02-15-2022, 08:17 PM | #1 |
Insanity
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Fizzy Bubbles 2022 Zone Discussion
Hello everyone! So, as we posted last week, one of the major things that we wanted to discuss was Zones. As the focal point of the game, Zones have always been in a weird spot throughout the life span of the game. Multiple iterations and ideas have been done with zones, both thematically and conceptually with varying degrees of success. We’ve had training zones, seasonal zones, permanent zones, limited zones, and so on and so forth. If you could think of it, someone has more than likely attempted it during our decades-long history.
So, we wanted to really focus in on a few things. Simplicity, first and foremost. Last year this was something brought up a lot, that a lot of zones feel too much like Megaplexes, encompassing multitudes of different areas and biomes. All of our current main zones, Arcane Realm, Unreal Archipelago, and New Fizz City very much fall into this. That it would be easily able to split up these zones into multiple, separate ones. The next thing is sub-areas. There are a few things that we want to discuss, primarily difficulty, thematic harmony, and shadow areas. First, denoting specific areas as one of a three-tiered system: Beginner Friendly, Intermediate, and Expert. This is meant to help all players, new and old, updater and updatee, to really get a feel for the skill level of the areas. Some meant to help those new to the game, either entirely or in helping run it, while others for those who really want a more challenging experience. We will also try to suggest some basic adventure suggestions in the area as well. Secondly, working on making sure all of the areas are not only thematic with each other but also work to the overall theme of the zone. This doesn’t mean that each area needs to be directly connected, but more that it makes sense that each area is in the zone as a whole. This, as well, includes trimming subareas so that while there is still a choice, these areas don’t sprawl fully into a thematic disconnect. Lastly is to codify shadow areas. These areas are meant to be challenging areas where Pokemon can lose clarity, as well as allow the opportunity to catch Shadow Pokemon. While Shadow Mechanics are planned for a discussion later on, know that we do consider these as major parts of zones and that we will be trying to include multiple in each zone. So, with those in mind, here is the first Zone up for discussion, the Arcane Realm. One of the more infamous zones in Fizzy history, we have seen two major iterations of it so far. Both have been labeled training zones during part of their lives, and we want to try and remove that idea from the zone as a whole. Spoilered below is a rewritten version of the zone, keeping a lot of ideas from the current version while trimming bloat. The Zone itself was also written with the above principles in mind, to give an example of these things in context. Spoiler: show The other major thing, besides the zones themselves, is adventuring proper. There will always be lulls in the game for a variety of reasons, mostly due to real-life ones. At the end of the day, not much can be done about that since each individual member has their own circumstances going on. In respect to this, we wanted to bring up the idea in addition to adventuring length, adventuring speed as well. Each zone is meant to have its second post dedicated to both the current adventures and who is updating them, as well as people needing to be picked up. One suggestion we would like to bring up to the community is a member denoting both the length and speed of what they wish out of their adventure. Of course, this must be agreed on between them and their updater, but it allows both of them to have baseline agreement on what the confines of the adventure are. Of course, short and fast and long and slow should be expected together, all combinations are valid. So, with the lengths of Short, Medium, and Long, timeframes of Fast, Medium/Neutral, and Slow is something we would like to add to this discussion. We do apologize for the text wall for this. This is meant to be one of the major discussion points of the year and wanted to offer a solid baseline for the community to discuss. Any changes implemented through this will not affect current adventures unless agreed on by both updater and updatee. As a heads up, the discussions for both Unreal Archipelago and New Fizz City will come at a later point within the year.
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I fill my lungs with everything You want someone that I can't be You say it's insanity, but I say that's my life Fizzy Bubbles |
02-15-2022, 10:32 PM | #2 |
Naga's Voice
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Codifying intended difficulty level in areas is something I have mixed feelings on. I can see reasons for and against it. In favor, it allows a zone writer more creative control-for instance, with my Outskirt Ridge proposal, I could have marked places like the Barrier Peaks and the Forsaken Fortress as veteran level challenges as they were meant to be. On the other hand, there's an argument to be made that not having some portion of any given biome within a zone be beginner friendly artificially limits the types of places people with less developed squads can venture, and this sentiment can lead to the creation of enough sub-areas to accommodate that we wind up back in megaplex zone territory again. Looking at that side, adventure difficulty would be better served as a variable determined alongside desired length and speed, as discussed later in the post. A happy medium exists somewhere in between, I'm sure, but I can't quite see it yet. If it has to go one way or the other, I would err on the side of making difficulty a consultation variable.
