Quick Questions

Saonji

I do not agree it's valid to hunt them down 2 RL weeks later or to hire a mark on them for it. It's also extremely blurry if that's legal or not.

Whether you agree or not, is irrelevant. It's been stated in the past that if you can attack for it, you can hire for it.

PS. Forum Rule #12 is: Don't use forums to contact game administration.

PPS. Just because someone disagrees with everything you say, doesn't mean they're trolling.

Argwin

Not to speak for the admins, because that would be dumb of me, but to add in some thoughts - it's long been established that 'it used to be like that' is not a valid justification for how it should be now. Those of us who submit designs have certainly cursed this fact often enough, I feel it's very valid here. Also of note is the often repeated response from Issues that Issues are not meant to address hypothetical situations. In short, if someone hires on you and you feel it's invalid, seek IC resolution. If that fails, Issue for it. I don't see why there would be a need for rule changes or clarifications based on hypothetical what-ifs and claims of 2 rl week delays in mark contracts. If a specific situation doesn't seem right, seek IC resolution. If that fails, Issue that specific situation.

Ictinus

Updates are made to the PK rules as and when we feel a situation arises that would benefit from more clarity. These are rare. The aim of the PK rules as they stand currently is to be as simple as possible and rely largely on common sense in order to promote more organic PK without the (thankfully bygone) tedium of past rules.

What they are not for (anymore) is to provide hard and fast laws on an infinite number of possible scenarios and their similarly infinite permutations and contexts. We've been down that road; it's ugly, it's not fun, and it greatly limits how much PK actually takes place in the game.

If your reaction to every given PK scenario is to assume foul play and analyse it through the lens of rules, laws, illegal, legal, etc then you are, in my opinion, only making Achaea less fun for yourself in the process.

Shecks

I very much appreciate that reply, @Ictinus - thanks for that.

I have to say though there are circles where looking at things through the lens of legality isn't so common, but looking at things through the lens of "how can I possibly make this person's experience as awful as possible without getting punished myself" is not all that uncommon (as I'm sure you and the team see often enough) - and hiring for flippant reasons which forces the target to defend themselves with issues (inherently makes them look like the troublemaker as well as being a stigma in the community, even when they're right) is griefing 101, it seems.

I'm not asking to drag this conversation out more, I'll just say that the reason for my request was because the current rules allow HUGE leeway for what "common sense" means, which is exacerbated by the fact that we don't know about contracts (or the reason for them) until after you've already been hunted and killed through it.

While I personally love the core concept of the new PK rules, I do think a bit of "guideline" for when and how retribution, and specifically Marks, should be used.

Again I'll refer to the example of hiring for blocking an exit, or an icewall. There is no "common sense" answer to whether or not hiring a paid assassin to murder someone for making you walk 2 extra rooms is appropriate or not (as evidenced by asking about this and getting a huge range of answers ranging from "of course, always" to "of course not, ever" and everything in between.)

In other words it may be common sense based on the image you have for how the PvP community should think and behave, but that has very little to do with how they currently do. If we are supposed to share a common understanding of what "common sense" actually means, then then we should have some guidelines for that aside from the current status quo of keeping a log of issue rulings / precedent so we have a peek into what the admins deem is "acceptable".

As far as I can tell, you can hire a room full of marks for an illusion of an icewall for a direction that isn't actually an exit to a room full of people who you have cause to attack anyways during a raid 60 days after the raid, and the mark can kill you 20 days later, at which point you get to spend hours digging through months of logs to reply that it's nonsense, only to have the ruling be a 50/50 depending on which admin reads it and whether or not they're in a forgiving mood, while announcing yourself as an "issue whore" to the community for reporting what I think any reasonable person would view as abuse of the mark system.

It's not just me, either - I'm just the only one who's happy to bring it up.

Reyson

Or just accept the fact that if you illusion PK-related lines, people will treat them as real and retaliate accordingly, and learn to live with that (or stop doing it altogether, if you don't like the consequences that come from it)?

That seems pretty common sense-y to me.

