It's easier to "control the player" if we have something like the arena: We know that the player has to pass by a certain place very regularly. Milestone trainers will have quests that are required to unlock them, etc. While it may not be part of the Cipher plot line, it ties it all nicely together. In the pokemon games you went from gym to gym, which is how you ran into all the story related quests. The gyms very rarely directly tied into the story of the game, and the Arena is going to work the same way.
And what would a pokemon game be without Gym Trainers and the elite 4? :p
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.
synonyms for evolution: transformation, natural progression
Personally I don't think Pokemon would have copyrighted 'evolution'. It is a commonly used concept outside of pokemon games.
TMs: hmmm... how about Skill Data? or Technique Data? or the Book of Starmon Arts :P
What if you use the arena space (like I suggested above)?
Keep in mind that the arena doesn't use any physical space. You talk to the Arena manager, he shows you the roster of competitors, you pick the one you want, and a fight starts. We do have an actual arena for players to fight in, but that's going to be used for spectate-able PvP fights as well as some dramatic storyline fights. The idea is that any PvP fight going on inside the arena can be watched by anybody who is interested. This "Grand Arena" is pretty big compared to the other areas that we have, and it's going to be terrained to look very fancy. If somebody is already using the arena, we'll give you the option to fight somewhere else instead (so there's no queues to get into a fight).
Regarding the map space- It is going to be a very tight squeeze to get everything we want into the game in addition to the battle areas. So we're not going to have random buildings/homes where you can go inside just to chat with the occupants. Pretty much all of the map space is going to be used for something important. The Arena town will be your main go-to area for most of the game. We're going to be putting pretty much everything you'll need in the town as well- it contains a starcenter (complete with a starmon storage box & a healing machine), the actual arena itself, a lot of quest NPCs, a teleporter console, the mentor, a general goods store, and (maybe) the IV/EV modification lab.
We've been making some good progress recently. ^.^ Moz has been working on the next zone (We'll show screenshots as soon as it's done), and I've been working on the final storyline quest for the alpha. I also made a bunch of improvements to our battle setup system, which is going to let us do more fancy stuff for story-related fights. The standard 1v1 battle can get a little dull if it's not mixed up every now and then, so we'll try and do something special for the important fights.
Finally, we added the player costume system. It's not entirely finished up, but basically players will be able to change their appearance to a variety of different models. You'll start with a few unlocked costumes, and you'll unlock more over the course of the game by completing side-quests or finding specific items/locations/events. You'll be able to change your costume back at town for free (there's no in-game cost). It should be a nice way for players to customize their appearance and also brag about their achievements.
Thank you, Maity, for informing me on how difficult the battles would be. Sounds good, predicting outcomes and choosing what action to take. I'd also assume they are capable of pulling outmatched 'mon from the fight for a type advantage, though only once or so per feint. That could get out of hand.
I also liked the description of the story. I do feel that a recurring zany counter-wanderer is required. The type of person who always carries jelly babies and offers them to you at the least opportune moments. I may have brought it up earlier, but how would you react if someone was sitting in a pool of lava, in a wooden boat that's about to burn and he offers you a slice of devils food cake? Hanging from a cliff and offers you some candy rope?
These are the new images for our conversation box, which in the video had default protoss images. The "nope" button on the left is how it looks when its moused over, and the other one is obviously the not-moused-over version. It doesn't look flawless, but I had a really hard time coming up with buttons for this thing :(
You're probably somewhat familiar with the background image for a starmons health, name, energy, status ailment and so on (Its a blue/black thing with blue lines separating the sections and it likes to reside in the corners of the screen). I've just made a couple of extra images with different colors so that we can make Shinies and Legendaries stand out more (Shinies are gonna have yellow/gold+black instead of blue+black, and legendaries will be red+black)
What else do we have... Well, I tested all of Zelda's quests today, found a minimum of one bug in each of them, but they were all really good :) He actually did a pretty damn good job at using sounds and music, I'm pretty impressed :)
OH. I finally set up SoulFilchers models, the metal walls and umbrellas. I'll get you a screenie of the umbrellas right now, and Mozared will be using the metal walls really soon so I'll let him make a screenshot of them :)
Yea, we can definitely have such a character in there. I love writing that type of characters ;) Just need to figure out how exactly we're gonna add him in.
