Sega's crusade against Shining videos

If you've followed the blog for any amount of time you know I tend to ramble on, so I'll try to keep this short.

This video explains something I had heard about in 1 or 2 of the of the retsupurae podcasts. Something about Sega acting crazy and removing videos on YouTube that were even vaguely related to the Shining Force series. This video explains it in detail.

Although I recommend listening to the entire video embedded bellow, I'll provide a link to the part of the video where TotalBiscuit explains the situation seeing as the entire video is considerably long.

And since the video is rather long, here's a summary.

Sega Going Nuts

Months back, Sega began to systematically take down videos on YouTube that just mentioned Shining Force, even videos that didn't even feature ANY footage of the game. As long as Shining force was mentioned, it was taken down from YouTube.

Videos were flagged down so fast that it caused several channels to be taken down entirely. Sega isn't even responding about the situation at all.

I'm fairly sure false copyright claims is a crime and thus illegal, but I'm no lawyer and it may vary from country to country.

It's assumed it's someone that works at Sega, or at least someone in Japan. It's suspected that they're just removing all videos that mention Shining force just so they can manipulate the search results for those keywords.

Backstory (Optional read)

In my opinion, it's worth going to the beginning of the video and watch all of it. It talks about how Sega of Japan seems to hate it's non-Japanese fans.


There's a considerably big and devoted fanbase to Shining Force, these fans have sent emails, packages, and even petitions to the developers of the Shining games, to express either their love for the games, how they would love to have a translation to the 2 final episodes of Shining force 3, and asking them to make more games in the style of the older games.

Sega of Japan's response in particular was harshly cold, if a response was given at all. The current producer of the series actually went on twitter and posted a rude comment towards the person who organized the campaigns and sent the packages.

I'm really summarizing it though. If you're interested, watch the whole video.

My Opinion

As for the YouTube issue thing, it's been confirmed it's someone from Japan. I guess there's still the possibility it's not someone from Sega.

More than that though, it makes me think about how it's a miracle that YouTube even works. The "shoot first, ask questions later" policy is just terrible and unfair. Really makes me wonder how that site hasn't had more issues like this in the past or even functions at all. Also makes sense why most serious LPers use blip.tv or other hosting instead.

For me this is more about how badly YouTube's policy is than how crazy Sega might have become.

Sega really should issue some sort of statement about this mess though, but it may be too late as it is. This whole Shining story kinda makes them sound like massive dicks and everyone who has heard of it considers boycotting Sega to some degree.


I don't believe there was that much miscommunication between the new producer of the Shining series and the non-jap fans, I think at most he jumped to illogical conclusions or was butthurt that people liked the older games for whatever reasons. There's some fucked up ego thing going on there.

You know, any developer should be honored to have fans like that, and Sega of Japan basically spits in their face.

I'm starting to suspect Sega doesn't actually have a PR department at all.

Thoughts about Interface design and operating systems

Incoming nerd rant.

M$ getting a lil desperate

I dunno how it is in the USA, but here in Portugal, I rarely see an ad on TV for consoles, videogames and operating systems. up to a month or 2 ago, i could count those on 1 hand. I was a bit stunned about M$ actually having ads on everywhere here about Windows 8. Saw it on TV a few times, local stores where having Windows 8 themed sales, stuff like that.

I get the distinct feel M$ really wants people to get Win8, but as I read, the ads don't reflect how Win8 is at all.

I have an android tablet, and if I knew how horrible they were to use, I probably wouldn't had bought it. I'm not gonna get into how shitty it is to use your fingers as controls, but it is.

From the Win8 ads, I had the feel that they wanted to make a tablet oriented interface, which is a horrible idea because those interfaces are the way they are because of limitations, not because they're awesome to use.

But, I read that you can actually get win8 to look just like win7. I didn't know that til I read it online, because from the ads I was under the impression that it was a horribly simplified piece of shit used by casuals jocks.

Did they convince people? I like to hope they didn't. Saw this earlier on a blog:




Made me smile.

Rules for interfaces

The thing with M$ is that even though they make operating systems, and the user interface is a very important part of it, it's something they systematically change for the worse.

I had a class in college that touched briefly on user interface design, it's not as easy as you'd think, but there are basic rules to it.

The goals of a good interface are being easy to use and being efficient.

What that means is that:

• The options should be grouped in a way that makes sense under a menu/tab/other that has a label that clearly describes the scope of the options within it so that they're easy to find.
• There shouldn't be an overwhelming amount of features/options on the screen at once. If there are too many options, then it's likely they should be split to another menu/tab.Do not overwhelm the user.
• Frequently used features need to be accessible quicker than ones that rarely are. This is done by making it so that less clicks are required to use the frequent options, and in case of too many options, the lesser used ones can be sorted in a subgroup.

There's many more details to it, like being intuitive, consistent, etc. but those things tend to happen naturally through testing.

Now, that's sort of a dilemma, and that's the part that doesn't occur to people until they make an interface themselves.

• You can be one of those people that hates submenus and make an interface where every single feature on it is a button on a toolbar, but if there's many features, you'll end up with something that looks like the an airplane's control panel, aka a clusterfuck.
• Or you can be one of those that likes everything neat and tidy and creates tons of submenus that actually drastically slow down the user and make stuff that's used often require several clicks. Doesn't sound like it's so bad, but it it's something that done hundreds of times a day, it'll piss the user off.
  

You want it to be easy/fast to use, but you want all the options well organized too.

What makes an interface good?

The big thing my teacher stressed at the time though, was:

The only people who can say if an interface is good or not, are the users, NEVER the developer.

After all, the users are the ones that will end up using the product and put up with it. My teacher added that coders tend to make the most horrible interfaces that only themselves could use efficiently.

That's possibly the part of software design that requires the most input from the user. And the more time the user has to spend using the software, the more valuable his opinion is.

So how is M$ failing at it?

