04-12-2024, 11:32 AM | #1 |
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Zone Discussion: Starlight Frontier
(Putting it here because Serebii does not have a dev thread)
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04-12-2024, 04:33 PM | #2 | |
Enraptured by Enigmatics
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I feel like the overall implied size of SF gets overlooked. It also has to have been noted that its not on the moon ( If we want to put it on the moon thats a different thing all together but idk how that would work ). As for the overall expansion... I feel like it just needs to be reworked from the ground up. Looking at the map I just don't like it? I get that its like a orbital ring thing... but it feels like a video game level than a true space station. As an adventurer my characters are heading to Nyx labs purely to see how things are because they spend a lot of time within Grey Matter Labs. I have no interest in literally any of the other areas and that is actually rare for me. Updating. Meh. Feels like I am forced to do a shitty sci fi adventure. Really limited from there if I want to expand beyond that storyline. To be honest... I feel like this zone needs to be heavily reworked. ( Looking forward to something like an actual space city thingy I guess )
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04-13-2024, 04:25 PM | #3 |
The Uncultured One
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Okay so. Breaking down by zone:
First, we have Port Elysios. Which... Is bluntly a generic Port settlement. A Kalosian/Paldean-inspired city, with a description that offers, almost quite literally, "generic city quests". We have an entire other zone for this. It genuinely feels like this zone was not written around being in a space station. Next up, Asphodel Meadows: Aether Paradise meets a farming sim. Again, this place is left pretty open-ended for questing, offering what amounts to generic field quests, but ultimately I can't think of anything unique to be offered here that couldn't be offered in a generic field zone in some other place. NYX Labs: In the cold void of space, the ethics board can't reach us. This is the first area of the three so far that is genuinely written to be aboard a space station, and it's also a fairly niche zone, especially with the description pointing updaters and updatees towards adventures revolving around experiments, either as an assistant or as a subject. While this is arguably better than the previous two, which give no such direction and practically state "generic city and generic farmland", one could argue that there should be less pointing at one specific aspect and maybe promoting a couple other angles. And finally, the Towers of Charon. Another zone that has basically one flavour of adventure promoted, this being "repair and/or maintenance of the ship's power grid". From a realistic point of view, I question why Trainers are allowed in here at all, much less allowed to perform maintenance here, and from an RP perspective, I find it fairly laughable as to how narrow the scope of promised adventures are. The long and short of it is: The more I read this zone, the less it makes sense as a single, cohesive zone. It claims to be a sci-fi zone, and then half the zones are, if anything, actively leaning away from the sci-fi themes and towards being regular places, forcing updaters to try and drag it back to sci-fi or else abandon that entirely and give the updatee just a regular-ass adventure. And then the two that do lean into the sci-fi aspect both offer a narrow scope of adventures, and while the Labs can get away with it on the versatility of Science, the Towers really cannot. Ultimately, I think we need to either rewrite this zone from the ground up, or get rid entirely. In its current iteration, I don't think it works very well.
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04-13-2024, 05:06 PM | #4 | |
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04-13-2024, 06:42 PM | #5 |
An actual game I made!
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My one adventure in this zone so far was my Eternatus adventure. I thought the space station zone was perfect for such a thing, with Eternatus being an extraterrestrial Pokémon, and, well, the ensuing adventure proved me right, I would say. I definitely see how it's a bit of a narrow scope. Definitely a zone with a certain genre in mind, and that's not gonna work for everyone. But for those it does work for, it friggin' works! I'm all for keeping this zone around. I'm not convinced a rewrite is necessary, but I'm also not sure I'm exactly the best judge of these things, so I'm not gonna force the issue if I'm the only one who's cool with how it currently is.
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04-14-2024, 08:13 PM | #6 | |
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04-14-2024, 09:27 PM | #7 |
Barghest Barghest Barghe-
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Let's start off with the questions first and foremost.
