Constructive Criticism Discussion

Caladbolg

I feel like we need one of these so that Tecton/anyone else who works with him honestly I have no idea who that is or maybe Can see how we feel about certain aspects in the game currently. and to get a general opinion from the community on those ideas. 

Rules, because we need them.
1.Constructive Criticism doesn't mean rant it means, basically I don't like x because of x and I think x is a good way to fix this

2.Avoid insulting others Constructive!! Try taking others views into consideration of why they don't like x aspect or why they do like x aspect.

3. Common sense!! use it!

I'll start this off with a simple one that was brought up in a recent forum post. Gold when killing monsters currently hits the ground. Personally I think it's a little outdated system these days generally we are all running scripts that automatically pick up the gold when we see it I think it would be a good change to automatically give the gold to the person who slayed the beast and to split it evenly among groups with any odd gold amounts going to the person who slew it. (like 1's for instance)

We have a pretty good community here and I like how recently it seems Achaea is embracing automation such as with the healing setup. but I think the game in whole would be better especially for new players if some of these small scripts like picking up gold when a monster dies could be completely cut out. especially for new players where typing pick up gold every 5 seconds can be a hassle especially if they don't understand the basics of making triggers yet let alone making one that will pick up gold after you've regained balance/equib.

Mishgul

^You have slain

Queue add eqbal get gold
queue add eqbal put gold in pack

Achaea has its own in game command for chasing balance now. No need to script for waiting gor eq or limbs anymore.

I am not a huge of killing things dropping gold personally. It lowers the worth of doing anything else for gold when you can bash it just as easily. Also denizens are being real slow at getting packs and keeping their gold safe. 

Think we should introduce lots of menial quests for gold instead to inject more realism, and it would be cool if it could be proportioned to a positive village feelings system. 

I could go on re: villagea and positive feelings but my thoughts are uncollected at the moment

Santar

The idea forum is a pretty good place for constructive criticism. Most important threads there get admin feedback.

Nim

Agreed with @Santar.

I mean, even if you're not sure of an exact solution, but you know there's an issue and have some vague idea of how it might be resolved, even that's probably enough to start a Golden Dais thread to discuss it further.

Sometimes they get derailed, but that's just how forums go.

Silas

Mishgul said:

I am not a huge of killing things dropping gold personally. It lowers the worth of doing anything else for gold when you can bash it just as easily. Also denizens are being real slow at getting packs and keeping their gold safe. 

Think we should introduce lots of menial quests for gold instead to inject more realism, and it would be cool if it could be proportioned to a positive village feelings system. 

I could go on re: villagea and positive feelings but my thoughts are uncollected at the moment

I really like this idea. You could introduce jobs for people to do for villages (and cities), that would pay a certain wage, for jobs done regularly, or have a certain one-off payment. Maybe you could also introduce a trade system between cities and villages, manned in part by players through ships and comm shops, so that cities could directly make gold and offer a wage (controlled by the ministries and the ruling council) to its citizens based on the part they play in the city.

There'd be a lot less gold in the market that way, but over time it would become worth much more. Maybe one day, mutton chops wouldn't cost a ludicrous 105 gold sovereigns.

Seftin

I like the idea of a rework of the gold/pricing system. Maybe introduce small coinage too - coppers + gold coins, 100 coppers to a gold coin, mutton would be like 4 coppers.

Silas

We already have gold bits from sailing.

Morthif

What? Pay the Chancellor? Great idea!

Valaria

i believe midkemia online have that system, @Seftin.

Skye

Silas said:

Mishgul said:

I am not a huge of killing things dropping gold personally. It lowers the worth of doing anything else for gold when you can bash it just as easily. Also denizens are being real slow at getting packs and keeping their gold safe. 

Think we should introduce lots of menial quests for gold instead to inject more realism, and it would be cool if it could be proportioned to a positive village feelings system. 

I could go on re: villagea and positive feelings but my thoughts are uncollected at the moment

I really like this idea. You could introduce jobs for people to do for villages (and cities), that would pay a certain wage, for jobs done regularly, or have a certain one-off payment. Maybe you could also introduce a trade system between cities and villages, manned in part by players through ships and comm shops, so that cities could directly make gold and offer a wage (controlled by the ministries and the ruling council) to its citizens based on the part they play in the city.

