Alchemy: Astronomy tuning

Shunsui

As it stands right now, alchemy tunings for a city reset every year (In Sarapin I believe? Maybe not, correct me if I'm wrong), requiring three alchemists to retune it for another year. I'm not sure if other cities have an issue with it, but Targossas only has a handful of active alchemists, two around regularly to maintain it, and another two or three who pop in at random and disappear for long periods of time. Would it be possible to have an orrery, once tuned, remain at that tuning for a minimum of one year, and then simply remain there until a change is made? Even if other cities don't have the alchemist population issue, this would at least get rid of the minor issue of waiting for three people to remember to tune it.

Xith

Maybe you guys should have picked forestals.

Melodie

Doubt they had a choice in the matter this go-round.

Venser

I think it's fine the way it is. Targossas is still relatively new and in time you will be able to recruit more alchemists in your city.

Perhaps establishing houses in the city would help you with alchemist population issue, be more of a solution to it or...

Maybe I should join you. I'm always in time for tuning

Sherazad

Mhaldor has this problem too. I don't think it's a problem with the tunings but more of alchemists being generally bleh. I've noticed the other cities that allow more neutral people (who are more free to pursue their own interests) do not find this a problem probably because they can just act as factories instead of being more involved with city activities. My own alchs are complaining about how tedious transmutation is and the class not being interesting and rewarding enough. We're going to try to find what's special in the class to invite more people in it, and keep them as our factories but I would appreciate if there's something more to it. It's a work in progress. 

Veldrin

Xith said:

Maybe you guys should have picked forestals.

We effectively just stopped accepting forestals, even in Shallam we always (except for the first week of Alchemists) had more active forestals than Alchemists. The class is simply lackluster and nobody cares/knows enough to propose a solution to fix it.

Venser

Sherazad said:

Mhaldor has this problem too. I don't think it's a problem with the tunings but more of alchemists being generally bleh. I've noticed the other cities that allow more neutral people (who are more free to pursue their own interests) do not find this a problem probably because they can just act as factories instead of being more involved with city activities. My own alchs are complaining about how tedious transmutation is and the class not being interesting and rewarding enough. We're going to try to find what's special in the class to invite more people in it, and keep them as our factories but I would appreciate if there's something more to it. It's a work in progress. 

I disagree with those alchemists that are saying that transmutation is not rewarding enough. I've transed two skill sets with the help of transmutation. If that's not rewarding enough, I don't know what is. It's tedious yes, but so is most of the trade skills. Is it interesting? Well, It depends on why you chose the class in the first place.

Maybe adding/changing skills to support others like astronomy empower will give a solid support role thing to alchemists that could get more people to use the class.

Sena

Venser said:

I disagree with those alchemists that are saying that transmutation is not rewarding enough. I've transed two skill sets with the help of transmutation. If that's not rewarding enough, I don't know what is.

Unless you have someone willing to pay far more than the current prices, making and selling minerals doesn't get you gold much faster than ratting. Questing, fishing, or other trade skills can get you gold two or three times as fast (far more than that, in some cases) with a lot less effort.

Sylvance

I love the idea of Alchemists (and I love them even more having begun my Achaea career back in the good ol' days of the Oakstone monopoly), but can't really comment on the intricacies as I haven't (yet) played one. In terms of it not being 'interesting', can somebody please clarify what this means? I don't see any class as being intrinsically interesting personally, although of course some of them might fit your playstyle more than others.

Shunsui

I love the alchemist class personally. The combat is interesting, and plenty challenging if you go for things other than bleeding someone out (srsly it's f'king easy to bleed people out). Hunting is decentish, transmutation is okay gold if you can stockpile materials, and otherwise it's great just for convenience and the potash balance bonus. And the rp is whatever you make of it, as it is with any class really. There's plenty of potential, but it seems to get largely ignored.

Basically I'd hardly consider the class to be lackluster, there's plenty of fun to be had for all types of players, other classes are just easier/more well known and people tend to go with the safer option.

Sherazad

Daeir said:

Eh, I don't really agree with that. The class is pretty good, it just takes a special type of person to enjoy it fully.

Most people are not special. The class is good, it's new but not particularly interesting. Frankly, I've had more fun when my alch was forestal. Transmutation is very tedious that I can just bash and get more monies that way. You can probably do good with it, if you don't have to supply lots of people with minerals and do not mind staring at the screen trying to make 28321901 potash. 

