[OOC] Wattplants General

[AceOfNothing]

I think we should somehow figure out a tree pet. Maybe with like dangerous fruits?

Just feel like we gotta have at least one that's just a whole tree

[Pichi2214]

a dragonfruit dragon is like. the most obvious combination but

[MarxzVulpez]

okay so with the mention of the Anemone one, it reminded me of the Moheek from Metroid 2

In Game Sprite art
 

and the official art

[MarxzVulpez]

as for more general inspo potential: I was reminded of the yu-gi-oh archetype Predaplant, Granted Wattplants are more than likely not going to be As Menacing

Some examples are Predaplant Spinodionaea


and Predaplant Heliamphorhynchus


and Predaplant Verte Anaconda

[skinstealer]

consider

[MarxzVulpez]

last batch for now are

Biollante from Godzilla


and Sylvanos from Rivals of Aether


and if we wanted to do a like, Bipedal wattplant or two, perhaps a classic Shambling Mound/Sargassum Fiend/Swamp Thing/The Rotting Root Lord from Berserk (pictured here->)


also I don't know what exactly to call this Biome besides like, strange and alien but perhaps an environment like this one from Metroid Fusion?

[MarxzVulpez]

consider

HOOUGH!!!! Shrimp Buddy...

[King-Clod]

Ok! a bit late to this, but, thoughts

I was a big neopets fan growing up, so I'm probably leaning towards more of a neopets vibe, though, I hope Wattplants doesn't go down the same route Neopets has in-universe


4) what kind of world do we want to have for this? what kind of setting, what kind of overall vibe? how much of a focus on story is there? what do people make up fanon-wise in-universe?

What I loved about Neopets most of all was that...the entire world was theirs. Their lore, the important figures, all neopets. A whole Neopet society, run by neopets, for neopets. It was technically a petsite in mechanics, but beyond playing for, feeding, and having your pets in the battledome, they were sorta their own little guys. They had their own taste in food, books, etc, and that's something I'd love to see in this. Like if Wattplants came up on their own out of the ground, no intervention. Though, it does kinda clash with what's been set up so far, and with typical petsites, so I get if you don't want to go that direction.

I do think it'd be fun if the Wattplants were wholly their own people, and less so pets. Who can make comments on things and the like. And who's personalities may be more of an annoyance to some players.

6) is there a story to wattplants? how well does the site upkeep lore? how messy is it?

I also loved the in-depth lore and events that Neopets had that ended up causing lasting effects to the map, like when the Fairyland fell from the sky and never...really returned to the sky. Or like the one area that's in eternal war? I love having a world that seems too vast to know every bit of, and while they don't do lore on neopets as much any more (and more NFTs rip) I love how varied it is. I love the one time events, and ideas that were intended for the phone app that never happened so they're just unaccesible islands in the sea. Ideas that had a lot of heart that ended up being limited or breaking, along with the indepth lore. Clashes a bit with the minimal lore before lore was added later idea though.

Maybe there was always lore, in like, in universe books and stuff? that people didn't know about/didn't read, then got upset when it didn't match what they thought up? Not sure.

7) what kinds of ways do you make money on the site itself? obviously im not implementing any actual games or anything but itd be interesting to give characters something to complain talk about. how are items earned? what is the economy like (if there is one)?

Neopets does minigames and item shops, though, many of the minigames broke because of flash, rip. I'm trying to think of what other websites do as well...though I keep coming back to minigames and item shops. It'd be fun if there was a haggling system like in neopets, but maybe on Wattplants you can use it on player shops as well? And there was a lot of discourse on that before it was removed.

Honestly... not part of any of the questions, but I think a fun thing I could steal from 4dopts a little would be stats. But more uniform for all the pets. Maybe it's like Petz in that it affects their personality as well, leaving a wide range for how snarky your pet is, but maybe some stats could make them better at haggling! Who knows!

[Pichi2214]

my one worry with how much personality they have in game and if theyre able to talk is like... the whole similarity to friendzoo and the fact that theyve become a construct species in turn so id be worried that theres too much overlap

[King-Clod]

oh I don't mean that they can like, carry on a conversation! I mean like, stock phrases and stuff. Not anywhere close to a construct species, more so just like, different sliders.

