GAME FEEDBACK + POKESPE INTEREST

GAME FEEDBACK + INTEREST

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→ GAME FEEDBACK

It's hard to believe that it's only been a month since Cetana came to an end. We hope that everyone who got to play a part in it had fun! We had a wonderful time running the game for you and we cannot wait to set up the next one in the near future. We understand that things can always be improved on, though, so we will be using this post as a general feedback on the game as a whole.

We would like to hear any and all thoughts that you've had about, whether they are positive or negative. What did you enjoy, what was not as fun, what was frustrating, and such on. Don't worry about writing an entire essay. Even just a sentence or two will be fine. We want to make sure that you guys have the best experience in our games and whatever feedback we get will be applied to both how Pokespe (and other potential games) will be run and how we will mod.

Thank you again for taking part in this wild maze of life!

→ POKESPE - INTEREST CHECK

As many of you may know, we will be running a small private game based on the Pokemon Special manga series. Closed to the public, PokeSpe (actual name TBD) will be invite-only and most likely include a player cap, similarly to Cetana. We have heard a wonderful amount of interest, so we will certainly move forward with creating and opening the game! However, due to current events and everyone's energy levels, it's difficult to determine when would be the best time for everyone to join.

As a result, we'd love to hear from you! Please comment below with the months that you'd be most available to play in. Based on these answers, we will be able to determine a date for the opening of PokeSpe that will work for the majority. As this game will allow for player invites, please feel free to spread this among your friends if they would perhaps be interested! The more answers we have, the easier it'd be for us to find the right time to start.

Thank you for absolutely everything! We appreciate our players so much and we hope to see you soon in PokeSpe!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This will probably become an essay because what's being concise.

1. I really loved this game! The energy was good, the play was fun, the speed was astounding. In particular I loved the freedom to do things as involved as Shadow dungeons and the way that bonus rewards encouraged a lot of tagging and thus even more engagement. Overall it was a really good system.

2. Main problems: the burnout. Towards the end I think we had too few wins to keep character morale up, and the freedom to do so much came at the price of having what was essentially every other month having two important events crammed in, often with time limits. I'm not honestly sure what the best workaround for this is! Maybe incorporating player plots into the overall plot more so that it can be a combined event? Or restricting it to only during the non-plot months entirely? I'm also not 100% on how you plan to structure the PokeSpe game anyway so this might even be moot!

On a more personal note I know that I also tend to do best in games where there's a steady momentum, so once there's some significant slowdown (like when the winter killed us all RIP) I was already losing my motivation to tag. But that's also a very specifically me thing. The slowdown was also due to a variety of factors that I don't think any of us could have predicted so AGAIN, JUST MY EXTREMELY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE sorry for the lagging tags around that time.

But again, I really, really loved Cetana, it had a lot of great CR and experiences and I'm super looking forward to PokeSpe! Regarding things like how to run events that involve groups in a timely manner, I can also try to pull up some examples from murdergames where group investigations are pretty common. I don't know how often that's going to be a mechanic in PokeSpe, but even things like using bold text for the actual "interactable" or "plot" items at the very least can help speed things up since it signals to the players where we need to look to advance the thread, stuff like that. Just let me know!

I'm really looking forward to seeing what you guys cook up next '-'b

finally sits down to comment on everything properly--

It was really great having you, Dani!! For events, trying to get the entire player base no matter how small to all thread together was a nightmare at times HAHA I personally would lean heavily against it for Pokespe, but groups of like 2-3 players + a mod sounds a lot more feasible if we ever go that route. So group investigation examples would be nice if you could gather some up! I know that Ichi ran murdergames and I've also played in three of them to date, but they're all with different circles of players and mods who do it differently, so it would still be great to look at! eg in the games I play, we don't use bold text at all unless it's a death announcement

Alright, here's a few examples!

Murder investigation
Final investigation (i.e. less murder more helping people just find general clues)
Final investigation

Also notable is that for final investigations, what we usually did was a mod post where everyone could post what times they were available so we could try to find a sweet spot where all of us were available to rapid fire thread out the investigation.

I can dig up more if needed but those ones do a good job of the important bold text imo!

Ohh, this is really interesting, thanks Dani! In the games I played, we had the investigations on the actual trial day on Saturday so everybody was already online for that chunk of time to begin with, it'll be different with a lime limit of half a month to a month or whatever events are compared to 8 hours of trial but this is good to see!

