Yeah, yeah. Diaphragm isn't the right word. I can't recall which bloody one I wanted to use. I can't find it either. My mind's drawing a blank. If anybody can help me not look like a fool here, I'd appreciate it. :P
For some attacks, we could figure the damage rather based on the current maximum health (i.e., adjusted) to the raw maximum health (i.e., unadjusted). However, this could be majorly painful for those with health maluses and actually really reduce damage if they have a lot of health blessings. Opinions?
I kinda wonder about this. Doesn't this completely negate the benefit for h/m/e+ runes?
I would support removing aeon too. Aeon is a unique mechanic to IRE games because of the way the combat system here works, but it really is difficult to balance because of its potency. (I also feel that it affects newbies much, much, much more than experienced combatants, and which makes it a bad thing, though that's debatable, I guess.) I certainly won't miss it if it is deleted, much as removing it may mean losing one of the things other MUD combat systems cannot really replicate.
I feel Lered is completely correct here and I fully support this. You could with firstaid play this game as a support combatant if not for aeon. Like choke, this is really one of the affs that has sent so many non-IRE vets runing out the door.
It would actually be the opposite, being too good for those with the runes. h/m/e+ runes will still give you a bonus to your sip on top of having the damage remain small despite the fact that your max health has increased. Well, the exact tuning of the new bard mechanics is still up in the air. The issues have been raised, and Estarra knows about them, just have to wait and see what will be done to tweak them.
It would actually be the opposite, being too good for those with the runes. h/m/e+ runes will still give you a bonus to your sip on top of having the damage remain small despite the fact that your max health has increased. Well, the exact tuning of the new bard mechanics is still up in the air. The issues have been raised, and Estarra knows about them, just have to wait and see what will be done to tweak them.
Can you show this with numbers, intuitively (so highly likely to be wrong here) it doesn't feel correct.
If the loss is max health based and sip is max health based, you still with the sip would have to make up for the additional loss. Wouldn't that mean sipping would have to outpace the loss?
Currently, both in normal lusternian combat as well as in the overhaul arena, the attacks being based on (current) max health. Iytha was bringing up the point that this doesn't help the overhaul bard because even when the opponents' max health is lowered (via the new health curses) the damage their attacks do go down accordingly.
The Estarra quote you quoted was Estarra suggesting that they could change the attacks to be based off (unadjusted) max health instead, but then the concern is that those with a lot of health curses will be take too much damage and those with a lot of health bonuses will take very little damage (because the damage from the attack doesn't scale to do as much damage, but the sip continues to increase).
This is the scenario I'm talking about, having a h/m/e+ rune under what Estarra suggested (ie. what you quoted) would mean that you have a max health value that is higher than your unadjusted max health, and will thus sip for more while the damage you take is scaled for a lower max health value than what you actually have.
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As an addendum, most attacks in the current system already scale to current max health, so h/m/e+ runes already DO make you take higher damage in most cases.
After some thinking time I think the general idea of the overhaul is good while there are some things i'd still like to see/address:
1) I was one of the people hoping this overhaul would adjust things for groups. Under the current iteration it would make them worse.
2) Remove illusions if not already doing so. This would make systems much simpler, and none of the guilds with illusions would need them.
3) Aeon can disappear, especially as a level four affliction.
4) Some of the afflictions need to be moved in general (reckless I am looking at you).
5) This overhaul currently just lends itself to spam till you win, we need to get a bit more tactical feel to it. We will need a few more trees but I think we can make this one work. Also possible is doubling up on a tree!
I have a thing to lay all this out, but going class by class to make sure it works keeps causing some changes. I assume no one wants a brand new class feel and a major change, but everyone will hvae some changes. Like Nihilist sacrifice is losing scabies/epilepsy, which might not be bad if you can still get it off with more effort, but is terrible if it becomes impossible. So I am trying to take all this into account.
It's not the fact that aeon is too strong in the game, it's the fact that aeon can be given by millions of sources. If it were just tarot afflicting with aeon, I think it would be fine. However you have those bards who can give it instant and bypassing quicksilver defense + stun + blackout, you have it in astrology on 2 second equilibrium, you have an entire skillset devoted to dealing it out (active AND passive), you have champion pets that dish it out passively, etc. Leave it to one source please. That's why aeon was too powerful. That's also why stun and blackout were too much in the game, because everyone and their mother has the ability to dish it out. Doesn't matter if there is an immunity to it, if you're getting stunned for two seconds every 4 seconds most of your life in that battle is going to be staying stunned.