Again, it's not that bad, it's decent overall but there are more interesting things in other classes. 

Sherazad

@Daeir: I've thought about it before, scripting the homunculus to work with a mapper but decided against it due to the effort. I'd be fine with removing the attunement thing to make things easier. It prolly won't help with getting more alchemists though. 

@Daeir, I'll just pm you. I don't wanna derail so much. 

Cooper

Sorry @Daeir, your comment was off topic and in the wrong forum section so I had to flag it as abuse. (See how dumb that is?)

Sylvance

Cooper said:

Sorry @Daeir, your comment was off topic and in the wrong forum section so I had to flag it as abuse. (See how dumb that is?)

Abuse is a bit harsh for what he did. In fact, I'd say it's abusive. But I guess now somebody is going to flag my post as Abusive.

Well, actually I'm not gonna flag your post as Abusive, because it'll probably actually flag it and waste the time of some Admin somewhere. 

Cooper

Half of my abuse flags are you anyway and a good chunk of my WTFs.

Xith

The class actually has a high learning curve. Its combat isn't easy and to be really good at it you need to automate your homunc/temper/symbol/wrack balances to keep up.

That aside, I did hear that hidden truewracks could generally have their afflictions predicted through system checks for curing, which sucks for their locking potential. If anything that might need looking into. Or people might just need to try harder.

Venser

Just a thought. Would it be OP if astronomy could empower on all the celestial bodies?

The sun - Gold - Increased health regeneration.
The moon - Silver - Increased mana regeneration.
The Nebula Coronae (nebula) - Copper - Increased endurance and willpower regeneration.
Ethian - Tin - Increased damage versus denizens.

With the current system it needs 3 alchemist per celestial body. So if the city wanted all empowerment bonuses, there would be a need for 12  alchemists just to be able to focus them all.

Hataru

I see an issue with population with that idea @Venser... is there even a single city with 12 (completely active, non-novice) Alchemists? I also see an issue with that since it'd really favour severely Ashtan and Cyrene as well while giving pretty much no benefit at all to Mhaldor (the actual anti-forest city) and Targossas. It would really just be a 'bonus' for being a citizen of a neutral city.

Note: I actually don't know if Cyrene is forestal or Alchemist so... just go with me there and ignore Cyrene if they're non-Alchemist having.

Melodie

Cyrene is also alemical. No city, save Eleusis, accepts forestals any longer.

Venser

Hataru said:

I see an issue with population with that idea @Venser... is there even a single city with 12 (completely active, non-novice) Alchemists? I also see an issue with that since it'd really favour severely Ashtan and Cyrene as well while giving pretty much no benefit at all to Mhaldor (the actual anti-forest city) and Targossas. It would really just be a 'bonus' for being a citizen of a neutral city.

Note: I actually don't know if Cyrene is forestal or Alchemist so... just go with me there and ignore Cyrene if they're non-Alchemist having.

Why no benefit for Mhaldor and Targossas? I thought they accept alchemist as well...

Some people have been saying that alchemist doesn't really pull people to play them. I think with this kind of support capability from alchemists, it would appeal to people to use the class. With that in mind, it would solve the population issue as well (I'm hoping).

Perhaps this idea does not solve it, but I'm pushing something similar of a change to make the class more interesting to people.




.

Xer

No benefit to Mhaldor because having 12 -citizens- online, let alone Alchemists, at the same time in itself is a feat (it's not that bad these days, but sub 10 cwho's are still common. At least they're not sub 5 though <.<).

Hataru

@Venser well, @Xer sort of hit it right on the head by what I meant by population.

You can't much expect a city to have 12 Alchemists total active and around enough to do that if they don't have at least triple that in active citizens - meaning that it would heavily, heavily favour the two cities (Ashtan, and Cyrene @Melodie ) because they both actively have populations of 25-30 on at times and I don't think I've ever seen Ashtan go under 15 people (and I play in some off hours) and Cyrene's kinda known for its ridiculous population.

Targossas and Mhaldor pretty much barely hit 12 people total on, Hashan has a lot of people I guess but I dunno how successful Alchemist is there since I've not had dealings with them in awhile.

So in the end such a change would only benefit 2 of the 5 cities that have Alchemists.

The problem with Alchemists isn't just giving it more flair (which requires more people) its about taking the fact that its a niche class and making it more friendly for everyone, not just the cities with consistent populations. The best start , in my opinion, is dropping it from 3 to 2 required Alchemists and then perhaps - maybe - looking into allowing maybe ONE other attunement for city in a given year (definitely not all four) at an extra gold cost for the city to have yearly access. But allowing all four to be bought or used would just weigh way too much in the favour of some people over the others - it would in fact be 'OP' for some cities.

