I made a mistake. I zimoru'd the bird because I was weirded out by the dog head and I figured I might find something cooler if I kept going. But then it kept having heads of different animals that were even less appealing and I was filled with regret. I finally got my beautiful howling wings back, but now it has an insectoid head, and I spent like 50 credits-ish and I'm just very sad. Zimoru sprees are usually fun, but I didn't have any fun with this one at all. Just regret. I'm sorry, Wishbone...
Probably something clear/obvious but stating it anyway. If zimoru sprees don't work out for me, usually altering the feeding through chemset just a -tiny- bit usually got me what I wanted when the sprees were all meh to that point. I ended up doing like 3 zimoru / change chemset rinse/repeat till out of goop or happy. I had the feeling that the zimoru sprees kinda aligned around a certain 'pattern' which could be slightly changed without loosing features like special wings or something like that.
I made a mistake. I zimoru'd the bird because I was weirded out by the dog head and I figured I might find something cooler if I kept going. But then it kept having heads of different animals that were even less appealing and I was filled with regret. I finally got my beautiful howling wings back, but now it has an insectoid head, and I spent like 50 credits-ish and I'm just very sad. Zimoru sprees are usually fun, but I didn't have any fun with this one at all. Just regret. I'm sorry, Wishbone...
Probably something clear/obvious but stating it anyway. If zimoru sprees don't work out for me, usually altering the feeding through chemset just a -tiny- bit usually got me what I wanted when the sprees were all meh to that point. I ended up doing like 3 zimoru / change chemset rinse/repeat till out of goop or happy. I had the feeling that the zimoru sprees kinda aligned around a certain 'pattern' which could be slightly changed without loosing features like special wings or something like that.
Yeah, trust me, zimoru is kind of My Thing. The chemset is amazing for people like me who are maybe a little too into beasts and zimoru, because it's so much easier to keep track of feed influence on different beast parts and recognize patterns. Unfortunately the pool of possible traits is too large to reliably keep those wings, and the one I stopped on was the only other time I'd seen them aside from the first look, and they're what I really regretted losing so I decided to cut my losses and stop. I also never had the canine head again at all; the most common head shape by far was vulpine. From what I can tell, there's a great amount of variety in sidiak birds, and some really unique looks possible, but I couldn't help but wish every single one of them was Wishbone again.
That's the downside of getting a great look early - you don't know what's possible, so you foolishly believe you might achieve something better if you keep going, but no. There is only despair.
I'll just be over here waiting for a Changelog about how skillsets, artifacts, and other goods are now discounted to 10%.
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
I once bought a gem of cloaking completely from roulette winnings. Shouldn't you be under a bridge somewhere, scaring billygoats?
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
You bought a gem of cloaking with credits, you mean. You personally got those credits (presumably) by buying them off the credit market, the prices of which are ostensibly set by the general availability of gold in the game (alone), which has gone down by 1/10 for everyone. Eventually the market should reflect that. In fact, for the casual player, in theory their gold relative to the high gold earners should go up, and their buying power therefore also go up!
(And of course, roulette wins aren't affected by this change, so you can still do... whatever with that. Cool try tho.)
You bought a gem of cloaking with credits, you mean. You personally got those credits (presumably) by buying them off the credit market, the prices of which are ostensibly set by the general availability of gold in the game (alone), which has gone down by 1/10 for everyone. Eventually the market should reflect that. In fact, for the casual player, in theory their gold relative to the high gold earners should go up, and their buying power therefore also go up!
(And of course, roulette wins aren't affected by this change, so you can still do... whatever with that. Cool try tho.)
Because people who can buy credits oocly will just magically start selling them for 10%, because something something supply and demand.
Haven't we tried this before?
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
"In fact, for the casual player, in theory their gold relative to the high gold earners should go up, and their buying power therefore also go up!"
...what. So, now that casual players make less gold, their buying power will rise relative to those who....already have several million gold sitting around?
