phantom of the black parade
pronounsshe / her pronouns
4,245written posts
offlinecurrently
at this, the world's end, do we cast off tomorrow~!
interest check for a vr mmo styled pokemon rp more details about this you say? you got it! site premise basically the running idea of it is that it's kind of... the "next stage" after pokemon go. the original year was gonna be 2020 but i might push that back to 2025 or 2030. but regardless, the premise is that nintendo had put out a pokemon mmo called "pokemon online" and was looking for beta testers for a top secret project, aka testing out the virtual reality aspect of the game and also further exploring what they stumbled across (aka pokemon are real in the digital world and can be pulled out of the digital world to interact with our world with no penalty). to get into the project, you have to agree to have no contact with the world outside of "cinnabar island", which is a small island out in the pacific that nintendo owns, but in exchange, you get everything taken care of. food and housing is free, all your bills are paid for, everyone's issued a cell phone, they'll give you a job if you want one (or let you start a business there), and they'll pay for your education at the local university with a highly-accredited curriculum and a mentoring program that can work to integrate you back into the world if you choose to return after the 5 year beta period is over. basically the company is offering a low-key utopia since it's such a dramatic thing they're asking of you (like, at best you can maybe write letters to your family, but they're screened for confidentiality reasons) and since they're low-key hoping to retain the testers after the beta period ends.
originally they were planning on just porting everyone's information from the old game via a server transfer, but at the last minute a virus was discovered deep in the program and it had eaten away at a ton of the game's coding and servers - forcing them to load up a previous version while working to recover later levels and areas and scramble to set up characters again from what they could recover. a lot of people lost their old accounts, but on the flip side, because it was so haphazard, some people who were on the old servers got their characters partially transferred, some even with "glitched pokemon" (aka pokemon who wouldn't be released yet; the whole thing is just an in-character explanation for why importing old character teams works as an out-of-character mechanic), and just. it's a bit of a mess, they know, they're working on it as best they can. but it made nintendo glad they off-shot the whole thing into another company. but on the flip side, now the pokemon don't seem like they're holograms in the real world (hence how that became a thing they have no control over), so yeah, they're dealing with a lot of "it's not a bug, it's a feature" moments.
tl;dr there's a lot of digimon feels in here and a lot of other fun mmo feels and if you wanna go become the best, that's great; if you wanna befriend all the pokemon, you can do that; if you wanna ignore the pokemon aspect almost entirely, hey, that's entirely an option too, go nuts.
pokemon systems basically pokemon are gonna be as simple as i can possibly make them. some of them are also more set in stone than others, so bear with me through this. some of it may change as things develop and i ruminate on them, some of it may not mirror what ends up happening eventually.
basics. pokemon are going to be more or less tracked by the species. remember this for later but. basically what it means right now is that we're not gonna concern ourselves with ability at all or gender outside of certain species (ie, you can't have a biologically male nidorina; we aren't gonna worry about vespiqueen or gallade though). this then departs into our three big separations: evolution, moves, and pokemon "classes".
evolution (+ megas). all pokemon will be evolving through the number of battles they participate in. i've not worked on a hard conversion scale yet (i might do 1 + stage # + one-fifth the original level and work from there) and this is an area where having an on-site pokedex would be great but. like i said, it's number of battles, so evo stones + friendship + trading + held items + move evos aren't gonna be a thing, it'll be all just pure battles. which will be either quests or wilds, we'd take either. this is essentially just playing with numbers by this point, so i'm not worried. extendedly, mega evolutions are something that you unlock via your "trainer level" but more on that later. at the core system, you'd have the option to either temporarily mega evolve or consume the mega stone for a permanent mega evolution after a certain number of battles again. you'd also be limited to how many active megas you can have in a party at one time but. yeah.
moves. rather than get messy with moves, we're going to take a leaf out of mystery dungeon and go's book for a more classic mmo style feel. basically all pokemon get 2 moves to start (a basic attack you can use whenever and a charge attack you can use with a cooldown) that the member would pick from a list of options when they get the mon or decide to mod it for quests. this is another place where that pokedex would come in handy since we'd list out the possible basic and charge attacks available for a given pokemon. from there, if you want other moves, you can use legacy coins to teach "legacy moves" from other sources which will probably have a cooldown too but less of one than an actual charge attack. on the flip side, since i'm 99% sure we'd be using basic "go" movesets... to cover pokemon which just aren't released yet in go (since imo they've only released through gen 3 right now), we'd also give an option for "glitched pokemon" from future gens who just have a "basic attack" that's typeless and a "special attack" that is one of their types that functions as a charge attack.
pokemon classes. this is essentially the closest we're gonna come to stats or levels really. basically what it boils down to is that all pokemon are given certain "classes" that have certain expectations with battling + modding. basic pokemon would have 10 hp and do normal damage - they're your average captured pokemon and have all our systems in place. wild pokemon, by contrast, have 7 hp and only know a kind of "basic attack" which is typeless does 1 damage - they're what you encounter for every wild thread and for "normal" quest pokemon. from there, we get into a "coin" system (basically attacker and defender coins from quest rewards) that can make your pokemon an attacker class (meaning you add 1 damage to every attack they make), a defender class (meaning their max hp is now 13), or a balanced class (meaning they have both benefits). the other notable class would be quest for any quest-line bosses which would just mean there'd be possible attack bonuses or different hp levels.
