Pokemon Empire: Official Game Thread

[ssbCasper 33]

Not an actual update, just wanted to let the handful who check this on a daily know that I changed the first topic to include a plot and feature summary for newbies as well as cutting most of the old topics that were kinda dead. So my next few post here won't be new concepts but just my list of field effects ideas and all the guilds etc. As a unimportant life update I've been visiting relatives the past few days so for those pm'ing me sorry for the cold shoulder.

[V for Vendetta 21]

You don't understand how happy I am reading the plot itself,I support this game entirely

[ssbCasper 33]

Sup folks, so one of my first post here was ideas for guilds. Which for those who didn't see that, guilds will act similar to the clubs in Zeta/Omni. Optional side questing is a big part of Empire so including 8 guilds for the player to join and earn guild specific rewards was a pretty cool idea. Note that joining some guilds will lock you out of joining others. Now lets introduce the guilds, the descriptions will be super short but if you want more info on what they do or their values just ask. Also feel free to give me your take on them or ideas for new ones I should maybe consider. 

 

Neutral guilds 

Explorers guild- Explores uncharted areas in search of rare Pokemon and relics

Detectives guild- Investigates the toughest cases for the Telius police department

(can join these in every play through)

Guilds 

Research guild- The top secret research sector of the regions biggest tech company N.G Power

Magic guild- Practice witchcraft in hopes of creating a new Pokemon type

(Due to the difference in philosophy you cannot join both of the above)

Espionage guild- Infiltrate the ranks of the evil team and learn the backstories of their admins

Rangers guild- Protecting Pokemon and the environment 

(The rangers do not approve of the ethical code of a spy and will deny you inclusion if you work with them)

Thieves guild- There's an abundance of rare and unique objects in Telius, why not get your hands on a few?

Monks guild- Train to find inner peace and reach enlightenment at the Zhu monastery atop the Semphis mountains 

(Stealing and other similar actions are very frowned upon at the monastery and thieves don't want to work with some goody two shoes)

 

 

[Noctelis 12]

1 hour ago, ssbCasper said:

Sup folks, so one of my first post here was ideas for guilds. Which for those who didn't see that, guilds will act similar to the clubs in Zeta/Omni. Optional side questing is a big part of Empire so including 8 guilds for the player to join and earn guild specific rewards was a pretty cool idea. Note that joining some guilds will lock you out of joining others. Now lets introduce the guilds, the descriptions will be super short but if you want more info on what they do or their values just ask. Also feel free to give me your take on them or ideas for new ones I should maybe consider. 

 

Neutral guilds 

Explorers guild- Explores uncharted areas in search of rare Pokemon and relics

Detectives guild- Investigates the toughest cases for the Telius police department

(can join these in every play through)

Guilds 

Research guild- The top secret research sector of the regions biggest tech company N.G Power

Magic guild- Practice witchcraft in hopes of creating a new Pokemon type

(Due to the difference in philosophy you cannot join both of the above)

Espionage guild- Infiltrate the ranks of the evil team and learn the backstories of their admins

Rangers guild- Protecting Pokemon and the environment 

(The rangers do not approve of the ethical code of a spy and will deny you inclusion if you work with them)

Thieves guild- There's an abundance of rare and unique objects in Telius, why not get your hands on a few?

Monks guild- Train to find inner peace and reach enlightenment at the Zhu monastery atop the Semphis mountains 

(Stealing and other similar actions are very frowned upon at the monastery and thieves don't want to work with some goody two shoes)

 

 

Those guilds sound pretty interesting, definitely going to have trouble choosing my guilds.

[Octavius 77]

Good concepts, but there looks to be overlap between a few of these groups. Espionage and Detectives look pretty similar, for example. And I'm not exactly sure how you'd be able to join a thieves guild if you're a detective in the police force lol. Very nice concepts, though, reminds me of Skyrim guilds, except you know, minus an assassin's guild. Which actually, that might be outrageous enough to actually work. Now that I think about it, if you replace 'espionage' with 'assassin's', that looks like a pretty strong lineup. And yeah you're still a spy mostly gathering intelligence, but calling it an assassin's guild sounds a bit more enticing in my opinion.

