival
But just to expand on what I said - The map isn't going to be dark/horror themed, it just won't avoid it. Nasty stuff will happen, but that doesn't mean it has to happen all the time. If a massive dragon attacks a town, it'd be really bad at its job if somehow absolutely everyone got away unharmed, right? But that doesn't mean we can't have some funnier and less grim stuff :p We're probably going to have the Moz/Explorer quest chain include a good amount of sillyness ;)
When I said I wanted a longer story I didn't mean more or bigger delays. I meant have us believe the journey ends much sooner like getting all the badges and feeling pro. But, suddenly spring on us afterwards that there's more things to do.
Well, the Arena Champion/Elite 4 being level 100 doesn't really make that particularly easy :p Short of straight up making enemies have IVs/EVs/Levels that are above maximum, there's not much we can do to make the game more challenging at that point. Of course, we could still add a couple more quests, maybe related to the Wanderer/drop pods.
Will the Elite 4 be active in the story occasionally? Eg, one of them could show up to investigate a starmon that had been terrorizing travelers, one of them could help with protecting the civilians when a dragon starmon or when an angry starmon horde attacks a town, during one of the times when the player is battling that evil organization early in the story (taking on the uber powered evil boss character while the player handles the Team Cipher grunts, who knows, perhaps the number 5 trainer could be the evil boss character), etc.
It would build up their character(s) and may help illustrate why these people are elite and why everyone aspires to be one of the elites, etc. Basically, it would provide more juicy story content :P
Btw do Cipher members have ranks? Is there a promotion system?
Something like: grunt -> squad leader -> captain -> boss.
It would be interesting for a Cipher grunt that the player had fought before to be encountered later on and battle the player as a squad leader and later on as captain (with "gym leader" starmon - starmon that is superior and higher leveled than the grunt starmons).
Will the Elite 4 be active in the story occasionally? Eg, one of them could show up to investigate a starmon that had been terrorizing travelers, one of them could help with protecting the civilians when a dragon starmon or when an angry starmon horde attacks a town, during one of the times when the player is battling that evil organization early in the story (taking on the uber powered evil boss character while the player handles the Team Cipher grunts, who knows, perhaps the number 5 trainer could be the evil boss character), etc.
It would build up their character(s) and may help illustrate why these people are elite and why everyone aspires to be one of the elites, etc. Basically, it would provide more juicy story content :P
Yea, they will most definitely be involved, but maybe less so than the Milestone Trainers (Gym leader equivalents), considering there's twice as many of them as there are of the Elite 4 :p
taking on the uber powered evil boss character while the player handles the Team Cipher grunts, who knows, perhaps the number 5 trainer could be the evil boss character
Btw do Cipher members have ranks? Is there a promotion system? Something like: grunt -> squad leader -> captain -> boss.
It would be interesting for a Cipher grunt that the player had fought before to be encountered later on and battle the player as a squad leader and later on as captain (with "gym leader" starmon - starmon that is superior and higher leveled than the grunt starmons).
We should definitely do something like that.
I did have an idea for something a bit more "funny" that's similar to that. A recurring Cipher grunt that just simply stays a grunt and is unimportant, with lines like "Hah, I'll get you this time!" at the start of a fight and "You don't remember me, do you? You know, from last time?" for defeat.
Eh, we could do that, but if you scroll down in the Arena list you will see they are all listed as the final level 100 fights. Also, I kind of want to have things make sense if possible (Which is why I want the elite 4/champ be level 100). I found it kinda illogical how gym leaders, who are supposed to be super awesome, had level 10-20 pokemon. So if someone who is clearly a powerful high level trainer is supposed to fight with low level starmon (Relative to what they are supposed to have), there should both be an explanation and good reason for them to have them.
Let's take the milestone trainers for example: It's their job to be a sort of checkpoint, obstacle or some form of "quality control", they are supposed to define a certain range of arena ranks. They make sure that arena rankings don't inflate by providing clear, static ranks. Without them, if you have enough trainers they can just fight each other to climb rankings which could easily lower the average level of those ranks. But by having to beat a specific trainer every 10 ranks this is prevented. They have a seperate lower level party of Starmon specifically for that purpose. You'll actually be able to fight all of them again as part of the last 20 arena battles with their real parties (Not sure what those 20 are going to consist of yet, but right now the plan is the 8 milestone trainers, rival, elite 4 and the champion, which is 14 trainers already. We'll probably throw in some other important characters.)
