[Story][Battle][Mechanics] Some suggestions from a galaxy far away ~

[Vilrose]

Hello there ~

 

It's been more than a week since I started the game, you will tell me that it's little compared to people who have 2000 hours of play or more.

But it is more than enough to observe the game carefully, to see its qualities, but also its flaws.

I thought of some suggestions in response to the problems that I could see.

Of course, I will therefore only speak here of the flaws of the game (in my opinion), and not of the qualities, but there are, otherwise I won't play it.
No need to hurt the ribs, everything will be fine eh ~.

I will also make some extra suggestions.

I am aware of the amount of work that is already provided, and I do not want to appear to ask too much. I'm just making take-it-or-leave-it suggestions.

- Story mode

 

Spoiler

Currently, the story of the game is incomprehensible.

Nothing is going well in Kanto.
There is rather strange mix of official anime/game storylines.

If Jessie and James are canon IG thanks to Pokemon Yellow, this is not the case with Gary, who is just Green from the anime.
So there's Green AND Gary in Kanto, pretty weird.

And I could say a lot of stuff like that.

Now, I don't have the impression that it bothers a lot of people, because everyone skips the story.
But do they skip it because they don't understand it, or just to go faster?

Frankly, I don't know, although I think it's to go faster.

 

Suggestion: I saw that a rework had been done on the fights against trainers of Kanto, Johto, and Hoenn.
Would there be a way to do the same to make the story a bit more coherent?
To make it more interesting to follow as an adventure?

 

- Battles
 

Spoiler

The biggest flaw, in my eyes, are the battles.

- The movement speed of the trainers attacking us is really slow.
- Lack of battle-specific musics

- Lack of VS banners before an important battle (gym leaders, elite 4, champions, boss...)

- Lack of ability animations

- Lack of trainer sprites at the start of the battle

- World weather does not apply in battle

- No double battles

- Bots are kinda dumb lol (the kind that try to poison a Roserade eh ~).

 

All these lacks makes the battles quite generic and flat.
No feeling while doing them.
Where FireRed, Soulsilver, Platinum, White, UM, and a few fangames give me chills during certain fights. 
And these generic fights combined with the story, harm the game a bit, I must admit.

The game brings the essentials for a competitive side, but has perhaps forgotten the visual and sound side (during battles only. the world is beautiful otherwise, i came for this at first).

 

And god, I'm still crying about the absence of double battles. I love them so much that I code fangame mods to make them double battle games à la Pokemon Colosseum.

Double fights are my hobby in pvp, I can't lose in this game mode, mark my words eh ^^

 

Also, there is a square that appears when you hover the mouse over a pokemon.
I don't see the use it has at the moment, it seems empty to me.
Could you show pokemon stats changes in it? Would be useful.

 

Suggestion: Fix all the problems listed above, and add a stats screen in battle.

 

 

- Mechanics

 

  - Apricorn

 

Spoiler

They're in the game, but you can't make balls out of them.

 

Suggestion: Implement ball manufacturing from apricorn.

 

  - Fishing

 

Spoiler

Sorry, I'll be honest, it's one of the worst fishing systems I've ever seen.

I spent an hour catching a magikarp in Johto. Just wtf, it never spawns, and i have the second fishing rod.

I mainly play water types, please don't inflict this purge on me.

 

Suggestion: Increase the excessively low spawn rates of fishing.

 

  - Field effects

 

Spoiler

I had the opportunity to see different biomes in battle (forest, sea, cave, frozen cave, building...).

But these don't change anything in battle.

 

With the sixth generation, terrain effects (or field effects, correctly translated from Japanese) appeared, such as Misty Terrain.

There are four of them: Electric, Grassy, Psychic, and Misty.

They only appear via certain abilities and special abilities.

 

However, for some time, fangames have been going all out on these mechanics, pushing them to the limit.

These effects have been permanently integrated into the battles, being present from the start of them.

I had the opportunity to see around twenty field effects, each with their own specificities, and that brought a lot to the gameplay, making it really more dynamic, and pushing players and bots to use it and interact with their environment to dominate the fight

This can cause the difficulty to go up on some fights, and down on others.

 

Suggestion: Transform current biomes into field effects, with their own specificities, and offer pvp players to be able to pvp with, or without field.

 

  - 2v2 region : Orre

 

Spoiler

Browsing through the game, I came across references to Pokemon Colosseum, an old Gamecube game, which was set in the Orre region, and was played entirely in double battles.

I saw that new regions were released on PRO, and I thought "Why not suggest Orre?".

 

Suggestion : I would like to have Orre as a playable region, and to keep the region as it was, with double battles, and with colosseums instead of the usual arenas.

 

  - Auction house

 

Spoiler

Wtf is a suggestion topic without the traditional auction house eh.