M$ breaks every single rule of interface design every time they revamp something. But I think I can sort of understand why:

• They believe that existing Windows users will just keep using Windows regardless because of how jarring it is to switch to an entirely different OS.
• They want to attract new people to Windows, their marketing seems mainly aimed at casuals, people who don't normally use computers.

However, they're not really having any sucess with either.

There's an irony here.

• Switching Windows version IS jarring as fuck as it is, and getting worse every time.
• Casual users don't have high end computers, and they actually do find win XP simpler to use, so they'll often use that.
• More hardcore users detest the newer versions of Windows because it requires an adaptation period, which will affect their productivity, and the interface is oversimplified requiring way more clicks in general to do anything, so even after you adapted to it, the interface just isn't as efficient.

I actually have seen how much better the memory management is under win7 compared to winXP, but, The interface would slow me down more than what I'd get from the improvements.

Of course, some people seem to like the newer versions for some reason. But 95% of all people are fucking idiots on any given subject, so who cares.

What's the solution?

Ultimately, whoever decides if the interface is good or not is the user, but there's many of them and all with different tastes, right? So you'd think you can please everyone, but you're sort of wrong.

This is the main thing about people who defend newer Windows versions:

"Well, you probably didn't like Windows XP's interface at first either, but you got used to it"

To which I reply:

"No you dumb shit, You didn't have to because you could customize it to fit your needs. Win7 will absolutely NOT let me do that!"

(I think I'm paraphrasing a convo I've had before)

And yes I know, there's some tiny things that you can customize on win7, but none of them really help me improve my productivity with it.

Here's something else a lot of people disliked:

The Firefox menu.

Most people I know hated it. I think it's retarded because it's designed to save the 20 pixels that the menu would normally take in exhange for an extra click and a lot of navigation through sub menus.

It's especially stupid in an age where monitor are so fucking big. See back in the day where 1024x768 was the most common resolution, maybe? but now? No. it's dumb and 15 years too late.

However!

You can disable it and get the old menu back. and really, that's all i ask for. The more you allow people to customize an interface, the better it will automatically be.

Just let people pick what they want, it's fucking simple.

The OS I wish would get finished

My personal hope is ReactOS.

It's basically an OS that looks and feels like Windows. It's made from the ground up to support any software that runs on Windows, as well as drivers.

It's literally a direct alternative to Windows, except it's meant to be better and won't force you to change OS every 2 years.

Obviously, M$ tried to have them shut down, but since the thing is entirely coded in Linux and does not use a single line of code from Windows, they can't.

A very entertaining read

I saw these tumblr blogs mentioned on tweeter a couple of days ago:

electionresultbutthurt.tumblr.com
whitepeoplemourningromney.tumblr.com

Suffice to say, I've been both laughing hard and been horrified at some of those posts.

Rant

The amount of racism on there is just shameful, the irony on those posts is delicious, and some people on there really can't seem to deal with not getting their way.

But really, those are just details, what struck me as stunning is how 99% of the people in those posts do not seem to even have a vague concept of what a decent healthcare system is. I suspect it could be media manipulation, but come on...

Most of the people who drop by to read this blog are Americans. So, as someone who has lived in countries with such systems my entire life, here's my understanding of it:

In a very brief description, it's a small tax out of everyone's income in exchange for all citizens being able to enjoy medical benefits at greatly reduced cost.

As an example, In France around 5 years ago, my mom had 3 hernias removed from her lower abdomen, and all we paid was 8 euros.

A lot of people seem to think that it's going to give "lazy people" food, money and whatever else without them having to work. I'm not sure how they'd assume that.

The thing is that if u don't contribute, you don't get these benefits, and you have to be a citizen or at least legally working in the country.

Maybe it's because of where I grew up, but I always thought all countries had a healthcare system similar to Portugal or France.

If you just check this page on Wikipedia, You can sort get the idea. Even though the USA thinks it's "the shit" as a developed country, it actually has pretty bad when it comes to health.

Seriously, if people can't see the value in increased life expectancy and reduced infant mortality, there's something wrong with them.

What kind of Pokémon hack would you make?

I've been watching creepy pastas on YouTube, and there are a lot of pokemon ones. Sometimes if the creepy pasta is good, fans of it will make a romhack that acts just like the creepy pasta.

So after watching a dude talk about another pokemon creepy pasta on Youtube, in the related videos there was a tutorial on how to use basic rom hacking tools for pokemon games.

The tools looked decent and simple to use and it seems to cover everything which makes sense because pokemon games are really popular.




So I start thinking to myself:

"Well, I'm sure I could do a romhack if I wanted, and it'd be nice to have a project to work on. But... what would I make?"

That's always the problem isn't it? I've learned to use many tools to make games in the past, but the only reason I never made a game is always because I never had a good idea for it. Editing a game is different though, the core is all there, you can just tweak stuff around a little.

I've been asking around for ideas, mostly out of curiosity to see what kind of pokemon hack they would do. The question is:

What pokemon rom hack would you make assuming you had a team do it for you. In this scenario we assume you're just the brains of the operation and all you need to do is decide things. 

I think I'd like to do a romhack even if the idea isn't that great, just for the experience. So I'm open to ideas and suggestions.




When I asked Zach what he would do if he could make a romhack, his response was "I dunno". but then again, that's also his response to "What are you doing?" and "How do you feel?". He says "I dunno" a lot actually...

As for myself, I had this vague idea:

---

You would play as a trainer who was walking through a desert like area with his 6 pokemon, but there were all caught in a sandstorm. The trainer gets separated from his Pokémon in the storm, and when it passes, he starts looking for them.

Now there's 2 ways I imagined this going:

• The trainer is the one that fights. He goes through all the areas around the desert looking for his pokemon and beating up wild pokemon and humans alike. His pokemon team would basically just be himself.
• One of the pokemon finds the trainer right away (a Numel), and he sets to find the rest of his team with it.

The goal is simple, find your lost pokemon. That's it.

In either case, the lost pokemon could be just hiding and/or cornered by other pokemon, trapped somewhere, collapsed from hunger/fatigue or stolen by another trainer.

