The divide of PRO community > PRO 2.0

[Guest CheckeredZebra]

We could go on about why PRO gathered the following it did (such as it being a new game at the right time, good graphical polish, good amount of youtube support), but that is again moving away from the main point haha. I love that kind of conversation, since it would lead to long-term viability/sustainability of design, what the game might look like in several years, etc...and that's my jam, but that is far and away from the core of our posting intentions.

Kind of a shame, really. :/ You seem like an interesting person to talk to.

 

Anyhow, you can look negatively at the project, you can "all know" how the game is doing, but it matters how and why everything got that way. Give enough time and this game would be no different than our situation. It might happen even sooner to PRO tbh. Almost all of PRO's entire foundations are wrong as well IMO, as admitted by you, staff, and others. It would be ill advised to think that PRO is somehow exempt from the same bits of cause and effect. Let me use an example really quick.

 

------

A guy is taking a hike around a volcano. Suddenly, a ghost appears before him.

Ghost in front of volcano: Don't jump into the volcano. It ended badly for me.

Guy's reply: What do you know? You tried the same thing and it ended badly.

 

Silly, right? But let's substitute a few things.

 

A guy is involved with an MMO. Suddenly, a person who has ample experience with a different, similar but troubled MMO appears before him.

MMO person: Avoid doing these things. It went badly for us.

Guy's reply: What do you know? You tried similar things and went badly.

------

 

I am the ghost from Christmas future. OoOooo.

 

Alternately, maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to say, since I too think it's fine to redo what PRO has (including a huge data wipe). I just disagree with making the redo and the original have separate identities. If we're on the same page, cool. If you're defending the concept of separate identities, I can't for the life of me understand why. PWO's current state, which you are criticizing, only backs up my point that fracturing communities and abandoning/neglecting projects halfway only leads to bad things and lost potential return in playerbase, support, pretty much everything important to a fangame. I am unsure how this detriments from my point that splitting/leaving PRO for new game = inefficient.

 

Pokemon communities may be used to restarting a lot, but honest rhetorical question: do you really want to keep going with a group that makes wrong foundations over and over again, with a history of half finishing things before giving up and starting over? Histories of huge internal staff drama? 10+ staff don't just up and leave for no reason. Even ex staff on here are saying "pwo 2.0" and if Shane doesn't merge his efforts of the new game to this one, that is exactly what is going to happen again. I wouldn't wish that experience on anybody else. Several other games not related to this one OR ours have managed to avoid the same thing so far. Not all of them have, but PRO can and it would be worth the effort to do so. So why isn't it keeping it's strong assets (community, brand recognition, staff)?

 

Qualified, responsible people are going to be thrown under the bus or left behind, again, in similar ways PWO was (if they haven't already). It's like our past, and I'd regret it if I didn't put a bit of effort to give people a heads up, even if I'm scoffed at.

 

This has happened before. The fallout is not fun. I'm still in the project I am in order to keep my promises and because I enjoy a good challenge, but that really shouldn't be something more people are unwittingly put through.

 

Starting over in code and requiring people boot up a new game is not as bad as starting over a brand or leaving behind community. It is all under the banner of continuing the same spirit of a project, a group of people, a same dream. Redoing things under that banner for the sake of progress doesn't feel like a total loss, but ditching that banner and group spirit on top of everything else is a harder and completely pointless blow. There is 0 reason to splinter those things in this situation.

 

I know what I'm saying/have been saying will touch some raw nerves, but I am indeed being sincere and have good intentions with this post. I'm not some naive, complete nobody with no experience just waving around pretending I have all the answers to everything, but I do know what I say I know. I have 0 reason to just come in here and start spewing information I'm feeling unsure of. I watched other peoples work and reputation get torn down and we inherited an empire of ruins in the process. Time to make Greece out of it, if possible.

 

People have learned some things about half finished games but not enough, despite a couple of the staff here having a decade of work and 2+ projects to look back on. How many of these half done MMOs have the key people at PRO just left to the wayside?

 

Take a harder look at PWO. The seeds planted there are still mostly in PRO, the main difference being that PWO's weeds had 8-9 years to grow while PRO's had 2-3.

 

PRO was poorly set up despite having the time and means to be made properly. Then on those shaky foundations (broken source), updates were rushed/half realized and then stacked on top of each other. Once the house of cards started to buckle under it's own weight, instead of fixing those critical issues (something that could and should have been done to begin with), they decided to tear it down and do something else. Again.

