Trading my Aetolian credits for your Achaean

Sasiya

Hi.

I'm hoping to trade my Aetolia credits for Achaean.

Thank you!

Keres

that's trading a goldfish for a Porsche!

j/k, good luck.. I'm sure there are some Aetolia players around here

Sasiya

EDIT:
Never mind.

Jonathin

how many?

Sasiya

I have 2850 credits at the moment. If people're interested, I also have a few tokens of discount left (-33% on artifact purchases). The tokens can't be given away to other people, but they work if you buy artifact gifts (so if I go to the artifact shop and 'buy gem1234 as gift for jonathin', it'll cost me 667 unbound credits instead of 1000, and the artifact will belong to you). And sinice I'm trading unbound credits anyway...

Jonathin

I don't think I'll be able to do more than 50 right now because of the holiday weekend here in 'Murica, if you've still got a bunch left next week though, I may hit you up.

Sylvance

I fancy trying another IRE. Is Aetolia just 'Vampiric Achaea'?

Sasiya

Generally speaking, no.

Aetolia has been steadily moving away from being an Achaea replica, both by replacing identical areas as well as classes. Overall, I think Aetolia as a game is better and more polished, with tons of small features that just makes it so much more fun to play. Achaea has a few things that make it appealing to me: a much bigger playerbase, a more thriving PK environment, and ships. I seriously want all these delicious credits so I can buy a ship and go exploring. The two major combat differences is that Aetolia doesn't use illusions for combat and it has pre-restore (apply restoration to a limb to cure some limb damage even if it hasn't broken yet).

I could write an infinitely long post about all the things I'm missing from Aetolia, but here's a few things:

• More and better crafting: we get customisable worn/removed lines (and if you're not happy with this, you can use the emote system when dressing/undressing: 'remove shirt [slips out of $item and throws it aside.]' would remove the shirt and everyone in the room would see 'Sylvance slips out of a green silken shirt and throws it aside.'). Aetolia gets tailoring, jewelcraft, furniture, woodcraft, cooking, brewing, ventier, floristry, luthier, fletching, fumology, and pyrotechnics (fireworks). Brewing actually lets you make -any- kind of drinkable fluid, my own designs range from 'cool, refreshing water' to 'acrid daemon blood'. The use of $dye tag in designs allow people to dye their own clothes ('a ruffled skirt of $dye silk' would show up as 'a ruffled skirt of gray silk' in the shop, then you could 'dyekit skirt azure' to change its colour). It also has customised forging. It's all sorts of amazing.
  
• Better emoting system. Infinitely better. I have no idea why Tecton has not just logged on to Aetolia, read 'help emote', and copied it all here. If he did, I would be happy. Can turn the following actions into emotes: put, drop, mount, dismount, wear, remove, and drink.
  
• Far more options for immersion and small things that enhance character identity. Customised shouts at endgame. A personal home at endgame. Customised descriptions for alternative forms (forms being sylvan/dragon/etc but for other things). Buy house mobs. Turn your house mob into a tutor and roulette dealer. Change the way you look via the attire command. It is in fact possible to conceal worn items from people looking at you, meaning you won't have to look like a christmas clown wearing all sorts of sparkly enchantments and artifacts. Not only that, you are also able to change the way you wear items:
  She is wearing:
       (emerging beneath her shoulder blades) : a pair of draconic wings
       (draped elegantly about the shoulders) : an embroidered, hooded velvet cloak
                      (worn on her left hand) : a silver and gold ring
                         (stained with blood) : a snug, black cotton shirt
                          (covering the legs) : a pair of comfortable leggings
  
• Far, far more transparent development process (http://forums.aetolia.com/categories/aetolia-development). This actually made me leave Achaea for Aetolia the last time, because it's so easy to get excited about all the things that are being planned. Up until this month, they were adding a new update every month.
• Multiclassing allows you to switch between classes you've learned every twelve hours (I think it is once per twelve hours). Oh, what wouldn't I give to be able to try out the Blademaster class without having to quit being a Runewarden.
  

