Thread:Redfork2000/@comment-30384301-20180707030921/@comment-30384301-20180913133458

You know, when it comes to planning stories, I sometimes plan for certain events to happen without much consideration of what might happen. For example, the gang with more allies going past the different rooms one villain throws at them seems way too OP, although at first I didn't think much of it. That's probably why I found the challenges in Red Fork's Rampage rather very challenging, as there were fewer allies at that time compared to other stories like this one. I mean, we have Dark Shadow, Black Gem and the Mane Six! It will be a cakewalk with them around since their abilities alone can help the gang past any kind of challenge.

My idea for the plant villains is to have opposite powers as their good counterparts. For example, how Polar Tundra has ice powers unlike Solar Flare who has fire powers and how Queen Chomp is able to shrink while Chompzilla is able to grow. I thought it would be interesting since having the plant villains have the exact same powers as their good counterparts would basically make the plant villains feel like rip-offs. Black Planter could've possibly be the same as Dark Green Shadow, so to prevent that, I decided to give plant villains the opposite powers of their good counterparts. You see, I don't intend to make this story feel like a rip-off, that'll be plagiarism. I wanted to prevent that and give some originality to the story.

Also, I have never really considered how a certain villain getting easily manipulated or messed with by another villain can make the latter look like a stronger threat than the former, until yesterday. While I don't want Re-Peat Boss to look like a wimp compared to other villains, I don't want him to be too overpowered either to the point that few are not intimidated by him. I only wanted to make him look more like a villain who is balanced in terms of how big or small of a threat he is, like I said yesterday, sort of at Bright Spark's level.

It's certainly not easy for me sometimes to think of important events, character development or outcomes that both you and I can agree on. In fact, it took me some time to think of character arcs for some of my major characters such as Starcade, Kyoji or Akasha. That's what made them some of the better characters in my roster, at least in my opinion.

Anyway, thanks for the advice and tips. I feel much better and while I have the confidence to continue working on this story, I'm thinking of newer story ideas that will not use the currently most recurring formula we both tend to use - about fighting the villain's minions before stopping the main villain himself while going through his challenges along the way. I agree that it is being overused and while the path to thinking of these newer story ideas won't be easy, I'm trying my best to think of fresh new story ideas.