Also, the conversation/narration box seems to have a personality of its own (Or perhaps its a reflection of the players personality, who knows) and occasionally comments on some stuff. For example, when you grab those 3 crates of supplies for a quest, the conversation box will follow it up by saying "Good thing you've got such huge pockets!" ;)
Last but not least, we've got a special duo in the game you'll be meeting quite a lot. It's not the duo you're thinking of, but chances are they're based on it, if you're thinking of the right duo ;) You'll meet them in the alpha, and perhaps we'll even make a video of em before then :p I'll do my best to make them as amazing as possible :) Zelda's done a good job until now, but once I have my hands on the map again I'll go over things and see if I can improve anything. (Zelda is currently working on it)
The dialog box looks fine for alpha, maybe look at it again during beta. Only thing I see that can be improved is the button text. You should try to open up the top lined polygon so that the text is only on that, not also partially on the metallic grey.
I like the idea of the conversation box commenting on the gamey nature of RPGs. I would offer feedback when I have a feel for the map's humor.
What else do we have... Well, I tested all of Zelda's quests today, found a minimum of one bug in each of them, but they were all really good :) He actually did a pretty damn good job at using sounds and music, I'm pretty impressed :)
Heh...I spent all day fixing those bugs. I should probably get better at not making them in the first place :P
We've gotten the story finished up to the good/evil split, so we've got 2 more quests to go (well, technically it's the same one quest but from opposite sides, so there's going to be some reused code). I'll see if we can get another video soon(ish). I've been having more computer problems, so I'm not entirely sure how things will go.
Oh man, I was never able to catch one when I was a kid. Those game designers were evil! Luckily for you guys, there isn't a way to check the date inside the editor. Otherwise I'd definitely get my revenge- Probichu would show up at midnight every third Wednesday, but only it's raining and snowing at the same time.
I like the idea of the conversation box commenting on the gamey nature of RPGs. I would offer feedback when I have a feel for the map's humor.
We're working on making the side quests fun and interesting. The main story is definitely going to be much more serious overall- it's not all written yet (we have the starting and ending bits, not so much of the middle), but there's definitely some sad/emotional parts with more serious moments. That's not to say it's all serious; the police chief you'll be helping out in the alpha is so paranoid that he refuses to go anywhere without his power armor and his chaingun (he calls it Betsey).
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If I get any better ideas for the conversation box/buttons I'll try and implement them. Not satisfied with how they look now, but they at least look decent enough to be presentable (Well, tbh, I like how the buttons look by themselves, just not how it all fits together ingame)
There will be 4 trade evolutions. The Stardex will tell you which ones they are. (Mortessus (Ghost/Ice. Lich), Shelob (Rock/Ice Spider) and I forgot the names of the last 2, one is a 2 headed giant brute (fighting) and the other is a rock+fire giant)
Stones: Not sure how we'll add em. Can make me rare drops or sold by the arena points vendor, or both. They should only be available after a certain level though, so that people can't get the evolutions too early (So between 20-30 is when you should end up with enough Arena Points or reach the zones where they can spawn. If you grind arena fights for the stones I think its only fair that you're allowed to get one early)
Probichu will definitely evolve via stone, as will our Eevee equivalent. I'll try and add in a few more.
Also, the items might not be called "stones", we'll see.
Probichu/Zenchu stats: When I added em to Starmon (they were planned from Day 1, but I had to wait til I made 24 other starmon. Yes, I even gave them the same ID numbers as pikachu and raichu) I checked the Pikachu and Raichu pages on serebii net to copy their base stats, but they were just so bad.
Remember when I said I wanted to keep all starmon "viable" by not having major differences in base stat totals, that I was bringing everything up to 520? Well, now you know when I decided to do that :P
This they actually aren't, really. You're seeing a border in this picture. There's trees long the side, but they've been cut down around the actual windmills.
That said, I still need to do *some* heighting play in the area just to make sure everything isn't 100% flat.
Another dislike from pokemon is it reduced their happiness from simply trading away then trading back. This is prob unnecessary (and easy to make complicated) but have you guys considered happiness affecting more things? It could be interesting having a more happy starmon doing more damage in battle or using less energy for moves. Or if starmon were aligned by karma too, frustration could make an evil starmon more battle productive. What if starmon hapiness affected quests and other things too?