Generally speaking, the roleplaying atmosphere is better but there are some bad parts about the game, too. The lack of active players is hurting some guilds. On the other hand, guild requirements are far from as excessive and daunting as some of the house stuff I've seen here (sometimes I wonder if you guys are trying to make Achaea into a chore for new/returning players instead of a place to just have fun). Combat is not as balanced as it is here. Achaea really has things nicely set up with the classlead system. Bashing is a lot faster in Aetolia, too.

So. Is Aetolia just 'Vampiric Achaea'? I would say no. There are some similarities, for sure, but they're being phased out. There are some things about Achaea that makes it distinctively Achaea (Oakstone being a good example). If I could, I would just take all the best things of Aetolia and put them into Achaea and never look back. So, the answer is obvious: try out Aetolia and give me all your Achaea-credits!

Keres

Sasiya said:

•  I have no idea why Tecton has not just logged on to Aetolia, read 'help emote', and copied it all here. If he did, I would be happy. Can turn the following actions into emotes: put, drop, mount, dismount, wear, remove, and drink.

maybe no one has suggested it yet?

I am totally jelly of those features, and would love to see (at least some of the) implemented here.. welcome back to Achaea, hope you stick with it this time around

Sasiya

Have 950 credits left if there's anyone else who wants to trade.

Xenomorph

Keres stole my thunder, but I'm not one to shirk my responsibility to an unwanted comment I regretfully fathered after a night drinking swish.

Lets see. Work more harder, brain, or no more drugs. There we go.  - "Usually when you are looking to create a deal, you need something to offer that is beneficial, as per forum logic, to an Achaean. While you were correct in all your actions prior to speaking, just a piece of advice from a Business major: trading someone syphilis for their cash is a raw deal."

Just a sanitary note, everyone should do their job here and wash their hands when they leave the thread. Me? I'm going to take a nap now, then I'm gonna call some hospitals.

Keres

I stole thunder from Lord-Tyrannus Xenomorph, Knight of the Illuminating Anecdote, Wielder of Astounding Wit

Percy Jackson ain't got nothin' on this

Sarapis

Keres said:

Sasiya said:

•  I have no idea why Tecton has not just logged on to Aetolia, read 'help emote', and copied it all here. If he did, I would be happy. Can turn the following actions into emotes: put, drop, mount, dismount, wear, remove, and drink.

maybe no one has suggested it yet?

For the same reason we don't log into WoW, read HELP RAID (or whatever) and copy that over. Code is not generally portable between games, and that includes IRE's, minus a handful of limited exceptions.

Keres

Erm @Sarapis, Are you answering my question or Sasiya's?

I completely understand code not being portable. That doesn't mean someone couldn't suggest the changes to the emote system through the proper channels, where the Achaea team could review it and decide to implement it or not. That does not necessarily imply copying code from another game, so I'm confused why I got quoted in your post. Also, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Sasiya meant "copy the concepts mentioned in HELP EMOTE on Aetolia and implemented them in Achaea" - not "copy their code". 

Eld

Keres said:

Erm @Sarapis, Are you answering my question or Sasiya's?

I completely understand code not being portable. That doesn't mean someone couldn't suggest the changes to the emote system through the proper channels, where the Achaea team could review it and decide to implement it or not. That does not necessarily imply copying code from another game, so I'm confused why I got quoted in your post. Also, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Sasiya meant "copy the concepts mentioned in HELP EMOTE on Aetolia and implemented them in Achaea" - not "copy their code". 

I assume he's responding to Sasiya. Statements like "I don't understand why you don't just copy/paste X system from Y game" implies that doing so would be a simple matter, either because you can just copy/paste the code and have it Just Work, or because it's not much work to write new code to replicate the functionality. The former seems like the more likely misapprehension. 