For some attacks, we could figure the damage rather based on the current maximum health (i.e., adjusted) to the raw maximum health (i.e., unadjusted). However, this could be majorly painful for those with health maluses and actually really reduce damage if they have a lot of health blessings. Opinions?
I kinda wonder about this. Doesn't this completely negate the benefit for h/m/e+ runes?
If damage attacks always did a small percentage of health + a raw base damage, then those who have h/m/e blessings or arties would still take a small increase in damage, but because of the raw base damage they would still benefit from increased health. For example, you have 5000 health. An attack does 10% + 500 damage, total of 1000 damage (20% damage). You have 20% h/m/e rune, so now you have 6000 health. The attack would then do 1100 damage (18.3% damage) The end result is a lower % of damage taken from the attack because of the artifact. The total damage was increased but only slightly because of the % portion that the attack always does.
I actually thought that's how all attacks worked in Lusternia except for physical damage. I'm almost sure actually that all magical based attacks works like this, but I'd have to test to confirm anything.
I had some stuff to post but it assumes a lot, so I wanted to ask @Estarra directly:
1) What is the goal of this overhaul? Was it purely to simplify things or was it balancing combat? Anything else?
2) How flexible is the overhaul right now? My proposed system does not use flat level to level ratios for affs and cures, which helps balance more finely.
3) Can we consider changes to go along side the overhaul? For instance will the autocure firstaid system be operational?
4) Can I freely suggest changes/removals/additions of current or new trees of afflictions?
5) What is the ideal level of afflicting as perceived by admin? Under current curing is purely overrun, do we want to stack 1 full aff every 3 seconds or 2 affs every 5?
6) Will we still have poisons?
7) Can we also propose changes and shuffles in skillsets? A great deal of the issue with lusternian combat is how many skills you need to simply function right now.
Malarious, you can suggest whatever you want! However, if you go off on some left field tangent that is a whole different system than what we've outlined and how we're proceeding in terms of the affliction system, etc., then that probably won't go far. I'm going to decline answering specific questions except to point to how the overhaul shell characters operate in the arena.
As for the goal, yes it's all those things! I have no idea what you may mean by 'anything else'--simplifying and balancing combat is a pretty enormous goal.
It's not the fact that aeon is too strong in the game, it's the fact that aeon can be given by millions of sources. If it were just tarot afflicting with aeon, I think it would be fine. However you have those bards who can give it instant and bypassing quicksilver defense + stun + blackout, you have it in astrology on 2 second equilibrium, you have an entire skillset devoted to dealing it out (active AND passive), you have champion pets that dish it out passively, etc. Leave it to one source please. That's why aeon was too powerful. That's also why stun and blackout were too much in the game, because everyone and their mother has the ability to dish it out. Doesn't matter if there is an immunity to it, if you're getting stunned for two seconds every 4 seconds most of your life in that battle is going to be staying stunned.
It is to strong if you want easier entry into the game. Aeon is a large burden to players creating combat systems. Without aeon combat systems are greatly simplified.
Seems kinda critical for us to have some sense of how the system might play out or break in groups while still in somewhat early stage. Could you set up shells for Wargames, doesn't need to be all the shells, maybe just bards at first. Without this, people really can't contribute knowledgeably.
It's not the fact that aeon is too strong in the game, it's the fact that aeon can be given by millions of sources. If it were just tarot afflicting with aeon, I think it would be fine. However you have those bards who can give it instant and bypassing quicksilver defense + stun + blackout, you have it in astrology on 2 second equilibrium, you have an entire skillset devoted to dealing it out (active AND passive), you have champion pets that dish it out passively, etc. Leave it to one source please. That's why aeon was too powerful. That's also why stun and blackout were too much in the game, because everyone and their mother has the ability to dish it out. Doesn't matter if there is an immunity to it, if you're getting stunned for two seconds every 4 seconds most of your life in that battle is going to be staying stunned.
It is to strong if you want easier entry into the game. Aeon is a large burden to players creating combat systems. Without aeon combat systems are greatly simplified.
Have you ever played any of the other IRE's? Aeon is in all of them, but it only seems to be a problem in Lusternia for everyone because it's offered in so many ways. Too many ways. You only need to worry about one or two classes with aeon in, for example, Achaea (I know it's bad to compare game vrs game with an affliction that exists in both but hear me out). And aeon only seems to be a problem in group combat (don't tell me you get killed 1 on 1 by aeon, because that's just not realistic). You're right that without aeon combat systems are simplified yes but aeon curing in itself isn't very complicated at all.
