Ask Your Producer: Spring 2016

Melodie

What are some of your current projects that's going to be getting put out soon-ish (like over the next couple of months). Obviously classleads is there, but what about things like more ship updates and so on? Mechanical or roleplay (or a mix thereof) all count. Curious what the current layout is.

Have you made any progress on re: other clan ideas/updates (from the Golden Dias thread)? Is clan housing (maybe just for families) going to be a thing? Anything else that might be interesting?

What are your thoughts on how the current cities are running? Do you feel any cities are doing anything in particular well, or poorly? Any wishes on what you think would be good for them to do?

Can you give us an idea of the amount of Gods-in-training we have at the moment, or perhaps any hints of any Gods we may be yet to see in the upcoming months/year? (Rip Mortori)

Jonathin

Antonius said:

Tecton said:

I'm pretty much in the same camp, maybe a different part though, as Antonius. I don't really care about weapons, becuase I've got artie weapons, so it's a non-issue for me.

Since there is no artie armour, would you be opposed to making some of the descriptors to extend the life of armour or a weapon depending on the rank of smith that it requires?

Atalkez

Tecton said:

I could potentially see a "repair" ability being added to the forging skills to maintain their own weapons and armour for a percentage of the initial commodity cost or something (completely spitballing here, no promises).

This was suggested before, I believe. It seems to be the best way to solve some of the issues Antonius is mentioning. If you shell out 120,000 for a fullplate, you can actually keep it in perpetuity with a bit of upkeep. Increases the realism of smithing, imo. 

As it is now, you're better off getting a plain fullplate for 25-30k, since the 120,000 one has next to no difference in functionality/benefit/longevity.

Josoul

1) Does the Staff of Nicator have custom powers for every owner or always the same 10% eq/bal bonus?

2) If yes on above, how are the custom powers chosen (eg. existing arties powers, discontinued auctions, new original powers, other) and care to share some such past powers?

3) We dont have icons, and wont have them in the foreseeable future it seems, which means we cant get alchemists. Icon alchemists are needed in a certain area to unlock a certain 'thing' though. Will that remain locked or you just had forgotten about it so will now fix it to use something else? And had it reached 50% completion before icons went POOF or is it up to admins to decide when enough alchemists are put in use?

4) Couple years ago we were seeing a new god portrait every month or so. Are we going to ever see a portrait for the missing living ones? Aegis, Lupus, Pandora, Prospero, Thoth (and Tecton).

5) Many people were not able to get to see 'the arena of ages' because damn timezones. Uhm, was it a one of a time thing or supposed to repeat itself more often than once per rl year?

6) Same as above for 'the Motley crew'.

7) What is the main killroute of the new class going to be? Prep, momentum or lock?

8) Before they were made into things you get when you spend money, talismans were designed to expand the bashing rewards (dragon, azatlan). Are we going to see any time soon new talismans in existing areas or has that been sidetracked in favor of other projects?

Tecton

Melodie said:

What are some of your current projects that's going to be getting put out soon-ish (like over the next couple of months). Obviously classleads is there, but what about things like more ship updates and so on? Mechanical or roleplay (or a mix thereof) all count. Curious what the current layout is.

Have you made any progress on re: other clan ideas/updates (from the Golden Dias thread)? Is clan housing (maybe just for families) going to be a thing? Anything else that might be interesting?

What are your thoughts on how the current cities are running? Do you feel any cities are doing anything in particular well, or poorly? Any wishes on what you think would be good for them to do?

Can you give us an idea of the amount of Gods-in-training we have at the moment, or perhaps any hints of any Gods we may be yet to see in the upcoming months/year? (Rip Mortori)

1) Upcoming projects I can talk about... hrrm.
    - PVE adjustments and rebalancing.
    - Ship and seafaring skill updates
    - Changes to forceboarding and that aspect of ship combat.
    - Further clan updates, including clan housing.
    - Some bashing area changes
    - Newbie storyline expansion

2) See above!

3) Mostly pretty well! Each city has peaks and troughs of activity, naturally, but I don't think any city is doing anything poorly.

4) A few celani in various stages of training in the program at the moment. As to gods or hints, nothing I can say.

