Commander

Alright so I'll probably make a few of these topics as writing is a fun little thing, but it can be a bit daunting on what and where to begin. Those might all be in one place, but I feel this one deserves it's own topic as it's one of the more important ones. Anyways here we go: So writing is one of those simple things with zero rules, but due to implied rules is overly complicated to figure out where your boundaries and strengths lie. So the obvious answer is that you want to ask people how good of a writer you are. I really like being an anonymous writer as people are more willing to be honest which is a good thing about communities and writing communities. A friend might just say it's good to not hurt your feelings or he's not an experienced writer. Why Feedback is so important When reading a story online that you like, the number one thing you can do to hurt them is not comment at all. The second worst thing you can do is say something along the line: "I liked the story. Will keep reading." Those two things are just as bad, if not worse than: "Ermagawd! You're story is so bland. Couldn't you write deeper characterz or sometingz!" Now that you're done looking at me with a funny face, I'll explain myself. Saying nothing is almost no different than saying you didn't like the story. It more or less means you didn't care for it and don't feel like it's worth the effort to say anything. Silence is the worst thing for a writer as it fills them with doubt and kills their self esteem and motivation. Short one lined comments are a tiny bit better, but not that much. To me, it feels like I failed as a writer for not getting you engaged to say anything more than you liked it. Why did you like it? If anything, it could be that you didn't like it and wanted me to feel better. You don't have to be a critic or even really good at giving feedback to really motivate a writer. A little bit goes a very long way. I love it when people give me a small paragraph and reasons why they liked it as it makes me want to do more. Seriously, 3-4 sentences to the writer goes a long way and more is better. As a writer, I've gone back through both criticism and feedback many times when I feel down or I am struggling to write. Both are just so important and make me feel like I'm not wasting my time. I suppose I can give a comment someone gave to me a while back to show what I mean:

Let's just look at the bigger picture before we start throwing things here and there about the problem getting worse. First off, people are going to come and go from an RP as we all have real lives and eventually get less time to do activities such as RP especially ones that have to be survelianced daily to the point people my just honestly forget and eventually grow bored of it. This is the part that nobody can really control and you can't expect RPers to stay around forever as writing in general takes a lot of commitment and acceptance it's not perfect (why do you think writer's sometimes call what they write crap...even if it is golden?). I think the bulk of the issue is that people just aren't that interested in RPs like they were a while ago. It's kind of like the fan-game Expose. There was a large boom and now like most of those games are out of comission like I said they'd be. I even told a number of people that this is a huge commitment and needs a lot of work which at some points might get boring or tedious. The roleplay section has also kind of hit that stage. We've lost quite a number of really good and interesting RPers as the above paragraph explained and it just can't be helped. With fewer writers coming into the RP sections, this place is eventually just going to die. That's just going to have to be accepted if new RPers don't find their way here. There are a few things you can do to attract more people: 1. The first and foremost is to let the creative writing grow and florish. We have all we need to let that place grow, but due to the lack of feedback, it's sort of in a stalemate as feedback is very important to help writer's grow and feel motivated. I was originally stepping out of the RPs due to someone needing to be there which is half the reason I dropped so many RPs (along with the lack of motivation) because I've been with a writing community before and I know how it feels to get nothing out of people reading it. Getting a brutal, but honest comment is so much better than just empty or no comments at all. It's just common sense that if they creative writing section grows, the RP section will grow as well since it's more or less a collab of writers. This alone would allow RPs to flow more smoothly as you have dedicated writers compared to random people. 2. There should be more RPs that appeal to what's trending on the site right now. If there's a time to do a fire emblem or Pokemon RP, now's the time to do it. Pokemon will always attract people around here as that's half the reason we joined. Hence why they're the biggest and long lasting. This'll draw more new people in compared to something they've never heard about such as the Fates series. Fire Emblem would be another good one as quite a number of the community enjoys it here and it's simplistic enough to create a grand adventure people can interact in. I had issues when doing mine, but I seriously do recommend making one as it appealed to quite a number of people. I still have people who mention my old FE RP if you don't believe me. Anyways, you get the idea now. 3. Keeping it simple. I mean I love Stratos's really long and well detailed RPs and even posts, but they are sometimes intimidating. Even for writers, I cannot stress it enough that simplifying and overly complex idea is not a bad thing to do even if it doesn't give you what you want. I'll admit I'm a bit jealous of Startos's ability to write like that, but I've figured out over time what works for me and trying to be him would only hurt my writing. Ironically, we're trying to do that to some RPers on here with those 1-line posts. We don't have enough of the people we're looking for (aka writers) so a reward system for making quality posts should motivate people to go away from that. I mean even comments about what a certain user RP'd would do wonders as I said earlier, feedback motivates people to continue. Motivation is needed to write. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- I kind of got a little rambly on the third point, but all of that should make a bit of sense. I mean you can keep throwing ideas around and around even original ones, but right now the RP section has hit a low point. Writing is always about taking risks and even falling flat on your face. Once you remove the risks, aka trying to force rules on people, it can get boring. I'm the type of writer who wants to encourage people to dance along the line of the rules. I'm not even against them bunnying or god modding. I tend to be the type of person willing to screw with another person's plans even if it ticks them off a bit because obviously, they are going to be forced to rethink their whole plans and even may want to get back at me. Why do you think I wasn't afraid to do things with Henry most people wouldn't? Obviously, there are going to be boundaries that people shouldn't break. Bunnying and God modding are frowned upon because of how unfair it is. Those are things that you should put on the backburner though. Instead, think about why you joined and got into RPing and why you don't want this place to die. Focus on that when trying to get people to join and finding newcomers. RPing is about having fun and it's not everyone's cup of tea which is why people leave. If you want people to stay, you have to let them have moments like you did instead of focusing always on rules and things people do wrong.