Eryl

@Shecks, can I share the contents of the issue you filed against me then deleted after I replied?

Sheverad

Is STR at all important for Psion PVE at higher levels? Any real use for PVP? Or does Psion scale with INT instead? I would assume their SECONDSKIN or other abilities would scale with INT, or STR? And is their PVP/PVE dmg considered magical or physical? I'm quite confused.

Eurice

To my knowledge, psion scales either STR or INT, whichever is higher. I think their PVE damage is considered physical, but I'm not 100% sure.

Gallida

1. Weaving scales with the higher of strength or intelligence and mirror level. Destruction in Emulation scales with intelligence. Strength is easier to temporarily boost with a Jera rune, intelligence is cheaper to permanently boost and gives you an anti-mana kill buffer. Given the option, I'd absolutely go intelligence heavy, but Psion doesn't need to min-max too much for good results.

2. Secondskin is flat universal damage reduction, no scaling.

3. Weaving does physical damage, as it can get eaten by a Shield of Absorption.

Grandue

Regarding the topic of frivolous issues and contracts. The official rule is as follows:

“Don't ever, for any reason, do anything to anyone for any reason ever, no matter what, no matter where, or who, or who you are with, or where you are going, or where you've been... ever, for any reason whatsoever...”

Sheverad

intelligence is cheaper to permanently boost

How so? It appears the STR/INT artefacts have exactly the same cost? Thanks for the answers!

Eryl

Something that never gets mentioned is that imposition's delay is shortened the higher your intelligence is, too. Forces are some of the most powerful attacks in the game.

Arin!

Is it true that you can be bloodlined by parents at separate times??? This is mind boggling to me, but it came up in a conversation and I was startled. What if your parent didn’t Want to have a kid with the other person????

Adrik

@Arin! Correct!

It's a pretty terrible system, but it's the one that is implemented.

Parent A decides to bloodline Child.

Child can then decide who Parent B is-- and as long as Parent B accepts, canonically?

Parent A and Parent B are now your parents, even if Parent A has never met Parent B-- or if Parent A is wholly opposed to the idea.

Arin!

@Adrik I have Very Mixed feelings 😂😂😱

Cailin

Has this ever actually occurred, though?

If so, I have an idea

Parent A and child go to Delos. Syntax is BLOODLINE RECORD <child> AS CHILD WITH <person B/unknown>. If unknown is chosen, it's permanent and a second parent can never be recorded. If a parent is chosen, they will receive a prompt to accept if in the room, just like the child does. If not present, they will receive a message notification and can also BLOODLINE RECORD at a later date, but no one else can. BLOODLINE SHOW only shows Unknown for Parent B until Parent B records their name.

Some times both parents can't make it to the Bloodline recording at the same time. Happened to me with my IC dad. I like to know that he can still bloodline me if he ever comes back from dormancy :P

Saonji

@Cailin Yes, happened with Mezghar even recently.

Kez bloodlined him, and Lyndee didn't until like 3 RL years later.

Peak

BLOODLINE SHOW @Artanis

Arin!

@Peak Yes that is how this discussion came up- it may have even been with you..

Peak

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Is there a secret to the Clio card? I can't get it to work :(

Greys

@Cailin Greys never got bloodlined by Nelbron, Kotori's husband, someone he only met a couple times. Kotori did broach Greys if he wanted to get bloodlined by someone else, but never saw the point of that.

Cooper

I bloodlined 1 person around 15 years ago because they paid me a lot of credits and promised they'd never make a bloodline themselves.

Now I'm related to half the game and dozens of people have used the Ikari name (it isn't a last name or blood family name so people doing that is really dumb).

Blood lining sucks.

Jonathin

@Cooper Was it Rexak? Because if it was, I felt your pain.

Cooper

Yep! I definitely regret it. I've had to deal with dozens of people over the years arguing with me about the Ikari name. Fake clans, people calling me grandpa, people asking others for gold/credits because they are related.

Even had one person carry the name over to another IRE game and claim to be me on a new character. They started a family and had a lot of people loan/give them credits because of it.