The circles I'm in usually do the bolded text to some extent, so it's always been very helpful to me, especially since it means even if we faff about we know what we need to do to actually continue progressing AHAHA

"Neither of them find anything, because the clue's back in the mess hall what ARE YOU EVEN DOING"

HAHA

Is the blue text something different or is that a character thing?

The blue text was a character thing, since that was a character who had an alien buddy attached to him who spoke in blue and couldn't be heard by anyone else!

Some of my comments will echo Dani's, so I won't go into too much detail.

- I liked the freedom to go a little wild, and that IC actions actually had consequences. I'm sorry for Jiro, everyone. OTL

- Pacing! The first few months when I joined were consistently paced and things progressed and that was great. I do better in games that have a continued pace, and when it just kind of grinds to a halt, especially for group threads, I lose motivation when it's been a week and nothing's happened to move a thread forward. Personal experience and preference here, of course. This wouldn't be something that stands out for me so much in larger games, but for small team-oriented ones it can be an issue if players have wildly different tag speeds or timezones when trying to coordinate a thread to completion.

That said, Cetana has been my favourite game so far and I loved that everyone clicked well and we had a good group here who communicated and was open to each others' ideas and player plots!

same as above re group threads, we'll find some way that doesn't rely on the entire playerbase needing to thread together, since this isn't a murdergame and even in murdergames that sort of high level activity is voluntary and doesn't take away from the overall experience/character contribution to the game, especially since it's impossible for everybody to have similar tag speeds/timezones anyways. What's important is that we saw what didn't work!!!! Also ideally it won't be very often anyways, because January's dungeon was us trying to mod what was effectively a dozen threads at a time to keep everybody going, that was way too much and something more hands off would be better (':

But I'm glad you had a good time and playing with you was really fun Morgan, I'm glad I got the chance after leaving Daybreak

Cetana... feels like a lifetime ago, wow! I got both mod and player side of things, but mostly mod thoughts so if you have any thoughts for things I bring up here PLEASE I WANT TO HEAR YOUR THOUGHTS in which my questions are bolded for ease

Before that— nothing has been planned yet for Pokespe so it's hard to make comparisons but just by the franchise alone there'll be fundamental differences that I think is important to keep in mind re applicable feedback, namely 1) small town Persona setting versus an open Pokemon world, 2) Persona users being expected to work together as a team versus Pokemon trainers who may travel independently or in small groups and often mix and match travelling companions, and 3) a series of dungeons in Persona that open up one by one, verses Pokemon gyms that can be challenged without order.

- Logs: This is a side effect of a small game but I was hoping for more player posted logs with the monthly event logs being background to player driven plots/character arcs, etc and I think an open world setting will help more with this since everybody won't be primarily focused on fighting Shadows. I mentioned this on my plurk but the largest time sink for me personally was writing two logs a month and occasionally spearheading team meeting logs too, which probably won't happen in the next game depending on how the world itself is structured, if we guide our characters through city by city versus dumping them all into an open world and then it's no longer feasible to write events happening in one specific location on one specific date like I could in Cetana. How did people like the logs? Was there enough to play off of in them? Was there too much? Did you like the types of events, thought there were too many festivals, is there anything you would change about the types of events or how they were presented?

- Pacing: It cracks me up every time thinking back about how scared people were of dating threads and trying to work in a timeline... please don't worry about this, I've never had another game that worried so much about this that wasn't a murdergame, and Cetana was NOT intended to be murdergame pacing. We implemented the monthly time limit for dungeons to reflect the importance of defeating those Shadows like in the games and so there would be consequences to deal with if that deadline isn't met, and both the time limit and the threading requirements to reach the boss were adjusted for the number of players and activity level from month to month to what we felt was reasonable. Pokespe... probably won't have these deadlines! But feedback on plot month logs are still appreciated: How did you feel on the threading requirements for dungeon logs? If we have events like this in the future, do you like having the "boss" available ASAP once requirements are met or is having these things on a timeline better? For the former, it's more organic and characters have to "earn" (I hate using this term and players shouldn't have to """earn""" progressing the game, but) opening up the boss encounter, but then we run into the trouble of having time limits and stressing people out about being fast taggers, which I don't want. The latter, though, makes it so the boss is guaranteed to be available and people can play at a more relaxed pace with the assumption that everything works out and the boss encounter will be unlocked, but it sort of takes away some agency, which I also don't like, since it's like "okay so this will happen regardless of whether characters do anything" and I hate handwaving things that feel like they should be an effort and have an effect. This sort of leads into another point so I'll make a new bulletpoint