I'm going to be brutally honest, I have to put down revelation after what I saw chapter 14 was as it's the icing on the cake. I just can't do it. I'm sorry, but I was willing to tolerate it up until they just ruined one of my favorite maps. I honestly was excited to go into this path, but it's just birthright 2.0 but really, really butchered. I mean Birthright didn't have the best maps, but I wouldn't say any of them were terrible...except 23. Chapter 23 can go die in a hole. I enjoyed Birthright as a whole this though...I tried to force myself to like it, but wow, just wow. I'm going to put this in a spoiler but I really do suggest reading it before consider buying Revelations if you haven't already: I mean the story isn't that bad, but my god is this the horrible gimmick path. I haven't managed to do any of the crossover supports, but a lot of the character just felt...a bit empty in the story. Like it's literally character joins you, end of their arc kind of bad. Even the royals joining feels a bit shallow so far. Maybe it's just me being spoiled by how well done the maps were in conquests...and walking into this mess.

TBH, the Shadow Claw thing has to do with no field effect AI otherwise it'd just spam Earthquake when Shadow Punch is a little bit stronger. The AI thinks it'll only do 90 BP when in reality it'd do 113 BP which is greater than 100...though right now it's doing like 136 BP. Even though it should totally be able to learn Shadow Claw since it's supposed to be the Grim Reaper. I'm glad you found Shade challenging. That fight took bloody forever to revamp, but if I had a dollar for every leader people said was so easy...I'd be able to buy a video game off of it. Anyways, I'm aware about the Kiki level thing and am considering giving Shade something else like Mismagius to take care of the Dark types, but then I'd have issues with electric types again. Like Serra, Shade is a rock in a hard place because his field is so exploitable and I had to nerf Gengar's speed a little bit or it'd sweep entire teams easily. I'm not like Reborn and say Gengar is too strong and make it physical. A lot of leaders are based on their Episode 7 teams as that's when I first played. What I think I'll do for Kiki is increase Shade's level cap by 10 and pretty much make Kiki level 45 range (with a bit of a Samson treatment) and Aya in the level 50 increasing everyone up until Radomus by 5. Since Noel's badge wouldn't increase the cap, there wouldn't be such wide gap between the player and Radomus's levels. It's either that, leave it alone, or decrease everything before Kiki by 5 levels. I'm a bit against the latter option as the charm of hardcore comes from that five levels in the early part of the game.