Edit: even better. Now shopkeepers who already spend...say, 500 to make and enchant a ring (since we doubled comm costs, it should be more, but 500 is a pretty round number), now won't be able to sell it at that much because it'll take 10x the work to make 500+ gold.
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
Shopkeepers don't have to lower prices at all, the entire idea is to reduce net gold gain, whether they do this by reducing gold drops or increasing the prices of commodities it has the same effect on what someone can buy. The first has a more immediate effect than the second (yah comm stockpiles). Credit prices will adjust in the end, gold from turning in (important for novices) remains and if it turns out too big a change I am sure adjustments are possible.
You bought a gem of cloaking with credits, you mean. You personally got those credits (presumably) by buying them off the credit market, the prices of which are ostensibly set by the general availability of gold in the game (alone), which has gone down by 1/10 for everyone.
Eventually
the market should reflect that. In fact, for the casual player, in theory their gold relative to the high gold earners should go up, and their buying power therefore also go up!
(And of course, roulette wins aren't affected by this change, so you can still do... whatever with that. Cool try tho.)
Yes. All gold generation from bashing went down by the same amount. However, the very lowest end of bashing got a relative boost, because a floor to gold drops was applied. In addition, gold turn ins and quest gold stayed the same... in effect getting a 10x boost compared to the midrange gold drops they compete with - there are very few (if any) high end gold turn in quests, and I don't think any of the previously high powered gold drop areas also have turn ins.
So the casual player who can't rotate through strong drop areas, wait for off-peak times to maximize the gold bonus for unbashed areas, or doesn't want to chunk out to optimize bashing via artifacts will make more gold via turn ins at midbie areas than they ever have before.
There are some REALLLY :thunk: opinions on economics and game theory ITG.
I'm assuming the strawpoll has a caveat for hotfixes that address critical gamebreaking issues, should we move to a regular dev cycle, @Estarra?
I mean I'm assuming so, just want to double check.
The strawpoll was me.
It was a response to something, and referring to moving the code cycle so all but emergency fixes were moved to being loaded in once a week rather than as they were available so they could be tested by players before going in at the cost of fix/development speed.
I was just curious what thoughts are.
To give an example:
The defense overhaul. While this -was- tested, this would have been given a longer test and development cycle before being loaded, and people might have spotted the M&M issue were they to test (since none of the administration use M&M, we would have not, so... this is beyond us to notice, sorry, though testing access was provided.) A patch could also potentially have been provided by the playerbase before release.
However, on the alternate side since it was brought up in the raves thread, my quick fixes for bugs that occur occasionally would not happen unless they were emergency - Essevina's fix for the Halli epic would have happened in the range of a few days rather than in the range of 30-60 seconds, waiting for the next patch day. Emergency patches would only occur for just that - emergencies. Item duplication bugs, server crashes, day jumps, etc.
I'm assuming the strawpoll has a caveat for hotfixes that address critical gamebreaking issues, should we move to a regular dev cycle, @Estarra?
I mean I'm assuming so, just want to double check.
The strawpoll was me.
It was a response to something, and referring to moving the code cycle so all but emergency fixes were moved to being loaded in once a week rather than as they were available so they could be tested by players before going in at the cost of fix/development speed.
I was just curious what thoughts are.
Not in game so I can't see the straw poll, but my thoughts would be: Good idea, maybe too slow on the load aspect. I would like to see 2-3 loads a week.
Requires player buy-in on the testing (I know first hand this can be like pulling teeth sometimes), which is probably the biggest problem I can see with it.
I'm assuming the strawpoll has a caveat for hotfixes that address critical gamebreaking issues, should we move to a regular dev cycle, @Estarra?
I mean I'm assuming so, just want to double check.
The strawpoll was me.
It was a response to something, and referring to moving the code cycle so all but emergency fixes were moved to being loaded in once a week rather than as they were available so they could be tested by players before going in at the cost of fix/development speed.
I was just curious what thoughts are.
