The Neocolours Virtual Pet Project (Lots of words)
Posted: 01 Feb 2008 02:01 am
Neopets, Subeta (Pets?), Mistic Pets, Marapets, Lunapets, Whateverpets, Pokemon, Digimon—If there are cute, scary, or just plain bizzare creatures involved, we've played it. We've poured countless hours into imagining every last detail of our nonexistent creature's lives. We've obsessed over the finer points of what does and doesn't suck when it comes to running a pet site. Fellow Neocolourers, I ask you, who knows what we want to waste our time on better than us? If you're trying to use your lifelines, you fail! The answer is no one. So here's our chance to come up with ideas and designs for our version of the perfect virtual pet/monster/critter site. There are no expectations to actually produce a working site. We're here to brainstorm and have fun. However, for our decrepit stolen lawyerbot's spark, you acknowledge that any contributions you make to this thread are part of a greater collaborative work and belong to Neocolours. Me. Us. Everyone. So, don't share original character designs and concepts you want only for yourself and don't steal someone else's crap. Or so help me, in the name of the interweb, I will punish you. Got it? Good. Let's begin, shall we?
For ease of reading, please label each part of your post with the appropriate section title.
MY POST IS ABOUT PET COLORS. MY POST IS ABOUT QUESTS.Etc.
Name—Obviously Neopets is taken, but what should our site be called? Neocolours Pets? Sounds kinda lame. I'd rather we not use pets at all. Perhaps Neocolours could be the generic starting city/world? I dunno. I think I'd like something that doesn't instantly make people think of us as just another cookie cutter pet site. So maybe there'd be lots of in jokes and flavor text alluding to Neocolours, but we won't actually call it that. Like, The Kingdom of Loathing, Maplestory, World of Warcraft, The Wrath of Bob. You get the idea. I'd like to call the pets and petpets/minions something else. Like how in the Golden Compass you have your own daemon? Or familiars? Someone out there go look up: archaic synonyms for minions, myths and legends about monsters and magical creatures, and report back.
Pets, petpets/minions— First things first. NO BOOBIES. If you ask me to explain why, you will be forcefully removed from the island. No voting. No immunity. Go crazy nuts on anything else. Except koalas. I claim the koala pet. However, there are a few other things to consider.
How many pet species should we start out with? I like the idea of 35-45. I think that would be enough to leave space open for new species, while not losing others in the multitude, and to keep redundancy at bay. If you like the Neopets' pets days, and I do, then once you hit 52 you'll have more than one each week. When Neo has several pet days crowded together, there's aways something that gets overlooked.
How many pets per person? Do you want one account with lots of pets, or an account tied to various aliases that have a few pets each? Or both? I liked being able to house groups of pets on Neo, but is it simpler to just have them altogether like Subeta?
Randomness. Only your active pet would get hungry since the others are sleeping or watching Lost. Maybe once every 45 minutes you'd have to feed them and their hunger status would affect other aspects of the site. It wouldn't be much, and since you'd only have to feed one and not worry about the others, it wouldn't be too much of a bother. Food wouldn't be quite so useless like it is on every other site. It'd be the same for toys. Kaotika says: I will not play that game unless you give me a sammich.
Pet and petpet/minion colors— I like Subeta's idea of having one common color. But I also like Neo's basic color options. You'd start out with a common pet, then be given the option to turn it into one of the basic colors without the use of paint brushes, potions, elixirs, or magic boxes. Well, maybe you could use them, but they'd be super easy to obtain like newbie brushes or visiting a particularly colorful wizard and rubbing his feet...
One thing that's always irked me about Subeta is that, for the most part, you can't have a pet that's one color. If you want pink, you'll have to put up with orange. If you want white, there might be a load of magenta and black thrown in, etc. So outside of common, the basic free* colors would be: white, black, brown, green, blue, red, yellow, purple, orange, and pink.
I'll leave the color fills and redraws up to you. Oh, and I prefer Subeta's pet size and Neopets item size. The bigges they can be without being eye sores.
Fighting and Battling— I'm skipping wars for now and including them in site wide events. Instead, I'll focus on day-to-day battling and training. I'm pretty sure we've got what makes a good war down, but what makes a good battle system? I mean, how many of you actually find the act of battling on Neo or Subeta fun? After a bit of thought, I'd like see to see a battle system similar to that found in NeoQuest. You could potentially fight alone, though that obviously wouldn't be the best choice in most battles, or with your pets. Maybe there could be instances in plots/events where you're alone and need to fight your way back to your pets/group. Anyway, you could fill up your active battle team with the pets you choose instead of Mipsy, Talinia, and Velm. You'd still requiring training of some sort and upgraded equipment, but there'd be more strategy and luck involved instead of just brute force. Perhaps someone else can more thoroughly explain how battles work in NeoQuest?
