okiedokie i am online now so let's respond to things... i guess in the order of length.

Mari i'm definitely hoping to be able to! like. basically i got tripped up last time cuz i choked on the coding and at the thought of trying to stay as active as i "should" be with all the mod work. but i'm hoping to pare out even more mod work, so as long as everyone is willing to be understanding and patient that the stuff you actually need staff for might take a wee bit longer, i'm thinking it'll be okay!

honey and the forgor land questions are more than okay! i'll definitely answer them. and respond to your commentary too just. let me put things under a spoiler so it doesn't get too long.

question + answer time

SPOILER: Click to show

A1: yes and no. basically, you're limited to all the damage-deailng moves a pokemon could possibly learn at one point or another in a game. for example, we'll look at pikachu's veekun page, you'd be able to teach it thunderbolt (a move it learns through level-up in all generations), swift (a move it could learn through level-up only in red/blue), volt tackle (an egg move it learns in multiple generations), or rollout (a tm move it can learn in gold/silver/crystal). or any other number of moves that are listed there. so. point being, no, vine whip wouldn't be a thing, and neither would, say, splash on a magikarp (since it's a non-damaging move), but you do get a p extensive potential moveset for most pokemon (i'd probably figure out what to do with smeagle + ditto when we got to that crossroad), so it's enough variety to keep people from having carbon copies of the same pokemon even if they have the same species.

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A2: uhhhhh i'm not even 100000% sold on a scavenging mechanic (since i might fob that off for another site tbeh) but. basically i would separate out things so it's wild threads + maybe solo quests (aka it's you with some mod rolls), normal quests (for 2-3 people plus mod rolls), and then raid battles (for 3-4 people). normal quests i wouldn't cap out unless we have problems where people are spamming them, but i'd probably do that you can only ask for 1 mod roll per calendar day for solo threads (just to try to stop people from spamming out 20 posts a day for mega charizard x from a newly caught charmander) and then cap out that everyone gets up to 3-5 solo threads active at a time. raid threads, on the other hand, would be set up so that you can go out of posting order if you want to (as long as you aren't posting again within 48 hours of your last post), but a mod has to show up every 3-4 posts to respond, just so you're not whaling the boss down before it has a chance to hit back.

tl;dr you're gonna have some options to do stuff without relying on people if you're not finding partners who are active enough for you, but y'know, the actual meat of plot stuff (aka the raid threads since that progresses the site) is something that you can't just speed demon and ignore everyone else on.

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A3: tbeh...... i'm probably not going to implement a breeding system. i've never really been happy with any of the ones that i used to have on sites i've done previously, and it typically was something that was largely ignored by people unless someone got a specific pokemon spawned for the first time that other people wanted. and it had generated a lot of eggs that no one ever really hatched.

like i wouldn't be entirely against putting in a mechanic for getting eggs as quest rewards or something, but since that's gonna be a ton more work and i'm the only staffer, it's probably easier for me to just... not.

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A4: i wasn't really planning on doing trainer types either. since i mean. the concept of it was meant to be nintendo's first attempt at a vr-mmo pokemon game, so it would be a bit like pogo in that there's just... not really anything there outside of catching and collecting and evolving.

that being said, like. if people want to go with "oh i'm trying to go be a coordinator!" or "oh i'm wanting to try to be a breeder one day", i'm not gonna stop them? people can organize unofficial coordinator contests and submit quests that are "ranger missions" or "research objectives" or even "help breeders out" but y'know. i don't want to try to build out a framework for perks/downsides of each class (or for letting people do unique classes), so to try to cut out some of the staff work, i'm planning on just... not running anything official.

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A5: no hard limit on character counts. i'm not about that life.

that being said though, to have additional characters approved, i'll probably do what i do on my other sites, aka you must 1) not have any characters currently inactive and 2) have at least 1 additional post on each of your characters from the minimum post count you had before (aka second character means you have 1 post on your first but fifth character means you have 4 posts on your first, 3 on your second, 2 on your third, and 1 on your fourth).

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A6: nope. it's a vr-mmo, so tbeh, i was never planning on anything like "team rocket leaders" or "gym leaders" or whatnot (at least, not playable). like, the closest i would get would be more or less an occupation list so there's not two chiefs of police or something, but that'd be that. i've just had a lot of bad experiences with site canon positions tbeh, i am not a fan of them.

