Commander

The first thing I really, really want to point out is that they have been trying to budget way too many things so I'm actually rooting for the following to be cut back: Support Convos: I actually want these to be harder to achieve and cut down a lot. No child units either UNLESS it's an FE4 scenario or a transfer data for a sequel, but not in the scale they do it. The point of Supports is to learn about the characters or give interesting perspectives so I feel they should focus on that and even a funny support is okay. Just quality over quantity because most of Fates supports are bad. Pair-ups: I prefer unit placement being vital over figuring out who goes well with who in dense stances. Fates did an okay job, but I prefer the chess style of moving units on a map and making a bad move costing me. It was a good change, but I think Rescue style is the way to go and keep it that way. The really confusing Weapon Triangles and Weapon Effects from fates: I never want to see weapons that decrease my stats ever again The treehouse/base thingy: Online play is nice, but not at the cost for making a poorly made game or cutting into why we play Fire Emblem in the first place The drunken boulders from PoR and RD: One does not comprehend how these boulders move Things I want to see make a return: PoR/RD's Base: This is imo one of the best features in any game as it removes a bunch of gripes I have from older games. You can buy weapons in there, manage the inventory, sell inventory, do support conversation, add normal conversations like Echoes did, and easily add new features or twists. It's a simple system that works very well. Which leads me into my next topic: Linear map system: You know how Conquest you go from map to map. I want that style to return. Arena Abusing is fine if people complain and I wouldn't be against the Tower From Sacred Stones returning, but I REALLY would rather it be map to map with no other way to train units. Gaiden Chapters: Basically these are chapters that can only be unlocked by completing a certain task on the map. I loved how these worked and missing them isn't a big thing it does benefit you often as well...usually you get a unit out of it. Sometimes Lore. Sometimes good items. Tactician Rank: I'm not really a fan, but I know a lot of people love this and it encourages replayability. Terrain Levels: For non RD players, this is basically Echoes's terrain affects except it's only factored on if you are above or below the enemy as maps have different levels which can be climbed by anyone but Calvaliers. This feature really helped make more use out of what normally would be worthless units like Armors and some infantry and really shines in defense chapters. Shields and Rings Equipment: Echoes did this really well with how you could only equip one. Path of Radiance actually used a similar where units could equip stuff which factored into their growths/Iote's Shield. I really think this should be expanded on if not become a staple Weapon Durability and Con: They keep trying to move away from it, but it's a simple system that works well. It's good ground work to try and add cool features and twists. Ability to Command "Green" Units: I'd love to see a big battle where you can order non playable allies around and even stay out of the battle or move to a certain destination. Bonus Exp: This is my favorite system as you can grind weak units up to play catch up to the other characters or abuse it to maximize stats. It gives incentives to do better on maps or play them faster for greater rewards. Archers and Healers Being able to hit at close combat: Let those healers wack people with their staffs again Now let's talk about the new stuff I'd want to see from FE Switch: More incentives to play Classic Mode: If you've ever played PoR, you actually know that the final boss has a second form if you play on higher difficulties. I would like to see some changes happen in the game if you go into classic mode as a "reward" for playing a harder version of the game. I'm not picky but I honestly wouldn't ever play Classic mode if it weren't forced in the older game, but now I can't do without it. I'd just like a little push to convince people to try it is all and join in on the fun. Casual mode SHOULD stay as it's a gateway for weaker players. A Skill Points tree/costs: I'll admit I really like the skill system introduced in Fates overall. Personal Skills I feel should be a staple as it makes characters that much more unique. This idea is just a way to substitute the Secondary Seals and keep characters within their respective class (aka the 20/20 only level ups). There's a lot of options but the point is making a way for characters be able to learn skills through Scrolls and such which better Skills would cost more, but some classes are locked out of skills. Adding MP to the game: I get it, IS doesn't want to add weapon durability back. Echoes really brought up a very cool concept: Skills at the Cost of HP. Take that concept but make it so that it costs MP which is harder to recover (or next to impossible). Make more use of the graphics and engines: Fates did a lot of things wrong, but one thing they didn't is display what they can do with their gimmicks. I want them to take those resources and instead throw big surprises for us when we least expect it. Maybe when a certain turn count happens, a flood of water whooses in and blocks half the map splitting your army up if you aren't careful. We've seen plenty of map changes in the past, so I'd love surprises like that which aren't dragon veins and a bit more logical. Ship battles: I know people said a pirate FE would be boring but I actually think you could do some interesting things with it. Imagine the lord being able to command his ship. The said ship actually has HP and if it loses all it's HP, Game Over. The goal of ship battles is to sink ships much stronger than yours by board and infiltrating them. Your lord could give orders and even order the ship to move to be able to board or get away from another ship. It's be a hard mechanic to implement but if they did it well, I'd be all for it as it's make ship battle less sitting duck maps with fliers only have super solid mobility. Mirage Sessions: Bringing back old FE units is not something new in the newer games. It'd be interesting to see Summoners be able to summon them under certain conditions (both you and the enemy) and these Mirages have a set number of turns before they disappear. Totally not an excuse for them to make more FE Amiibo A revamped Laguz system: I loved the idea of the Laguz mechanic but what hurt it so much is how little Exp they gained. It'd be so interesting to see them attempt that again but in a way exp is easy to gain for them but they don't overpower Beorcs. New types of Map Missions: I'd love for them to try new map objections beyond even escape and defense chapters. You could do a few things such as stealing an item from a boss who is insanely strong then escaping or a surprise change in map objectives (RD did do those for one really good chapter which tied into the plot). One such example could be a Ryoma/Xander situation, but your goal is to prolong the fight to distract the guards while your allies sneak by to kill the real boss.