Not in game so I can't see the straw poll, but my thoughts would be: Good idea, maybe too slow on the load aspect. I would like to see 2-3 loads a week.
Requires player buy-in on the testing (I know first hand this can be like pulling teeth sometimes), which is probably the biggest problem I can see with it.
I think 2-3 would be possible if we had a larger development team. However, with the literally 2-4 people we have at any given time depending on how busy people are, waterfall or 1-week granularity is about what we can do realistically.
As for player buy-in on testing, yeah. Getting people to test even major changes like autocuring or the defense overhaul has been questionable, and I have put those up for testing for envoys. Wider testing might help, but I do feel personally this would lead to nothing but slowing load times.
As well, any of this would be a change we'd all have to adjust to.
I think 2-3 would be possible if we had a larger development team. However, with the literally 2-4 people we have at any given time depending on how busy people are, waterfall or 1-week granularity is about what we can do realistically.
I'm not speaking for anyone but myself, but I don't mind waterfall. I accept that development is a work in progress and that sometimes things will have to be fixed or adjusted for after release.
To your edit: I also do not use M&M so I couldn't catch any of that stuff either while I was on.
Maybe have a group of volunteers who would like to help test things as a small supplement to envoys? Or make doing it more of a mandatory part of envoy duties? I am unsure what the best solution is, but when testing is just a couple of people it is really hard to catch some stuff.
I'm assuming the strawpoll has a caveat for hotfixes that address critical gamebreaking issues, should we move to a regular dev cycle, @Estarra?
I mean I'm assuming so, just want to double check.
The strawpoll was me.
It was a response to something, and referring to moving the code cycle so all but emergency fixes were moved to being loaded in once a week rather than as they were available so they could be tested by players before going in at the cost of fix/development speed.
I was just curious what thoughts are.
Awesome, I feel more confident about my choice of vote. Thanks!
The divine voice
of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations,
Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
0
EveriineWise Old Swordsbird / BrontaurIndianapolis, IN, USA
OMFG if I haven't been getting Xarriv and Delosidir mixed up all this time.... GAAAAAAAAAH.
Everiine is a man, and is very manly. This MAN before you is so manly you might as well just gender bend right now, cause he's the manliest man that you ever did see. His manly shape has spurned many women and girlyer men to boughs of fainting. He stands before you in a manly manerific typical man-like outfit which is covered in his manly motto: "I am a man!"
Daraius said: You gotta risk it for the biscuit.
Pony power all the way, yo. The more Brontaurs the better.
So artisanals/bardics got vanished during the website update, with the mention that they were on hold and a suitable method of revival being hunted for. That was a year and a half ago, apparently. Anyone know what's up with that? I've got the sneaking suspicion I shouldn't hold my breath.
Well, I sure wish they would reactivate artisanals if they're ready. I've already been considering just leaving again til they're back. Would it really kill anyone if artisanals came back on even though bardics aren't ready yet?
My understanding was that implementing both of them as they were would be fairly easy, but bardics were waiting on the admin deciding if they wanted to integrate them into the library or not. In fact, have a quote from @Ianir in Simple Ideas (September 2017!) that isn't going to get a direct link because I am failing at forum wrangling. No idea if any of this is still valid.
So, here's the not-so-simple answer to the question:
IRE is not
supporting bardics and artisanals. Previously, the support for this was
IRE-wide and nothing had to be handled by us other than the judging.
However, this is no longer the case, and we severely want to keep these.
At this point, the question is how.
This, of course, means
developer time needs to be spent and the 'how's and 'what's of the
system need to be determined before we can even start developing.
Artisanals are actually the easy bit, these aren't changing much beyond
some quick QOL for the judging behind the scenes, and are mostly
developed at this time (requiring about a day of wordpress plugin
development from me) and just need style cleanup. Bardics are the hard
part though.
