New Dev Chat Format + Emotions & Mood Brainstorming Recap + New Theme + Poll (Patreon)

Hello everyone,

It is I, Sandrine! As usual, I’m here to share with you all the summary of the latest community brainstorming session as well as the new theme for the month of March. Oh but what is this? I also have something extra to talk to you about today: a new format for the weekly developer chat (reward available to the Hero and Legend tier Patrons)! Keep reading to learn more about it. Note that this Patreon post is for Patrons only so please don’t share it. Thank you!

New Developer Chat Format

If you’ve been around our Discord server or the r/Paralives subreddit, you probably saw (or even took part in) our weekly developer chats transcripts. Every Friday for an hour we opened the #developer-weekly-chat Discord channel to all Hero and Legend tier Patrons for them to chat and ask questions to the team.

We’ve decided to change up the format a bit and hopefully more of you will be able to join the fun! This new weekly dev chat is asynchronous, which means that Patrons can ask questions from Friday to Monday each week and then us developers will post all our answers the next Friday.

When? Starts every Friday at 1 PM ET, ends the following Monday at 1 PM ET

Where? On our Discord server in the #developer-weekly-chat channel

Who? This activity is exclusively for Hero and Legend tier Patrons, but all Patrons will be able to read the transcript of the chat once questions are answered by the team a week later.

How to participate:

• Ask your question to any dev. Unless they are sick or on vacation, all devs will be able to answer your questions each week.
• Maximum of 3 messages (question, suggestion, comment, etc.) per Patron during this time. You can give further explanations on the same subject and we will still count it as one message. You can ask the same question to different/all devs and it will still count as only one question (as long as the question is the same to everyone). The number of maximum messages could change from time to time.
• React respectfully to other Patron’s questions. The question with the most “+1” reactions will have a special place in the dev chat document.
• Send your different questions/suggestions in separate messages to make it easier for everyone to react with “+1” emojis.
• Feel free to go to the  #developers channel to discuss any questions you see in #developers-weekly-chat.
• You may edit your question if you see that your question has been asked by someone else or for any other reason. Please note that any edits made after we close the dev chat won’t be taken into account as we will have already forwarded the questions to the devs.
• Your questions will be answered in a document that will be shared the following Friday around 1 PM ET in the #developer-weekly-chat, #developers, and #patron channels.

Why this change? We hope that this way more of you will be able to participate and ask questions to the team. You will also have more time to think about questions. For example you could wait for the Patreon post to be published, whatever the time of publishing may be, and ask your related questions. With this new format, the team will also have more time to answer the questions and would be able to provide more detailed answers.

Emotions & Mood Brainstorming Recap

Thank you all for participating in the Emotions & Mood brainstorming session, we gathered your ideas from the comment section as well as from Discord and Reddit. Here’s a general summary of the ideas that stood out to us. Please keep in mind that if you don’t see your idea there, it doesn’t necessarily mean we won’t be taking it into account when working on this aspect of the game. In the same way, listing the ideas below doesn’t guarantee that we will add it to the game either since we will be focusing on the most important features first in order to be able to release the game. More interactions and features will be added overtime after launch.

• 🤩 A variety of emotions: neutral, joyful, sad, lazy, anxious, stressed, nostalgic, inspired, jealous, nervous, scared, gloomy, proud, overwhelmed, bored, confused, euphoric, disgusted, shy, etc.
• 😣 Mood could affect effectiveness of an action and the probability of a positive or negative outcome
• 🌨️ Likes and dislikes could affect the mood: weather, season, colors, activities, work, school, nature, children, music genre, etc.
• 😡 The Parafolk’s identity could affect the intensity of emotions
• 🌡️ Degrees of intensity for each emotion
• 💤 Needs could be affected by emotions. For example, being sad or nervous could make energy decrease faster than usual
• 📺 Different ways to unwind from a negative emotion. For example, some Parafolks would need social interactions and others would need alone time doing their hobbies
• ↘️ Emotions could fade over time, not end abruptly
• 🥴 Emotions could intersect and interact with each other instead of changing drastically each time something happens
• 🛌 Parafolks could wake up to different emotions
• 🧍‍♂️ Idle animation affected by current emotion
• 📈 Teenagers would be more prone to mood swings
• 🤰 Pregnancy mood could imply mood swings and cravings
• 🕗 Events that can affect the mood of a Parafolk for a few hours. For example, watching a horror movie would make your Parafolk nervous
• 📅 Events that can affect the mood of a Parafolk for a few days or more. For example, getting into a fight with another Parafolk, loss of a close one, break-up, etc.
• 💔 A break up could trigger different emotions depending on the circumstances: angry if cheated on, more or less sad depending if the Parafolk initiated the break-up or not, etc.
• 💘 One-sided relationships: Two Parafolks could have different/opposite emotions when interacting
• 🧸 Objects and furniture with sentimental value: Having it around could boost the Parafolk’s mood but removing or breaking it would cause the Parafolk’s sadness

Special thanks to Patron and Discord user Axart once again, who made a summary of his own during this month. As always, it’s been helpful to us!

Here’s a word cloud to see what has been mentioned the most in the Patreon comment section of the previous brainstorming session:

Next Monthly Brainstorming: Town Services & Businesses

Embark on a city tour with this month’s brainstorming session topic: Town Services & Businesses! By that we mean any services offered by the city itself but also local businesses. From fish market to postal services, how do you picture the initial town’s businesses and services? To get started, you can ask yourselves the following questions:

• 🛒 What town services and businesses would you like to see in-game?
• 🚒 Which services could be offered by Parafolks or NPCs (e.g. mail carrier) and which ones could be lot services (e.g. town hall, library, etc.)?
• 🍁 What kind of town services and businesses could be specific to one town or season?
• 🏡 Which services could be offered at home and which ones would you need to go out to get?
• 🚗 Which businesses would you need to call or visit to obtain what they offer? For example, would you need to go to a tattoo parlor to add a tattoo to your Parafolk or should it only be done in the Paramaker? Would you need to order or shop for food or should it always be available in your kitchen?

We’d love to read all your ideas in the comment section of this post. It is very inspiring! As usual, we will open this brainstorming session to the public next week on Discord in the #town-services channel and on Reddit.

Happy brainstorming!

Poll: Town Services

Now that the new topic has been revealed, we have a question for you: which of these more specific town services and/or businesses would you like to see in  Paralives? You can select more than one option.

You can answer in the poll below. If you can think of something that is not in the options, don’t hesitate to share it in the comments.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Sandrine