[New Pokemon Like MMO: Temtem]

On 2/13/2020 at 8:16 PM, wcv said:

Meanwhile doing a quick google search for TemTem bans shows they banned a bunch of people for cheating, and nothing about overly draconian TOS or banning people for criticizing the game. So far I’m leaning more toward the counter argument rather than your claims, which seems to amount to “people should be able to say anything they want and never suffer consequences”. Which frankly is a terrible policy for any community, let alone a game trying to build a sustainable one.

I've seen a ban for a tame "attack helicopter" joke, though I misplaced the screenshot. My point was that "Community Managers" have every reason to lie about the state of the community, mainly to keep being employed or to save face. If you want examples I'm sure Blizzard has made headlines enough recently that looking shouldn't be too taxing.

Temtem doesn't have a sustainable community. Even large series with decades of good will and steady sales have issues maintaining MMOs, and launching one focusing an already ingrained fanbase goes beyond shooting yourself in the foot.

Temtem has no media presence, no merchandising, nothing aside game that is on a hard timer.

 

On 2/14/2020 at 2:08 AM, ShogokiX said:

With the removal of RNG based elements like evasion, critical hits, or min/max rolls, the fight become more skill based than in Pokémon as well.

I really love how the first time I heard "it's more skill based because no RNG" was accompanied by a clip of a Temtem freezing both enemies. That's so much better than having to weigh the risk of a powerful but inaccurate move.

The other thing is that less variance there's much less actual on the fly skill and it becomes more mindless flowcharting. It devolves into pure Rock-Paper-Scissors, and becomes decided by whoever has a team that happens to have an advantage over the other.

Pokémon itself suffers from that a fair bit, but Temtem's battle system looks like a lot of fights will boil down to "Did my opponent do the correct thing, or did they muck up and hand me a win." or "I won due to having more consistent type advantages."

 

13 hours ago, Johnny_Nevori said:

Good Luck with that.

Going to snip this a bit, and clear up a common misconception. TPCI has next-to-no hand in the development of the games, despite how secretive the behind the scenes is. TPCI basically works as a manager, making sure everything is on schedule and leaving the details to their respective heads. Aside from some mandates (every gen needs __ archtype for the marketing departments, __ number of mythicals for movies/staggered releases, etc.) they would likely leave the games up to Gamefreak so long as they hit deadlines. Sword & Shields negative reception is likely making them rethink those policies now.

 

Now for some of the choicer quotes.

"Haven't added all typing combos"

Trying to force typings ends up with a lot of bad fakemon that you can see on Deviantart and Twitter and the like. Even with Gen 8 suffered under Turner being unfit for art director, it still had more good designs than most Fakemon projects.

 

"even with all the money they have and get every year and all the new technology, that they simply could not do certain things, which have been done in other games and mods/hacks"

Gamefreak's active dev staff is fairly small, and it's likely they aren't getting the lion's share of profits either. Marketing is often a gigantic money sink for these sorts of things, and investing in things like the anime, movies, various other promotional materials to keep cultural significance also isn't cheap.

 

"Yet everyone would rather stick up for The Pokemon Company intentionally"
Nobody here is defending Sword & Shield, I personally am just exasperated by watching Temtem commit a lot of obvious, amateur mistakes that they should know better.

It's seeing someone burn his hand on some fire and walk away, then another guy decides to backflip into the flames a few years later in an attempt to get attention. I would work on that metaphor more, but this post is already getting too long.

[New Pokemon Like MMO: Temtem]

18 hours ago, ShogokiX said:

You shouldn't believe everything that people are saying.....There are only 2 kinds of people who got banned up to now: Those who sabotaged the game by hacking, exploiting, and DDOS attacks, and those who live under the illusion that being an asshole is the right way to communicate with other people on the forums.

And you shouldn't blindly listen to assumed authority. There have been cases of wide spread senseless bannings in an attempt to contain negative feedback, even outside of MMOs. I would bring up some examples but I hardly feel like taking this thread more off course.