At the same time, something missing from the adventure length section of this chat prompt is, for lack of a better word off the top of my head, travel progression. Leaning back on my last submission, the reason the gondola system was made to only go up so high was that the upper reaches of the mountain were intended to be adventured towards as well as adventured in, so to speak-what do you usually do at a mountain's summit-visit the peak, but also isn't it cheaper if you just go straight there? I'm not about to advocate for anything like the supposed entry requirements for the Soul of the Cradle popping up again, no one set foot in that place for the AC zone's entire lifespan for a reason, but at the same time, something like the peak region of a mountain presents itself most obviously as a goal to be worked towards, a destination moreso than a journey, but most zone writing would have it be a potential entrypoint. Looking back at the Cloud Garden, we did see some implementation of something like this with its Trial system, which was engaged with, but people did not quite push to the farthest points in the Zone. As such, I would suggest that any Zone wanting to gate travel progression to a particular location should do so in a way where access can be gained simply by making progress in a related area-make it a "reach the mountaintop by climbing up to it" sort of deal rather than a "press three switches in sanctuaries scattered across the zone" type of deal. Probably the only reason I'd be okay with anything more complex than that would be if a Legendary encounter was in the cards at the end, but that's a whole different cat-and-bag ensemble with its own variables to weigh that are outside of this discussion's immediate scope. I hope I made myself clear enough on both of these points, but I can't really make any decisions without a feel for the general stance on each.
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02-15-2022, 10:33 PM | #3 |
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Okay, this is going to be a huge post and will probably contain some strange biases as I've still only scratched the surface of what FB has to offer, but I hope you can get something out of this; these are just proposals and reviews, after all.
First off: multiple zones and zone sizes. I do agree that zones are way too big as it stands now and require some reeling in to make sure that everyone actually makes use of their different areas, but I think that splintering our current zones into smaller ones without much change could result in even more complications than how they're set up right now. In my personal opinion, I think that instead of cordoning them off, you could simply merge different sub-areas or remove them altogether. This would retain the canonical scope of the zones but would bring some much-needed simplification to them without spreading the ZAs too thin. Alternatively, you could just cut out parts of zones that are deemed extraneous, but this would be at the cost of people who actually did want to adventure there but couldn't for one reason or another. All of that being said, there is some validity to reducing the scope of each zone to a single biome, as it allows for more detail and worldbuilding to be added to its areas and sub-areas instead of having to paint everything with very broad strokes. This ties into the "thematic disconnect" approach so I wouldn't blame you if you choose to go ahead with the splintering method anyway. Sub-area difficulty is interesting. I like the idea of indirectly specifying the scope and challenge of an adventure before it even begins, as well as possibly introducing the possibility of failing something (more on that later), but I feel like it could be handled a little better, as some areas that might make for a perfectly intense storyline might be locked behind a "medium" difficulty and thus can't be utilized for that sort of thing. It could also interfere with adventures that take place between multiple areas; if one is explicitly easier than the other then there's going to be some strange workarounds happening, especially from those that don't quite understand that you can fudge the rules a little. The simplest way to solve this would to just have the difficulties there as suggestions, but I think it would be interesting if, instead of listing difficulties at all, you instead leave it to the player's discretion; that way they can visit every area at the difficulty that they're most comfortable with. Of course, some areas might be too intense for an easy adventure so leaving the indicators up as a baseline would help ward off situations where you have to justify novices hanging out near a pit of lava in the middle of an infamously impassable mountain range. As for harder difficulties: I feel like it's a guarantee that you're going to ace every challenge thrown at you and that's that. What I'd actually like to see more of in the future is failure; it helps keep adventures interesting for both players and updators. Of course, there's more than one way to solve a problem, especially considering how RPing lets you try every possibility in the book, so having concrete rules isn't always the best idea. However, stories aren't engaging if there's no risk to balance out the reward. All of this is just speculation though, so feel free to disregard this point if you don't think that it would fit in FB. Shadow areas need to either see more use or be discarded entirely. It's evident that there's been an internal push to make Shadow Pokémon more integral to FB as a whole, but as it stands right now it seems more like a woefully hidden option more than anything. Perhaps giving others the choice to redirect their adventures to a shadow area or letting them encounter Shadow Pokémon outside of those areas (with permission, of course) might be a good course of action, but it's a tricky thing to tackle, especially when there doesn't seem to be too much demand for it. Specifying length is good. It helps assuage updators' concerns over whether their adventure is the right length for whoever they're updating as well as making sure that the updatee is fully aware of what they're getting into. I'm not a fan of the timeframe thing, though; updating is sporadic and inconsistent by nature and holding an updator to that standard could cause some undue stress on their part. Instead, I'd like to see updators establish a baseline speed for their adventures as they begin, and then keep the people that they're updating informed whenever they're able to move faster, need to go slower, or outright take a break from updating for a while. The second post is good, too; having that information in a public space instead of privately maintaining them on Discord is good for transparency and can help connect both people looking to be updated and updators who are looking for people to update. As for the Arcane Realm rework, I don't see very many problems with it, and next to none when I take my personal suggestions into account. I'd like to contest the removal of the Fool's Path, however; it's a great way to get indecisive newbies into an adventure quickly without any friction on their part. Other than that, again, I personally have no qualms with its layout, although I would suggest that you evenly distribute the difficulties of each area if you decide to follow through with the original plan, as the Arcane Realm is intended to be focused more on training updatees as opposed to the updator training in the Djinn's Archives.