I can't think of a good reason why the elite four would keep a seperate set of lower level starmon :(
I mean the same set. The first time we fight them they scale to our levels (maybe with some offset to be higher) and the second time they're level 100. Sort of like a progression thing where during the time we train, they do too but much faster (because they defeat trainers on a regular basis).
That would imply that the Arena is really new and there simply aren't any powerful trainers in existence to take up the level 100 slots. They're supposed to top tier trainers, not future top tier trainers. That's the big issue with allowing people to fight them earlier - It goes against their primary purpose.
What could be done on the other hand is have one or more of the Elite 4 replaced by someone better than them at some point in the game, someone you run into and fight at some point. But that again wouldn't work with your idea of tricking the player of thinking he's actually doing the final battles long before them, as you wouldn't know that that guy would become one of he Elite 4 and it also wouldn't matter as he isn't one of them yet.
I dunno, I don't think the surprise not-ending is too feasible here.
Also, the RED fight didn't work that way either. You really beat the game, and then just got one special fight to top it off afterwards (Instead of the other way around: Getting a special fight with the Elite 4, and then beating the game). I think we can create something similar to that using a side character and the starmon backstory (So... The Wanderer), but it won't have the same awesomeness of the RED fight simply because pokemon is just... Old. There's nostalgia involved, there's--
...I'm absolutely fucking stupid.
Ok, listen, ok? So, you fight- You listening? OK, you fight a trainer - Right, a trainer, and you fight him - Still listening? Ok, good, so you fight a trainer, a trainer, that's wearing red, ok? And - Listen carefully - His name is Red as well, and, right, ok his team setup, right, listening, ok? Is Probichu, Venostalk, Blasturtle, Charragon, Fatty (yet unnamed snorlax equivalent), and another starmon based on an iconic pokemon.
It was in front of me this entire time, so fucking simple, and it took me this fucking long...
Haahhhaaha, I like the name fatty :P. Why not call him big belly? :P.
But how will you make him epic after the elite four? You seem set on keeping them at level 100.
Fatty is the actual name of the model (Used to be the infestor, but then they created the model that is used now.), don't know what I will name the Starmon yet, but I'm not sure whether big belly would fit anyway :p
How to make him epic... Well, as I said, Red has that nostalgia factor. I don't think him being a higher level added nearly as much to the fight as just him being him.
We'll see how hard our highest AI level will really be at level 100. I want it to be really hard. If beating the Aren Champion won't be possible enough, we can just pump up Red's stats. +1-2k EVs will surely make a difference :p If that won't be good enough/too cheaty, custom moves can be made for him with high side effect chances that the AI should abuse really well. Considering it's a bonus fight and completely optional, I don't think making it unfair would be that much of an issue, unlike with the Arena Champion.
The main motivation behind the promotion idea: With any large organization, there will be at least some talented grunts among their ranks, right? The promotion idea is to show that Cipher is a competent and resourceful organization that have talented members who can get the job done (unlike team rocket - despite their large membership base and plentiful amount of resources and equipment available, is utterly incapable of taking on a single unsupported individual).
Regarding the promotion: the grunt would be promoted by means of their role in achieving team Cipher's objective despite losing the battle against the player. It could be something like:
A few ideas:
As a grunt:
Objective: to steal a high value item.
Role: to prevent interference from outsiders while a Cipher captain breaks into the facility.
Event: Player goes in, you first see that Cipher grunt defeating 2 local guards, some dialogue, fight, after fight -> Objective achieved, Cipher captain orders an evacuation, grunt gets recognized for outstanding performance.
As a squad leader:
Objective: to capture a legendary (or something equally dangerous).
Role: Active role in the capture operation (preferably with them fancy gadgets and machinery and vehicles and starmon).
Event: player tries to interfere with the operation (may be together in a group with other trainers), battles with the squad leader and his squad of grunts, the legendary goes beserk from the effects of the gadgetry used on it, the squad leader moves away and lures the player into the path of the beserk legendary, player fight with legendary, squad leader uses some fancy modified-ultra-ball-equivalent to capture the weakened legendary (doesn't work against full strength legendary), throws a smoke grenade or a flashbang or uses tear gas or something against the player to successfully escape -> promotion to captain
Yeah, a grunt would get less important roles than a squad leader.