It would not be a long game, I imagine playing it wouldn't take more than 1 hour to beat. Probably not even 30 mins if you're replaying it.

Would probably disable capturing wild pokemon, but allow the player to get the lost pokemon in any order. Much like megaman, some orders could be easier than others.

---

Could be fun.

If you guys have comments or ideas I'd love to hear them.

Halloween events 2012 - Forsaken World

I haven't posted about FW in a while because the posts for FW don't get good ratings. But me and Bitten do still play it.


This event works exactly like the last Valentine's day one, except, they fucked this one up completely. I'll get into why in a moment.

Duration of the event.

• Started 26th October.
• Ends 25th November.
• How to qualify for the event?
• Have at least 1 character over level 40.

How to participate?

• Enter the site fw.perfectworld.com/halloween.
• Pick character to send prize to.
• Pick a character and get random prize.

Possible Prizes.

• Fenrir Mount
• Felicity Pet
• Random level 2 or 3 gems
• Pumpkin Nox Pet
• Lord Candle Pet
• 7 Day VIP Cards
• Reputation Badges
• Seashade Orbs
• Ghastly Flare Gem Boxes
• Elite Dawn Scrolls
• Pet Trial Scrolls
• Star Crystals
• Medium Pet Essences

Extra Notes.

• Everything is bound. Which makes this event really bad.
• You can claim 24 hours after the last time you claimed.

---

As you can tell, I have issues with this event, and so does most of the community. Sure, free stuff is good, but only if it's relevant. otherwise it's quite frustrating.

How? well here's an example:

Let's say I have 2 characters, 1 has a good mount and the other one has a good pet. I know one of the prizes is a mount and another is a pet, however, they'll be bound. And I won't know what I get til AFTER I pick the character that receives it.

You can see where this is a problem. You can get really good valuable stuff, but it can be stuck on a character that does not need it.

Day 1 of the event had a big issue that led to one of the prizes being removed. Originally the list also had fashion items, and there was immediately an issue with it because female character were getting male fashion (Like Bitten did), Which in itself wouldn't bad if you could sell it, but it was stuck on Bitten's female character.

Their "fix" was to not do anything about it and remove it as a prize.

This is just another episode in the trend of bad decisions and incompetence Perfect World Entertainment has been doing with Forsaken World. I won't get into it, because there's a lot of crap to mention about that.

Even though the event is flawed, It's still worth trying your luck and see what you get. Some of the stuff we got was mildly useful so far.

Traitor

I feel like the biggest douche bag in the world right now. I'm a jerk that just completely disregards the feelings of anyone else. It's really not hard to see why I'm not really friends with anyone outside the internet. I'm not a good person. I'm selfish and cold-hearted, and I don't care about anyone else. I'm a horrible person...

I'm no good to anyone in real life, either. I laze around, taking up space, cause I don't have any useful talents and I lack the initiative to try getting a real job. I'm a parasite, leeching off of my parents, who I wouldn't be surprised if they're ashamed of me. I wouldn't blame them. I'd be pretty pissed too if I let such a piece of shit jerkass into the world.

Tof's a saint for being so willing to put up with me...

Considering giving up on the blog

This blog has been my longest running project ever, I've worked on it long and often, but in the end, it feels like I'm the only one that cares about it.

Years ago I invited Zach to post here with me. 1, because he's my best friend. 2, because he has a lot of characters and most have a story behind them. I figured he could use the blog to expand on that if he wanted to and also post stuff the he felt wouldn't fit under. FA or DA.

On the same year I invited Jimmy, who's my oldest online friend whom I have now known for over 10 years. Jimmy is a good artist and spriter, and always supported me when I scribbled and sprited things by giving me critique and suggesting ways to improve it. It motivated me do do stuff. Whenever I had a silly idea for something artsy, he would always help me even if odds wew that we'd be wasting time.

Ages later, I invited Bitten for the same reasons I invited Zach, but very early on it became clear he didnt really want to post at all so I offered myself to post for him.

Jimmy never has free time, but even so, when I talk to him, he'll talk about writting/drawing stuff for the blog, always being supportive.

I've never really liked bugging people for anything, that's just how I was raised. And with Bitten and Zach, I always felt like I had to twist their arm a lil for stuff to post on the blog. Makes me feel like I'm annoying them and I hate feeling that way.

By twist their arm I don't mean asking them to draw stuff specifically for the blog. I would just ask if they'd drawn anything that we'd be able to post on here.

But the general impression I get is that ever after 4 years, it still feels that no one gives 2 shits about this blog, authors and readers alike. I tried to make commenting as easy and simple as I could get, and I'm very grateful to those who did, but lookin at the traffic, most people just don't care to take 1 sec to rate the post which doesn't require any sort of registration.

I mean, is there really a point?

Everything Zach and Bitten post here ends up posted on FA or DA. Actually would just get posted on there directly if I wouldn't go out of my way to nag about posting here. Jimmy can' t post often because of real life and I dont think I can do anything anyone would care about.

I mean, Zach even went and made a tumblr 2 days ago to post pics. Essencially do what this blog was for but on another blogging platform. I was hurt he didn't even tell me about it and I accidentally found out about it. However it's pretty clear this project and all the work I put on it was a waste of time.

As it is, this blog is only contributing to my depression. It meant a lot to me, because I really wanted to make it work, but it really doesn't matter how hard I try, I can't do anything people will care about.

If it's not porn, people don't care.

Tof's gaming ideas: Pokémon revisited

A while back, I made a article where I wrote down things I would change in Pokémon games to make them more enjoyable. However, there was a lot of discussion about my suggestions not being very good, although not a single valid reason was presented to me as to why.

At the time this generated a lot of discussion between myself, Zach and Bitten. Even Jimmy made his own post with his own thoughts on the matter.

So now I'm going to make a revised version of those suggestions.

---

The Fixes

The Pokecenter

Then

This was something I thought everyone would agree, Because it's truly annoying as fuck.