At the moment, happiness doesn't really do anything. That said, we made sure to add a slot in the banking system to save it, so it will be easy to make it have some effect in the future if we decide to. In other words, starmon currently have a happiness number, but it has no effect on gameplay. If/When we add happiness we'll definitely look into that, I honestly don't know enough about how it worked in the pokemon games to really comment.
Today I put in a bunch of improvements to the game which should speed up our development/testing process a bit. It was taking us longer than it should to add new trainers into the game, so I redid the way we input new trainer types into the game. Similarly, it was taking us longer than we'd like to test the quests, so I threw in a bunch of quest debugging features that let us to zip around rapidly to whichever bits of the story we need. You guys won't notice any difference, except an earlier alpha date from the time we save, I suppose :P
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I certainly hope you do :) We're trying to make it really good, but we don't want to spoil it here. That way, when you guys get to play the first few quests during the alpha, we can get your opinions on the story as a whole. If the tone, pacing, or style of writing needs to change, it's better to change it now rather than later ^.^
We also put in a "Group Event" type of thing today. If anybody's played Guild Wars 2, it's sort of like that. There's a chance for an odoron horde (odorons are these flying poison starmon) to invade a zone at night. If this happens, they'll cover the area with their toxic gas. This gas will carry over into battles in that zone, poisoning any starmon you send out during battle (but not the odorons, of course, they're immune ^.^). If players work together to kill enough of the odorons, they may eventually leave the zone, allowing the gas to dissipate....
Here's a screenshot of a plagued zone- this is same grassy zone we've shown off before (Route 1)... As you can see, there's gas all over the place and the sunlight doesn't shine through very well- and there's odorons all over the place. It's usually a lot nicer looking ^.^
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Howsabout somebody sticks in a reaver modeled mechanical starmon- use the portrait model!
Sidequest ide... Oh wait- u guys aren't doing those anymore. Well, since all I'm doing here is sitting around lamenting on how bad blizzard is for getting rid of reavers and being annoying, I'm gonna go and- in typical BladeOfAiur fashion- leave and BANG MY HEAD ON MY DESK OVER THE FACT THAT THERE ARE NO REAVERS!!!
It was actually my favorite unit too! But I'm not a diehard fan like he is.
Can you guys incorporate some kind of starmon like spiritomb- how you kinda run across a wierd structure but have no idea what it is until you get some kind of mysterious item by working your [cencored] off- and then if you bring that item to the structure that starmon appears?
Also, can you make stones like the ice- and moss- covered rocks how you evolve a starmon by leveling it up in the same area as that rock?
One more thing- make a scary place with awesome, epic music like the distortion world!
Thanks you guys, and I'm really sorry about my friend- you know how they are!
After every trainer battle we have the option to refuse money rewards or steal. Even if we lose a battle we can steal money and end up with a net gain :P
Completing quests given by 'good' people increases the good meter. Similar with bad.
That's a good idea. But the stealing-when-losing part wouldn't make sense lorewise - You've got nothing to threaten the guy with, while he is quite literally able to kill you.
Almost evey decision we make needs to affect karma to make it interesting. Sometimes I might want a mildly good character, one that's all the way evil, or maybe redeem myself and be a saint ;) . Don't do the mass effect thing where going all good or all bad was the best since it unlocked special dialogue options. There should be advantages for being more inthe middle.
We want to use this system as much as possible. We might neglect the middle ground at the start because it might just be way too much work in addition to the already two seperate storylines we have, but we want it to be viable in the long run.
Maybe how often starmon are healed affects karma. Less healing might be considered starmon abuse.
Eh... Not sure I like this idea. Too easy to abuse for good karma, makes "evil" players play more risky (and punishes them for playing safe by screwing with their karma) and punishes ill prepared players that don't want bad karma.
Starmon are aligned with karma too and if they match with the character then they get bonuses in battle or something.
Not sure whether that can be implemented easily and visibly. And in the end, they'd always end up with the players karma anyway, so it's practically just another "happiness" value.
Karma affects bigger story elements. If you're evil then team cipher becomes stronger and moves around more actively. Maybe have the mass effect 3 ending type thing where we build up for a war (affected by karma).