In the same vein, you could train your pets in certain skill sets or classes. Perhaps you want a pet that's really good at healing, another is great at defending, another attacking, etc. It would add variety without forcing you to choose one species over another. There could be some basic attributes, spells, or abilities each species innately has that can later be obtained or mimicked by other species. Maybe squirrels can spit acorns at an opponent and wolves can obtain this ability by completing the One With Your Nuts quest. Whatever.
Oh, and you could also team up with other player(s) for certain big baddies. Like how you needed a team to dig graves in the Haunted Woods plot? Everyone has guilds, but this would help make them something more than just cliques.
Games and Moneymaking—How the heck do you make money without being forced to complete some mind numbing repetitive task?
Games are neat. I like games. Regardless of my personal bias, I think Neopets does games pretty well. I like games that help immerse you into the fiction of the site. Like the way Puzzle Pirates rewards you for completing logical piractical tasks: swabbing the deck, hoisting the main sails, err...stuff like that. I'd also want to see real time competitions against other players instead of, or in addition to, Neo's style of who can send the highest score.
Item quests can be fun, but Subeta has taught us that they can also be a huge pain in the ass. What can we do to include a few, and not make them suck?
Restocking sucks. I don't like it at all, but every pet site sees it as a necessity because Neopets does it. I personally would do away with it altogether. I like the idea of shopkeepers/vendors stocking infinite supplies of X like the Hidden Tower or Millionaire Center in exchange for money or other items, and being able to sell random crap you find back to them. I like the idea of gathering things a la Animal crossing. You'd pick fruit, harvest vegetables, fish, hunt, battle, dig for fossils or rare minerals required for making certain items. Basically, anything but spending hours staring at a blank screen hoping for items to appear. There would still be user shops, auctions, and trades.
Life, the Universe, and Everything— Neopets and even Misticpets beat Subeta on this. I like having a world map with different lands and regions that have the own culture and theme. Each world has its own common peoples, heroes, villains, way of dress, native plants and animals, and architecture. I'd like there to be animals that aren't pets or minions and peoples who aren't human. Neopets has faeries. Subeta has fairies, demons, gods and goddesses. I'd personally rather not see any races that closely resemble humans with funny ears, wings, or tails. I'm sick of faeries and elves. Certainly we can come up with something else? A race of sentient plants? Robots? Robots are cool. I like robots... They can be pets or people or a pet color. I don't care. There must be robots somewhere. I call dibs on the futuristic high tech world, robots, and koalas.
Houses. I want houses to decorate and make pretty. Yes. There could be different housing styles according to which world you make your home. For example, a Mystery Island home would be cheaper to build on Mystery Island than in Faerieland and vice versa. Islanders would pay less for Island furniture, food, clothing, weapons, etc. because they'd be native and common. But, if you wanted to build a dark and foreboding castle in the heart of Lollipop Land decorated with the corpses of your slain foes, you could.
You'd also earn special bonuses for staying put, doing local quests, and other things. Say you lived on Mystery Island. Each day you lived there you'd earn a token. At the end of the month you'd be rewarded with your tokens and granted access to a world specific shop. You'd be able to be unique items from this shop that might not sell for much in your own world, but would sell for more in others to encourage trade. During site events like sports or gaming tournaments and wars, you could earn extra tokens for remaining loyal to your home world. You could still move to different worlds and support different factions, but you'd get a little extra for remaining a loyal supporter.
Oh, and I like the idea of having to explore the world, at least in the beginning. The front page would have the requisite stuff about how awesome our site is, but registering and creating an account would be like a mini adventure.
You awake in the blackness of the void. You try and remember who you are.
What is your name? This would be your user name. <Insert witty narrative for your password and email here>
You are formless. Shapeless. Your physical body is gone. You're not sure if it was destroyed by falling into a black hole or eaten by ravenous poodlesharks. You're even less sure of why you feel the need to pee without having the necessary parts to do so. Suddenly three doors appear in front of you. One is labled Men, one Women, and the other Bob.
Which door do you choose? Upon choosing you are presented with a human male or female avatar. I won't tell you what happens when you pick Bob.