 

PRO should have lasted much longer than this before encountering all of these issues, before facing potential shutdown. So many of these problems are no stranger from PWO. One difference is we looked at the crappy foundations and said "time to get to work" instead of adding unstable feature on top of unstable feature. Nothing was learned from the first prototype, when you get to the base of it. They just learned how to better make card houses and how to run on fumes.

 

Will PRO staff do better with the next iteration? Idk, maybe, but I still don't see good vibes from how openly the staff here are willing to contradict themselves. (IV reroll never! Jk. We won't keep PRO updated/we will keep PRO updated. My personal favorite: PRO is it's own thing with redone code and fixes and separate in work from PWO. 2 years later, almost everything wrong with the game is PWO's old code's fault.)

 

"Pokemon MMO, but like a meta roguelike where if staff mess up everything starts over again" is not appealing to me.

 

As for how you and others perceive this post, it will be easy to just write it off. If you do, fine. But this is not an advertisement, my intentions are not to encourage people toward my own gain. I'm not here to rub things in people's faces. I've tried to be respectful, but I can't completely tiptoe around most of the touchy subjects at hand without making 0 sense, either.

 

This is your friendly, partially uncomfortable heads up/reflection. It is ultimately meaningless to me what happens here, but I'm not one to watch something burn without trying to call firemen first. If the firemen don't bother to take proper action or they say "lol but your game has fewer players so you don't know what you're talking about" , the consequences​/fallout are on them, not me. Also shows that, once again, people are bafflingly ok with shortchanging the future for the present and nobody with any experience, intention or skill can prevent those people with that level of determination from shooting themselves in the foot.

 

Take that as you will.

-adm

 

Edit: typos

[Sesshomaru]

people believing that pro wont die in the long run cause lack of staff support probably also still believe in santa claus. ofc all staff will swap to the new game in the long run cause of the limitations that the current pro has

[Thor]

Welcome to PRO old friend (CZ)

 

Let me start by denouncing about 96% of what everybody has said here.

 

Yes, Shane is making 'PRO 2.0' (although that is only a moniker because in itself is a COMPLETELY different game built from a custom engine.

 

Yes, I myself have been interested in its progress (why shouldn't I be, I have many talents that anybody would want for their game).

 

Reading many of the replies spouted here, gave me cancer (im exagerating, but some of the crap being said is nonsensical).

 

Someone CAN work on 2 different projects, ya know? I'm involved in 2 myself (here, and creating a custom cheats engine for DraStic DS emulator) So, sounding the death bells are a little premature.

 

Shane has always said he will still provide updates for PRO, this wont be stopping anytime soon. Also FYI Shane doesn't actually run PRO, He owns it and is the only developer, however the day to day running of the game is split between myself, Red, and Unknown007 (the 3 admins)

 

Content will never stop being made. (Do your research on this one ;))

 

(I would like to say thank you for the compliments about how nice the game looks btw. As a PWO reject, who made about 70% of the games tile system, those words are appreciated)

 

However, let's look at the facts here.

 

You cannot come on here saying X this and Y that are fixed, (sure, they might be, good for u :)), but the way I look at things is by pure player count. PWO has 100 players daily, we have 2300+! Not bad for a dead game eh :).

 

And, don't forget. I will always be around. so as long as I am, PRO will always get fresh stuff

 

Yours sincerely

 

Arnie

[Red]

Hey Zebs. Our game has a very smooth economy. We have sinkholes in places, myself placed them many.

 

I tend to post statistics about it very often. Please also note that PRO is still being worked on. New moves, abilities and others will come soon as Shane sorts out his real life priority and things he is busy with. Kanto, Johto, Sevii, Hoenn and custom areas are mapped and scripted totally. Sinnoh is mapped and spawns totally minus main quest and story line missing which is currently being worked. Our scripters were away for a while. Some of them returned recently and they are to finish Sinnoh quests and story line.

 

That being said, PRO is not going anywhere anytime soon. Team revolution never failed to deliver and we've introduced what other similar games will never have. I've been managing the development of every region we currently have as well as spawned every map and did a respawn based on the community input. Not saying this in a braggadocious manner but it was not an easy road but we did it and we did it way ahead of schedule and what other games of this type will never have. On a positive side Arnie/Thor and some other scripters including one we recruited returned to do stuff. Arnie did boss updates recently. There is always something going on with content. The game itself is very very huge. It's content is almost endless.

