Announcement & Discussion

[Namohysip]

Alright everyone, this is a big one. Reply to anything that catches your eye.

Boss 1 post-round retrospective

I have a lot of housekeeping that I intend to do for the following things after seeing everything that happened over the course of this boss fight, most of it having to do with game balance. As expected, things to do with the new system are going to change a little. Small game-balancing tweaks as Diyem adjusts to strengthening your characters' bodies.

• While the specifics are not yet hashed out, I intend to buff the Strike and Heal support classes, and possibly modify some of the others slightly. This will overall have a benefit to their impact, and will make them much more useful in the early game.
• Across the board, healing moves have had their stamina costs significantly reduced.
  • AoE 50% healing moves such as Wish and Morning Sun have been reduced to 30 stamina.
  • Single-target healing moves such as Synthesis have been reduced to 15 stamina.
  • Life Dew costs 15 stamina.
• Due to some feedback near the beginning of the fight, all users were given a single "Support" freebie. The system as it had been proposed in the hotfix was that everybody who had been in the Front Lines in one fight would get a single "free Support" action in the next fight, if they were brought down to Support.
  
  The logic behind this is that Front Line players would have spent a lot on items the previous fight, and other hypothetical FL-exclusive expenditures, and would therefore be less willing to spend points on Support if they think they'll need those points for a future Front Line expenditure, and 30 points is significantly more than what most have spent on their item loadouts. Therefore, Support feels like a waste to a Front Line player in Support for a round.
  
  However, after further deliberation, I and the balance team have found that the Support pricing was indeed balanced against item expenditures and other FL-exclusive things, aside from, ironically, the move shop that was just unlocked. Therefore, the freebie system will not be staying for long, if at all. However, I am willing to let you as a community decide when and how it goes.
  
  There will eventually be an upgrade to the shop. There, items will be stronger, but also more expensive. Eventually, being FL will cost more than using a single Support action per round. You gain, at max, 60 points per round, but only spend 30 per fight. The extra 30 could go to savings for double-Support in a future round, or other expenditures. Front Line users may spend more than 30 per fight at some point, depending on what happens and what they buy.
  
  Therefore, Support is overall balanced across the entire campaign, but is relatively more costly in the early rounds. That being said, here are possible solutions, which can be voted on here. It's multi-select: pick all of the options that appeal to you and I will choose the most popular one. No matter what is picked, Support freebies in general will go away when the shop gets its first upgrade, at the latest. With that in mind, here are the options until then:
  • Keep things as they are until the first shop upgrade. This means that any Front Line player will get a Support freebie every time they go from FL to Support round-to-round.
  • Make freebies instead be "half-off" on the first Support, such that it will cost 15 instead of 30.
  • Let everyone keep the freebies they currently have, but grant no more.
  • Set all players to having 1 freebie now, and then grant no more.
  • Get rid of freebies entirely, now, rather than waiting.
• I'll be keeping this poll up for 24 hours before making a decision.

Announcements:

I am still working on the Story So Far for round 1. For round 2, I am opening the floor to volunteers to handle the Story So Far from here on! Those who volunteer will have to summarize all major and optionally minor events that take place during the week or round, and then provide that to me as a document for me to proof and post, giving credit to you. Volunteers will be awarded 1 BLEC and the equivalent of 1 review's worth of challenges filled out for each week of events covered. This is a rare instance where direct work for Blacklight will count toward points and BLECs. Please contact me first to get approval before working on this, as only one person can cover any given week or round!

By the way, after the time-skip, the move and ability shop will open! With it, you can spend 5 points to learn or relearn any legal Egg, Transfer, Tutor, or TM move! For 10 points, you can also change Abilities. In-universe, there are certain NPCs that are responsible for these changes, and can optionally have a scene with for flavor. Additionally, Support players can reconfigure their Support tree, if desired, for 5 points, as if they were relearning a move. Note that purchasing new Support skills with your new Level does not cost points.

Along with that... The mysterious stones discovered at the impact site, called Useless Lumps, can now be purchased for 10 points, limit 1 per person. Note that you need at least 1 BLEC to unlock this item. These items can be purchased by both Front Line and Support units. When on the Front Line, the Useless Lump can be repeatedly used to inflict 10 fixed damage to an enemy if used as a bludgeoning weapon. As Support, the Useless Lump will be on the Support unit's person during their actions. They have no other effect.