So far it looks interesting, but there are some problems that may rear their heads as work continues:
1) The actual effects are too powerful in relation to the ease they are generated
2) The effects are also too powerful to have 'curing buffers'
2) As a result of #s 1+2, there isn't enough space for unique guild mechanics
3) As a result of all of the above, group combat woes will be significantly exacerbated
1) The effects spawned by these afflictions at their mid-to-high tiers are too powerful taken in context. Even with quick curing, the two shell characters can dish out afflictions far faster than they can be cured, simply by spamming a single, no power attack, in such a way that practically guarantees victory (or mandatory escape). Nothing that has been presented related to the overhaul, including the two shells, appears to include any kind of mandatory build up or intelligent tactics, in the manner of wounds. It is quite easy to very quickly catapult your target to locking levels, even using no-power attacks.
The easiest way to fix this would be to speed up curing, slow down afflicting, or do a combination of both.
2) The problem of 'curing buffers' is best exemplified by the Muscular track of effects, its first tier specifically. Recklessness is a quite nasty affliction, which can take five or more eats of yarrow to cure in the overhaul track system. While static cure orders can provide interesting tactics (all static cures in Aetolia automatically work this way) it can lead to some terrible problems when the effects themselves are too powerful for how deep they are buried in the cure order. With the way the overhaul is currently structured, there isn't any tactical skill required to string skills together in such a way as to cause a cure stack, you need only spam a single attack to achieve the same results. Essentially, an aggressor can ensure that their opponent will have a particular effect for a long time, if not indefinitely, which causes problems with effects like aeon or recklessness. Many effects that are ported from the current affliction setup will need to receive a long, hard looking at, as they will inherently be much more powerful, as they come paired with automatic synergistic afflictions and curing stacks.
The simple fix here is to move powerful afflictions to the top of their tracks, and diversify the curing methods so that more afflictions are on differing cure methods.
3) Both of the above effect-power problems contribute to an overarching issue with archetype design, that there may not be enough sufficiently unique ways to play the presented system to support 30 different guilds. I think that this issue is fairly self-explanatory, but the core problem is that because the common affliction system is currently so devastatingly powerful, guilds will want to use their strongest simple attack that raises one or two tracks, and use it to the exclusion of other mechanics, unless those other mechanics are more powerful... and because the affliction mechanic is so powerful, anything more powerful will be unbalancing to play. Guilds by necessity will need to share tracks due to the sheer number of spec skills, and the limited number of affliction tracks, and if those tracks are too strong (which they currently are, see above points), guilds sharing a strong track will want to spam it. You'll basically have multiple guilds with different flavor text spamming the same handful of attacks. Not to mention that balancing afflictions/skills that are shared by multiple guilds/archetypes is an absolute nightmare, take it from me.
The unfortunate simple fix for this is to introduce more tracks as you water tracks down. Including more tracks at the level of strength that we see in Raklang and Hollimar's options would be devastating, but if the strong effects from those tracks were spread to 2-3 tracks , things would be more managable, and guilds would have more space to unique tracks.
4) The most painful impact I predict resulting from the overhaul as it exists now will be felt in group combat.Combat will become even more group centric, instead of less. Group fights will become even more about just spamming one or two moves to win, instead of less. Our 10v1x10 (ten versus 1, ten times) PvP situation will only get worse, because it the only substantive change will be that afflictions become harder to cure, remaining about as easy to deal out,as if everyone in the game was turned into a warrior, with the wounds system... except without any of the balancing factors of the wounds system: No anti-stacking penalties, no stancing, no parrying, no high armour/shield values, no need to pray to the rng god for an actual affliction.
I must say that it feels like an inevitable conclusion to a game filled with Raklangs and Hollimars, that no amount of tweaking cure speeds or effect tiers will solve, even with the solutions I've presented above, and others suggested by other people. The basic core of the system has a flaw in the way that afflictions are being given/removed that will lead to this kind of problem eventually.
