Kyu

What should we do sweendog We can't fix it without you telling us why you enjoy the other thing more than this thing We need your help, please don't let us down

aight

I am sorry that it's not the answer you wanted. I would love to sit around and discuss game theory with everyone for 16 hours a day, but the community wants an actual game instead, and we try to use their money wisely. Maybe in the next life.

I only have 4 people which I can confidently assign this task, and they all work on more important problems right now. The majority of Moderators are not actually involved with development as you know. This means that either: The Moderator would have to guess as to whether we want to tackle a problem (which means misleading information coming from a staff member) The Moderator would be a "Dev by proxy", which means that it would spend both their and our time in order to answer a question Thinking like a developer, knowing the limitations of a team as a manager, and knowing the intricacies of game design are not innate skills. It is something which is learned through years of experience, which is why you can see @RacheLucario saying "I know enough to not say anything definitively" up above despite having ~4 years of experience as a QA/designer and a few as an SGM.

That's alright. I'll help you out. Let's break this problem down really simply: I am a grown man. I have a stomach and some very adorable cats to feed. More importantly, I have a community who wants a better video game. I have 24 hours in my day, 8-10 of which I need to sleep in order to maintain my health, which gives me an effective budget of 14 hours per day in which to: Maintain my health. Visit the grocery. Visit the general store. Prepare food and cook. Handle the legal, financial, and business overhead of life. Do work; This involves PokeMMO, my personal business, and any projects I have. (Home repairs, tech repairs, hobbies which result in something created) <-- This is what you are consuming right now by demanding that we reply and getting pissy when we say "No" Visit family. Entertain myself. Now, I take 1 personal day per week, mostly to clean. This means I have a weekly budget of 50-60 hours, depending on how much I sleep, in order to maintain my life. Let's assume that: I spend 4 hours cleaning every week. I spend 6 hours per week driving if I go out (I don't bill for these, so this is effectively downtime). I spend 6 hours per week visiting my Nana. (She's lonely, and I'm not a cruel boy.) I spend 2 hours per week organizing my personal space in order to be able to respond quickly to my customer's demands. I spend 2 hours per week at the store, if I need to visit. If I decide to eat more than microwaved potatoes, I spend 2-3 hours a week cooking. I spend 10-15 hours every week as leisure (ignoring my personal day). Now, I have a budget of 20-50 hours per week in which I can dedicate to PokeMMO, depending on how needy everyone else in my life is feeling. So, let's break down my schedule for the next 8 weeks for PokeMMO. I get to: Fix GF's encounter tables some more (this is behind schedule because I needed to spend a week discussing guidelines for upcoming features, and I kept discovering more problems) Create data for NPC trainers in Unova, probably while rebalancing Kanto's/Hoenn's. Handle the heap which is "Item Maniacs" Work on rebalancing crafting and creating a new class of items Dealing with overworld item issues Importing other people's work If we can fit it in, working on a new software renderer to improve performance on older, unsupported PCs Grind out as many move animations as we can prior to the update Review other people's work and ensure that my subordinates are making the correct decisions based on guidelines I've written So, quite frankly, I think I have enough on my plate and I'm a little annoyed that you feel like this is somehow more important than making the video game you want (especially as a former staff member, who should know better). But let's ignore that. Now, I have a budget of 4 other people who I think have been around long enough who can answer any of your questions as to whether we might want to, or be able to, do something, from Development's perspective. They are: Your primary systems administrator and primary developer of the video game Your second Java developer of the video game Your artist of the video game Your Senior Game Master and Head Bug Moderator of the video game, who you are trying to tell off Each of these people has a very similar schedule to the one which I outlined above, and they're all grown men and women who have mouths and cats to feed, Nanas to visit, and video games to make, and they generally work on this game around 8-10 hours per day when they're able. So, I have to ask you: Why do you think this makes the game better? We already know what we want to do, and we already know what is best for us, because we've been working together for a very long time. Answering you personally with "No" isn't going to accomplish anything. In fact, it's probably going to make you feel dumb and upset you. So, in my opinion, the only thing you're asking is to waste their time by demanding they respond to your suggestions (which we may not even care about, because we've already decided our update schedule) That is why I don't care about this problem, I'm not going to care about this problem, and why I enabled the upvote system on this subforum; so that players can help curate suggestions, and we can spend more time working on the game you all want, instead of trying to figure out how to make the game you all want. -- Edit: To anyone who may read this comment in the future, please note that this molten salt volcano is because I find former Moderators being disrespectful to Senior GMs, on a topic which they were never involved in, to be extremely disappointing. If you have an issue which requires an Admin's attention, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thanks

nobody's got time for that mate I'll make @Desu fix the default one of these days. IPB changed how their asset management works and he didn't realize how to do it in 4.x

