Sevii, Fairy, Hoenn

[LunaticJames]

Hello, as part of ongoing transparency I am here to give updates on what we are working on, how far along things are, and general info sharing. It was mentioned this would occur after the Summer event, but when discussing it in game chat, not much detail was shared instead wanting to have more air to talk about such things.

As you can tell from the title there are 3 things we are going to focus on, ranging from the short term future, to the long term goals. We used to have a future outlook topic on our objectives, but instead of adding to that we are making a new topic as most of that was completed. This is also generally the priority order as of now, but there are no time constraints on either of the last two so maybe that will change. For starters, let's begin with the current objective:

Sevii
Talking points: Progress on Sevii. How much is done? How much is left? Why is progress slow?

Progress on Sevii
It has been much the same since we last talked about it properly. People are busy. But we have recollected where we were up to, with us having regained our direction after not having much focus on it since late last year. We are working through each island, one at a time. Previously we talked about releasing one island at a time, but that idea was changed to a whole release instead due to the nature of the questline unfolded in development. Sorry if that was not conveyed clearly since then.
Currently the active work on Sevii is being done working on the spawns, indoors, and links (Going from one map to another), while we beef up our scripting stock with tutelage. We have all islands and sub islands planned out with spawns for each area now. For example, Two Island is ready to be put ingame, but we have held off on it for now.
There is still much to do in Sevii before release. The project is one of those projects that always seem "We are close to being done, nice" but large parts can have fast progress which is encouraging, and technical parts have slow progress which makes us rethink how close we were to the end. On that note, what is actually happening?

How much is done/How much is left?
As you can see from this table, 16/30 are green. Yay. We are half way then!?
Yes, but also not exactly, but still sort of yes. I'll explain.
There is much more weight associated on some parts more than others, due to the effort required to code something properly compared to the easiness of fixing broken map links, so those take longer to turn green on the table while others can be very fast. This table also doesn't touch on Post-Sevii content that we are also preparing, but it is a good yard stick if people wanted to see how it is going with more accuracy though. Maybe I can update this over time.

Why is progress slow?
>*Opens book of usual excuses*
Honestly, we just have been busy IRL or with other things. We can still work on events easily as they are rapid, short term projects, but rallying to such a large multi-year project is difficult. Not much more to say for that really.

With all of this in mind, we are happy to be regaining people from long term IRL projects early September and will be pushing ahead with Sevii full speed as our Primary goal. While there are other parts in this topic to talk about still, Sevii is the primary focus above all else. This again means Events could be pushed to the side in favour of the content team working on Sevii. CG based content would still be going ahead though (Swarms etc) with the CG group, while the GE group marches on behind the closed doors.
A point was raised by players in the past to re-release old events, which we will consider as we move into Autumn...


Fairy and Gen 6
While not a lot of speculation has gone into this player wise, even though:

• All of Gen 6 is in the Playerdex's Pokedex
• The Fairy type graphic has been in the files for years (...\Pokemon World Online\Skins\Default\Interface\type.png)
• The recent TM change removing Numbers specifically as to not clash with future gen
• Some Gen 6 Items and TMs are also ingame (Assault Vest, TM - Avalanche)

None of us have really talked about it from staff either.
Ideally, we want to move to the Gen 6 (X/Y) battle system sometime in the medium term future. Especially with Hoenn approaching sometime soon, this just gives our content pool an increase and a refresh ontop of what we already have. This does not have a prospected release date as it is a colossal amount of work falling to very little people. But for transparency, this is one of our aims.
So don't be upset when your dragons get Moonblasted.

As Jinji mentioned in his Change Log last week, we are aiming to blend Gen 5 and Gen 6 TMs in at the same time, hence removing the Numbers in the names as there are duplicates in between gen 5 and 6, but have different numbers. Type updates will be included, including Pokémon now being fairy where before it didn't exist, such as Clefable changing types and others changing their secondary type, like Gardevoir. What is the timeline of this? We cannot say of course, but it is on the radar.

Mega Evolutions
Another huge aspect of Gen 6 was Mega Evolutions. One question we have not even asked ourselves is if it is even possible within our client...
But lets assume it is possible in our pile of VB, should we? It was something that Nintendo left behind after all, and it was something that made normal Pokémon competeable with legendaries, which PWO does not accommodate in PvP anyway.
But I digress, they are very cool.