Keres

@Eld - yeah, I get that.. as I said in the post you just quoted, I don't think Sasiya meant the literal "copy/paste" that you are suggesting, and I just wanted to know why I got quoted in his post, instead of him just quoting Sasiya

Eld

Keres said:

@Eld - yeah, I get that.. as I said in the post you just quoted, I don't think Sasiya meant the literal "copy/paste" that you are suggesting, and I just wanted to know why I got quoted in his post, instead of him just quoting Sasiya

Yeah, can't speak to why you were included in the quote. I was just pointing out that that if she didn't mean a literal copy/paste of code, then the question "why don't you just do it this way?" is an even more extreme trivialisation of the amount of effort that would be involved in a complete rework of the emote system, clothing system, or whatever.

Sasiya

@Sarapis:
I never understood why the emoting system wasn't uniform across the IRE games. It's one of those things that exist in pretty much all muds in varying extents, it's one of those things all muders are familiar with, and it's one of those things you learn by heart if you're interested in roleplaying. I can't even begin to tell you how confusing it is moving from one fairly elaborate system to another, or how frustrating it is that some of the things I'm used to do doesn't seem to come out right at all or even not be possible at all. I wasn't implying that it's just a matter of copying code and we'd have the same thing here: I was saying that I don't understand why we can't have an as immersive emoting system as one of the sibling IRE muds when it just adds so much to the atmosphere for the people that're actually interested in playing a role in a fantasy setting instead of using Achaea as an IRC chatroom with combat features. Roleplay and character development is amazing and something that can be very enjoyable, but it gets infinitesimal attention compared to other aspects of the game (such as PK) as far as extra coded features go. There is a disparity between the IRE muds that doesn't really need to be there. But that's just my opinion.

^_^

@Eld, @Keres, and everyone else:
I still need more Achaea credits! Yay Achaea!

EDIT:
I did not mean to trivialise the effort it takes to make changes to the emoting system and I apologize if it sounded that way. I am still convinced it would be well worth said effort to do it if it gave us more tools for roleplaying.

Keres

@Eld - I don't necessarily agree with that. The foundation is already there with targeted emotes - TMOTE - and it does not seem to me like it would be an extensive amount of work to extend its functionality to include what Sasiya has described.

I could be wrong, I'm not a programmer, and I'm not speaking to reworks of the clothing system or any other system, just the emotes. Just my two cents.

Sarapis

Keres said:

Erm @Sarapis, Are you answering my question or Sasiya's?

I completely understand code not being portable. That doesn't mean someone couldn't suggest the changes to the emote system through the proper channels, where the Achaea team could review it and decide to implement it or not. That does not necessarily imply copying code from another game, so I'm confused why I got quoted in your post. Also, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Sasiya meant "copy the concepts mentioned in HELP EMOTE on Aetolia and implemented them in Achaea" - not "copy their code". 

Sasiya's. Was on mobile at the time and didn't have the patience to try to sort out the quoting stuff.

Either way, Eld is correct. Altering any big system in any meaningful way is a non-trivial amount of work, and as with everything when one thing gets done, one or many other things don't get done. Always trade-offs. 

Sarapis

Sasiya said:

@Sarapis:
I never understood why the emoting system wasn't uniform across the IRE games.

------------------------------------------------------------
(This quote system mocks me. Looks normal in preview and editing, spits out something totally different on saving.)

Because they didn't evolve that way and it's not worth standardizing them now.

------------------------------------------------------------

Sasiya said: 

I was saying that I don't understand why we can't have an as immersive emoting system as one of the sibling IRE muds when it just adds so much to the atmosphere for the people that're actually interested in playing a role in a fantasy setting instead of using Achaea as an IRC chatroom with combat features. Roleplay and character development is amazing and something that can be very enjoyable, but it gets infinitesimal attention compared to other aspects of the game (such as PK) as far as extra coded features go. There is a disparity between the IRE muds that doesn't really need to be there. But that's just my opinion.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Well, it's not a matter of can or cannot. It's a matter of where to choose to spend our effort. Shall we not do classleads for a few classes, for instance, and do this instead? (Not a real question, but the real actual type of choice that is made with development.)

