Random Achaea Thoughts

Jules

Who can know?  The important thing is that Santar is using his gifts in accordance with the Universe's mysterious plan.

Trilliana

Exelethril said:

Jukilian said:

I just lowered my star sigil price to 500g per to compete with another shop. I used to have them at 600 per. How much are you seeing it for, @Exelethril ?

Well, in terms of comms they are pretty pricey. I think it would be better if they weren't as cheap as an eye sigil but maybe costing 1 silver or gold instead, since chasing through evade is essential for a few momentum classes.

Edit : Definitely two perspectives here but yeah, I think a cheaper price would make them more relevant for frequent usage.

I completely agree with you. The price to make them almost doesn't make them worth the effort. 

Jukilian

I still make profit when selling at 500 gold per, just minimal.

Their price probably explains why I early see them sell. Perhaps admin could look at modifying the comm requirements.

In any case, blame the shop I find in Hashan selling them at 500 gold per, otherwise they'd still be at 600 gold per.

What commodities are in star sigils again?

Exelethril

Jukilian said:

I still make profit when selling at 500 gold per, just minimal.

Their price probably explains why I early see them sell. Perhaps admin could look at modifying the comm requirements.

In any case, blame the shop I find in Hashan selling them at 500 gold per, otherwise they'd still be at 600 gold per.

What commodities are in star sigils again?

2 silver 1 gold iirc. Also, I think leaving the old option of buy housing rooms with credits along with the perks would be a good way for IRE to still make money while offering the convenience to people not really keen on wood/stone shopping.

Jukilian

Yeah, that's right. I am making some small profit from it, though minimal now with 500 gold per.

And I agree about the housing stuff. I think having both options available would've been good, so that I'd always have something I could spend my membership credits on.

Tael

...what the heck are star sigils?

They must be (relatively) new and HELP SIGILS is kind of vague about what they do.

Sena

You throw them at the ground, they coat everyone in the room in reflective dust (shows up in diag, not sure how long it lasts). While a serpent is coated in reflective dust, you can see them evade.

The admin said at one point they were considering making it work for other forms of hidden movement and not just evade, but no changes were announced, so I assume it still only affects evade.

Kuy

Can't decided between upgrading crit pendent to level two, getting a cloaking gem thingy, or a tuning fork.

Amranu

crit pendant

Jhui

Kuy said:

Can't decided between upgrading crit pendent to level two, getting a cloaking gem thingy, or a tuning fork.

Gem of cloaking is for griefers that are scared and want to hide. Tuning fork for rite splattering fa sho 

Melodie

Tuning fork so worth, especially now with rite decay.

Jinsun

Tuning fork hands down 

Santar

Jhui said:

Kuy said:

Can't decided between upgrading crit pendent to level two, getting a cloaking gem thingy, or a tuning fork.

Gem of cloaking is for griefers that are scared and want to hide. Tuning fork for rite splattering fa sho 

I'd probably keep my gem of cloaking off if I didn't always forget to turn it on.

For a long time I kept it off most of the time. Then I'd go to Annwyn/UW and people would see me and run away before I could get them. 

And I'd phase and people would see me phased on the wholist. 

Or people I'm after would hide in their city anytime my name was on QW.

Just can't be fucked anymore.

Merador

Modify your mapper/aliases to turn gem on if it's off before you touch root/skip around circle.

Kellonius

Kuy said:

Can't decided between upgrading crit pendent to level two, getting a cloaking gem thingy, or a tuning fork.

Fork.

Tael

How exactly did Ashtan manage to burn an Iron Citadel down?

Loose Sovereigns.

Chiam

@Amanu @Amaru @Amranu

Borran

Is Achaea dead? Seemed like a couple years ago we had 2-3x the number of people online at any given time. Although, I am in a different timezone, so that maybe what's affecting my QW list.

Tahquil

It's exam time.

Sarapis

Achaea's not meaningfully changed in size in a few years, though it goes up and down based on time of year and stuff like exams. We are certainly smaller in population than we were in 2004 though. Our population peak was right around when WoW launched, which really decimated MUD populations in general unfortunately. Literally from the month it launched until around 2010, the population headed downhill (and eventually, the continued loss led to us replacing Achaea's producer with the current producer - Tecton).

Borran

Thank you, @Sarapis . I was surprised to get an answer at all, let alone one from You.

Borran

I want to be able to rebirth my characters without losing the credit investment in them.

By this, I mean that I'd like to create a new character with all the lessons/credits of one of my alts and begin their life anew, with a new name, new rep. Fresh start. I wouldn't even mind if I only kept 1/2 the lessons and 2/3 the credit value of their artifacts.

Jukilian

I doubt that's going to be possible, as similar questions have been asked in the past. Just take your character in a new direction.

Tecton

Sarapis said:

Achaea's not meaningfully changed in size in a few years, though it goes up and down based on time of year and stuff like exams. We are certainly smaller in population than we were in 2004 though. Our population peak was right around when WoW launched, which really decimated MUD populations in general unfortunately. Literally from the month it launched until around 2010, the population headed downhill (and eventually, the continued loss led to us replacing Achaea's producer with the current producer - Tecton).

Additionally, I think a lot more people have a gem of cloaking these days. Just looking at QW right now, 25% of the people are cloaked from the list.

Aktillum

@Tecton Just a random thought, but would Achaea actually be able to handle a "huge" (>1000) playerbase? Back in the day, Aetolia was created to take a load off Achaea's servers, and you guys recently added the eq balance to honors because everyone doing NDB stuff was lagging up the game. What would happen, and what would you guys do, if Achaea suddenly got a huge influx of new players?

Tecton

Potentially, yeah.

It would certainly identify areas where we need optimisation (having 550 people in one room for Bal'met helped this  ). Once they were worked out, it would be theoretically possible to scale up to 1000+ concurrent players.

Cynlael

BAL'MET EVENT.

PLS NO.

NOT AGAIN.

BAD @AKTILLUM
(the event itself was freaking awesome... The 45-60s lag spikes were not )

Sarathai

Sarapis said:

Achaea's not meaningfully changed in size in a few years, though it goes up and down based on time of year and stuff like exams. We are certainly smaller in population than we were in 2004 though.

Out of curiosity, is the population changing or static? By which I mean is there a general river of new players joining and hanging around as older players go dormant, or does it lean towards mostly the same group of people continuing as they get older and come in and out of dormancy?

Jules

Having that many people in any one of the games seems like... Even if the servers could handle it I think I would feel more like I was in downtown New York than in a vast, mysterious magical world.  It would also be more like a large, gritty RL city in the sense that you really would have absolutely no idea who most people were.  And my god the spam... Whether it was in melee fights or just hanging out at CC, it would be overwhelming.  I think the optimum size would be more limited by player experience and how well you could make such a huge population manageable and enjoyable for the players.  I'm pretty sure that would be the case for me.  Just as an example, even as it is now, all of the games would probably benefit from offering (some) melee situations that cap group size.  I'm even more sure of that after hearing it suggested by a combatant in another game, and having combatants here say "yeah, the fights that aren't too huge are definitely more fun".  It's also definitely better for less accomplished combatants. 

Melodie

I always want more players!

I can't imagine it being bigger than 500-600 logged in at peak though. That might blow my mind a little too much.