I guess I really should update this. I've been doing bug testing now and it has been smooth sailing. There's only been about I want to say 5 critical errors which most were very easy to correct as a lot of it was mostly missing a single letter in the code. I also discovered a game breaking error with the Party System I never noticed before (if you run around as Fero recruiting members it could wipe his team...possibly). I've gone from the beginning of the game all the way up until right before visiting Obsidia Ward. The only thing big to note is that while I have been rewriting and trying to fix errors with text, that is my lowest priority still. I have my gripes with the intro but it works and does its job well enough. I know there were a few punctuation errors but those are so hard to find to go back and change compared to a spelling error or typo. Once I run through up until Florinia, I definitely will be able to get a release, but there's still things in the swamp that could be done and added. That alone could push this back until April if I wanted to hammer it all out. Everything is starting to wrap up though so don't worry about a "Oh this isn't going to get a release until March" statement. There will be a release. There's just two things on the table that I'm not sure will be in there. The first is Create-your-own trainer (mostly because I want applications in PBS format to shave off hours of work on this nightmare) and the other is that new feature.

Okay, we're in a real awkward situation right now. Normally when someone goes silent for 3-6 months, we can naturally assume that they are no longer working on the project or are on a very long hiatus. Going on a hiatus can lead to the cancellation of a project as these fan-games are a massive and draining amount of work. We've recieved no updates since that message which a simple "it's still being worked on" is important to state once in a while. Anyways, I'm not saying to cease all discussion here, but try to keep speculation talk to a minimum. The only thing I really want to avoid telling people is "Hey, the next version of Desolation is coming soon" and in reality it's actually discontinued without anyone even knowing. I'm also stating this for another big reason: At the end of the month, I will be updating the fan-game directory and if I don't see any responses from Caz or proof he is still working on it, Desolation will be placed in the status unknown. That warning does spread out to anyone else who has been completely silent 4-6 months.

Well to actually add to this, Ame actually hinted to the Titania gym battle back in E15 or E16 announcing Dragon's Den. If you look back at the post, you'll see a line teased there that's found reading the signs in Titania's gym.

So now it's time for your weekly update and yes I work on Redux weekly. Anyways, I legit forgot how much text I put in each episode as the total is like 100 or so lines which rewriting them takes a while. For the sake of getting this Episode out sooner, I'm skipping the books in HCHQ (even though it's RHQ technically). I have about 4 events left (2 are very short and the other I may actually already did) before I go into test running stages. I am toning down a few things in the dialogue. Johnathan is a little tamer, but no worry he is still the same guy you know and love. I suppose I can at least show an example: I can't say when, but I can definitely say I should be able to get the E2 version out in February so long as things are kind of smooth sailing.