Blah blah blah, you pick out the details of your avatar and find some tattered clothes to cover your nakeyness. Then you're spit out into the main city of Neocolours and taken on a guided tour. However, the world map only shows areas that you've discovered and is shown in full only when you've explored the entire world. The entire account creation and tour shouldn't take long, maybe an hour which includes picking your first pets? Completing the world map could be done in a day, but maybe take a couple hours? I'm hoping this will add more depth to the world along with frustrating n00bs so that they won't bother to play. Devious, I know.
And now I'm pooped. Discuss.
For ease of reading, please label each part of your post with the appropriate section title.
MY POST IS ABOUT PET COLORS. MY POST IS ABOUT QUESTS.Etc.
Name—Obviously Neopets is taken, but what should our site be called? Neocolours Pets? Sounds kinda lame. I'd rather we not use pets at all. Perhaps Neocolours could be the generic starting city/world? I dunno. I think I'd like something that doesn't instantly make people think of us as just another cookie cutter pet site. So maybe there'd be lots of in jokes and flavor text alluding to Neocolours, but we won't actually call it that. Like, The Kingdom of Loathing, Maplestory, World of Warcraft, The Wrath of Bob. You get the idea. I'd like to call the pets and petpets/minions something else. Like how in the Golden Compass you have your own daemon? Or familiars? Someone out there go look up: archaic synonyms for minions, myths and legends about monsters and magical creatures, and report back.
Pets, petpets/minions— First things first. NO BOOBIES. If you ask me to explain why, you will be forcefully removed from the island. No voting. No immunity. Go crazy nuts on anything else. Except koalas. I claim the koala pet. However, there are a few other things to consider.
How many pet species should we start out with? I like the idea of 35-45. I think that would be enough to leave space open for new species, while not losing others in the multitude, and to keep redundancy at bay. If you like the Neopets' pets days, and I do, then once you hit 52 you'll have more than one each week. When Neo has several pet days crowded together, there's aways something that gets overlooked.
How many pets per person? Do you want one account with lots of pets, or an account tied to various aliases that have a few pets each? Or both? I liked being able to house groups of pets on Neo, but is it simpler to just have them altogether like Subeta?
Randomness. Only your active pet would get hungry since the others are sleeping or watching Lost. Maybe once every 45 minutes you'd have to feed them and their hunger status would affect other aspects of the site. It wouldn't be much, and since you'd only have to feed one and not worry about the others, it wouldn't be too much of a bother. Food wouldn't be quite so useless like it is on every other site. It'd be the same for toys. Kaotika says: I will not play that game unless you give me a sammich.
Pet and petpet/minion colors— I like Subeta's idea of having one common color. But I also like Neo's basic color options. You'd start out with a common pet, then be given the option to turn it into one of the basic colors without the use of paint brushes, potions, elixirs, or magic boxes. Well, maybe you could use them, but they'd be super easy to obtain like newbie brushes or visiting a particularly colorful wizard and rubbing his feet...
One thing that's always irked me about Subeta is that, for the most part, you can't have a pet that's one color. If you want pink, you'll have to put up with orange. If you want white, there might be a load of magenta and black thrown in, etc. So outside of common, the basic free* colors would be: white, black, brown, green, blue, red, yellow, purple, orange, and pink.
I'll leave the color fills and redraws up to you. Oh, and I prefer Subeta's pet size and Neopets item size. The bigges they can be without being eye sores.
Fighting and Battling— I'm skipping wars for now and including them in site wide events. Instead, I'll focus on day-to-day battling and training. I'm pretty sure we've got what makes a good war down, but what makes a good battle system? I mean, how many of you actually find the act of battling on Neo or Subeta fun? After a bit of thought, I'd like see to see a battle system similar to that found in NeoQuest. You could potentially fight alone, though that obviously wouldn't be the best choice in most battles, or with your pets. Maybe there could be instances in plots/events where you're alone and need to fight your way back to your pets/group. Anyway, you could fill up your active battle team with the pets you choose instead of Mipsy, Talinia, and Velm. You'd still requiring training of some sort and upgraded equipment, but there'd be more strategy and luck involved instead of just brute force. Perhaps someone else can more thoroughly explain how battles work in NeoQuest?