Eeeeh... Karma won't affect this directly. It's kinda more the other way around... You'll be doing quests which obviously affect one or both sides, and those change your karma appropriately.
Here are some story ideas:
Our initial adventure motivation is NOT to be an elite op trainer and participate in the big dick waving fest that's happening :P. We need something interesting and realistic, kinda like an expansion of pokemon beginnings where an errand is run for the professor.
We haven't decided yet who the player is and so on, and I'm thinking of keeping it relatively vague, possibly adding a customizeable background (Like in GW2)
Maybe some portion of the game should be playable without starmon so when we gain them, we can really see how much help they are. How about we need to meet up with a family member in town and do some quests (before getting our first starmon)?
Really don't like this idea. It'd pretty much just delay the entire game, force the player to do things that are completely unrelated mechanically. Imagine you join a custom map that advertises itself as a pokemon clone, and you don't get any pokemon. You'll just go wtf and ragequit after 5 minutes.
Team cipher has complete control over at least one zone (and they're the only trainer types you find there). This should help demonstrate their power and effectiveness as a group.
If we have space, maybe. We're definitely adding a sort of hideout, but right now the plan is to not have it actually connected to any zone and just port players over when necessary.
Make clear to the player that there is a FFA war going on. It's starmon vs civilians vs team cipher vs legendaries. Maybe as part of karma we can decide which faction/team to join.
It's mostly Arena City dudes vs Cipher. Legendaries will be more similar to natural disasters than an actual faction in an FFA, and the starmon themselves won't end up uniting and become a faction. That shit's going down between the two factions we have though will be very clear.
We have a relative who's a milestone trainer or elite four. Give us some backstory on what it's like to live as a pro trainer through conversations or something.
Answered the backstory thing above. This is an interesting idea.
Some NPCs we meet become good friends, some become enemies. Unlike pokemon where it was sunshine and rainbows and everyone treated you like you're an angel :P.
There's a limit to what we can do. Technically, it's possible, but we also had an alpha test planned for late April, didn't we? There's just some pretty cool ideas that will have to be ignored for the sake of time, and I think this will be one of them :(
This one's a bit hard to explain but the main story quests should feel like an adventure and make me look forward to doing the next thing. It shouldn't be just 'become the most powerful trainer' which takes ages to get. I'd like hints from NPCs that I should be travelling to the next zone, using alternate routes, doing favours for people, etc. Something that feels like I'm always doing something to make progress with the adventure and anything could happen. There might be a road block or characters might get inthe way :P.
The main story quest won't be "beat the arena". The player might want to become the best, but it won't be the focus of the story. Shit's gonna go down and the player's gonna get dragged into it. The player can pursue his goal of advancing in the arena while plans are being made and prepared, while he isn't needed by his allies. Then, after the main story ends, the player will have a good chunk of the arena left to go.
The main story quest won't be "beat the arena". The player might want to become the best, but it won't be the focus of the story. Shit's gonna go down and the player's gonna get dragged into it. The player can pursue his goal of advancing in the arena while plans are being made and prepared, while he isn't needed by his allies. Then, after the main story ends, the player will have a good chunk of the arena left to go.
I'm liking what I'm seeing :)
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@Trieva: Go
It's easier to "control the player" if we have something like the arena: We know that the player has to pass by a certain place very regularly. Milestone trainers will have quests that are required to unlock them, etc. While it may not be part of the Cipher plot line, it ties it all nicely together. In the pokemon games you went from gym to gym, which is how you ran into all the story related quests. The gyms very rarely directly tied into the story of the game, and the Arena is going to work the same way.
And what would a pokemon game be without Gym Trainers and the elite 4? :p
On the note of walkable buildings I already showed Mozared a viable solution earlier, I think the map is posted somewhere in these absurd 37 pages.
synonyms for evolution: transformation, natural progression
Personally I don't think Pokemon would have copyrighted 'evolution'. It is a commonly used concept outside of pokemon games.
TMs: hmmm... how about Skill Data? or Technique Data? or the Book of Starmon Arts :P
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Curse PremiumKeep in mind that the arena doesn't use any physical space. You talk to the Arena manager, he shows you the roster of competitors, you pick the one you want, and a fight starts. We do have an actual arena for players to fight in, but that's going to be used for spectate-able PvP fights as well as some dramatic storyline fights. The idea is that any PvP fight going on inside the arena can be watched by anybody who is interested. This "Grand Arena" is pretty big compared to the other areas that we have, and it's going to be terrained to look very fancy. If somebody is already using the arena, we'll give you the option to fight somewhere else instead (so there's no queues to get into a fight).