Firstly, before having alt forms working for Megas, we would want to have other simpler things working first, like female based sprites, or forms like Castform/Unown/Rotom working properly first before going onto Megas. But we would still be interested in the communities opinion on it.


Hoenn

After completion of Sevii, Hoenn would be the next task on the plate.
In someways it might be simpler than Sevii as well, as would be a region without quests that just get added in over time with the main focus just being on basic progression to begin with. Hands up if you remember how Johto was added in? Yeah, like that.
We have not put anything in concrete design wise for Hoenn however while we toiling away at Sevii first. So things can and likely will change from what is being discussed here to implementation on the live server. But with it being the next project, it has started to be discussed in loose terms behind our closed doors. I understand the jokes about Hoenn taking forever to be released, but we were talking about Sevii while working on the Elite 4, so now we are also looking at Hoenn in that regard.

So let's talk about our ideas when it comes to Hoenn.
The Hoenn experience would be standard at first, focusing on the 8 and 16 badge experience with ideally it being a starting region in the future. This would not be available on release sadly, but it would be a later focus.

There are also no maps for Hoenn since we converted over to our current map system in the past, we would need to remake them all (I will be wanting more Mappers soon, don't forget to make a showcase). Likely we'd just make it a little more custom to fit PWO's story line as well over time, and yes, we have a setting in Pokémon's universe, we are based 15 years after Red/Blue. Hence Youngster Joey being in the Elite 4.

Our current basic plans for Hoenn access:
- Players starting in Kanto/Johto arriving in Hoenn would have the requirement to have 16 badges and have finished Sevii's questline to get access.
- Gyms have 2 versions, just like in Kanto/Johto with it being more difficult in your second/third region. Meaning you would have 1 low gym level in starting region, and the other 2 would be high level. As opposed to being level 100 or something.
- In the future when implemented, starting in Hoenn would require you to beat all 8 gyms, and then a version of the Elite 4 (Hoenn's or Indigo City) to gain access to either Johto or Kanto and join on the current progress circle.

This may still change of course when we actually start working on it. But imagine this as being our draft board we are letting other people see.


Closing notes
I think this is what we wanted to cover mostly. Right now this is just focus on content as to replace the old sticky thread we had up with an updated one. As it is just content, this thread won't talk about any future Client update while we are working on them, or other administrative goals we have.
As normal, there cannot be any timelines set in stone. I'd love to speculate that Sevii would be done this year, but we just cannot confirm if that would be the case as all our lives are constantly changing.

Please feel free to ask any questions that might be had, or give us a poke for an update in the future. This is written as of the information available from August 2022.

 

[desya]

When I played was 2 regions. When I returned to the game, a global construction began. This is all because of me? Not bad.

 

[Cleveland]

In desya we trust

 

[justme1306]

whats about sinnoh/unova/kalos? any progress?

 

[lWtRl]

 

[Fadoka]

Not gonna lie, I've been pretty much active for more than a year now and the progress I saw or that is yet to come, is really huge and I'm happy to see this. It's motivating and a huge step forward to the whole game and its reputation. I always love such challenges and hoping for the best.

P.S: Throwing real talks aside, now credits are only to desya, jack and lobster. Staff might be included after the Gods but it depends. #EZ.

 

[Georgelzr]

How much is done/How much is left?
As you can see from this table, 16/30 are green. Yay. We are half way then!?
Yes, but also not exactly, but still sort of yes. I'll explain.
There is much more weight associated on some parts more than others, due to the effort required to code something properly compared to the easiness of fixing broken map links, so those take longer to turn green on the table while others can be very fast. This table also doesn't touch on Post-Sevii content that we are also preparing, but it is a good yard stick if people wanted to see how it is going with more accuracy though. Maybe I can update this over time.

Well any updates?

 

[Aevero]

Hello once more.

With the Winter event wrapped up and the tournament beginning, now seems as good a time as any to give an update on how the future is going behind the closed doors.