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02-15-2022, 11:38 PM | #4 |
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two small things, one, i feel like codifying difficulty is maybe something that might be better served by integrating that into the suggested reliance on updator-updatee conversations and agreements about speed/pace, as it feels needlessly arbitrary and restrictive to tie it directly to areas.
And I'd like to put forward that while I get some amount of "zone too big" frustration, I was absolutely enamored by the scope of the zones. everything seems so wide open and possibilities seem endless, kinda like that first feel when you open a new dope fantasy book and see that big map at the front and just get to wonder a bit at what's behind those names. I would like to see at least one zone that maintains that sprawl for folks that like more uncertainty and go with the flow type adventures. idk. just two cents.
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02-16-2022, 11:32 AM | #5 |
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I'll try and keep this to short notes since I want to avoid getting muddled in my thoughts here like some other Dev discussions: Arcane Realm Reborn #1. The Arcane Realm rewrite itself is fantastic. I've always felt like AR as I've known it has sort of been relegated to the Zone where people go to when other Zones don't have the environment they want, so this is a welcome change. #2. I think bringing a lot of the lore that's been built-up around AR to the forefront is a good thing, especially for newer members. These rewritten areas feel like places that have a history and identity of their own, and that makes me want to explore and guide others through exploring them. #3. Since this iteration of AR will have greater emphasis on Pokemon as something like a Zone Boss, I just want to confirm if it's intended that updaters be able to run them fluidly, if they decide to make them part of the adventure. I say this because with my experience in Cloud Garden, I found the wealth of important NPC's to be a bit intimidating. These aren't really my characters, and while I was told that I could run them how I liked, I definitely felt expectations around how they've been characterized in the past that put me off touching them. #4. Will we, as a community, be summoning a big fuck-off dragon to destroy and recreate the old AR when this drops? /s Focus on Expectations #5. Overall, I'm for setting expectations between updaters and updatees. More communication is always good #6. Over the past couple years, I've felt like there has been some issue with features like Raids feeling exclusive against people who are just starting out and don't have the resources to handle parts of the game that demand competitive strategy or having a variety of moves/Pokemon at your disposal. I would rather not bring that perception into adventuring, to be frank. #8. Shadow Areas are an exception to this, as I feel like the mechanic has mostly gone ignored and unincentivized for a long time. I don't mind having areas that bring Clarity to the forefront and explicitly add danger to venturing into certain parts of FB. That's a good use of difficulty for flavor imo. #9. I'm in agreement with Blu3shift that if we go ahead with area difficulty, it should be clearly focused around consequences for failure, rather than by how strong the Pokemon or Trainers in an area are. Obviously, fucking up in the Slaughterdocks should be more dangerous on-average than fucking up in Artisan's Row, even if the actual strength of an encounter in either is the same. #10. I want to make it clear that my contention is entirely on the updatee side. For updaters, marking which areas might be lore heavy and have more complicated or restrictive themes is extremely helpful. Perhaps we should dedicate the second post of a Zone toward that sort of updater-centric information? I'll be honest, it feels like the list of active adventures that's kept there is never up to date anyways. Zones Going Forward #10. In regards to "megaplex" design: I'm definitely for trimming down and focusing on thematics first. While I was negative at first, I think areas like Pinewood Park are important for striking that balance between theming and being easy to get into. #11. I've said before that no small part of my burnout with CG came from the lack of interesting things or variety that Zone had in its lowest echelons. All of the areas that people had to start out at in order to progress were basically all different flavors of forest/grassland. It's not much wonder that