Quick Questions

Cynlael

Adeleine said:

they pay to play.

I just knew this coment would come up sooner or later. Such is the "modern way."

Peace.

Melodie

Adeleine said:

This isn't 1985 anymore where "Thou hast yon great strength" is how you measure your stats. The modern-day metagame is all about comparing numbers. I can guarantee you that literally nobody except prissy grognards who failed math class are going to care if the server tells you exact damage numbers and balance times.

Everyone has fun in different ways. Some people have fun playing the numbers game. Some people have fun gagging every numeric value on their screen and replacing it with "yea verily, thy loins froth with most excellent vitality." Let people do whichever one they want and stop trying to dictate how people should enjoy the game they pay to play.

To unveil one is to ruin another, though. Once that is exposed, there is no going back from it for anyone in Achaea, and how every bit of combat works and functions will change, much more drastically than you can imagine.

Achaea and its admin have always opted to keep things semi-veiled so there is a margin of error for people. So people can have different theories, and want to do different tests, and try to figure out (much like a mathematical puzzle) the best method to complete <x>. There are people who spend the majority of their online hours crafting theories to test. All of those people at the top of the combat game have put in hundreds upon thousands of hours learning the ins and outs of Achaea's hidden complexities, because in knowing how everything interacts with everything else, and being able to react to such things in a small timeline, is how you "win" Achaea (for them).

To expose that is to take all of that away and for combat to become far, far more linear. You protest you want your own fun out of this in your own fashion, but this isn't your every day MMO (or MUD) that is just "behind the times" (which is completely false). In case it isn't clear, let me make it so: The admin of Achaea do this on purpose because it is the bedrock upon which Achaea functions in a unique part of the ever-changing landscape of online gaming.

While I understand this is how several gamers like to think, and often get their fun out of things - it doesn't do well in Achaea's model. Which, has been stated many times over the past several years. That's just something you and other people will have to apply to the many, many, many many many other games out there that you can do this sort of thing to.

Makarios

This is one of those topics that everyone has an opinion on and noone is going to change someone elses opinion on the subject. Hence why I don't try to. I don't think it needs to be nearly as major a debate as it generally turns into; some people are in favour, some people aren't. Disagreeing on the subject is no big deal.

But just to put any concerns to rest, I did not fail math class. Fear not.

Anedhel

I don't care if people go to great lengths to get numbers. If that makes you happy, by all means, knock yourself out. 

I do care if people try to change the culture of a game I really love precisely because it stands out due to taking a different approach to the way it gives out information. In a world where games go out of their way to quantify and munchkinism is a very real thing, Achaea's wonderful to me because it's not a numbers game. It's the effort some people make to try and change the way Achaea works to suit their number fetish that bugs me. 

Yes, you can opt out of receiving input and whatnot. I can't really opt out of interacting with people on a MUD, though, and the amount of number chatter I've been subjected to recently in tells/says/clans, even in methods of communication that aren't labeled as OOC, is a little depressing; while I get where you're coming from, I hope you can understand when some of us say: we don't want raisins in our chocolate. 

Tahquil

@makarios would explain no one can pinpoint certain equations like limb damage.

Morsul

Although there's no solid connection (yet), the two IREs which have become mathematized (is that a word?) have also become the ones with the smallest populations. 

Revealing the formulae of the game simply removes too much of the uncertainty and room for error that prevents Achaea from being a math problem that's easily solvable by bots.

Atalkez

Makarios said:

But just to put any concerns to rest, I did not fail math class. Fear not.

C is still passing, amirite?

Szanthax

I had a hot calculus teacher so I passed

Armali

I come from super autobot land, and I appreciate the results that less information and less perfect determinism has seemed to produce in the way classes are designed and balanced. They're simpler, more accessible, and I feel, in turn, this has led to more people wanting to get involved.

Nazihk

I think that seeing the information changes how people think of the game on a meta-game level in a deleterious way. Basically, once you start telling people all these numbers, people start obsessing over them and they start to skew the game in unpleasant ways as more people start to value optimality higher and higher.

