[Question] Second region and other game length questions.

[Wootius]

The main question is given a second region to explore, how would you prefer to do it?

With your team from the first region, ready for high level challenging battles and extreme enemy team comps?

Or would you like to take the same characters though a new storyline with a fresh team, maybe starting with a ~Lvl. 10 starter with some bred friends for challenging lower level battles featuring egg and tutor moves?


Other questions include would you breed given a game that featured the length given to make it useful(lvl 70-80)? Would making hatching faster help or cheaper breeding for you?

Would you take part in a sudo-farming sidequest area, farming berries and milking Miltanks or sheering Mareep?

How storyline involved to you want the catching of legendaries to be? A major side quest? A simple call from the region's Professor and a room to show it off in if stored? If I may be selfish, answer this one in line with the Kanto/Johto ones. As an example of "major sidequest", would an expedition with Blaine for Moltres interest you?

I'm not posting this in my game thread because these questions can help anyone shape their games a little given some good feedback, and more people are more likely to see this here.

 

[Arma]

I don't really get the point of adding a second region. Why not expand your first one with new post-game areas?

Starting out with a new team would be ridiculous, I mean, why not just create a new game then? If you were to add a new story, shouldn't it be in a new game?

Sidequests does seem like a nice way ti spend time though. In my game, the player can do quests and invest money to expand the player's hometown.

All legendaries are tied to major quests in my game, and should be, if you ask me. A LEGENDARY Pokemon deserves more than just a simple phone call.

Tl,dr; Second regions are dumb, try making one really epic instead.

 

[BlackWaltz3]

I agree one hundred percent with you, elarmasecreta. "Why not expand your first region with new post-game areas?" indeed. I've noticed newcomers tend to make these really ambitious region maps but end up only having tiny little locations or proportional locations with nothing in them. It's clearly better to have one, highly fleshed-out region than any number of hollow regions.

 

[Wootius]

As for why "start over" in a second region, I'd personally like a fresh start with the same character/s. Having Kanto be a "liberal" (aka rule free) gym region while Johto has a highly "conservative" (aka regulated simulator rulesets), lower level gym region that rewards smart breeding would make for great contrast. Now that I've gotten turbo working breeding will only be 1/4 as bad as it was even if I don't change anything about it. Something like that wouldn't interest you?

On legendaries, I feel that some of them, like the Bird trio, are just extra^2 rare pokemon. Yes, I realize they had a huge movie but the later Weather trio covers that kind of plot as their main one. But I get that you want quests to go with each one.


Thank you for responding elarmasecreta.

 

[Maruno]

Try not to tie this discussion down to what one game (i.e. yours) is doing, lauerolus. You posted this thread here for general chat.

I personally think that a fangame should only be as long as it needs to be. Once you get to the point of recreational breeding (i.e. breeding at all) or farming, there's not really any point in playing. A good game is not the same thing as a big game, and if you invest time trying to keep people playing once they've finished the game itself, you're going to lose that time spent on improving the actual game.

On the subject of "fresh starts", I can only see that as an attempt to create several games in one (I don't care if you'll unlock access to your old Pokémon later; you can do that with migration). Try to make one game first before making several.

 

[FL]

Starting out with a new team would be ridiculous, I mean, why not just create a new game then? If you were to add a new story, shouldn't it be in a new game?

This.

I like more that one region, but when making other regions, try to make something to them make sense for being a separate place, like old places, desert region, snow region, future region, old/ancient region, other planet/dimension, underground region, etc... There's isn't good to make a region exactly like the first region.

Side quests/minigames/breeding are good, but give priority in making the main game. Try to link these thing to the actual game like minigames that give rare items like evolutionary stone, shards, plates, etc...

Since there's too many legendary pokémon, I see no problem having small plot about these pokémon, maybe along with the more important with bigger plots.

 

[Worldslayer608]

I am a fan of incorporating multiple regions, but in some sort of non-linear way.

For example, Follow your main plot, and have your character finding themselves in a new region with a purpose. Classic games have done this by reintroducing the same general goal, and I personally do not like that idea.

A great example would be something such as having a character crashing on an island in middle of the main plot, have a goal set for the player to get off the island and progress with the original story once they do. This opens up a lot of development space, such as setting a size of the island, introduce special/unique features within this space or establish a sub-plot that can remain open ended for other developmental purposes.

While many may think that multiple regions is not that interesting, there are a lot of creative points to break it up and have your game flow quite smoothly and keep things interesting and bringing multiple regions into the plot without directly giving that impression to your players

You brought up farming, but using the example of the shipwreck, you could do other things, such as resource gathering to repair the ship or tracking down someone with obstacles placed in the player's way.