Any further questions or inquiries can be asked here or on the discord as usual, and any major announcements will be posted here!

 

[Namohysip]

Hey all, the next time skip has happened! Went on a little longer than intended, but we are now in Day 8 ~ the beginning of autumn. The next time skip is planned to be on September 5 and will be for another week or so. Until then, I actually have a few scenes that I'd be interested in having people grab if they'd like! (And of course there's a scene with Owen if anybody wants. He can be in any of these scenes but also just character stuff, since I'm a player, too.)

The ones that are bold are plot-critical and must happen this round, and therefore will happen even if nobody participates. Though I'd definitely like if at least others were there.

-Group not-plot scene during this weekend's sweet spot, the lunch that Soda mentioned Maple invited them to.
-Scene at Kecleon Market for TMs
-Scene at Blissey Sunny for Egg Moves
-Scene at Xatu's for Move Relearning
-Scene at Marowak's for the Move Tutor
-Scene with a certain someone for Transfer Moves
-Scene with Wigglytuff for Ability changes
-Scene with Surf and Turf
-A scene with Maple at the beach.
-Scene at the Guild to discuss the still-missing Team Spice.
-A scene to search for that shadowy Rattata

If ANY of these look interesting, hit me up!

 

[The Walrein]

A few questions regarding how learning moves works:
1. I thought moves were going to work like HoC where each Pokemon can know a large number of different moves but can only have 4 'prepared' moves at once for each fight, but looking over the discord it seems like that might not be the case anymore. Just to make sure I have it clear, is the following a correct summary regarding how many moves we can know at once: "Like in the main series games, players can only know up to 4 different moves at once, and when learning a new move while already knowing 4 moves, must choose an old move to replace. If a Player chooses to buy a new move and replace a move they'd already bought that round, this costs 0 points. However, after a battle all moves used are 'locked-in' and players must then spend 5 points again to replace them."
2. How does learning level-up moves work? Can we get them for free once our characters are high enough level? At what time can this occur?
3. What movelists can we use for learning new moves? Is it just from the Gen 8 lists (Gen 7 if not appearing in Gen 8), or can we use earlier generation movelists as well (if so, any limit to which ones)?

 

[Namohysip]

1. That is still true, yes... for the mechanics side of things. There's a small bit of gameplay and story segregation here in that it requires points to switch moves after they are locked-in, even if they were previously known. However, in terms of roleplay flavor not during battles, you can basically say that your characters happened to hotkey a different set of moves during their idle time. Roleplay moves/move sets done between boss fights don't cost anything.

2. Level Up moves are free, but relearning them is not if you happened to remove it. With that weird exception where you might learn it again via Level Up.

3. I'm very, very lenient here. If it existed ever, you're good. "Transfer" moves, or moves that were only obtainable via a previous generation (8 for most, 7 for Dexit victims) would be treated like transfer moves with the exception of Level Up moves from a previous gen.

 

[Virgil134]

Made an announcement about this on Discord earlier, but I made an Affinity Chart for our characters in Google Sheets alongside Namo and Goat. The point of it would be to keep track of our characters’ affinity for each other and see how their relationships will develop over the course of the campaign. This sheet is open for anyone to edit, so any help would be much appreciated! If you’re interested, just go to your character’s tab and fill in a value between -5 and 5 for all the other characters:

Blacklight Affinity Chart

docs.google.com

 

[Phoenixsong]

Hello, hi! Sorry to interrupt (and possibly add more work to your shiny new spreadsheet, oops). I'd love to get into Blacklight with y'all now that I'm free of Moving Hell, but first I need some things about mechanics/rules explained to me as if I were a small child, i.e., slowly and probably exasperatedly.

(second I need to actually decide on a character and I Cannot. but. baby steps)

Namo may need to answer some of these, but I welcome exasperated explanations from anyone who understands!

-Do you only know whether you've leveled up by checking the character sheet periodically, or is there some way to know how much exp you're earning? The rewards table just says the exp gained varies, but I saw at least one post from someone claiming rewards that implied they knew they'd be getting enough to level up, which implies knowing how much exp they're redeeming. Checking the sheet is not remotely difficult, so that's fine, but I'm just wondering whether there's information about that missing from some thread or other.