In the same vein, you could train your pets in certain skill sets or classes. Perhaps you want a pet that's really good at healing, another is great at defending, another attacking, etc. It would add variety without forcing you to choose one species over another. There could be some basic attributes, spells, or abilities each species innately has that can later be obtained or mimicked by other species. Maybe squirrels can spit acorns at an opponent and wolves can obtain this ability by completing the One With Your Nuts quest. Whatever.
Oh, and you could also team up with other player(s) for certain big baddies. Like how you needed a team to dig graves in the Haunted Woods plot? Everyone has guilds, but this would help make them something more than just cliques.
Games and Moneymaking—How the heck do you make money without being forced to complete some mind numbing repetitive task?
Games are neat. I like games. Regardless of my personal bias, I think Neopets does games pretty well. I like games that help immerse you into the fiction of the site. Like the way Puzzle Pirates rewards you for completing logical piractical tasks: swabbing the deck, hoisting the main sails, err...stuff like that. I'd also want to see real time competitions against other players instead of, or in addition to, Neo's style of who can send the highest score.
Item quests can be fun, but Subeta has taught us that they can also be a huge pain in the ass. What can we do to include a few, and not make them suck?
Restocking sucks. I don't like it at all, but every pet site sees it as a necessity because Neopets does it. I personally would do away with it altogether. I like the idea of shopkeepers/vendors stocking infinite supplies of X like the Hidden Tower or Millionaire Center in exchange for money or other items, and being able to sell random crap you find back to them. I like the idea of gathering things a la Animal crossing. You'd pick fruit, harvest vegetables, fish, hunt, battle, dig for fossils or rare minerals required for making certain items. Basically, anything but spending hours staring at a blank screen hoping for items to appear. There would still be user shops, auctions, and trades.
Life, the Universe, and Everything— Neopets and even Misticpets beat Subeta on this. I like having a world map with different lands and regions that have the own culture and theme. Each world has its own common peoples, heroes, villains, way of dress, native plants and animals, and architecture. I'd like there to be animals that aren't pets or minions and peoples who aren't human. Neopets has faeries. Subeta has fairies, demons, gods and goddesses. I'd personally rather not see any races that closely resemble humans with funny ears, wings, or tails. I'm sick of faeries and elves. Certainly we can come up with something else? A race of sentient plants? Robots? Robots are cool. I like robots... They can be pets or people or a pet color. I don't care. There must be robots somewhere. I call dibs on the futuristic high tech world, robots, and koalas.
Houses. I want houses to decorate and make pretty. Yes. There could be different housing styles according to which world you make your home. For example, a Mystery Island home would be cheaper to build on Mystery Island than in Faerieland and vice versa. Islanders would pay less for Island furniture, food, clothing, weapons, etc. because they'd be native and common. But, if you wanted to build a dark and foreboding castle in the heart of Lollipop Land decorated with the corpses of your slain foes, you could.
You'd also earn special bonuses for staying put, doing local quests, and other things. Say you lived on Mystery Island. Each day you lived there you'd earn a token. At the end of the month you'd be rewarded with your tokens and granted access to a world specific shop. You'd be able to be unique items from this shop that might not sell for much in your own world, but would sell for more in others to encourage trade. During site events like sports or gaming tournaments and wars, you could earn extra tokens for remaining loyal to your home world. You could still move to different worlds and support different factions, but you'd get a little extra for remaining a loyal supporter.
Oh, and I like the idea of having to explore the world, at least in the beginning. The front page would have the requisite stuff about how awesome our site is, but registering and creating an account would be like a mini adventure.
You awake in the blackness of the void. You try and remember who you are.
What is your name? This would be your user name. <Insert witty narrative for your password and email here>
You are formless. Shapeless. Your physical body is gone. You're not sure if it was destroyed by falling into a black hole or eaten by ravenous poodlesharks. You're even less sure of why you feel the need to pee without having the necessary parts to do so. Suddenly three doors appear in front of you. One is labled Men, one Women, and the other Bob.
Which door do you choose? Upon choosing you are presented with a human male or female avatar. I won't tell you what happens when you pick Bob.
Blah blah blah, you pick out the details of your avatar and find some tattered clothes to cover your nakeyness. Then you're spit out into the main city of Neocolours and taken on a guided tour. However, the world map only shows areas that you've discovered and is shown in full only when you've explored the entire world. The entire account creation and tour shouldn't take long, maybe an hour which includes picking your first pets? Completing the world map could be done in a day, but maybe take a couple hours? I'm hoping this will add more depth to the world along with frustrating n00bs so that they won't bother to play. Devious, I know.
And now I'm pooped. Discuss.