Tecton

Josoul said:

1) Does the Staff of Nicator have custom powers for every owner or always the same 10% eq/bal bonus?

2) If yes on above, how are the custom powers chosen (eg. existing arties powers, discontinued auctions, new original powers, other) and care to share some such past powers?

3) We dont have icons, and wont have them in the foreseeable future it seems, which means we cant get alchemists. Icon alchemists are needed in a certain area to unlock a certain 'thing' though. Will that remain locked or you just had forgotten about it so will now fix it to use something else? And had it reached 50% completion before icons went POOF or is it up to admins to decide when enough alchemists are put in use?

4) Couple years ago we were seeing a new god portrait every month or so. Are we going to ever see a portrait for the missing living ones? Aegis, Lupus, Pandora, Prospero, Thoth (and Tecton).

5) Many people were not able to get to see 'the arena of ages' because damn timezones. Uhm, was it a one of a time thing or supposed to repeat itself more often than once per rl year?

6) Same as above for 'the Motley crew'.

7) What is the main killroute of the new class going to be? Prep, momentum or lock?

8) Before they were made into things you get when you spend money, talismans were designed to expand the bashing rewards (dragon, azatlan). Are we going to see any time soon new talismans in existing areas or has that been sidetracked in favor of other projects?

1) Some stay the same, some differ.
2) Usually something new, and you'd have to ask the previous holders if they found theirs!
3) I'll look into that for you.
4) I'd like to get them done, yeah. I'll have to chase Sarapis up and see what the plan is there.
5) It's possible that you'll see this again.
6) This was just a one-time thing, but the team is always encouraged to run fun events like this whenever possible.
7) Multiple!
8) No immediate plans, due to the many other projects already on the cards, but yes, new talisman sets for in-game activities will happen in the future.

Melodie

Tecton said:

1) Upcoming projects I can talk about... hrrm.
    - PVE adjustments and rebalancing.
    - Ship and seafaring skill updates
    - Changes to forceboarding and that aspect of ship combat.
    - Further clan updates, including clan housing.
    - Some bashing area changes
    - Newbie storyline expansion

So clan housing will be a thing?! Oh man, that's fantastic. Is it going to be for families only, or open to all clans? This will include already-made houses, not just new houses, as well?

Time to start fundraising, I think.

Tecton

Melodie said:

Tecton said:

1) Upcoming projects I can talk about... hrrm.
    - PVE adjustments and rebalancing.
    - Ship and seafaring skill updates
    - Changes to forceboarding and that aspect of ship combat.
    - Further clan updates, including clan housing.
    - Some bashing area changes
    - Newbie storyline expansion

So clan housing will be a thing?! Oh man, that's fantastic. Is it going to be for families only, or open to all clans? (I'm asking because I may need to start really cracking down on getting funds stocked away)

Current thinking is for families, but nothing set in stone as yet.

Antonius

Atalkez said:

Tecton said:

I could potentially see a "repair" ability being added to the forging skills to maintain their own weapons and armour for a percentage of the initial commodity cost or something (completely spitballing here, no promises).

This was suggested before, I believe. It seems to be the best way to solve some of the issues Antonius is mentioning. If you shell out 120,000 for a fullplate, you can actually keep it in perpetuity with a bit of upkeep. Increases the realism of smithing, imo. 

As it is now, you're better off getting a plain fullplate for 25-30k, since the 120,000 one has next to no difference in functionality/benefit/longevity.

To be perfectly honest, I don't care about the cosmetic descriptors from forging itself, what I want is the ability to fully customise suits of armour, and that's only worth doing if it's non-decay and resetting, because that makes it a one time cost, not an ongoing one. The convenience of non-decay is that you never have to keep track of how many months you have left and don't have to worry about losing items if you go dormant. I have a number of artefacts that are customised to go along with my customised fullplate armour, so even when I'm forced to wear other types of armour due to class I'd still like to be able to have it match. A repair/ongoing upkeep ability gives me none of what I want, so from my end doesn't solve any of the issues I have with the current system, and I'd be really disappointed if that's the best we ever got.