We can do the exact same system we did before with
the aforementioned judge QOL, but there's a lot of push for differing
changes. At the moment, we have a ~4-5 page long wiki thread on our
internal wiki on ways to actually bring the bardic system in-game,
allowing submission of bardics in-game and the risks thereof, how we can
tie library rewards into it without requiring an org librarian to step
in because that way lies drama and frustration for everybody, and some
other things we've been looking at to improve the system for a while.
In
the end, because this requires developer time (and that means me for
the most part, and I already have a large amount on my plate), my
personal plan has been to shelve this until the bardic side of things is
100% sorted out so I can just sit down and code it, because I
personally would love these to be back up and running.
Personally, I would like everything to just get implemented as it was. If they are going to make changes, it'd probably be a good idea to put those up in a discussion thread. Anything that slots bardics into the library is a massive library change. Also a massive bardic change, because they were previously OOC and the library is very much IC.
Or if they're getting dropped entirely, it'd be great to announce that so we can just stop hoping and move on.
Any sufficiently advanced pun is indistinguishable from comedy.
There's actually been a slight update in the situation that might speed them up, but I'm a bit bound by NDA on the matter. That's all I can say on the situation.
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Personally, I would like everything to just get implemented as it was. If they are going to make changes, it'd probably be a good idea to put those up in a discussion thread. Anything that slots bardics into the library is a massive library change. Also a massive bardic change, because they were previously OOC and the library is very much IC.
Or if they're getting dropped entirely, it'd be great to announce that so we can just stop hoping and move on.
100% agreed, especially to the bolded portions. To me, it boils down to this:
Bardics are individual wins that are consistently rewarded to that individual and build over time (bonuses for each boost in rank).
Library prestige is a win for an organization that consistently nets rewards for that organization and also builds those rewards over time (library weight etc).
And there's other differences, too!
Every org rewards cultural contribution differently based on their city/commune laws. Some bardic cycles, a large amount of people from the same org submit works and compete with each other; in contrast, the library's city/commune focus allows only two submissions from an org each cycle, so org members can't compete with each other. As Portius stated above, bardics are OOC while the library is clearly IC (Example: Thul's funny bardics couldn't have always worked in an IC sense, but worked very well in an meta-OOC sense!).
So on and so forth.
Tldr: I could see it becoming unnecessarily complicated to merge the two systems given the difference between their formats and reward systems. I wouldn't be surprised if that was why bardics/artisanals have been delayed awhile!
There's actually been a slight update in the situation that might speed them up, but I'm a bit bound by NDA on the matter. That's all I can say on the situation.
That's good news. I think everyone's excited at the thought of having bardics/artisanals up and running again.
"Oh yeah, you're a naughty mayor, aren't you? Misfile that Form MA631-D. Comptroller Shevat's got a nice gemstone disc for you, but yer gonna have to beg for it."
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
Ophiuchis is a real constellation that also crosses the ecliptic, the other 12 that do this are considered Zodiak signs. Nice bit of reseach mods!
Yup, if you were born between November 30th and December 18th, while you are considered under the sign of Sagittarius, you are also born under the constellation of Ophiuchius.
Never put passion before principle. Even if you win, you lose.
If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
Comments
That's the downside of getting a great look early - you don't know what's possible, so you foolishly believe you might achieve something better if you keep going, but no. There is only despair.
(And of course, roulette wins aren't affected by this change, so you can still do... whatever with that. Cool try tho.)
Haven't we tried this before?
...what. So, now that casual players make less gold, their buying power will rise relative to those who....already have several million gold sitting around?
Edit: even better. Now shopkeepers who already spend...say, 500 to make and enchant a ring (since we doubled comm costs, it should be more, but 500 is a pretty round number), now won't be able to sell it at that much because it'll take 10x the work to make 500+ gold.
So the casual player who can't rotate through strong drop areas, wait for off-peak times to maximize the gold bonus for unbashed areas, or doesn't want to chunk out to optimize bashing via artifacts will make more gold via turn ins at midbie areas than they ever have before.
There are some REALLLY :thunk: opinions on economics and game theory ITG.