- Player interaction: We put a lot of effort into making the game as interactive as we could and incorporating character decisions into the game's setting and plot, especially with their effects on the setting and the npcs. It's a player driven game! Which ties into a lot of the pacing and plot, especially towards the end. There were times where everybody got together and had to decide how to proceed re talking versus fighting, and Iiiiiiii thought it was boring from a player standpoint but reasonable from a character standpoint to try and get the team together and come to a consensus. Hopefully the nature of Pokemon negates the need for these sorts of things, since there's no enforced group or feeling shunned if you don't like working with groups. In terms of plot, I felt like I was doing a lot of shoehorning at certain points, especially towards the end........ HOW DO Y'ALL FEEL ABOUT YOUR IMPACT AS A PLAYER? Bi-monthly dungeons and a final boss is pretty formulaic, but I hope players felt like they were able to make an impact instead of just reacting to things we threw at you. Cetana as a theme has a lot to do with karma, so there were things behind the scenes re consequences of both characters and villages from the past having an effect on the game as events rolled out. Things that are majorly detrimental to the game as a whole we'll try to rein in, but we also like giving everybody their freedom, so there's some balance to be struck there. Sometimes it's hard to reconcile, like characters being burned out by the fact that there's been personal Shadow events every month and things turning out terribly— but it's also not fair to players to say no more personal Shadows, so we sort of brought that stress on ourselves... no one to blame but ourselves /:

- Bonus points/plot clues: What are people's thoughts on the bonus points system? What are things you liked and/or found fun to play with, what are things that were sort of eh? How did you feel about the plot clues given out? Especially the last point since I wrote most of the bonus point plot clues, and I tried to tie them into either the current month's events or events that will happen next month/in the immediate future, so if something wasn't explored, it would have been revealed at a later time anyways, making some of them obsolete after a while. A lot of these plot clues were intended to be discussion points for characters to talk to one another, but I don't think there was a lot of that from what I could see. What sort of plot clues do you guys like? New information? Answers to pending questions? Something more interactable? These also sort of eat up mod time, so I'd like to find a balance that feels useful for players so they're worth earning.

- UHHHHH these are my pre-lunch thoughts and I'll think about more discussion points after work today

Logs

They were fun, I liked having various options to pick from because even if something wasn't my speed there was a chance someone else could do something with it that made it more fun for me to tag into.

Dungeon requirements:

I honestly kept forgetting about it and had to make sure to get it out of the way early so I wouldn't be rushing for it later. The AC itself was easy to make, but I was always at risk of forgetting and trying to use it as bonus AC instead... I don't think there should be any need to keep two separate types of AC, especially when the group is already so small. The people who want to get involved in plot are going to make sure to be there with or without it!

That said, I can go both ways on the boss availability. If the lead-up to it was really harsh, I might want a breather, but if we're all still hype about completing the requirements, might as well ride that hype into the fight itself.

Impact as a player

I feel like my characters were definitely able to impact the course of the game!

Bonus system

I like the bonus system! It's a good incentive to tag around a lot. I also really appreciate that although the bonuses can be random, they can also be opted out of, since I like to have a bit of a handle on what situations my characters are facing to encourage them to grow this way or that. It's a good blend of introducing opportunities I wouldn't have thought of normally while still ultimately giving me the control to decide if I want to go through with it or not!

Plot clues

I think on one hand while it's nice to ask questions and get answers, it can also be pretty tough to come up with relevant questions all the time. So with that said my poor tired out brain prefers investigative plot clues but I CAN GENERALLY ROLL WITH WHATEVER.

ALSO REGARDING POKESPE since people can be potentially traveling at different paces and whatnot, are there any ideas of how to keep people interacting when physically they may be far apart and the group is already tiny?