- How do you feel about the current structure of the zone? Is there anything you want changed? Would you prefer if areas were expanded? My personal feeling on the zone as it stands right now in term of structure is that it has ended feeling not particularly good. This zone is VERY complicated from the get go, with areas that are not contiguous and whole with each other, and a really complicated map layout that I'm not sure actually serves the zone any good. The Towers don't even really feel like an area you should be exploring, given the general lack of gravity and kind of just...the lack of any strong reason to be in the guts of the craft. It takes up a huge portion of the real estate as well. In addition, on a personal note, I HATE the theming of this zone. This is going to eternally bug me about this zone until it's fixed, but naming all the different locations as different parts of the underworld and darkness completely clashes with the vibe of the OP. The message I get from naming a part of your ship "Elysios" or "Asphodel" or "Charon" is deathtrap. This is the ship from Event Horizon, not a place to have happy fun adventures. I don't know if the intent was some kind of Deus Ex smart person comedy but it doesn't work. Very random theming that ultimately ends up hurting it. The reason the other two subzones don't really work in this zone is really simple: they just kind of don't make sense. Nothing about the port is evocative of a sci-fi setting, it's just a city. It's probably not going to be exactly like a normal Earth city for various different reasons, and frankly it should probably lean harder into the sci-fi aesthetics. The Meadows also has a huge optics problem: its uh. The Meadows, but the intent with the area is not that. The vast different ecosystems that are supposed to be here don't really feel represented, either in name nor on the map, and so I think as a result it just kind of gives the impression of a really big section of farmland. This is one of those areas where having subareas would be REALLY important for helping to delineate important landmarks and locations. If there is a vast inland sea, it would be cool to know about it rather than it feeling throwaway. - I saw points about this in the thread where some people don't feel like their characters would fit in this space. How do you feel about this zone as an adventurer? *sigh*... So here is ultimately where I have to be totally honest about my feelings on this zone as a whole. I literally cannot imagine either of my characters ever coming here. They were not designed with the idea that easily economized space travel in Fizzytopia was real. So I've never bothered adventuring here. It feels very weird to me that this zone exists as it is. It clashes with my view of how the game world exists and for that reasons I've just taken to avoiding it. "Why would either of my characters come here?" is a question I've just found impossible to answer. - Assuming you find this zone to have problems, what would you suggest as a fix? The zone needs to be heavily reworked, but it might not just be as simple as "change the zones to be more spacey". I think we should really work to reconsider what exactly we want a zone of this type to be like. |
04-15-2024, 04:32 AM | #8 |
The Uncultured One
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Random spitball idea for rework potential: Scrap it being an actual space station, make it a simulation of one as training prep for something that got scrapped and turned into a "space city on Earth" touristy city. Keep the labs, get a proper sci-fi city going, give some simulated alien terrain for tourists to "explore", aaimulated space station with low-to-zero gravity, that sort of thing.
Ultimately I think whatever we end up doing here, we are going to end up with essentially a new zone. This is not going to be a small to moderate rework, this is going to be a "rip it out and start again" and I think it's worth fielding the thought of "is there enough interest to warrant trying to rewrite it?" because if most people can't see a reason to come to the zone anyway... Why should we keep it?
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04-15-2024, 10:34 AM | #9 | |
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- a full "science" zone that is not in space at all but is still run by Grey Matter Labs. Different areas represent different areas of scientific study (there's a space study with the simulation like Iron suggested, nature with a research biodome, technology, wormhole, dynamax, tera, etc. - it's still in space but the labs move central, sub areas around the lab are different biodiverse climates (akin to Blueberry Academy) and there is another sub area that allows for space exploration. I am also open to other ideas, or the possibility of just finishing out the current adventures and closing the shutters on this zone --- as I am not the original visionary and I'm sure there's lore about it I'm not even aware of.
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04-15-2024, 10:54 AM | #10 |
The Uncultured One
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To be honest I think we'd probably be better off prepping to shutter the zone anyway because this is going to be essentially a fresh zone.
The second thing I think we need is a survey as to whether people are actually interested in adventuring in a sci-fi zone like the possibilities that have been proposed or if people would just prefer a new zone. I don't think it's worthwhile rewriting the zone if people are still going to look at it and go "Cool, but idk why my characters would go there."
