Why no new beastclan lore for the 3rd consecutive year?
Huge disclaimer! this isn't an attempt to attack the staff nor am I stating that everything said here is true, everything here is just my opinion from being a fan since 2020
so, it took a while but i finally gathered all my thoughts and i think i know just why flight rising is so goddamn slow lore wise:
the lore is being rewritten for the 3rd time for the Adventure mode. probably all from scratch.
so. we all know flight rising lore has changed twice in the overall history of the site: it started with the element descriptions, world map and encyclopedia entries for the dragon breeds and the beastclans in the encyclopedia from 2013 to 2018ish - then in 2019 the bounty of the elements was introduced, the deities' interactions diminished and the ancients emerged. the change between lore styles was jarring: in the beginning, we had deities talking to us in the foruns but during the 2018-2023 lore building period, every sentence was important for the story the Adventure Mode was building up to tell - now we have event npcs to decipher the gods' hidden broken messages as they are going missing
the change from the 2013 lore to the 2019 one was mainly to increment and prepare the site users for the future Adventure Mode release, that's a given, but what some people didn't understand is how big the impact of the Auraboa backlash was for the overall development of the Adventure Mode.
you see, the interactions between beastclans, modern dragons, ancient dragons and the shade were and probably still are the principal source of conflict and a lore for the Adventure Mode. it just happens that the source of conflict between the beastclans and everything else was very colonialist and the conflict between modern and ancients could be seen as opressive. Imagine how much art and writing it got produced for the Adventure Mode from 2018 to 2022 having both the old ancient lore, the old beastclan uprising and the old flight lore in it. Now imagine having to restructure EVERYTHING because:
in 2022, the devs decided to make public their desire to change the official lore in a way that doesn't mirror horrible practices found in the real world regarding to land dispute and cultural relocation. In the "Apologies for Beastclans on The Rise", the devs announced that they would be rewriting everything about the beastclans in the whole lore to erase the colonialist tone plaguing it.
this makes for the First Big AD Rewrite, or the Second Lore Retcon (Bounty of the Elements being the First), during late 2022. and everything went well after this until a unseen controversy shook the dev team and their plans late 2023: the Auraboa lore.
When the short story for how the Auraboas got "found" again by the modern dragons was released with the Auraboa dragon, many people were quick to notice that both the story and the dragon design told a story too gleefully based on native nations stereotypes and suffering, like the noble savage trope, the cultural assimilation of their kids and the white savior trope given to the modern explorers. this created such an unexpected backlash for the way the devs were handling the lore building that they decided to go full control mode.
completely freezing the lore updates and making sure that every single new dragon or familiar they added was squeaky clean and controversy free, to the point they have written a completely different tone for the site from everything they have ever done. the dragons aren't warlike, there's no mentions of conflict ANYWHERE anymore and nothing gets any more lore than a tooltip.
it got so far that they have started to remake entire flights, this being seen in the wind flight remake in the Cirrus dragon introduction, as the staff deems the cultural background of the wind flight to close to real life asian countries.
imagine how both of this big changes have affected the lore planning in the backstage? now that they are in the hyper cautious mode, I dont doubt that the new sensibility writer has been working overtime having to redo most of the planned lore for the big sitewide Adventure Mode
this certainly marks the Second Big AD Rewrite or the Third Lore Retcon.
the reason we don't have any new beastclan lore is because they are rewriting the Adventure Mode.
we don't have new first contact stories because they are making sure no one is gonna get upset by the Adventure Mode.
we don't have any new official lore because they prefer to give nothingburger lore to the new dragons that can't spook the ad sellers because its much easier to work with that than anything with conflict for the new Adventure Mode!
so now they can't be transparent and show the Adventure Mode progress or any kind of lore for that matter because they will have to tell everyone that they have demolished everything substantial and are starting new again for the third time!
siiiiigh. all I wish from all of this is that the Staff doesn't sanitize the site lore to the point of unrecognizability. and maybe a beastclan lore drop or two.
I think it's kind of strange that FR's response to Wind being accused of conglomeration of East Asian cultures was to pick a source for the Cirrus that makes that worse. I would've thought perhaps they'd focus on tightening the scope to a singular culture since that's always been the major complaint but instead they make a big deal about incorporating another EA culture that's never even been mentioned before.
Though imo wind isn't nearly as bad as people think to begin with. Ironically some of the "mixing culture" complaints are themselves a result of people not actually understanding east Asia themselves. Wind is like 99% Japanese.
Pinstripe, Lionfish, Clown, Swirl etc. All look a lot different on Tundras than on other breeds
Hex on older moderns with manes (accent colour on mane) vs Obelisks (main colour on mane) vs Gaolers (main colour with accent details) vs Veilspun (accent colour with main color details)
Skydancers get neat little wing details on most secondaries that aren't there for other breeds
Runes adding details on Veilspun's wings
IriShim
Obelisk Mane Accents On Literally Every Gene
Those are all deliberate artistic choices made when developing the genes. As I see it, aesthetic variety takes precedence over consistency.
I get this one case wasn't intended, but the result was very well received and the correction is overwhelmingly unwelcome. Please, just reverse the changes. This is just embarrassing.
what was the situation with tox? I've heard vague things but I cannot find out what actually happened for the life of me
ok so what happened was (and i’m paraphrasing here, and also it’s been a while so forgive me for any inaccuracies) tox got banned permanently from fr because he posted shota content off-site, on a site that allows it and was properly warned for, despite fr’s supposed rule of not punishing for things offsite
this led to him getting MAJOR harassment from all corners of the fandom, like it was super fucking bad, i didn’t know who the guy was before this shit went down and i hadn’t played fr in a few years and i STILL heard about it, that’s how widespread this harassment campaign was
the dude is super cool and nice, it’s rly a shame he went through all that and still continues to go through similar shit but on a smaller scale ;;
Honestly, aside the color and glow errors, this gene would only look best on F Nocturne. It shouldn’t be plated, it throws off the patterns.
I think Glowtail is supposed to compliment the Wasp gene. But even then, the hard cut at the base of Glowtail throws everything off.
I really like the concept, would make for great (blue-tailed) Skink-Dragons, but this was poorly released. Sounds like they’re just gonna fix the glow and gradient on Glowtail. Kinda wish they’d get rid of the plated look, and this gene doesn’t look worth 1200 gems if it just affects the tail. Should’ve been a Baldwin or Coli gene :/
I totally understand where yall are coming from, and I commend you for seizing the opportunity for some Sweet Dragon Cash...
But I also understand the backlash at this point. Yeah, snipers are gonna be going wild for the first week or two after an item/set/gene comes out due to crazy demand, but after that it usually calms down a bit. With the bane scrolls, though, it’s been almost a whole month since they came out and the sniping has still been going strong. I don’t quite understand that?
While this doesn’t really affect me (I don’t have any bane plans right now and snipers don’t usually get on my nerves), I figured I should put my two-sense in and see what everyone else thinks.
Feel free to discuss in the replies, but please don’t be rude.