Let's begin with Sevii:

As can see from the overly simplified table, which is already out of date, things are moving forwards slowly - but nicely. All overworld maps, indoor maps, and links to all are fully functional.
Placing NPC's into maps is now far easier now that staff can traverse normally through the islands, instead of having to look up guides to figure out what is to the right of Five Island so they can teleport there.
There is still a lot to do though. Spawns are still being reconstructed one island at a time, and quest NPC's (the difficult ones) are slowly being chipped away at. But all in all, good progress is still happening.

https://imgur.com/eJNLZCg

Q - You said no more events while you worked on Sevii? We missed out on Halloween event. Why the Winter event then?
A - Sevii was still being worked on during the event by some staff. The idea for the Winter Event came from our scripter team (Sorey/Relicanth) wanting to do something to familiarise themselves working together originally. Hope you enjoyed . Once again though, we're trying to put focus onto Sevii instead of temp content like events, so no events until Sevii's release. The CG team will still operate and conduct swarms/games as normal however.

While there could be more to discuss around Sevii, for now we can leave the update on that note and instead move onto...


Fairy/Gen 6 update:
While a lot of other things have been going on regarding content, Gen 6 with the addition of Fairy has also been slowly cooking away in the depths of the database as well. Clearly we underestimated how large a change this is going to be, as we are also discovering changes between Gen 5 and Gen 6 most of us had not noticed before.
Steel nerf, Base Stat increases, Base Power changes for moves, etc. All being worked on one at a time by the Team. This is a long term project, so don't expect anything appearing to interrupt the tournament as we're keeping most of the changes in the Testing Server to make sure what we're updating works as intended.

The Gen 6 Pokemon sprites added in the last patch were to help Staff with testing Generation 6 Pokemon and changes, and there was no real issue in them being released for players as well. So our gain is your gain. With Gen 6 in mind, the next talking point is always...


Forms and Megas:
While Forms and Mega Pokemon were touched on in the last update, it comes with large complexity as well. Does it fit our meta? How can we even do it? Should we even do it? After some digging on some of the expansive work done by previous DEVs, the game does currently support Forms, but would need significant extra legwork to make Megas feasible.

As it stands this system is rather difficult to use. Which is not very desireable, but still does technically work.
Take Unown for example - Right now every Unown ingame is the letter A and any changes we make would not modify existing Pokemon in the game. We currently have the ability to place all the letters for Unown into the Ruins of Alph. But instead of it being 1 spawn that is randomising the letter(form) that appears as you'd expect, it would need to be 26 individual spawns disguised as one spawn, all with an equal chance of appearing. This uses a form system using obfuscated values hidden inside the database that aren't inuitive for staff to use.
Before we would even want to think about Megas, we would rather have attention put onto exploring the ins and outs of this system more to see its limits, and potentially make modifications. This is the case so much that we're splintering Forms and Megas discussions away from the Generation 6/Fairy update into seperate conversations behind closed doors as to work on it properly. So When Gen 6 does get released, Forms/Megas won't be joining them at the same time, with the note that Megas might not ever come.


Closing Notes
For now this is what we can cover of progression of stuff happening content-wise. I'm sure there are updates some players were keen on seeing, but we are becoming more focused on Sevii over the top of other content for the time being again, so not going into things we have nothing new to speak on.

 

[Fadoka]

While Forms and Mega Pokemon were touched on in the last update, it comes with large complexity as well. Does it fit our meta?

In my opinion Mega evolution is a must to be introduced because it will fit our meta with its available items. Every mega pokemon has its counter already in game in fact, mega evolution was added on Oras of gen 6 with the actually available pokemon of gen 5 (which pwo already has) so all the pokemon that could be affected with mega evolutions and those who counter it, are already available.

That's aside from the fact that we players, decide the meta and we always write stipulations at which we want to battle.
For example: In the past people only wrote "B99 no slaking" It's because slaking was over powered for having a broken ability.
Each of these stipulations are taken into consideration by community veterans in terms of PvP and we do our part in staying positive by giving our opinions to staff after every event/update (at least that's what I do regardless others).

with the note that Megas might not ever come

Not gonna lie, but the game is trying to recover it's leftovers in the latest years and we are in real need for it to be more active that it is recently. That happens with huge updates. The fear of commitment on updates will always be a negative steps towards the big goal.