-Do attack and magic matter at all for supports? Apparently shielding involves HP, defense and resistance (though def/res aren't mentioned on the tree diagram?), and strike and heal run off of stamina. But the other two...?

-Just so I'm clear, the points that support players claim from the official actions thread are currently only used for performing their support actions, respeccing their loadout and buying U S E L E S S L U M P S, correct? Such that buying a U S E L E S S L U M P potentially impacts the number of support actions I can perform in an upcoming boss fight, for example?

-When the support rules say it costs 30 points to use "a support attack" and 60 points to "do it a second time", does that mean using a support skill in general, or repeating a specific one? If my character has hex 2 and boon 1 and wants to use each one once in a given battle, does it cost me 60 points (30 for hex, 30 for boon) or 90 (30 for hex, 60 for boon)?

-Once you complete the rewards table in a given round, you can't do it again, right, and all further posts claiming rewards are solely for BLECs? So there's a maximum of 45 points earned per typical round?

-On that note, does that mean that the intended typical cadence of a single player's support actions, assuming no other purchases and no hoarding for big fights, is roughly to be able to use two actions during every 4th boss fight (boss 1: 45 earned, 30 spent, 15 left; boss 2: 15 banked, 45 earned, 60 total, 30 spent, 30 left; boss 3: 30 banked, 45 earned, 75 total, 30 spent, 45 left; boss 4: 45 banked, 45 earned, 90 total)?

-Just as a general note, there are some things that do exist in the various information threads but that I think would be even more helpful added to the end-all-be-all rules thread (and/or official actions, and/or signup thread), just so latecomers like me don't have to dig for it:

• a brief statement of what the points earned through the rewards table are actually for (e.g., buying moves/items/etc. out of battle for frontliners, spending on support actions during battle for support) -- I was confused on this for a while until I reread a few threads to give myself the right context. I admit that I'm slow, but still, a definitive explanation would be nice
• that you start with +10 bonus stat points and gain an additional +3 per level
• how stats work when you're support (shielding, etc.), so support players know how to distribute their stat points (or, perhaps, that the points don't actually matter for them at all?)
• the official actions thread could probably also do with the point redemption examples from the initial announcement post, or at least reiterating that there are waves for redeeming each of the prize columns -- based on the actions thread OP alone, I didn't really grok that each column was a separate wave
• the end-all-be-all thread never actually explains what BLECs are or how you get them, only the prizes and specifics on what does or doesn't qualify
• the miscellaneous new stuff you added after the first boss (move shop, support respeccing, etc.)
• the auto-statting and the auto-inventory for frontliners should probably be in the signup thread template

Thanks in advance! This has been really fun to spectate so far.

 

[Namohysip]

I'd love to get into Blacklight

Sweet, when you're ready, you can do that by signing up in the official signups thread, which doubles as a repository for any permanent character traits you'd like to have, such as the item autobuy or the stat point distribution priority.

Do you only know whether you've leveled up by checking the character sheet periodically,

Pretty much. Generally speaking, you earn enough exp to gain ~6-7 levels per round, assuming you're keeping up.

Do attack and magic matter at all for supports?

Yes! Specifically for Strike-related Supports. The attack power is determined by stamina (i.e. Feint Attack has a power of 60) but the actual damage dealt relies on that user's offensive stat. Shielding, therefore, also relies on the user's bulk--so, their HP and whatever relevant defending stat the attacking pokemon is targeting.

Just so I'm clear, the points that support players claim from the official actions thread are currently only used for performing their support actions, respeccing their loadout and buying U S E L E S S L U M P S, correct?

Currently yes, that is all Support players will be spending points on. The Useless Lump does nothing for Support units, but you're free to buy it anyway. It is a Useless Lump.

When the support rules say it costs 30 points to use "a support attack" and 60 points to "do it a second time", does that mean using a support skill in general, or repeating a specific one?

In general. Choose wisely!

Once you complete the rewards table in a given round, you can't do it again, right, and all further posts claiming rewards are solely for BLECs? So there's a maximum of 45 points earned per typical round?

60, because the special condition when defeating a boss nets you an additional 15 if achieved.