I mean I'm assuming so, just want to double check.
The divine voice of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations, Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
It was a response to something, and referring to moving the code cycle so all but emergency fixes were moved to being loaded in once a week rather than as they were available so they could be tested by players before going in at the cost of fix/development speed.
I was just curious what thoughts are.
To give an example:
The defense overhaul. While this -was- tested, this would have been given a longer test and development cycle before being loaded, and people might have spotted the M&M issue were they to test (since none of the administration use M&M, we would have not, so... this is beyond us to notice, sorry, though testing access was provided.) A patch could also potentially have been provided by the playerbase before release.
However, on the alternate side since it was brought up in the raves thread, my quick fixes for bugs that occur occasionally would not happen unless they were emergency - Essevina's fix for the Halli epic would have happened in the range of a few days rather than in the range of 30-60 seconds, waiting for the next patch day. Emergency patches would only occur for just that - emergencies. Item duplication bugs, server crashes, day jumps, etc.
Requires player buy-in on the testing (I know first hand this can be like pulling teeth sometimes), which is probably the biggest problem I can see with it.
As for player buy-in on testing, yeah. Getting people to test even major changes like autocuring or the defense overhaul has been questionable, and I have put those up for testing for envoys. Wider testing might help, but I do feel personally this would lead to nothing but slowing load times.
As well, any of this would be a change we'd all have to adjust to.
Maybe have a group of volunteers who would like to help test things as a small supplement to envoys? Or make doing it more of a mandatory part of envoy duties? I am unsure what the best solution is, but when testing is just a couple of people it is really hard to catch some stuff.
The divine voice of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations, Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
That is my understanding of the situation.
IRE is not supporting bardics and artisanals. Previously, the support for this was IRE-wide and nothing had to be handled by us other than the judging. However, this is no longer the case, and we severely want to keep these. At this point, the question is how.
This, of course, means developer time needs to be spent and the 'how's and 'what's of the system need to be determined before we can even start developing. Artisanals are actually the easy bit, these aren't changing much beyond some quick QOL for the judging behind the scenes, and are mostly developed at this time (requiring about a day of wordpress plugin development from me) and just need style cleanup. Bardics are the hard part though.
We can do the exact same system we did before with the aforementioned judge QOL, but there's a lot of push for differing changes. At the moment, we have a ~4-5 page long wiki thread on our internal wiki on ways to actually bring the bardic system in-game, allowing submission of bardics in-game and the risks thereof, how we can tie library rewards into it without requiring an org librarian to step in because that way lies drama and frustration for everybody, and some other things we've been looking at to improve the system for a while.
In the end, because this requires developer time (and that means me for the most part, and I already have a large amount on my plate), my personal plan has been to shelve this until the bardic side of things is 100% sorted out so I can just sit down and code it, because I personally would love these to be back up and running.
Or if they're getting dropped entirely, it'd be great to announce that so we can just stop hoping and move on.
- Bardics are individual wins that are consistently rewarded to that individual and build over time (bonuses for each boost in rank).
- Library prestige is a win for an organization that consistently nets rewards for that organization and also builds those rewards over time (library weight etc).
And there's other differences, too!Every org rewards cultural contribution differently based on their city/commune laws. Some bardic cycles, a large amount of people from the same org submit works and compete with each other; in contrast, the library's city/commune focus allows only two submissions from an org each cycle, so org members can't compete with each other. As Portius stated above, bardics are OOC while the library is clearly IC (Example: Thul's funny bardics couldn't have always worked in an IC sense, but worked very well in an meta-OOC sense!).
So on and so forth.
Tldr: I could see it becoming unnecessarily complicated to merge the two systems given the difference between their formats and reward systems. I wouldn't be surprised if that was why bardics/artisanals have been delayed awhile!
That's good news.
If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
@Czixi has broken my heart
Tonight amidst the mountaintops
And endless starless night
Singing how the wind was lost
Before an earthly flight