My suggestion was to entirely cut out the animation where the nurse slowly places the pokeballs on the machine and heals your pokemon, and to cut down partially or entirely on the dialogue with the nurse. Optionally, have the scene play out normally only the first time you interact with her.

Another idea was that IF the current system was to stay, implementing the regen system from pokemon mystery dungeon would balance the need to use a pokecenter often.

The reasoning was that the cutscene serves no purposes other than to waste time and it's an action that has to be performed serveral times in the game and tends to get on people's nerves due to how long it takes. Also you'll encounter NPCs in the world that will perform the same services as the pokecenter nurse, except they only say 1 line of dialogue and it's done.

Now

My new suggestion is have an option menu where the player can set how they want the pokecenter to act: "default, short, instant".

• Default is the way it's always worked
• Short acts like the NPCs that give you 1 line of dialogue and you're done.
• Instant means you activate the nurse, and done, no dialogue whatsoever. A sound effect would play to confirm you used her.

The reasoning behind instant is that 99.9% of the time you talk to a nurse, it's to heal your pokemon. Asking you if you want to heal them or not just wastes everyone's time.

Someone's PC

Then

This was an issue mostly because of the HM system, having to backtrack to get a pokemon with a specific HM to advance. I actually have no problem with the PC system beyond that personally because I tend to stick with the same team the entire game.

So for this issue you have to consider the HM system works like it normally does.

Bascially, there's no reason you can't acess Bill's PC from anywhere with a wireless device. You keep getting calls all the time, meaning you do have a wireless device. So is it so out of line to make it so that you can switch pokemons from anywhere?

Originally, I was pointed out that this would fuck up events like the elite 4. No it wouldn't, just put this on the top right corner of the screen in those areas:


Another thing i was told is that it had something to do with strategy, Although saving time does not factor into strategy at all, so I dunno what was meant by that.

Now

Like I said, if the issue of HMs was solved, I wouldn't care about this one at all.

But when you capture a pokemon in the middle of a cave or forest, it ends up in Bill's PC somehow, and that's how it worked since the first game. I really can't see a problem with switching pokemon wirelessly.

If you want areas to be harder and feel like a gauntlet of battles, Just find a reason to not have signal there. But then explain to me why you can send them to Bill's PC.

A lot of my suggestions were rejected because it didn't make "enough sense" in the game world, yet, Bill's PC getting your excess pokemons, which never made sense, is fine.

HMs

Then

That's a big one. This system forces you to backtrack a lot or have a pokemon slot wasted to carry around an HM whore or even waste 1 skill slot on your normal party's pokemon for a skill you don't really want.

I had a few suggestions back then:

• Allow use of the HM as long as you had 1 pokemon with the HM learned either in storage or in party.
• Allow player to carry extra pokemon that wouldn't be used in battle only for ability use.
• Allow pokemon to each learn 2 extra moves that are non battle.

The 2nd one would be hard to figure how it'd work. But, from what I read, the creators have considered some of these right from the first game. Even for later games, they considered giving all pokemon 6 moves instead of 4, or increasing the size of the teams.

If I had to guess, the main reason they don't do it is because there's always fans that will bitch and moan if they change anything in the core game.

Now

Me and Zach discussed this many times, basically coming up with dozens of solutions that would be better than the current system in every way. However, Zach came up with one I thought was perfect.

HMs are meant to act as keys that you get as you progress through the game. Well here's another thing you get as you progress through the game: Badges.

HMs are always very basic abilities a pokemon has, like flying and swimming, which there's no way the pokemon wouldn't know how to do these things. It never made sense you had to teach them those skills in the first place.

Instead of making it so that the pokemon has to learn something it clearly already knows, make it so that it depends on the trainer. The requirement could be that the trainer needs a certain amount of experience to either have the pokemon perform certain tasks or to be able to ride on it safely.

Some of those abilities could be unlocked as the trainer gets more badges, or key NPCs could teach the trainer how to do them (like how running is taught currently).

The irony is, this is extremely close to what the creators were originally going to do in the first pokemon game, but for some reason, went with the current system.

Movement speed/Transportation

Then

Why can't we fucking run from the start? What kind of 10 year old are we meant to be playing? Why don't we have a bike from the start for that matter?

It strikes me as a lil strange, but, literally every single person I know had a bike by the age of 10. I'm willing to believe that's not the case for everyone, but come on.

The fact that you lack all these options to move at a decent pace and are forced to crawl your way to the first city does not help the games.

Now

No change really.

This really was a minor point on the bike, and even on running I don't care that much, but really, at least running should be an option from the start.

I will never believe we play as a 10 year old that has never ran in his life. Simply does not compute.

I do feel however that the game does explaining backwards: Instead of explaining to me why i can suddenly run, explain to me why the hell i couldn't up until that point.

More than 1 save slot

Then

There's really no limitation to add more save slots, a lot of people enjoy restarting the game but don't wanna lose all their past progress.

Now

I suggested this as a minor point originally, but lately I've been watching a lot of videos where it's mentioned people really like starting a new game. This seems to be a much bigger thing that I originally thought.

If they're concerned with the online features, they could make it so that only save slot 1 can use those.

Some people just like playing through the game. Once you complete the story, their interest is gone, but they won't start a new game to avoid losing their game.

Improvements

Choices and Paths

Then

Basically, I suggested more of a focus on the player character itself where he/she would be able to choose a "class" that would give very minor perks. This is, after all, an RPG game.

The player could choose a class with perks that focus on breeding pokemon, catching pokemon, more attack in battle, more defensive, improved stats effects, etc.

This would be used in conjunction with the plot and path the player takes.

Depending on what the player chose, he would take a different path on the map and do gyms in a different order, possibly having a slightly different story.

Would add a lot of replay value.

Now

I got good feedback on that, and I stand by it.

Especially when I mentioned you would be able to play a team rocket type character.

Jimmy's Suggestions

There's 1 in particular that caught my attention.

The Pokedex

As Jimmy pointed out, why is the damn pokedex always empty? Why does it ALWAYS start empty?