Minecraft is actually a nice reference point as well. If you have multiple regions, who is to say that the main goal has to take place in just one region?

It is all about the endgame you set for your project and that endgame can open up design space or restrict it, both in many ways.

 

[tImE]

I've gotta agree with ЩѻƦḽᶑʂḽдƴƹƦ on this.
As long as it is well incorporated in the rest of the game, a second region could hold great potential.

GSC/HGSS's way of having a second region is really boring imo.
Having a second region, simpy for higher level purposes and a second Pokemon League visit, seems highly wasted when you could simply make the first region more fleshed out, as elarmasecreta and jim42 said.

However, the way Game Freak did it with the Sevii Islands in FRLG was GENIUS.
It gave us a small sub-plot to have fun with in the middle of the mainplot, in a small region with a few additional areas and plots post-game with the access to previously unavailable Pokémon was really fun.

My conclusion is that having a second "main region", only for more area to explore and more Pokemon to catch is higly overrated and seldom works well.

However, having a smaller extra region which temporarily diverts from the maingame, like ЩѻƦḽᶑʂḽдƴƹƦ's Island example, with a few more new areas accessible post-game, with a few small sidequests and additional Pokémon can really add depth to the game.
I think the keyword here is moderation. Extra regions or areas can easily get too big, and would fit better for a whole other game.

 

[Wootius]

Noted Maruno.

So not sequestering a second, if any, region away is a big point with everyone. Even using a second region is a point of contention. Integration is (the hard) key.

That's why I posted this, to make sure I(and others if they're willing to listen) can make sure they're not just designing something they want to play. Thank you for the honest responses!

I'll answer my own questions without shading them in my game.

Honestly, I liked the second badge challenge. HG/SS little bit of added Kanto plot was enough for me. If you were to integrate it into your game better then HG/SS did it'd be possibly too much awesome for me.

I'm fine with either, but if someone could make breeding rewarding a challenge worth the time investment it'd be awesome. But that'd have to be a serious challenge for a possibly large initial time sink. Expections would be high after breeding ~3-4 good nature, decent IV and right move pokemon and you'd have to deliver. Faster breeding wouldn't hurt me at all.

Pokemon just needs more "sidequest" content in general. Tying it in with a area would be fine. Farming would be ok if based on game time like in Harvest Moon. ЩѻƦḽᶑʂḽдƴƹƦ's shipwreck idea would be a good way to introduce Pokemon Rangers. There are endless area to explore from the anime/manga.

Some legendaries like Mewtwo and much of the later "deity" types and their helpers yes, if you should be able to catch them at all. But other, like the Birds just seem like extra^2 rare pokemon. A sidequest with a NPC couldn't hurt or just a few separate maps with puzzles to put them off the beaten trail.

 

[tImE]

Noted Maruno.

So not sequestering a second, if any, region away is a big point with everyone. Even using a second region is a point of contention. Integration is (the hard) key.

That's why I posted this, to make sure I(and others if they're willing to listen) can make sure they're not just designing something they want to play. Thank you for the honest responses!

I'll answer my own questions without shading them in my game.

Honestly, I liked the second badge challenge. HG/SS little bit of added Kanto plot was enough for me. If you were to integrate it into your game better then HG/SS did it'd be possibly too much awesome for me.

I'm fine with either, but if someone could make breeding rewarding a challenge worth the time investment it'd be awesome. But that'd have to be a serious challenge for a possibly large initial time sink. Expections would be high after breeding ~3-4 good nature, decent IV and right move pokemon and you'd have to deliver. Faster breeding wouldn't hurt me at all.

Pokemon just needs more "sidequest" content in general. Tying it in with a area would be fine. Farming would be ok if based on game time like in Harvest Moon. ЩѻƦḽᶑʂḽдƴƹƦ's shipwreck idea would be a good way to introduce Pokemon Rangers. There are endless area to explore from the anime/manga.

Some legendaries like Mewtwo and much of the later "deity" types and their helpers yes, if you should be able to catch them at all. But other, like the Birds just seem like extra^2 rare pokemon. A sidequest with a NPC couldn't hurt or just a few separate maps with puzzles to put them off the beaten trail.

I think the biggest problem with making people want to breed good-natured Pokemon with good IV's is the fact that bred Pokémon often have absolutely no point in the singleplayer, as the opponent is never smart enough to use competitive tactics.

You have no need to make sure your Scizor is on steroids. A good ol' regular Scizor often suffices.