On that note, does that mean that the intended typical cadence of a single player's support actions, assuming no other purchases and no hoarding for big fights, is roughly to be able to use two actions during every 4th boss fight (boss 1: 45 earned, 30 spent, 15 left; boss 2: 15 banked, 45 earned, 60 total, 30 spent, 30 left; boss 3: 30 banked, 45 earned, 75 total, 30 spent, 45 left; boss 4: 45 banked, 45 earned, 90 total)?

See above, but generally every other fight would allow this, as it's 60 per round on average.

Just as a general note, there are some things that do exist in the various information threads but that I think would be even more helpful added to the end-all-be-all rules thread

Right, I'll get to this sometime over the weekend, hopefully. Thanks for pointing them out.

 

[Namohysip]

Oh right, I forgot to announce this here, but due to the scenes that are currently going on and the other scenes that are being planned, I've decided to delay the time skip and combine it with the boss walkup. Don't feel too rushed to get stuff done before the skip, as it will just be lumped with the walkup. This will buy everyone a handful of days, about half a week extra, to get things finished!

 

[Namohysip]

It was requested of me to show what the rankings would look like for who has priority for going into the front lines for the next fight now that everyone is eligible and veterans are able to join in! I made these rankings based on what everyone's preferences are for being in the Front Lines.

Please make sure to tell me explicitly if you are interested in joining this fight if your FL number is 3-5.
Please make sure to tell me explicitly that you are NOT interested in joining this fight if your FL number is 1 or 2.

As a reminder, this is how the rankings are made if there is ever a dispute on who wants to join:

1. The person is requesting to be in Front Lines. (This has not been determined explicitly yet).
2. The person who had the longest “drought” of only being in Support wins the spot.
3. The person who had the lowest overall number of times in the Front Lines wins the spot.
4. The person who has the priority spot furthest from 1 wins the spot. (i.e. if a priority 2 and a priority 4 person both want the final FL spot, and they tied for the three previous criteria, then the priority 4 person will win.)
   • Note: When forming the initial default lists, FL-2 individuals who missed the last fight are picked first, and then FL-1 units, and then the rest of FL-2 units.
5. Case-by-case. If the tie gets this low on the tiebreaker, I may also consider raising the FL limit by a tiny amount for that fight only.

The boss is not yet known, and this list is subject to change based on who requests to join and who opts out despite being at a high enough ranking to join by default.

I suspect a lot of requests and planning will come in during the 24 hours between the walk-up and the actual fight. That may be when the list changes around the most, so stay tuned.

As of now, including Support-exclusive characters, this is everyone's priority rank if they were to request to join the fight. This is essentially a summary priority of everyone's rank if numbers 2, 3, and 4 were taken into account and they requested to join.

Round 2 priority rankings:

Anybody on the same line has the exact same priority even with 2,3 and 4 all taken into account. If there is a dispute between them, a case-by-case discussion may be required:

(top priority)

Fey, Seyka, Brisa, Angela, Flame, Mithos, Skara, Tricky
RD, Lauchs
Owen
Maneki, Cino
Cynthian, Necrozma, Vix, Astrid, Zane
Cuicatl, Ashwood
Dave
Cabot, Curio
Nip, Mellow, Celeste, Starr, Jaro

(Bottom priority)

Based on these rankings, anybody with a rank of 3-5 will not be included in FL unless they ask me before the boss starts. Anybody with a rank of 1-2 will be automatically included (and then bumped off if it gets crowded and their priority is lower.)

As such, the current FL lineup is...

Cino
Cynthian
Necrozma
Vix
Astrid
Zane
Cabot
Curio
Two from: Nip, Celeste, Starr, Jaro, Dave

Excluded:
The other three from: Nip, Celeste, Starr, Jaro, Dave

(Owen will not be FL this fight)

Once again, if any Supports are interested in this fight, or anybody included in this list would like to opt out, let me know BEFORE the round ends so I can adjust this list.

 

[The Walrein]

I think I'd prefer to just be support for the upcoming fight.

 

[Namohysip]

Thanks Wal--with that in mind, this is the current setup from what I'm seeing for the next fight. Note that this is NOT yet locked in:

Cino
Necrozma
Vix
Astrid
Zane
Cabot
Curio
Three from: Nip, Celeste, Starr, Dave

Excluded:
One from: Nip, Celeste, Starr, Dave

At this point if everyone stays this way, I would be willing to temporarily bump the FL capacity to 11 to accommodate all four at the bottom priority (I will beef up the boss a tiny bit to compensate, though.)