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A7: oh heck yes there's an actual battle system. i have been too long in this genre, i have seen things. i have seen the ash ketchums refusing to let their pikachu die to an onix and i have screamed over having to figure out if my modded togepi ought to be fainted yet or not.

it'll be a basic battle system. wild pokemon will have lower health (since you're supposed to win those) while boss/raid pokemon will have more health (since it's a team effort). i might work in a class system for pokemon to rank them up to be better but. basic system functions as "all pokemon have 10 health, normal attacks do 2 damage, if it's super effective it does another +1 damage (so 3 total), if it's not very effective it does -1 damage (so 1 total)".

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A8: animanga. animanga for all of it. i wouldn't be doing an interest check on p2 if it was rl fcs. nah but also for real i'd probably even rule out playing canons from series that are largely live action (like harry potter or supernatural) since i feel like it's kind of cheating around the rules for animated panfandoms to allow them, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it is what it is i guess.

responding to commentary time

SPOILER: Click to show

R1: i'm.... gonna be super transparent about it and say that a large reason why i want to go with both canons and ocs is because i would want to run with the same basic plot idea for a site for both canons and ocs. like. trust me, i'm not entirely satisfied with it either, and if i'm being entirely honest about it, i'd probably actually cut the ocs out, not the canons, since i personally would much rather play a small handful of animated canons than i would the few animanga ocs i still have. but that still opens up the same barrel of worms since like i'd want to allow the opportunity to have, like, humanized simba, which means i'd allow people to claim a face if they wanted, which then dumps us back into the same boat of reusing faces. plus i'd be personally concerned about people doing the same thing they do in 90% of panfandoms i've seen/joined and just... play only within their own fandoms + fandoms they know and then with their friends' characters in fandoms they're less familiar with. since ho boy that drives me bonkers and i have left a few panfandoms because that was going on.

like. i know i could technically just. make it on two different urls and say they're linked if i'm running them low-key but i don't want to do that for both more selfish reasons (like me not wanting to use up all my premium jcink spots just for this) and for actual legitimate, understandable reasons (like me being concerned about neglecting one version of the site or the other since as of right now, i'm the only staffer for the whole project, and as you can see from my siggie, i'm also responsible for two other sites).

the other option would be putting both versions on the same url but keeping them in separate board structures with the excuse of "oh yeah it's two different servers nbd". which i'm not entirely opposed to this if it would be something people wouldn't mind seeing, and it would resolve most of my concerns in splitting the two sites up. i'd mostly just be worried about if it would seem too messy to actually push through. and y'know. new areas for one group might get spoiled if the other group advances further, but eh, i'm less concerned about that since it's mostly just. "oh neat this is the fire area! this is the grass area!"

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R2: i'm definitely not opposed to word of mouth promotion only! (and y'know obviously i'd not stop anyone from putting want ads up on resource sites and whatnot.) the only problem with this method that i could see would be the obvious slowdown of the site in terms of quest threads or raids (especially since more members = faster movement since anything that does not actually require staff attention to function is not going to be forced as a mod roll). well. that and the fact that three years out of pokemon and two and a half out of animanga have left me outside of a friend group but. ye.

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R3: i mean i have a site that's 18+ and a site that isn't and they're about the same largely. the big difference would be, like i said, whether or not there's a mature board for graphic threads or not (since we're jcink premium so graphic content is a go regardless, it's just a matter of whether it's gonna be sequestered away or not). since imo it's not great to have blatant graphic content or even just super intense / controversial topics in the guest-viewable areas as the first impression, even on an 18+ site. it'd probably depend on what we have for interest and whether or not it would be a dealbreaker for people or not i guess.

honey and the forgor land

to answer your question, this is a very resounding yes! please! please, i hate running things on my own, it is the worst!

the only reason i'm basically running the whole thing as though there aren't other staff is because right now, there are none. (which, to be fair, there's also been no one who's actually confirmed they're interested in joining, so by that standard, y'know.) and i would rather not build out elaborately complex systems that are going to rely on the assumption that i have other staff to help when it might turn out that i don't. this is partially because i just don't have the manpower but also partially because i tend to have p bad luck with staff (as in i tend to end up more or less solo staffing a site no matter how many other staffers i have), so in that regard, i'm trying to be cautious about what i might be signing myself up for.

under the spoiler is gonna be some vague systems rambling and all that so. yeah. i got long since i was rambling through things and i'm kind of soundboarding some things since like i said, i don't have other staffers right now so i'm legit working through all these ideas in real time here in the thread. so uh.