capturing pokemon. if you want to get another pokemon, you would have the option of creating a wild thread, where a mod or member would roll from a certain list for each area and then plop down the basic species you would get from that area. members would be limited to 1 per character and a max of 3-5 per member (just so we don't get harold over there with 20 wilds for each of his characters or susan over here with 10 wilds for one of her characters). the member would have to write out the battle and/or capture (since imo friendly capture is an option) and then either request to keep going or ask to end the thread with each pokemon. they'd also be required to take at least 1 damage in each battle so as to keep things somewhat fair. i might also cap the max number of modded pokemon in a single thread to 6. idk, it might not be necessary with the 1 damage requirement. i'm also hard debating removing pokeballs entirely and taking a leaf out of pokemon conquest and going with that catching a pokemon requires establishing a "link" with them on your poketch (aka your phone) by gathering data on them through the interaction and catching them immediate ends the thread, but i'm still toying with that too.
purchasing pokemon. buying a pokemon from the site shop would be the other option for obtaining a new pokemon. shop purchases would be either you paying a lower cost for a roll of the lowest available pokemon of an evo family out of a given type (aka eevee would be obtainable in electric because of jolteon but pikachu would not because pichu) or paying a higher cost to specify a specific list of possible rolls or a specific singular base pokemon (not sure which i would prefer right now). shop purchases might be eggs, i'm not 100% sure on that (i'm kinda leaning towards it though) which would basically mean you put the counter in 1 thread and make five posts and then we'd hatch it for you. also yes member stores would be a thing.
legendary pokemon. legendaries would not be catchable at the start of the site nor would they be something you can import onto the site. however, that being said, eventually, i would like to open up an option to purchase an ability to go out to "legendary isle" on a special wild thread to find legendary pokemon. obviously, the same legendary can be caught multiple times (it's an mmo, after all) but i might limit how many legendaries a character can have at once and make them character-bound, just so we don't see a newbie with all the legendary birds transferred onto them. we'd structure the prices so, for example, celebi costs more than articuno and so that you can only get a small number of rolls before you have to give up and try again for a certain legendary. i might also give legendaries the option for a "legend" add-on for class that gives them an extra +2 hp and +1 attack after they're caught, but i'm also not 100% sure on that.
starter pokemon. when you're starting out, you can either choose to start fresh or to import a team from a previous site. for starting fresh, i'm thinking what would happen is that you have two options. you can either choose to pick a type and have three lowest-evolved-form starters for you to pick from randomized from that based on the family (aka, again, eevee is an option in electric because of jolteon but pikachu is not) and you would also get either a bit of extra starting money or the option to pick one of the class coins to put on a pokemon. you'd get one reroll if you don't like any of the options, but if you reroll, you must pick from the new three (yes, even if you like them less). alternatively, you can name 3-5 non-legendary pokemon and get one of them randomized for you from that list, but you get no bonus items and you're stuck with what gets rolled. that way there's some randomized fun with it but also we're not just letting people have whatever they want right off the bat.
importing pokemon. like i said way back at the start, i want to be able to let people move teams over from a character's iteration on a previous site. while we will need to verify that it's your character and impose a few limits (right now, this is more or less no legendaries, limiting to 6 pokemon max, and requesting that members try not to abuse it just to get the teams they want). but remember how i said pokemon are gonna be tracked by the species? this is where that comes in since it means that one site's level 20 female charmander with a hidden ability and 12 moves is gonna be about the same as another site's level 5 male charmander with blaze and knowing scratch and growl. conversely, a level 50 charmander is not going to equal a level 30 charmeleon. however, that being said, we'd probably convert a level 30 charmander so they get either an attacker or defender class designation and a level 60 charmander so they're a balanced class. just so that's not entirely lost.
shiny pokemon. as you may have noticed, this was entirely absent from the other headings. this wasn't exactly an accident. originally i was planning on doing a standard "yeah you can find shiny pokemon and import them and so on" and make that a mod roll. then my instincts for kiss came in and i went "huh that might be a good quest reward" so. we may have no naturally occurring shinies outside of shiny token use and imports (since imo, converting it to shiny tokens and then putting it on again makes it moot anyway). but i'm still toying with that so we'll see.
breeding pokemon. honestly i'm on the fence with this entire system since on one hand, it's kind of unnecessary given the shop mechanic, but on the other, it's a good way to get a given pokemon onto the site. right now i'm leaning towards no since imo the systems are pretty generous as is for getting the exact pokemon you want, but again, we'll see.