[skinstealer]

yeah i can't imagine prickle going the NFT route- he'll probably make some Questionable site decisions, but nothing too horrible. more along the lines of like...introducing something that absolutely fucks up the economy for a bit, stuff like that. or like. lettucepocalypse from 4dopt, weird bugs/exploits that break things for a bit.

a world of their own...hm!

i do like that as well, personally! i do love the idea of a scientist...let me pitch this to you all, actually. it's a bit out there, but...

the world of wattplants has died, a long time ago. there are some survivors, but not many- and those that exist live in far reaches of the globe, communicating only via a long distance network of computers. one of those survivors managed to find a way to bring back more animals from extinction, namely from plants...and others copied their techniques, leading to the creation of different species of wattplant. whether they are sapient or not is up to the player, but they cannot communicate with their creators- leading people to both work with lore involving "oh, wattplants are taken care of by the survivors" and lore where they have their own societies, isolated from "civilization" a la warrior cats. make it kind of have wiggle room- both cases probably exist!

as for communicating with the player...i want to say it could be done via text blurbs conveying body language, with players able to visualize their own personality for their pets. this kind of reminds me of how petpets could be talked to in neopets, with a set of randomized responses- but for these, it could be controlled by hidden personality stats skewing what kind of interactions are more common. i could see this creating a very anthropomorphized reaction in players, without going fully into construct territory.

i like the books idea, especially with how it ties into this weird apocalyptic thing ive just. bullshitted out of the aether. there's less in the way of big wars or stuff like that for active events, and more just...scientific discoveries (like introducing new items, pet species, etc), disturbances in biomes, and lore that you can read through books (psypets/poppyseed pets actually has readable books too, so this isn't too out there)

i like your ideas for making money! the haggling idea is especially cute, yet another one of prickle's bold ideas that ends up being extremely clunky in practice.

[MarxzVulpez]

okay I dig the kind of After the End but repopulating angle but especially for the potential pun of it being a literal seed world

[King-Clod]

I'm not sure there's a way to do both sapient and not, but that's ok! We can lean more into the pet angle rather than trying to make both ways work.

I do wonder where the Watt part of Wattplant comes in, actually, in this apocalypse idea. Maybe the plants either...consume, or produce electricity?

Maybe...this is a bit silly, but maybe every time the plants are content, they produce more energy, so there's an objective to keep giving these guys new experiences and nice things to keep the settlements running, and stuff like that.

[skinstealer]

let's just make the pet angle work, then!

hmm...i like the power idea, that definitely works that in. maybe there's like...you know how on flight rising there's those whole...what are they called, dominances? where players have to exalt dragons and get coliseum wins, and whichever faction/flight/etc gets the most points gets a bonus? maybe there could be that, where people pick a biome/settlement to "live" in and whichever settlement has the most energy at the end of the week/month/whatever, gets a big bonus!

[King-Clod]

Maybe! Not sure honestly. I'm remembering that the Watt part of Wattplants could also come from this being a digital pet game, and now that I think about it my power idea seems like a lot of unnecessary mechanics? You don't have to scrap it if you don't want to, but I think I want to focus more on mechanics for story and exploration.

Even though this is gonna be a lot different from Neopets, the explore function is really important to the experience and should be carried over I think, even if it is isn't a Wattplant world for Wattplants. I'm trying to think of a way for there to be worlds be as varied as like, Fairyland and the Haunted Woods and the Virtupets Space Station, without necessarily just being different survivor settlements. Maybe the survivor settlements are where the players are, and the world is taken over by strange capricious beings that either give you quests (like the Fairy quests) harm/scare your pets (like many things around Neopets tbf) or do their own thing? I feel like having something more than just survivors and Wattplants would be really important for getting the same sort of vibe across. And I think gimmicky lands are really important too.

Apocalypse sorta worlds can be very bleak if you aren't careful, or at least, not the sorta vibe that always lends itself well to a fun little pet game. Do you think the Apocalypse vibes could have more design elements of say, Fusion Fall or something? Well, maybe not Fusion Fall specifically now that I think about it, that got a lot of it's fun from the Cartoon Worlds it bright to life, hm... Just something cartoony and fun, bright colors and the like. Like the Splatoon world! The Splatoon world used to be like ours, then fully became something else as the squids took over.

Something that you could almost forget was an apocalypse, and maybe some players didn't pick that up at first and that's why they got aggravated with the lore.