If you think someone's post was removed unjustly, feel free to mail an SGM with a summary of the removal (time, topic, etc.) and they'll review the decision. We don't maintain people on staff who can't take criticism, although you may not receive a detailed response due to privacy of other players / mods. Edit: Alternatively, if you're not comfortable with that, I do read all PMs sent to me via email (although I don't respond on common support topics most of the days).

It's not so much that, to me. It's that its goal is to create a vapid community response which makes the poster feel more important in order to increase their engagement / retention on the website, but its consequence is that you end up with "hiveminds" like Reddit where everyone kneejerks to every dissenting opinion and you end up with a culture of bullying. It also increases low-effort posting in return for internet validation points, which I especially hate, and is the main reason we disabled "like counters" and inline post counters. Now, I wouldn't mind this if our Forums actually ran advertisements and we could make money off direct Forums traffic, but because we don't out of principle (We don't like ads, we want you to play the game, not the website, and attention taken away from the game is harmful to the game), it's not useful to us. So, instead, we use the Forums as a tool to improve the main product (the game) which necessitates both dissension among the userbase and a constructive environment where bullying and echo chamber behavior is kept to a minimum. That's why, if you have something negative to say, we make you use your words like a big boy.

Yeah sure w/e. You don't get emotes though. I really hate the facebook/reddit-style reduction of emotional responses to points.