Canon wise, did all the kids the other professors sent in the past gens get killed in a cave?

We can't be the only ones that think there should at least be some data on the pokemons from the past gens.

---

Closing thoughts

I'd like to state that the changes I suggest are rather minor and mostly aimed at making the games more enjoyable without changing much, although I do think the games should change and try new things.

I'm a fan of egoraptor's sequelitis videos, there's something he said that kinda describes what I'm thinking about when I write something like this.

A preceding title should act as an inspiration for a sequel, a launch pad aiming the production towards greater things.

A sequel shouldn't be weighed down by irrelevant tradition for the sake of consistency.

I think the pokemon games suffer from a lack of evolution, ironically. I've played pokemon red, soul silver and black. I can't say the game added much since the first version.

It's gotten to a point where both the company and the fans are comfortable with the series and don't want to change it. Not even the interface which is really not that efficient.

These suggestions aren't groundbreaking and are aimed towards the series as they are right now.

I personally prefer the mystery dungeon series a lot more because the gameplay is more interesting, the story is better, and lasts way longer than any other pokemon game in the main series.

For better or for worse, it's trying something new. Which is more than can be said about the main series.

VN's gaming ideas: Pokemon

Tof had some pretty good ideas for pokemon, and perhaps it would improve the game. The best improvement would to be to not play it at all. While that would end this post here, I've decided to throw in my opinions on what I think should change.

---

POKEDEX

Problem: Why the heck are we still "collecting" data on every pokemon? There are "people" in this pokemon world who own/breed/research various different types of pokemon. By now, there should be some kind of pokewiki or something, and since the pokedex is essentially a smartphone/tablet finding anything would be as easy as turning the damn thing on.

Solution: Pokewiki that shit.

---

COLLECT WITH CONSEQUENCES

Problem: The game's mechanic and essential message is to capture every pokemon and then bloat about it to your friend like you're special (but deep down you know you're not). But what do you really get in the end? Essentially you get a message that says "you've done it. good job." That's prety much it. You can also tell all your friends but you'd look like an idiot who wasted their time collecting digital animals.

Solution: Sure you can collect them all but there should be consequences for your collecting actions. That nice statue in your hometown might be something but there should be negative consequences as well. Like there should be a pokemon activist group that keeps bugging you as you keep capturing more. They should also have the ability to harass you and free some of your pokemon that you aren't supervising. Certain towns who are against stuff like pokemon battling should also ban you from entering while pokemon fetish cities would welcome you like some hero.

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FAWK BACKTRACKING

 

Problem:  You're doing fine and then you find that you cannot move on until you get xxx ability. You can't enter this area till later. Backtracking is the most idiotic thing ever. You made me suffer through a long painful walk or mode of transportation then you tell me I have to go back to access the new area?

Solution: Hire better level designers. THE BARD ONLY GOES ONE WAY. FORWARD.

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MANDATORY NPC BATTLES + GUNS!

Problem 1: You're "collecting" pokemons or just traveling in a horrid speed to the next town for whatever reason and each trainer on that path wants to battle you for no reason other than the fact that you happen to be going that way.

Solution 1: I can understand forcing a player into their first battle to teach them the gaming battle mechanism, but for the rest of the game I should have a choice. If the NPC is interested they should give you the option of saying no. As a pokemon trainer I don't want to be battling a little girl standing randomly in the middle of a pokemon infested field at night to test who has a stronger set of pokemons.

Problem 2: That damn pokemon is too strong. Those NPC keeps battling me.

Solution 2: Why don't they have pokeguns yet? This would solve a lot of problems in the game.

KLODIKE BAR uses MINTY FREEZE on PIKACHU. It's SUPER EFFECTIVE!

   Use Item -> Pokegun -> Shoot pokemon -> Legs

TRAINER uses POKEGUN. KLONDIKE BAR is critically wounded!

   Use Item -> Pokeball

You got a KLONDIKE BAR!

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I WANNA BE THE VILLAIN

PROBLEM: I want to collect pokemons but leveling them up is so damn boring. Damn I'm at a cave and I need some kind of fire pokemon to light my way. All these trainers around this area have one...

SOLUTION: I agree. There should be an option where you get to be criminals and steal other people's pokemon. Sure you'll get heckled and the police will be after you, but the point of the game is to collect right? Why waste time leveling up your own pokemon when you can take some other sucker's pokemon who did all the hard work for you?

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PLAYING WITH MY POKEBALLS

PROBLEM: You really like collecting things.

SOLUTION: Have the ability for you to modify the pokeballs! Pretty soon you'll be collecting things like Nurse Joys, Officers Jennys, and random NPC trainers!

Tof's gaming ideas: Pokemon

Pokemon games, the main series, are games that never really changed much when it comes to mechanics, and a lot of the structure of the game has remained the same over the versions.

Tiny changes have been added, but honestly, some annoyances inexplicably have remained in the games over the years.

There are hundreds of tiny things everyone has a problem with in Pokemon, but I'm not going to get into too much detail.

The following is a series of things that I feel should be fixed to make the game more enjoyable, and at the end i even add a suggestion on how to make it more interesting.

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Fixes

The Pokecenter

If you've played a Pokemon game ever, you might already know what I'm gonna say.
I still don't understand what kind of person makes a part of their game purposely annoying. In every Pokemon game, going to a Pokecenter to heal has always been a tedious, and unnecessarily so.

This is made even more evident by the fact that certain NPCs in the game will heal all of your Pokemon, restore the PP and do so instantly but without the long wait.

Also ticks me off that the nurse will ask if you want your Pokemon healed, I mean, is there ever a time you talk to the nurse and don't want her to heal your Pokemon? even if you didn't mean to, what's the harm of healing them anyway?

-Solution-

Have the nurse do the slow version the first time you visit a Pokecenter, then afterwards just have her say all your Pokemons have been healed when u talk to her, that's it.

Alternatively, implement the regeneration system from the Pokemon mystery dungeon games to reduce the need to use a Pokecenter all the time.