Sigh...okay give me a minute to explain this as it's not an easy question: All Pokemon have EVs on them bar Shade's Mimikyu who only has 3 HP EVs and 0 in everything else. How it works is the EV amount is the level times 1.5 so anyone who doesn't have fixed EVs will auto generate those EVs until it's like 80 something. Then specific EVs are placed onto Pokemon as Starting with Serra aces recieved adjusted EVs (like 252/252/4 most of the time). Charlotte is the first leader to have all her mons like this and following that bosses outside of leaders start using EV spreads on their aces and second strongest mon. So yes, all leaders have EVs on their Pokemon. It's just the higher up leaders have them more adjusted to "perform" better or be stronger.

So...I didn't get invited into the Beta testing. While my internet connection is bad and fails have the time, I have concrete proof that it was submitted so don't tell me I never sent one. That means this beta test was stacked. Stacked so that people who'd make them look bad didn't get in. I demand a recast of participants to deal with this fake news. #Commander2k20 #FakeNews #Janisacrook #MakeRejuvGreatAgain #Ididntactuallyturninanapplicationbutdidthistomakepeoplewhodidntgetinfeelbetter #MoselyDaBest #BadXenbre

Given I planned the original design, I doubt it, but it definitely is possible to make it toggle, but tedious af to make all those checks.

So just another update. Progress takes me a lot longer as I cut 35-40 hours a week on this mod to 8-20 hours a week. I'm still getting stuff done as the synopsis is done up until E2 (minus conditional statements but those are easy) and the bulk of E1's dialogue edits is almost done. And by dialogue edits, I mostly mean Johnathan's stuff. Seriously, I had no idea how many lines I even made to the point I underestimated how long it was going to take. Hopefully things will look cleaner but...that's not my focus.

I think the biggest problem with these two nations is the fact that the lore and politics got kind of thrown out the window. It's really sad that it was making them so hard to overall compare but here's just a few things Hoshido does have over Nohr: 1. Takumi is one of the best archers of only one time with RD Shinon being his only true rival 2. Ryoma's Sword looks freaking amazing 3. They have Azama 4. There is a more diverse group of races/tribes to look at and analyze 5. While I prefer the classic class system, it was interesting seeing the new classes and their overall performance I do think thieves should keep debuffing knives in future installments 6. The fact you can hear Road Taken 7. The samurai sword drawing swoosh noise 8. A storyline that didn't make you facepalm I can't really think of anything else off the top of my head.

Amaria was nerfed hard as she doesn't even have a good team (or mons she used which were major threats...cough Ludicolo...cough) with the intention of avoiding Amaria from outclassing Saphira or Hardy. Now let's talk about Hardy and Rock types. I think Hardy is going to go for a Trick Room doubles team as most rocks are very slow and Lunatone and Solrock were his aces (which got a buff in Gen VII). I don't really see an HO singles style as that'd be way too predictable and Adrienn and Titania have been real curveballs in fights doing very unexpected strats. I don't think he'll be that difficult because well it's Rock types and no field gives the buff of hell like Fairy Tale did to Steel (aka no bulk buff which he needs). Saphira though will not be using a Pseudo team spam. She used a couple interesting teams and strats so I imagine, given Ame, she'll have a team more in the ballpark of that over trying to be a sweeper team (since Dragonite is near invincible alone). I'm predicting both will be pretty cool and interesting, but not particularly hard since we've got way too much in the player's arsenal and not even a huge level gap can really make a large number of their pool even viable.

So before y'all get into a hype storm expecting something (I checked the original post announcing this to make sure before saying anything) I want to make two comments: 1) February has a duration of 28 days so it could be released at any point during that timeframe. 2) The announcement was made five months ago. We did not get a solid date so this could actually change to march or even april. 5 months is both a long time and a very short amount of time so it's very hard to determine where this project is at which not progress reports to follow on. It's so hard to make an estimation that early on.

Hey, remember when I said I'd update when I got a feature done. Well I did...kind of sort of. So I figured I may as well post today and give an update. Here's one of the two things I was working on last week: So yeah, we have a synopsis of the story so now if you forget everything or want to refresh yourself. So for every major plot point in the game I'll have one of those topics to select to read. I also decided to have it in the protags prospective given that...I don't like silent protags with 0 personality so hopefully you all enjoy that. If you don't, well it's merely one option in the menu so it's all good. Which reminds me... Quit and End game are being deleted from the menu. 0 reason why we even have either of those since there's this thing called the x button which does the same thing.