Edited 2020-04-29 19:31 (UTC)

All these things are good to hear! Re interacting when people are physically apart, the game will probably feature a network out of necessity I think, that's the easiest way to do it. IT'S HARD WHEN WE HAVE ZERO THINGS PLOTTED YET but my initial thoughts is a plot that features a specific city each event so activity can be focused there, and characters can physically gather there if they're interested in plot. Or maybe a handful of cities and there's something new to explore in each one and people meet up by chance if they don't already plan to. If they're not interested or if they're travelling outside, I think it would be fine if they do their own thing too? Since organically there's a lot of different Pokemon journeys, like trainer vs breeder vs coordinators, etc. So interaction is encouraged based on character motivation but won't be forced in the same way Cetana sort of was since the town was so tiny and it's hard to avoid people. It'll be more on the players to find a reason for their characters to group up, compared to how it was in Cetana, probably

THIS IS STILL DANI I'M JUST IN MURDERGAME HELL PLEASE HAVE MERCY

But basically we should be apping characters who would have a reason to actually attend things and look into plot and not go off into the mountains to become hermits, this is good to know.

APPARENTLY ICHI HAS IDEAS TO HELP WITH THIS BUT I was just imagining Red spending the entirety of Cetana going "yeah every month that passes, I am more and more convinced to become a mountain hermit" haha

Red is valid.

How did people like the logs? Was there enough to play off of in them? Was there too much? Did you like the types of events, thought there were too many festivals, is there anything you would change about the types of events or how they were presented?

I thought there was always enough to play off of in the logs! If not, we could base things on the log and make new prompts ourselves. Sometimes characters had their own agenda that was apart from the logs, but posted in the log because it fit the timeframe.

Though, if there was one thing I wish I could have suggested earlier, is to make each section of the log under a detail HTML tag (that clicky show/hide section thing) because there was a lot of scrolling every time I had to tag (the page didn't always automatically go to the tag when posted, etc). I think my mouse scroll wheel burned out...

How did you feel on the threading requirements for dungeon logs? If we have events like this in the future, do you like having the "boss" available ASAP once requirements are met or is having these things on a timeline better?

I personally didn't mind the dungeon threading requirements, but I could understand for the people who don't tag as fast or are always trying so hard to catch up when they can, that the dungeon threading requirements on a non-dungeon month was difficult. Even I had months where I threaded a bunch in the month, but then I double-take and go "oh I need a dungeon thread".

Regarding the boss availability threads, your thoughts on both sides are pretty much what I think of it. When we needed to unlock the boss, I felt that we were pressed even more for time, because it was like having two deadlines (even if there technically wasn't): one for unlocking the boss, and beating the boss by a certain time. I think this was a part of why the game's pacing felt fast at certain points despite how time is utterly fake in Cetana.

What I mean by how there technically wasn't a time limit for boss killing, but it felt like there was one was avoiding timeline paradoxes asap.

How do you feel your impact as a player?

It was... very, very big lol. Since it was a small game with small cast of characters, and in a contained setting, I definitely felt it. I think I did a lot in this game, especially with Terry in the first half of Cetana, and I really liked the impact my character had because it felt like he actually mattered in the game. If not setting-wise, it definitely felt like it CR-wise.

What are people's thoughts on the bonus points system? What are things you liked and/or found fun to play with, what are things that were sort of eh? How did you feel about the plot clues given out?

I loved bonuses, and it definitely gave enough incentive for me to thread a lot. One of the things I liked about it was that I could customize the Persona's skills to be whatever I wanted, which is normally like pulling teeth in the games they're based off of, so having the freedom to do that was really fun.

Also, at first I thought you guys would have restrictions on what we could regain, but then we started regaining entire houses lmao. Not that I mind! That was fun! But I felt that what we regained... the value(?) of that regain per threads we turn in for the regain was inconsistent. With a single regain, we could have a bomb, but we could also regain an entire house (with nothing in it). With a single regain, we could get a hoodie or a weapon of mass destruction that would eat entire worlds. I tried to impose limits on myself like adding onto Terry's longbow powers with separate regains, but at times it was really wild. I'm not saying to have a strict set of rules of how much we can regain with a single regain, but like... a general guideline of sorts? I remember when Terry was first regaining pinpointing, we discussed that he could have it separated into four tiers. Kinda like that!

I was also one of the people who regained plot clues every now and then, and my reactions ranged from what I can remember. It did give me some things to play out, and that was fun! It also gave us info of what we could expect from the game or what's going on behind the scenes. I realized halfway that gathering all these plot clues on a character who is not good at these things was... yeah. But I didn't want to stress myself on dividing who knows what regarding plot clues, so I continued to shove them onto Terry lmao. But that's a me problem. I did spend a lot of time in an effort to organize the plot clues that were given, and I had to sometimes use Orien as a "Terry you're dumb. THIS is what it means" with them. It was my first time doing that in a game, so that was quite an Experience. I kinda don't want to do it again though...

