"Nostalgia Goggles" item

Suggestion Title: "Nostalgia Goggles" item Suggestion Summary: Create a key item that allows players to view older albinos and melans. A lot of people do not like how the newer albinos and melans were toned down and look "boring" Positive points: Less drama over colors Negative points: Probably a huge pain to code. Reason For Consideration: Simply put, the backlash over this sort of thing is getting ridiculous

I have no idea if this is legit or not, but hoooonestly? If it'll get the Sprite Discovery Discussion thread to be less harsh on people trying to give any sort of negative feedback, then I'm all for it. The drama is ridiculous and I'm sorry to say it but sometimes even good crit posts are smacked with the delet button. That's why I don't post there unless I'm praising a sprite (a rare occurrence) because no matter how much I pad statements someone says how much it hurts to read. There's no winning, is there? Maybe making the real haters have a reason to shut up will allow the real crit to shine through and better people's temperaments.

The ultimate "make a toggle to turn the new features on/off" item. Outside of joke territory, though, I very much doubt this would be a thing. The suggestion of making something a toggle has become a meme in and of itself from how often it's asked of every new feature and how many times it's been turned down. (This is all being said from someone that would actually like to see the old albinos/melans, I just don't think it'll be accepted due to past evidence. :/) How far back would this go? Would it revert a sprite to its original release or keep any changes made to it before the big "rework" that's being done now? Why should the art team work so hard on making new albinos/melans if a substantial part the site is going to ignore them? (Nevermind the maybe implied question of why they're working so hard on making new A/M's when so many people seem to not like them but that's another topic) Like, as I said before, if this actually became an item I would probably use it and appreciate it. Long story short, what the art team wants for A/M's is not what I want for A/M's. This would, in theory, be a way so I can still enjoy the A/M's that I enjoy while the art team can have their vision of what they want the A/M's to be. I'm just not sure it'd ever be approved from the history of rejecting/belittling the request to revert/toggle new changes. [Shrug Emoji]

I know this is PROBABLY not legit, and wouldn't happen, but I'd pay a good amount of ZC for this item. :x It's not fair that someone should put so much work into getting a pokemon only for it to be changed so drastically that they don't even want it anymore. I can't imagine how disappointed I would be if that pokemon had been a melan. I know we can just replace them with CSS, but... that requires replacing each pokemon's ID number, and you'd need to keep the code on every one of your skins. I'd much rather just have an item where I can see what I want to see. But I can also understand that the art team puts the sprites out there for a reason... idk. I know this probably isn't legit but I'd throw my support behind it because I want the sprites I like back.

Maybe during times when it's... time.. to redesign certain melans, maybe have users submit ideas, they can vote, and the art team can do something with that. Oooor, have another artists recruitment. I think this would be a perfect time for that, more people, more ideas. I know that's a lot of work, but anything to reduce this utter ridiculousness.

It's just. I don't know who asked for this. The Staff didn't ask us if we wanted all of the A/M's to change (as far as I'm aware, PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong!). They decided on their own they wanted the A/M's to change, so they could be more "consistent"/"realistic". And you know what? That's fine! It's fine if they want that for their A/M's! It's their site, they should run it and have it look how they want it to. But changing every single A/M and not expecting backlash is...sort of...willfully ignorant? Expecting everyone to go along with it and love whatever replaces their favorite familiar sprites is.... That's just not going to happen. :/ And I don't see things getting better as more and more of the gens are updated. People are still going to be disappointed, people are still going to be sad their favorite A/M's are gone. I do think, in principle, this would be a great way for people to keep the old sprites they've known for years while the staff would be able to make the A/M's the way they want to. But, you know, I guess you could apply this line of thinking to most any change that's immediately asked to be toggleable shortly after. But this is such a huge change that impacts a very huge part of this game: Collecting Pokemon you think look cool, that you like. Shiny hunting, Albino hunting, Melan hunting. The point of Albinos and Melans: To be cool looking pokemon people will want and work hard towards, or pay a lot for. And having Pokemon you worked so hard for suddenly change into something you don't like without anyone asking isn't cool.

