Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
- 6.2K All Categories
- 3.1K Everything Achaea
- 1.5K North of Thera
- 26 Archives of the Terraformer
- 257 The Matsuhama Arena
- 885 The Golden Dais of Creation
- 299 The Scarlattan Theatre
- 149 The Blank Canvas
- 2K Getting Help
- 412 General Questions
- 258 Quick Class Questions
- 1.3K Tech Support
- 313 Client Help
- 486 Curing Systems and Scripts
- 841 Off-Topic
- 255 The Wander Inn
- 586 The Universal Membrane
- 298 Class Discussions
- 298 Individual Class Sections
- 20 Alchemist
- 9 Apostate
- 30 Blademaster
- 9 Depthswalker
- 14 Druid
- 4 Infernal
- 20 Jester
- 19 Magi
- 34 Monk
- 11 Occultist
- 8 Paladin
- 7 Priest
- 29 Runewarden
- 18 Sentinel
- 26 Serpent
- 20 Shaman
- 9 Sylvan
Comments
It's a reasonable request but I'm concerned about the unanticipated consequences.
Also I hate the term 'bashed out', just go to another area even if it is slightly below you.
I think a lot of people DO go to areas that are "below" them, partly because the consensus is that it's actually more efficient to do something like that than it is to hunt areas that are even remotely risky for you, especially as you get into levels 70 and up probably. And that can probably put players in even more direct competition for resources in certain brackets. The lower level player is still bashing things that are "challenging" (where he might die occasionally) and that actually still makes sense for him, and now, the bigger players are going to go to those areas too. So besides just being a big player base that probably doesn't have enough resources overall, there is probably more overlap at certain levels, and at certain times of day than may have been anticipated.
People can like or not like the term "bashed out" but it's clearly a real thing, and it's even more clear (or should be) to anyone who's played some of the other IRE games where yes, even if your "favorite" area is bashed out (which is far less of a problem in the first place), you really do just toddle on to another area that is almost as good.
I rarely create newbies, but the one I do have (which I'm keeping, although it's on hold indefinitely) isn't THAT old, and my experience was that even the newbie areas (where older players are kept out) experience intense competition for meager bashing/quest resources. It would have been a fairly awful experience if I'd been an actual newbie. The hunting situation in Achaea is one of the bigger reasons I'm not over here much (and certainly don't hunt much when I am). From what I can tell, all of the other IRE games are in better shape hunting wise (by a large margin) than Achaea is. Being a newbie in both Lusternia and Imperian was much better, and plentiful bashing resources don't seem to be a problem in either game at higher levels either. To be fair, those games actually need people (especially poor old Lusternia, but apparently they drove their conflict straight into the ground) so if they suddenly had a large influx of players, there's a good chance they wouldn't be prepared either. That said, I also noticed that they are both more generous with newbies, and the mobs repop VERY quickly.
But Achaea is the IRE flagship, normally the first IRE game people try, and the bottom line is that being a newbie in Achaea felt like trying to stock up on canned goods in a Walmart right before a hurricane, and the whole game sort of feels like that, really. I mean, another especially apt example is the bazaars, where, even if you're actually around for them, and run right over to have a look, you often don't even get to SEE all of the items in the shops, much less buy them... You walk into one of the shops and the sheer number of people in the room instantly forces your screen to scroll up. That whole "see the tuna fleets clearing the sea out" aspect is sometimes just "annoying", but it also kills a lot of that sense of being in a relatively untouched, abundant magical world.
Really, I suppose my point is to avoid having one favourite area, or two favourite areas. Get lots.
- With sharp, crackling tones, Kyrra tells you, "The ladies must love you immensely."
- (Eleusian Ranger Techs): Savira says, "Most of the hard stuff seem to have this built in code like: If adventurer_hitting_me = "Sarathai" then send("terminate and selfdestruct")."
- Makarios says, "Serve well and perish."
- Xaden says, "Xaden confirmed scrub 2017."
Well, YES. The last time I went hunting, I took Sena's advice to go to places that are pretty out of the way, and also not "great" hunting. I still had my IRE membership (which was maxed) that I finally cancelled a few weeks ago. It was... well, pretty much as advertised. I didn't die (although I actually had to be more careful than you'd think as a pretty artied out level 81 slumming it in relatively low level areas) and the XP yield was pretty meager even with a maxed out IRE membership, but, as has been discussed at length, I produced a (small) net gain.
Given the overall situation, I think it was very solid advice, and that's the problem as far as I am concerned - that the smartest thing to do is to get as far from the main part of the game as you can, so you can hunt things that could almost never kill you (ideally not even if you lag horribly or even DC), and whose other main selling point is pretty much that (mostly) no one else is bothering to kill them.
I also took a couple trips down to Meropis around that time, because I like poking around down there anyway, and hunted a little bit (carefully, since I wasn't sure how powerful some things might be). I doubt I'd like doing that walk all the time though (and I was able to ship return to mainland). On that note, I realize you feel you'd "still have a decent array" without it, but I'd also say that having to have a pebble, or a friend with a ship docked at a remote island for you in order to have a "pretty good" set of bashing options would definitely be a bad thing (and I say that as a certified artie whore who opted against buying that pebble, but does have two ships).
Well, "always leave them wanting more" is probably pretty true for a certain kind of player. I mean, that is sort of the "addict" model, and I'm sure that can work really well for certain player profiles. I do wonder if IRE has some sort of "profile" on what kind of player might like each game (maybe, I mean, I would want that if I were you guys) and yes, Achaea does seem to fit this model the most. I think it served Achaea especially well in its younger years when its core base was younger. You guys have toned it down somewhat as those players grew up and entered the workforce en masse (but still, Achaea probably most "intense" player base).
That said, I honestly think that a lot of people just don't really understand that IRE has a whole array of games that, even though the basic mechanics really are pretty similar, have differences that really matter, depending on what you're looking for. Just as importantly, it seems like a lot of those crucial changes are relatively recent. So if you did wander over and try them in the distant past, you unfortunately are even more likely to dismiss them (I did, for the longest time). In short, I do see players who are clearly frustrated with the "addict" model here, and probably really would like one of the other games better.