What sort of plot clues do you guys like?

Some more plot clues that would obviously point something out. As much as I like critical thinking as the next guy, it wore me out. o)-( Though, with so many plot clues that I got through bonuses, most of the problems I wrote out about them are really... just a me problem lmfao

Other notes:

Dani brought up the limited in-person interactions in pokespe already, but I'm a little more concerned on how voice/video/text kinda worked in Route 29 back in the day since there were so many characters, but considering this would be a small game with lesser amount of characters, this is my concern... I just imagine some characters are forever solo travelers and they're across the entire world, doing their own thing forever :'D

Edited 2020-04-29 20:14 (UTC)

i can't reply to everything because i am on mobile but in regards to your last point, i have some ideas on how to keep groups together to avoid characters being singled out! i think most people enjoyed how everyone icly knew each other in the game? so i have some plans for that

JUST SAYING IT HERE SO I REMEMBER lmfao card says that we haven't planned anything because my dumb ass hasn't finished typing up the tl;dr ideas for her. i'm coming for you, card

god... it wasn't until November that I learned how to code the clicky hidey thing and only put it in there because the ooc section was so long. But that's something I can do with the log itself too if it gets to be that big!! That's a really good idea, November's log was MASSIVE and nothing loaded for anybody haha

We'll figure out this timing problem too, it's something I was always keeping in mind but never knew how to solve since the nature of each dungeon was slightly different. It was a little better in non-dungeon months I think? But since it's such a small game, significant things happened on a day to day basis so that was hard to work out timelines if players decided to stick closely to them P;

WE DEFINITELY WENT CRAZY WITH REGAINS AND IT BECAME UNBALANCED...... the value of a t-shirt equaling the value of a mansion... yeah. We got a lot more lax as the game went on and people were running out of canon things, and in Pokespe if we have a system like that tiers would make things a lot easier on our end too instead of having a pool of 23434234839 random bonuses to think up

Plot clues will probably also be limited, esp in a bonus setting. I wrote all of them so I def had times where I sat there going "I don't know what to give you guys..." Maybe like max one clue per player per month or something, and a request that players say what specifically they want more information on instead of no preference, since that makes it hard on me too

Trying not to conflict with ongoing timelines really felt like murdergame pacing from how much some of us wanted to avoid it LOL even though I never played in a mg, sometimes it felt so chaotic

Limiting plot clues sounds great! I do remember you mentioning that you wanted us to specify what kind of plot clue we wanted, but how about making a super broad category for the person to pick out from? Like... for pokespe, maybe the categories could be like "wild pokemon, gym leaders, crime syndicate rumors" or something. idk how it'll go, but it's just a suggestion \o/

regarding regains, at least for my case, i could probably suggest my own regain tiers and ask you guys if that's okay to make it easier...

anyway, i really enjoyed cetana! i loved playing in it, despite burning out near the end. all the laughing and screaming was a part of the cetana experience but this was the first kind of rp that i genuinely enjoyed in such a long time, for a long time, despite doing lj/dwrp for like... ten years. it was also my first time at a invite only game with a small cast, so thank you and ichi for making the game really memorable. i really look forward to pokespe!

Logs - The logs were fine for me. I had no problem coming up with prompts from them. I'd rather have a lot of stuff to work with than too little.

Dungeons - None of that mattered to me in regards to when/how the boss was available or what had to be done ICly to move to X point. I don't OOCly stress about that kind of stuff or feel pressure with time constraints or the idea of IC failure. I can't really give constructive feedback on it for that reason.

Player Impact - I definitely feel like the game was allowing the players a lot of room for going off into unplanned directions and individually, and in groups, having an impact on the plot and the way things ended. Regarding shoehorning things in at the end, I think it was necessary because there was a month and a half where over half of the players were on hiatus or more busy than they had been and the ones that weren't didn't have the characters that would delve into the plot points, so it kind of got slice of life-y for a while and off track. I think that was a fluke and shoehorning might not be an issue with subsequent games unless everyone apps idiots. Which... well.

Bonuses - I loved playing with random bonuses and effects, and this was kind of a highlight of the game for me ngl.

Plot Clues - I think they were sort of convoluted, and it may be because I missed the first couple months of the game or didn't have enough Persona lore, but I couldn't tell what the plot or backstory was going towards at any given moment. I think some of the concepts were too vague and with having a lot of the plot clues revealed through characters that got them, they ended up having their own thoughts mixed in with the clues and so theories never formed among the playerbase as a whole. I'll just say I'm glad Toki is so stupid because I was also clueless.

