Earrings (permanent partnership)

Jules

This will definitely garner an "I love this, do it immediately" or "no, don't you dare" reaction from various people, but I was browsing through Imperian's artifacts and was interested to see this in the blurb on their Earrings of Gazalis artifact:

"These earrings are unlike other artifacts in that they are permanently bound and linked to the buyer and one other person. That other person must be specified to Jeremy when the artifact is purchased. The link and binding of the earrings cannot be changed, like all other artifacts".

Imperian doesn't seem to have *nearly* the issues with earrings that Achaea does, and a good deal of that probably has everything to do with sheer cost. 800 credits a pop to have an earring partner. The earrings themselves seem have similar mechanics (you can't be prone or off-balance, etc...), although it's not explicitly stated in their help file (their help files are often somewhat lacking compared to Achaea, as admin is spread thinner).

 As a reminder, the relevant blurb for Achaean earrings:

"Earrings of Sinope are always owned by exactly one person, though clearly they are used by two. If the owner should decide to bestow the other pair to some different partner at a later time, this can be accomplished. Cost: 100 credits. You specify the partner at purchase time with the following syntax: BUY <earring> PAIRED WITH <person>. See HELP ARTEFACT TRANSFERS for more information on changing partners".

You could simply stop allowing people to do that.  People keep all their current partners, but no new ones for 100 credits.  This is well outside what I'm involved with, so I leave it to you all to hate, love, discuss, what have you, but interesting to see how a small administrative difference seems to have made ALL the difference in how prevalent/PITA an artifact like this is or isn't.  Obviously, it makes the artifact somewhat less appealing, so Achaea would sell fewer of them in general, so there's that.

EDIT:  Whew, had to fix the mess using the quote feature made, and it made a worse mess, and now it's decent!

Antonius

Does Imperian also have the delay on earring usage? I'd happily be stuck with my current earring partners (or, more accurately, take a slightly larger hit if I decided to switch) in exchange for getting rid of that.

Earrings aren't really a problem, especially not since the changes.

Jules

Antonius, that, I don't know.  I can ask.  

Austere

Earrings are a pain in the ass, but this isn't an earring nerf.  You honestly think this would effect people like @Jhui‌ ? He doesn't even buy the majority of his earrings.  I haven't got to use my earrings with him in three months and I would still not transfer.  This is a buyers nerf,  not an earring nerf.  No, no, no. 

Jules

Oh it's totally a buyer's nerf (which is a good, descriptive way to put it).  And one that seems to have a real chilling effect on the prevalance of earrings.  

Austere

Jules said:

Oh it's totally a buyer's nerf (which is a good, descriptive way to put it).  And one that seems to have a real chilling effect on the prevalance of earrings.  

I have only changed earring partners once. I don't think this is really going to change the battlefield of Achaea that much. Both my sets are worthless right now, and I still wouldn't trade partners.  If anything,  this is just going to set apart the haves and the have nots. With that in mind,  I am with Antonius: take away the summon time for earrings and you have a deal. 

Jules

I think part of it is that you KNOW you can change if you need to.  That's a subtle, but important difference in a buyer's mind I think.  I'll see what I can find out about whether the Imperian guys have a delay or not.  If they don't have a delay, maybe a better chance of admin being willing to make that "deal". 

Austere

Jules said:

I think part of it is that you KNOW you can change if you need to.  That's a subtle, but important difference in a buyer's mind I think.  I'll see what I can find out about whether the Imperian guys have a delay or not.  If they don't have a delay, maybe a better chance of admin being willing to make that "deal". 

166 more credits to trade partners in exchange for old earrings?  Any earring abuser would sign off on that.  I honestly don't see a problem here.  At 166 credits difference, no one is going to hesitate to buy earrings because no one buys earrings with the intention of changing partners.  My "deal" was sarcasm. If you revert earrings,  I will personally be buying two more pairs today, and I am sure I am not the only one.  If you truly want to nerf the buying,  raise the base price. 

Jules

I don't think you can trade them in over in Imperian, based on that blurb.  I could be wrong about that, but that would be part of the intent - No trade-in value, because they are permanently linked to two people.   

Jules

(Eoghan is one of Imperian's admin types, and contacted me when I did ISSUE ME for this)

Eoghan tells you, "Earring travel is instant, but is blocked by normal movement restrictions (entangled, paralyzed, etcetera)"

- so, no delay over there.