 

Also, feel free to pm me before you start posting field effects on here. I have an entire notepad full (almost 40 total) of fully fleshed-out field effects that will save you a lot of time and energy. Some are just modified (re-balanced and updated), more generic reborn fields (cave, forest, etc.), but over a dozen are original works. These include realistic fields like zen temple, mean streets, imperial palace, laboratory, archaeological dig, polar sanctuary, and more. And you have a bunch as well, I think we might be able to benefit from each other's work. So like I said, just pm me if interested and we can work out a time.

[Commander 875]

I guess I'm going to be the one guy to state the obvious that I already see a foreshadowing of a huge mess if not a huge letdown in content. Quality is more important than quantity after all. Let's just take a step back a moment and review that you want a choice based storyline which is a very intensive style of writing and requires mastery knowledge to do very well. If someone paid me to write a draft of that, I'd pretty much tell them to not even consider touching anything else until I finished it due to the sheer amount of chaos that could happen. I'd also probably urge to decrease the effects to basically 5 or 6 branch paths which only slightly alter the story (or 1 or 2 that greatly alter is unlocking and locking major storyline events). Of course the difficulty relies on the complexity of the story (as certain events need to still be very clear and a good understanding needs to happen with both outcomes). That's another subject entirely and a tad bit off topic.

 

So my understanding is that there are 8 guilds in the entire game. Most guilds or little side groups are pretty much nothing getting no development with the only purpose is to give out rewards. That's an RPG standard. Games that have a much smaller amount of content and sidequests tend to invest a lot more in specific ones. The Last Story is one I can think of off the top of my head where there's even complete chapters that are optional (ie dungeons with loads of dialogue). Another one is Majora's Mask where there are entire side plots since the main story is very, very short (focusing more on the time mechanics instead). I can think of many games that have a lot of quests which promote you to go to certain areas of the game to fight or collect something which generally is used more to promote exploration. Chrono Trigger is the game I was thinking of with the excellent sidequests (not counting the DS). Point is that the more content you try to add to a game, the weaker storywise the game becomes.

 

This is me just being skeptical so don't worry that much.

[ssbCasper 33]

@Octavius The reason the detectives are in the neutral catagory is because you'll be doing a lot of borderline illegal things in order to complete cases, although you do work the the PD your really like a vigilante. The assasin idea is ambitious but I like it for the reasons you stated. Only issue is it should end with an actual assasination taking place. 

 

[ssbCasper 33]

Because I've been asked this a lot im going to quickly run down my writing philosophy for the plot. When my brother and I were just spitballing hundreds of ideas for an a post war region I began penciling in every major checkpoint first, these checkpoints include gym battles, the major plot breaks and "arc enders". Following that we started filling in everything from the intro screen to the end of the first gym before opening up rpg maker. This served as a reference point so I always knew what I'd be mapping or coding in and it worked great for a first attempt. After having some friends play test we decided to take the first arc in a completely new direction, but hey scraping hours of work happens a bunch in game development I imagine. As far as side questing and all that cool optional stuff I've talked about, I have the ideas and locations written in for the areas they will appear in but haven't actually put my energy into it yet as my main job is to make the main story as good as it can be. 

[ssbCasper 33]

Announcement: Due to a few of you asking for another medium to discuss stuff related to the game's development I made a discord server for it. For now I want to reserve it for just discussing ideas and making edits to stuff. So if you to be an honorary member of the dev team just PM me and I'll drop you the link. No updates for the rest of the week as I have exams and work backing me up. Til next time. 

[Sceptilespy 62]

I personally think you're trying to do to much with the game. I'm too tired to provide an in depth analysis of what I see right now, but just make sure it doesn't become a jumbled mess. 

[ssbCasper 33]

@Sceptilespy As long as things stay as organized as they are we'll be fine. I do talk about a lot of unrelated features and stuff but in terms of making things happen we follow a really strict set of goals for each time something gets worked on. As long as the quality of everything meets the standards we've set I don't see a reason to cut down on anything yet. Thanks for dropping by and voicing concerns. 