[AceOfNothing]

Just kinda popping in but if I may

Maybe the community was more "The lore is that these creatures are the ones in charge and they run things" but Prickle, when he added lore later, went the science route.

It fits with the narrative of people not being happy about this being how things turned out. So some people still give their wattplants bios in this narrative too.

[skinstealer]

echer here! okay, let's see...

hmm. there's a lot going on here, but i think i want to finalize some things and make em set in stone, if that's okay? there's a lot of things happening and i think to progress we have to make some things Concrete. i don't know if i can satisfy everyone's wants and needs with this, but i have ideas and i think they'd be good for structure- ty all for your suggestions, it's given me a lot to think about!

let's take it from the top...

prickle is the solo dev of wattplants, and has been doing this for a couple years now- maybe like four? it started as a personal project to pass the time and learn coding after he got out of snugco, and also to explore the idea of a plant-heavy story and his relationship to them. plants became some of his only friends in snugco itself while working in an experimental garden program, and he was able to get a job at a greenhouse and escaped the facility through that.

prickle is very motivated by botany and science, which probably looks more fantastical to us than other morbitians. carnivorous plants were especially interesting to him and he grew mildly fixated on them, and wanted to make creatures that capture both their cuteness and beauty. whether people actually find them pretty or cute varies, but i like to think even with the controversy the site has, people generally really like (most of) the creatures.

note to self: design one that people think is ugly, possibly for nonsensical reasons lol

prickle is kind of at odds with the community at times, which causes a lot of stress and periods where not a lot of updates get done. his hiatuses are very controversial amongst more entitled players, but...i imagine there's still a strong foundation of dedicated players who send him nice emails and fanart and stuff. :)

ever time he feels down, he just trawls the forums and peoples' petpages for a bit, and even the ones that go against his lore help him feel better.

the game has a vague post-apoc theme, but where the world has started to recover enough that it was nebulous at first whether it was or not. i don't know if i want to go for outright "cartoony"- wattplants are very cute and cartoony, but that may just be a result of morbit being that as well...but! what i think could be cool is something vibrant in the same way that plants are vibrant- very overgrown and people living within nature. people probably had theories that something was up early on, but most people just assumed it was a wild world full of beasts, considering one of the later points...

overall, i like to think that it's a very hopeful take! prickle probably has a lot of influence from his traumatic upbringing (considering, um, snugco) but he's a very optimistic person and his love of plant life makes him feel like "the world will always regrow, no matter what".

the world is very varied a la neopets, and themed settlements exist between wild areas. these themes are a bit more grounded than neopets, but they're still very much there. i still like the idea of biome inspired stuff, but biomes are really varied in this world, and may have more in common with the vast variety of morbit zones than our own earth. settlements have lots of different little shops with different focuses, and different markings/features are more common to different areas/associated with them.

the world also has dangerous and mysterious creatures in the wilds. some of them are sapient and can give quests and such via random events, others do not and are more akin to animals/terrors. these are also majority plant themed, and some events may require players to defeat a certain amount of enemies maybe?

"people" NPCs were added later into the game, which elaborated more on the post-apoc nature of the setting, and gave more lore. this is a big part of why players didn't recognize the apoc nature of the setting. this is kind of how a lot of petsites go, i think? where stuff is added later and is a big shakeup...prickle is very proud of his characters and a lot goes into them, but i think some people see them as edgy or pretentious, or maybe clunkily written. there might be a few characters that people actually really like, but most are controversial and some are just outright hated and ignored/memed on.

i'm pretty set on all these details...but i'd love to discuss what people think can be expanded on, or if anyone has questions!

[AceOfNothing]

I'm happy to see details getting finalized! I think I can vibe with these details.

Some people are genuinely upset with the changes, but many people have embraced it. Caused a lot of problems early on. And hopefully as time went on and newer people joined, the outlook became more positive overall.

Guess things I think we could talk about are like
Has Prickle ever considered getting help for the site? Does he have moderators at least?
And maybe we could talk about potential events? Interested on how these worm.

Also maybe like... does the site do anything game wise? Maybe a like monthly dress up game that themed

[skinstealer]

added three new wattplant species to the drive and gallery, check em out

will answer questions later, possibly tomorrow, but yeah we got new guys

[skinstealer]

hoohoohoo