a so-called controversial change (Patreon)

firstly, i'd like to take a moment to express appreciation for everyone's tolerance of what i believe qualifies as "tomorrow", seeing as it's been almost a week. like this was completely within expectation but also i am thankful that y'all just kind of deal with me showing up on the timeline whenever.

anyway, the thing i was talking about previously... maybe it isn't even that controversial (given that another conversation about it came up like, yesterday...), but it seems like there's always a few people unhappy with retcons. 

in short, we're looking at retconning kiki and corey so that they're never leaders in the first place.

i said before how i just kinda started making the story without figuring out where it was going at first, and so in episode 3 when i sat down and did try to figure all that out, one of my first priorities was about how i would fit all the characters from the online league in. and the biggest obstacles with that were with the fighting, grass, and poison types because we had had three leaders of those types already (electric would be later but arclight wasn't a thing yet). so, i took one each of the fighting/grass/poison leaders and made them rivals, but i still had an extra one to fit into on top of the ones that would be used for gym challenges. my solution was as you already know in game.

i really underestimated how much not getting a promised badge would frustrate first time players-- or some first time players at least. it seems to me like no one really minds once they know it's coming, but the sucker punch of not getting the badge was way more intense for people than i expected. the level cap didn't help that. in fact i probably don't even need to explain this because i expect many of you reading might remember that feeling from your first play as well.

i felt like i needed to make them leaders to justify the player fighting them in a traditional pokemon formla where the evil team is just a side hustle compared to the league challenge, but as development went on, the league became more and more of an afterthought to the plot with team meteor. for that reason, in retrospect, there was really no need to put them in that position. kiki already has her entire own area, and corey's on the enemy team that became a focus. so... why keep it? i've been thinking about this for several years already.

as long as we're going through the early game anyway, this feels like the proper time to do it. retcons feel bad, and there's a few other details that need to be changed, but i'm pretty confident we can do so without really affecting that much. and hopefully it'll make the first playthrough that much smoother for newcomers.

if you have particular thoughts on the matter, we're open to hearing them. frankly, as long as we're looking at early game as a whole anyway, we're open to general thoughts and ideas to consider. no promises-- and like i said in the previous post we're not looking to make sweeping changes to the game's structure-- but we are all for listening and having a discussion if you guys have ideas!

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as a final side note, today some Cool Community Members finished a spanish translation of E18! if you know anyone who's been itching to play the game but only speaks spanish, now's their time!