cosmoooc | Post-HTG and Apps Re-opening

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Post-HTG and Apps Re-opening

Good evening everyone! It's been a week since we had our first How's the Game and so we've taken all your feedback to heart and have some things to announce.

First off, here's a list of immediate changes:

We have a brand new app form! It can be found here.
Events will now be bimonthly (there will not be one this month)
The day tags will officially no longer be used
The temp drop system is no more
Player locations have been added to the setting page
Player plots will have to be approved by mods
Characters can no longer obtain powers if they did not participate in an event
All powers must now be mod approved. Players also have the option of upgrading a power or receiving an item instead of a new power. We have a whole new system for this which you can read all about here while requests can be made here.
In addition to the new power system, the following powers are now all freebies to all gems: bubbling, fusion, shapeshifting and a basic starter weapon. This is to give new characters more powers to play with so they're not stuck waiting two months for a second power because of the new event schedule. The discovery of these powers can be done in the character's spare time but must be spaced apart by at least two weeks each.
More power restrictions established
As noted on the Powers FAQ page we are asking new characters to no longer come in with their weapons on them and to instead try to incorporate the weapon into their gem weapon power or regain it after an event. For characters currently in game with their weapons you can still keep them: they will not be taken away.
There is a new tag for "internet" posts. Please use "!forum posts" for these sorts of logs.

In addition we have some other changes that we will be making over the next few weeks:

A new canon update system
Updating the settings page with suggested locations (that we will announce later)
Extending the calendar to three months for easier plotting and planning
Adding new sample apps
Going forward with more plots/explorations outside Waverly Bay in the coming months
General clean up, rewording sections and all that fun stuff

Please excuse our dust and rough edges as we continue to fix things up.

I have a few other announcements to make as well.

First, apps will officially start getting processed again this weekend. So long as you use the new form, you are free to start submitting them now. All current reserves (including the ones from before apps closed) have been extended to the end of the week (so this app cycle), but we know this is a little sudden so if you need another week extension let us know on the reserve post!

Second, if the newly added freebie powers make up a huge chunk of your character's pre-existing power list, we are allowing them one free retcon. If you are unsure if your character qualifies for this please show us their power list and we shall let you know.

And lastly, as both an apology for no event this month and also as a present from us to you for the holiday season all characters in the game will be receiving one free power/upgrade/retcon/small item from home. New characters this month will also be given a choice between a power or an item from home (as upgrades and retcons wouldn't make sense for them). Once again, requests can be made here (just say "holiday claim" or something like that in the event link part)

Whew... that about does it! Thanks for being so awesome and patient these last few weeks guys. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below!

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Oh man, this is really cool, I like the sound of these new things!

I've got a couple of questions about Ralph's powers and things I want to do with them, is this the right place to ask them?

Sure, you can ask here! Or you can message any of us if you'd like to talk about it more privately.

Cool, thanks! I just wanted to make sure I got it in the right place.

Ralph's power that he got when he entered the game is Enhanced Strength. With the new upgrade system, what is the upper limit of strength that he could have pre-upgrades? I've been playing it that his strength is close to the original Ralph's in the movie (he can wreck/smash/lift nearly anything). Is this too much strength and do I need to nerf it down and boost it back up with upgrades?

For the weapon summoning freebies, would advanced guns need to start out as smaller guns and be upgraded into something better? For example, would Ralph start out with a small hand gun that could be improved into a larger gun?

On the topic of summoned guns, is there a waiting period between being able to fire shots or after firing a certain number of shots?

Sorry for all the questions and thank you so very much!

Re: Ralph's Enhanced Strength, you can continue to play it as it was before. We don't intend to nerf any pre-existing powers unless they pose a potential problem (i.e. being too infomoddy, etc) and honestly that sounds fine on its own.

You can start out with a big(ish) gun but it may not have any special features it might have as a more advanced model (depending on what it had before). We would like it to not be TOO big (i.e. comically big) but we leave that to your discretion.

Waiting periods we also leave to your discretion. We won't impose anything like that on anyone, but if you wanted to play around with it that way you may.

Oh, awesome, thank you so much, I really appreciate it!

I was wanting to duplicate the gun that he brought in with him, it doesn't have any special features, so I think it'll work. It's on the bigger side, but not absurdly so.

Okay, cool, sounds great to me!

Thanks again!

Oooh, nice~ Sounds like maybe I should have Vel discover her starter weapon sometime this weekend, then~♪

It's good to see Cosmographia being renovated and adjusted to accommodate how busy things have been!

Few questions about powers, though.