 

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And i can't blame Crema (the devs) for not wanting those people around. As long as you play by the rules you won't get banned. And no, saying things like "This game and it's devs are a piece of shit because feature X or Y that I WANT is not in the game..." is no critique, that is just rude. And the guys who got banned for that are now claiming they are innocent. Go figure.....

"Asshole" is extremely ill-defined. There are forums where that quote, mild as it is, would get you a ban. Giving moderators a free pass to power trip as long as they say "toxic/salty/asshole/etc." is an extremely poor system.

 

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The people who got banned so far all deserved the ban for their actions. And of course they are whining now, claiming to be innocent victims who got ripped off of their money. But let's be honest: They had the option to use their brains and NOT violate the TOS for both the game and the forums.....but they chose to be a pain instead. Instant Karma!

Give me 40$ and then let me punch you, by your own blind victim blaming mindset you'll deserve it.

 

41 minutes ago, Godot said:

That’s what I expect.  Most people we ban here do similar things.

“They banned me for having different Opinions!"

Saying that you shitmod doesn't really excuse others shitmodding. There's also the matter of having different standards for something free vs something paid. Hard to keep your MMO active and running if rumors, and screenshots, of nonsensical bans keep potential paying customers away.

 

In all likelyhood Temtem flubbing it's launch will be forgotten fairly fast, but it won't get enough of a playerbase to keep it going in the long term. It doesn't have much for artists and the like to latch onto, very limited gameplay-related reasons to keep playing and already has quite the negative reputation.

[New Pokemon Like MMO: Temtem]

12 hours ago, Alisae said:

Pokemon hasn't seen a rival that has motivated me in years.

Temtem's rival is a spoiled brat that I could not care for.

The team in this game I kinda couldn't care about and I don't think any team was as interesting as Team Plasma (btw I didn't play the gen 5 games so I wouldn't know). Team Rocket was kinda the best imo.

Team Rocket is basic, but you want to stop them. I won't go into Gen 5 spoilers, but Plasma was interesting. Felt like Gamefreak didn't go as far as they should have with the concept though.

 

12 hours ago, Alisae said:

"Hey, lets design an RPG"
"Oh boy, what should we put in it?"
"We're going to stuff it with the things that people hate the most in RPGs!"

"Love it! Lets do it!"

The conversation probably went more like "How much from Pokémon can we use without getting in legal trouble." It doesn't seem like they really did much to make Pokémon work in the MMO format.

 

12 hours ago, Alisae said:

So, I'm going to describe what a toxic community is not like.

A toxic community is not welcoming towards new members.
A toxic community is does not remember that behind a username, there is a person

A toxic community can but may not always be anti-semetic, racist, use the R word a lot, use the F word a lot.

A toxic community may not be open to someone who has a different opinion as them

A toxic community will always have drama within it.

Thanks for the effort, but that doesn't really tell me what "toxic" is. You also started off by saying what a "toxic" community isn't like, then changed your mind mid-way through. You just said what a "toxic" community is vaguely like, without actually defining what "toxic" is.

It's like saying an apple is Red, Round and Edible. It's true but it doesn't really say what makes an apple an apple instead of something else.

 

12 hours ago, Alisae said:

There's probably more, but on my homesite, I would call that a good community.

[...]

Just play league of legends with chat enabled, eventually you'll get flamed. Its bound to happen.

What is your homesite if you don't mind me asking? I actually did play LoL a few times some years back, real boring.

 

12 hours ago, Alisae said:

EDIT: Ok so there is a lot of complaining about the 3rd island on the temtem forums, and I'm in that thread. And I am seriously reading people say "I think Tucma's was really enjoyable and well-paced and unique story for these type of games. While they took the risk of using unpleasant gameplay." This is actually a thing that I just read. What fucking sick shit will people make up for calling that area "good gameplay?" What the fuck is wrong with people? Like, literally you can have an enjoyable, well-paced, and unique story, and have good gameplay. Your game isn't a fucking art piece. People have to play it.