Edit: of course, you can also have the recurring incompetent grunt character that appears alongside the talented grunt who gets promoted (eg, they are member of the same squad. Or when talented grunt gets promoted, he becomes the leader of the squad the incompetent grunt is in). Something along those lines
A few minor updates- We've been working mainly on adding content so you guys will have something to do once the alpha starts. Right now, we're up to 9 finished quests. 2 of those are tutorial quests, 1 is a main story quest, and 6 are sidequests. We're working on getting the 2nd main-story quest done (that's going to be where the alpha story ends).
In addition to some of the more standard quests, we're starting to add a couple of random events and repeatable quests. The first random event has been added to the game, and it's called the "Odoron Plague". There's a small(ish) chance that Odorons (our poison cloud starmon) will flood into areas near the city, covering it with gas. While they're flying around the area, any battles fought within that zone will have a special poison-cloud weather effect, which poisons any active starmon.
Another change that we've made has to do with arena progression. Previously, you had to fight through every arena trainer in order to progress. Now, you can challenge any trainer within 2 ranks of your own rank. So basically, say you defeat the level 6 trainer. You can then fight the level 7 or the level 8 trainer. If you then beat the level 8 trainer, you can fight the level 9 or 10 trainer next. So basically, this allows you to skip up to half of the fights in the arena if you want. The only restriction is that you can't skip fights against the arena champions (otherwise that would be pretty outrageous). It also gives you a little bit more flexibility in which fights you choose to take on.
Whenever you beat a fight in the arena for the first time, you receive a bonus pile of credits as well as some Arena points (our PvP Currency). You can repeat any fight you want, but you'll receive less Arena Points (2 instead of the usual 5) and you won't get the bonus credits. You'll still get the standard credits reward as well as the experience you gained from battle, but this makes completing all the fights a worthwhile bonus, not a required timesink.
Some of you may have been listening to all the E3 news. There was lots of great stuff announced, but we also got some nice details on Pokemon X & Y. One big game-changer for the balance is the brand-new Fairy type. When we made the starmon battle engine, we set it up so we could add more types if we ever needed to, and the opportunity has now presented itself. So we figured we would ask you guys here- If it were up to you, would you add the Fairy type into Starmon? Right now we're tentatively leaning towards a "Yes", partially because we feel it would be a good type for the "Good karma" starmon (with dark being the "Bad Karma" type), but we're going to wait for official information on the type strengths/weaknesses.
But please, share your opinions on the Fairy type! Let us know if you like or dislike the idea, and why.
1. No, fairy type would be strange and to much of an obvious copy. I would instead suggest Light type as that can cover more types and isn't a blatant copy off of Pokémon.
2. I would be careful with copying to many things just look at bar craft.
Fairies: Ok, going with the no here ;) Wouldn't have been an issue for me adding them.
Base Stats: Mostly based on how the Starmon looks and what my first impression is of it. If I find a model of a massive 2 headed brutish looking giant, I'm going to give him a lot of health, good attack and defense but keep his specials and speed low.
Gameplay: Arena is an important part of it, but more like the Gyms in the pokemon games: They're not really part of the main plot, but something you do in between. We're gonna have a lot of stuff to do in the zones and will try to get as many quests in as possible so that the arena isn't the only thing you can do. The arena city will be the only one mostly due to map size restrictions - There just isn't enough space for us to put in towns and cities.
Copying Stuff / Barcraft situation: Copyright laws just gotta ruin everything, don't they? This is really getting absurd...
But anyway, I guess we're going to rename some stuff.
Moves = Attacks
Abilities = Passives
Nature = Personality
"(Poke)Balls" are already called called Capture Cores.
Things we need ideas for:
Evolutions
TMs
Can't think of more atm, will edit/post again if I do.
I guess we can also rename Poison and Steel types to Toxic and Metal.
The arena city will be the only one mostly due to map size restrictions - There just isn't enough space for us to put in towns and cities.
I should add that there's some positive news here; I've been able to crack in small houses and even tiny villages every now and then without running into map size problems. There may be a couple of these villages scattered around the area. They won't be major quest hubs or such like the villages in the original Pokémon games, but it should help the world feel a bit more lively.
That's ok to some degree but what if everyone looks a bruiser? :P. I prefer a more even variety which the original 150 had. Weezing is an awesome defender while starmie is fast and powerful.