Eoghan tells you, "Earrings can't be directly traded in using the ARTIFACT TRADEIN command, but you *can* contact Jeremy to trade them in should you want to." 

- This surprised me a little, as the blurb seems to indicate that the earrings are super permanent, but there you go.  And yes, just having to trade the artifact in seems like it's not enough of a disincentive for the hardcore earring fiend over here in Achaea.  

So everyone take those as you will, and discuss as you see fit.  

Trevize

The community each game has is vastly different, as are the number of players around.

I think this plays a much larger part than a 66 credit difference in cost to change partners.

Cooper

Austere said:

Earrings are a pain in the ass, but this isn't an earring nerf.  You honestly think this would effect people like @Jhui‌ ? He doesn't even buy the majority of his earrings.  I haven't got to use my earrings with him in three months and I would still not transfer.  This is a buyers nerf,  not an earring nerf.  No, no, no. 

This would hurt people like Jhui the most.

I'm surprised this hasn't come up before. One of the reasons Achaea saw so many earrings is because changing your partner was so cheap. I'd bet that we'd see 90% less earrings if you couldn't swap them very easily.

Kresslack

Earring Delay was only recently implemented in Achaea. What (currently) works for another game isn't always going to work for Achaea, regardless of how much as I want Vamparism and Lycanthropy.

Blujixapug

You should have to cut off one of your fingers per set of earrings you buy. So you can get more than one, but it will start to affect your WPM.

Trevize

Blujixapug said:

You should have to cut off one of your fingers per set of earrings you buy. So you can get more than one, but it will start to affect your WPM.

Which prompts more and more automation, until the best combatants sit around laptops, fingerless, shouting 'Kill X' to voice activated scripts.

Dunn

Earrings aren't a problem on Imperian because all of the PKers hate eachother/city hop so often, by the way.

They just have other OP items like Raksha bands, which are like neutral Hermit tarots with almost zero restriction. Can't really compare IRE games because Achaea is honestly the tamest in terms of arties and items available.

Jules

That raksha band really is insane, but it's also an auction item.  There are enough of them out there that people grouse about it, to be sure, though.  I don't know that the PKers in Imperian all hate each other that much though (because they do city hop so often).  Some of them hate each other, to be sure.  

It does seem like Imperian generally has way more crazy OP things than Achaea, yes.  It really does have a fun beta server feel.  Still, when I first read about the earrings in Imperian and noted there was no 100 credit swap, and that I hadn't seem them used heavily, a senior combatant's immediate response was "yes, and we need to nerf them more".  As it turns out, it's only a 266 credit cost over there (trade-in value), which is more costly than Achaea's bargain basement deal of 100 credits, but I do think that might be a prime example of a real difference between the two player bases.  Here it would probably need to be steeper, because Austere is likely right in saying that plenty of Achaean players won't blink at 266 credits.  

Part of that might just be that earrings have become more prevalent thanks to the low cost of changing partners, though, and maybe you'd be able to change them back to normal trade-in value sometime in the future.  Maybe.  I say this because Achaea already squeezes the player harder than other IRE games, and I'm not really keen to further that tendency - which is why this 100 credit bargain basement earring change fee is so weird in the first place.  It's counter to the business model (but maybe not really because it looks like they've sold an assload of earrings).

Anyway, maybe the delay they've put in over here really is enough (I wouldn't know).  If earrings are still something people would like to see less of, it sounds like the problem isn't that someone occasionally escapes via earring, or even that a few people escape a lot.  Instead, the problem would be that a significant number of people have multiple pairs with multiple people, so that they have a sort of network to help one another escape death on a regular basis.  A "buyer's nerf" (rather than a mechanical one) really does seem like it would have a chilling effect, and I put it up to be considered as a solution if people still feel that earrings need to be a less commonly used item.  

Kyrra

You may trade in an earring of Sinope and receive 533 Bound Credits for the trade.

Trading in earrings would give you over half the cost of a new pair with someone, so if you went that route, someone would only be coughing up 200 credits more (300 vs 100 with getting the partners changed). 

I'm by no means a combatant or have an interest in PKing, yet I've paid full price for five sets of earrings simply because it's nice to have that utility for traveling around.