So Percy, one of my other muses, got Earthquakes once, but I feel like that's too powerful. Does downgrading to Tremors work? I can't replace it completely since it was already sort-of used in a thread.

And about Sans' magic bones- would making them as damaging as they are in the game (eventually, I'll have to upgrade them) too much? He's the final boss of a Run, making him a strong opponent even if he's a one-hit-kill, but if fear it might be too much.

I'm running the downgrade question by the others now so I'll get back to you on that!

re: Sans' magic bones, what kind of effects exactly would you plan on them initially having? Just straight up damage, mirroring the poison/KR effect...?

Initial abilities would be moving them around at his will as well as getting them to spawn from nowhere. He'd had to make them with ends tapered to a point for them to do real damage for this first tier, though.

Second upgrade would be the initial punishing damage for even touching them, and third would be the KR effect.

That would be totally fine! We might ask that there be an upper limit on how many bones Sans can summon at once, but that can be properly discussed when you submit your power request.

As for your downgrade, yes, that's perfectly fine too! You're free to go ahead with it.

Hmm... Sans has tons of bones in his boss fight, but none of them are onscreen for long. Maybe the number of bones could be upped in the upgrades too.

That'd be totally fine as well! The exact details would be gone over with your power request, but I don't see why that would be a problem at all.

Powers question!

Out of Amelie's six powers, she's never used one and only rarely uses three others, and I kind of want to just focus on enhancing the two she uses/the basic powers she has now under the new system. The problem with this is that there...doesn't appear to be anything in place for outright reducing the number of powers, just changing the ones you already have. And under those rules, it would take sixteen real-world months to fully effect that change, and that's only if I never focus on upgrading the powers I actually want to use.

Is there a way I can just drop those powers without taking more than a year? Maybe with some kind of in-character explanation instead of just a handwave?

(Claire here, just doing some housework and too lazy to log out of the mod account LMA0)

During the new power system reshuffle, we've decided that players will be allowed to drop up to three of their existing powers without the need to cash in any of their currently allowed retcons. We'd also ask that players let us know which of their powers they're going to be dropping.

I hope that helps!

It does, thanks!

Oh boy, so I have a few questions? I heard that in the case of muses with half/more than half their existing powerset being freebies we could have a retcon aside from the holiday power/upgrade/regain-whathaveyou, but I was wondering how exactly to gauge that, especially in the case of where I split a power into upgrades to try and make it less of an o.p. deal... (Gongenzaka namely began with a shield that could absorb and rebound energy, which upgraded into doing the same with physical damage... Reira in turn started with one third of an eventual whole that got upgraded into the full deal, though that one was noted as three on his app anyway so my question is more for Gongenzaka hahah. I definitely don't need retcons on Reira...)

At any rate, Masumi as well has a lot of freebies as her abilities, making literally half as of the latest power regain... (I gotta update those powersheets augh) ...so yeah I was just wondering how to gauge that matter!

On that note when it comes to small items from home, how small or large...or living, for that matter... are we talking?

Like I said in the post, we'll have to see your powerlists for them before we ultimately decide but here's the general idea.

This was given so that characters who don't really have much else going for them power wise are not suddenly left with a rather bare bones unique power list despite their length of time in the game. An example of this is Al's Harley who currently has four powers: two of which are now covered by freebies. That's half her powerset. That also puts her at a disadvantage compared to older characters who have collected a lot of powers by now. This is also why we're not giving them out to just everyone who has them: there's some characters in the game who by now have had time to gain upwards of six or seven different powers give or take (if we were to include the one they app in with and how powers gained from test drive memes have, in the past, been acceptable to carry forward). To suddenly give those characters TWO new powers, including the holiday power, just because they had one of the freebies in their set makes things a little absurd.

Like I said, I'll have to see the whole powerset but as Gongenzaka's been in the game for a long time I'm not sure he'll qualify. Masumi I'll also have to see her set.

As for items, for small it'll be a case by case basis for now (we're still talking about it) but as for living things, we talked about it and for the holiday's we're allowing pets as a possible regain. The only stipulations are:

-if it's a pokemon or any other creature with powers it will arrive in game depowered (this is to help distinguish companion pokemon and the pokemon we have app in who DO come with powers because of their new gems)
-from this point on pets will cost two events (unless they are absurdly huge)

Alright, that makes things a bit clearer thanks!

(And that makes sense on the pets note haha)

Anything I need to change for Remi?

Would it be possible for you to elaborate on what the upper limits of her 'Super Strength' power are for us? Just so we can see where you're working from at the moment!