Other - Since this became a topic, pokespe interactions. Maybe there can be hidden Mario warp zones. (b^_^)b Bonus info rewards like "the warp from X City to Y-Town is the third bush behind the boba shop on 5th St."

HAHA we'll see if everybody apps idiots. The plot was admittedly sort of convoluted in that there were several parts to it that were released out of order and in pieces. Like just in terms of timelines, there was 1) everything that happened in the past hundreds of years ago with the Daitengu, Kotengu, and original villagers, 2) an early round of Persona users involving the Attendants, 3) and the current round of Persona users and the effects of the past on them. I GOT THAT IT WAS PROBABLY VERY FRUSTRATING SOMETIMES I tried to make it a little clearer in team meetings but that also depends on character thoughts like you said, so P; By the end of the game I was basically doing my best to stress that it's okay if nobody understands the plot, if their goal is to go home then that's what they fight for, the whys don't matter- I think it was Terry saying that to someone and I sat there nodding haha

I admittedly wasn't focused on plot clues either, so I never sat down and went through them all for what could be pieced together. Just played along with how they came out in game.

lmao, near the end I just pp'ed all Jiro's plot clues and crow conversations to Haki for Terry's pinpointing because they'd never talk to each other.

laughs, poor Haki holding all these plot clues... Haki if you're reading this, sorry for 459805957 different puzzle pieces to 234895 different puzzles

it's okay... it was a learning experience for a puzzle lover like me :')

THIS IS GONNA BE CRAZY LONG IM SORRY. Overall, I had a really good time in Cetana and I'm glad I was here! I think there were a few points that can be improved tho.

Logs: To be honest I didn't have a big issue with the fact that there wasn't a lot of player-created logs. Because my characters pretty much knew all the other characters (or knew of them at least), and we all had inbox threads where we could do one-on-one threads even without owning a phone or whatever, I never felt like my roleplay opportunities were limited. I think stuff like that is more important for bigger games -- or like you said, games where the characters aren't all stuck together in the same small space.

My main thing was the setup of the dungeon logs relative to the AC. Because of the way scheduling was set up, the dungeon AC requirement kinda shook out to be unnecessary. On dungeon months, everyone pretty much engaged with the dungeon. On non-dungeon months though, it felt to me like we just made a lot of short dungeon threads that went nowhere while our 300-comment chains went to bonus AC. It was the roleplay equivalent of level grinding. A possible solution for this could be to introduce small changes in the dungeons for off-dungeon months, ex. "A new normal enemy has appeared in the school dungeon and it drops nothing but froggy chairs!" or "All the fire on the third floor of the lake dungeon has turned blue, and the Shadows are drowned ghost Shadows!" It doesn't have to be deep. It doesn't even have to be made up by the mods. Just the ability to invent something new, since all the angles of the dungeon were probably explored the month prior.

Pacing: The pacing in this game was super varied as it went, and to be honest I have no idea why that is. I guess it all had to do with the moods of the players? There were certain months where we were all going crazy hard, and certain other months where it was like a ghost town.

Interaction: A++. You guys did a really good job with that. I loved learning how small things could have big impacts down the road. The IC round-tables were honestly really interesting to me; if nothing else, if such things become necessary again, we could probably also host an OOC round-table and ping every player afterwards. Being IC is fun and cool, but having to express your OOC opinions while keeping it in-character naturally leads to a difficulty in organizing. Sometimes I definitely had opinions that Akira (my main 'plot' character) would not share, and I had to go to Plurk to voice them, which not every player could see.

Burnout: I agree, I think we brought that one on ourselves. I think everyone kind of got a grip of what could be done with the Shadow dungeons at the same time, about halfway through the game, as well as the characters getting deep enough into their despair to warrant one -- and from there to the end we all suddenly wanted to get ours in. But even past the months of personal Shadow events, there were also months where things were extremely quiet for no apparent reason.

Bonuses: The bonus system is really cool and I like it a lot. It's a nice way to naturally develop powers and the range of things you can do with it was entertaining. I think we kind of lost our grip on it, though, when we started permitting things like entire ass houses because they were funny. Problems like housing, which I know the mods intended to be an issue, became basically useless. I really liked the plot clues given, although I didn't have Akira take any of them. The big problem I had is related, though.