Again, we players are the ones getting affected with those updates that we play with, as well as you staff as players too. We ourselves can see what is best for us and what can keep us fired up.

For the future:
Polls could be made, Old players and community veterans could be reached to give their point of view, votes and more activity could be provided in a way or another.

So I really wish that the idea of megas never gets cancelled but it could be postponed. I personally don't think anyone would mind that.

 

[Jinji]

Mega Gengar... Kekekeh...

 

[Cleveland]

Mega Gengar... Kekekeh...

Spoiler

 

[The-Joker]

Hello once more.

With the Winter event wrapped up and the tournament beginning, now seems as good a time as any to give an update on how the future is going behind the closed doors.

Let's begin with Sevii:

As can see from the overly simplified table, which is already out of date, things are moving forwards slowly - but nicely. All overworld maps, indoor maps, and links to all are fully functional.
Placing NPC's into maps is now far easier now that staff can traverse normally through the islands, instead of having to look up guides to figure out what is to the right of Five Island so they can teleport there.
There is still a lot to do though. Spawns are still being reconstructed one island at a time, and quest NPC's (the difficult ones) are slowly being chipped away at. But all in all, good progress is still happening.

https://imgur.com/eJNLZCg

Q - You said no more events while you worked on Sevii? We missed out on Halloween event. Why the Winter event then?
A - Sevii was still being worked on during the event by some staff. The idea for the Winter Event came from our scripter team (Sorey/Relicanth) wanting to do something to familiarise themselves working together originally. Hope you enjoyed . Once again though, we're trying to put focus onto Sevii instead of temp content like events, so no events until Sevii's release. The CG team will still operate and conduct swarms/games as normal however.

While there could be more to discuss around Sevii, for now we can leave the update on that note and instead move onto...


Fairy/Gen 6 update:
While a lot of other things have been going on regarding content, Gen 6 with the addition of Fairy has also been slowly cooking away in the depths of the database as well. Clearly we underestimated how large a change this is going to be, as we are also discovering changes between Gen 5 and Gen 6 most of us had not noticed before.
Steel nerf, Base Stat increases, Base Power changes for moves, etc. All being worked on one at a time by the Team. This is a long term project, so don't expect anything appearing to interrupt the tournament as we're keeping most of the changes in the Testing Server to make sure what we're updating works as intended.

Os sprites de Pokémon da 6ª geração adicionados no último patch foram para ajudar a equipe a testar os Pokémon da 6ª geração e mudanças, e não havia nenhum problema real em eles serem lançados para os jogadores também. Portanto, nosso ganho é o seu ganho. Com a geração 6 em mente, o próximo ponto de discussão é sempre...


Formas e Megas:
Embora Forms e Mega Pokemon tenham sido abordados na última atualização, ele também vem com grande complexidade. Isso se encaixa no nosso meta? Como podemos fazer isso? Devemos mesmo fazer isso? Depois de pesquisar um pouco do trabalho expansivo feito pelos DEVs anteriores, o jogo atualmente oferece suporte a Forms, mas precisaria de um trabalho extra significativo para tornar o Megas viável.

Tal como está, este sistema é bastante difícil de usar. O que não é muito desejável, mas ainda funciona tecnicamente.
Pegue o Unown, por exemplo - No momento, todo Unown no jogo é a letra A e quaisquer alterações que fizermos não modificariam os Pokémon existentes no jogo. Atualmente, temos a capacidade de colocar todas as cartas de Unown nas Ruínas de Alph. Mas em vez de ser 1 spawn que está randomizando a letra (forma) que aparece como você esperaria, precisaria ser 26 spawns individuais disfarçados como um spawn, todos com uma chance igual de aparecer. Isso usa um sistema de formulário usando valores ofuscados escondidos dentro do banco de dados que não são intuitivos para o uso da equipe.
Antes mesmo de querermos pensar sobre Megas, preferimos ter atenção para explorar mais os meandros deste sistema para ver seus limites e, potencialmente, fazer modificações. Este é o caso tanto que estamos separando as discussões de Forms e Megas da atualização Geração 6/Fairy em conversas separadas a portas fechadas para trabalhar adequadamente. Portanto, quando o Gen 6 for lançado, Forms/Megas não se juntará a eles ao mesmo tempo, com a observação de que Megas pode nunca vir.