I'll try and keep a lot of variety. If there end up being too many starmon with very similar base stats, I'll shift the focus of them a bit. (Using my giant 2 headed brute example, I can cut his defenses and focus more on attack, or vice versa, and it would still make sense.)
Interesting. I like how it's like a giant side quest :P. Too bad level scaling makes it less special because I'd like to build up money and exp in the arena if I wanted to then destroy every trainer in the main plot :P.
Eeeh... Well, can't say I really mind that that isn't possible :p Being able to outlevel stuff to make it easier is ok I guess, but only to a certain degree. Also, keep in mind that quests reward XP to your starmon, so they might end up being more efficient than just grinding arena battles.
Oh, and the milestone trainers are locked :p You need to do quests to get them to be available. (Reasons for locking will be different. Generally something keeps them from fighting, stuff like a lost Starmon or Cipher rolling into the city with tanks.)
Names of things are subject to copyright?! That's BS imo. So many games out there have common names for equipment and stuff. Will blizzard get sued for a map with 'axes' or 'swords' in it?
I don't know whether names themselves are copyrighted, and I'll keep the fairly generic stuff, but I think renaming things in general to reduce the overall similarities is a good idea.
EDIT: Could you guys do entering of small houses like the battlefield? Just reserve a small map space and reuse it. Also hav small buildings or huts layed around to create the village look.
The battle arenas already eat into our available map space. If we're going to reuse anything, we need one of them for each possible player. Stuff like that eats up map space really quickly.
We already have the ending semi planned out (Since it relates to the big, main legendary), and... well... Let's just say it'll be quite... deadly ;)
I think we'll end the main story a good amount of time before the elite 4/champion - They're all level 100, and that takes really long to reach and the gaps between levels get longer and longer. I'd prefer to not have too long delays between story quests, and those are unavoidable past a certain level. I think we'll probably end it around level 70 or earlier.
The Elite 4 and Champion will just simply be the top of the Arena and not as super special as the pokemon league. There are two issue with making something like Red in gold/silver.
The first is that since the Elite 4 / Champion are level 100, you have no real way to progress past them, to make the game harder after them (They're supposed to be the best, aren't they?)
The second is that we just simply don't have anything like Red we can reference yet. (If that fight had been just a random trainer with random high level pokemon, it would've been pretty lame, wouldn't it?)
But that just got me thinking... We need to create a memorable character :p
If you guys have ideas for a big post-game event or such a character, tell me :p
EDIT: There also aren't that many things that are set in stone. We've got a beginning, a relatively vague ending that can change if we get a better idea, and we have a few small ideas for the middle but we'll definitely need more.
All I have to say is that the current "series" of Doctor Who had some tasty twists, with river song and the face of boe. I also like Skyward Sword's ending bit. It was a good sad scene, her fall from godhood and that ever present impossible love story.
Just want you two to keep those IPs in mind when writing the story. How hard can that be, they are a part of your identity on this forum. I don't know what the feel of the map is though, so I can't give sharper feedback until after beta.
I have to say, that bit of terrain you showed us was epic. LoL'd literally. I almost want it to stay. Almost.
So, no limit on money? Fair enough, just thought it was worth considering. I play Hardcore occasionally, so I know what my HC friends deal with.
I would love it if beating the Champion was a challenge, even after making a team specifically to counter his/her team. Seeing as s/he will be the 5th guy with a team full of 100's that we fight.
@TheAlmaity: Go
I think you could do a RED type Character after CHAMPION, it should be one of you Map Developers, Moz, Zelda, Almaity, ect. You each pick a set of Starmon for your team and the winner of the most rounds should be RED Character I think, Then that RED Character and his Team are set He should be the Level 100 Team and the Champion's team is level 90 or 95.
That would be AWESOME to fight one of you at the END, and it makes sense since you had access to the Arena and all Area's of the game first. That's how you reached the MASTER of the GAME like RED, because your journey in the WORLD was the first RECORDED in HISTORY. Like RED there may of been other's (Failed attempts at making a Pokemon Style Map in StarCraft II / StarCraft 2) but You're the first known to have MADE IT!
Taken from our design/discussion document:
So... Those guys won't be messing around :P The conditions for using status ailments and defensive moves will probably have to be tweaked. If possible I'd like them to use specific combos as well (Like having a tank buff himself up and then baton pass out to something powerful. Or using a sustain-tank (two starmon (+their evolution chains) have a move set that will make them very good at tanking and healing themselves so that they can continue tanking), etc.