Power levels: I think this will be easier to get a grip on in PokéSpe because Pokémon power levels are so well documented and limited (Pokémon won't listen to you if you don't have X amount of badges), but there was also a big disparity between character power levels when only depending on bonuses. Of course this is not to say that people who submitted more bonuses and got stronger Personas were wrong in any way, they were not. However the system definitely benefitted those who were boomerang taggers, and gave little in the way of letting new or slower players catch up.

The only reason I noticed this is because Akira ICly dedicated himself, the second half of the game, to overworking himself and catching up to the stronger characters. So I looked a lot at the leveling system. There was no minimum level for characters; Cyrus for example started at level one, whereas I think he probably should have started higher. Not enough to keep him RIGHT up to par with the older characters, but enough that he had a fighting chance to catch up. Perhaps a minimum stat boost after every dungeon, so no character can be below -- say -- 15 in any stat at the endgame.

Large-scale fights were organized mainly around the small handful of characters with crazy high stats, and the rest of the characters had two options. A, fudge their power levels to remain relevant, or B, stay true to their power levels and get tossed aside in every fight. Neither option feels good. I didn't have this problem as much with Akira, but that's because I intentionally focused every possible resource I had to boosting Akira's stats through boosts and weapons.

In PokéSpe of course, keeping balance between player characters is much less important. There are high level areas and Pokémon, and low level areas and Pokémon. Characters are in friendly competition, so disparities are natural. But in Cetana, where a huge focus of the game was collaboration of all players against single "raid bosses", it was pretty unbalanced. Keeping an eye on the adaptation of the battle system is still a good idea, depending on how you want to handle battles and contests and etc. between players or against NPCs.

Edited 2020-04-30 00:55 (UTC)

Having Akira in the game from start to finish made me REALLY HAPPY ARCHER but also a lot of his frustrations I also felt for him asflkjh especially the point with everybody's power levels, there's a point about rewarding active players with stronger personas but there's also just the fact that Akira would naturally know how things work and how to train, versus Kido who is scared of Shadows and avoids the dungeons, and I sort of hard to fudge the reason for her Persona strength by giving Nekogami Growth 3 and say that he was basically sharing in other people's wins. Having everybody's Persona levels grow together as the game progressed might have been the better choice, looking back, since it's sort of like in the games where you take a lower leveled party member and train with a strong group and they catch up easily, with the amount of experience scaling to their level. I'M SORRY IF THIS WAS REALLY FRUSTRATING FOR YOU ARCHER every time Akira expressed his frustration over this I felt bad for him too ):

The nature of Pokemon largely takes care of that, thank god...

Also yes, OOC discussion plurks >>>>>>>>>> IC team meetings adsflkj

Trust me the frustration was 100% IC! It was because Akira went from being very powerful in his own game, to powerless in Reviv, to feeling inferior to others in Cetana. He just gets very antsy and uncomfortable when he's not in control, and that had a negative impact on his relationships.

On my end, the system was new, this was a test run for it, so it's understandable that there would be things that don't work right. I just did the best I can to approach it in a way that Akira would, which is try crazy hard and put himself under extra stress so he comes out on top.

The reason I brought it up is because I think the knowledge could still be applicable in PokéSpe if you guys wanted to do 'raid boss' style events, and especially with stuff like Gym Badges.

hi this was me, I forgot to log in

To keep this list clean and easy to read, please keep your comments short and only type the months that you will be available/would want PokeSpe to open. Thank you!

May (and every month afterwards - no pref on when the game starts)

june or later is fine for me!

May or later is fine. No actual preference. (It's haki)

June or later for me, I think!

June or later for me!

May onward (no preference!)

June, leaning towards July
y'all... don't say May, nothing's been discussed yet lmao we don't even have a name

June or later works for me!

June or later for me!

kicks down the door, everyone holy fuck
i can't believe that i forgot my tablet pen so i can't even edit my own shitty meme. anyway! potential characters i'll be bringing are:

chiaki nanami (danganronpa)
- i am absolutely bringing her in. this is 100% guaranteed
- sdr2 version if anyone cares and if you do care, please give me dr3 nanami. i'm the mod, i can do whatever i want
- also give me other dangans
- linked picture is her. she's going to catch so many pokemon and go

if someone does pokemon wrong

saber/arturia (fate/)
- this is like... a 30% chance that i'll play her but look at her. she can eat and live out that happy cooking anime life but in rp
- idk she'll have a munchlax and they'll eat everyone on the island together
- if i play her, i just want her go :O at everything. that's all i care about

no fancy looking comment. just have a bunch of boring text

SO as most of you already know/to the surprise of no one, i'm interested in bringing red back for the pokéspe game, except this time, i'd like to take him fresh from canon and from the pokémon masters canon point! in masters, red is portrayed as being very expressive and comfortable with himself/other people (and he says ONE WHOLE THING) which sounds like a nice change of pace from how he was in cetana, haha.....

also look at dat smile

HEY THERE IT'S DANI BACK ON HER BULLSHIT WITH two characters from Miwashiba games. Why this.