And, since the game has so little multiplayer value, because of the low amount of players actually playing the game, you aren't exactly motivated to put down lots of time on breeding perfect Pokémon in a fan game, as you would in a real one.

In a fan-game, you almost never get the chance to battle another player due to a very small playerbase, compared to the real Pokémon Games, which millions of people play.
The fact that you also can trade and send to newer generations in the real games, means your investing for the future, when breeding there.

Trying to make breeding attractive in a fan-game is like making an MMORPG without raids or PVP.
You expect people to grind just for the sake of it?
That would mean just people who really enjoys the PVE story gets to enjoy the game.

On the other hand, if you add something like a harder difficulty setting, or simply make a really hard game, where every gym is as hard as a Battle Frontier Facility, I think breeding would be a lot more attractive. But imo this wouldn't really be attractive as a second region. I would just sort of give up and play it occasionaly, like I did with the Battle Frontier in both Emerald and Platinum.

That is a problem with second regions aswell. If it gets too hard or takes too long, many people stop playing, simply because they think: "Meh, I already finished the E4 once. A Battle Frontier doesn't matter."

This is all despite the fact breeding would have been reduced to 1/4th like your example.
Imo, if one wants to make a game where breeding would be attractive, it'd have to be more like the Gym Challenges in Pokemon Stadium.
No storyline to grind through, just a simple ladder climbing style gameplay, with a world to explore, simply for training and catching Pokémon.

But I don't know how everyone else thinks, this is just my opinion.
Maybe you should start a poll, and see what people think about second regions, with harder battles that require breeding or not.
I think a lot of people can't be bothered to post, but would gladly vote in a poll.

 

[Arma]

I think the main problem is that people always think about length and the amount of regions. Why don't you make a lift of things you want as post game activities, and then figure out if it's worth creating new areas for?

I've seen many games which are poorly planned out. Too many lifeless cities, routes, landmarks. Like I said, before designing your region, think about what will happen on each area. Does this town serve a purpose? Is there any reason I want to come back to this place later? People should think of towns/maps for their features, not the other way around.

 

[Worldslayer608]

People should think of towns/maps for their features, not the other way around.

While I agree with everything else you said, I disagree with this statement.

Why?

Because some people design top to bottom and some design from the bottom up. There is no right or wrong way to design, merely poor execution to distinguish a good design from a bad design.

Other than that, actually bringing your maps to life is going to be far more beneficial than merely adding additional regions. Give the player a reason to be on every map, be it from finding a specific item or learning how to overcome a specific obstacle. Not only does this create fun filled maps, but it also builds on game time, allowing your game to be played for longer periods of time and ultimately giving your game more value.

 

[Wootius]

On the other hand, if you add something like a harder difficulty setting, or simply make a really hard game, where every gym is as hard as a Battle Frontier Facility, I think breeding would be a lot more attractive.

This was the idea for the second region's gyms. 100% focused teams with egg and move tutor moves in every Gym along with competitive rulesets(sleep, level limits, etc).

But imo this wouldn't really be attractive as a second region. I would just sort of give up and play it occasionally, like I did with the Battle Frontier in both Emerald and Platinum.

That what I figured would happen. I'll make a poll however.

I do agree with elarmasecreta/ЩѻƦḽᶑʂḽдƴƹƦ that one needs to make sure X isn't there to just be there. It has to fulfill some further role then to just fill space.

One easy example is the buildings one can't go into or that have NPC that say nothing of value. Put trades in there. Change what they say based on story switches. If Team X is in town, stopping a random robbing of whatever would be so unexpected but awesome.

 

[Nickalooose]

There's nothing wrong with having a house with nothing "special" in there, gives the towns and routes, life. I prefer this actually. Makes me look around not knowing what's in each house. If a house has something specific, like move tutors or special items etc. I would bounce from house to house, collecting everything and never returning knowing what that house does or had in it. This doesn't make that city have anything special besides free stuff.

Also, why can't a game have 2 or 3 regions with a new beginning, Ash started new in each region, why can't we... So you have to capture level 5 Pokémon again, what's the problem... The thing with Pokémon games, many people think grinding levels is the way forward... I never found this, I have never endless battled wild Pokémon in any of the game, but I have still beaten the Elite4 whether I needed to use 5 Full Restore or Max Revive, or zero... It's all about what you train, the moves you teach you orders used and most important... How bad the NPC battles, sometimes you can get a lucky streak of 3 Thunders hitting a water type... Sometimes your best attack can get critical hit... It's simple enough... But what's to say that because you've had to start from level 5's again, that the new region won't be a new experience, maybe new features that you unlock after the Elite4... New Pokémon... Legendaries appear... Old region gym leaders become rivals for the new region... There are many ways a creator can go... There's no simple, "make the 1 region amazing", when in fact you can make 2 or 3 or 6, regions amazing.