Notas finais
Por enquanto, isso é o que podemos cobrir da progressão das coisas que acontecem em termos de conteúdo. Tenho certeza de que há atualizações que alguns jogadores gostariam de ver, mas estamos nos concentrando mais no Sevii do que em outros conteúdos por enquanto novamente, então não vamos entrar em coisas que não temos nada de novo para falar.

I want to thank all the equip for the work, and the transparence in that topic, now i can see the game walks to have a big future.

i have a question, have any plans to introduce natures for our/wild pokes?

 

[thunderclap]

 

[Absoltrainer108]

I'd like to plead with the developers to please add megas into the game. How else am I gonna show off Absol's awesomeness?

 

[GawertyXL]

Nice set of updates, keep it up!

 

[Aevero]

Hello once again all,

For all the progress we have made over the past 6ish months since the previous post, some of it feels like none was made at all, while other parts feel like everything happens at once. There were recent plans to release an update post, which fell through due to not finding enough to talk about, sorry for the delay.

Today we will be focusing solely on Sevii progress, so lets talk about it.
Similar to before, below is a the chart showing progress. We've added in Seven Island to the table as well, as plans changed with it to be more included.

From January a lot has happened and a lot has changed. Progress has been grand, but difficult due to the high complexity and the large scope of Sevii. It is far larger than anything the current team has released in the past, and it being permanent content ensures we have indepth discussions among ourselves on how to best approach sections to ensure they are balanced for the game, as well as enjoyable.

https://imgur.com/kamS8FQ

Also since January, a new Scripter has been trained up and joined the team fully in May and has slotted right into Sevii production. Say hello to Raam if you ever find them online fixing issues or lurking. Must be fast, they're lightning quick with /ano. Do not rush with Chainsaw Lancers.

A nice thing to now touch upon is: What are the requirements to access Sevii?
Sevii is slated as being end game content for our players who ask "What do after getting 16 badges". As such, level spawns for the Islands are higher than would find elsewhere in Kanto/Johto, and NPCs are more challenging as well. Accessing Sevii expects players to have also progressed other areas of the game too.

The current requirements to access Sevii are:

• 16 Badges
• 1 Normal + 1 Hard Elite 4 completion

Once the above has been done, the NPC located at <redacted> will then register players are ready, and allow transport to Three Island to begin our Custom Sevii Quest. We hope you enjoy when the time comes.


Lets get into some likely questions as well.
Still feel free to ask more though if there were some burning questions regarding Sevii you had.

Q: "What is going to happen to 7 Island and the battle tower? Isn't that also on Sevii?"
A: 7 Island in its current form will remain the same. The Sevii quest does not require access to 7 Island, and players wanting to go to the battle tower will not be suddenly locked out of it. But completion of the Sevii quest will make the rest of 7 Island available where you might find more...

Q: "When can we expect Sevii?"
A: Ah, I see you are new here. We cannot put a pin into the calendar, as per usual. While current progress is excellent, this is still a volunteer efforts in staff members free time to work on. Any projected release date can be very easily missed due to sudden IRL things occuring. However, each day is a new day, and progress made makes us closer to finishing. We are more optimistic now than we were even just 1 week ago with that step-by-step mentality in mind.

Q: "Will we have an Event soon?"
A: As all of our content staff direction are laser focused on Sevii, events have fallen on our priority list to be a postponed item. :/
Staff enjoy working on events as much as you enjoy playing them, but it is difficult managing our time here if splitting away to work on temporary content often. Our team is still small. So upon the release of Sevii and it is running smoothly, we will re-commence work and events will occur once more instead of having supplementary swarms.

Q: "What are the spawns?"
A: Well that would be telling, wouldn't it?
All spawn areas were completed back in February and finalised recently. Current consensus of the team is now positive with how the spawn list is sitting as well after the recent polish done to it.
We reserve the right to fiddle with them up until release to do our best with balance, so it would be best not showing early as well. As this is permanent content, we need to focus on the impact what these spawns mean to the economy very highly, while still keeping them interesting for players for a region that is neither Kanto, Johto, or Hoenn.
Additionally, any new spawns that are introduced will be removed from being able to appear in the token store where applicable as well.