 

[Namohysip]

Hey all, time has advanced and I'm beginning the boss walkup now. EDIT: The boss walkup will last a few hours in an effort to let more people get some input after the time skip. I lost track of the days and it turns out we have an extra day of leeway, but that's meant for the walkup to begin with.

Any scenes that are ongoing I'm going to allow to continue for another 24 hours or so, but please please please wrap them soon. I'll be addressing this issue in the boss retrospective after the round and fight is over, so hopefully it will be easier to manage going forward!

Also note that time has advanced. If you wanted something to happen offscreen in the meantime, tell me. I tried to take into account some of the things mentioned in other scenes to account for what happened regarding those.

 

[Namohysip]

A few minor announcements mentioned on the discord but not here:

1. I added a small little thing in the Challenge tab below the main table that shows how long ago it's been since I last updated the sheet. A lot of people wonder when I last touched it, since sometimes it doesn't get updated until the weekend when it's not a boss fight. This may help. It might be a little off due to time zones. If someone knows how to make raw dates timezone insensitive in Google Sheets, let me know.

2. As a reminder, per the votes from a few weeks ago, the "Support Freebie" system for those who were in Front Lines and then back to Support is still in effect until the shop gets upgraded several rounds from now. The system has changed. The first Support now costs 15 rather than 30, but then will return to the normal price of 30, 60, 90, etc.

3. More Rank A supports (currently inaccessible, but will be starting round 3!) are being made and added to the sheet! The balance team is currently working on hashing them out. By the end, every combination of two Supports will have a corresponding combo-Support option if desired!

 

[Namohysip]

Congratulations on defeating your second boss! This one went much better than the first, and I wold attribute that to having more tools in your toolkit and in general coordinating a little more strongly with the team as a whole because of it. There are a few things that I noticed this round that I wanted to bring up, but this is also the time for anybody to air any other concerns or comments they may have about how things went down. Here are mine, which I am looking for input on before coming to a final decision on any. I may seem more decided on a few of these, but I am still open to input regardless.

Please read them carefully.

1. The Strike Supports seem weak now, but they will continue to scale up as stamina pools increase. I am going to wait and see for how strong they are during tier upgrades rather than continuing to tweak these low tiers.

2. The Shield Support seems to be very strong. I'm not keen on reducing its power for what currently exists, but their upgrades may be shallower relative to other Supports as I see how others behave.

3. The damage reduction multipliers from moves like Reflect, Light Screen, and Aurora Veil are unmodified from their canon counterparts. Therefore, a Reflect on an unboosted Pokemon is the equivalent of a +4 in defense, rather than the typical +2 that such moves would typically grant. This was true for bosses as well as allies, such as Thyme's usage of it which stalled the fight. Should these multipliers be reduced by half to comply with the rest of the game, or kept the same?

4. Being unable to do turns is unfun. While I won't do anything about the "forced rest" due to going below 0 stamina (you did that on your own), I am looking to modify how negative speed works. Regardless of how low your net speed is, you will always have at least 1 action. However, in exchange, stamina penalties at negative stamina will grow significantly, in line with other modifiers. Every -1 in speed will add a 25% penalty to stamina costs. Note that if a boss has some attribute that gives them +1 action, a -4 in speed WILL STILL reduce their action count to 1.

5. Roleplay related - After seeing how scenes were handled in the past two rounds, I'm wondering if a more dynamic approach to chronology would be warranted, especially as the time skips move forward but there are, logistically, more likely to have scenes between the time frames given. As such, I am wondering if the times placed on the World Map can instead be treated as "target times" to move toward for the next group plot scene, and until then, scenes can take place any time between the previous group plot scene's date and the next, so long as every character only goes forward in time from scene to scene. It may require captioning the beginning of your scenes with [Day X] or something, but otherwise I think this might help make scenes more flexible for players. What does everyone think about this system?

6. There are a few clarifications etc. in the backlog for me to add to the master list of rules per Phoenix's and other requests above. I will hopefully be getting to those sometime today.

 

[Namohysip]

So... it has come to my attention that Reflect and Light Screen ALSO reduce my a third if in a battle with multiple allies.