I think that this suggestion is not very useful to note it here considering that it is already in the list of things to do.
But it's always nice to talk about this kind of things again, to prevent it from falling into oblivion lol.

 

Suggestion: A auction house with :

- Auctions (thanks captain obvious eh ~)

- Immediate purchases

- Purchase of pokemons, TMs, objects...

- The possibility of entering search criteria

 

Make it either a new button on the bottom left, or an NPC in the pokemon centers (there are a lot of empty slots on the floor of the pokemon centers, where the trade NPCs used to be).

There are also the GTS like the one in Goldenrod.

 

- Pokegear

 

Spoiler

As in Heartgold and Soulsilver.

- A radio, with music (perhaps affecting the spawning of wild pokemons), info about outbreaks or events...
- A phone with calls from common trainers, to let us know which Trainers are available to rematch.

- Same for gym leaders, and boss.
It was really cool as a mechanic

Jackson could call us to get spanked on command, isn't that wonderful eh?

 

- List of recruiting guilds, with choice of language if possible

I don't think I need to argue about this one, it seems transparent to me.

 

- Redesign of PC boxes

 

Quote

To make them more ergonomic, with advanced search and sorting functions, the possibility of renaming boxes and changing their background.

 

 

That's all for me. I'm exhausted, I wrote too much.

When I read it again, I feel like I'm spitting on the game, but be sure that doesn't reflect my state of mind when making this thread.

But as a proverb says, who loves well chatises as well.

And I find the game super fun despite the content of this topic eh.

I just want to help the game improve to have a little corner of paradise where I can chill at night or during my lunch break.

I love these kinds of fan-run projects. Keep up the good work !

 

I regularly have lots of stupid ideas, and other more fun and useful ones.

I may post more here, as I progress on PRO.

Feel free to give your opinion, it will be a pleasure to read you.

 

Vil'

Edited October 7, 2022 by Vilrose

[Olker]

Most of these ideas were either rejected, are being worked on, or are already being discussed.

 

1. Agree, story mode might need a rework. However, at this point of the game existance, it would be something REALLY hard to do.

2. Double battles have already been discused. Respecting the visuals, don't expect hyper animations and graphics from a free game, keep in mind mods work on this game on their free time, and work on in completely free.

 

3. Apricorns... I'm pretty sure they are in the low priority list, as there are more important things to worry about.

 

4. Agree, fishing mechanic needs a rework.

 

5. Terrains will probably be introduced when the Tapus are released. However, I don't know if they will be implemented in biomes. I think it would make story more interesting. Don't know if it would be new user friendly thougjh, lol.

 

6. A doubles region sounds interesting. Why not give the whole game the possibility to be played like this?

But again, time and workforce is limited.

 

7. As you said, already discussed and highly needed. I think it is in the high priority list.

[Vilrose]

Hi !

 

10 hours ago, Olker said:

Most of these ideas were either rejected, are being worked on, or are already being discussed.

As for the ideas already in discussion or being worked on, my goal was simply to provide perhaps a few more ideas !

However, I do not see which points of my topic have already been refused.

Maybe I missed something while browsing the forum.

 

10 hours ago, Olker said:

1. Agree, story mode might need a rework. However, at this point of the game existance, it would be something REALLY hard to do.

Except the longer they wait, the harder it will be to do.

It is therefore, if the suggestion is accepted, something that will have to be started as soon as possible, to avoid that the workload is impossible to assume.

 

10 hours ago, Olker said:

2. Double battles have already been discused.

As for double fights, I saw that it was in preparation (eh, can't wait ~).
I just hope they go back to the old regions to add them, or even make a double battles mode that the player can choose.

 

10 hours ago, Olker said:

Respecting the visuals, don't expect hyper animations and graphics from a free game, keep in mind mods work on this game on their free time, and work on in completely free.

As for the animations, I don't agree, however.

Your argument, I have often seen it, and if it makes sense, it does not justify everything.

PRO is far from the only fangame, and is far from the least populated.
However, smaller games, who are free, with fewer resources and fewer people, manage to have fairly clean animations.

I'm talking about all this because I know it's possible to do it with RPG maker and essential, and/or with internet resources.

 

In terms of animations for abilities, RPG maker allows you to create them.

And, if indeed it can take too long to do, there are still other solutions.

For example, there are pokemon animation packs freely available on the internet, which for some are of good quality.

There are even some who have the animations of the official games eh, I saw those of X and Y pass before my eyes some time ago lol, but there are older ones and more adapted to PRO.

This would be a perfect permanent solution, or even temporary while waiting to make PRO-specific animations.

There is clearly no need to complicate life to do this eh ~.

 

Moreover, I saw map creation contests within the community, nothing prevents to do the same for animations, banners etc.
It's a fangame, involving the community is common in this kind of environment.