of the half-dozen people I was trying to update, all of them were in Galea Foothills, with at least three in Galea Plains. #12. Overall, I think FB as a whole might benefit from moving toward being more fantastical in its locales. I find it hard to slot in certain Pokemon that have weirder and more overtly-magical elements if the setting of the adventure isn't really supporting it. #13. Some of my struggle trying to find my niche here comes from the disconnect between what is allowed in adventures and what is allowed in Free RP/VG. It feels like outside of adventures, FB is filled with all sorts of really interesting ideas that we just sorta pretend don't exist when we're adventuring. While I understand that divide is important for a lot of reasons, I think letting a bit more whimsy like Djinn's into the game can help make the difference not feel as jarring. Of course we absolutely should still have a fair amount of space for the mundane, though. [/vent] Other Notes #14. I just want to say, I'm really glad for all the hard work that's gone into trying to revamp Fizzy over the past few months. Y'all are truly amazing, and I'm glad that this is a space I look forward to being in every time I come home <3. Have a good day, y'all. Last edited by ShadowDRGN; 02-16-2022 at 07:42 PM. |
02-16-2022, 12:19 PM | #6 | |
Insanity
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Quote:
So been reading this thread at work and been wanting to work on an overall reply at home, this kinda needs immediately clarification. First and foremost, the Arcane Realm is not a training zone, and should not be considered one. As for the Fool's Path, while something for indecisive updatees to get their foot wet, for updater's it was an increadibly annoying area that almost always ended up with them tossing the updatee somewhere.
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I fill my lungs with everything You want someone that I can't be You say it's insanity, but I say that's my life Fizzy Bubbles |
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02-16-2022, 12:30 PM | #7 | |
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Hey, I've slept on my post for a bit here and wanted to kind of address a part of it that really didn't sit well with me.
Quote:
In response to Leo's reply above, thank you for clarifying; I'm not sure how I got the impression that AR was a "beginner" zone in the first place but having that, as well as the difficulties that updators had with the Fool's Path, made clear to me helps me reorient my views on the zone in the right direction. As of now I don't really have any qualms with the rework as it stands right now.
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02-16-2022, 01:08 PM | #8 | |
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02-16-2022, 01:31 PM | #9 | |
Dragon's Tears
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Quote:
I do think there's definitely a use for these kinds of intro crossroads for newbies, as my very first Adventure took place in CG's Rainbow Road without anything specific in mind simply to see what would happen, where I just met a Gulpin and battled a Trainer who accused it of stealing food
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02-16-2022, 03:44 PM | #10 | |
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Quote:
Yeah agreed. Fool's Path feels incredibly lopsided toward updatees, while giving out absolutely no guidance toward updaters wanting to pick someone in that area up. I completely understand wanting to give new members a place to ease-in. I was hella nervous when I first joined and didn't really know what to pick until I just... went with my favorite arcana from Persona lmao. The thing for me is, with Fool's Path, transitioning out of it smoothly requires a ZU who can either spontaneously generate a scenario with little prompting (a hard task, especially with a new member), or goes in to talk with the updatee about what they want from their adventure. Imo, the first option is a lot to expect of somebody now that anyone can drop-in or out of being a ZU, and the second completely invalidates the need for Fool's Path.
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An Open Letter to Fizzy Bubbles [02/29/2024] Last edited by ShadowDRGN; 02-16-2022 at 07:43 PM. |
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02-20-2022, 12:51 PM | #11 | |
Insanity
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Mkay, been about four days and we haven't had any major discussion here. Finally able to actually get around and work on this a little bit, so let's go then!