A lot of RPGs get a pass for bad/mindless gameplay for good story, and a lot of the time the stories aren't any good, but since people play them for so long they convince themselves that it's better than it is.

 

2 hours ago, Godot said:

Holy mother of text walls.

Thank you for your contribution to this conversation.

[New Pokemon Like MMO: Temtem]

I've not a lot of thoughts on Temtem itself, the monster designs don't do anything for me and the MMO aspect is greatly offputting. That said there's still a fair few things to respond to in this thread.

 

On 1/24/2020 at 6:58 PM, Salfy said:

Its a cash grab they increased the price from 20 to 35 dollars

Also I have heard something about Tem Tem officials just banning random people for space in the que

Some games have reduced costs for preordering, in order to get profits earlier. I haven't heard of any queue bans, but I've seen unsourced reports of the moderators wanting to force a very specific type of community and are heavy-handed with bans.
 

On 1/26/2020 at 3:37 AM, ShogokiX said:

This game has a lot of potential and i hope it will turn into serious competition for Pokémon, since the monopoly Pokémon has on the market right now allowed Game Freak to pull this stunt that is Sword and Shield. As it's own games Sword/Shield may be good games, but as part of the Pokémon franchise they are the worst games of the main series.

I doubt Temtem will last any period of time. MMOs aren't exactly a popular genre anymore, and from what I've seen there's little there to keep players logging in and paying for the various costs. I wouldn't even call Sw/Sh decent on their own, but Pokémon has enough of a dedicated fanbase to keep it going, and there are various events going on often enough for people to reasonably keep invested.
 

On 1/26/2020 at 3:37 AM, ShogokiX said:

Also, this is still an early access game, so it's not fair judging it as if it was a full release just yet.

Saying it's early access isn't really a defense, you're basically just gambling that maybe it'll get better and early-access has a lot of games that failed. Additionally, the developers felt that it was not only in a releasable state, but good enough to ask for money for. Defending any flaw with a "maybe" also isn't doing the devs any favors since it gives them an easy way to get out from any criticisms. 

 

21 hours ago, ShogokiX said:

Now one may think that is the double battle system that makes for a slightly higher difficulty, but that's not all. The removal of random factors like critical hits, attacks missing and the min/max rolls on damage multiplier are greatly improving the competetive factor of the game. Damage is calculated only on raw numbers, no rng involved. The same attack from the same Temtem on the same opponent will always do the same amount of damage.

No RNG also makes everything extremely stale, if everything is a stable and constant theres fewer risks to calculate. No missing means there's never a risk to using a high-power but inaccurate move, and consistent damage means there's never a reason to use a less reliable move to guarantee a kill versus risking a low roll.
Even with a game as RNG-heavy as pokémon there is often discussion that competitive formats are extremely easy to flowchart.

 

14 hours ago, Alisae said:

- It would have been nice to see the game make an attempt at tackling things like level grinding. sw/sh does this with xp candies. EDIT: I really wish this was the game that solved this issue where I could battle say, a couple of wild mons to see what the new ones are, a couple of trainers, and have that be a viable playstyle. This is not the way the game was meant to be played. The way the game was meant to be played was for you to grind your ass off so that you're a high enough level so you can proceed. I hate this. I don't want to grind XP for 6 hours. I would really like to just fight some harder enemies and then fight a boss. Instead, I feel like this game places a lot of trainers everywhere because the devs didn't know how to pace their game.

Leveling and reliant on having high numbers than your enemies is something that comes with a lot of poorly designed RPGs unfortunately, you can use other strategies in a lot of them but even in good RPGs simply having higher numbers is enough to muscle through anything without ever needing to think or strategize. Having so many NPC trainers also speaks that the EXP curve is slow, so instead of tough fights meaning a lot you just have slow annoying fights where you backtrack every so often to heal after mindlessly spamming your good moves.