So how about I actually give you guys and update about what's going on since the next two days I'll be wrapping up schoolwork for the week. That January 31st deadline isn't happening. Sucks but I can only get so much done in so much time. So now I'm beginning QA testing even though I don't have the new features fully made. I have the layout of the one fixed now (which took two hours to find out I forgot a single line of code followed by putting the wrong name for a certain line making the menu go wack. Followed by the fact I can't bloody spell...hooray!) Just to find out I used the wrong calling command. This is what happens when you don't code for a long time folks. There's one bug there but I probably can fix it rather easy. Then there's the other one. If by god's will it works perfectly fine, that'll save me hours of work but I highly doubt it will do just that. Of course that comes after QA testing so I'll be dreading it as it appears more closely. I also only have 1 of the 3 completely finished so I'm merely testing the waters before spending way too much time invested on it. So basically I'm at the done for now point where I test stuff to smooth it out better. I'm going to be rewriting and editing a lot of the dialogue so it's not as jarring and splattered with Typos. E1 has I want to say about 20 events worth of those to check while E2 has 30 I wanna say. In other words, there's a lot of bloody stuff that needs checking. Part of it has to do with Ame completely swapping things around and such and...balance. Let me just go on a rant for a minute here: When it comes to the game, Episode updates usually greatly improve the episode and what made it good only occasionally taking a step back with some small changes. E17 went all out and revamped a ton of stuff. While the AI is an improvement, it doesn't really change the basic formula I use (just makes better choices...at the cost of being more restrictive), but the mon balance and the team changes are an OI! Monotypes are completely gone now which i strongly disagree with. I'm pretty sure Ame would remove the type rule for gym leaders even if it wasn't established in the main games. Dialogue is completely changed due to that such as with Cain and Fern. Guess who is actually putting forth the effort to not only find those lines but actually put them back and make sure they fit? Then there's balance changes. I already said that I'd push Rotom and Ralts back as they are available way too late into the game. Post Luna is literally the point a Pokemon hits obscurity if not completely unusable but that's for Hardcore. If we look at the stats, I'm sure team consist mostly of mons found in the first few areas of the game. So basically we have issues like Bewear (if you have not seen my Rejuv Run, I legit raged at Marianette's Bewear) on top of something odd. Most early game event mons are not static. What this means is that you really can't plan a team out. That reminded me to remove Cincinno. Anyways, I've been working on these events just for them to be less random and removing crappy mons and what I feel are the OP ones. Sure you might get mad at me for doing some, but hey I gave you guys like 10 or so additional Pokemon. Anyways, it's been kind of a swamp to get through this episode. Top that off with my job doubling my hours when I asked them for less. Next update though I hope I'll have something to display on the new stuff. First thing I'll try and post some screencaps and if I get the other thing working I'll make a Youtube video for it as a demonstration.

Let me just make a single comment before saying anything else: You have a total of 2 status moves and all of the mons you gave them are HO minus Tentacruel who ironically only has offensive attacks. I honestly do not get what you are trying to accomplish here. Like I really don't as you have taken 0 bits of any feedback I've said before bar the legendary comment and this is pretty much just a repeat of the last two fights. If it's for fun, fine, but why make the comment devs should choose the levels. It just sounds like you just made half of a fight and expect good feedback from it or devs to use your ideas. Now since I can give feedback, I can say that this team has awful synergy. Let's just start with Metagross. Metagross has solid stats with its weakest stat with is speed. Get a will-o-wisp on it and the player pretty much has won the battle since Melia and you should be able to take down Venam very easily as her only threat is Crobat. Or you can take down Crobat and trick Metagross into OHKOing its partner with EQ. Giving them bad synergy would be a good detail due to the story, but you wanted it to be hard and not look hard. If you wanted a good bad synergy team: Magnezone and Tentacruel lead (they damage each other), Forretress and Nidoking (with EQ), and Mawile and Seviper. Who cares if it's easy. You'd just see how pissed they'd be at each other at the end as they end up killing each other. Crobat is way too frail in doubles to be covering for someone. You'd be better off with Weezing at that point. Fills the same roll, has tanky stats, and carries Will-o-wisp to shut down now guts fighting types. Scizor is the worst member though. Fire types will shut it down instantly. Will-o-wisp shuts down Metagross and certainly shuts down this one as well. Hell, Will-O-Wisp shuts down Mega Mawile who has no swords dance nor Sucker punch both of which are staples on it. So one single tactic shuts down Saki completely and in a battle like this, that's a very bad thing to do. Now let's talk about Venam. Seviper is an awful Pokemon so there's not much you can do about that. Believe me, I've tried making it good. It also makes 0 sense why you'd run Black Sludge over Assault Vest on Tentacruel as you didn't even give it any status moves. It doesn't have anyone to work with to stall meaning it's gonna die faster so...may as well make it as tanky as possible so it can at least live a round. That's all and good, but we're actually missing the elephant in the room: Melia. You're relying on the difficulty to be difficult so long as Melia is bad. I hated the weak partner concept in Reborn to the point I buffed many of them and difficulty was overall better (and you could rely on your partner rather than them being a hindrance). Why not make Melia stronger so that you can make Saki and Venam use more Pokemon and try more tactics rather than a mere "Oh Melia has to suck so HO is the best way to fill that role." And the other than is that this is theory. My own personal belief is that theory is worthless without testing and experience. So why not plug it into the game and test it instead of trying to get feedback (I'm not going to put this into a game and do that for you though). 3 revisions is about the minimum I do for fights (I've done 20 for some...yes 20).