So, first and foremost, in immediate response to what I posted earlier. While there is merit to the idea of the Fool's Path, Shadow has really hit the nail on the head here. We are already trying to promote a lot more communication between updatees and updaters now, and with that, it will naturally lead to adventure expectations being talked about. Throwing in an area whose sole purpose is to throw someone into another area after an update or two, in my opinion, is something that adds to bloat in a zone. It creates too much pressure on updaters, as a few have already stated in this thread, and can cause those adventures to be skipped by people who don't want to have to create a massive scenario in a different area. Yuki also brings up a valid point in that not everyone is wanting to be dragged around or go on this long epic quest. Sometimes people just want a simpler, shorter adventure focused around one specific thing. And, well, sometimes it is hard to figure out where to go for that. This leads someone to post in a sort of area like that hoping that their updater would have a better idea. If we want this sort of thing, then the best thing to do is to try and suggest possible kinds of adventures we can have in the areas of the zones, which I have done my best with the proposed new Arcane Realm. Of course, it is not the end all be all, but at least giving a suggestion or sort of idea is better on narrowing things down instead of basically saying "okay I'm here, take me wherever". Anyways, back to area difficulty. This is more or less meant to be base guidelines for the area. We have had feedback from newer members that things did not feel beginner-friendly, and wanted to add in points where newer people could approach zones. While, of course, you could have a more challenging adventure in more beginner-friendly areas, if someone wanders into a harder difficulty area they should expect to have a bad time. We shouldn't always let updatees succeed, after all. If they fail, they fail. Even when you're equipped for the job, things can always go awry. If an area fits for the plot, then please use it, but also remember these are meant for updatees to gauge where they could possibly go. Part of updatee/updater communication is getting a base understanding of what the updatee wants out of their adventure. Adding a base difficulty to sub-areas helps with those expectations, and can be further ironed out between updatee and updater. So, as an updater, don't feel you have to be limited by these when creating your scenario, and instead tailor it as best you can between what the updatee wants (out of a challenge) and what your story is. Quote:
As for Shadow Areas, we really need a way to make Shadow Pokemon more accessible as well as dedicated areas for clarity loss. Though, this perhaps might be better for the discussion on Shadow Pokemon later on in the year. For now, this is pretty much the stance on why we have them. That's my current thoughts for now. Hopefully, we can get more discussion on this since, well, it is important to the game as a whole.
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I fill my lungs with everything You want someone that I can't be You say it's insanity, but I say that's my life Fizzy Bubbles |
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02-20-2022, 02:43 PM | #12 |
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All fair points from Leo, and I appreciate the acknowledgements.
--- So, I'm gonna start with area difficulty, because I think this is where my stance needs to be clarified a bit: I have absolutely no problems with more challenging adventures, or even with designing sub-areas that are intended to be more complex or challenging than others. Failure, when handled fairly, is a tool that updaters should consider using if it would lead to a more impactful adventure. I think my contention is largely around the perception that an updatee coming into a zone will have. I'm not just invested in this discussion as an updater or an updatee, I'm also interested in encouraging the game in welcoming new members, as well as people returning from long absences to find FB a very different game than it was before. FB is extremely non-linear as a game, and that's its greatest strength; In my experience, it's pretty rare to introduce a character by doing paperwork in a laboratory, for instance. Our parties can also vary wildly between Level 10's with only a handful of Moves, and a level 70 with over a hundred Moves, yet I notice most updaters enable both Pokemon to be used in the same battle without being crushed or dominating instantly. I love us for that freedom, personally. That said, I think really honing in on that strength also comes at the cost of having traditional progression systems (as we've been talking about in regards to CG), but it feels like the way the difficulty tags are presented could go against that. I don't think [Beginner-Friendly], [Intermediate] and [Expert] say so much about how much challenge to expect, but rather how much experience a Trainer adventuring there should have, which could be anything from having access to appropriate typings or a full team, to those mons having varied Movepools, items and such. I think that if I were younger and newer to FB (and honestly even a bit now), I'd feel deterred from trying certain areas tagged [Intermediate] or [Expert], even if the flavor of that area is absolutely my jam. In my mind, it doesn't really matter if a character like Goto would be comfortable strolling through Rogue's District, if the tag is giving me the impression that I'd be adventuring in a place that will punish me for not having as many tools as a more established member. On the other side of the coin, if it's understood that Rogue's Distinct is an area that's challenging because you have to watch where you tread and who you trust, that's something that clearly isn't dependent on your resources as a Trainer. I hope that explanation makes sense, I spent quite a bit of time fine-tuning it ^_^; --- As for adventure scale, I will also say this is something I feel we should discuss more. If you've read my VG's in any capacity, you know that I really like zooming in on a single scene and fleshing the details out to the utmost of my ability, without grinding the pace to a halt. I bring some of this style into FB as well, though I'm always making sure that if I have an opportunity to comfortably move things along, I'll ask my partner and consider taking it. Conversely, I'm not very experienced at writing far faster-paced stories. I prefer to be part of a sweeping adventure, or one that's limited in terms of plot points or having a tight setting, but high in self-expression and interaction, than I would something that's made to hit each of those points as quickly as possible, with limited room to slow down and breathe. The latter is absolutely valid as an adventuring style, just not really what I gravitate towards. I realize that can cause me to not fit well with someone as an updater or updatee, which is why I want to encourage more communication. I know it's hard to reach out when it requires one or both sides to take the initiative to send a PM or tag someone. hell, I struggle with this constantly, which is why I think it's well-worth the effort to just let someone know if you're caught-up in the details and need to bounce ideas off your partner, or if you feel like the last few updates haven't given you a lot to work with. On that note—I want to shout out Marion Ette for being wonderful both as an updater and updatee in talking with me about what we each expect out of our respective adventures, as well as sharing insights about our characters so we know how best to engage with them.