Given that they're made to our specification, I'm not quite understanding why the decision process would involve anyone else? Just to be clear, I'm not trying to be funny or anything - that's legit just the question that comes to my mind. I mean... Let me apply that sort of logic to something else. Nobody asked for 'Albinos' (which are more "leucistic" but oh well) or 'Melanistics'... We just made them. See what I mean? Doesn't make sense to the include it in the conversation, does it? Uhm... May I ask where you got us "not expecting any backlash" from? We expect backlash for every thing we do - and every time we are correct. I expect backlash for this post and simply being honest and speaking my mind. This isn't a problem, as such, but it can certainly be draining on the psyche but it's a thing you learn to take on-board and move forward with. We've shown we take peoples' feedback in to account on many occasions now, too, so... Eh. Oh well. The only thing we do expect, to be blunt, is common decency - no being rude, no bashing, no blind hate... Simple stuff. On the flip-side, overt positivity is not exactly helpful either. Great, [person] likes it, but it also doesn't provide anything to work with. This isn't a bad thing, by any means, that's just the fact of it. To be blunt... People are welcome to give their feedback - but this is our vision. Our company. Our website. People are entitled to their sorrows in regards to what we're aiming to achieve, but at the end of the day... This is what we want. The fact we take these suggestions, listen to the feedback and... Y'know... Include our userbase in what we do... But try telling Nintendo to change the shiny for Riolu/Lucario, for example... Just saying. It's rare for a company to be so tied in with their community... And this is part of the reason why. The negativity can be astounding. The number of times I've had to step in and tell people to be so much as simply decent about giving feedback is horrendously saddening... Yes. The drama is annoying. We know. We're at the forefront of it, y'know? But if we turn around and give in to the drama by 'appeasing them', as this suggestion suggests, then what comes of our vision? We already listen and adjust and take on feedback - but this isn't a "request it and we'll do what you want"-forum. We're not taking on free art projects and we're not doing this for each individual person. If you want that, my unfortunate suggestion is that you're going to have to do it yourself. And I say this without any inkling of nasty intent. Some people who were on our website did exactly that! They have their own website now, too, and I've had contact with them previously when we found out that a paedophile that was on our website was also on theirs... So we worked together to ensure the safety of both our, and their, users. I agree, in principle, such a feature would be a good way to accomplish this - except that this isn't what we want to do. We're updating things to the vision that we ultimately have and while we'll take feedback on-board, we're not going to ultimately abandon the goals that we've set out. Whether that means largely editing / altering the 'final product' as it is right now (as in, you only get the one sprite), or making an entirely new system to let people see the sprites that were effectively "wrong"... Yeah. We're not doing either of these. I can't say anything to this barring the fact that I agree - but let's apply the line of thought to something like a more traditional MMORPG. There's a really 'cool' class / set of armour / mount and it's not what the developers want it to be. It's too strong - it's done wrong and they feel the need to fix it - anything like that... Do they really sit there and fret over the fact that the players aren't going to like it, or do they go ahead and fix it? ...They fix it. Every time. I know it's not the perfect comparison, but my point stands that they do it to their vision. I acknowledge it's not perfect and I wholeheartedly acknowledge that people are going to get upset about it. Remember what I said about backlash? Yeah. We know. We're used to it. And I can't dismiss it as invalid either - but the fact remains that we can't stop moving forward just because a group of people don't like it. We can't just sit and stagnate because then we'll simply never move forward. We'll never grow. We'll never change. That's not okay. Change is necessary - and it's always important that we listen, hear and accept the feedback - positive, or negative (hopefully just not done in a rude way...). The thing is that "accepting feedback" doesn't mean that we're going to do what each individual person wants (whether or not they want the same thing) because... We just can't. It's impossible. Nobody can please everyone - and it's a fool's errand to attempt to - and can you imagine having us work on something that we don't want? There'd be no passion. No drive. Is that something that people really want? I mean, to be candid... It really does feel like a lot of the people who tout the "I want"-attitude don't think about the people behind what they're complaining about... And that alone kills a lot of the motivation we have. I mean, honestly, there'd probably be a net-gain in morale to just remove the capability to give feedback. This suggestion alone only pushes that feel further, truth be told. We don't want to do this. I'm not saying we will. I'm just saying that this is genuinely what I think.

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I do want to note that there's a point the suggestion doesn't cover. Would the sprite be chosen per-pokémon via. a drop-down menu of some sort, or would it be an all-or-nothing kinda deal?

I guess this was the answer/confirmation I wanted most. Your goals are more set to making the site how you want it more than making the site to how (at least, some sections of) the users of the site would want it. You're okay with making unpopular changes because those are changes you wanted to make. Which I can respect. And, I guess, should sort have deduced from this change in the first place. Thank you for the detailed/polite answer.

I am all for the changes being made, if even when some sacrifices. Really, I just made this suggestion out of my annoyance of all the people complaining. Just earlier today, I found a post from someone I follow on DA saying that PFQ is going at a "bad direction" because the "new albinos and melans are boring" For what I didn't cover in my suggestion, yeah, I was thinking a drop-down. Perhaps we should have a sprite criticism station that functions like the rating system on PFQ. Only constructive posts would be allowed and simple nitpicks would get purged. ... another thing I'll admit is that I'm someone who cares way too much about pleasing everybody. I don't like being surrounded by negativity, and really, the community has been awfully vocal in a negative fashion in recent months (*cough* Mega Mew debacle *cough).

the entire staff is nicer about this than i expected if it was my website or my art, i'd just.. "don't like the artwork? get off my site draw it yourself then." staff and art staff have no obligation to meet requirements set by the userbase, their only obligation is to the visions and goals they themselves have set for the site. and pretty much anywhere but here, user feedback isn't even read, let alone taken into consideration. you're allowed to not like something, but asking staff to change something based on your personal opinion? rude. if staff see something wrong with colour, line-work or proportions, they will fix it, regardless of what you say. i used to be subbed to the sprite discussion thread, curious about feedback, but only about 1 in every 50 posts is actually useful feedback for the staff to work from. "i liked the colours on the old melan better" is not useful feedback, because there might be 500 other users that like the new colours better than the old ones. it's not about pleasing everyone, the art staff should only have to work to their own personal standards. as an artist, there's nothing worse than drawing something you don't want to. "the new melans are boring" well, don't get them then. no one said you have to. Edit: to sum it up, no support. though it would solve some arguments.. it's more of a band-aid fix than a solution. it's a problem that shouldn't even exist.