As for chapter 23 it was salt to the wound when Elise learned Rally Resistance down the line. REALLY COULD'VE USED THAT. 25 definitely is a pain to deal with and I've never seen Xander go down that fast before...of course nobody could take on 20 or so attacks like that and live. And pyrr, you should be glad you didn't take on Forrest's Paraloge because... As for Leo, mine fell behind, but seeing as a certain maid couldn't keep herself from being critted, I said screw it and put Leo back on the team and he caught up. I finished Conquest...and people make the story sound much worse than it was. I wouldn't say it's the greatest, but it definitely fit the role of being tied into Revelations. As for Revelations...oh boy where do I go with this one. I'll keep it in the spoilers to avoid spoiling anything.

...I still don't know how you guys are able to play this on lunatic, but chapter 23's boss scarred the living hell out of me. I forgot to grab the chests, but I don't need the money (I still have like 30,000 gold anyway), but I do feel bad about missing the boot...though I have two or three in my inventory. But yeah here's a summary of chapter 23 on hard: It's a really good chapter...compared to an annoying chapter that follows which I'll have to beat. Luckily I have the perfect army for this situation.

Probably, but if you're really that bothered by not getting the exp share, download hardcore which is somewhere on that topic in the fan-game expose (I know the link in the last or second to last page is the current release), walk up to the grand hall by techie johnathan, pick up the exp share (and probably the lucky egg), then just go back to playing regular reborn. Though the game is paced so that you shouldn't need to grind unless you add another Pokemon onto your team. As for Fly, in Episode 16 and don't play with it.

I feel like even though it's been a month I can actually jump in and answer this. The difficulty thing was based on quite a few different things and while it's true some leaders were harder than others, they weren't that marginally difficult compared to now. I know for Hardcore I did try to restore a few leaders back to their original difficulty such as Aya who actually isn't that much different than her pre-field version. I believe the no field effect teams had overall stronger pokemon which is why some people say their better or harder along with a better AI system since Episode 14 made everything go back to square one. The field effects did make other Pokemon, who normally are pathetic, much stronger allowing for them to do more damage and be more threatening such as Shelly's bug types. Though I will admit that I myself am a bit bias and prefer many of the axed leader Pokemon such as Julia's Chinchou, Kiki's Scrafty, Aya's Muk, and especially Serra's Mamoswine as they were things that forced me to think outside the box. Anyways, I feel that this argument would be made again if Reborn's leaders were made tougher in the official release in which the weaker players would call them being too tough causing them to stop playing. Reborn is much more polished now than it was back then and I actually would encourage people to stick more to the newer episodes as the older episodes are mostly veteran nostalgia than anything.

Since you probably don't want the programmer's answer, it only starts to rain right before reaching Shelly which I made a joke a trainer let his Politoed run wild in the gym. I couldn't get the AI to use Rain Dance, but that thing will be removed unless I get a lot of requests to keep it (I'll eventually make a thread sooner or later asking quite a few questions on a newer Reborn mod for E16). And yes to your other two questions. I really only did that to keep people from burning the field...because you clever people found out about pledge moves making it an easy win. Just a warning, I think Masquerain carries Energy Ball. I can't remember its exact moves but Scald, Air Slash, and Struggle Bug I'm sure are its other three moves. I thought this through very carefully.

(I really need to check on this more) One of my rules of thumb is that I'm not touching anything regarding the main story including lines and animations. There are three reasons: 1) I have to completely redo everything I do for each version release so the more I add, the more that needs to be redone next episode and 2) I want to keep the story as close to the original when possible. The third reason is in case I add a second additional difficulty to the mod in which changes like that would be quite a hassle to do when they don't impact the story that much.