Regarding the map space- It is going to be a very tight squeeze to get everything we want into the game in addition to the battle areas. So we're not going to have random buildings/homes where you can go inside just to chat with the occupants. Pretty much all of the map space is going to be used for something important. The Arena town will be your main go-to area for most of the game. We're going to be putting pretty much everything you'll need in the town as well- it contains a starcenter (complete with a starmon storage box & a healing machine), the actual arena itself, a lot of quest NPCs, a teleporter console, the mentor, a general goods store, and (maybe) the IV/EV modification lab.
We've been making some good progress recently. ^.^ Moz has been working on the next zone (We'll show screenshots as soon as it's done), and I've been working on the final storyline quest for the alpha. I also made a bunch of improvements to our battle setup system, which is going to let us do more fancy stuff for story-related fights. The standard 1v1 battle can get a little dull if it's not mixed up every now and then, so we'll try and do something special for the important fights.
Finally, we added the player costume system. It's not entirely finished up, but basically players will be able to change their appearance to a variety of different models. You'll start with a few unlocked costumes, and you'll unlock more over the course of the game by completing side-quests or finding specific items/locations/events. You'll be able to change your costume back at town for free (there's no in-game cost). It should be a nice way for players to customize their appearance and also brag about their achievements.
Thank you, Maity, for informing me on how difficult the battles would be. Sounds good, predicting outcomes and choosing what action to take. I'd also assume they are capable of pulling outmatched 'mon from the fight for a type advantage, though only once or so per feint. That could get out of hand.
I also liked the description of the story. I do feel that a recurring zany counter-wanderer is required. The type of person who always carries jelly babies and offers them to you at the least opportune moments. I may have brought it up earlier, but how would you react if someone was sitting in a pool of lava, in a wooden boat that's about to burn and he offers you a slice of devils food cake? Hanging from a cliff and offers you some candy rope?
SNEAKIN' IN A TEASER PIC!
...
Aaaand out again.
@Mozared: Go
Why are windmills on a flat plain? Not to mention surrounded by trees?
Realism aside looks nice.
I wanna do screenshots too D:
These are the new images for our conversation box, which in the video had default protoss images. The "nope" button on the left is how it looks when its moused over, and the other one is obviously the not-moused-over version. It doesn't look flawless, but I had a really hard time coming up with buttons for this thing :(
You're probably somewhat familiar with the background image for a starmons health, name, energy, status ailment and so on (Its a blue/black thing with blue lines separating the sections and it likes to reside in the corners of the screen). I've just made a couple of extra images with different colors so that we can make Shinies and Legendaries stand out more (Shinies are gonna have yellow/gold+black instead of blue+black, and legendaries will be red+black)
What else do we have... Well, I tested all of Zelda's quests today, found a minimum of one bug in each of them, but they were all really good :) He actually did a pretty damn good job at using sounds and music, I'm pretty impressed :)
OH. I finally set up SoulFilchers models, the metal walls and umbrellas. I'll get you a screenie of the umbrellas right now, and Mozared will be using the metal walls really soon so I'll let him make a screenshot of them :)
@OceanFlex: Go
Yea, we can definitely have such a character in there. I love writing that type of characters ;) Just need to figure out how exactly we're gonna add him in.
Also, the conversation/narration box seems to have a personality of its own (Or perhaps its a reflection of the players personality, who knows) and occasionally comments on some stuff. For example, when you grab those 3 crates of supplies for a quest, the conversation box will follow it up by saying "Good thing you've got such huge pockets!" ;)
Last but not least, we've got a special duo in the game you'll be meeting quite a lot. It's not the duo you're thinking of, but chances are they're based on it, if you're thinking of the right duo ;) You'll meet them in the alpha, and perhaps we'll even make a video of em before then :p I'll do my best to make them as amazing as possible :) Zelda's done a good job until now, but once I have my hands on the map again I'll go over things and see if I can improve anything. (Zelda is currently working on it)
@Mozared: Go
I look forward to catching Drifloon.