Aduan

Even in hashan, the amount of alchemists is limited.

Alchemist combat requires some clever coding to make it doable. That puts it out of reach of most people, unless vadi incorporates some scripting. It might be a while before it catches on, if at all.

With Alchemists you get a class that needs to lock someone in a room and do a fairly intricate setup, before they can start fighting (literally takes 10-12 seconds before an alchemist can do you any real harm). After that they are an OP powerhouse.

Alchemists have no ranged attacks. Displace now requires the initiator to not take any action, it is stopped by cloaks and mono's and cancels if the target moves. A brazier is definitely the better choice there. A class without any ranged abilities and a long setup is simply tricky. In an environment where ranged and group combat is prevalent. Alchemist is fun, but it has no part in group combat offensively.

Which makes alchemists the default support class, with rezzing, transmutating and empowering in a city. (And the homunculus for logistics). Most people prefer to have a more active role. So i doubt alchemist in its current incarnation will be viewed as interesting, even if there is enough RP potential. It might take a while before the class gets 'fixed' to make it usable in city defense/raids.

Astronomy requiring three alchemists overal isn't so bad. As you cannot get the empowering with no alchemists around. And i do think, that down the road, when the class gets more balanced, more people will join it.

Zii

Class needs work with 1v1 combat.  Otherwise its fine.

Jonners

Awesome, so they forced a class down all the cities throats that isn't profitable and is difficult to RP and understand combat.  So glad they turned back the time on the Eleusian Guilds... Cyrene, what was that you said about not 'choosing' the new shiny thing?

Melodie said:

Cyrene is also alemical. No city, save Eleusis, accepts forestals any longer.

Disagreed because I hate the Alchemy/Forestal divide, even though you are correct.

Vayne

Jonners said:

Awesome, so they forced a class down all the cities throats that isn't profitable and is difficult to RP and understand combat.  So glad they turned back the time on the Eleusian Guilds... Cyrene, what was that you said about not 'choosing' the new shiny thing?

Melodie said:

Cyrene is also alemical. No city, save Eleusis, accepts forestals any longer.

Disagreed because I hate the Alchemy/Forestal divide, even though you are correct.

I'll concede two of the three points. However, Alchemists have huge untapped RP potential.

Trilliana

Jonners said:

Awesome, so they forced a class down all the cities throats that isn't profitable and is difficult to RP and understand combat.  So glad they turned back the time on the Eleusian Guilds... Cyrene, what was that you said about not 'choosing' the new shiny thing?

Melodie said:

Cyrene is also alemical. No city, save Eleusis, accepts forestals any longer.

Disagreed because I hate the Alchemy/Forestal divide, even though you are correct.

This is how I've seen it: with Forestals, they tend to put the forest before the city (Look at the Shala-khulia event in which we were telling people to fight at the risk of having Mhaldor target Cyrene and people still went out and did it) Not only that, but we were given the opinion that forestals should go back to the forests (angered quite a few forestals, but point well taken. This was about the time when Occultists were told to join Ashtan, Apostates/Infernals to Mhaldor.... It wasn't about it being shiny and new... there was a huge debate on it- but you'd know that if you'd read the news

Jonners

I did read the news. I also disagreed with most of the points made by the 'for' side. I was dormant at the time though so I couldn't chime in myself. Occultists and Infernals are one thing, though personally I don't feel they should be restricted so harshly either. But this is three classes that either go Eleusis are are 'foozled'. Not only that but go the ONE house for them. Hard coded restrictions on RP are always bad imo. If Targ doesn't want Infernals they just don't let them in... problem solved.

Aduan

Well let's face it, if the class was more interesting on the combat side of things, people would stick with it, and there wouldn't be a problem with astronomy tuning. The complexity means it's an advanced class for coders, that don't mind being on the sidelines for raids. 

That group is going to be small, whichever way you turn it. Not necesserily bad, in fact the current tuning limitation means there's at least some alchemists around.

Mako

if anyone thinks the alchemist class is borring and is an alchemist I have one suggestion. QUIT CLASS

Aduan

Yeah most people did, hence the complaint on needing alchemists for astronomy. It'll even out eventually, once more advanced people pick up on alchemist. It's not a novice class for sure.