Woland

So I spun the Wheel with tokens a few times, as I noticed the prizes were potentially a pretty good ROI (versus if you bought those prizes directly). Would appreciate advice on how best to utilize the following:

• interlocked cache - if I don't have any talismans at all now, what's the best set to go for? Or should I tradein the cache? I feel like it'd be time consuming and expensive to finish any sets, which I'd rather avoid if that's true.
• decorated sleeve - which suit to aim for?
• shimmering phial - what's a good first tattoo to make permanent?

I'm an occultist and my focus now is just gaining exp (bashing, I guess) and making gold. Not interested in PK or PVP for the foreseeable future, except as a support role. Thanks!

Shecks

@Woland this might sound cynical (and it is) but it's also true:

Rolling caches and cards (and stockings) is rarely a good ROI compared to selling them, even if you want one of / some of the things it could land on. In general it's only efficient for the scalpers to do this as they can reliably sell the cards (often in bulk) and complete Talisman sets. They also almost exclusively get to see the talisman refuning system actual work as it requires large volume of "junk" talismans and an even larger volume of good ones to make the odds of having a full set a realistic outcome.

(It's kinda like opening a single booster pack of cards compared to when a shop owner opens 4 entire boxes of booster packs. They know exactly what they're doing to get, and are also optimized to sell them at a higher total price per card on top of getting a discount on buying them in bulk).

It's worth noting that these things are designed to look tempting to roll but the odds of actually getting GOOD items is extremely tilted against you in the code, and only the scalpers (and admin) know what these odds are.

Also worth noting that by selling them you will always get unbound credits whereas if you roll items, usually you will be stuck with bound.

For shimmering phial from a pure ROI standpoint none of them make sense other than maybe Ox and Megalith. From a practicality standpoint though, Shield and Tree are by far the most important, arguably followed by Moon, Boar, Megalith, Ox.

tl;dr rolling the gambling items is just that: Gambling. Do it if you like gambling but just like with casinos don't expect to come out with a good ROI.

Caelan

A large, prismatic Wheel of Fortune slows down to a halt, rewarding you with 13 lessons.

Woland

@Shecks Thank you for that informed reply, it really helps put things into perspective! Looks like I'll be trading in the cache then (yay more credits), though I have to open the sleeve deck anyway and just hope I get lucky heh. And I'll probably get the tree tattoo then - my thinking there was more for usefulness, so that list is good to keep in mind in case I get more in the future.

In terms of overall ROI I was thinking of the prismatic tokens specifically, as the total credit value of the prizes I got came to just under 500 credits (excluding the deck, including trade-in of cache), and I spent the equivalent of the no-brainer credit package + 1 single token for that. BUT maybe I was just lucky though, as I could've gotten 5 caches in a row and that'd have sucked. However, that's all I'm going to do, as I enjoy limited gambling within a limited budget. I appreciate your advice here a lot!

PS Maybe not the place to post this but gacha games (those with lootbox mechanics) from Japan, and I read also on the Apple Store, generally show the rates or probabilities at which you can get prizes. It's a somewhat recent implementation, would love to see it done universally. Maybe it doesn't help the bottom line 100% but it helps the players.

Shecks

Yeah @Woland, have to be careful with replying as well... To be honest though, I won't recommend IRE games to anyone I know as long as it's using exploitative micropay tactics that have been almost globally accepted as abusive/harmful, many of which so much so that they're considered crimes to offer in some countries (and even moreso without ensuring you're selling it to adults).

I like that the average and median payout of tokens (at least with enough volume) is higher per dollar than the credit store, but considering that the credit store prices are completely arbitrary, this really isn't saying much. That's like cornering the market on milk, raising cost of milk to $50 a gallon for no reason, then saying that beer at $40 a bottle is a steal because it's cheaper than milk. I guess that analogy falls short though because milk isn't addictive.

Woland

@Shecks Touché! These last few years have gotten me so used to this business model but you just reminded me of what it really is like 😅😥