IPB is not known for its stellar backend security and file uploads are a major attack vector on a publicly hosted website. The risks far outweigh the benefits of the feature, and the main service is the game, not the forums, which is why we disable/restrict all forms of file uploads directly to the forums and keep their databases separate. Web-based social networking services make it possible to connect people who share interests and activities across political, economic, and geographic borders.[26] Through e-mail and instant messaging, online communities are created where a gift economy and reciprocal altruism are encouraged through cooperation. Information is suited to a gift economy, as information is a nonrival good and can be gifted at practically no cost.[27][28] Scholars[29] have noted that the term "social" cannot account for technological features of the social network platforms alone. Hence, the level of network sociability should determine by the actual performances of its users. According to the communication theory of uses and gratifications, an increasing amount of individuals are looking to the Internet and social media to fulfill cognitive, affective, personal integrative, social integrative, and tension free needs. With Internet technology as a supplement to fulfill needs, it is in turn affecting every day life, including relationships, school, church, entertainment, and family.[30] Companies are using social media as a way to learn about potential employees' personalities and behavior. In numerous situations a candidate who might otherwise have been hired has been rejected due to offensive or otherwise unseemly photos or comments posted to social networks or appearing on a newsfeed. Facebook and other social networking tools are increasingly the aim scholarly research. Scholars in many fields have begun to investigate the impact of social networking sites, investigating how such sites may play into issues of identity, privacy,[31] social capital, youth culture, and education.[32] Research has also suggested that individuals add offline friends on Facebook to maintain contact and often this blurs the lines between work and home lives.[33] According to a study in 2015, 63% of the users of Facebook or Twitter in the USA consider these networks to be their main source of news, with entertainment news being the most seen. In the times of breaking news, Twitter users are more likely to stay invested in the story. In some cases when the news story is more political, users may be more likely to voice their opinion on a linked Facebook story with a comment or like, while Twitter users will just follow the sites feed and/ or retweet the article.[34] A 2015 study shows that 85% of people aged 18 to 34 use social networking sites for their purchase decision making. While over 65% of people aged 55 and over rely on word of mouth.[35] Several websites are beginning to tap into the power of the social networking model for philanthropy. Such models provide a means for connecting otherwise fragmented industries and small organizations without the resources to reach a broader audience with interested users.[36] Social networks are providing a different way for individuals to communicate digitally. These communities of hypertexts allow for the sharing of information and ideas, an old concept placed in a digital environment. In 2011, HCL Technologies conducted research that showed that 50% of British employers had banned the use of social networking sites/services during office hours.[37][38] Research has provided us with mixed results as to whether or not a person's involvement in social networking can affect their feelings of loneliness. Studies have indicated that how a person chooses to use social networking can change their feelings of loneliness in either a negative or positive way. Some companies with mobile workers have encouraged their workers to use social networking to feel connected, educators are using it to keep connected with their students and individuals are benefiting from social networking to keep connect with already close relationships that they've developed under circumstances that would otherwise make it difficult to do so.[39] Each social networking user is able to create a community that centers around a personal identity they choose to create online.[40] In his book Digital Identities: Creating and Communicating the Online Self,[41] Rob Cover argues that social networking's foundation in Web 2.0, high-speed networking shifts online representation to one which is both visual and relational to other people, complexifying the identity process for younger people and creating new forms of anxiety.[41] In 2016, news reports stated that excessive usage of SNS sites may be associated with an increase in the rates of depression, to almost triple the rate for non-SNS users. Experts worldwide[which?] have said that 2030 people who use SNS more have higher levels of depression than those who use SNS less.[42] While the popularity of social networking consistently rises,[44] new uses for the technology are frequently being observed. At the forefront of emerging trends in social networking sites is the concept of "real-time web" and "location-based". Real-time allows users to contribute contents, which is then broadcast as it is being uploaded—the concept is analogous to live radio and television broadcasts. Twitter set the trend for "real-time" services, wherein users can broadcast to the world what they are doing, or what is on their minds within a 140-character limit. Facebook followed suit with their "Live Feed" where users' activities are streamed as soon as it happens. While Twitter focuses on words, Clixtr, another real-time service, focuses on group photo sharing wherein users can update their photo streams with photos while at an event. Facebook, however, remains the largest photo sharing site—Facebook application and photo aggregator Pixable estimates that Facebook will have 100 billion photos by Summer 2012.[45] In April, 2012, the image-based social media network Pinterest had become the third largest social network in the United States.[46] Companies have begun to merge business technologies and solutions, such as cloud computing, with social networking concepts. Instead of connecting individuals based on social interest, companies are developing interactive communities that connect individuals based on shared business needs or experiences. Many provide specialized networking tools and applications that can be accessed via their websites, such as LinkedIn. Others companies, such as Monster.com, have been steadily developing a more "socialized" feel to their career center sites to harness some of the power of social networking sites. These more business related sites have their own nomenclature for the most part but the most common naming conventions are "Vocational Networking Sites" or "Vocational Media Networks", with the former more closely tied to individual networking relationships based on social networking principles. Foursquare gained popularity as it allowed for users to check into places that they are frequenting at that moment. Gowalla is another such service that functions in much the same way that Foursquare does, leveraging the GPS in phones to create a location-based user experience. Clixtr, though in the real-time space, is also a location-based social networking site, since events created by users are automatically geotagged, and users can view events occurring nearby through the Clixtr iPhone app. Recently, Yelp announced its entrance into the location-based social networking space through check-ins with their mobile app; whether or not this becomes detrimental to Foursquare or Gowalla is yet to be seen, as it is still considered a new space in the Internet technology industry.[47] One popular use for this new technology is social networking between businesses. Companies have found that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are great ways to build their brand image. According to Jody Nimetz, author of Marketing Jive,[48] there are five major uses for businesses and social media: to create brand awareness, as an online reputation management tool, for recruiting, to learn about new technologies and competitors, and as a lead generation tool to intercept potential prospects.[48] These companies are able to drive traffic to their own online sites while encouraging their consumers and clients to have discussions on how to improve or change products or services. As of September 2013, 71% of online adults use Facebook, 17% use Instagram, 21% use Pinterest, and 22% use LinkedIn.[49] In 2012, it was reported that in the past few years, the niche social network has steadily grown in popularity, thanks to better levels of user interaction and engagement. In 2012, a survey by Reuters and research firm Ipsos[50] found that one in three users were getting bored with Facebook and in 2014 the GlobalWebIndex found that this figured had risen to almost 50%. The niche social network offers a specialized space that's designed to appeal to a very specific market with a clearly defined set of needs. Where once the streams of social minutia on networks such as Facebook and Twitter were the ultimate in online voyeurism, now users are looking for connections, community and shared experiences. Social networks that tap directly into specific activities, hobbies, tastes and lifestyles are seeing a consistent rise in popularity. Niche social networks such as Fishbrain for fishing and Strava for cycling. These social platforms offer brands a rich space in which to engage with their target market and build awareness. People use social networking sites for meeting new friends, finding old friends, or locating people who have the same problems or interests they have, called niche networking. More and more relationships and friendships are being formed online and then carried to an offline setting. Psychologist and University of Hamburg professor Erich H. Witte says that relationships which start online are much more likely to succeed. In this regard, there are studies which predict tie strength among the friends[91] on social networking websites. Witte has said that in less than 10 years, online dating will be the predominant way for people to start a relationship.[92] One online dating site claims that 2% of all marriages begin at its site, the equivalent of 236 marriages a day. Other sites claim one in five relationships begin online. Users do not necessarily share with others the content which is of most interest to them, but rather that which projects a good impression of themselves.[43] While everyone agrees that social networking has had a significant impact on social interaction, there remains a substantial disagreement as to whether the nature of this impact is completely positive. A number of scholars have done research on the negative effects of Internet communication as well. These researchers have contended that this form of communication is an impoverished version of conventional face-to-face social interactions, and therefore produce negative outcomes such as loneliness and depression for users who rely on social networking entirely. By engaging solely in online communication, interactions between communities, families, and other social groups are weakened.[93]