And while we aren't ready to share specific spawns ahead of time. Here is a simplistic generation breakdown for those interested in playing guessing games.
Gen | Count
1 | 70
2 | 33
3 | 14
4 | >5
5 | >1
6 | 0


But wait, there is more.
Outside of the Sevii update, there is a growing priority on Staff's side to make an improved effort to go through the Bug Catcher and Suggestions box more frequently. Efforts towards this were made earlier in the year which some affected noticed, but it does need to be better from our side to be more responsible and continue to keep it in check so there is value raising stuff there for others.
This comes from a workflow viewpoint as well. There have been many instances of players contacting staff directly with changes and bug fixes they hope to have made, which while does get the point across and brought to attention, it also causes us to become distracted and lose focus as we chase individual changes. We are only human afterall.

The ideal solution with using the Playerdex to report and suggest ideas is after they are triaged by staff, they can then be moved to the development team to prioritise and release in groups. If we can reach that destination, then more regular changes can happen from that space as we become more organised. Hopefully beginning soon this becomes more visible as we make efforts towards it.


Ending notes.
While we will always remain candid about any release dates, it is hard to deny the amount of green on the table right now. So while we will continue working towards Sevii in our own pace that allows us to remain healthy, the next Sevii update posted here will likely be the final progress update.

We hope to speak again on this soon

 

[Future~Sight]

Hello once again all,

For all the progress we have made over the past 6ish months since the previous post, some of it feels like none was made at all, while other parts feel like everything happens at once. There were recent plans to release an update post, which fell through due to not finding enough to talk about, sorry for the delay.

Today we will be focusing solely on Sevii progress, so lets talk about it.
Similar to before, below is a the chart showing progress. We've added in Seven Island to the table as well, as plans changed with it to be more included.

From January a lot has happened and a lot has changed. Progress has been grand, but difficult due to the high complexity and the large scope of Sevii. It is far larger than anything the current team has released in the past, and it being permanent content ensures we have indepth discussions among ourselves on how to best approach sections to ensure they are balanced for the game, as well as enjoyable.

https://imgur.com/kamS8FQ

Also since January, a new Scripter has been trained up and joined the team fully in May and has slotted right into Sevii production. Say hello to Raam if you ever find them online fixing issues or lurking. Must be fast, they're lightning quick with /ano. Do not rush with Chainsaw Lancers.

A nice thing to now touch upon is: What are the requirements to access Sevii?
Sevii is slated as being end game content for our players who ask "What do after getting 16 badges". As such, level spawns for the Islands are higher than would find elsewhere in Kanto/Johto, and NPCs are more challenging as well. Accessing Sevii expects players to have also progressed other areas of the game too.

The current requirements to access Sevii are:

• 16 Badges
• 1 Normal + 1 Hard Elite 4 completion

Once the above has been done, the NPC located at <redacted> will then register players are ready, and allow transport to Three Island to begin our Custom Sevii Quest. We hope you enjoy when the time comes.


Lets get into some likely questions as well.
Still feel free to ask more though if there were some burning questions regarding Sevii you had.

Q: "What is going to happen to 7 Island and the battle tower? Isn't that also on Sevii?"
A: 7 Island in its current form will remain the same. The Sevii quest does not require access to 7 Island, and players wanting to go to the battle tower will not be suddenly locked out of it. But completion of the Sevii quest will make the rest of 7 Island available where you might find more...

Q: "When can we expect Sevii?"
A: Ah, I see you are new here. We cannot put a pin into the calendar, as per usual. While current progress is excellent, this is still a volunteer efforts in staff members free time to work on. Any projected release date can be very easily missed due to sudden IRL things occuring. However, each day is a new day, and progress made makes us closer to finishing. We are more optimistic now than we were even just 1 week ago with that step-by-step mentality in mind.

Q: "Will we have an Event soon?"
A: As all of our content staff direction are laser focused on Sevii, events have fallen on our priority list to be a postponed item. :/
Staff enjoy working on events as much as you enjoy playing them, but it is difficult managing our time here if splitting away to work on temporary content often. Our team is still small. So upon the release of Sevii and it is running smoothly, we will re-commence work and events will occur once more instead of having supplementary swarms.