Remember that people over on Aetolia are saying, "Why can't we have more balanced PK, like Achaea does?" (Just an example. You'll find the playerbases on the other games all asking why they can't have X from one of the other IRE games - I know, having gotten emails about it since our second game - Aetolia - launched in 2001). 

Cooper

We understand that code isn't just copy/pastable from game to game but that doesn't mean we don't want the cool things that other games have that Achaea lacks, or that we don't want the upgrades from Achaea's way of doing things that the other MUDs have implemented.

Sasiya

I agree that Achaea is awesome. This is why people should trade me Achaean credits.

And why would you all trade me Achaean credits if Achaea is so awesome? Because Aetolia is also awesome but in a different way!

>.<

Sarapis

@Cooper Sure, and the other games want the cool things that Achaea has that they lack (like the larger playerbase, that plays here partly because of the features we have, not the features another game has), and the cool things that MKO has that they lack, and the cool things Imperian has that they lack, and etc etc. I'd like some of the cool things that Eve Online has (like 3d space combat, so we could have sweet combat in 3d space while mounted on dragons or giant eagles, for instance) but the question isn't whether we want it, but what's the cost/benefit of developing it. The cost includes the opportunity cost from not doing whatever we would have otherwise done with those resources.

So, for instance, Aetolia players have complained/do complain that their combat is less balanced than ours and ask why Aetolia can't "just balance classes like Achaea does". Maybe if they'd spent the time they spent on their emote system on combat, they could. Or maybe we should just pick 6 or 7 classes that need upgrades via classleads and skip them in favor of the emote system. 

Can't spend a dollar twice, in other words.

Sarapis

Sasiya said:

I agree that Achaea is awesome. This is why people should trade me Achaean credits.

And why would you all trade me Achaean credits if Achaea is so awesome? Because Aetolia is also awesome but in a different way!

>.<

And Aetolia is getting awesome-r. Razmael is doing a kick-ass job since we promoted him to Producer in December.

Iocun

Sarapis said:

So, for instance, Aetolia players have complained/do complain that their combat is less balanced than ours and ask why Aetolia can't "just balance classes like Achaea does". Maybe if they'd spent the time they spent on their emote system on combat, they could. Or maybe we should just pick 6 or 7 classes that need upgrades via classleads and skip them in favor of the emote system. 

I think removing the jester class will save enough time on future classleads that we can afford to get a super cool emote system instead! Everybody wins!

Shirszae

@Sarapis Combat will never ever be truly 'done'. But I am certain taking the time to actually rework the emoting system would be in Achaea's best interest.

Eld

Iocun said:

Sarapis said:

So, for instance, Aetolia players have complained/do complain that their combat is less balanced than ours and ask why Aetolia can't "just balance classes like Achaea does". Maybe if they'd spent the time they spent on their emote system on combat, they could. Or maybe we should just pick 6 or 7 classes that need upgrades via classleads and skip them in favor of the emote system. 

I think removing the jester class will save enough time on future classleads that we can afford to get a super cool emote system instead! Everybody wins!

I was going to write something about how an emote system more like Aetolia's has been requested in several Dais threads and the impression has been that the admin would be open to it but it would have to wait until the dev resources were available, but I'm not sober enough to make it worthwhile. Instead, I'll just say that since I can't like @Iocun's comment more than once I will mention @Iocun as much as possible in this response to @Iocun's post to indicate that @Iocun knows what @Iocun is talking about and we should totally make things easier by deleting @Iocun jesters.

Iocun

Hi, I got a notification that my name was mentioned in this thread. Does anybody need anything?

Eld

Iocun said:

Hi, I got a notification that my name was mentioned in this thread. Does anybody need anything?

Your work is done, sir, but thank you for checking in.

Keres

It's not even 'reworking' or a 'massive overhaul'. I'm fairly certain the changes proposed - extending the system that is already in place - wouldn't really be that much work. It's like some variables in a parser... jus'sayin'.