SPOILER: Click to show

like in a sense, i'm actually kind of glad i took another year to come back to this idea since actually the current setup i'm toying with is a lot easier to work with from a staffing perspective.

like to detail out some of the ground rules we're working with here:
> trainer levels are probably gonna get kicked out and replaced with a general rank (aka novice / adept / expert)
> trainer experience is also gonna get kicked out, we can use crystals you get from defeating bosses to rank up (there's 6 possible in each area, but you only need 3 to go up each rank)
> pokemon don't have levels or experience or abilities anymore, so you don't need to roll for that
> a pokemon's gender + alternate form + starting moveset is decided by the rper/modder, so that's not a roll either
> a pokemon's additional moves + shiny status are unlocked through item usage
> pokemon class is also probably going to get kicked to the curb entirely so it's not something we track
> aka the only part of a pokemon encounter that would need to be randomized is the exact species
> and the only things that staff would need to track of a pokemon would be moveset + species + special status (shiny / alternate form / mega)
> also i'm letting members roll as much of this as possible so

so for context, more or less. staff would just have to 1) approve bios, 2) add in the crystals as an award each time a raid boss gets defeated, 3) change permission masks to rank players up (if i want to be sure people can't post where they're not allowed), 4) do general site maintenance (archive finished threads, update claims listings, etc etc), and maybe 5) edit players' "bag + pc" posts if i want to be paranoid about people cheating the system and 6) run any kind of promotion if we decide to have them. literally everything else would be something a normal member would be allowed to roll.

(like legit the battle system isn't really something we have to monitor, it's just basic "this is how we decide who wins fights and give easy benchmarks for people to figure out when they need to lose a fight and what the expected rules are" type things.)

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i'm still p leery about doing a breeding system just because i really don't think they work well in rp. they're usually ignored and tbeh i'd actually be a bit leery of people changing a pokemon's gender to try to get around egg type issues (or y'know next thing we know, every eevee is female). like. i guess if i was going to do one, i'd take it in the direction of "people pay x amount to put in 1 pokemon into a pot, when the pot reaches 10 everyone who put in a nonlegendary pokemon gets 1 mystery egg each, after people post with the counter for it y amount of times in the same thread the mystery egg will hatch into a pokemon that is randomized from any of the possibilities in the original pot." i'd try to restrict it so that people would be allowed to hedge their bets by putting more of their own pokemon into the pot or getting friends to join them too (thus increasing the odds that they get something they want) but i know i would definitely lock down to "limit one pokemon per evolution family" to stop someone from putting in all 8 eeveelutions plus an eevee to try to guarantee another eevee.

... actually, in typing that out, i do kind of like that system a little bit, it would be nice to be able to use mystery eggs as promo items or quest rewards. and if people leave/disappear, nbd, the mystery egg would just fade into the nether like i would do with their pokemon too.

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as far as scavenging system goes... if i did it, it would be an overhaul of all of the wild threads. aka it would replace wild threads with general exploration threads, where you're wandering about and you have a chance of 1) encountering a wild pokemon, 2) finding a random low-quality type item (like the +1 move item), or 3) coming across an obstacle you could pass if you meet the right conditions to get a high-quality type item (ie, you need a fire-type pokemon to cross a bed of lava to reach a small crevice with something shining inside, which turns out to be the +shiny status item). heck i could even add a possibility for a 4) find a pokemon egg that will hatch into the dominant type of the area you're exploring in (pokemon randomizes when it hatches, not when it's found).

i'm just a bit leery of actually implementing that whole thing since just. 1) it's a whole new set of things to roll for when previously you would only have to roll for pokemon species for a wild thread. 2) since canons could keep their non-world-breaking powers there would be nothing to stop anyone from breaking systems they could canonically (ie, superman flies over the lava to get the item instead of having his charmander go fetch it for him) or at least, nothing to stop them from complaining about the fact they can't do it. 3) it adds a different feel to the site that does rather contrast with the whole vr-mmo aspect of it. and 4) it would take a lot of emphasis off of the main questing system (which i want to set up so that it encourages not doing solo threads as often as possible) and really tempt people to only do quests if they're looking for a specific rare item (which they would likely be able to buy out of the shop if i'm keeping it, which idk if i am).

basically just. it's a cool system. i would like to use it one day. but i am not sure if link cable is the right site to use it on, and if it isn't, that would not break my heart since i would love to keep it for a potential future pokemon site.