To be honest, I generally don't really get bothered by costumes since they are optional...even though I never really use them. It's kind of like Xenoblade X's fashion armor where I pretty much just used the normal armor to keep their outfits the same (except Cross). Though on the latter side, sometimes people get tired of looking at the same outfit and like to look at something else when they want to...especially if it can be silly (cough Ziggy's swimsuit cough). Different people are different tastes. What I can say is that keeping things always serious dampens the affect of the whole thing. Most people use humor before or after a serious moment to kind of help lighten the mood in an attempt to make it more impactful. A very talented writer is able to make someone laugh and cry at the same time. The most obvious example is a joke right before a tragic death, but that's not what it really means. It means to balance the dark moments with the lighthearted ones so that both are impactful. It's actually common knowledge that sometimes people forget about when their writing becomes darker or trying to force lighthearted humor when a simple happy moment would suffice.

Toshiro's Group (if we're still considering it a group right now) When Citrine saw the man reading her profile, she was honestly quite surprised she even had one. She assumed Henry put it together otherwise she'd probably be given a couple funny looks for being a lone wolf. That didn't matter as she looked up to the man ready to ask her question. "There's just been this little thing that's been bothering me ever since I even got to Ymora. I come from a region where Pokemon are considered scarce so we pretty much just use whatever we can find and focus since most of the Pokemon are nothing outside of natural born wild Pokemon. I suppose it's simply a world where we try to better ourselves as a trainer vs breeding from what I feel is like merely the bettering of your own Pokemon, but I really hope that isn't the whole point. Based on this, I just can help but ask: what is the point of breeding?" The Skitty, watching the girl, hadn't really thought about it until now, but she was a house cat turned into a fighter. The Rotom in the room stopped paying attention and stared at all the machines. He had no idea what any of them were talking about...and it had little to do with tech. Techie may not have been able to touch the machines, but nothing was stopping him from looking at them...even if it could possibly turn everyone into a panic attack. He darted around the place looking at anything interesting. Rosie, on the other hand, finally was able to piece it all together. No wonder why that one battle seemed so off now. She figured Citrine pretty much had no confidence in herself. If they were going to battle in a tough fight again, she definitely was going to make sure to fix that. Ain't no way a veteran like her was going to go down in a lame way like that.

Oh Pyrr you're going to have a fun time on chapter 20. It's one of my favorites due a certain gimmick. But yeah, 17 is just a prelude to what's coming up.

In reality the story is actually all three games with Birthright being the first. The reason I say Birthright is the first part of the story is because there's really not that much explained in it and it's more or less a whole stop the evils of Nohr in a nutshell. The maps aren't bad, but it's definitely the easiest of the three paths. They also touch on a few little things, but due to certain events and lines, the ending just doesn't feel right. You could say it's a false happy end similar to Drakenguard. Conquest is the second part of the story. A lot more gets explained and they expand on many points that were lightly hinted at in Birthright's storyline. Since I played Birthright first, I completely understood quite a bit of what was going on and in fact, I am enjoying it a lot more than Birthright. The game expects you to play Birthright first, despite them saying you can play in any order, as it builds off of the first path and focuses mostly expanding on the characters such as Azura whose story is only brushed on in the first path. Obviously, the ending isn't going to be great and feel similar to Birthright's as not being quite right. They also do go into a little bit on those invisible "hogs" which they don't do in Birthright. Revelation is obviously going to be the true happy ending. I have only played chapter 6, but from basic knowledge it'll likely tie up all the loose ends and explain the truths behind this whole mess. Conquest hints at a few things that will be down this path similar to how Birthright hinted at Conquest events though I don't feel like sharing in case it'd spoil a thing or two. Now that I've finished Chapter 22 in Conquest, there's something I feel like mentioning which is kind of a spoiler:

...I totally didn't make the mistake of thinking Pyon clicked the deez nutz option. I clicked yes to most of the options, though the second one I feel is very situational. I don't think there's a perfect system for every RP and some would probably be hurt by it. My vote would be more or less to consider using any of the systems rather than saying I'd actually use them. And you already know I'll participate in an RP like this if you make it.