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An Open Letter to Fizzy Bubbles [02/29/2024] Last edited by ShadowDRGN; 02-24-2022 at 06:41 PM. |
03-01-2022, 11:51 PM | #13 |
Naga's Voice
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Fair play on not having any strict travel progression requirements, after two failed attempts it would be reasonable to think that the game in its current form can't handle it. And as I'm thinking about it, all the more motive for something like a mountain to just be one place rather than a couple areas for different points.
As regarding difficulty and failure: perhaps, and Shadow's vision of difficulty as less in terms of the magnitude of challenge, and moreso in terms of the magnitude of consequences, the only trouble I have with that is, what do easy/medium/hard failure consequences look like? If those consequences involve swathes of one's active party being knocked out, how do you handle recovery in a way that the consequence is meaningful, but without making it outright crippling and disrupting the flow of the adventure? How does that same question apply to a full party wipe? If any sort of area difficulty is going to have any ounce of codifying outside of updator/updatee expectations meetings, we need to have an answer to that now-what is a player going to stand to lose? Is there anything that even can be permanently lost without either being easily replaced, or feeling like the investment of some substantial amount of time and effort just vanished into the ether wastefully? We have to take into consideration that someone will try to adventure above what might necessarily be their pay grade-be it because they as a player are averse to the idea of taking an easy mode, or because a more experienced player knows that the character they're writing would want to challenge themselves despite not really being ready, or because someone just simply overestimated how prepared a given character of theirs was for something. How material should the consequences be? Should they extend beyond anything in the immediate adventure? Generally, I'm of the kind that there are so many questions baked into that pie that no combination of answers will really leave everyone fully satisfied. On the flipside, a challenge magnitude system is more readily negotiable, the person with an overconfident character can readily plan an adventure where they get in over their head, and perhaps make the adventure more about getting away once things go wrong, without having to worry about what they're losing. But just the same, if they end up actually being able to meet that level of challenge after all, having underestimated themselves, maybe that goes to the character's head, and next they try something that's actually far beyond them. Who knows? The point to be made here is thatI honestly think failure consequences that go beyond simply changing the nature of the adventure in front of you against your initial goal in some manner (forcing you to have to flee an area rather than find your objective, for instance) will just lead to worry about missing out on progression-both in terms of one's Pokémon team, and progressing their character's stories (as team progression milestones often dictate when a player goes ahead with certain human character developments, as far as I've seen). In my opinion, the best consequence for failing an objective is simply having a radically different, logically following objective placed upon you.
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03-05-2022, 08:00 PM | #14 |
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Just popping in to bump thread a bit, and to say that I understand what Heather is saying. I'll admit I hadn't really been thinking too hard about what consequences look like for different levels of challenge, especially when it comes to permanent losses. I'm not super knowledgeable in how most users like to tackle character development and planning between adventures, since I haven't really finished one yet as either an Updater or Updatee ;^^
FWIW, I do agree that failure in an adventure should come with an alternative objective, rather than a pure dead end. This is both to keep momentum on an adventure going, and to avoid an updatee reaching a point where they feel they're being given no way forward, or that they simply can't come up with anything to do now that their main goal has gone wrong. That sort of thing kills RP faster than a stray droplet of water kills an Onix. Really, I'm just hoping we get a few more people interested in joining dev talk. These might be some really big changes to the structure of the game, so I hope we get more of the community weighing-in. Even if it's just something small, it goes a long way.
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An Open Letter to Fizzy Bubbles [02/29/2024] |
03-06-2022, 07:41 PM | #15 |
Blades and Butterflies
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I agree with the AR's proposed draft in terms of the bloat-trimming. I think this new version is more focused, while still maintaining sufficient variety to keep adventurers interested.