@TheAlmaity: Go
The dialog box looks fine for alpha, maybe look at it again during beta. Only thing I see that can be improved is the button text. You should try to open up the top lined polygon so that the text is only on that, not also partially on the metallic grey.
I like the idea of the conversation box commenting on the gamey nature of RPGs. I would offer feedback when I have a feel for the map's humor.
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Curse PremiumOH, he called you out, moz!
Heh...I spent all day fixing those bugs. I should probably get better at not making them in the first place :P
We've gotten the story finished up to the good/evil split, so we've got 2 more quests to go (well, technically it's the same one quest but from opposite sides, so there's going to be some reused code). I'll see if we can get another video soon(ish). I've been having more computer problems, so I'm not entirely sure how things will go.
Oh man, I was never able to catch one when I was a kid. Those game designers were evil! Luckily for you guys, there isn't a way to check the date inside the editor. Otherwise I'd definitely get my revenge- Probichu would show up at midnight every third Wednesday, but only it's raining and snowing at the same time.
We're working on making the side quests fun and interesting. The main story is definitely going to be much more serious overall- it's not all written yet (we have the starting and ending bits, not so much of the middle), but there's definitely some sad/emotional parts with more serious moments. That's not to say it's all serious; the police chief you'll be helping out in the alpha is so paranoid that he refuses to go anywhere without his power armor and his chaingun (he calls it Betsey).
@OceanFlex: Go
If I get any better ideas for the conversation box/buttons I'll try and implement them. Not satisfied with how they look now, but they at least look decent enough to be presentable (Well, tbh, I like how the buttons look by themselves, just not how it all fits together ingame)
@Trieva: Go
There will be 4 trade evolutions. The Stardex will tell you which ones they are. (Mortessus (Ghost/Ice. Lich), Shelob (Rock/Ice Spider) and I forgot the names of the last 2, one is a 2 headed giant brute (fighting) and the other is a rock+fire giant)
Stones: Not sure how we'll add em. Can make me rare drops or sold by the arena points vendor, or both. They should only be available after a certain level though, so that people can't get the evolutions too early (So between 20-30 is when you should end up with enough Arena Points or reach the zones where they can spawn. If you grind arena fights for the stones I think its only fair that you're allowed to get one early)
Probichu will definitely evolve via stone, as will our Eevee equivalent. I'll try and add in a few more.
Also, the items might not be called "stones", we'll see.
Probichu/Zenchu stats: When I added em to Starmon (they were planned from Day 1, but I had to wait til I made 24 other starmon. Yes, I even gave them the same ID numbers as pikachu and raichu) I checked the Pikachu and Raichu pages on serebii net to copy their base stats, but they were just so bad.
Remember when I said I wanted to keep all starmon "viable" by not having major differences in base stat totals, that I was bringing everything up to 520? Well, now you know when I decided to do that :P
Because... that's where the wind blows? Why would you build them in hills?
This they actually aren't, really. You're seeing a border in this picture. There's trees long the side, but they've been cut down around the actual windmills.
That said, I still need to do *some* heighting play in the area just to make sure everything isn't 100% flat.
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Curse PremiumAt the moment, happiness doesn't really do anything. That said, we made sure to add a slot in the banking system to save it, so it will be easy to make it have some effect in the future if we decide to. In other words, starmon currently have a happiness number, but it has no effect on gameplay. If/When we add happiness we'll definitely look into that, I honestly don't know enough about how it worked in the pokemon games to really comment.
Today I put in a bunch of improvements to the game which should speed up our development/testing process a bit. It was taking us longer than it should to add new trainers into the game, so I redid the way we input new trainer types into the game. Similarly, it was taking us longer than we'd like to test the quests, so I threw in a bunch of quest debugging features that let us to zip around rapidly to whichever bits of the story we need. You guys won't notice any difference, except an earlier alpha date from the time we save, I suppose :P
Wouldn't even notice that. We don't have a date to compare to. :P
Tools for implementing stuff faster is almost always good.
I think I'll like the story line when it's done.