There'd be a lot less gold in the market that way, but over time it would become worth much more. Maybe one day, mutton chops wouldn't cost a ludicrous 105 gold sovereigns.

We actually had a similar discussion to this once:

http://forums.achaea.com/discussion/comment/69318/

Almost 2 years ago even

Nicaara

In Imperian, you can get caravans (small, medium, large) fill 'em with commodities, escort them to another city while fighting off bandits who want your shit, the amount of which scaled off caravan size. I don't remember all the details, but it was super cool.

You know.. despite Achaea having always been the more popular game, at least ratings wise, there's a lot of things in these other games that really help to create a better roleplay environment that we just don't have anything to compare with. For example, one of my favorite things in Imperian was taming. You can tame like.. just about anything. It'll fight for you, rat and fish for you, deliver things, be your mount.. It opened up so many RP opportunities, without having to buy an artefact pet, and transcendent tamers could transfer pets to less skilled tamers. There's good opportunity to make money there with pet trading. Also Predator is the coolest class - you craft your knives from the bones of your enemies. But now I'm just going off on a tangent.

As much as I want to make Achaea more like Imperian, or the other IRE games I haven't played, I know it's just not feasible to rip ideas from them. Like, automatic gold collection from kills we could probably take, and I hope we do, as it is so minor and just a quality of life improvement. But I'm sure these bigger systems such as caravans and taming miniskill are simply wishful thinking. It seems to me the most valuable ideas here will likely be those which are entirely original, or very incremental.

Perhaps we can do an adaptation of caravans. There will have to be some risk and time involved in commodity trading, or the prices will stay too balanced. Ships could definitely work for that (pirates want dat booty). Inter-city trading will have to be done mainly by neutral players or between cities not in conflict, so village trading will be very important. What else!

Austere

I would rather having taming over caravans.  I made an character there once and it just looked so cool.  I never got far enough to actually try,  though.  Sad really.  

Bluef

Austere said:

I would rather having taming over caravans.  I made an character there once and it just looked so cool.  I never got far enough to actually try,  though.  Sad really.  

I love taming so much. I had so much fun with it. I also loved the carvans when I was a newbie there though. Really fun reason to learn the way to all the villages. 

Nicaara

Upon further inspection, I realize auto-looting gold (and corpses, haha) is an optional config option in Imperian. My corpses were dropping on the ground and I was like wait this isn't right..

Kresslack

There are a lot of quests available which can earn you a lot of gold in a fairly short period of time, but doing tasks and running errands. I would like to see more, if and where applicable, but the main thing is just learning them. @Mariya was the first person to show me how worthwhile these can really be, if you take the time to seek them out and learn them.

I think one of the issues questing faces is that people are encouraged to just go kill things for gold, which also ruins things in a lot of cases for people who are trying to do the quests. I can't tell you how many times I've been in the middle of a quest, and someone came in and killed everyone involved. It's a very frustrating experience.

Silvarien

Kresslack said:

There are a lot of quests available which can earn you a lot of gold in a fairly short period of time, but doing tasks and running errands. I would like to see more, if and where applicable, but the main thing is just learning them. @Mariya was the first person to show me how worthwhile these can really be, if you take the time to seek them out and learn them.

I think one of the issues questing faces is that people are encouraged to just go kill things for gold, which also ruins things in a lot of cases for people who are trying to do the quests. I can't tell you how many times I've been in the middle of a quest, and someone came in and killed everyone involved. It's a very frustrating experience.

@Kresslack : I agree that it's rude and frustrating, but the denizens are usually aligned with this or that. For example, while I hunted to dragon in Morindar there were some unique quest-related denizens and when people asked me not to kill them I didn't. But from an RP standpoint, it makes no sense to kill an army of feyrs and nel'dorath and leave Lavarin the Shah intact when he's the one basically running the whole circus.

Kresslack

Silvarien said:

Kresslack said:

There are a lot of quests available which can earn you a lot of gold in a fairly short period of time, but doing tasks and running errands. I would like to see more, if and where applicable, but the main thing is just learning them. @Mariya was the first person to show me how worthwhile these can really be, if you take the time to seek them out and learn them.

I think one of the issues questing faces is that people are encouraged to just go kill things for gold, which also ruins things in a lot of cases for people who are trying to do the quests. I can't tell you how many times I've been in the middle of a quest, and someone came in and killed everyone involved. It's a very frustrating experience.