We're not exaggerating. This issue primarily affects very old Intel chipsets, e.g. the 11 year old GMA 945, which fall into a category where the hardware can only support OpenGL 1.4/1.5. We have stats on what renderers players use, and both `Compatibility Mode` and these very old chipsets fall into around 2-4% of the online playerbase at any given time. The main other issue that we have is 1st-3rd Generation Core i3/i5/i7 devices (Intel HD Graphics 3000~4000) which are unsupported by Windows 10 due to Intel's refusal to maintain End of Life devices, but that's not something new, as it was the main reason `Compatibility Mode` exists.

It sort of is. It depends on whether we've finished up features to a point where they can be played, whether we find bugs during the private test build, and how we want to time it (2 day, 3 day, what do we want out of the first day, does it matter whether players have debugs, how long has it been, when's the weekend). Development is mostly halted to run the event, in order to maintain a stable build for the PTS and because we're all watching gameplay / feedback in-game. The exchange to start it basically goes like this: So it's all kind of luck depending on how those first few days went. I did try to give a few day's warning the last time and I'll do so again for the upcoming one if possible

No. The battle renderer has been entirely redone in order to support the new sprite types as well as 3D animations. Yes. We are dropping FireRed as a requirement and moving to an NDS base ROM, which necessitates the 3D renderer be common among all regions.

?

It's being looked at for Unova and falls under the "Overworld item rebalancing" I had mentioned here. It's a bit more complicated than it appears though: But anyway, I'll be taking a look at the cost:reward ratio for berry powder over the coming weeks. Thanks for bringing it up

Understandable, have a nice day

After Sinnoh I guess. Does anybody even want a region where you can already get all the species in Sevii?

Both the EXP curve & wild encounter design is vastly different in Gen 5 than in Gen 3, and needed to be rebalanced to match Gen 3's gameplay. Gen 5 did a lot of very odd things which I'm not happy with, in order to make the game easier and to appeal to casual console players. Some of my notes on the topic: I've already solved most of these problems though. The main issue now is automating the solutions, since we're now looking at around ~300 maps with wild encounters in the game (which is only getting worse with Gen 4 / Dungeons in the future).

Backlogged behind: Difficulty curve rebalancing (2 wks) Horde/Encounter/Pickup rebalancing (2-3 wks) Overworld item rebalancing (2-4 wks) Updated software renderer (1-2 wks) Note that several of these are a consequence of Unova being vastly different than Gen 3 in terms of gameplay, which is why they've taken priority. Thankfully I was able to automate a lot of it, and they've had significant work put into them already, so these are estimates from time of posting. Takes 1-2 months to design a dungeon from scratch, some of which is already done, but requires an overarching concept for a series of dungeons (trios) which pushes that into a realistic span of 2-3 months from start to completion of 1/3 Legendary of a trio. For context, North Pole took around 2 months and was only ~60 maps, although I've gotten better at map design since then. A realistic timespan is "first one in 1-2 patches after Unova's release." We were able to explore the very basic concepts of co-op gameplay last Christmas so those problems are already solved. Requires: UI rewrite (Scene2D) (1-2 months) Pure LibGDX renderer for Android (2-3 months) The current PTS client is a LibGDX/LWJGL2/TWL frankenstein, but shifting our focus to finishing framework ports is something we will probably be doing around the time that Dungeons are being worked on. It's very likely that there will be at least 1 major functionality/bug fix patch for Unova after its initial release, afterwards we would be looking to port to Android if we can sustain a 3-6 month dev cycle on it. So, to summarize: we need to finish Unova to a reasonable degree before working on either of them. We're getting towards the end and scripting is coming along well, but there is still quite a lot to do. We're about halfway through the storyline at the moment, the battle particle engine is coming along nicely, and rebalancing efforts have around 6-8 weeks left in them. I had already said this in the Dev Blog, but release will start to be planned for after the next PTS (which we've been staggering every 3 months, currently).

