Post by Super Gmagical on Feb 16, 2018 11:52:32 GMT -8
The Slothening Continues
BREAKING NEWS!
According to our leading wormhole researchers, the recent outbreak of wormholes has suddenly doubled in frequency! These poor Slakoth are everywhere, even more than before! Please, if you see any Slakoth dropped in dangerous situations, have a heart and help them out.
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That's right! Starting today, every catch and training thread can spawn up to two bonus Slakoth-- or put another way, has two chances of rolling the Ultra Beast, whose odds of appearing, incidentally, raise a little bit higher every day. (Not in the sense of "it's gotta happen eventually" but "literally it's coded to raise a little higher every day".) Fallers still get two rolls per spawn chance, of course.
Rapid-Fire Notes
- The current Showcase has been extended, and now ends on the 24th, so be sure to get those entries in!
- A small but nice update/clarification for the new Import system: as of today, rather than monthly claims being per calendar month (offering the chance of back to back claims) or a full 30-day cooldown (which can be a bit harsh and risks people forgetting and going way over with no way to recover the time they forgot about), months are simply divided in half. From the 1st to the 15th of each month is the first half, and the 15th to the end is the second half. (If you claim exactly the 15th, you can go either way next month.) Whenever you claim, you simply need to wait until the next time that half rolls around, preventing back-to-back claims with a minimum (non-repeatable) two week wait time, but also allowing some flexibility and reducing the chances of losing time. We hope this change suits everyone importing!
- Some upcoming things to look forward to: Shadow Pokemon (probably March 1), Berry Farming (in March or April), and "Veriant" Pokemon! (Released gradually; the poll is set to last the rest of the month but the response thus far is overwhelmingly in favor.)
SG is also going to attempt to figure out how to force the profile inventories to keep a consistent order but no promises; the shop code itself is uneditable and the javascript is written in a shorthand I can't read so it's gonna be an effort to write a new plugin from scratch that will interact with it, but when or even if that happens is a tossup. - The Feedback Thread is always open, too, so feel free to let us know any thoughts!
New Treasure Areas
A mysterious phenomenon has occurred near Aleal and Carrefor! The mountain caves and the extensive underground ruins have always existed, but recent reports claim that for reasons unknown, items of interest have become much more common, in a similar manner to the mines in Liggs and the ruins in Faraday and Old Pahala!
The Mountain Caverns and Underground Ruins are two new treasure areas to explore, with different loot tables than the existing areas.
Aleal's Caverns contain Z-Crystals, Natural Evo Items, Unnatural Items (dropped by hikers, perhaps?), and Fossils.
Carrefor's Ruins contain Mega Stones, Gems, Valuable Items, and Fossils.
Just be careful out there exploring!
New Plugins!
We've got several new features in the past few weeks, so here's a small guide for them!
- Post Templates - One of the most obvious, found below the posts on the full Reply page, these let you save templates to insert. They are per account and stored in your browser, so if you use multiple computers you may need to save them on each one. (I can potentially make the boxes smaller if people prefer; just let us know in the Feedback Thread if so.)
The templates are inserted in BBCode format, and are simply tacked on to the post, meaning that in addition to making RP post tables easier to use, they're also handy for things like PC layouts, where you can just click the "insert" button to add another box, or this announcement template, for instance! - Canned Responses - On the full Reply page, next to Add Attachment and the little gear icon, there's a new menu for Canned Responses, which is similar to the Post Template plugin except that it's Staff-made. Currently, Staff and Mods have quicker access to some confirmation messages like common Pokeballs and evo confirms, and everyone has quicker access to the Character Application, evo request form, and the bare basics Pokemon info form used in the application. (Dex name / nickname / gender / ability / moves.)
More canned templates may be added later, and we'll let you know if so. Requests can go in the Feedback Thread or elsewhere in the Suggestion board. - Listen to Post - This button on posts shows up near the Quote and Edit buttons only in browsers that support it, but for those that do it will read a post with a Speech API voice. There unfortunately is not a pause/stop function, but you can always mute or close the tab. At any rate, in addition to the chance some members may find the voice amusing, we hope others might find it useful to be able to hear a post when reading is less an option, such as when their eyes are bothering them or doing something offline or in another tab/window that requires their focus, like cooking or doing art. It may not be the most used feature, but if even a few folks get some good use out of it it's very worth having~
- Account Archival - Everyone knows how unpleasant it can be to dig through the member list and have so many abandoned accounts bogging down the user list. So, just a day or two after Staff had considered possibly eventually deleting at least the 0 post accounts, what do we stumble across by pure luck but a beautiful Archive plugin?
This does nothing to a member's ability to post, it simply marks their account as "archived", fading their user info on profiles and mini profiles, and removing them from the member list and the total member count on the board, which serves all of making the count more accurate for the current board, making it less intimidating to potential new members, and making our activity rate look better. Wins all around! When a member returns, Staff simply X's their name off the Archived list in the plugin and returns them to normal status~ - Finally, Dice have been added, which may be used for whatever you can think of but in particular lead into our last announcement point:
Battle System?
So we know the last attempt to fix the battle system sort of spiraled into a mess. In an effort to prevent abuse of the system and endless dodging, the rules became very long and clunky, and in response to feedback from one or two members in particular asking, "but what about this? what about that? what about this case?" more and more clarifications were added that made the final product even more bogged down and intimidating.
As such, we'd like to try again, and have a proposal for trimming down and streamlining the system by using the dice plugin written up alongside a poll here.
We also understand part of the backlash last time was the lack of warning, so now we're asking you. Do you like the new suggestion, prefer the way it is now, or have your own suggestions as to how things might be done? Please vote and let us know!
We do also understand that a lot of major changes back to back can stress some members, and would like to apologize if anyone is feeling this right now. Our current goal is to iron out a few big things and get the site looking as smooth and sleek as possible before starting to seriously advertise again, giving us the best chance of attracting and keeping some fresh new members, so we hope all our old members can be patient with us trying to cram in a bit here with the hope that once all this is done, the months to follow will have high member activity and lower numbers of announcements aside from fun IC events like contests and more UB hunts~!
PHARAOH LEAP.