Want a good recent example? Makarios posted about exponential essence gain from one person relinquishing multiple avatar mantles and a huge fraction of the playerbase went "Oh, so it's optimal to team up and stack them all, let's all do that". And I've heard lots of players say things like "It is less fun this way, but stacking up the avatars is so much more effective so it makes sense to do it this way".

Kez

There have also been lots of people saying they're glad it's being done this way because they never would've been able to get a foot in otherwise.

I like numbers, so I run shops and practice trades. Mining is good for numbercrunchers too. Achaea has many more features than just combat. Check 'em out!

Vessil

Melodie said:

Adeleine said:

To unveil one is to ruin another, though. Once that is exposed, there is no going back from it for anyone in Achaea, and how every bit of combat works and functions will change, much more drastically than you can imagine.

So uh, I feel like it's necessary at this point to point out that my request that started this entire conversation was for Mob Damage. I didn't request additional combat info, and I don't know that I've seen a single pro-info post that advocated combat info. This is probably because the numbers you see in combat are already 100% precise(with some limited exceptions).

For reference, Practice mode in the Arena has been around since an announce post on (05/20/2014 at 19:02) and somehow, the game hasn't died yet.

The sky-is-falling hyperbole isn't really productive at all.

To whoever insinuated that too many numbers killed Imperian and Aetolia: No clue why Aetolia is like it is, as I've never played it seriously. Imperian's dwindling population is due to 110 different things(back-to-back poorly received class revamps, buggy/short-sighted/bad systems(shrines/relics, obelisks, caravans, boneyards), the death of combat outside of shardfalls, the lackluster cult/sect system that replaced Orders/Gods with Entities that tended to be active for extremely short periods of time before being unceremoniously killed off in poorly scripted battle scenes, a massive population imbalance that has been present for years that refuses to self-correct, a dwindling midbie class, a poorly designed lvl 100+ system, among other things). The constant QoL improvements(including giving more specific info about XP, showing def mana drains, COOLDOWNS, etc) are among the only things I see universally applauded by players there.

Elynithara

What're the most common systems in Achaea, and which one would you recommend for someone that's new to the game but have experience with other IRE games?

Xaden

Elynithara said:

What're the most common systems in Achaea, and which one would you recommend for someone that's new to the game but have experience with other IRE games?

First a shout out to the Nexus client, which is getting better and better every other month. Server side curing is an excellent QoL improvement too.

That being said, mudlet is the most popular client in use I think, lots of people are using svof (more so to manage serverside than anything else i think).

From there you're probably looking at Antonius' limb tracker, or Austere's AK system which as far as I know does both limb tracking and affliction trackin.

Into the realm of GUI's (because who doesn't like pretty) there's really no beating Zulah's stuff. He's really rocking that scene right now.

Vessil

I'd imagine people more familiar with the various systems in Achaea would probably need more info about what you want a system to do? If the answer to that question is "everything but kill people", Svof might be a good start.

Unrelated to previous conversation, I see that there are additional reactions on some older posts besides Like and Awesome, but they're obviously not reactions you can pick now. What happened that this changed? Achaea is by far the most lenient IRE forum I've seen, so it obviously wasn't to avoid hurting people's feelings with an "Off-topic" or "Disagree". I really miss being able to use "Insightful" to thank someone for providing me with information without indicating that I "like" that information or think that it's "awesome". 

Atalkez

Actually it was to stop hurting people's feelings.

Ernam specifically, he cried about it a lot.

Vessil

Atalkez said:

Actually it was to stop hurting people's feelings.

Ernam specifically, he cried about it a lot.

Isn't he banned or something now? If so, let's bring them back so I can show my appreciation for the information on your post without LIKEing or AWESOMEing Ernam's shedding of tears.

Morsul

@Elynithara svo-f and Wundersys seem to be the two most prominent systems out there!

Elynithara

Like @Vessil said, everything but kill people (for now at least). Something that'll keep me alive if I do get attacked, and something that'll keep me alive when levelling up.