I want these guys to be really fucking hard. Beating the arena should be a big achievement, and not just something that is inevitably going to happen.
The Elite 4 will be themed as always, so it'll be a bit easier to counter them. The Champion will however have a powerful all-round team.
I have a cat named after the Face of Boe... Just felt like sharing.
Also, I really miss Tennant and Barrowman :( (He's playing a somewhat important role in "Arrow" though =D)
Zelda and I have been going over ideas for potentially very interesting characters. One concept I came up with is currently just called "The Wanderer" (And honestly, I think I might keep it like that)
He's a character that will be very detached from the world and ongoing conflict between the good and bad guys, but you'll regularly find him and be able to talk to him.
He will tie in a lot into the backstory, he will be interested in finding out more about Starmon and their origins - Why did they crash on this planet, and more importantly, people only found escape pods, but where did the spaceship go?
He will recognize the player as someone who wants to become the best, and will offer to fight a "fair fight" against him to help him measure his skill. Not sure whether its feasible, but we can maybe analyse the fight and have him give useful feedback to the player.
The reason I put "Fair fight" into quotes was because I want him to really stand out, and will probably have him use different, unique moves and mechanics. Those will likely include a different way of releasing starmon (No capture cores/pokeballs), sending out level 100 starmon and then reducing their level to match the player, and having a unique unavailable starmon (Which I will try to tie into the previous two "mechanics" and his overall storyline)
We already mentioned that we want the player to visit a starmon drop pod site at some point, and I definitely want to somehow tie the character into that.
As for twists, we have what I think is a very interesting idea for the main antagonist (Cipher boss) and a situation with him that I can guarantee will hit people right in the feels. Also, we don't want the story to be too black and white, and Cipher will consist of people with varying motivations, some very noble while others aren't.
I'm also planning on a sidequest chain involving a mercenary you can team up with, and I can probably whip up a decent story for him as well.
Generally, for suggestions, I think a lot of random ideas can be incorporated. We haven't set much in stone yet. Also, "dark" ideas are acceptable - as we said a few times already, this won't be a game for little kids. I do a lot of writing in my spare time as a hobby (Can give links if anyone is interested) and generally dislike avoiding dark/bloody/deadly stuff just for the sake of avoiding it. But on the other hand I won't include it just for the sake of including it. If a situation makes casualties/injuries plausible/unavoidable, expect them.
Currently the Arena Champion, Elite Four, Milestone Trainers are pretty much blank slates. The Arena is a place of diplomatic immunity/peace (Nobody will ever be banned from participation or arrested during it. That doesn't stop the cops from standing outside its doors to catch criminals though.), which means those guys aren't good guys by default. The Arena champ is a good guy to some degree though (When it comes to the Arena, he is 100% neutral. In his free time/outside the Arena he will side with the good guys)
We don't have any plans for most NPCs yet (Doctors/Starcenter staff, main item shop dude(s), any other cool NPC that we can have, etc.)
Oh, and one small update on the rival stuff: We decided to drop my idea about having multiple different rival personalities. The rival will be the same for every player with the same alignment (So technically seen its 2 rivals, seeing as he will always play the opposite side of the quest chain than the player. So if the player goes dark side, the rival will be one of the good guys and vice versa)
ok, I got super distracted while writing this by discussing more and more ideas I got with Zelda :p
Thanks for the posts regarding this - They really made me think harder about this and I'm getting some amazing ideas ;)
EDIT: Dammit, someone posted while I was writing, and I didnt check to make sure my post went through >.>
EDIT 2: @DaFunk86: Go
The issue with a Red like character is that Red is a character from a previous game (and also sort of from the anime of said game :p ). There'd be very few people who'd recognize us and have the feeling that that character is special, so it wouldnt compare at all to RED. And I also dont wanna lower the level of the elite 4 and the champ - They are supposed to be some of the very best, the final challenge to overcome to become recognized as a true master. There may be better trainers than the Champion because they did not accept the full-time position of champion, but there aren't many.
Hi, guys, long time no see... Wait... Can I say that through the computer? Anyway, I was wondering two things: 1:Are you guys still taking requests for side stories and/or special events? 2:And are you making one of those cemetery- like places? Yaknow, pokemon tower, celestial tower, old ceatau, lost tower, etc. EDIT: Also, please tell me what, if anything, you are accepting requests for these days.