This is especially true based off of recent readings that Shane/Thor are primarily the game's backbone when it comes to programming.

 

Kindly note that Shane is currently the only programmer. Arnie does not code.

 

- Please note that a database/server merge was brought up. What will happen with it is solely in hands of Shane. He already confirmed that he has some plans for it. Not giving any promises though given that he is a super busy person.

 

- He has 3 kids to spend time with, pretty sure updates will happen soon as he finds some free time to do so. He has a wish and todo list. Things are still on the table.

 

- Staff had a hit last year, we've gone through it. There are currently more than 30 active staff members, very solid foundation who are working very hard on the project. On a positive side there are more than 20 people in training. A small surprise might come soon if things go according to my plan.

 

- There are currently almost 3000 active users in the game. May be lower than what we had but trust me, it's not easy thing to manage those people and satisfy every group. I've recently introduced a new rank, community managers. CMs are taking care of social aspect of the game, user research, focus groups and a lot more.

 

- As for workload, every staff works hard and their work is being appreciated and acknowledged. Personally, I haven't stopped doing things ever since I started this adventure with shane. There is always room to improve. It would be funny if I say we are perfect.

 

- Hope I answered more than one question in this thread.

[Han1996]

furthermore shane promised that people coming from pro to pro 2.0 will have some kind of reward

[Theprodigy]

I honestly think both sides have a point.

 

When PRO 2.0 comes most players will transfer there and the people like me with bad computers have to stay here and be lonely because the new game is 3D and being 3D it is most likely for high end computers.

 

However Thor and Red have a good point, they will still be working on PRO and They have plenty of staff. And who knows maybe some staff have bad computers too and will stay on PRO.

[Guest CheckeredZebra]

Hey cool, I wasn't expecting so much of a response. Hi guys.

 

Arnie, you weren't a PWO "reject." You left on your own. Then you were eventually banned for things related to exploitation if I recall correctly, which you later bragged about openly. I had a lot of respect for you until over time you started behaving differently, and that was after the split. Honestly out of everything, your behavior hurt me among the worst.

 

But on the main point:

 

I do think you guys have something to be "braggadocious" (lol, love that word) about with how much content and community you've amassed during the time you've been around. I'd like to go through the game and pick at its every threads, but I don't have that time. Honestly some approaches seem like an improvement, but the shaky bits are more about design standards based on statements made by staff and how some things appear to be manual or bottlenecked through reliance on just one person.

 

I took the posting community's words on the economy; I know how iffy that can be, but it seems to be a sentiment here. Either way, my post is in defense of your economy and how things can be fixed pretty handily, so don't take that the wrong way.

 

Darci, the rest of your points are either good (merging DB, but I'm surprised that it being unified wasn't the default to begin with), intriguing (20 new people at once? New rank? Neat) or are something I touch on below lightly.

 

From my experience, when I believed in single developers, I have been let down again and again and again. Promises for this, promises for that, needs never met for one reason or another. Some legit, some not. Some needs outright ignored with no replacement in suggestion or sight. It's not that I didn't see "content will never stop being made" notes, but in my checkered (haha puns) past, that just never came true until we finally had our own resources and team. I can count several where we were severely let down, and it completely turned me off from this project. With no outward hint that the worst core issues/structures were changed during the split, why would I think PRO is any different at its heart? For example, so many people that went during the split took their leave while saying "where is the donation transparency?!"

Someone CAN work on 2 different projects, ya know?

 

That never, ever worked out for us when we were under Zammbi, Shane & Xan eras. See above.

Broken promises by management after broken promises; trying to fix that lead to hostility, radio silence and sometimes belittlement (talking pre-2014 for ref). People who could do something would either ignore it or defend it.

 

Arnie, I imagine your side of the conversation will be "no, that was you guys." My own experience when trying to standardize policy staff/behavior to not be power abusive as hell, to fix communication and quality standards issues was to get kicked in the shins constantly. But that's why nothing was ever resolved and probably never will be. Unlike you, I feel that most of the people still perpetuating that was a specific group that migrated here, which is why I am ye of little faith in some ways. And, no matter how much in depth we talk to each other about it, we will probably never be able to resolve it. I've half given up on that sentiment, which is unlike me. Not out of anger or something, it just traditionally has never worked out. Even worse, attempts to do so lead to further abuse from people here, like walking on a doormat. No thank you.

