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.
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
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
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).
I'm liking what I'm seeing :)
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
@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
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 you guys be using custom soundtracks?
If so, I think this one would be suitable for a trainer battle: http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/368469
And this one for a wild pokemon battle: http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/322088
What do you think?
Copyright isn't an issue as long as you acknowledge the individual authors