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i love how i said i wasn't gonna do trainer classes but then i got in the shower and my brain started thinking about trainer classes.

basically, i'm sort of considering adding trainer classes? it might be a cool dynamic to add to the site, especially if it goes in the direction of a panfandom versus a multifandom, but. yeah. i'd try to keep the perks p low key and interchangeable (just nice things versus be-all end-all ways to twist the game) so. yeah.

prototype classes + perks are:
> trainer: +1 damage to all attacks
> coordinator: +1 starting move for all pokemon
> breeder: +1 empty slot towards a mystery egg pot? -1 post required to hatch an egg? idk since idk if there's gonna be a breeding system or even eggs in the final site so don't quote me on this yet
> researcher: +1 possible mega evolution in party (max of 3)
> ranger: +1 max pokemon party size (max of 10)
> warrior: ... +3 health to all pokemon i guess?

idk it's a bit of a rough system and even though i'd like to make them actual member groups, i'd probably try to make them user-created groups and see if i can figure that system out for jcink. (hopefully it's a self-sort where you can only be in one). and idk whether i'd take additional classes submitted by members but. ye.

like i said, don't. hold me to this but. i'm spitballing here and seeing what i like and what works and what doesn't.

and i would honestly not mind too much making it a canon panfandom and calling it a day. since i did toy with that idea as well for a while. i just had 0 idea how much traction it would actually have (since even though i know there was excitement when it was tossed around the last couple of times, i also am very aware that rpers are like cats and they'll say they want something and then once they have it, they don't actually do anything with it). and y'know. concerns with not rping across fandoms.

but i guess people are likely to bubble anyway since, y'know, on original sites everyone will just bubble in their friends and with fcs they like so. by that standard, i guess it's. fine. if nothing else, the raid threads and questing ought to help spread people out, and i can always add in a guideline that's more or less. "hey guys, i know people tend to focus on fandoms they know or on characters played by friends, and that's understandable, but please make sure that you're not doing it to the point where you're actively excluding other people or characters."

no but also real talk, i would love to hear more input from people who would be interested in joining whether they'd be down for a site that's canon-only or one that allows ocs as well. (and, y'know, to what degree ocs would serve as a turnoff.)

honey and the forgor land + @neincat (since i was writing this up while you replied but i addressed the levels + experience p explicitly with why i'm strongly considering dropping it.)

yeah no i know i'm gonna do a discord server eventually for this. i'm not gonna be running a cbox on the site so discord server is gonna happen for sure. i'm just. trying to see if there's actually traction before i make one. so it's not just. "oh oops there's only three other people in here, well, this is awkward."

i might fish around for some staff officially in the staff search area, though i'm also kind of at the same crossroad there too. since y'know. i'd feel bad if there's just no traction behind it. especially if it means it then just ends up not happening. or when i'm still setting up the core stuff (since i personally like throwing together the meat of the site myself, just because i like knowing exactly how it's gonna work but also so i know that i'm not gonna have issues with people yanking content if they leave on bad terms since oops that was nearly a thing i had to deal with before). and i know some people get turned off by seeing all the backend stuff when i'm soundboarding, oops, which is why i'm grateful people are actually posting in this since it's nice soundboarding some of this off other people who're interested in the idea.


for the feedback:

1: i'm p sure i'm leaning towards doing away with the trainer levels + experience. i can phase things in well enough just using the basic ranks (since i mean. 3/6/9 max party size for each rank. mega evolutions unlock at adept. permanent megas unlock at expert. each ranking gets 6 moddable areas. novices can only get basic pokemon for wild battles (aka pichu or charmander or eevee; basically the lowest evolution form), adepts can get basic or middle evo pokemon (basically charmeleon is a yes, espeon is a no), and then experts can get middle or final evo pokemon (so espeon, charmeleon, and raichu are all possible). and the way i've been working, raids are repeatable (meaning that both your character can run the same raid multiple times if you want and that multiple threads can exist to fight the same raid boss at the any time), so it would just. make them required in the sense that you have to complete at least a third of them (since at most i'd require 3/6 to rank up, though i also might do 2/5, idk), maybe half if i decide to gate off legendaries behind their own "rank" so to speak.