 

I put my alternate perspective here since I would like to see my pessimism proven wrong for once. Also, I'm still a nerd that's fascinated by problem solving and systematic changes/efficiency. I don't get a lot of chances to post my little heart out anymore on these things, so it was fun.

 

Anyway, past drama aside, if PRO ends up outdated in terms of tech and the new game is overtly similar (same locations, generally same core systems/rates) PRO is going to end up by the wayside due to player interest and reliability of updates. It'd be like having a legacy client half paired onto a modern game instead of its own full fledged thing. Options are to let its embers die out or take it out swiftly.

 

There are pictures of Shane saying that fixing key aspects/features here just isn't worth the effort. If he wanted to support PRO properly (fix its guts), that contradicts the action of suddenly doubling up on Pokemon MMOs. I still call shenanigans. I have no doubt Darci can hold his own and I know the life that just a few key people can bring into a game/project, but if I'm wrong about my earlier statement and Shane is the only person holding the keys for some critical needs, that is actually making me feel a bit more vindicated about my analysis. His actions are not matching your staff's words or what you guys say your goals for PRO are. That is, unless the update intentions are to add content that has no teeth, since it can't be backed up solidly/consistently by much the needed programming/fixes.

 

For the game community's sake, please prove me wrong with your actions, over time. I'm pretty sure we'd both be sincerely happy with that outcome.

[Red]

[mention]CheckeredZebra[/mention]

 

- Personally, I am not a fan of things depending on one person. Admins can verify the same, same as former ones such as Naomi and Chappy. I've spread out the workload because it's impossible for one person to handle. Mappers and Scripters have a live editing access and they are able to deliver endless innovations and content updates. We are doing what we can given the tools and peoples access level. I've promoted admins, past and current team. I've been always trying to find peoples hidden talents and gave them a push many times, they can verify the same. Do I expect every staff follows the staff iron rule? No I don't, it would be funny if I did. Hence various demotions due to abuse and whatnot.

 

- We took a major hit last year when a inner ring was formed and people gone deep into shanes private life. We recovered shortly after and the team is very stable right now. Basically, you can't expect a programmer to sit in a cave like a caveman with basic life necessities and not getting out as they are delivering the updates.

 

- As for the economy, I often do statistics. End user is encouraged to spend ingame currency for a luxurious stuff such as early access spawns located in safaris. I also monitor how many of certain monsters have been found and what is their desired nature, ability and IV set. That being said, a good stated monsters with proper set is not easy to find. Some monsters are just rare.

 

- We are doing what we can with what we have. So far, many regions have been fully developed and spawn health is extremely good for a mmo setup. If I need certain tools and help Shane will always step up when he can. Considering the game was started with only few of us we did very well. It's not an easy thing to do.

[Guest CheckeredZebra]

I'm not disagreeing with anything you said above. Somehow, those rumors went back to me anyway, but it was a little more nefarious than just "getting out"; I'm not uncouth enough to repeat them here. I'm sure you know what the truth is, anyway, and it doesn't ultimately matter to me. At the end of the day you're the person that has to handle the outcomes. I don't envy you of that.

 

I just looked up your donation system and am glad you guys went with mounts/etc instead of the nasty issue of our TS, for example. Considering the resources you guys have, I think you did well. I have no doubt you guys are skilled and that most of you have good intentions, barring the predispositions I have already stated in the posts above.

 

I'm still sticking by that Shane and staff's actions to meet their stated goals are inefficient/irrational at best. But, since it seems like you are wanting to stick with other generally unrelated points (I already sided with you on economy, unless you just wanted to share the actually intriguing snippet about statistics - that might be fun to talk about some day), I don't think there's going to be a clear answer; I don't want to push an old friend into a corner. Not like this, anyway.

 

I have a feeling this is going to go down a darker road than you or I want, so if it's ok, I'm going to leave it here and do my best to not look back for a while. I know I haven't said the most pleasant things but I appreciate you guys spending your time to be hosts, for lack of a better term. Sorry about my nasty habit of editing everything a million times, wasn't intentional.

 

Take care. See you around in the future.

[Gamiverse]

Might be a bit OT but could someone provide the original thread or a link to PRO 2.0 [webpage if already set up]?

 

Thanks - and sorry for interrupting your intense discussion.

 

BR

Gami