Skarash

With the proliferation on the new, non-creditsale promos,  would you consider orgs getting a kick-back to purchases of these that are in line with the kick-backs given for creditsales. I don't want to seem greedy here - but really cities especially, over the years have evolved in such a way that their main source of revenue are these creditsale kickbacks, despite my attempts to diversify at least Ashtan's sources of revenue. 

Tecton

Antonius said:

Atalkez said:

Tecton said:

I could potentially see a "repair" ability being added to the forging skills to maintain their own weapons and armour for a percentage of the initial commodity cost or something (completely spitballing here, no promises).

This was suggested before, I believe. It seems to be the best way to solve some of the issues Antonius is mentioning. If you shell out 120,000 for a fullplate, you can actually keep it in perpetuity with a bit of upkeep. Increases the realism of smithing, imo. 

As it is now, you're better off getting a plain fullplate for 25-30k, since the 120,000 one has next to no difference in functionality/benefit/longevity.

To be perfectly honest, I don't care about the cosmetic descriptors from forging itself, what I want is the ability to fully customise suits of armour, and that's only worth doing if it's non-decay and resetting, because that makes it a one time cost, not an ongoing one. The convenience of non-decay is that you never have to keep track of how many months you have left and don't have to worry about losing items if you go dormant. I have a number of artefacts that are customised to go along with my customised fullplate armour, so even when I'm forced to wear other types of armour due to class I'd still like to be able to have it match. A repair/ongoing upkeep ability gives me none of what I want, so from my end doesn't solve any of the issues I have with the current system, and I'd be really disappointed if that's the best we ever got.

I can see where you're coming from, it's just a matter of striking a balance between that convenience and the long term viability of the tradeskill. 

Tecton

Skarash said:

With the proliferation on the new, non-creditsale promos,  would you consider orgs getting a kick-back to purchases of these that are in line with the kick-backs given for creditsales. I don't want to seem greedy here - but really cities especially, over the years have evolved in such a way that their main source of revenue are these creditsale kickbacks, despite my attempts to diversify at least Ashtan's sources of revenue. 

No plans to, no.

Kayeil

Woohoo! Just to add to Josoul's post.... would LOVE to see more God portraits. Especially Lady Pandora and Lord Prospero.

Asmodron

Will the new class be focused upon physical capabilities or magical in nature?

Tecton

Asmodron said:

Will the new class be focused upon physical capabilities or magical in nature?

More the latter than the former.

Penwize

I know I've asked this in the past, sort of, but what's the state of the mortal builder program?  Does it still exist, is it still in use, and can people still apply for it?  Is there a need or desire for mortal builders at this point?

Kayeil

How'd the Pirates of Meropis get a special area to themselves, and how could the Mariners Guild go about acquiring their own thing if they were interested?

Tecton

Penwize said:

I know I've asked this in the past, sort of, but what's the state of the mortal builder program?  Does it still exist, is it still in use, and can people still apply for it?  Is there a need or desire for mortal builders at this point?

It's on hiatus at the moment. I've pondered reopening it with a different structure and seeing if we'd have better success with it, but it's not something that's high on the priority list at the moment.

Tecton

Kayeil said:

How'd the Pirates of Meropis get a special area to themselves, and how could the Mariners Guild go about acquiring their own thing if they were interested?

Would be something that the High Clan would need to organise through their patron.

Antonius

Tecton said:

Antonius said:

Atalkez said:

Tecton said:

I could potentially see a "repair" ability being added to the forging skills to maintain their own weapons and armour for a percentage of the initial commodity cost or something (completely spitballing here, no promises).

This was suggested before, I believe. It seems to be the best way to solve some of the issues Antonius is mentioning. If you shell out 120,000 for a fullplate, you can actually keep it in perpetuity with a bit of upkeep. Increases the realism of smithing, imo. 

As it is now, you're better off getting a plain fullplate for 25-30k, since the 120,000 one has next to no difference in functionality/benefit/longevity.