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Curse PremiumDarn, you got me >.>
I certainly hope you do :) We're trying to make it really good, but we don't want to spoil it here. That way, when you guys get to play the first few quests during the alpha, we can get your opinions on the story as a whole. If the tone, pacing, or style of writing needs to change, it's better to change it now rather than later ^.^
We also put in a "Group Event" type of thing today. If anybody's played Guild Wars 2, it's sort of like that. There's a chance for an odoron horde (odorons are these flying poison starmon) to invade a zone at night. If this happens, they'll cover the area with their toxic gas. This gas will carry over into battles in that zone, poisoning any starmon you send out during battle (but not the odorons, of course, they're immune ^.^). If players work together to kill enough of the odorons, they may eventually leave the zone, allowing the gas to dissipate....
Here's a screenshot of a plagued zone- this is same grassy zone we've shown off before (Route 1)... As you can see, there's gas all over the place and the sunlight doesn't shine through very well- and there's odorons all over the place. It's usually a lot nicer looking ^.^
GIVE ME REAVERS BACK!
Oh? Were you guys talking?
Oh hey!
Howsabout somebody sticks in a reaver modeled mechanical starmon- use the portrait model! Sidequest ide... Oh wait- u guys aren't doing those anymore. Well, since all I'm doing here is sitting around lamenting on how bad blizzard is for getting rid of reavers and being annoying, I'm gonna go and- in typical BladeOfAiur fashion- leave and BANG MY HEAD ON MY DESK OVER THE FACT THAT THERE ARE NO REAVERS!!!
Sorry about that- my friend was messing with my computer while I was away doing things. That was NOT me.
It was actually my favorite unit too! But I'm not a diehard fan like he is.
Can you guys incorporate some kind of starmon like spiritomb- how you kinda run across a wierd structure but have no idea what it is until you get some kind of mysterious item by working your [cencored] off- and then if you bring that item to the structure that starmon appears?
Also, can you make stones like the ice- and moss- covered rocks how you evolve a starmon by leveling it up in the same area as that rock?
One more thing- make a scary place with awesome, epic music like the distortion world!
Thanks you guys, and I'm really sorry about my friend- you know how they are!
That's a good idea. But the stealing-when-losing part wouldn't make sense lorewise - You've got nothing to threaten the guy with, while he is quite literally able to kill you.
We want to use this system as much as possible. We might neglect the middle ground at the start because it might just be way too much work in addition to the already two seperate storylines we have, but we want it to be viable in the long run.
Eh... Not sure I like this idea. Too easy to abuse for good karma, makes "evil" players play more risky (and punishes them for playing safe by screwing with their karma) and punishes ill prepared players that don't want bad karma.
Not sure whether that can be implemented easily and visibly. And in the end, they'd always end up with the players karma anyway, so it's practically just another "happiness" value.
Eeeeh... Karma won't affect this directly. It's kinda more the other way around... You'll be doing quests which obviously affect one or both sides, and those change your karma appropriately.
Was definitely planning on it. Maybe even the third, but probably not. Just not sure how and when we'll give it to the player.
We haven't decided yet who the player is and so on, and I'm thinking of keeping it relatively vague, possibly adding a customizeable background (Like in GW2)
Really don't like this idea. It'd pretty much just delay the entire game, force the player to do things that are completely unrelated mechanically. Imagine you join a custom map that advertises itself as a pokemon clone, and you don't get any pokemon. You'll just go wtf and ragequit after 5 minutes.
If we have space, maybe. We're definitely adding a sort of hideout, but right now the plan is to not have it actually connected to any zone and just port players over when necessary.
It's mostly Arena City dudes vs Cipher. Legendaries will be more similar to natural disasters than an actual faction in an FFA, and the starmon themselves won't end up uniting and become a faction. That shit's going down between the two factions we have though will be very clear.
Answered the backstory thing above. This is an interesting idea.
There's a limit to what we can do. Technically, it's possible, but we also had an alpha test planned for late April, didn't we? There's just some pretty cool ideas that will have to be ignored for the sake of time, and I think this will be one of them :(
The main story quest won't be "beat the arena". The player might want to become the best, but it won't be the focus of the story. Shit's gonna go down and the player's gonna get dragged into it. The player can pursue his goal of advancing in the arena while plans are being made and prepared, while he isn't needed by his allies. Then, after the main story ends, the player will have a good chunk of the arena left to go.
I'm liking what I'm seeing :)