So, I propose an elegant and fundamental solution to the issues I outline above, that I believe - when paired with some of the strategies outlined in my above points - would make a much more engaging and fair combat system for Lusternia. The warrior metaphor I employed previously is the key to this solution:
First, make each affliction track work via a system of counters, in the manner of our current burns system, or wounds. Every attack will deal out a number of counters. If you have any counters in a particular track, you suffer the effects of the first tier of affliction (like first degree burns). Pyrotoxin gives 2 burn counters, for instance. Once you reach or surpass a threshold of counters, you additionally suffer the effects of the next higher tier of effect, and so on. For burns, 8 counters registers as 'second degree burns', and so on.
Right now, this is basically what the overhaul is using, but it only has five counters, and five thresholds, one counter higher than the last. With this fix, we need to increase the number of counters such that there are intermediate levels where you can have extra counters that haven't manifested as an additional effect, the "1-7" on the burns scale", so to speak. For the sake of discussion, I prefer a factor of 20 because it's easier to understand that '100' means 'maximum amount', but the number could be arbitrarily high, with higher numbers increasing the effectiveness of the change, by allowing finer and finer tuned control. An increase factor of 20 while preserving the ratios means that a 1/5 attack would instead be dealing 20/100 counters, and that the thresholds would go from 1/2/3/4/5 to 20/40/60/80/100.
With higher levels of granularity, you can begin to fix problems with a finer level of control. The most obvious problem this can help curb is that of group stacking. We can penalize players for attacking targets already engaged in battle, by reducing the strength of their damage and affliction counters by some percentage. For example: If Howard and Roark (in that order) are both attacking Toohey with 20/100 attacks, it can be made so that Roark only deals 10 affliction counters, instead of the full amount (dealing a total of 150% the strength of a single attacker, instead of 200%)! If each affliction only takes effect once you reach a 1/5th threshold, Roark has still assisted Howard in reaching a higher tier of effect, but half as much as he would without the diminishing return effect in place Once Howard is attacking again, he too is only hitting for 10 counters, their total number of counters per round (20) is the same as it would be if Howard was attacking alone.
These numbers are provided to illunstrate the solution, and are perhaps overly harsh, but the theory can be used to create diminishing returns of arbitrary strength. You could allow a certain number of people to be attacking the same target at once before diminishing returns start, or even have those numbers change relative to events in the game (such as village revolts) to change the dynamics of group combat during that event. Diminishing returns for working together would hopefully encourage players to focus on different targets and split up in combat, instead of focus firing down one opponent after another in sequence.
Counter afflicting would also allow the balancing of high-tier effects such that it is actually harder to upgrade to them than it is to upgrade into a lower tier of effect. To find a model of this, we only need to look to wounds, with the way that critical wounds are further from being heavy wounds than heavy wounds are from being moderate wounds. Instead of effects activating at 20/40/60/80/100, they could activate at 10/25/40/65/100, or some other threshold pattern. This kind of setup would make achieving (and maintaining) a lower tier of effect easy, but higher levels progressively more difficult to achieve or maintain.
Like warriors trying to pressure wounds, this would encourage fighters to 'spread the wounds' to multiple tracks using attacks equivalent to a blade master attacking different body parts, in preparation for using a series of focused lunges on one body part to quickly build wounds on a single part, once the other locations are prepped. The admitted downside to this setup iss that it would make mid level counter afflictions take longer to cure once you reach critical levels. However, unlike wounds, the counters should probably be capped, which will cut down on that issue. The cap can be above the highest effective level, though!
If we take this new approach alongside the suggestions I put forwards in the first part of my post, we would have a system in which each guild has several tracks they can pursue (like 3-5 different tracks), only a few of which should significantly overlap with other guilds. The powerful debilitating afflictions would be further up the aff tracks, and therefore actually take proportionally more effort for their payoff. To reach those afflictions, you will need to employ tactical intelligence to drag your opponent's curing around to different tracks, as you hit the important mid level affs there. Multiple people in the same fight would want to prioritize and engage with different targets, as they will be able to take down their opponents more quickly that way. Envoys will be able to balance not only the effects of each affliction track, but will also be able to suggest easier changes to the ratio between curing and afflicting on a skill-by-skill basis, with a lot of the math pre-done!
All kinds of unique guild takes can be worked in with this kind of system, like special attacks that require pre-existing conditions on the target, or have a affliction counter floor (possibly even on a track the attack doesn't progress) before they will take full, or any, effect. I think the added flexibility and control-of-balance would serve Lusternia more going forward.
Tl;dr:
- Cure:Aff ratio is shot
- Cure buffer:aff buffer is shot.
- Affs are too powerful to bother with unique guild abilities
- Spam will rule combat.