Ps. Can anyone link me to a good place with elemental model packs?
Heh, we'll see. We're all going to referenced in the game somehow or another. As you've already seen, moz is an explorer with his own sidequest chain. We have a couple ideas for where we'll put myself and TheAlmaity, but nothing solid yet. :)
Oh noes! I don't want anybody to die!
If you want to throw ideas for sidequests at us, I'll chuck them in our idea box. But I think we've got what we need idea-wise for the alpha, we just need to actually get the quests into the game.
And yes, we will have a ghost-type zone. It's going to be a sort of "haunted woods" type area. It's not going to be ready for the alpha but once it's been terrained we'll put up some screenshots. It's a pretty cool idea for a zone, I can't wait to see how it turns out :)
I really like the idea about the Dev Team as trainers, we'll see how and if we implement that. As Zelda said, we already had some small plans for this, but those can easily be changed.
"Hey, Zelda, have you seen my car keys?"
"You lost them again, didn't you?"
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
"Dude, where's my car? 2" in cinemas this fall.
Ok, thats it with lame jokes for this post.
@BladeOfAiur: Go
Ello again :) I guess Zelda answered the rest already, but for Elemental model packs, I assume you mean elemental creatures? (Living tornadoes and stuff) Find the WoW model packs/requests thread(s) here on mapster, there might be some in there.
@Trieva: Go
Those are good ideas :)
The second one can be easily used for the Rival
But just to expand on what I said - The map isn't going to be dark/horror themed, it just won't avoid it. Nasty stuff will happen, but that doesn't mean it has to happen all the time. If a massive dragon attacks a town, it'd be really bad at its job if somehow absolutely everyone got away unharmed, right? But that doesn't mean we can't have some funnier and less grim stuff :p We're probably going to have the Moz/Explorer quest chain include a good amount of sillyness ;)
Well, the Arena Champion/Elite 4 being level 100 doesn't really make that particularly easy :p Short of straight up making enemies have IVs/EVs/Levels that are above maximum, there's not much we can do to make the game more challenging at that point. Of course, we could still add a couple more quests, maybe related to the Wanderer/drop pods.
Will the Elite 4 be active in the story occasionally? Eg, one of them could show up to investigate a starmon that had been terrorizing travelers, one of them could help with protecting the civilians when a dragon starmon or when an angry starmon horde attacks a town, during one of the times when the player is battling that evil organization early in the story (taking on the uber powered evil boss character while the player handles the Team Cipher grunts, who knows, perhaps the number 5 trainer could be the evil boss character), etc.
It would build up their character(s) and may help illustrate why these people are elite and why everyone aspires to be one of the elites, etc. Basically, it would provide more juicy story content :P
Btw do Cipher members have ranks? Is there a promotion system? Something like: grunt -> squad leader -> captain -> boss.
It would be interesting for a Cipher grunt that the player had fought before to be encountered later on and battle the player as a squad leader and later on as captain (with "gym leader" starmon - starmon that is superior and higher leveled than the grunt starmons).
Yea, they will most definitely be involved, but maybe less so than the Milestone Trainers (Gym leader equivalents), considering there's twice as many of them as there are of the Elite 4 :p
HE KNOWS OUR PLANS! RUUUUUUUUUUUUN!
We should definitely do something like that.
I did have an idea for something a bit more "funny" that's similar to that. A recurring Cipher grunt that just simply stays a grunt and is unimportant, with lines like "Hah, I'll get you this time!" at the start of a fight and "You don't remember me, do you? You know, from last time?" for defeat.
Eh, we could do that, but if you scroll down in the Arena list you will see they are all listed as the final level 100 fights. Also, I kind of want to have things make sense if possible (Which is why I want the elite 4/champ be level 100). I found it kinda illogical how gym leaders, who are supposed to be super awesome, had level 10-20 pokemon. So if someone who is clearly a powerful high level trainer is supposed to fight with low level starmon (Relative to what they are supposed to have), there should both be an explanation and good reason for them to have them.
Let's take the milestone trainers for example: It's their job to be a sort of checkpoint, obstacle or some form of "quality control", they are supposed to define a certain range of arena ranks. They make sure that arena rankings don't inflate by providing clear, static ranks. Without them, if you have enough trainers they can just fight each other to climb rankings which could easily lower the average level of those ranks. But by having to beat a specific trainer every 10 ranks this is prevented. They have a seperate lower level party of Starmon specifically for that purpose. You'll actually be able to fight all of them again as part of the last 20 arena battles with their real parties (Not sure what those 20 are going to consist of yet, but right now the plan is the 8 milestone trainers, rival, elite 4 and the champion, which is 14 trainers already. We'll probably throw in some other important characters.)