Don't really care about Fool's Path either way. If it continues to exist, I have no issue updating people who start there, but I also won't mourn its passing. I know that's not a super productive opinion, but if I were to say anything else, it would be disingenuous. I actually am not particularly enthusiastic about designating a specific area difficulty. Any area can host any level of adventure difficulty with the right updater. Speaking for myself, you can give me the most innocuous sounding place and I can craft the adventure from Hell. Conversely, a beginner-friendly adventure can be crafted from even the most ominous-sounding places, if the adventurer is given adequate support/a reasonable path to avoid the worst dangers. Consequences, too, I think are a case-by-case thing. Being brutally honest, I don't see the point about worrying about this too much. An updater, after all, has the ultimate authority on where the adventure goes, and if an updatee is particularly struggling, then circumstances can always be altered or changed - support comes in at a crucial moment, or things go south in an unanticipated way if more difficulty is needed. Besides, any adventure worth embarking on is going to have some form of setback - the important thing is that the updater uses these setbacks to further the story rather than stymie it. One door closes and another opens, and all that. Even a beginner updatee can deal with some serious setbacks as long as the updater gives them the ability to ultimately course-correct... Or move on to something equivalent/better than what was offered before. It all depends on what makes sense for that particular narrative, and the characters at play... Which is a largely intuitive thing, at the end of the day. I'd rather not force sub-areas into boxes and tell people how much consequence they'll face where, when that's going to be highly variable, personal, and situation-dependent. Obviously, that still leaves the issue of newcomers feeling that zones are not particularly beginner-friendly. I remember Lit talking about having example adventures from Djinn's to show beginners - to give them an idea of what an adventure can look like, start to finish - and I definitely think that's a great idea. It should be stickied and easy for beginners to access... And possibly we should have multiple examples, if people have good ones to nominate...? This was how I learned way back in the day, and it's really the best way, I'd argue. Our beginners can learn by observation. As for setting adventure length and speed expectations between updater and updatee... I've been advocating for this for a long time, and we really need to start encouraging this. Hell, what prevents someone from putting a little OOC note somewhere in their intro identifying the desired adventure length, speed and any other relevant notes for their updater they feel should be shared, so that an updater matching their needs can pick them up? We can either make it a standard part of the intro or something more informal - I don't really care either way - but something like this would be super helpful, I think. We could even have "desired level of difficulty/consequences" be part of that note, rather than enforced on a zone, if we need such a metric.
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03-10-2022, 01:51 PM | #16 | |
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03-11-2022, 07:00 PM | #17 |
The Uncultured One
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Trimming sub-areas, agreed. It was always a bit weird that there were sub-areas within zones, especially when in certain zones they just read like five strokes of the same area. Felt more box-ticky than actually engaging.
Agreed that difficulty should be tied to the adventure and not the zone. Thematics for zones and sub-areas, agreed. Setting adventure expectations beforehand, agreed. It was always one of those areas where it was implied there should be some communication between updater and updatee outside of the thread to indicate this but in my (admittedly limited) experience this never happened. Difficulty should absolutely be bundled into here as a rough approximation. I disagree that every zone needs a shadow area, it feels like a forced mechanic for the sake of the mechanic. If it fits, it should be ticked, but it shouldn't be forced into every zone, especially not being crowbarred into multiple areas. No practical issues with the AR redo, though you might wanna run a typo check before pushing it live.
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03-12-2022, 04:06 PM | #18 |
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Reading through things again, I think the general consensus among updators here is that Zone difficulty tags are largely unnecessary, and difficulty is something that should be hashed out between updater and updatee. Adventure-by-adventure basis makes sense, given how much of FB already runs that way.
Personally, I still think there's a bit of value using tags for more than just [Shadow Area] on the updator side—Mostly because I see certain areas in the rewrite as being more complex to run than others. Clockspire Tower, in particular, is notable for being what is effectively a Mystery Dungeon. While that doesn't mean it has to be an easy or difficult adventure on the updatee side, the work required to design interesting puzzles, run guard patrols and populate the area with treasures (as a base expectation of the area) might be deserving of a note saying this area is more complicated to update for than others in the zone. I just want to make sure that this is also what updatees want, as right now it's mostly just been an updator-centric discussion. While the input so far has been really good, I also don't want mods to go forward with this only to find out that updatees disagree on key points in this discussion, or aren't interested in certain rewritten areas. Even if you're only popping-in to quote and make a short agree/disagree, knowing just that goes a long way toward making sure we're confident in these changes.
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03-12-2022, 08:18 PM | #19 |
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Alright, high time I chimed in on this, huh? Lemme see...
If I find that I have anything more to say on the matter, I'll be sure to add it, but for right now, that's all I got on this. |
03-14-2022, 11:53 PM | #20 |
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It's late and I should probably be in bed right now but I finally remembered to reply here while I wasn't busy so I'm gonna do that.