@Kresslack : I agree that it's rude and frustrating, but the denizens are usually aligned with this or that. For example, while I hunted to dragon in Morindar there were some unique quest-related denizens and when people asked me not to kill them I didn't. But from an RP standpoint, it makes no sense to kill an army of feyrs and nel'dorath and leave Lavarin the Shah intact when he's the one basically running the whole circus.

I was more pointing out the 'mindlessly kill everything' mentality that seems prevalent. While I realize it will likely not change, it does not (from an RP standpoint) make sense for someone to kill everything they come across in any area, especially if they've not taken the time to glean some basic understanding of the area and its inhabitants. Unless, of course, you're playing a sociopath (or a Mhaldor, there's relatively little difference between the two. Spread Suffering. Hail Hydra Sartan.)

Caladbolg

Kresslack said:

Silvarien said:

Kresslack said:

There are a lot of quests available which can earn you a lot of gold in a fairly short period of time, but doing tasks and running errands. I would like to see more, if and where applicable, but the main thing is just learning them. @Mariya was the first person to show me how worthwhile these can really be, if you take the time to seek them out and learn them.

I think one of the issues questing faces is that people are encouraged to just go kill things for gold, which also ruins things in a lot of cases for people who are trying to do the quests. I can't tell you how many times I've been in the middle of a quest, and someone came in and killed everyone involved. It's a very frustrating experience.

@Kresslack : I agree that it's rude and frustrating, but the denizens are usually aligned with this or that. For example, while I hunted to dragon in Morindar there were some unique quest-related denizens and when people asked me not to kill them I didn't. But from an RP standpoint, it makes no sense to kill an army of feyrs and nel'dorath and leave Lavarin the Shah intact when he's the one basically running the whole circus.

I was more pointing out the 'mindlessly kill everything' mentality that seems prevalent. While I realize it will likely not change, it does not (from an RP standpoint) make sense for someone to kill everything they come across in any area, especially if they've not taken the time to glean some basic understanding of the area and its inhabitants. Unless, of course, you're playing a sociopath (or a Mhaldor, there's relatively little difference between the two. Spread Suffering. Hail Hydra Sartan.)

This is actually one of the biggest pains of playing a targossian and trying to bash.

Your like let's go hunt mog cause mog is awesome exp, nope innocents let's go kill tir murdan because everyone bashes there must be amazing exp nope innocents.

Adds alot of non mindlessly killing everything flavor when you have to try to figure out if somethings innocent or not. especially when your guideline is, I found a cool place. what is this place there's a guy hi guy are you an innocent *say nothing* or like on Meropis the bloody murderer dwarfs are some how innocents?

But anyways, my point is unless im missing something since I typically avoid the pve scene it's pretty hard to actually tell if you should kill something or not, and I believe most bashing places go by word of mouth of what's awesome and what's not.

Kresslack

Caladbolg said:

Kresslack said:

Silvarien said:

Kresslack said:

There are a lot of quests available which can earn you a lot of gold in a fairly short period of time, but doing tasks and running errands. I would like to see more, if and where applicable, but the main thing is just learning them. @Mariya was the first person to show me how worthwhile these can really be, if you take the time to seek them out and learn them.

I think one of the issues questing faces is that people are encouraged to just go kill things for gold, which also ruins things in a lot of cases for people who are trying to do the quests. I can't tell you how many times I've been in the middle of a quest, and someone came in and killed everyone involved. It's a very frustrating experience.

@Kresslack : I agree that it's rude and frustrating, but the denizens are usually aligned with this or that. For example, while I hunted to dragon in Morindar there were some unique quest-related denizens and when people asked me not to kill them I didn't. But from an RP standpoint, it makes no sense to kill an army of feyrs and nel'dorath and leave Lavarin the Shah intact when he's the one basically running the whole circus.

I was more pointing out the 'mindlessly kill everything' mentality that seems prevalent. While I realize it will likely not change, it does not (from an RP standpoint) make sense for someone to kill everything they come across in any area, especially if they've not taken the time to glean some basic understanding of the area and its inhabitants. Unless, of course, you're playing a sociopath (or a Mhaldor, there's relatively little difference between the two. Spread Suffering. Hail Hydra Sartan.)

This is actually one of the biggest pains of playing a targossian and trying to bash.