Q: "What are the spawns?"
A: Well that would be telling, wouldn't it?
All spawn areas were completed back in February and finalised recently. Current consensus of the team is now positive with how the spawn list is sitting as well after the recent polish done to it.
We reserve the right to fiddle with them up until release to do our best with balance, so it would be best not showing early as well. As this is permanent content, we need to focus on the impact what these spawns mean to the economy very highly, while still keeping them interesting for players for a region that is neither Kanto, Johto, or Hoenn.
Additionally, any new spawns that are introduced will be removed from being able to appear in the token store where applicable as well.

And while we aren't ready to share specific spawns ahead of time. Here is a simplistic generation breakdown for those interested in playing guessing games.
Gen | Count
1 | 70
2 | 33
3 | 14
4 | >5
5 | >1
6 | 0


But wait, there is more.
Outside of the Sevii update, there is a growing priority on Staff's side to make an improved effort to go through the Bug Catcher and Suggestions box more frequently. Efforts towards this were made earlier in the year which some affected noticed, but it does need to be better from our side to be more responsible and continue to keep it in check so there is value raising stuff there for others.
This comes from a workflow viewpoint as well. There have been many instances of players contacting staff directly with changes and bug fixes they hope to have made, which while does get the point across and brought to attention, it also causes us to become distracted and lose focus as we chase individual changes. We are only human afterall.

The ideal solution with using the Playerdex to report and suggest ideas is after they are triaged by staff, they can then be moved to the development team to prioritise and release in groups. If we can reach that destination, then more regular changes can happen from that space as we become more organised. Hopefully beginning soon this becomes more visible as we make efforts towards it.


Ending notes.
While we will always remain candid about any release dates, it is hard to deny the amount of green on the table right now. So while we will continue working towards Sevii in our own pace that allows us to remain healthy, the next Sevii update posted here will likely be the final progress update.

We hope to speak again on this soon

Good stuff guys - looks like it's coming along well.. Would be nice to install PWO again and explore Sevii someday! Best of luck with the project

 

[Fadoka]

Good stuff guys - looks like it's coming along well.. Would be nice to install PWO again and explore Sevii someday! Best of luck with the project

Its not "would" it's "will".

 

[Aevero]

The Final Sevii Update

The topic, named Sevii/Fairy/Hoenn covers exactly what we intend to keep the players informed of before hand to keep not only ourselves in check as part as our responsibility as staff to continue creating, but so there is no uncertainty in players minds that we aren't just sitting around doing not much behind the curtains.

As such, this is the final update on Sevii prior to its release. Lets discuss it.


Everything is done!
Or is it? <Vsauce music plays>

As can be seen in the chart we've been nice and diligent on the permanent content front. Sevii is on the verge of being completed and requires some final scripting to be finished and then testing/polishing will ramp up further. We are now exploring release windows in the staff realm based on our availability. We hope on release it was worth the wait.

We also have a new staff member joining our ranks!
A CG under the psuedonym of "Sushikraver" joined our team at the end of November. Below is a few words written by them:
"Howdy I'm Sushikraver, and I wi-..."
Thank you for the few words. Sushikraver will work amongst the CG team to help deliver fun community based content and activities which has been going very well over the past 12 months since our last event.
Leading into - We hope that you are enjoying the Event hosted by the team. If you are reading this after the Event has ended it was super cool we got to carve statues, invent new dragon moves, request power from a strange void... Good stuff! While working on Sevii is our priority it was shown that we could achieve a nice event in the mix, so effort was applied there. Large thank you to Relicanth for getting it off the ground and over the finish line.


Alright back to Sevii:
Let's discuss a minor update on the previously shown requirements. As mentioned before, Sevii is slated as lategame content so we expect it to be the final location any player would venture to, regardless of their starting region. Leading into requirements, to start the Sevii quest you still need the same progress as before:

• 16 badges
• Hard version of the Elite 4 completion (2+ clears)

But additionally as a heads up, it is expected that you have also completed the Mt Silver questline. No details will be spoiled, but would recommend its completion. It is not required for access to the Sevii quest, but will be required for completing it.