Elfen, I'm willing to bend the rules a little bit and add Giga Drain to your Treecko as it's an honest mistake that can't be fixed too easily (just PM me your save) however, I will devolve it into a Treecko again in the process as that's the only way to make this more or less fair. (Unless you're like level 40 which in that case you should probably already have a ditto).

Oh this is easy considering I had to redo some Pokemon for Hardcore: Julia - Voltorb. Yeah, the explosion gimmick would work way better with Magnemite who is equally as threatening especially at that point. I get why Ame didn't include it though. Florinia - Cottonee. It's just bad and kind of meh even as a Whimy. The rest of her team, believe it or not is pretty decent. Corey - Croagunk. Even with Sucker Punch, I've never even seen this thing get a turn on me...ever. Shelly - Volbeat. That thing is bad ngl. If it had a better special attack things would be different. Shade - Doublade...Again, never even seen this thing get in an attack. Kiki - Believe it or not, I have no complaints about her team. It's pretty solid all around though Machamp is borderline Aya - Another solid team...though I feel her Nidoqueen really makes the fight perhaps too easy compared to the old iron wall fight Serra - Crygonal. Not a bad Pokemon, but not a great one either Noel - Wigglytuff...enough said. Radomus - Gallade...for AI reasons. Luna - Pawinard. Great Pokemon. Horrible lead. Samson - Lucario. Works for Kiki...not for Samson (though it's better than Chespin) Charlotte - Nothing. I mean quite literally nothing. Her team is just that solid though I suppose I'd consider Typhlosion to be axed. Terra - Claydol, but there's not much on her team that isn't pretty good. Just meh movesets. Ciel - Skarmory. I'd have to say Talonflame. It's just not that threatening this late in the game. That's for the one Pokemon I want to get rid of, but I doubt that's the kind of response you were looking for. I already put restrictions on myself to make the game more difficult because after one playthrough, you kind of know what to expect so you can prepare for it. I prefer something being more difficult as it makes victory so much sweeter which is why I would always push for more challenge before nerfing (cough Serra cough). If you want to know that one pokemon I struggled with for each leader it'd be (based on my first playthrough):

After working with field effects for a long while, I can really just say that they're a gimmick and not really needed to make great Pokemon battles or a great game. And trust me, I've had plenty of AI wars with modding Reborn and finding about 40 exploits in the process so I do suggest you know what you're doing for those higher difficulties. Still my favorite was the whole Derpbot (as I call her) using Nature Power - Sand Tomb on flying types. I'm also so glad you didn't lose all of that work. Whenever that happens to anything I write, it really kills my motivation to keep working on it and sometimes have to take a week off. I'm also going to guess you made a backup after that mess happened so that you don't have to redo it all over again in case it happens again.

Well welcome to Reborn. As for the map...it kind of is being slowly implemented as time goes on in the game. The areas like the dessert used to be what it originally looked like (and a ton of areas were added over time including the mountains like where Croagunk is found). As for the city, I agree and disagree with that. The city concept itself is neat with all its little events, but it caused a ton of lagging problems making it a double edged sword. As for the whole not having fan favorites at the beginning, there were more at the start originally but about 90% of the teams carried those Pokemon and nothing else which is why they were axed. It's similar to a nuzlocke where you might not get what you want but that's where the fun is. Try using something you wouldn't normally use. Reborn provides a lot of great mons even as early as episode 1 such as my legedary Arbok in my original run, but the difficulty is based upon what options you have. Even for the Hardcore mod, I made sure to make sure nothing was so difficult it couldn't be overcome with strategy and skill. And about that Ditto-ceus, that's supposed to be an impossible battle which will affect an event in the future of the game whether or not you win it. As you've probably seen, I generally do prefer teams over a single super powerful Pokemon as teams are usually more difficult and harder to exploit compared to something like the Garchomp. The one gripe I will say is about grinding. It's not so bad nowadays, but grinding did get a bit tedious when trying to add a new mon. I originally was part of the whole, you have to grind to get attatched to your pokemon, yet that went 180 and I added an exp share and lucky egg at the very beginning of the hardcore mod. There are just a few areas where it's a problem. Reborn tried to retaliate this by nerfing some of the leaders like Radomus's levels, while what I did was a 5 level shift. Neither of us quite got it right as I have Players being overleveled for Kiki's episode, and a bit underleveled for Radomus while I remember a lot of people were saying a few leaders in Reborn were way too easy now. In other words, levels are screwed up a bit.

