Captain Narflunk's Log

Post Site-Crash

Well after a long hiatus due to the server malfunction that brought down the site for over a week, I'm back for a new post. Type Race finished, so I didn't get to hatch anything exciting. They obviously made everybody "win" due to the server crash, but oh well. I'll try again to host the TR group some other time. Today I finished hatching the required specials for Mimikyu. I'll continue hatching until the end of the month, when I'll change to something in line with the next type race. Still trucking along with my shop. The server downtime was unfortunate, hopefully people start visitng shops again soon. So good to be back!

AHHHHH MELANNNN!!!!! It's the first one I've ever hatched. Even though I already posted today, I just had to add this since it happened so unexpectedly. Can't wait to make it a totem.

July 1st post: Happy Canada Day! I just barely missed the top 100 of the tourney. Darn! Type Grass this month. Breaking my Mimikyu chain (12/3/1m/508H) and going to do some quick hunts before Type Race. Then gonna choose a fakemon or variant to hunt during the competition. Hatching some fakemon and legendaries, then first working on Pyukumuku. Green Pyuk!!

Update Time: Took the Pyukumuku hunt a bit farther than I expected, added a bunch to my shop. Finished all the regular summons and got my first beast ball! Going to use it eventually, probably to break my current hunt. Hunting Luckoo for type race. Already have my first albino. Type Race has started, it's looking like a great team. Hopefully we do really well :)

I think I'll write my thoughts on the announced "reboot" to Pokéfarm, since the announcement thread is locked.

First things first, I am not a programmer and don't know what goes on behind the scenes. I completely realize there are things that have to happen behind the scenes that are invisible, and what we see on the actual site is only the top of an iceberg that extends deep underwater. If the underlying code that makes the site run needs to be reworked, optimized, and streamlined to allow easier additions or changes to it later, it probably is easier to just start from scratch than to try to change everything one line at a time. This might also improve other things, like lagging, errors/bugs, or other problems that sometimes appear. I'm all for it. One of the key points in my feedback review of the site was how hard it was to learn things, so I'm really glad the tutorial is being revamped. Unless you take the time to go through all the different pages, exploring and clicking on things you have no idea what they are, you will never learn everything the site has to offer. More guidance to differen aspects is a big plus. I disagree that the site is not a 'game'. The definition of a game is "an enjoyable activity played according to rules, governed by skill and/or luck". This site is enjoyable, has (very vague) rules, and is governed by luck. Even if it doesn't have a story or any real structure doens't mean it has to in order to be a game. The mindless clicking is part of the charm and appeal of it for me. Granted, I really love the idea of adding quests, and this will greatly help people find things on the site beyond what the tutorial guides you to. I'm hoping they aren't just one-and-done too, that you can do some of them many times. Repeatability for fun quests is too often ignored for new and fancy content. Having things to do other than click may also be a good thing when the site activity is low. There are times when I have clicked the party of literally every person online, and I need something else to do. Based on the one image we got, the site looks so empty. I hope as more aspects of the site are unlocked they will fill more of the space, so we will have to wait and see. I'm not sure what I think about the menu. It will be good to have eveything accessible from the same menu, but it might get cluttered and confusing (especially without labels. What do all the symols mean?). I'm on the team that prefers the exact numbers for experience rather than a percent. With the exact numbers I can roughly estimate how long until things are finished based on the rate of increase, but if that is turned into a percent I won't be able to tell as precisely. Those new type symbols are great. However, some of them look too similar. Poison/Ghost, Flying/Fairy, Normal/Steel, and Bug/Rock/Ground could easily get mixed up (in my opinion). All in all I'm looking forward to seeing what the new site has to offer. My biggest concern, however, is how it will incorporate the progress I've made on PFQ. Pokedex completion, wishforge level, customized data (dress-up, descriptions, etc.) are all things that are very important, but if the site is a complete wipe and start over, that will be frustrating. Since I have no experience with programming and data collection I don't know how feasible it is, but it seems like it could be very possible for System Sally to "read" our progress here on PFQ and transfer it to the new site. Things like items are just numbers, so all it has to do is see how many of each thing we have and copy/paste it. Progress in the pokedex or wishforge could be seen as more of a presence/absence or yes/no. Then when you sign up for the new site, you are given the option to transfer over your progress or not. If you want to completely start over, that's great, just decline to have your PFQ profile translated. If you don't want to lose that progress, then the system will be able to read your profile here and transfer the data over. Somethin similar is already done when a back-up is taken, so I feel like it could be a relatively straightforward process. Whatever, those are just my thoughts. Wanted to write them down so I wouldn't forget.

Middle of Ice type race. Doing pretty well. Got pokerus two days ago, and yesterday was Niet+Shazi+Ice V~Wave day. I was able to hatch all 190+ shelter eggs, and jumped up over 1000 points. Today finally got the last albino I needed for my Luckoo hunt, getting to 6s/3a/434H. Had to use a Grassium Z crystal today. Just popped my Nihilego egg, and then I'll start an ice hunt (maybe Alolan Sandshrew). Yesterday I hatched a random chance Shiny Swinub! Also got a bunch of albinos which is nice. The tourney is evolving recently hatched pokemon. I've hit the hard tier target, but I'm really hoping to get onto the leaderboard and get the exclusive. That will get me caught up until next tournament season which would be nice, we'll see.

Type Race finished. We didn't do particularly well as a team, but I hit a new high of 2526 points. Hatched quite a few albinos in total. The last couple days of the type race I chained Alolan Sandshrew and then Alolan Vulpix to get the shinies and albinos. 4/2/123 for and 2/2/56 for . Was almost able to get on the board for the tournament, but made some poor choices of what to evolve in the last couple of hours so just missed rank 100. Working now on filling a few more Variant eggdexes and UBs.

Did a hunt for igglybuff, finished at 3s/3a/230 hatched. Need to hatch a few more though to finish the field of single natured. Hatched the rest of the variants that I need except Magquaza, it's the last egg for variant eggdex. Also hatched Buzzwole, working on getting the credits for my next UB egg to switch. Been gem collecting, almost ready to hatch several hundred eevees to evolve for different types for wishforge. New tournament season is beginning, the new eggs look cool. First tournament will be getting interaction points. Assuming I have plenty of time to click I should be able to stay on the leaderboard.