There are more things to share on Sevii of course, but we elect to let it remain a surprise for you all to enjoy at the same time. So for now lets get to a mail bag of random questions that weren't just invented for specific responses. Please feel free to ask your own below if you have any, and if possible we can try and answer unless it spoils things.

Q: "Give Sevii?"
A: Soon™

Q: "I played through Fire Red in preparation. I'm ready."
A: Good job. Not actually a question though. Also Leaf Green is superior.
The maps will be mostly the same in PWO's Sevii, so good to get a layout of what is where. However, our version of Sevii is not exactly the same as the Handhelds. While not currently strongly re-enforced, PWO is supposed to be set ~10 years ahead of RBY and 8 years ahead of GSC. There are differences, such as mild map changes on Six Island, and our Sevii will follow its own unique story line. As example the first Island in our main quest will lead you to Three Island.

Q: "What should we expect for Sevii's release?"
A: You ask strangely unique questions that allow us to discuss talking points.
Sevii isn't only the release of the mini-region, but also a few updates that have been worked on in the background. There will be a required client update on Sevii's release, along with some new graphics/music.
Further we will need to implement a lot of these new changes prior to its release after we've updated the client, so we will conduct a staff only maintenance period on the server for its release, potentially over 8 hours worth so we can update Sevii accordingly. This isn't something that can be completed after it goes live for players and is done later, it needs to be individually applied to 100+ NPC's manually, then tested to see if working.

Q: "Nice, then what Hoenn, Fairy, Gen 6? That's also in this topics title."
A: For now we only have an update on Sevii so we'd try to not discuss other areas that haven't progressed much. Our team does have a small velocity when it comes to releases so we need to pick and focus on what we are working on. While it's not in our Nature to reveal things ahead of due time, we will have the Ability to discuss these further after Sevii's release.

Q: "So what was that thing in October where some people were able to farm nuggets when doing the surfboard quest?"
A: You saw nothing. But really, will explain it as its already known I guess.
While placing NPC's on One Island we eventually came to the southern area named Treasure Beach. Treasure Beach was home to the surfboard quest, but was mistaken for a random staff testing area because other areas were used similarly elsewhere. And as I never had done the surfboard quest I just thought they're test NPC's for it. So removed them and added in a quest to Sevii that drafts a concept for finding and selling Nuggets after picking out something from the Suggestions Box.
Next day a message is sent asking why players can go there and that they are farming nuggets and money. Chaos ensues, patch and fix that issue and think some players got away with a bit of extra monies for my mistake. What was seen wasn't the final version of the quest either as was still in the Dev test stage and still needed balance and polish. So to the few players that did experience it, it will be different later.


Final notes:
This is going to really be the final update of Sevii. The next time we will be officially communicating regarding Sevii will be for its release, or planned downtime regarding to it. This was an expansion planned by a team of previous staff members back in 2016, and when we picked it back up after finishing the Elite 4 we assumed it was going to be a simple plan. It was anything but, and it is a great sense of anxiety and relief to be at the finishing line over 2 years later.

If you have any further questions regarding Sevii (besides release date), please ask them below.

 

[Sushikraver]

Howdy y'all - I'll keep it somewhat brief so as to not detract from the purpose of this thread.

I'm AsianKid Sushikraver. Some of you may know me, some of you will. I have no plans to remain anonymous, but at the same time, be considerate.

As Aevero mentioned, I will be working to develop fun content in the background while also being a point of contact in-game. While CGs are considered “Staff,” we are not that much different than the average trainer. Since we are “closer to the ground,” we hope to be more attentive to the wants and desires of this wonderful Community. Our goal is to be the medium that embodies and reflects the voice of the Community—be it concerns about current processes or genuine aspirations for the future. Our influence reaches beyond the simple Swarm or Official Tournament, so a little cooperation can go a long way. (And I hope you’re enjoying the event by the way.)

We lobby to the heavens on your behalf. Believe me, no one wants more cool stuff in PWO than we do! That said, just because we’re CGs, does not mean our thoughts or ideas are superior to any of yours. Au contraire! Our ideas are meant to be an extension of your thoughts, and the Community’s ideas. So as we transition into the new year, I will promise you this: Change is coming. Be ready.

Talk soon,
SK~