Shadow Areas, upon further thought, actually shouldn't be a mandatory part of zones and I wholeheartedly stand by Iron and MM on this one. I feel like, again, shadow Pokémon would be better integrated into zones if updators just let them appear wherever they wanted to within reason. Again, there's the issue of relatively low demand for them—maybe you can provide an additional incentive for catching and maintaining one? This will probably be addressed in a future discussion, so I'm not going to try to propose anything else on that front. Hard agree on updator/updatee communication. I've said this in the Discord earlier, but I want to make it more formal; if you leave an updatee hanging for any reason, then they will eventually either lose interest or become frustrated over the lack of communication. I understand that this isn't a universal rule, and I'm mostly speaking from personal experience here, but I maintain the notion that this is not just affecting me. Going forward, I'd like to see more input from updators whenever they can reasonably do so, such as absentee notices (when convenient), feedback for certain decisions that the updatee might not want to take, and difficulty bumps. I don't want this to be a required effort, but establishing a baseline for this instead of standardizing updators vanishing into raid battles and occasional chatter on the Discord will go a long way, in my opinion. Difficulties should definitely not be dictated by area, unless there's a good explanation as to why less experienced trainers would be seen there. I personally feel that these expectations should be independently set on a per-adventure basis, and then adjusted as they continue. The system set up in the Djinn's Archives is a good example of this in practice, though it'll probably have to be modified to fit the new systems that we're establishing. MM brings up a good point about leaving things up to chance. It's become the norm to establish some sort of expectation, which is a good thing, but sometimes you'll encounter someone who genuinely just doesn't know what they want to do and in turn will try to fully hand the reins over to the updator from the get-go. I, personally, would know, having abstained from creating a Memakyu and Emakiss for the sake of letting updators have a more active role in what kinds of Pokémon and items that I encounter. Now I'm not saying that these types of adventures should be encouraged, but accommodating these updatees when the updator can come up with something engaging will ultimately solve that problem. Lastly, and most importantly, I'm starting to feel that Fizzy Bubbles in general has become very clerical and inactive due, in part, to the high expectations set for updators, and I'm sure that there are others that feel that way. Roleplaying is definitely about having fun first, and I'm aware that it's definitely a priority in some regard, but I feel like this aspect may have been forsaken in the pursuit of keeping everything together—heck, even I was guilty of that when I ran the bank, trying to hold myself to the highest standards possible until I eventually burnt out badly. I feel like intentionally lowering the required standards for updating will result in more activity, but the jury is still out on that one so don't take my word for it verbatim. Anyway, this concludes the late-night ramblings of someone who is currently teetering on the edge of delirium. Make of them what you will.
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03-15-2022, 07:08 AM | #21 |
Insanity
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Okay. I will try and respond to the rest of the thread tonight. I just want to try and clarify one thing with shadow areas. We aren't trying to limit shadow mon to these areas. These places are meant to adress clarity gains and lossess in particular. Perhaps Shadow Area isn't the best tag for this kind of area, but that is what we are trying to designate here. Areas that would make sense for Pokemon to lose clarity, or have the ability to overcome and regain it. I hope this info will allow people to re-evaluate.
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I fill my lungs with everything You want someone that I can't be You say it's insanity, but I say that's my life Fizzy Bubbles |
03-15-2022, 11:35 AM | #22 | |
The Uncultured One
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03-17-2022, 08:10 PM | #23 |
Insanity
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Alrighty we are working on responding to everything said in the thread, but the mod team has decided, based on heavy community consensus, that zone difficulty tags will not be implemented in the game.
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I fill my lungs with everything You want someone that I can't be You say it's insanity, but I say that's my life Fizzy Bubbles |
03-17-2022, 08:54 PM | #24 |
Insanity
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So, in light of recent events, the moderation team had decided to change how Djinn's Archives functions. THis zone will now function similarly to the other zones in Fizzy Bubbles, where people can post adventure intros and anyone can update as they please. This will be considered a "Training Zone" for the purpose of helping people get their feet wet, or if they want help in specific parts of updating. Thus, we are re-introducing the third adventure slot, since before it was a system of two slots + DA in particular. This way, we hope people who want to adventure in the zone can adventure there without being limited by the current system, which has proven to not work.
We will be keeping this thread open to discuss the other topics brought up, as well as discuss changes to UA and NFC when they are available.
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I fill my lungs with everything You want someone that I can't be You say it's insanity, but I say that's my life Fizzy Bubbles |
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