However, some peoples minds do get set in the old, "oh look Team Destroys-Alot... I better stop them from taking over the world", ploy... New ideas is a MUST for a new region... What a waste of time HGSS was when you went back to KANTO and can smash every gym leader within an hour because your Pokémon are level 70+ (especially since Heatran and other legendaries were high level upon capturing them) and the highest any leader has is 60... As long as it can be equaled out somewhere down the line... I don't see a problem.

 

[tImE]

There's nothing wrong with having a house with nothing "special" in there, gives the towns and routes, life. I prefer this actually. Makes me look around not knowing what's in each house. If a house has something specific, like move tutors or special items etc. I would bounce from house to house, collecting everything and never returning knowing what that house does or had in it. This doesn't make that city have anything special besides free stuff.

Also, why can't a game have 2 or 3 regions with a new beginning, Ash started new in each region, why can't we... So you have to capture level 5 Pokémon again, what's the problem... The thing with Pokémon games, many people think grinding levels is the way forward... I never found this, I have never endless battled wild Pokémon in any of the game, but I have still beaten the Elite4 whether I needed to use 5 Full Restore or Max Revive, or zero... It's all about what you train, the moves you teach you orders used and most important... How bad the NPC battles, sometimes you can get a lucky streak of 3 Thunders hitting a water type... Sometimes your best attack can get critical hit... It's simple enough... But what's to say that because you've had to start from level 5's again, that the new region won't be a new experience, maybe new features that you unlock after the Elite4... New Pokémon... Legendaries appear... Old region gym leaders become rivals for the new region... There are many ways a creator can go... There's no simple, "make the 1 region amazing", when in fact you can make 2 or 3 or 6, regions amazing.

However, some peoples minds do get set in the old, "oh look Team Destroys-Alot... I better stop them from taking over the world", ploy... New ideas is a MUST for a new region... What a waste of time HGSS was when you went back to KANTO and can smash every gym leader within an hour because your Pokémon are level 70+ (especially since Heatran and other legendaries were high level upon capturing them) and the highest any leader has is 60... As long as it can be equaled out somewhere down the line... I don't see a problem.

I think what Maruno and the others are trying say with "Just make 1 amazing region." is that you shouldn't lay focus on having as many regions as possible, because it will thin out the game.
It takes long time enough to make a good game with one region. If you intend to have a restart with new level 5 Pokémon in a new region after that, it's going to take double the time to finish the game.

If you're gonna do a "brand-new start" in the new region, why not simply finish the game with the first region and make the second region a completely new game? And you can make it compatible for trading between the games, so you can have your team from the first game, as well.

There really is no benefit in having multiple regions in one game, unless you plan to utilize it storywise and actually incorporate them properly.

 

[Worldslayer608]

Because multiple regions are amazing.

Why?

Because they build on activities for the player.

You can make one amazing region with plenty of detail and fun and you can make 2 regions that are balanced and offer more dynamic>

There is nothing wrong with multiple regions, simply the execution of it.

When you design a game that is XXXY long and you want 4 regions you don't build the game as XXXXXY. You condense into XXXY. Y is your end game for the overall story and X is the allotment of time you allow the player to finish the game within set parameters, such as levels.

Make sure they can explore and play through both the world and plot in time and at the same time.

 

[Arma]

Wait, I really don't get that one statement worldslayer. How can two balanced regions be better than one that's in all points better?

Anyway, I do think most people overlook the size of a region. Just like it has been stated before, Pokemon games are balanced around one region, so far I haven't seen any good ideas for a second one.

I want to state something about my game. My region is divided into nine zones, each with its own biome and characteristics. The goal is to clear all the zones before entering the league.
I've had suggestions of how I should add new zones after finishing the game, or add a new region altogether.

The reason I'm not doing this because I think it's rather stupid to introduce new zones after you finish the game when it requires you to clear all of them in order to finish it. And I won't add another region, because I won't be able to make as epic as the first one.

What I could do though, is saying each of my zones is a different region, that way I would have a well balanced game with a whopping nine regions. The only reason I am not doing that is because I think it rather silly to have regions with an average of two or three towns.

 

[Worldslayer608]

I never really said it was better.

However you have to keep in mind that in order to make a region feel natrual, you have to restrict design space.

Designing, not just games but anything really, generally follows something called a style guide. You see examples of this in video games, card games, movies etc. It is a guide that tells you what your word essentially contains, how it looks and how it behaves.