Your like let's go hunt mog cause mog is awesome exp, nope innocents let's go kill tir murdan because everyone bashes there must be amazing exp nope innocents.

Adds alot of non mindlessly killing everything flavor when you have to try to figure out if somethings innocent or not. especially when your guideline is, I found a cool place. what is this place there's a guy hi guy are you an innocent *say nothing* or like on Meropis the bloody murderer dwarfs are some how innocents?

But anyways, my point is unless im missing something since I typically avoid the pve scene it's pretty hard to actually tell if you should kill something or not, and I believe most bashing places go by word of mouth of what's awesome and what's not.

I'm really not sure what the rules are for you guys, having never been on that side of the faction spectrum. As an avid explorer, though, I can tell you there are usually some environmental based clues relating to the culture and inhabitants.

Some of them of course are not going to be blatantly obvious, such as in a place like Manara or Hrridan (spelling?), but in many instances they -are- there, it just takes giving some attention to your surroundings. I think many people do not do that as they run around with verbose room description set, and in that case are missing a lot of flavour and history and clues that people spent hours developing around an area.

There are areas in which it's usually obvious some are just denizens living and not bothering anyone, such as the Tsol'aa, perhaps? Then there are areas in which the denizens will outright just try to kill you, because they can, and because that's their prerogative, such as in Lower Azdun.

At the end of the day, I think it more boils down to, in your described situation, the used definition of 'innocent' and who gets to decide how it applies to certain areas and their inhabitants, even as many areas house denizens which play both sides of the spectrum.

Caladbolg

Well it's basically just common sense, like Hey this is a peaceful village. that's typically an innocent.  People who mind their own business are typically innocents. and villages that would normally be innocent but have aligned them selfs with enemy gods (like Vastar and the flying city place) are considered non innocents.

And yeah I was hunting in Meropis in that battle with Ashtan one time killed like the entire area got a little into and said Die Ashtan Scum, to which one of the mobs said "You will never win Ashtan scum!" and im like oh oops

Kresslack

Caladbolg said:

People who mind their own business are typically innocents. and villages that would normally be innocent but have aligned them selfs with enemy gods.

Therein lies a lot of ambiguity, in saying "These people aren't hurting anyone, so we'll leave them alone. These other people over here aren't technically hurting anyone either, but they're associated with this god we don't like, so we're going to kill them anyway." This effectively makes innocence largely a term and concept applied in a subjective manner, rather than an objective one.

Aodfionn

Rules are as follows. 

1. It's protected if it worships the Bloodsworn or some similar iteration. 

2. It's encouraged if it worships Evil/Chaos/Darkness/Whatever Divine we're engaged in a shrine war with. 

3. Anything that doesn't fit into #1 or #2 is viewed as neutral. You can kill neutral stuff if you can think of some decent reason why they're not worthy of protection. 


I think the guidelines are great. That said, I still really wish we could get the thumbs up to relax stuff like Moghedu, but that will require consensus and effort from both the playerbase and the relevant admin. Unfortunately, I doubt we'll get it, because no flimsy theological excuse is quite going to hide the fact that we mostly just want to be able to go HAM on more areas.

Nim

I continue to maintain the belief that the problem is that there are so many villages that just kind of mind their own business for evil people to slaughter, but then the number of legitimately evil places are somewhat scarce.

Meanwhile, evil players have no problem hunting in the evil places either, unless it's allied to them - only good players have this disadvantage.

Aodfionn

Yeah, you ain't wrong. We are the only faction that is heavily affected by hunting restrictions, by a wide margin. Every other city/faction gets one or two areas that they can't hit (Blackrock/Enverren, Petra/Thera, Tasurk'e, Caer Witrin, Aalen Tsol/Dryads for Mhaldor, Ashtan, Hashan, Cyrene and Eleusis, respectively) - meanwhile, we're kind of saddled with the fact that it's easier for us to list the places that are legit to bash, than the ones that aren't. 

I personally don't have much of a dog in the fight - I bash, but not often and not with great enthusiasm - but a lot of people who enjoy that sort of thing are innately hamstrung. Hopefully we can get some stuff in the works to help make it a little bit more enjoyable for the players. 

Kresslack

All else fails, go diving. Plenty of fish and sea spiders and sea dragons to kill, and it's a decent challenge.

Tesha

Targ is fine with bashing, just have to find different areas. Alternatively you can utterly monopolize specific midbie areas and be fine.

