New Mallboro

[Bob]

Heh, well, I'm thinking that won't be a problem because 1. it seems most people aren't keen to the idea, so I'm thinking of not doing it, and 2. there are a lot of apartments where you'd still be alone.

[Fleck]

Yeah that's... actually a good point. Having to work like sardines, crammed into a mall with people you don't like is one thing, but having to LIVE with people is even worse. Having spent three months in a barracks, I can attest that it is indeed maddening. Maybe we should shrink the mall, but leave options open for apartments? Or maybe come up with something besides just shrinking the apartments. I know most of my characters would probably go into a violent rage within a few days of being forced to live with other people.

[seflask]

As mentioned before, I think it's best to keep the apartments the way they are, or use the old non SP system for the current apartments. Anyways, if the idea goes through, either someone will have to take up Shera or Cid will be living alone again. Locke and Faris can live with people of their respective genders, but will not live with anyone who is of the opposite gender, unless it's to someone whom they are married to, and I don't see Locke or Faris getting hitched anytime soon. Besides, if they did, it would take away from their game integrity.

Sorry to get somewhat off subject there. I say leave the apartments as they are. This new idea is just causing confusion.

[bloodfestbutterfly]

My characters? Violent rage at the mention, for some, and adventure time for the rest. Horrid idea.

Shrinking the mall might be a good plan, since there are so many open slots.

[Bob]

Well, what I was thinking for apartments was more that the bedroom/max occupancy would be for player characters. NPCs would be kinda whatever and could still live with people, but they wouldn't count on apartment lists and they can't take up a bedroom, basically.

My thoughts with shrinking the mall are that every store will have the same SP always and also the same employee roster: 1 Manager, 1 Assistant Manager, 1 Full Time, and 1 Part Time. Always (or so my thoughts go, anyway). I'D like to sack the managers and demote all managers to assistant managers, making a total of 3 spots per store and have a NORG-mandated manager in each spot (but probably still giving assistant managers some hire/fire abilities). But I don't think that'd be a popular idea. . . . I'm just thinking that mall stores typically don't hire many people (except for bigger stores), so limiting the employee roster would be fun.

[seflask]

Contraction of the roster (NPC's contracted of course) might help things. I have no problem with the NORG manager as long as it's not a "permanent" (lasting longer then say, a month or two) thing.

[Bob]

Yeah, I think we'll kinda think on it. Heh, OR (idea time), NORG appoints permanent managers to all stores, but still allows managers to stay managers, or should I say CO-managers. So they're still in charge, but like, all their dang decisions have to be cleared by the NORG managers. I'm thinking that I want to do away with the Assistant Manager position and instead have only Manager, Full Time, and Part Time at each store. Whether or not we do the co-manager thing and whether or not it's permanent can be decided at a later time, but I'd like each store to have 3 possible employees. I think it'd be most fun that way. Fewer peeps to worry about and such.

[Fleck]

A thought:

As I was thinking about things to do about the mall, I realized that pretty much all Mall mini-games have currencies already built in. Or, at the very least, they have things of value, which is basically the same thing. So there's no need to have a money system since really, we already have one. What's the point of saying 5 Triple Triad cards = X Gil when we can just say 5 Triple Triad cards > 4 Triple Triad cards etc? Basically, I'm thinking that we can implement a barter system easily since we already have a barter system. We don't need to assign real value to things in Mallboro, only relative value. Furthermore, things could have different value to different people. Like, if you play a lot of blitz but don't play a lot of triple triad. You go on a quest and get a bunch of cards you don't want. To YOU, those cards are nearly worthless, but to someone who plays obessively, those cards are worth a lot. So a price could be arranged, trading items back and forth until both parties are reasonably satisfied. The great thing about this idea is that it's NOT new and involves NO new rules, really. All of this is already in place, we just have to recognize it and utilize it.

[Bob]

Yeah, I thought about that (for the most part anyway) but aside from Triple Triad, there isn't much else to trade. Chocobos, maybe... All things have EXP of some sort though, which is currency-like. I just don't know how to go about trading something like that. If you have ideas though, I'm all ears.

[Fleck]

Well, the Arena has BP, AP, and Exp. Unless you've done something drastic with the program since the last time I played with it, I don't think it'd be a big issue to trade those (unless it affected abilities, in which case it would require the player to readjust stats and whatnot, but still, not a whole lot of work).

Anyway, another idea expanding on the bartering thing. Here's my thought: we bring back clans, and instead of clans just being a collection of people who gain noteriety, clans instead have like.... a treasury? A coffer? A vault? Not sure what the word I'm thinking of is, but basically the clan itself owns cards, chocobos, Arena equipment and whatever else we can think of, and they loan it out to whoever is in their clan. So if a character goes on a quest or enters a tournament, they have access to all the community equipment in their clan. Obviously, if multiple people from the same clan are doing the same thing, only one person can use it at a time, but that's not hard to keep track of.