[Tobi 1]

On 10/1/2017 at 1:44 PM, ssbCasper said:

Well here is the first addition since the creation of the Official Dev post. I know I've said this before but this is the finalized starter list.

 

• Normal: Lillipup

• Flying: Starly

• Bug: Venipede

• Dragon: Axew

• Dark: Zorua

• Fairy: Flabebe

• Electric: Mareep

• Fighting: Makuhita

• Poison: Nidoran

• Ground: Phanpy

• Rock, Rockruff

• Ghost,Misdreavus

• Steel, Magnemite

• Fire: Vulpix

• Water, Horsea

• Grass, Tangela

• Ice: Sneasel

• Psycic, Abra

Cri no Ralts;-;. Hehehe but really I love this. This unique choice of starters is great. ><

[ssbCasper 33]

@Tobi I have to leave some strong and popular Pokemon for events and side quest rewards etc. 

[Tobi 1]

3 hours ago, ssbCasper said:

@Tobi I have to leave some strong and popular Pokemon for events and side quest rewards etc. 

Hehe yeah I know but oh my god you would think that alot of these would be used for events but these Pokemon are great for a starter choice

[Octavius 77]

I like that the starters are unique. But doing it this way has some inherent pros and cons:

 

Pros: 1. They're not the usual grass/fire/water GF starters. To be fair, that system is kind of tired by now. After all, why must a player start with a grass, fire, or water type? I like Dark and Ice types, personally, and would like to be able to start with one. Type diversity is cool and increases the re-playability of a game. 

2. With this system, there isn't as much overlap. GF starters like chikorita or tepig are just worse versions of other starters, and never get picked as a result.

3. This eases the burden of players trying monotype runs--and there are a surprising amount of players who like to do those. 

4. There is a certain merit in having starters that feel like normal Pokémon, so to speak. Most trainers the player encounters don't get one of GF's conventional grass/fire/water starters, so why should the player? Starting off with a phanpy or mareep seems more likely than starting with a real ace like torchic or froakie, after all.

 

Cons: 1. It's difficult to balance the game around this wide a variety of starters. The 'finalized starter list' has some Pokémon that only evolve once, and half of them require a specific item or event to fully evolve: sneasel, vulpix, horsea, flabebe, nidoran, misdreavus, abra, magnemite, and I guess tangela if it needs to be re-taught ancientpower with a heart scale. Placing evolution items in the game will be very difficult because you can make some starters much stronger than others. If you get a link stone/heart early but you never get a shiny stone, well, then abra is going to be a lot better starter than flabebe. But if you don't give out a link stone/heart because you don't want abra to be much better than the other starters, you're going to hurt all the other Pokémon in the game that need a link stone/heart to evolve. 

2. While some of these starters are enticing picks, they're all over the place in what they bring to the table. Some of these are considered really rare Pokémon (axew, starly, magnemite) while others feel like generic Pokémon you might find walking around in the grass before the 3rd gym (lillipup, venipede, makuhita, nidoran). I mean, would anyone actually pick a Stoutland over a Staraptor? And yes, there is an advantage to picking something more generic like makuhita, because it evolves early, has some decent moves it learns naturally, and thus is really useful early on into the game--as opposed to something rare like axew, which probably won't even be remotely useful until around the 8th or 9th gym.

 

But overall, GF starters are called starters for a reason: they have a smooth (and early) evolution curve, don't need any specific items or events to evolve, but are still useful late into the game. I don't like that they're all either fire, water, or grass, because like I said before, some starters are just worse versions of others. But with some tweaks to abilities, movepools, stats, and dual-typings, I think each of the 18 21 starters can carve out a unique identity that makes them worth choosing. And if chikorita and tepig were actually valid starter options, I think I would prefer that to this proposed starter list where choices like lillipup and makuhita will probably be as hopelessly outclassed as chikorita and tepig currently are.