Best fix:
-Make affs work like wounds by:
--Making a big number of counters, delt by skills
--Different thresholds of counters = more effects. Thresholds shouldn't be equal, should increase
--Penalize fighters for ganking targets by reducing the counters per attacker over a period
It's not the fact that aeon is too strong in the game, it's the fact that aeon can be given by millions of sources. If it were just tarot afflicting with aeon, I think it would be fine. However you have those bards who can give it instant and bypassing quicksilver defense + stun + blackout, you have it in astrology on 2 second equilibrium, you have an entire skillset devoted to dealing it out (active AND passive), you have champion pets that dish it out passively, etc. Leave it to one source please. That's why aeon was too powerful. That's also why stun and blackout were too much in the game, because everyone and their mother has the ability to dish it out. Doesn't matter if there is an immunity to it, if you're getting stunned for two seconds every 4 seconds most of your life in that battle is going to be staying stunned.
It is to strong if you want easier entry into the game. Aeon is a large burden to players creating combat systems. Without aeon combat systems are greatly simplified.
Have you ever played any of the other IRE's? Aeon is in all of them, but it only seems to be a problem in Lusternia for everyone because it's offered in so many ways. Too many ways. You only need to worry about one or two classes with aeon in, for example, Achaea (I know it's bad to compare game vrs game with an affliction that exists in both but hear me out). And aeon only seems to be a problem in group combat (don't tell me you get killed 1 on 1 by aeon, because that's just not realistic). You're right that without aeon combat systems are simplified yes but aeon curing in itself isn't very complicated at all.
I have played other IREs. Aeon is a mechanic that players quit over. even if only one class had aeon it would still need to be something that players would code around. A partial series of triggers helps you if aeon is removed. A partial series of triggers kills you if aeon is present.
I get that most players here and more generally in other IRE games can cope with aeon. All that means is we're the 'survivors'.
I don't think aeon is necessary to enjoying the game and since I believe it helps to run off new players, especially those part time players who won't shell out credits for a system, I believe removing it would make it easier to attract and hold players. I'm not up on the other games, but achaea I believe still has at least one mostly functional free system.
I've been putting a lot of thought into the system, and honestly a lot of what Enyalida said echoes my concerns. The idea of 'counters' to level up affs is something I support, as one of the most entertaining classes to play is Warrior in my opinion. Disregarding the frustration of parry/stance/rebounding, having things force you to worry about different affliction levels will make combat more tactical, and having a varied level for each affliction will allow us to restrain the higher level afflictions.
Perhaps even have things set up so that some will raise purely the affliction track's level, while others cause affliction. You could have some attacks produce greater affliction that way. (I.E. Warrior lunge/crush causing more wounds than a generic swing.)
It's not the fact that aeon is too strong in the game, it's the fact that aeon can be given by millions of sources. If it were just tarot afflicting with aeon, I think it would be fine. However you have those bards who can give it instant and bypassing quicksilver defense + stun + blackout, you have it in astrology on 2 second equilibrium, you have an entire skillset devoted to dealing it out (active AND passive), you have champion pets that dish it out passively, etc. Leave it to one source please. That's why aeon was too powerful. That's also why stun and blackout were too much in the game, because everyone and their mother has the ability to dish it out. Doesn't matter if there is an immunity to it, if you're getting stunned for two seconds every 4 seconds most of your life in that battle is going to be staying stunned.
It is to strong if you want easier entry into the game. Aeon is a large burden to players creating combat systems. Without aeon combat systems are greatly simplified.
Have you ever played any of the other IRE's? Aeon is in all of them, but it only seems to be a problem in Lusternia for everyone because it's offered in so many ways. Too many ways. You only need to worry about one or two classes with aeon in, for example, Achaea (I know it's bad to compare game vrs game with an affliction that exists in both but hear me out). And aeon only seems to be a problem in group combat (don't tell me you get killed 1 on 1 by aeon, because that's just not realistic). You're right that without aeon combat systems are simplified yes but aeon curing in itself isn't very complicated at all.
I have played other IREs. Aeon is a mechanic that players quit over. even if only one class had aeon it would still need to be something that players would code around. A partial series of triggers helps you if aeon is removed. A partial series of triggers kills you if aeon is present.
I get that most players here and more generally in other IRE games can cope with aeon. All that means is we're the 'survivors'.