Someone's PC

It made sense you had to use a PC in the first game to store your Pokemon.

But now, there's a lot of wireless going on in both the game's world and the real world.

It seems unnecessary to make you go to town and find the nearest Pokecenter to switch Pokemons.

-Solution-

Make a fucking menu where you're accessing the computer wirelessly.

HMs

Again, an obvious issue if you've played any Pokemon game.

In some games, there are far too many them, and they're usually bad moves that you have no desire of using because they could be replaced by something far better.

However, you are forced to use them in specific area to progress, which ties your hands behind your back.

This forces you to handicap yourself by either spreading the moves through your fighting Pokemons, or carry around 1 or 2 Pokemons specifically for the HMs that aren't any good in battle.

HMs are keys, just handled the worse way possible.

That's not to mention the redundancy with all the water related HMs: Surf, Waterfall, Dive, Whirlpool. That's ridiculous and should had been streamlined years ago. Just 1 ability should cover all of that.

-Solution-

Make it so that, as long as you have 1 Pokemon in your party OR storage that knows the ability, you have use the ability. Simply have a HM menu where you choose the one you want to use.

Alternatively, How hard is it to carry 1 or 2 extra Pokeballs? the main character could easily carry extra Pokemons, that wouldn't be used in battle, just for ability use.

Yet another alternative: Allow Pokemons to learn 2 extra moves that are only usable outside of battle. You would still have the option to learn them as an attack move.

Movement speed/transportation

These games have a sadistic delight for making you start out your adventure at snail pace. The slow grueling speed you go through the first area of the game is agony after you get used to the speed you can move on later in the game.

But, is there even a point or reason for this?

Besides making the start of the adventure painful and boring, not really.

-Solution-

The auto-run option from HG/SS. I really don't need to go into this one. Should be in every game and you should start with it.

In fact, why don't we start with a bike? all it does it allow you to move faster, it doesn't really add any advantage to the player.

There's no reason you shouldn't have the bike from the start. You're a 10 year old kid, are you expecting me to believe you the one kid that doesn't have one?

Pokemon games don't need padding, they're already long as fuck and monotonous.

There's a good reason they were banned on the "let's play" board at something awful.

Speed this shit up ffs.

More than 1 save per game.

This is fucking 2012, add save slots ffs!

-Solution-

Add more saves slots, duh!

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Improvements

Choices and paths

I've mentioned it before, but I think it'd be very interesting if the main character had to make choices.

The choice would influence the path the main character takes, which influences the areas he'd have access to, the Pokemons he can catch, and the order of the gyms. associated with a path would be perks.

Here's an example:

Early in the game, you could be given a choice to become the apprentice of a famous Pokemon breeder (heck, could even be Brock), or continue as a battling trainer.
Picking a path would be like a picking a class, and doing so would confer some bonuses.

Here's an example of class perks could be for a Pokemon breeder:

• Increase your chance of encountering female Pokemon.
• Reduce the time required for your Pokemon to make eggs
• Reduce steps required for egg hatching.
• Slight stat bonus for bred Pokemon.

It really wouldn't be hard to come up with other classes such as Pokemon researcher, Pokemon catcher, Pokemon battle trainer, etc... a lot of NPCs in the games and characters in the anime claim to have such jobs.

Although just the fact that you could go through the same game with a different story and in a different order seems like it'd add replay value.

Why biased people shouldn't run games

Have a seat, Gonna tell you whippersnappers a story.

Yesterday I played some TF2, I stumbled upon a server that mostly runs the same minecraft themed payload map over and over.

After 5 rounds, I haven't had a chance to play on offense once, and I felt like going pyro, because spies were out of control and the team wasn't checking for them nearly enough.

I select pyro, and I get booted back to the class selection screen.



I'm a lil confused by it, so I try again, and it kicks me back to the same screen. So I pick a random class just so i can use the chat, and this happens:

Note: Can't remember the dude's name, but I recall he had this Brony flair on him, so that's how I'll refer to him, these probably aren't the exact words, but it's as best as I can remember them.

K-ToF: This is a weird server...

Brony: How come?

K-ToF: 5th round in a row I'm defending, and won't allow pyros.

K-ToF: Doesn't seem to be setup all that well.

Brony: Owner doesn't like Pyros.

That kinda stroke me as the dumbest reason ever to exclude a class. Not for balance, but just because "the owner doesn't like them". It rubbed me the wrong way instantly, So I got a lil rude trying to spark a reaction.

K-ToF: Why? Is he a noob?

Brony: Ahem...

Brony: Pyros are for noobs.

Brony: W+M1

> W+M1 is as much of a noob excuse as it is a noob tactic.

> That's... actually very true.

K-ToF: That's even less of a reason then, Those are the easiest to deal with.

Brony: You haven't seen them on this server.

A fucking huge wide open area with little cover. Yes, I'm sure pyros are fucking terrifying here.

K-ToF: And yet, snipers are allowed.

Brony: Don't like it? Shame.

K-ToF: Without pyros there's no spy checking.

K-ToF: And that's why there's a horde of spies running around.

I seriously considered going into full detail on how removing pyros affects the game, but the setup time had ended and the match was underway.

Brony: Stop whinning.

K-ToF: Don't like it? Shame.

Needless to say, didn't stick around much after that. The server runs the same minecraft themed map over and over 24/7, and it's a very open map, makes it really hard for pyros to be effective, so again, not sure how bad these people are at this game.

However there is a giant tall ass tower specifically made for snipers to keep out of danger, but that's fine I guess.

---

Here's why banning pyros is a terrible idea.

• Lack of pyro chain reaction:
  > Way too much freedom for spies to operate.
  > Engies can't set up anything
  > Heavies just get killed as soon as they come out.
  > Scouts dominate the entire map unrestricted
  
• No pyros, no defense against ubers. Good pyros will airblast away ubered pairs and prevent a massacre.
  