Theobald Leonhart from LiEat is my first choice and yes. Yes that is his name. No he is not going to tell anyone but for different reasons than you might initially think. If Haki goes through with apping Efina, Theo here is her reluctant con artist single dad. Thanks to his particular job, he'll probably be switching up his appearance and name in each town and finding some new hustle to get money ~~to get cute clothes for Efi~~ so... if you want a savvy asshole who's pretending to be something else all the time, /fingerguns.

Yoshi Nanase from 1BitHeart as a SCP CRAU is probably going to be my second?! He's originally a shut-in now a ~*secret agent*~ for the Foundation, specifically from a universe that matches our own world fairly closely except SCPs exist and there's fiction of all the canons except parts of homestuck and undertale. In-universe all """fictional""" characters do come from real worlds and have real souls and everything, they've just landed on an earth where there's fictional adaptations of their universes, which includes alternates (which is also why there's doubles up the wazoo). Basically, there is a chance he would 4th wall some characters though I will have an opt out for people who don't want to be recognized at all or people who are fine with it but would like to specify the degree to which the 4th walling occurs - he's probably not going to run around talking spoilers anyway since again, he's used to doubles and even if he meets characters he met in SCP, he'll be able to recognize that they're different instances even if they have the same looks and/or name.

The main thing is he's a huge nerd and will want to become a POKEMON MASTER and also he probably needs a break from him and his friends constantly ending up in murder games 'cause that life is rough.

I'm determined to bring adults to this game. Toki and Jiro are both disasters and they're banned from Pokespe. I'll likely only go for one character this time, since I'll be in a couple other games as well and I expect more people for a pokemon game than there was in Cetana.

Potentials:
- Atsushi from BSD
- Alex from Gangsta

Because they both deserve some chill and cute pokemon. Unless this game is murdergame in disguise again.

so like I'm at a solid ??? of who I'm going to bring in, but I know someone is gonna be there. Possibilities include:

- Akira again, but a different one, a Royal one. This depends entirely on me finishing Royal in time, which will probably happen, but... yeah.
- Henry Fireemblem. I am definitely apping Henry Fireemblem.
- Ardbert FFXIV. I've never played him before but it would be so fucking cute, you guys.

Edited 2020-04-30 00:34 (UTC)

hello hellooo it's haki and my prospective characters for pokespe are the following:

Efina from Lieat is a little girl. She's also a dragon. And I'm talking Little. 98 cm / 3'2" and looking like she's five years old kind of little. She's calls Theo her Papa and makes lies into tangible block blobs and eats them. Other than that, she's a sweet, cheerful girl who will absolutely enjoy her time in pokespe. I hope.

My second prospective is... up in the air! Again!! I was initially gonna get Jace into pokespe, but I know I am terrible with playing the same character in two games, so we'll see how it goes by the game comes. Other possible prospectives could be Red Riding Hood from SINoALICE, some kind of fake personatag, and whoever else I happen to want to play.

Edited 2020-04-30 01:02 (UTC)

I'll likely be bringing Wei Wuxian in from Mo Dao Zu Shi!! I have no idea what I will be doing regarding his canon point, but I'm tempted to bring him in from a different one!

If I bring in anyone else, it will probably be Kaede Akamatsu but we'll see how well I can balance everything!

hiii, it's mad and i'm still not set on who to bring so it might change, but here are some prospective characters:

- nagisa momoe from madoka magica because she deserves to be happy for once!! i'm also considering mami tomoe or sana futaba from this series because magical girls and suffering have taken over my life
- lio fotia from promare because maybe it's high time to play someone more serious...
- entrapta from she-ra and the princesses of power because combining pokemon and science stuff seems like a cool concept (inb4 mewthree)
~~- violet evergarden if ichi apps saber only to make this happen~~

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