If we didn't rewrite the entire client and break literally everything related to backend data, we'd consider it. There's also the fact that Unova's scripting is still extremely fragile and that characters break pretty regularly. So we're basically rewriting the game at this point, and you can't half-ass that without creating a (literally) broken game. It's just not good enough for release yet. Sorry.

１０ ｙ ｅ ａ ｒ ｓ ｓ ｉ ｎ ｃ ｅ Ｐ ｏ ｋ ｅ Ｍ Ｍ Ｏ ｕ ｐ ｄ ａ ｔ ｅ. Ｉ ｗ ａ ｌ ｋ ｔ ｈ ｒ ｏ ｕ ｇ ｈ ｔ ｈ ｅ ｅ ｍ ｐ ｔ ｙ ｓ ｔ ｒ ｅ ｅ ｔ ｓ ｔ ｒ ｙ ｉ ｎ ｇ ｔ ｏ ｔ ｈ ｉ ｎ ｋ ｏ ｆ ｓ ｏ ｍ ｅ ｔ ｈ ｉ ｎ ｇ ｅ ｌ ｓ ｅ ｂ ｕ ｔ Ｉ ａ ｌ ｗ ａ ｙ ｓ ｅ ｎ ｄ ｕ ｐ ｓ ｉ ｔ ｔ ｉ ｎ ｇ ｉ ｎ ｆ ｒ ｏ ｎ ｔ ｏ ｆ ｍ ｙ ｃ ｏ ｍ ｐ ｕ ｔ ｅ ｒ. Ｉ ｓ ｔ ａ ｒ ｅ ａ ｔ ｔ ｈ ｅ ｓ ｃ ｒ ｅ ｅ ｎ ｆ ｏ ｒ ｈ ｏ ｕ ｒ ｓ ａ ｎ ｄ ｔ ｒ ｙ ｔ ｏ ｓ ｕ ｍ ｍ ｏ ｎ Ｄ ｅ ｓ ｕ. Ｉ ｍ ａ ｋ ｅ ｍ ｙ 4 8 3 1 s t ｗ ａ ｌ ｌ ｔ ｅ ａ ｍ ｔ ｏ ｇ ｒ ｉ ｅ ｆ V e r m i l l i o n, ｂ ｕ ｔ ｉ ｔ ｉ ｓ ｎ ｏ ｇ ｏ ｏ ｄ. Ｔ ｈ ｅ ｅ ｎ ｄ ｉ ｓ ｎ ｅ ａ ｒ. Ｔ ｈ ｅ ｎ Ｉ ｌ ｏ ｏ ｋ ｏ ｎ ｔ ｈ ｅ ｕ ｐ ｄ ａ ｔ ｅ ｈ ｉ ｓ ｔ ｏ ｒ ｙ ａ ｎ ｄ ｃ ｒ ｙ ｍ ｙ ｓ ｅ ｌ ｆ ｔ ｏ ｓ ｌ ｅ ｅ ｐ.

ok sir can do eta july 4th 2019

It's something I was planning on doing, but there are some technical limits to mixing conditional spawns (Season+Daytime/Nighttime+Day of Week) which need to be addressed prior. "Changing spawns" isn't very impactful to the overall game though, it's just nice to have (and at least several week's worth of work), so it's low priority to me currently. I may try to expand "Seasons" to drop tables too at some point. It's probably not going to be used to expand into Gen 4-exclusive species, though; we need something aside from the storyline to make Gen 4 NDS regions worthwhile. I'd really like to be able to use it to get some things out of Safari Zone restrictions since the original planned times for seasons were 1 real month (same as NDS). I'm not sure how well that's going to play, though. It impacts our meta quite a lot and pins some species into "you can only breed good ones during Spring" restrictions.