Aodfionn

Tesha said:

Targ is fine with bashing, just have to find different areas. Alternatively you can utterly monopolize specific midbie areas and be fine.

Gtfo my arcadia/mysia

Silvarien

Kresslack said:

Caladbolg said:

Kresslack said:

Silvarien said:

Kresslack said:

There are a lot of quests available which can earn you a lot of gold in a fairly short period of time, but doing tasks and running errands. I would like to see more, if and where applicable, but the main thing is just learning them. @Mariya was the first person to show me how worthwhile these can really be, if you take the time to seek them out and learn them.

I think one of the issues questing faces is that people are encouraged to just go kill things for gold, which also ruins things in a lot of cases for people who are trying to do the quests. I can't tell you how many times I've been in the middle of a quest, and someone came in and killed everyone involved. It's a very frustrating experience.

@Kresslack : I agree that it's rude and frustrating, but the denizens are usually aligned with this or that. For example, while I hunted to dragon in Morindar there were some unique quest-related denizens and when people asked me not to kill them I didn't. But from an RP standpoint, it makes no sense to kill an army of feyrs and nel'dorath and leave Lavarin the Shah intact when he's the one basically running the whole circus.

I was more pointing out the 'mindlessly kill everything' mentality that seems prevalent. While I realize it will likely not change, it does not (from an RP standpoint) make sense for someone to kill everything they come across in any area, especially if they've not taken the time to glean some basic understanding of the area and its inhabitants. Unless, of course, you're playing a sociopath (or a Mhaldor, there's relatively little difference between the two. Spread Suffering. Hail Hydra Sartan.)

This is actually one of the biggest pains of playing a targossian and trying to bash.

Your like let's go hunt mog cause mog is awesome exp, nope innocents let's go kill tir murdan because everyone bashes there must be amazing exp nope innocents.

Adds alot of non mindlessly killing everything flavor when you have to try to figure out if somethings innocent or not. especially when your guideline is, I found a cool place. what is this place there's a guy hi guy are you an innocent *say nothing* or like on Meropis the bloody murderer dwarfs are some how innocents?

But anyways, my point is unless im missing something since I typically avoid the pve scene it's pretty hard to actually tell if you should kill something or not, and I believe most bashing places go by word of mouth of what's awesome and what's not.

I'm really not sure what the rules are for you guys, having never been on that side of the faction spectrum. As an avid explorer, though, I can tell you there are usually some environmental based clues relating to the culture and inhabitants.

Some of them of course are not going to be blatantly obvious, such as in a place like Manara or Hrridan (spelling?), but in many instances they -are- there, it just takes giving some attention to your surroundings. I think many people do not do that as they run around with verbose room description set, and in that case are missing a lot of flavour and history and clues that people spent hours developing around an area.

There are areas in which it's usually obvious some are just denizens living and not bothering anyone, such as the Tsol'aa, perhaps? Then there are areas in which the denizens will outright just try to kill you, because they can, and because that's their prerogative, such as in Lower Azdun.

At the end of the day, I think it more boils down to, in your described situation, the used definition of 'innocent' and who gets to decide how it applies to certain areas and their inhabitants, even as many areas house denizens which play both sides of the spectrum.

@Kresslack : I've always been innocents-related and it's actually a restriction I've personally liked and found logical. For example, if you're a Paladin going to Manara burrow, it's a little sad to kill the starving chained-up slaves and you get XP for them dying horribly. I know there are people that don't mind the XP, but some people want to role-play-out the being kind to people of that sort or in that situation. I've never really had trouble finding a hunting ground because while I was restricted, there was always some area like Morindar that I could run off to.

Shirszae

I don't know. Some of those slaves in Manara are so abused that death could be a kind of release to them. Or at least could be roleplayed as one.

Silvarien

Shirszae said:

I don't know. Some of those slaves in Manara are so abused that death could be a kind of release to them. Or at least could be roleplayed as one.

@Shirszae : in a way you're right, but I wish instead there was a key to unchain literally all of them and let them go. Or just break the chains with weapons. I know there's a way to save some, but I mean all the slaves in the entire area.

Kresslack

What about the dryad on the torture rack in redacted, begging for you to kill her? There's no way to free her from her shackles, so then the choice becomes...kill her and end her suffering or leave her to it.