 

14 hours ago, Alisae said:

- It would have been nice to see the game make an attempt at tackling the issue of random encounters. Temtem's grass is mostly mandatory and personally, I would like to see most of it being pushed to the side. I would also like to interact with temtem in the overworld and catch them. These are things sw/sh does.

Overworld vs Random encounters is a manner of debate and personal preference, but sw/sh actually handed it well aside from the technical issues. A mix of both manages to solve the issues of needing to chase down enemies if you want/need to mindlessly grind for a bit, and also lets you know whats in an area without having to waste time to find out if theres any low rate encounters.

 

14 hours ago, Alisae said:

- I could not care about this game's story. I think thats just a me thing tho [...]  Why are they doing the dojo challenge? Why is the dojo challenge important? The adventure isn't fun to me here because there's nothing driving it. I actually feel like I have no real reason to go to these places that I am going to aside from characters telling me to go to them and deciding to go to them because I have no real reason not to.

A holdover from wanting to be a Pokémon MMO, you take the on the gyms Dojos because that's what you do. The Pokémon games usually give a brief explanation of it being the Player's dream, but there's also some other things that come up and give the player investment outside of go to place, get badge, rinse & repeat until end.

Rivals motivate players, the Team X plots motivate players, etc. and what motivates players in Temtem?

 

9 hours ago, ShogokiX said:

-Yes, you are right, the grinding is kind of time consuming, but let's be honest here: A lot of well known RPGs involve grinding. So this is not an issue with Temtem itself.

Except that is an issue with Temtem, they elected to ignore one of the major demerits of the genre because everyone else did. To use a metaphor, If everyone decided to stab themselves in the leg because someone did before them, would it be okay for you to do so?

 

9 hours ago, ShogokiX said:

-You say that most of the NPCs feel like they are not of any matter to the story at all. To be honest, that is just like Pokémon. For example: If you were to swap the gym leaders around between generations the games wouldn't change one bit. That of course is just my personal opinion, but i never felt like the official Pokémon games had a story at all.

NPCs can have text that hints to the greater world's working, or advice, warnings of nearby mons, hints towards sidequsts or simply decent jokes. A game I played recently, that I cannot name due to this forum's ToS, had NPCs change dialogue depending on a few different factors notably the time of day/night, and what state the Player currently was in. You could get items, or minor quests depending on that.

I got away from the point a bit, but if a lot of NPCs have pointless filler text the solution is to simply have less NPCs.

 

2 hours ago, Commander said:

Random encounters and high amount of battles is more of an old school thing. Games didn't have a lot to develop off of so those were there to slow down the pace. In reality it more likely is more of an annoyance in Temtem than an actual fault but it grinds down to patience. Not everyone can take an hour to get to the next exciting thing. It depends on tastes really but it is filler when it grinds down to it. RPGs are notorious for filler leading to ridiculously long games.

Not really, lots of early RPGs were based off of tabletop games and how to simulate those with the game acting as an impartial, if limited, DM.
WRPGs tended to go for more player choices and options, predicting and simulating what a Player in a tabletop game might want to do. JRPGs took more direct inspiration from the genre's early instances - copying from Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy without really understanding why those games were made the way they were.

 

2 hours ago, Alisae said:

I know Persona 5 is also good but I haven't played it so I can't say for sure if it beats these issues.

It's not, snazzy UI and OST are the most it has going for it. Atlus repeating a lot of the mistakes of P3/4 because those games made a lot of money for them.

 

2 hours ago, Alisae said:

Also, something I really don't get is the community. In the discord I kind of mentioned a bit about how the high amount of battles really bothered me, and apparently in response to that I got told to play a different game if I am complaining about the high amount of battles, so if someone sees good in it aside from the Combat and the Temtem themselves, I would really like to hear why, but I get the feeling the community is fairly toxic.

I see a lot of mentions of "toxicity" in various communities, yet not once to this day has anyone elaborated on what "toxic" actually means. Could you please be the first?

[ask jelly anything]

Why Jelly instead of Jam or Preserve?