Sprite Discovery Discussion

This may not apply to you, but most people here see the main feature of this Pokemon hatching and collecting game as hatching and collecting Pokemon. Just check the main page of the site: It's right there. There's only 2 reasons to hatch Pokemon on this site: For specials, or for badges to make it easier to hunt specials. Even though specials are completely random, that's the whole reason people are hunting Pokemon. For the specials. They might not be statistically any different than regular Pokemon, but the color is the entire reason people hunt them in the first place. Battling (The only place where stats actually matter in this game), is almost completely ignored by the playerbase. And I just have a question for you: If you don't like a Pokemon's special, you wouldn't hunt it. So how would you get these specials to "sell off to people who do" like them? Please tell me how that is a logical argument against disliking the new sprites. As for your car example, my friend brought up this idea: Let's say you spent months working hard to save up enough money for a nice red Ferrari. You buy the car, and drive your nice red Ferrari around for several more months. But then, all of the sudden, someone repaints your red Ferrari barf green. Would you just sit back and take the color change without complaining? Probably not. You'd probably start complaining about the change. We hunted melans for their old sprites. Having the sprite completely altered, without us having even prior notice, is the reason we are complaining about the change. We've spent months of our time, and for many, lots of real life money, working to get the melan that we wanted. Now many of us have melans we've worked hard for, but now hate the sprite of. Please give me a valid reason why we shouldn't complain about the new melans, and I'll gladly stop complaining. But as far as I've seen, there isn't one.

We have prior notice. We know that the art team is revamping the regions one by one. We don't know how they're revamping but we know it's happening.

I understand the Artistic Freedom of the staff, and that they put a lot of work into the new ''Melanistic'' Pokemon. But they do not reflect how Melanistic Animals look, or how Melanism works in its entirety. We want Melanistic Pokemon to look Melanistic. There was a quote from a staff member a while back- I'm unable to quote it because of the fact that the thread has been archieved and locked (Img of quote) Asking why we complain when a new thing is implemented while simutaneously asking for new things. Put simply, we like it when new things don't look bad. Melans are not Melanistic now. I see where the art team is taking it, they're doing the exact opposite of how melanistics should look and they're taking the appeal out of melanistics entirely- actively killing the market for them and their site in its entirety. If people don't like the melans, they are going to leave, the entire point of PFQ is to hunt and hatch specials, with a few things on the side. Making your specials look bad makes your entire site look bad, and people are going to leave. I've seen people dance around the subject to avoid upsetting staff out of legitimate fear of an account lock for their criticisms and I'm actually sick of it. I don't care about your consistency, you're taking backwards steps and actively destroying your entire site in the process. Saying "The staff has worked so hard" "It's rude to the staff" etc. Does not change anything. It's literally a guilt-trip and it only makes me even more infuriated about the mindset of a lot of this community. If something is bad and needs criticism, I'm going to criticize it. We complain, because when new things are implemented, take forever to implement, then look like absolute trash, it's more than a little disappointing. I'm not meaning to be rude, or throw shade, or target the staff team. But there have been so many complaints about the new sprites already. Melan hunting is nearly dead as it is, these changes should make them better, not worse! In a month, sure there'll be less complaints- not because we think the sprites look any better, but because complaining is pointless when the staff barely does anything to make positive changes or take userbase opinions into account at all. PFQ feels more like a staff playground that they're 'graciously' letting us in than something that the users can actively influence because they care about the userbase. If I'm wrong, prove me wrong, yell at me, tell me I'm wrong straight to my face, show me solid proof. I'm a lot like Garthic in the way that I say things harshly, and sometimes people take them the wrong way because on the internet it's hard to argue and not come off as a terrible person. I am begging you- staff Keep the community updated, give us a say in how the melans look, and the upcoming features. If you want Pokefarm to survive these are things you need to do as site administrators. I fear for the future of PFQ if things keep going the way they're going now. Melans in point from the wiki:

I am fond of the new sprites. Sure, there are some I'm not really a fan and what not. I'm not going to get into albinos, melans and shinies since uh..a bit worried about saying the wrong thing to be honest. (That and I really want to avoid being dragged into a possible argument...sorry guys) I do want to say I do appreciate the work the art team did! However, there are a few sprites that I'm a little bit confused of in terms of their looks and what not. Not specifically the albinos/shinies/melans but more so the the sprites of the megas and what not. I hope you don't mind if I ramble about a couple but point out things that bothered me in a respectful matter ^^'

I have a feeling calling things "trash," "disgusting," or that the staff is "ruining," / "taking backwards steps," is the exact way you get staff to lock up, circle the wagons, and double down on keeping the sprites the same they are right now. The staff is open. The staff is always here - I don't see as much of Shazi recently, but I've seen Sei, Garth, and Niet around almost every day and Shazi around often enough for me to mention. You want staff that doesn't listen? Go play a site like Dragcave - where suggestions have sat without creator input for years, get locked and can't be discussed, etc. That's what a site with unapproachable staff looks like. While I may not agree with some of the color choices - they're trying. And they WILL listen if you point things out in a rational way. The staff has changed sprites in the past - Houndoom's line was changed after Johto was released. They do listen. Because people were civil about it.

The thing is, a lot of us are trying to say things civilly. Yes, sometimes it's hard when you're upset (and rightfully so.) Heck, I tried to suggest being able to use legacy sprites for a fee and others have tried too, with little success. If the mods are around, it would be great to hear from them and hear on paper that they see we are upset. EDIT: I believe in being respectful towards the mods and being respectful of the artists. I LOVE this site. I loved the old melans, and some of the new ones too. It's just that I know I, as well as many others, worked hard for something and it's unfair to have it taken away.

From my experiences and looking at others', I do not think the staff is as open as you lead us to believe. Just earlier this week, the Trainer Customization thread was locked and archived because we expressed our dislike of the new feature. Many suggestions are immediately locked and rejected, many times without even a response. And a site with suggestions ignored by the staff for ages? Sounds like the pages or ignored responses we have here, left sitting there with no response for months, until someone just deletes it.Suggestions like the "melan chance update" have stat around for months and others like the "ability to pay to use old sprites," get immediately rejected as horrible ideas (even though this is already something possible with custom skins, wouldn't be hard to add in, would completely negate any problems with sprite updates, and would be another possible gp sink, especially since the staff have shown that they're trying to stablize gp values). I believe we, the players of this game, have been forced past civil critism by the lack of response or negative and sometimes even hostile responses. And as it was shown in a post earlier, the hostile responses to suggestions and critism has made some people too fearful to even post their own opinions on a subject. Few people are still melan hunting, many have quit in the recent months, and I've seen the Online counter get down to below 350, and I've never seen it over 1k, and I'm on almost 24/7. Just to sum it all up: This game is awesome and has amazing potential, but to get out of this trend towards death, something needs to be done about staff to player communication, for present features, future features, and suggestions. I love this game, and because of that, I will do everything in my power to try to prevent simple, easily fixed problems from destroying it.

Guys enough, continue with your opinions of course. But you do have to realise this is a very small team. I'm not sure how many times staff can keep saying it. I'm not even art staff and some of the comments from this thread are for lack of a better word, demoralising. Opinions are great; feedback is great. But not when you're doing what Brindle put forward. They're reading your comments now, and yeah. Give them a moment. Some of these comments are hitting hard. They need time.

@Constantine I realize I may have come off as harsh. I'm not meaning to- I'm very upset and out of my normal mindset. If any of the art team takes offense to what I've said I'd like to encourage them to personally DM me (or even physically call me on Discord so I can get my voice and tone across because tone will be taken the wrong way over text) and we can talk about it because I'm genuinely not trying to be offensive. They're doing hard work, and the melans don't look all bad, per-say, and I feel that calling them trash was way too harsh on them. What I was trying to get across is that, to me, the melans do not look like melans. I don't care how good or bad they look when I can't even call them melanistic by definition.