I finished the Birthright path a long while ago and I can honestly say that it's alright. Any Fire Emblem fan could see most of that story coming a mile away, but it was still enjoyable. TBH, I prefer Conquest's story as they actually went out of their way to explain all of that stuff they left out in Birthright and a lot of it is cool and interesting. You also get the better sword (and stronger units) so much earlier. Birthright's maps are a little better than awakening's, but there are a few maps a despise. Chapter 21. I HATE THAT MAP! Here's why: Believe it or not, I feel chapter 23 is worse due to a certain...annoying thing slowing down your progress. I will say there are some good maps as Chapter 8 is one of my favorite desert chapters. I just felt the whole thing really wasn't balanced or done well enough compared to conquest. I'm on chapter 17 of conquest and can I say that there isn't a single map I despise in this version...yet. I think my least favorite is Arthur's son's paralogue which isn't even that bad. Chapter 10 was a lot of fun bringing back good old defend chapters. I feel each chapter gives you a reason to get your butt moving, but not to rush in giving it a nice balance. Conquest players aren't missing out on that much from birthright.

XD You think Abra is bad now, you should've seen it when it was Level 75. So many people said it was too strong. As for the Meteor battles, I really beefed them up in the Tanzan base as you don't get too much exp for them. As for El, he only has Arceus right now, but I'll likely add Smeargle and Snorlax to his team (along with a couple full restores) to make him a bit more difficult...unless we actually face him in battle in E16. As for Radomus, I'm looking at your bug options...and I'm a bit worried for you. I'd rather him be pitifully easy for you than for a worse case scenario here. You could say he got a bit of the Shelly treatment where I really buffed up his Pokemon while getting trick room to work. (Looks at Radomus's team) Yeah...I might nerf his...and probably Samson's teams a little bit. I'm also glad you found Noel to be decent as I had a horrible time testing his team. Imagine getting wiped because of Mincinno flinch hax. I'll vote for Murkrow because you need to bring in the good Pokemon (though Dark Types should be able to take care of most of his Pokemon).

Toshiro's group "Well, I guess that's that," Citrine shrugged. It didn't bother her which person she had to meet up with, mostly because she really didn't know that much about any of them. She then recalled a scolding from Henry for not doing research on what likely was a chance to meet some very important people...then it came to her. There was always something bothering her, but she headed up to Alastair with a more serious look on her face. "Uh sir, do you mind if I ask a question before we start on the Pokemon hunt?" For once, the Skitty and Rotom looked at each other with the same puzzled look. Neither had any idea what exactly was going on. Then the Skitty remember a very small detail, that she didn't think would come up now of all times. The Rotom then looked away trying his hardest to restrain himself. This place was a Rotom's dream world...outside of the kitchen. It was a war between obeying and having the time of his life, but he kept himself under control hoping they'd be outside again soon.

...You used MS Paint. That's your problem. No, I'm dead serious. Whenever you save something through MS Paint it automatically generates a background regardless of whether or not you want it to. For a hack, you have to embed the image, but for an RPGmaker game like Reborn itself, just use a tool like GIMP to get rid of the background. That's literally all there is to it and you can look up a tutorial pretty easy to get rid of it. GIMP is also free so no worries there.