I don't think aeon is necessary to enjoying the game and since I believe it helps to run off new players, especially those part time players who won't shell out credits for a system, I believe removing it would make it easier to attract and hold players. I'm not up on the other games, but achaea I believe still has at least one mostly functional free system.
Aeon isn't necessary I know, it has always been around and I always thought it was a unique affliction to keep around. But I do agree with you.
Aeon is unique, fascinating, and an absolute mess to balance around. A guild having access to aeon (as all guardians, wiccans, city bards, three out of six warrior guilds) or an aeon equivalent (druids) makes it utterly challenging to adjust them, as - particularly with shared skillsets - you have to take into account how it'll affect a half-dozen different guilds, if not more.
Thoros said: Aeon isn't necessary I know, it has always been around and I always
thought it was a unique affliction to keep around. But I do agree with
you.
This highlights how the admin get crappy feedback when they're unclear as to their goals. What market do they really want to go after? What are the goalposts?
I don't mean to be overly harsh against aeon. It certainly is an interesting mechanic. Just without it, firstaid alone might be enough to encourage a non-com to step a bit out of their shell. Aeon jumps out because I watched so many people leave over the skill that shall not be named for no other reason then they didn't want to deal with the coding.
I'd rather we not get rid of aeon. Sure, it can be a pain, but in all honesty, it's not -that- difficult to code in. I think people are unjustly worried about it given how difficult it is for some to cure out of. Granted, that's more their curing functions, but still. Point stands.
Last time I checked, firstaid wasn't curing afflictions properly in the Overhaul. But I didn't test that extensively, so I'm not certain. I'll give it a go shortly.
Comments
If the loss is max health based and sip is max health based, you still with the sip would have to make up for the additional loss. Wouldn't that mean sipping would have to outpace the loss?
The Estarra quote you quoted was Estarra suggesting that they could change the attacks to be based off (unadjusted) max health instead, but then the concern is that those with a lot of health curses will be take too much damage and those with a lot of health bonuses will take very little damage (because the damage from the attack doesn't scale to do as much damage, but the sip continues to increase).
This is the scenario I'm talking about, having a h/m/e+ rune under what Estarra suggested (ie. what you quoted) would mean that you have a max health value that is higher than your unadjusted max health, and will thus sip for more while the damage you take is scaled for a lower max health value than what you actually have.
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As an addendum, most attacks in the current system already scale to current max health, so h/m/e+ runes already DO make you take higher damage in most cases.
1) What is the goal of this overhaul? Was it purely to simplify things or was it balancing combat? Anything else?
2) How flexible is the overhaul right now? My proposed system does not use flat level to level ratios for affs and cures, which helps balance more finely.
3) Can we consider changes to go along side the overhaul? For instance will the autocure firstaid system be operational?
4) Can I freely suggest changes/removals/additions of current or new trees of afflictions?
5) What is the ideal level of afflicting as perceived by admin? Under current curing is purely overrun, do we want to stack 1 full aff every 3 seconds or 2 affs every 5?
6) Will we still have poisons?
7) Can we also propose changes and shuffles in skillsets? A great deal of the issue with lusternian combat is how many skills you need to simply function right now.
As for the goal, yes it's all those things! I have no idea what you may mean by 'anything else'--simplifying and balancing combat is a pretty enormous goal.
Seems kinda critical for us to have some sense of how the system might play out or break in groups while still in somewhat early stage. Could you set up shells for Wargames, doesn't need to be all the shells, maybe just bards at first. Without this, people really can't contribute knowledgeably.
So far it looks interesting, but there are some problems that may rear their heads as work continues:
I get that most players here and more generally in other IRE games can cope with aeon. All that means is we're the 'survivors'.
I don't think aeon is necessary to enjoying the game and since I believe it helps to run off new players, especially those part time players who won't shell out credits for a system, I believe removing it would make it easier to attract and hold players. I'm not up on the other games, but achaea I believe still has at least one mostly functional free system.
Aeon isn't necessary I know, it has always been around and I always thought it was a unique affliction to keep around. But I do agree with you.
This highlights how the admin get crappy feedback when they're unclear as to their goals. What market do they really want to go after? What are the goalposts?
I don't mean to be overly harsh against aeon. It certainly is an interesting mechanic. Just without it, firstaid alone might be enough to encourage a non-com to step a bit out of their shell. Aeon jumps out because I watched so many people leave over the skill that shall not be named for no other reason then they didn't want to deal with the coding.
By randomly, I mean that once the spar starts, you can either use it or you can't.