I can't think of a good reason why the elite four would keep a seperate set of lower level starmon :(
That would imply that the Arena is really new and there simply aren't any powerful trainers in existence to take up the level 100 slots. They're supposed to top tier trainers, not future top tier trainers. That's the big issue with allowing people to fight them earlier - It goes against their primary purpose.
What could be done on the other hand is have one or more of the Elite 4 replaced by someone better than them at some point in the game, someone you run into and fight at some point. But that again wouldn't work with your idea of tricking the player of thinking he's actually doing the final battles long before them, as you wouldn't know that that guy would become one of he Elite 4 and it also wouldn't matter as he isn't one of them yet.
I dunno, I don't think the surprise not-ending is too feasible here.
Also, the RED fight didn't work that way either. You really beat the game, and then just got one special fight to top it off afterwards (Instead of the other way around: Getting a special fight with the Elite 4, and then beating the game). I think we can create something similar to that using a side character and the starmon backstory (So... The Wanderer), but it won't have the same awesomeness of the RED fight simply because pokemon is just... Old. There's nostalgia involved, there's--
...I'm absolutely fucking stupid.
Ok, listen, ok? So, you fight- You listening? OK, you fight a trainer - Right, a trainer, and you fight him - Still listening? Ok, good, so you fight a trainer, a trainer, that's wearing red, ok? And - Listen carefully - His name is Red as well, and, right, ok his team setup, right, listening, ok? Is Probichu, Venostalk, Blasturtle, Charragon, Fatty (yet unnamed snorlax equivalent), and another starmon based on an iconic pokemon.
It was in front of me this entire time, so fucking simple, and it took me this fucking long...
Fatty is the actual name of the model (Used to be the infestor, but then they created the model that is used now.), don't know what I will name the Starmon yet, but I'm not sure whether big belly would fit anyway :p
How to make him epic... Well, as I said, Red has that nostalgia factor. I don't think him being a higher level added nearly as much to the fight as just him being him.
We'll see how hard our highest AI level will really be at level 100. I want it to be really hard. If beating the Aren Champion won't be possible enough, we can just pump up Red's stats. +1-2k EVs will surely make a difference :p If that won't be good enough/too cheaty, custom moves can be made for him with high side effect chances that the AI should abuse really well. Considering it's a bonus fight and completely optional, I don't think making it unfair would be that much of an issue, unlike with the Arena Champion.
@TheAlmaity: Go
The main motivation behind the promotion idea: With any large organization, there will be at least some talented grunts among their ranks, right? The promotion idea is to show that Cipher is a competent and resourceful organization that have talented members who can get the job done (unlike team rocket - despite their large membership base and plentiful amount of resources and equipment available, is utterly incapable of taking on a single unsupported individual).
Regarding the promotion: the grunt would be promoted by means of their role in achieving team Cipher's objective despite losing the battle against the player. It could be something like:
A few ideas:
As a grunt:
As a squad leader:
Yeah, a grunt would get less important roles than a squad leader.
Edit: of course, you can also have the recurring incompetent grunt character that appears alongside the talented grunt who gets promoted (eg, they are member of the same squad. Or when talented grunt gets promoted, he becomes the leader of the squad the incompetent grunt is in). Something along those lines
A few minor updates- We've been working mainly on adding content so you guys will have something to do once the alpha starts. Right now, we're up to 9 finished quests. 2 of those are tutorial quests, 1 is a main story quest, and 6 are sidequests. We're working on getting the 2nd main-story quest done (that's going to be where the alpha story ends).
In addition to some of the more standard quests, we're starting to add a couple of random events and repeatable quests. The first random event has been added to the game, and it's called the "Odoron Plague". There's a small(ish) chance that Odorons (our poison cloud starmon) will flood into areas near the city, covering it with gas. While they're flying around the area, any battles fought within that zone will have a special poison-cloud weather effect, which poisons any active starmon.