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04-15-2024, 09:05 PM | #11 |
Mrow?
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Okay so I have opinions about this zone and its potential for rewrites in general.
First off... no way in hell should we ever open the can of worms that is proper space exploration. It would just result in the same issues that currently exist with DA and the problem of it being too open. While biodiverse areas of study such as research biomes are kinda and extreme cop out and a bit cliche... tropes exist for a reason so I'm on board with that so long as they have proper reason to exist within such a station. Second... taking the space station out of space defeats the purpose entirely. Simulations as opposed to proper adventure is boring. Making a giant lab for science in general results in any area of scientific study in any other zone feeling redundant. And more importantly we should be allowing for the fantasy of fixing a proper space station. Let me have to throw on a proper suit and walk outside to repair something. Let me have to deal with the fact that the air filtration or something stupid isn't working quite right and they need someone to go pick a part of storage and fast. It adds to the excitement to make it real and what we want out of adventures is to make them exciting based off the region, not to slap the same "go catch a Pokemon because I said so" quests into every goddamn zone. |
04-16-2024, 11:49 AM | #12 |
Insanity
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Oh, Starlight Frontier. I have very mixed feelings about you as a zone, but I do think it's a zone that should exist. Pokemon has always had tech and sci-fi elements to it, even from the original Red and Blue. However, we very much have a problem with how the zone is designed. All adventures end in the Labs. That's just how it is. Pretty much every single adventure there ends up with members either interacting with the labs directly, or the staff in one way or another. So, that fact, and the map of the zone, really does it no favors in being a zone and more just feeling like a single sub-area or something a secret base could realistically employ.
The fact that two of the subareas are split apart from each other, with the city being split by one of the towers, and the fields completely split in half, makes traveling the zone a headache. The zone itself also tries to put further emphasis on it feeling like a place down on the planet which like... it shouldn't. It should feel like a space station. A giant spaceship that's tech, hallways, and minimal nature. If we want people to be able to go out into space itself, I feel like that's something we can do without it being actual space exploration. Allow us to walk on the moon, or explore some asteroids. It can be done in a way that isn't like... as open-ended as DA currently is. A good example, of what I feel SF should be, is a mix of like Star Trek ships, the ship from Wall-E, and the International Space Station. Cut out the city and fields in its entirety. They can be replaced with bunk rooms and labs. I can see a greenhouse being a thing, but not the whole artificial sun fields and that like. I want it to feel like that gritty science fiction that a spaceship promotes. Like I am privy to one of the ideas on reworking the zone and do like that direction, in a sense, but I think we should really keep the zone to what it is at the end of the day, a high-tech space station. Do not try to make it an artificial biome or city or what have you. Allow us to perform tasks around the ship, explore it, and see what's being researched, and maybe at most have us explore the space around the ship and potentially the moon. Hell, I'd be fine with the ship's purpose to be colonizing the moon like Futurama does, for example. We've already had a good amount of people think the zone is on the moon or going to the moon is an option of the zone.
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04-16-2024, 02:37 PM | #13 | |
The Uncultured One
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...Honestly the more I think on this, the more I feel like we should just bin the zone and make a new zone that isn't constrained by being an association of this dumpster fire. There's too much that needs changing.
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04-16-2024, 03:52 PM | #14 | |
Insanity
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04-16-2024, 04:39 PM | #15 |
Dragon's Tears
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For the record I am very much interested in having a space-themed Adventure someday, but Adventure slot limits are a thing/I'm saving SF for a potential Legend capture.
(That said I haven't really looked into the Zone itself beyond the "IN SPACE" novelty so Idk.)
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Yesterday, 01:43 PM | #16 |
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As mentioned, I have the first draft rewrite that I would like to put forward for community review/opinions. I would like to mention that the "sub-areas" are more there for suggestion if you had something in mind (like you specifically wanted to see the agriculture area) but you are welcome to just explore the general area as well. ALL areas in this are open for renaming as well. |
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