For my part, I have bases with pokemon essential, making mods here and there for games.
But I wouldn't mind learning to use RPG maker in more depth, with some time, if it was to help, and I figure other people, silent in the crowd, would be willing to help if given the chance.

 

In short, there are ways to find solutions that are roughly inexpensive in terms of time, and even free in terms of money.

 

 

For the rest of the things mentioned earlier:

 

- The speed of the NPCs is far from being the most complicated thing to manage.

 

- As for VS banners, the community is there again, but it's really not the most obligatory thing.

 

- For the sprites, honestly, you just have to browse the internet to find the sprites of each trainer.

I think there are no sprites for the opponents because there aren't any for the players either, it is the game that is like that, but I find it unfortunate.

If I understand that there are no sprites for the players because of the cosmetics, for the NPCs, there is surely a way to have them.

It would just be necessary to make sure that the game does not try to display the sprites of the players in pvp so as not to bug everything.

 

- Finally for the music in combat, once again, there is a way to have it.
The world music of PRO is almost the same as that of the official games, it would suffice to do the same with the music in battle.
Also, I see more and more music youtubers doing pokemon remixes partnering with fangames.
Why not with PRO?

 

 

For the rest, I have nothing to say, I understand your point of view.

It was a pleasure to have your opinion !

I promise I'll stop complaining now eh ~.

I think I have argued enough, it's up to the devs to see what they think about it and if it is possible to do it, and to the community to give its opinion.

Don't forget, I come in peace, i don't want to end up burning at the stake lol.

 

Vil'

Edited September 27, 2022 by Vilrose

[Starlight]

Yeah, I always feel odd when it's raining in overworld but not in battle. That also got me thinking, maybe some areas should have a chance to get sunny day effect in battle during daytime when it's not raining in the overworld.

 

Ability and move animations, the reason why we still don't have many of them is stated to be a lack of talented artists doing them for PRO........I wonder if it's impossible to just use the animations from gen 3/4/5 games, and why?

 

As for the empty box when you hover on your Pokemon, that is actually used for entry hazards. But yeah, a box that shows current stat up/down effect on the Pokemon would be nice to have.

[Bhimoso]

Honestly agreed on everything ngl.

[Vilrose]

3 hours ago, Starlight said:

Yeah, I always feel odd when it's raining in overworld but not in battle. That also got me thinking, maybe some areas should have a chance to get sunny day effect in battle during daytime when it's not raining in the overworld.

I admit that seeing the rain in the overworld, but not in combat, frustrates me.
Having regularly active weather changes the way you fight, like terrain effects, I like it a lot ~.

This is where we see who is able to adapt and take advantage of the environment (rain team for the win ~), and who gets demolished by it.
That's why I like so much the principle of fields effects used in fangames and a bit in official games.
Adapt, or lose.

 

3 hours ago, Starlight said:

Ability and move animations, the reason why we still don't have many of them is stated to be a lack of talented artists doing them for PRO........I wonder if it's impossible to just use the animations from gen 3/4/5 games, and why?

To be honest, I don't know how the game is coded.

If it is made with Pokemon Essential and RPG maker as a basis, there are plenty of ways to create your own animations quite easily, or to import them from internet.

But if the game is created from scratch, it's different. Probably more complicated to animate the game if it is like that.

Just looking at the pc boxes, I don't think it's coded the same way as the offline fangames I've touched.

And I know the maps are made with PRO specific software. 

 

3 hours ago, Starlight said:

As for the empty box when you hover on your Pokemon, that is actually used for entry hazards. But yeah, a box that shows current stat up/down effect on the Pokemon would be nice to have.

Oh, ty for the info, I didn't know ~.

 

Thank you for reading anyway, I was afraid my topic would be forgotten.

Maybe I should have separated the suggestions into several topics over time.

[Fafouney]

Reading you put a smile on my face . 

You provide superb ways to improve the game and good ideas. 

I hope the majority of them will be considered. 

•  

 

Edited September 30, 2022 by Fafouney

[Gatso]

+1

[Vilrose]

Little up (I don't know if we have the right, my apologies if not ~).

Is there a way to get feedback from the devs, at least on suggestions like those on fights, fields and Orre?

The rest of the suggestions are generally minor additions, sometimes already on the to do list, or for which it is useless to hurry (apricorn or pokegear lol).

Except for the auction house and the redesign of the pc boxes, but from what I understand, it's already planned.

 

Anyway, thank you all for your feedback on this topic !

I'm glad to see that I didn't write all this for nothing and that some share my opinion, even among the oldest in the game ~.

 

Vil'

[Mapper]

Regarding your suggestion for Orre, we already have plans for 3 regions, Astrella, Orange Islands and Unova so it will be abit before Orre is considered. And untill double battles are coded, there is no point in adding it.