site systems basics. okay so i'm gonna blow through some of this as quickly as i can for an overview. trainers are going to have their levels that dictate some of what they can do. we have a questing system that will be used for "mainline quests" (aka the site progression) and user-submitted "side quests" (aka how to get those quest rewards like legacy tokens, shiny tokens, attacker + defender coins, and extra exp and money). we have a basic wild system for getting more pokemon, but that's already been explained so i'm not going into that again.
trainer levels. basically all trainers are gonna have individual levels like an mmo. which i mean. it's an mmo site, ofc we do this. what your level dictates, so to speak, is a few things. for example, as you go up in trainer level, you can start bringing more pokemon with you (from 2-3 as a novice trainer to 9 as a master) or having mega evolutions with you. you can also get access to more areas and higher level quests with more / better rewards.
overall questing. questing would be, much like wild threads, limited to 1 thread per character and 3-5 threads per member. while concluding them is going to give you bonuses in trainer exp and money (both of which right now you can earn without ever setting foot in the online world, though this may change, i don't know, that's pending some screwing with jcink's systems to see what i can do with them)... they're also going to be the sole source of items like legacy tokens, shiny tokens, attacker coins, and defender coins. they'll also be separated both by trainer level (since imo higher level trainers get higher leveled quests with higher level rewards) and by either "mainline" quests or "side" quests.
mainline quests. the mainline quests are, as you would imagine, what would be considered the main storyline of any game. with this in mind, instead of large-scale events or a firm plotline on the site, we'd be using the mainline quest to push the story along. it's basically the big bad of the level that has to be defeated in a giant boss thread before you can progress to the next area and open up more pokemon to actually mod out. rewards might be lesser than a side quest, i'm not sold on that, i might make them repeatable instead and do that you have to do them in a given party so there can be 2 threads of the same quest at once, even after the quest has been cleared once to open up the next area. i just don't know, i'm still working out the kinks.
side quests. side quests, by comparison, are going to be simpler kinds of quests that are primarily going to be user-submitted, though we will keep a certain number of them available as default. these are going to be a bit more of your standard mmo experience (ie, roll a die to determine if you find xyz number of wanted items, basic defeat some number of rattata in an area, basic beat up the boss pidgeot, roll a die to catch some runaway mareep, roll a die to find some lost item) but they're mostly intended to give some rewards and easy training and such, both for solo and for group modding. they'd be repeatable and with any luck, not require anything more from the staff outside of approving the quest submission, updating a mod list, and popping in to award quest rewards when it's done.
overall moderation strap yourselves in, folks, because we're gonna try to set things up so modding is a lot less work than usual and is a community job. that's right, you heard me. outside of a few areas in promotional events, mainline quest generation, application approvals, shop purchases, legendary wild threads, site upkeep, and trainer progression, we're gonna try to make this as member-moddable as possible. let the members roll wild threads. let the members submit and run side quests. i am ready for this. (i'm also debating whether or not we want to do separate team threads that get locked and staff updated simply so there's no cheating for species or moves or pokemon classes or anything else and so that there's a definite log somewhere on things but we'll see.)
questions and concerns wow this is... a lot.
like i said, i've had a lot of experience with pokemon sites and a lot of time to actually quietly play with systems in my head.
you're putting a lot of faith in members to do things.
honestly, to me, it makes sense. obviously, we'll have an option for members to report potential systems abuse or favoritism, but if it means that members are likely to get their things faster with less stress on the mods? i don't see why it would be a problem to push as much modding onto the members as we can.
why jcink?
honestly i just really prefer jcink's systems. proboards is a pain and i've long ago accepted that i'm just not going back. sorry!
why put so much of this up?
i have a lot of time on my hands right now and i'm low-key debating starting to work on it to pull it together because of that. and i high-key don't want people sniping it out from under me without having some insurance to cry foul for if i start seeing pokemon sites popping up with this setup so. yeah. and yes i've had site ideas ripped off me before, so.
why do this now?
i have time, i'm feeling nostalgic, i have a desire to skin, i'm caught up for once, i have my affairs in order, i've been replaying some of the older games, there's a lack of really great pokemon sites right now, pokemon let's go has me excited, i've been high-key debating doing it anyway right now... it's a huge combination of factors to be entirely honest so. yeah.
can i app a canon?
no. you can't use pokemon faces either though. those are gonna be site npcs.
can i app an npc character?
..... maybe?
can i app someone who doesn't want to do pokemon?
sure i guess? there won't be a lot for you but. if you want it, do it?
can i app a gijinka?
if you want pokemon abilities.... no. but i might just shrug loudly and say more "fantastic" appearances (animal ears + tail + horns + wings) would be cosmetic surgery and it just works so. yeah. no clue for sure, but for right now, that works.
..... you're really not gonna do site events?
okay we might occasionally do temporary side quests that are event themed (aka things like "it's summer, come fight the torkoal of the hot springs for a neat award" or "it's christmas, come defeat all the delibirds for a special redeemable item") but no, right now, i'm not thinking we're gonna do them.
|
last edit on Aug 21, 2018 20:12:06 GMT by Kuroya |