This is NOT to say that once you join a clan all of your stuff inherently become's the clan's stuff. That's optional. A clan can have its own rules for how they divide the spoils. Maybe you can have a communist clan where once you join, all YOUR stuff becomes all OUR stuff. Or you can have a nice clan and say, "okay, you can donate whatever you want to to community pile, but you can still keep your personal stuff if you want. No pressure."

And it introduces some self-governance, since the clan will be run by player(s) and not by mods. So maybe one clan will have a jerk leader who takes all the good stuff and never lets anyone else use the badass sword in Arena fights (and then everyone gets pissed and leaves the clan).

I understand that this idea is just in its infancy, so don't shoot it down because if you find a flaw. I think this has some potential to be a fun, not-complicated way to add a new dimension to the game if we lay some groundwork first.

Also, second idea. I really like that there are places to quest at leisure (like that tower and whatnot). We should have more of that. A lot more. To give clans places to go. I want to expand more on this idea, but friggin break is over. Grr.

[Bob]

FRIGGIN BREAKS ENDING! GRR!

I actually really like the notion of Clans having community chocobos and Triple Triad cards. That idea KINDA blows my mind (in the good way) because well, it'd just...work. Plain and simple.

The Arena aspect, however, is kinda sketchy. I like people maintaining their uniqueness, but I can see this community thing being VERY exploitable. For example, I get all five of my people into one clan. One guy levels only AP and Level-ups. Meanwhile, the other five (or at least a pair of them) dedicate all their EXP (all 1000 they start with) to BP, so that Character #1 (we'll call him Auron) has all the best equipment right away.

But I really like the idea of Triple Triad and Chocobo Racing being a Clan thing because it gives me ideas. Like, maybe Triple Triad or chocobos will be important in a quest, so you'll need somebody in your clan that is good at cards or chocobos (good at chocobos?). And this way, we can have fewer total chocobos and Triple Triad things so that you don't need multiple people in one clan to do it all.

What I think would be kinda fun (though probably wouldn't work out well) is if blitzball revived and each blitz team was a clan. Not a requirement for sure, but I'd at least like to host a clan that was the whole blitz roster (if we get clans that big, otherwise they might just be a big chunk of a team).

Anyway, yeah, I like this idea for clans. Definitely works for TT and CR, just not sure about Arena and Blitz just yet.



Also: I'm enjoying the posts about people that are afraid they can't afford their stores now. I changed the SP required on apartments already, but held off on notifying people because well, that's an actual cause for concern with pay cuts

[Fleck]

Yeah, for Triple Triad and chocobos, the transition to community property is easy. BP, AP, and Exp would be harder to keep track of and more exploitable, so I we'll have to be a bit more creative to come up with workable ways to integrate Blitz and the Arena (because I would like to get all the mini-games involved, if possible). Maybe for the Arena we just have weapons/armor? Clan X has this sword and anyone in the clan can use it for fights. It'd be fairly simple to keep track of and unless someone deliberately tried to break the system, it'd be hard to exploit (I think. Haven't thought about all the angles yet). We all know each other here, so I think we can just say "hey, don't do that" and people will oblige.

Okay, expanding on my second idea. I think it would be awesome if we just had a huge world to explore at our leisure. Kinda like what some of the quests are heading towards, but bigger. More areas and whatnot. Instead of having one quest at a time, I think it would be cool if we just had a list of available areas to pick from and explore whenever you want. Make it more of an adventure and less of a mission, right? So a clan can get together and decide where they want to go. Do they check out the forest? The caves? That weird tower by the sea? Basically, I'm just totally ripping off MMO's right now. Free range exploration, or as much as an RP can allow. We can even let other people design places if they want.

ALSO! Maybe we can increase chocobo relevance/use by locking certain areas off until you have a certain kind of chocobo. "This island is surrounded by shallow water. Need a Gold/Black/Blue chocobo to access."

Anyway, I'm probably doing a terrible job of pitching this idea, but my brain is kinda frazzled right now. Basically my plan is Clans + Clan Items + Big World to Explore = Maybe Fun?

Of course, this only matters to people interested in joining clans or questing. If you'd rather stay at Mallboro, you can totally do that and not get involved in all this nonsense.

Oh and also maybe stuff should happen at the apartments. Bob and I have occasionally discussed Apartment Events similar to the Mallboro Events, but I'm thinking something like events but different. I dunno. I'll work it out and maybe have something more to talk about later.

[Bob]

Dec 2, 2010 0:21:55 GMT -8 Fleck said:

ALSO! Maybe we can increase chocobo relevance/use by locking certain areas off until you have a certain kind of chocobo. "This island is surrounded by shallow water. Need a Gold/Black/Blue chocobo to access."

Shh! That's TOTALLY not already part of the plan *shifty eyes*

[seflask]

I'm not sure each blitzball team being a clan would be a good idea, especially since there is trading and roster changes going on every season/tournament. It takes away some of the sports aspect though it does reinforce the team aspect.

[Bob]

Yeah, I don't think it'd work either, though I suppose if there were a particular clan that didn't quest but only blitzed and never traded players it'd work, but that's unlikely.