• No pyros, 1 less class to target snipers at a distance. I'll admit that's not too common, but I do take out snipers as a pyro quite a lot, I have ridiculous accuracy with the flare gun.
  
• Really good pyros (I don't consider myself one) will reflect every single damn rocket and grenade back at the enemy fucking them up immensely, actually turning soldier and demo's strengths against them.

Bottom line: PYROS HAVE A ROLE.

And yet, they're the most nerfed class on TF2 because of morons like the one who ran that server.

Anyone with common sense understands that each class on TF2 has a role, strengths and weaknesses. and that some strengths are meant to counter some of the enemy's own strengths. (except snipers, they really don't factor into anything)

---

In a similar fashion, my all time favorite online game, Footman Frenzy, was ruined by DotA players who didn't understand how deep the game was and the roles of the heroes and armies involved into the game.

Footman was a 3vs3vs3vs3 game involving heroes and armies. DotA players couldn't quite grasp the concept of commanding more than 1 unit and would always focus on their hero, often just killing their own units so the enemy couldn't farm them, because that's what you do in DotA.

As a result, they'd often lose, even though according to them they were "doing everything right". So these poor losers made their own version of Footmen Frenzy, but did NOT change the name of it, Their map claimed to be the official one and to the average player, it was impossible to tell what was official or not.

Several of these fake versions popped out. Even though all of them had the official site URL on the loading screen, no one ever checks those.

Last loading screen the official version had, which was picked from a contest that I won.

The fake versions eventually became more popular, because people don't care about balance as long as they win. From the 50+ heroes in the game, only 3 or 4 were commonly used because the changes made all the other ones near useless. Most strategies just became too weak to work and "1 man army Hero" was the only one that remained.

---

Sometimes, there will be an asshole who hasn't looked into a game's mechanics much, hasn't considered how it's balanced, or just doesn't understand the game itself.

He plays the game, and something that's meant to counter him, counters him.

The idiot tells himself "These game developers didn't balance this, I shouldn't had died cause I'm infallible." And he changes the game. Either hosting a server with restrictions, or modding the game itself.

The problem is when these become popular and ruin a good game.

However, that is not to say that developers don't make mistakes. Heck sometimes developers will be the ones ruining their own game, or just make a bad game to begin with.

Where rock/paper/scissors type balance is involved, one must be very careful. Only thorough testing can tell you what to tweak.

> I put up a picture of Egon cause I like him.

> I approve of this!

My stance on "Bronies"

First, here's a somewhat relevant video about the subject from foreverpandering:


Now, here's my thoughts on the subject.

I for one am glad there's such a label as Bronies. Why? because there's finally something out there with a worse reputation and way more annoying than Furries. It's very ironic when you think about it.

The irony about Bronies, is that whatever they like it or not, they're actually "furrier" than Furries. Simply because the ponies ARE anthro characters:

"Anthropomorphism is any attribution of human characteristics (or characteristics assumed to belong only to humans) to other animals."

Even though physically they only look like ponies, they can talk, read, have personalities, etc.

You could had watched the above video and replaced every instance of the word Pony with Furry, and it wouldn't had changed it's meaning in the least, except for one part: In general Furries don't rub on other people's faces the fact that they're Furries.

The average Furry is between 2 and 3, Bronies are easily a 5

Memes, which are by definition one of the lowest forms of humor, have been pointlessly mass converted into ponies, making them even less amusing. It's like telling the same joke again, but with the word "pony" instead of "man".

The fact that they spam their versions of existing memes increases the "shoving it in" feel that a lot of people get from Bronies. Not to mention how lame and unoriginal remaking memes is.

Yes, it's harmless, but seeing it everywhere all the time is rather irritating.


Bronies are no different from other Furries. There's sick fucks in the Furry community and there's perfectly decent people in it. But the same could be said about people who like soccer, or cheeseburgers.

What people like has never been an indicator of the kind of person they are.

However, Bronies detached themselves from the Furry stereotype somehow, even though in essence they're Furry++. And seem to strive to prove there's nothing wrong with them, and in cases, they seek to "convert" others into the fandom, like it's some fucking cult.

That's why I dislike them: Bronies are just regular Furries that want special treatment and think they're entitled to it.

I think that's the only explanation that documentary got so much funding. They desperately want to show people that they're all normal decent people who just happen to like a cartoon. about horses. for lil girls. and get an erection while watching it.

The fact that they try so hard is what makes it so weird though.

Ever heard "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."? It feels like it applies here.

---

Society loves labels.

I make a distinction between fans of the show, and Bronies. The fans just like the show and don't feel the need to annoy others with it. Bronies keep waving their flags on other people's faces.

Much like for Furries though, both will be labeled the same regardless

With that said, if I meet a brony, I'll judge him as an individual like I do with everyone else (except Brazilians, god damn).

Paying money for polygons, sure, but for a stat?

I rarely play TF2 nowadays, it's more like, I have phases where I play it a lot for a few days, and then forget about it for weeks.

By doing that, I detach myself from the community and "value" of the items that are introduced in the game, and when I'm confronted with those items I have a more objective view of them.

I was looking up price for some random items on TF2, and I've found some really outrageous trades. However before that here's some facts:

• 1 key can be bought from valve for 2.50 dollars.
• 1 key is generally traded for 2.50 refined metal.
• Thus, 1 refined metal is worth 1 dollar.

---

So here's what I found out earlier:

This hat is called the Holiday Headcase, looking at it, it looks rather crappy. It's indeed an all class hat, but still, doesn't look good on anyone.

It's being traded for 90+ keys. Yes, more than 90. That's 225+ dollars for a mediocre hat. I'm sure there's a rarity factor in there, but, for a cosmetic item, shouldn't looks actually factor in a little bit?


Here's a Strange Scattergun, this is a gun that does absolutely nothing ingame that the default scattergun didn't already do.

The only thing difference is that it keeps track of kills, which doesn't matter because anyone could farm kills so whatever value is on it will never be impressive.