She's just about strong enough to uproot a large tree unaided.

That's fine to stay as it is, then! Though something to keep in mind is that, in the example you've given, uprooting a tree would need a lot more effort/strain since roots and all. I hope that works for you!

Well, it's basically just her canon strength. Anyway, can people leave the city yet?

There haven't been any expansions to the world yet, no! For the moment, we're concentrating on getting the mechanics of the game working as best we can before that gets touched on. There'll be an announcement when exploration out of Waverly Bay is available to players, though!

Hey there! I just have a couple brief concerns/questions about the new Weapons rules. I mentioned a lot of this on the initial proposal post, so my apologies if this has already been considered but there are numerous canons (and yes, I will be totally up-front about the fact that the one I play from is extremely guilty of this, but it's also very common in video games and anime) that have large and/or complicated weapons that are also fairly important to the characters that wield them. To the point where they would conceivably prefer not to or could be outright uncomfortable/incapacitated by not having it or wielding an alternate weapon. Sora's Keyblade/keychains and Inuyasha's Tetsusaiga are some immediate examples I can think of. I'm just wondering if characters like this are now going to be handled on a case-by-case basis of some sort or if there'll be special consideration given towards their weapon summons/item regains? I'm mainly concerned being unable to keep their canon weapon(s) in some way will discourage players of characters like that from apping them in. ^^;

On with my actual questions though regarding the new Powers/Weapons FAQ since characters can now no longer bring their canon weapons with them and all weapon summons start out as "basic", how basic is "basic"? I'm currently assuming that means a sword, or an axe, or a lance, etc; a weapon that does only one thing? In SU canon we've seen that gem weapons can do more than the weapon's basic function (Amethyst's Whiplashes, Pearl's energy beams, Steven's Shield Bubbles, etc,) so I'm guessing those are now the sorts of things that would require "power/weapon upgrades" via participation in events?

Using Yang here as an example if she were to be apped in now under the new system instead of when she was, I'm figuring her Weapon Summon power would allow her to summon her gauntlets (as they appear in canon) but with the shotgun capabilities disabled until she earned a power upgrade via an event? And would an upgrade like that require more than one event participation? ...Mostly I'm just wondering what the general timeline/cost for things like this will be, but I understand if it's totally dependent upon who or what is being upgraded.

I had a question about item/physical weapon regains and the definition of "small" but I see that's been answered already (case-by-case basis too it seems?). ^^ At any rate, I really do appreciate all the hard work you all have been doing though and I'm excited for all the new, shiny, in-game happenings. :D

No worries about bringing stuff up! It's better for everyone to get their questions answered and for us all to be on the same page.

As all characters in the game now have weapon summoning right off the bat, it'd be a little redundant (and potentially unfair to other new characters) for a character to come into the game with a weapon from home as well. As stated into the FAQ, if a player would like to bring a character's weapon with them into the game, they are free to have their characters weapon (nerfed a little, of course) manifest with their 'weapon summon' ability.

As for "basic" weapons, this essentially means a weapon that doesn't have any extra fancy functions outside of just... what it already is. Let's use Labrys here as an example; in canon, Labrys has a large axe with multiple boosters that speed up and add force to her blows and it can also collapse and be stored on her back. As it manifests with her power now, Labrys' axe doesn't have any of its above functions, but I could upgrade it at some point in the future to include them.

In terms of timescale and cost, I think that's something that would vary, depending on what kind of weapon you were upgrading and the kind of functionality your upgrade added.

I hope this helped! If there's anything else you'd like to ask, or anything else you need clearing up, don't hesitate to drop us a line about it.

Yep! That's much clearer, thanks! I had a feeling that was probably how it would work but I just wanted to be sure, especially if I try to enable anyone into apping (I'm going to enable everyone into this game by gum).

Thanks again!

An abiltiy check please?

Also, the next abilities I have on the docket is to basically be a power amperage which increase the power of the first two abilities to be able to be used offensively. The first is Sound Attacks -- i.e., sound explosions (missile style, grenade style, and proximity mine style), sound shockwave/pushback, sound balls, sound beam, sound vacuum, and brown note (harmful low/high frequency wave).

The next ability would use wind in a similar, but much more limited, manner as the ability to control the wind is not her area of proficiency.

Please let me know your thoughts. o7

Sorry for the late question, but since SONiKA's first power was Shapeshifting, would you guys like to choose one of the other powers from her app to be her new first power or should I pick one myself?

You're free to pick one yourself! All we ask is that you let us know what you'd like your retcon to be on the Power Request post.

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Post-HTG and Apps Re-opening

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