How about we put it this way: can you say a game is bad because it reuses and rehashes old content claiming it is a new game? Reusing elements from old games is important, but there comes a point where it gets old. Pokemon has gotten old for me a long time ago as it's the same game for the past 25 or so years. Are they fun games worth playing? Yes, but I just want to point out one last thing: you said USUM are great/amazing games. Now the best way to describe Pokemon is that it's the CoD of RPGs. It's not THAT bad, but you'll see what I mean. If any other RPG making company tried half the stuff they did, it'd not end well. Simply put, Pokemon is a series that's all about mindless fun. It focuses more on being flashy than actually being good. The overall cast is just hallow shells with a story simply there to fill the role. While mechanics and new gimmicks are fun and usually solid, it feels as if everything we like simply gets thrown away with the next gen (Gym leader rematches, Difficulty modes, contests/movie maker, Battle Frontier) so you can't get that attached to them. Do I even need to go into the two versions and the usual third version mechanic. This is not a continuation but a remake of a game simply because it's easy money. Hell, they even made two versions of it. It's very easy and very cheap to do and is very successful. I get reusing assets when making a sequel game (hell B2/W2 is what I feel should be what a second game in a region should be), but nothing I saw was all that impressive. From what I've seen, this is a supposed enhanced version of a game I didn't like so much I stopped at the tutorial (which is pretty much 1/4th of the game). This is just me crapping on business tactics for them to get more money than they normally would (every person who buys two versions of the game is an extra 40 bucks minus like 2 bucks for the actual game). It's really smart, but not something I agree with. Now I'll merely treat it as a standalone game meaning I won't compare it to anything Pokemon. You have a lot of stuff to collect and mess around with, but the game's overall difficulty doesn't push to learn how to use the system effectively meaning it's designed for non RPG gamers. It's flashy and looks good and is overall fast paced which is a fantastic games for casuals. It doesn't really excel in anything other than a competitive mechanic system. Most gamers are not into that so they won't care so much in that regard. It's a simple and fun experience that lasts 12 to 20 hours on average with a small postgame and a lot of collectibles. It's not a game for people seeking a game with a strong story, while the mechanics are good, the difficulty really doesn't challenge it for skilled RPG players, and due to a handheld the graphics are a bit limited and battle still feel really static despite all the flashiness. Don't get me wrong, I think people can find and really enjoy USUM if they are a Pokemon fan, but we have to not look at this perspective. When you say a game is fantastic, you are saying it's worth picking up and playing MORE than the bulk of the video game library which is countless of games. If you want to try and prove me wrong, by all means try. If you meant fantastic as an addition to the franchise, that's a different topic entirely. But that's not what you are looking for: Just because a game reuses assets doesn't make it automatically bad, but it generally does feel weaker compared to using fresh assets. Reusing assets dampers the experience unless the world is very, and I mean, very well built which Pokemon does not qualify. So I feel it is justified to deduct points because of that and something that should be pointed out. Heck, I deducted points in Trails in the Skies 3rd (probably in my top 10 favorite games of all time) for doing this.