some of the reason i'm debating switching things out like this is to minimize both actual staff work (since levels + experience would be tracked in profile fields, thus requiring staff edits in the admin cp and staff actually making the final posts in all quests and mod threads since you'd get a tiny bit from mods + solos, more from normal quests, and the most from raids) and to minimize the amount of micromanagement-style grinding that you'd have to do (which yeah, some of that is hand-in-hand with the vr-mmo genre but to a certain extent... i don't want the site to be endless grinding, i have a life outside of this and i just... don't enjoy grinding for ages to make progress that feels fairly meaningless in the grand scheme of things). plus i like that it kind of pushes people towards participating in larger threads (where they're more likely to interact with people) where the pure exp system could end up with someone just. soloing their way to the expert area if they're patient enough and diligent enough with the limitations. (which is especially important since you can't unlock new areas until the latest raid boss is defeated at least once, so to that regard, it's rewarding you for going towards site progression since you just need a number of the raids beaten, not specific raids beaten, so you can mix and match if you can't or don't want to run the current "end-game" raid.)

and i mean. tbeh the levels didn't really do a whole lot in and of themselves anyway. it was just a slower scaling for increasing party size. i was already using the ranks to parse out the areas and some of the quests (since imo no point in having quests for mega stones if you can't mega evolve yet) and as rough thresholds for determining how many active megas you could have at one time, so it wasn't honestly that much of a leap. it's literally just. taking out two extra numbers that required staff tracking and making it so you just have to count the z-crystal pictures on the side to verify if someone needs to be ranked up to a new permission mask / member group.


2a: oh yeah no there would definitely be a thread for explaining the character class with both like. a little bit of flavor text (like that the warriors come from the long ago land of ransei, where they would wage war on each other and make links with their pokemon and, according to legend, could even transform and evolve as their partners did) and an actual explanation of what the perks are. which i do like the idea of having perks on the classes since it actually adds back some of that mmo feel again (since it kind of reminds me a bit of the healer / dps / tank or the support / healing / damager breakdowns for some games). especially since i still really don't. want to try to work out official coordinator events or a meaningful equivalent for each additional class (since it wouldn't be fair to give that to only one class).

plus it adds a bit of flavor and just. makes for some cool actual groups to pick from that actually mean something for character development. (please consider some villain insisting that they're a warrior when in truth they're just a coordinator.) and i mean. it's not like it really adds in a lot more work to do perks since most of the perks are stuff that's managed user-end (like i legit think coordinator and maybe breeder are the only ones who get perks staff have to remember to account for, and neither are particularly hard to keep up with since it's just "remember coordinators get to have 2 moves for each pokemon they find instead of 1" and "remember breeders fill an extra slot with nothing when they add to a mystery egg".)


2b: yeah like i said. the scavenging mechanic is definitely cool and i like it. and i would not hesitate to incorporate it into a site if it weren't staring down all the reasons why it might be a bad idea. (which i mean, the members would actually be able to roll all that since like i said, i am farming as much modding out to members as possible; not that ya'll have to do it, mind you, but if you have time, you're more than able to pop into a raid thread and play the boss rq or show up for a quest to hand out a result on a roll or toss a new pokemon for someone's wild thread.)

and i mean. sure i could say y'know. "hey the game's coding bugs out when you try to cheat your way around the issue without the pokemon" but at the same time i just. do not want to deal with That One Guy (tm) who would whine about how his character could definitely do it without the pokemon and all that. and i know that i'd get one at some point since pokemon + mmo seems to attract the powergamers like catnip.


3: yeah no i definitely like it too! i'm actually surprised at how much i like it. because it turns breeding into something you actually have to coordinate on a lil bit, makes it so it's not gender-bound or reliant on a ditto, and gives it an extra hint of randomness so it's not just "oh yeah sure let me breed my ponyta and give you an egg so you can have one now".

plus i've always liked some of the mechanics of eggs (since i liked being able to reward members for being active in a thread with their characters and progressing their storylines), so this would allow me to take what i liked about the eggs and keep it in a way that actually feels good with how the rest of it is implemented.