CoachDozier
Takeshi Protegé
did you erase your cookies or use a different computer?
Because that might be the reason why Fennel keeps popping out.
I did a little digging, and it looks like my CCleaner program was clearing the data from Flash... operating outside the exception settings I had in place for it to leave the data from Firefox alone... so that should explain why Fennel kept showing up every day. Thank you for pointing that out.
For the first time, I got a perfect "whatever" bonus on Wailord game, no one splashed on the sea!
And I took a female Seaking home, it's ability is wonderful.
The Lightningrod Seaking was the inspiration that got me so heavily involved in the Dream World and specialized breeding. When I finally breed my ultimate Seaking from that project, it is going to be very special. My plan: Lightningrod ability and both Aqua Tail and Body Slam... which is impossible in Black/White alone. Getting both Aqua Tail and Body Slam requires breeding and use of a move tutor in PtHGSS... and it was a long learning process for me as I sifted through Serebii's database of stats and egg moves. It has set me on a long path to egg breeding unique fighters with the hope of maybe opening a modest little trade shop here someday when I get it all organized. I have been keeping the egg move fathers and Dream World mothers stored safely away, and I enjoy the science that goes into it.
that, was an epic rant, squire. i've only quoted the final paragraph as my posts are long enough as they are, but yours was an interesting point, eruditely put, and i recommend anyone to go back and read it and discuss;
i personally think that it can't be that easy for them to maintain continuity over a 5 generation-and-continuing franchise of games, with a global market of players playing in all regions, especially since the games are, unlike some other franchises, ones that connect across the generations and remain valid and important;
i think your points have some weight though, they make berries readily available now after the time taken to grow them in the last generation, which seems a little off. and i haven't even played heartgold yet but even though i really want a misdreavous or many, i'm not entirely looking forward to using the tamagotchi-esque walker, although if it makes me move my fat arse more then i usually do then perhaps it'll be better then i think. but it has a limited use, for sure.
still, pokemon is much like sports games; it's not a game that's conducive to big changes in gameplay and experience, especially if you want to preserve that continuity. so, to keep things fresh, new gimmicks and variants on gameplay are the way to do so, more then anything else i can think of. the transition appears to need to be slow and carefully performed. even so, with the problems some people have had with the DW, and the way that the first few generations are incompatible, they haven't done the best job with the whole thing. whatevs
Thank you for the vote of confidence. Having played the games since Red/Blue/Yellow (as I was just about to graduate high school), I walked into the games for their RPG experience as a fan of Final Fantasy and its summoned monsters dynamics. I'm right there with you on all of it, and I think the concept of creating a global network comes with its own caveats. I was happy to know that the sluggish loading screens aren't just the fault of my old computer, and I can understand the congestion of 2 million + people per day using the system. It is a massive undertaking but requires some massive oversight on their part to be successful. Some of it to me seems more like a touch and go process, and I imagine that part of it falls to us to point out through our experiences how they could better them for us. I've never been opposed to the concept of gimmicks myself. I'm a child of the 80s, and by the time I was 5 or 6, the FCC had started passing laws against making Saturday morning cartoons into one massive toy commercial. Mind you, they still are, but they have to be spaced out to some degree (commercials for toys cannot air during their respective cartoons, etc.)
But I digress. With Pokemon, there is a distinct opportunity to maintain more of the backwards compatibility than they are keeping. With infrared and firmware, there are so many possibilities out there that could be harnessed, but Pokemon seems to be keeping it simple in a lot of ways. They make plenty of money off of it, no contest, but Japan's video game and movie industry follows a set of deadlines that don't have very much leeway. Personally, I would be willing to wait a few extra months or pay a little more if more time were spent on some of these gimmicks such as the PokeWalker to allow them to expand into something with the generation that follows it. The Dream World, hopefully, will hold a large portion of that future... but we still have to deal with regional issues and glitches that may not be worked out for quite some time. I have my good days and my useless waste of time days in the Dream World, but I see its potential to take Pokemon in a direction it could have gone several years earlier. Now we just have to wait and see how it plays out.
As for the berries, I still haven't seen all of them show up yet, and I wonder if they have written several of them out of the game altogether. Case in point: the GameStop event releases for HGSS/BW. Celebi, Entei, Raikou, and Suicune all came with specialized berries... with no way to send them to the game they were intended for. I am wondering if any of the GameCube berries such as Liechi and Rowap are going to surface at some point in the Dream World or if any other item expansion is in the works. The Cafe Forest currently running in Japan seems to point in that direction, but we will have to wait and see how far they plan to spread those ideas.
i had an idea today, which is more an attractive hope then anything, but one i don't see why they couldn't do, and i think they should do; they could do a promotion at some point where you have a period of one week during which you can catch the powerful, rare little tykes from the first 3 gens - mew would appear in the sea, celebi in the forest and jirachi in the sky.
i don't think they should get DW abilities, not sure about moves; with mew it's redundant because he can learn almost everything;
here's the deal in my proposal - during this week, everyone who plays in the DW will be able to find ONE of each in the area i've specified. if you somehow fail your mini-game, it won't appear again that day like normal, but will appear on another day during that week. they will be quite rare to encounter, but not so rare that you could frantically search all week and not find any of them. if you catch any of them, then well done, and that's the ONLY one of each you'll get - they won't appear any more if you befriend one. only 1 of each can be befriended, basically.
i think it's a smashing idea and would bring loads of fans who are into the franchise but maybe haven't played 5th gen or simply not bothered with DW so far running to the site. thoughts?
Brilliant. Hopefully the future success of what they intend to do with Dream World starters and other as-yet-unavailable Pokemon like Super Luck Togepi could push them toward something like this.
I also would like to see some sort of reward for dedication with regard to points. I have noticed that the Pokemon encounter rate per visit is finite (which could affect the chances of something like your legendary idea working unless they program an encounter rate of 75-100% for a specific Pokemon), so you end up running out of encounters or items if you keep skipping too many you aren't looking for. After maybe 15 encounters/items total, the island areas are empty. I haven't seen the exact number, but this happens after maybe 7 visits to the Island of Dreams no matter what you do. I suppose that maybe it is a way of forcing you to consider using the other aspects of the Dream World such as gardening and visiting other houses, but it's definitely not a good day when I run across almost nothing but Murkrow, Oddish, or Taillow and keep getting the Play With Wailord game on almost every encounter... which happens to me every few days or so and is way too slow to bother with. It would be nice to have this encounter rate raised based on points... and maybe even increase the number of Pokemon you can take to your game or at least allow a bonus second choice to remain on your Dream Tree list after you have transferred one to the Entralink instead of sending them all back to their areas to be found again. This would help at least to balance out the fact that some days the random encounter rate just makes your luck far too good to pick just one.