DO NOT QUOTE ME ON THIS WHEN I SAY IT AS IT COULD BE COMPLETELY OFF TARGET! From what I'm seeing with the update and the information provided, these seem to be more in the ballpark of measurements of statistics rather than doing or completing tasks. I could see the HC quests giving AP but the bulk for the expensive prizes would have to be done through stuff like playtime, catching a certain number of mons, and defeating a number of trainers. Think more along the lines of B/W2 instead of Playstation, Steam, and Microsoft Achievements. What you are asking for is a "less is more" type system which I've seen for some steam games like the Trails series. Roughly 30 achievements (usually less), but range in difficulty which some take the entire game to achieve such as my favorite being talking to every single treasure chest. It's amusing due to the fact that they all have a unique message and some are golden (there's one joking about the long development time and how it extended further). They're very easy to keep track of and very doable to do them all. A system like that isn't viable here merely due to the trading system. A shop with infinite and good items needs a lot of opportunities to AP grind to work. Quantity is much more important than quality here. Now I'm not saying that this system will be bad at all but I feel like it's going to be a the Battle Frontier but with tasks instead of battles. When you treat it like that, it's a pretty good system and can work very well. I'm sure a lot of people will like the system as it is and will give better feedback compared to me. Seriously, I hate the voltorb flip stuff (which you have to do for completionists), I really was not a fan of the Battle Frontier or any of the high competitive areas where you grind of BP, and I'm not a fan of games with 100s of achievements (steam has made me start liking the achievement thing more). To top it all off, I thought the achievement thing in B/W2 was kind of meh and there were way too many coins. I know I'll probably dislike this no matter what, and that's okay as it doesn't make the game awful or any worse since ultimately it's optional. It's just best to back off of it for now until the version release. If you really don't like it, there's probably not much that could be done so that you do like it (meaning it's best to save your breath), but if you're indifferent or only find some parts you enjoy, that'll likely be better feedback to help improve it. That was kind of rambly, but the point is that I do think it's a little bit too early to really judge and make suggestions without experiencing it first hand. Actually, I just thought of something. Why was a shop created instead of merely giving prizes based on how much AP has been acquired? I feel that would remove the factor of balancing AP so you don't give too little or too much. (Sorry, modding has given me either a ton of paranoia or speculating worse case scenarios to avoid them as much as possible).

Sigh...I really don't see why you'd argue that players who picked the more enjoyable path to make it unenjoyable later on in the story just for the sole purpose of making both paths "fair". That's never a good argument to cut content. Anyways, I'm pretty sure the story will revolve around this fact or will at a later point: I do have a feeling that people are gonna regret helping Taka stay in Meteor. After all, there are fates far worse than death.

Sorry for the late response but uhhh...That's Sigmunds strategy which I've been debating a long time what to do with him. A lot of the upcoming bosses actually I have to make a few decisions on what to do. Also, Julia definitely feels in the just right for all the fights for me. Singles got a little bit easier, Doubles now functions, and Master serves its role. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So for a little update, I guess the best way to put it is that I don't know when I'll have E2 done because QA testing has been odd. My computer updated and certain things didn't save but others did and suddenly old things are missing so it's been a headache trying to redo things that should have already been done but I think I'm almost at ground zero in that department. All that is theoretically is left is the new features stuff. I am upset I had to redo the intro because I did spend a long time working on that trying to align it up and sync it just right. Anyways, the one feature which is merely just a convenient tool than useful I might delay until E3 because E3 is probably the easiest episode of them all. E2 is a bit of hell due to all this transferring mumbo jumbo (I've been focusing solely on Reborn City stuff) and I have to implement new stuff. I have a temporary settup and design for but I'm definitely going to redo it and clean it up as I know how to cut down 90 or so lines if it needs to be done through events. When I have it working and it's functional, I will release more info on it but not until then. And talking about E3, that one might come early due to my move (which is now late February) as the focus of that one was basically fleshing out and fixing stuff. There is one feature I'm going to try and push and release for E3 then E4 will introduce another feature. Now I gotta go back to dealing with this complicated stuff (and pray is works). Oh yeah, Monday and Tuesday are kind of my dedicated to working on modding days since the other 5 days are purely for school stuff (gotta love workloads) so I'll try to do weekly updates on Tuesday unless I don't accomplish anything. And if you want a funny story, I have no idea how or why Johnathan disappeared from Julia's Gym. Seriously, it's like this mod is trying to be unplayable at this point. No idea how something you implemented in a previous version just disappeared like that.

