For The Foals!

Started by ComedicWriter, 2018 Oct 28, 12:21:55

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Should foals should be able to get the Batpony Costume and Winter Warm Up Vest?

Yes
No
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ComedicWriter

After a lengthy discussion about this on the LoE Official Discord Server, I thought that it would be good to see how many people do want the foals to have access to the quests and their costumes. It is unfair and unfun for the players that enjoy being foals to not get these cool costumes. So go and vote, For The Foals! (also, I'm not sure if there are other costumes that foals can't get, these are just the ones I know of.)

CMC Scootaloo

2018 Oct 28, 13:36:45 #1 Last Edit: 2018 Oct 28, 13:40:26 by CMC Scootaloo
Hmm..... I think this thread comes at a bit of an unfortunate moment, as there was just an intense discussion about the matter, and it probably would have been better if you waited with this for a few days, but I appreciate your efforts to do this, Starry.
And since this is just a poll to collect votes, I suppose it's fine. I will go and promote it on Derpibooru, but be sensible with discussing this. Right now it's a little heated and I think we all, including PR, need a bit of a break from talking about it today.
Thank you for making this!^^


Edit: Also, 600th Post! 0:)
You always wanted to meet Scootaloo? Then be on the lookout for her in Equestria, she is galloping all over the realm!


Galapagois

2018 Oct 28, 14:14:10 #2 Last Edit: 2018 Oct 28, 18:51:44 by Galapagois
This query was already addressed by multiple team members on the discord server when it was brought up, and I feel it's a little disingenuous to take that conversation onto another platform without mentioning those answers because you didn't get the answer you wanted, but regardless, I'll reiterate what was said there:

We have, from the very introduction of the foal stage, made it clear that choosing to remain as a foal will mean missing out on content that will only be available for players who have progressed to the adult stage - in much the same way that progressing to the adult stage too fast may mean missing out on foal-exclusive content like the werepony questline. You're welcome to keep one or more of your characters as a foal, but that does mean that you won't get to experience some of the content that was not designed for that stage. You are, of course, free to progress to the adult stage at any point, or create a new character that gets to that stage, in order to experience that content.

There's a multitude of reasons for this. Some of them are purely technical; certain aspects of certain items are very difficult to get to play along with the foal model, and even those that we manage to get to an acceptable state have numerous issues (see basically any armour equipped on a foal). The time it would take to get each individual item to function to a point that we feel it's at least playable would be time that wasn't spent on actually adding new content to the game.

Another issue could be with our phasing system. Insofar as I know, all current items/events that are unique to a particular stage are bound to quests, which make a lot of use of the phasing system, which gets very complicated very fast. Given that many quests use the phasing system at the same time, depending on how certain quests are set up, it might be very difficult or even impossible from a technical perspective to get them working in one stage or the other.

Some of the specific items you've mentioned, along with some others, involve quests that use characters that aren't in the right place, or simply don't exist, during the foal stage. For example, the Winter Warm-Up event quest involves, off the top of my head, Mercury, Hullabaloo, and Spud, all of whom are the player character's classmates - meaning that during the foal stage, they are foals, they are in a different location, and they may not be in a position to provide the item or help that is required for the quest to progress. In these cases, that makes it impossible for foals to participate.

There may also be character and story reasons why foals cannot participate. For example, Ensemble - being an arrogant, aloof, and thoroughly unpleasant character - would probably think it beneath his talents to waste his energy creating a mere child's costume, when he could instead use that time to fashion a magnificent outfit for a full-grown, upstanding citizen. Also, he'd probably assume that a foal's pocket money wouldn't be sufficient to afford his services. Another example might be Micro Transaction's quest, where she specifically states that she's asking for the player's help because she believes that an adult could convince her bullies to stop, but a fellow foal could not.

There may be story reasons beyond just a particular characterisation that limit a quest, though. Our writing team has been working for years on an entire world history, with hundreds of thousands of words not only detailing Equestria's past, but also its present, and its future. Not all of that content has made its way into the game yet, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't contain details that would explain why foals are generally not seen participating in certain events.

In addition to this, existing quest information might well contradict the ideas. For example, in the foal-exclusive werepony quest, the characters involved braving the threats of the Evershade is treated as a big deal, because foals are not meant to go into such a dangerous location. It would undermine that story point an awful lot if Ensemble was just casually sending foals in there a couple of times a year like it was nothing.

Finally, there's the consideration of game design. The simple fact is that we want to encourage players to experience as much of the game as possible, and that naturally is going to involve needing to progress to the adult stage. Again, if you're happy to remain as a foal, we're more than happy to let you do that, so long as you understand that it's going to mean that some content, such as these costumes, are going to be out of your reach. Not everything will be, though; it's not like there aren't already a good number of costumes or other cosmetic items available for foals anyway, after all!

As time goes on, and we add more content to the game, it's inevitably going to mean we add more stuff that is exclusive to one stage or the other. This might mean costumes and items, or quests and activities, or even entire zones, as we work to improve Equestria. You may well find that remaining as a foal for longer means getting some things that players who choose to quickly progress to the adult stage don't get.

If you want to experience all the content we create for you, that's fantastic! But if you want to remain in a state that we have openly from its inception stated is designed to be restricted, for the variety of technical, gameplay, and story reasons that have been outlined here (along with probably a host more that I'm unable to remember right now), then you'll need to accept the limits that you yourself are choosing to place upon your character.

This doesn't mean that things won't change in the future; as I constantly state, LoE is a work in progress, which means that every aspect of it is subject to change depending on the needs and capabilities of the team. It's very unlikely, however, that a poll is going to be what changes this - it'll be a decision taken by the team based upon the reasons that have been detailed above.
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