For example, if a world is Greek themed, your buildings, people, activities etc. are generally going to represent that.

This is a design restriction.

Expanding to multiple regions or style guides allows you to build beyond which opens up more design space for mechanics in which you can build upon.

The biggest design mistake I feel you can make, is an emphasis on the things that don't quite matter. Your statement about breaking it up into 9 regions is a good example.

In the grand scheme of things, your world size, just does not matter all that much. You could have 9 regions with 3 town, or 3 regions with 9 towns, in the end it is really not as relevant as people seem to think it is. What matters is whether or not your story can cover the entire expanse of your physical world to let your player see what they need to see, go where they need to go and do what they need to do as the game progresses without excess or shortages. It is also much more important to ensure that you have enough mechanics in the world to keep your player engaged.

World size is almost irrelevant.

 

[tImE]

I never really said it was better.

However you have to keep in mind that in order to make a region feel natrual, you have to restrict design space.

Designing, not just games but anything really, generally follows something called a style guide. You see examples of this in video games, card games, movies etc. It is a guide that tells you what your word essentially contains, how it looks and how it behaves.

For example, if a world is Greek themed, your buildings, people, activities etc. are generally going to represent that.

This is a design restriction.

Expanding to multiple regions or style guides allows you to build beyond which opens up more design space for mechanics in which you can build upon.

The biggest design mistake I feel you can make, is an emphasis on the things that don't quite matter. Your statement about breaking it up into 9 regions is a good example.

In the grand scheme of things, your world size, just does not matter all that much. You could have 9 regions with 3 town, or 3 regions with 9 towns, in the end it is really not as relevant as people seem to think it is. What matters is whether or not your story can cover the entire expanse of your physical world to let your player see what they need to see, go where they need to go and do what they need to do as the game progresses without excess or shortages. It is also much more important to ensure that you have enough mechanics in the world to keep your player engaged.

World size is almost irrelevant.

I agree with everything you said except one thing. Your last statement.

World size is almost irrelevant.

This is honestly not true. Even if you fit in the same amount of gameplay hours in a game, 2 or 3 times the world size than normally, sure you'd have a coherent and fun game without excess or shortages. HOWEVER; If you have such a large amount of space to put your story in, it means you'll end up with towns no one remembers, routes which haven't been explored and you lose any sense of direction. (Lack of better word :S)

What I'm trying to say is, having things you recognize and know from before is good in games. It makes the player think "Ah, I have to go there! I know where that is!" and they immediately wants to head there.
But in a world too large, you'd probably end up just visiting every town or city once, simply because the story is spread over such a large area. The game, if you follow the storyline, will never seem boring because the story is too thin, but you'll lose all the "memorable moments" you get in a town.

You have no idea how well I know Jubilife City, simply because of the Poketch Company, and the fact that you had to cross it to first get to Oreburgh, then again to get to Floaroma, and finally once more to get to Canalave.

This recognizability factor makes games a lot more fun and memorable.
Force the player to only visit a town once when they follow the story, because you have so many towns to go through, because of the large world, and you lose that.

 

[BlackWaltz3]

What I'm trying to say is, having things you recognize and know from before is good in games. It makes the player think "Ah, I have to go there! I know where that is!" and they immediately wants to head there.
But in a world too large, you'd probably end up just visiting every town or city once, simply because the story is spread over such a large area. The game, if you follow the storyline, will never seem boring because the story is too thin, but you'll lose all the "memorable moments" you get in a town.

You have no idea how well I know Jubilife City, simply because of the Poketch Company, and the fact that you had to cross it to first get to Oreburgh, then again to get to Floaroma, and finally once more to get to Canalave.

This, this, so much this! Did any of you play Final Fantasy XIII? I know I did. For those that haven't played it, you only really visit each area one through the game, like a long tunnel (and of those, you can never return to about half!). It's one of FFXIII's many criticisms. Because of that, when I lent it to a friend to try, I couldn't help her out when she got stuck, simply because I had no idea where she was!

Conversely, when she played Final Fantasy IX, I was able to direct her over the phone; the importance and frequent use of many areas allowed me to become highly familiar with them and as such I was able to provide specific directions for that part of the game, even though I was unable to see where I was leading her.

The same principle should hold when designing regions in a Pokémon game; make each location, each character, each plot thread important in the long term, not just the short. It's not good enough to have your region(s) exist as little more than a series of checkpoints on the way to your goal. Unova suffered from this greatly. Implant meaning into those checkpoints, and continue to reaffirm and build on that meaning as you progress.