Number 2 kind of helps relieve a lot of my concerns. It's a relief seeing mons not be a prize in this especially given the whole Jackpot starter situation (and to a degree the slot machine). Also kind of bummed there aren't missable achievements. I kind of wanted one called "Not even death can kill me" for defeating Madame X in Blacksteeple.

I guess I'm going to be Mr. Negative here (at this point that's what I'm famous for) and bring up a strange piece of criticism. First off adding the concept of achievements in the game is a really good idea and a very nice feature. My gripe is actually about taking a step beyond and doing something with them. Just hear me out for a minute because this will take time to explain: So back in the older console gen days, games didn't have achievements. They had something we like to call collectibles which some got ridiculously hard to get and collect (sometimes from superbosses). What did these items do? Nothing. Yes, nothing at all. Sometimes they had a function, but their purpose is merely proof of success. And it's really cool to brag talk about how you beat a difficult superboss. Now let's jump into the achievements era. Achievements overall serve no purpose in games. That's a cold hard fact. Sure Xbox sometimes gave points or whatever but they are completely worthless. So why on Earth do we like them? Simple enough, it's fun to complete them and it's a cool shiny thing to show off. You don't have to do them but admittedly it is kind of fun to complete the harder ones just for the heck of it (I don't go out of the way to do them). It's a nifty concept and since it holds no significant value you don't feel pressured to complete them. If you haven't figured it out, you will in a minute. So for doing these things we get points in which we can exchange for items exclusively for a shop. In a sense, you are forcing people to use and work for a system with the original intention of being a mere little collectible (achievements are that). Most of those items aren't the end of the world so I wouldn't be griping about it. But then the statement that there are super good things in it. Basically, you're forcing people to use this system. While in a sense it is optional, people like me who don't aim for getting achievements now are being forced to do so since we like collecting items. You'd also have to be very conservative with your points and not use them if there's a finite number. I'm not really sure on that point though. And that is all. If you want the tl;dr version: Why give a purpose to something built around not serving a purpose?

I suppose I can throw my cap in and explain what I meant earlier (I'm getting a little busy due to school so I don't always have time to respond). Personally from my standpoint adding a Blissey/Audino trainer is a bad move as it's merely addressing a problem instead of fixing it. Addressing the problem is merely accepting that something is an issue. You can add stuff to the game in order to help reduce the problem and issue that resides like a trainer with good exp, but the problem still exists. I know some RPGs give rare monsters who drop really rare items, tons of gold, and exp but in modern RPGs it takes strategy to figure out how to take them down. These are bells and whistles that should be added to make grinding more enjoyable. Now we get into what the problem is. You say grinding takes too long, but everyone is skipping over the elephant in the room. Grinding takes too long because combat is boring. I said it. It's boring. Add small amount of exp yields (post E15 is a bit ridiculous) and pathetically easy battles and it just all stacks together. The random encounters also really doesn't help (but it's a necessity for bigger games like Reborn due to heavy resource using). This is a really detrimental factor to Reborn as it's heavily focused on exploration with the desert being the key highlight on top. Boring combat and big areas really don't go well together. It's sad because there's so many really well made areas in the game that people have 0 incentives to try and work and explore those. I really hate saying that as well. Audino trainers will not resolve this issue. It's also hard to give suggestions as it grinds down to what someone wants to do but there's things that could be centered upon: -promoting the need to use different mons and swapping them up (right now you can beat the game once you settle with a static team) -overall higher exp yields to reduce time needed to grind (random trainers, wild mons, rebattable trainers, earlier exp share, lucky egg, etc) -a more structured and obvious soft level cap system (Adrienn is like 72-75, Titania is 77-78 as well as Amaria leaving a 12 level cap from the hard) -better grinding spots (remember when Unknown was a best method of grinding) Designing things around those won't make a combat system less boring, but it helps tackle the actual monster instead of brushing around and ignoring it. Jasper Ward is one of the best grinding spots and overall best designed areas to take notes from because there's a healing machine right where you can encounter Beedrill who give good exp.