It's... it's been that way since Gen 3. I didn't know. I need time to reflect on my past life decisions, but until then, I'm modifying #3:

Do you want to keep this the same, i.e. a third damage across the board? The multipliers are a little uglier this way, but they are canon.

Keep it consistent with other boosts the game has, and instead reduce damage by 25% instead of 33%. In exchange, the stamina costs of these moves would go down to 15 from 20.

 

[Namohysip]

Oh! Also. This battle was set to Normal 4/10, hence why most of the attacks did very little damage despite being Power 150 moves. Is that still a nice difficulty to go by, or should I raise things to Normal-Hard 5/10?

 

[Chibi Pika]

3. Leaning toward the 25% option for smoother numbers, but I'll defer to the people who get those moves.

4. Mm, not a fan of this. Maybe -4 ends up being less unfun than it would have been, but at the cost of -1, -2, and -3 being significantly worse than before (especially -3 jumping from a 1.33 penalty up to a whopping 1.75). Considering that being at those stages will be far more common, I feel like this is a massive nerf. (Also there's the fact that stamina being a simple addition/subtraction to the denominator of 12/12 was easy to work with and remember, and now it's suddenly different for positive stages vs negative ones.) I understand that there needs to be a penalty of some kind at -4 (besides moves costing 12/8 stamina) but this catches too many other situations in the crossfire.

5. This... might get confusing. I'm not sure. Maybe if people are very careful to mark when scenes are happening, so others don't accidentally time travel? Curious to see what others think.

6. I'd be open to 5/10, but also wouldn't be too upset if we stuck to 4/10. Having the difficulty scale with performance is also an option (like Amby mentioned on Discord).

 

[Shiny Phantump]

4. Why not set it up so that the “normal” multipliers for low speed are the same, but when the clause that gives you at least one action comes into play, those actions are significantly increased?

5. I don’t think we need to have all scenes wrapped up to timeskip, we can have lag there. I would prefer new scenes all start after the existing ones. Like, if there’s a scene going on 2 days before the present, don’t start a new one 4 days before.

6. As for the balance of this fight, I think most of the “gimmick-y” parts like the swamp, supports and enemy item use were at a difficulty level I like, but the team was a bit squishy health-wise, especially Darkari. (I know we were supposed to one round him or die, but still, he was so easy. We had enough damage cued up to kill him twice over and more.)

 

[Namohysip]

I'm not sure what you mean by your response to 5, Phant. I'm essentially saying that scenes under this proposed system could start some time in the future, and the characters themselves probably shouldn't go backwards from scene to scene, time wise--and everyone would ultimately meet up in the group plot scene as regulators/checkpoints as the campaign continues.

 

[Negrek]

Hmm, I'm not sure I totally understand five, but here's where I'm coming from...

Currently, each round involves some time period of "free RP" where people can pretty much do what they want. PC-PC, PC-NPC, and any number of plot scenes can happen here. Then there's a global "timeskip" to the boss walk-up scene, and then the final boss battle to cap the round. Right now you always have to progress through the phases in that order.

If I'm understanding right, what you're proposing is that you can do a scene in any time between a previous group plot scene and whatever the next one is, so essentially "go back in time" as long as it would still be a forward movement in time for your character.

I think part of my confusion is due to my not understanding the definition of group plot scene. Does it only include "mandatory" scenes like the walk-up and boss battle, or is that any open "plot-related" scene, e.g. last round the curry scene or the scene with Balm and Ceba at the beach? Because if it's the latter, it doesn't seem like what you're proposing would gain people much time to do other stuff? Since at least last round the plot scenes often seemed to start within a day or two of each other, or even overlap.

If only certain big scenes, boss or otherwise, count as group plot scenes, and we're talking a week or two of extra time for people to play stuff out, then I think I'm probably fine with this? Generally speaking I'm okay playing fast and loose with RP timelines. There's the potential for real weirdness here if you had two characters in a scene, one of whom had already been in a "later" scene and who accidentally does/says something based on information that they shouldn't know yet, but I don't tend to consider blips like that a big deal, personally. As long as people aren't being strange and, like, trying to powergame somehow by retroactively having their characters learn stuff they shouldn't have been able to, I don't really see a problem.

I am not totally sure I understand what you're getting at, though! Could you give an example of how you see this working in practice?