Another change that we've made has to do with arena progression. Previously, you had to fight through every arena trainer in order to progress. Now, you can challenge any trainer within 2 ranks of your own rank. So basically, say you defeat the level 6 trainer. You can then fight the level 7 or the level 8 trainer. If you then beat the level 8 trainer, you can fight the level 9 or 10 trainer next. So basically, this allows you to skip up to half of the fights in the arena if you want. The only restriction is that you can't skip fights against the arena champions (otherwise that would be pretty outrageous). It also gives you a little bit more flexibility in which fights you choose to take on.
Whenever you beat a fight in the arena for the first time, you receive a bonus pile of credits as well as some Arena points (our PvP Currency). You can repeat any fight you want, but you'll receive less Arena Points (2 instead of the usual 5) and you won't get the bonus credits. You'll still get the standard credits reward as well as the experience you gained from battle, but this makes completing all the fights a worthwhile bonus, not a required timesink.
Some of you may have been listening to all the E3 news. There was lots of great stuff announced, but we also got some nice details on Pokemon X & Y. One big game-changer for the balance is the brand-new Fairy type. When we made the starmon battle engine, we set it up so we could add more types if we ever needed to, and the opportunity has now presented itself. So we figured we would ask you guys here- If it were up to you, would you add the Fairy type into Starmon? Right now we're tentatively leaning towards a "Yes", partially because we feel it would be a good type for the "Good karma" starmon (with dark being the "Bad Karma" type), but we're going to wait for official information on the type strengths/weaknesses.
But please, share your opinions on the Fairy type! Let us know if you like or dislike the idea, and why.
@caparosmith: Go
Yea, Cipher will be promoting talented Grunts to squad leaders. The player will likely rise through the ranks of Cipher if they choose to join.
@zeldarules28: Go Fairy type: thanks but no, thanks.
@zeldarules28: Go
1. No, fairy type would be strange and to much of an obvious copy. I would instead suggest Light type as that can cover more types and isn't a blatant copy off of Pokémon.
2. I would be careful with copying to many things just look at bar craft.
Fairies: Ok, going with the no here ;) Wouldn't have been an issue for me adding them.
Base Stats: Mostly based on how the Starmon looks and what my first impression is of it. If I find a model of a massive 2 headed brutish looking giant, I'm going to give him a lot of health, good attack and defense but keep his specials and speed low.
Gameplay: Arena is an important part of it, but more like the Gyms in the pokemon games: They're not really part of the main plot, but something you do in between. We're gonna have a lot of stuff to do in the zones and will try to get as many quests in as possible so that the arena isn't the only thing you can do. The arena city will be the only one mostly due to map size restrictions - There just isn't enough space for us to put in towns and cities.
Copying Stuff / Barcraft situation: Copyright laws just gotta ruin everything, don't they? This is really getting absurd...
But anyway, I guess we're going to rename some stuff.
Moves = Attacks
Abilities = Passives
Nature = Personality
"(Poke)Balls" are already called called Capture Cores.
Things we need ideas for:
Evolutions
TMs
Can't think of more atm, will edit/post again if I do.
I guess we can also rename Poison and Steel types to Toxic and Metal.
I should add that there's some positive news here; I've been able to crack in small houses and even tiny villages every now and then without running into map size problems. There may be a couple of these villages scattered around the area. They won't be major quest hubs or such like the villages in the original Pokémon games, but it should help the world feel a bit more lively.
I'll try and keep a lot of variety. If there end up being too many starmon with very similar base stats, I'll shift the focus of them a bit. (Using my giant 2 headed brute example, I can cut his defenses and focus more on attack, or vice versa, and it would still make sense.)
Eeeh... Well, can't say I really mind that that isn't possible :p Being able to outlevel stuff to make it easier is ok I guess, but only to a certain degree. Also, keep in mind that quests reward XP to your starmon, so they might end up being more efficient than just grinding arena battles.
Oh, and the milestone trainers are locked :p You need to do quests to get them to be available. (Reasons for locking will be different. Generally something keeps them from fighting, stuff like a lost Starmon or Cipher rolling into the city with tanks.)
I don't know whether names themselves are copyrighted, and I'll keep the fairly generic stuff, but I think renaming things in general to reduce the overall similarities is a good idea.
The battle arenas already eat into our available map space. If we're going to reuse anything, we need one of them for each possible player. Stuff like that eats up map space really quickly.
Barcraft situation?
http://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/general/general-chat/54082-bar-craft-has-been-removed-from-star-craft-ii/#p1