[Tobi 1]

As to what @Octavius was saying I agree alot for the most part. Although as I've said before I adore the new start choices. Alot of them are really cool like Venipede, Axew, Zorua, Flabebe, Horsea and such. But some of them are kind of just there, and although the ones I stated are really cool, some of the starters aren't cut out to be there mostly due to the fact that they are  2 staged Pokemon, take too long to evolve, or are under looked because of the better Pokemon options. Things would be more fit to use to the player if each Pokemon had 3 stages like what a normal starter would have. I guess only one of the ones I said only has 2 stages but still. Point is Zorua is badass to me but it would evolve at level 30, that's having as tiny little puppy fallow you around for a long time and to be honest I don't think I would pick it even though it's one of my favorite. Axew is similar in regards to the fact that I might not pick it even though it has 3 stages, but because it takes forever to level up I feel as if it were a chore to use it. I really love the Pokemon for the new starter list but maybe you should consider changing a few or if not then maybe try to implement a different learn set in order to make having a Dark type werepup more enjoyable to have until it evolves hehe. In terms of other starters that are underlooked due to the badass starters maybe we could try and see if anything else could fit it's place for that type, not to strong but not too weak y'know

[Noctelis 12]

@Tobi @Octavius, Casper had already stated that there would be some changes to the movesets/evolution of some of the listed pokemon, some pokemon will get a better moveset, some will evolve sooner and others will simply evolve in a different way, that way it will all be balanced out.

[Tobi 1]

@Noctelis well thank u for clearing that up, I'm sorry hehe 🙃

[Noctelis 12]

@Tobi I'm actually sorry for making it sound like it was common knowledge, it was quite a while back and not easy to find now.

[Tobi 1]

@Noctelis no it's really fine, promise hehehe >< thx for letting us kno I appreciate it. I have been shifting through all the posts for 2 days hehe I'm really interested in this I probably missed that post ><

[ssbCasper 33]

@Octavius I've addressed a lot of your concerns in the past as I wouldn't make an idea public without at least thinking of all the possible cons. Some of the "more rare" starters really aren't that much more rare in the cannon games. With rebalancing I think it will prove to be a feature people enjoy. Having Pokémon that peak in strength earlier or are better late game adds to the decision making. 

 

Addressing other stuff,  it's really hard to pick a dragon starter. And from the original poll Pokemon like Venipede, Lillipup and Makinita actually had a lot of backing for being just solid Pokémon. Good Pokémon in this game won't be as scarce as in the reborn styled ones. 

[ssbCasper 33]

Late night post, been awhile since any new info has been posted so here we go. Today we'll be previewing the mysterious guild from the neighboring Yoake region. The Yoake mercenaries. Who are they? Why did they step in during the war? Lets find out. 

 

If you've been keeping up with things you'll have seen these mercenaries mentioned many times. Yoake is a small region off the coast of Telius. Due to proximity the actions on Telius directly affect residents here, so naturally during the war as Pokemon fled the region and no supplies or helped reach out to the them Yoake began to suffer. As the tables turned and the King began to lose control he started taking young trainers with potential from Yoake to win lost territory. When the news came back that the children and friends of these people did not make it the final straw was broke. Before the next group was scheduled to be enlisted into the royal army a group of the region's outcast overtook the port and sailed towards Telius. Similar to the U.S joining WWII the arrival of these trainers served as the turning point in the war. Now with the monarchy toppled connections are being fixed between the two regions. Most members remain in Telius to help reconstruct the region, you will run into them from time to time. Some have high ranking spots such as council member or elite 4 while others are simple bartenders who tell war stories. As you learn about them and there reasons for joining the group you may learn a bit about the true nature of the war.

[Noctelis 12]

@ssbCasper, with each single post about stuff important to the plot I get more excited about the game, looking forward to the 1st release even more now.

[ssbCasper 33]

@Noctelis Glad to hear. These are my favorite post to make although its hard to not give too much away. 

[WSGreen 13]

its been a good while since i last looked on here. things are starting to look good and i cant wait to start helping.