Anedhel

Svof is great for the utility scripts it brings. If you don't plan on being heavy-handed with your curing and are willing to just use a couple built-in buttons to customise your curing, go with that. Wunder doesn't have a dedicated person taking care of it/updating it, afaik, but it's better, I think, for tinkering with- though it doesn't come with a lot of the handy stuff Svof brings. 

Elynithara

Every question I ask just leads to another. Do I need more than one vial for each elixir/salve, or can I just automatically refill from the rift (as in, will something hinder me from doing that during combat)?

Morsul

@Elynithara Fill up your rift, then refill an empty vial through your rift. After that, the vial will automatically refill (provided that your rift has the proper elixir/salve!).

EDIT: That is, you don't need more than one vial per elixir/salve because it all refills from the rift.

Puxi

Elynithara said:

Every question I ask just leads to another. Do I need more than one vial for each elixir/salve, or can I just automatically refill from the rift (as in, will something hinder me from doing that during combat)?

It will automatically refill your health vial from rift after it runs out. Quite handy! I didn't know about liquids being able to be in rifts until level 75 or so. I dumb.

Anedhel

One vial per is all I've ever needed!

Melodie

Vessil said:

Melodie said:

Adeleine said:

To unveil one is to ruin another, though. Once that is exposed, there is no going back from it for anyone in Achaea, and how every bit of combat works and functions will change, much more drastically than you can imagine.

So uh, I feel like it's necessary at this point to point out that my request that started this entire conversation was for Mob Damage. I didn't request additional combat info, and I don't know that I've seen a single pro-info post that advocated combat info. This is probably because the numbers you see in combat are already 100% precise(with some limited exceptions).

For reference, Practice mode in the Arena has been around since an announce post on (05/20/2014 at 19:02) and somehow, the game hasn't died yet.

The sky-is-falling hyperbole isn't really productive at all.

To whoever insinuated that too many numbers killed Imperian and Aetolia: No clue why Aetolia is like it is, as I've never played it seriously. Imperian's dwindling population is due to 110 different things(back-to-back poorly received class revamps, buggy/short-sighted/bad systems(shrines/relics, obelisks, caravans, boneyards), the death of combat outside of shardfalls, the lackluster cult/sect system that replaced Orders/Gods with Entities that tended to be active for extremely short periods of time before being unceremoniously killed off in poorly scripted battle scenes, a massive population imbalance that has been present for years that refuses to self-correct, a dwindling midbie class, a poorly designed lvl 100+ system, among other things). The constant QoL improvements(including giving more specific info about XP, showing def mana drains, COOLDOWNS, etc) are among the only things I see universally applauded by players there.

It's more of a "slippery slope" situation. How much an attack does to an adventurer does different from damage done to a denizen, though, for whatever that's worth.

In any case, my post wasn't directed at you so much as Adeleine (thus why I quoted her) and the general topic, rather than just mob damage.

Vender

let's not forget though that a lot of the nice things that achaea has was developed first in other ires then brought over here, the prime examples being autocuring (serverside curing) and vialbelts (riftable liquids).

Anedhel

Serverside curing isn't really a comparable thing to getting the formulas behind damage to denizens, though, imo. One very much fits the idea of the game (Achaea's adventurers are a competent lot who deal with adversity better than 'normal' people, as opposed to knowing that, somehow, your attacks do 550/11000 damage or w/e), and the other does not. 

Vender

when testing in pvp, i usually don't ask for the number value anyways and go straight for the percent, which is already displayed on the prompt for denizens

and i've never seen the idea supported that achaea's adventurers are inherently competent. the tutorial doesn't start in some grand centaur raid, rather the introductory denizen has to ask if you know how to even take a sip or throw a kick, and ratting is how one would start off making extra gold.

i prefer it that way though because how do you stand out if everyone is already grand from the beginning?

Armali

Do you really want to get eaten by a pygmy?! 

And some people say yes.

Cynlael

Tbh with all the either gruesome shit in this game, I'm surprised they don't just make it (when you say yes to that) do something akin to suiciding your char, except you're a feast for the pygmies. 10/10 would make a lot of newbie chars.