So how much do you guys think such a useless item is worth? surely it's less than a dollar, right? No, it's traded between 6.3 and 7.5 dollars.

---

The lesson here? I don't really know, maybe that all player driven economies are doomed to become very unbalanced and randomly priced for no valid reasons.

Although the cosmetic item seems way overpriced for what it is, I somehow feels that the Strange Scattergun is the biggest waste of money, because the entire point of it is keeping track of a stat. I can't imagine a person sad enough to brag about how many people their Scattergun killed, it'd be too pathetic.

Maybe it's just me.

Tof's gaming ideas: World of Warcraft

This is hopefully the first of a series of articles about videogames and thoughts on how to either fix, or improve them.

I've tried myself to make 2 games in the past, but stopped after making the basics because I've realized that just making a game with good gameplay won't make it fun. And since then I've started analyzing what makes games interesting and/or fun.

Maybe it's because I majored in software, but I always think of ways to improve apps. Games are no different.

Comments on these articles will be appreciated.

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World of Warcraft: Intro


WoW is pretty much the Guideline for all MMORPGs out there. The proof is that most people will instinctively compare any new MMO to it as reference.

When it came out, WoW was surprisingly well made and deep. Maybe they borrowed ideas from other MMOs, of that I can't be sure, but it was the first MMO I played with a job system, crafting, auction house, reputation system, factions and instances just to name a few.

There's really nothing to fix, It's a very complete MMO. My ideas for it are more towards making it "interesting" again.

As I may have mentioned once before, I used to help manage the database of a private WoW server. Those were really fun times because we, the admin team, spent most of our time customizing the server, making our own instances/bosses/mobs and even adding camps/towns to the game.

These ideas come from those times, but also from the nostalgia I often hear from players who used to player vanilla WoW.



Idea 1: More than 2 factions.


This is something we really wanted to do on the private server, but knew it was impossible.

Basically, at the time I still played Warcraft 3 a lot, and the most fun maps always involved more than 2 teams. That's something that surprises me in online gaming to this day is how almost no one does games involving 3 or more teams fighting it out.

So even though we couldn't do it, we started formulating how we'd do it if we could. This was during the "Burning Crusade", when the new races were the Blood Elves and the Draenei.

Default lineup for Alliance and Horde

One of our ideas was to have a Scarlet Crusade faction, which is an actual NPC faction. It basically was the alliance before WoW, as such, it contained humans, dwarves and high elves. And as most people might know, Blood elves are High elves.

We had various lineups for these factions, and I will admit, all lineups we came up with had issues in some way gameplay wise. However coming up with a better lineup nowadays with the new races and class changes would be considerably easier.

Possibly one of the lineups we liked best was the one where humans, under a new ruler, leave the alliance and the undead (Forsaken) just become non playable because they made very little sense to begin with.

Our Scarlet faction was tweaked from the original though, it was more racist in general. However, the New Alliance lineup was really poor and barely made sense. The actual lineups are besides the point, this is just an example.

Much like the Pandaren in the new WoW expansion, some races could be part of either faction. So in my example above, you could have humans in both the Alliance and the Scarlet faction.

At the time we also wished we could replace races with other models, as such, this was a lineup we liked:

A 3 way conflict is always more fun than just 2 way. A 4th one wouldn't be out of line either. Events and battles would be so much more complex.


Idea 2: Territory Conquest.


This is something I'm just taking directly from Dynasty Warriors Online because I thought it was actually really good. It also works really well with multiple factions.

Basically, the entire world would be separated into regions (It already kinda is), and every 1-2 weeks, players would have to fight to defend their faction's towns and cities but also to conquer their enemy's.

In short, it's like playing "Risk".




In essence, it'd be going back to the initial days of WoW where the Horde used to all gather up to invade Stormwind, or vice versa, and kill the enemy faction's leader for the lolz.

The difference is, when the leader of an area is defeated, the opposing force will now own it and gain perks from it.

Depending on who owns the town, the NPCs in it would change, certain props would change (flags, banners, things like that). and barricades would be placed alongside the borders between towns controlled by different factions.

The more territories a faction owns, the more it benefits it's players. An example would be more items available in shops and overall cost at all shops reduced by a small percentage.

Now, this, unlike the 3 faction thing, is actually something you can pull off in a private WoW server, So it's most likely you could pull it off on the official version too.

All it would require is simple database operations to switch towns into specific layouts, and store these into a routine. Town leaders could be made, and scripted to inform the dev team who won the battle without having to directly supervise it. It wouldn't be too complicated, but would still be a lot of work.

There are logical problems/questions to this sort of system though, such as:

• What happens when the capital of a faction is captured?
• What happens when a faction loses?
• Are all regions eligible to be conquered?

There's many ways to handle these issues, but personally here's the set of rules I'd use:

When a race's main city is captured, They're moved to the nearest friendly main city as refugees. When a faction ends up losing all of it's main cities, The faction who eliminated them is declared the winner. This prevents 2 factions working together to eliminate another one, but also makes it so that they won't let another faction get eliminated by the stronger enemy.

When a faction win over any other, it's declared the winner, and the "campaign" is over. So it's reset and starts all over. Players from the winning faction would gain some nice rewards and the faction itself could start the next campaign with an extra territory.

Only bordering regions would be eligible to be conquered, and only 2 from each faction at a time. Each bordering territory would have guard captains (or equivalent), and depending on how many time those are killed will influence the next territory battle. Basically, the battle will take place between the areas with the most activity.

The battles would need more rules to avoid such clusterfucks.

If for whatever reason an area is cut off from allied main cites, it will fall under enemy control. That would make going for the enemy main city in a straight line a risky tactic.

Honestly, the battles for territory is what made Dynasty Warriors Online actually very interesting. There was a feel of camaraderie in the game, and those battle weekends were taken very seriously by some. Rival guilds from the same faction would work together on those weekends to help their kingdom, it was rather amazing.

We're talking about thousands of players frenetically killing each other on 12 vs 12 matches for 2 hours. It was pretty intense and rather fun.