To be perfectly honest, I don't care about the cosmetic descriptors from forging itself, what I want is the ability to fully customise suits of armour, and that's only worth doing if it's non-decay and resetting, because that makes it a one time cost, not an ongoing one. The convenience of non-decay is that you never have to keep track of how many months you have left and don't have to worry about losing items if you go dormant. I have a number of artefacts that are customised to go along with my customised fullplate armour, so even when I'm forced to wear other types of armour due to class I'd still like to be able to have it match. A repair/ongoing upkeep ability gives me none of what I want, so from my end doesn't solve any of the issues I have with the current system, and I'd be really disappointed if that's the best we ever got.

I can see where you're coming from, it's just a matter of striking a balance between that convenience and the long term viability of the tradeskill. 

I understand that, I just think there are few enough people who would actually do it when considering the costs involved that it wouldn't be a problem. Most people would continue to buy armour from smiths because that's BY FAR the cost effective route, and they don't care about the convenience (enough to justify paying such a large amount) or the ability to customise items.

Right now I can buy a suit of splintmail for about 6k, and I'll have to buy six suits of it per RL year. That's 36k per RL year on splintmail. Let's say I can go to some denizen and make my armour non-decay for a cost of 360,000 sovereigns (because it makes the math easy); that's 10 RL years worth of armour costs upfront just for the ability to customise the description and not worry about losing that 50 credit payment for the description. Or let's say that through some forging magic an adventurer smith can take my 360,000 sovereigns and create a suit of non-decay armour for me; they've just made what they'd make from me personally in 10 RL years worth of time. The chances that we're both going to be playing consistently for the next 10 years are slim, so they've actually come out ahead in what they'd reasonably expect to earn from my business personally as an armour smith.

Of course, if everybody opted to do that we'd have a problem. It would be great for current armour smiths because they'd get a big increase in earnings at that particular point in time, in exchange for not making any more gold out of that customer, but then future armour smiths wouldn't have any customers at all. However, in reality nowhere close to "everybody" would opt to do it (because it's not even close to being cost effective) and because there's a pretty constant influx of new characters/players who need to buy armour, and at least some of them are going to buy from the new armour smiths.

Rom

Any plans or ideas on reinvigorating interest in 1v1 combat outside of the stellar balancing thats been going on?

Thinking things like a Matsuhama-esque God/player org (tall order) or a rework of the combat ranking system (anonymity, less ways to 'game' it, more unique prize title or honor/recognition), or something entirely different.

Tecton

Rom said:

Any plans or ideas on reinvigorating interest in 1v1 combat outside of the stellar balancing thats been going on?

Thinking things like a Matsuhama-esque God/player org (tall order) or a rework of the combat ranking system (anonymity, less ways to 'game' it, more unique prize title or honor/recognition), or something entirely different.

I'd pondered a random selection combat rankings overhaul (where you'd get randomly paired up against another player in the rankings), but I'm not really sure we've got the participant numbers and timezone diversity for it to work well. The being said, I'd love to see more focus on 1v1, but I don't have any particularly solid plans for changes there.

Cynlael

New class: Balance or EQ-based? Please don't say it's another combined one like Alchemist/Apostate. At the very -least- make it so the bashing attack uses the same as the general combat abilities >.>

Penwize

As dragon numbers continue to grow, and as new players (and supernoobs) seem to be rushing to dragon as a goal more and more often, has your stance changed at all with regards to looking into PvE endgame and enhancing/extending/expanding it for those who love that aspect?

Tecton

Cynlael said:

New class: Balance or EQ-based? Please don't say it's another combined one like Alchemist/Apostate. At the very -least- make it so the bashing attack uses the same as the general combat abilities >.>

You'll have to wait and see!

Tecton

Penwize said:

As dragon numbers continue to grow, and as new players (and supernoobs) seem to be rushing to dragon as a goal more and more often, has your stance changed at all with regards to looking into PvE endgame and enhancing/extending/expanding it for those who love that aspect?

Adding more high-end content is one of our building focuses at the moment.

Penwize

Tecton said:

Penwize said:

As dragon numbers continue to grow, and as new players (and supernoobs) seem to be rushing to dragon as a goal more and more often, has your stance changed at all with regards to looking into PvE endgame and enhancing/extending/expanding it for those who love that aspect?

Adding more high-end content is one of our building focuses at the moment.

...well then, if you're trying to buy my love, it's working.

Is there going to be any additional endgame choices or goals beyond or in addition to dragon?

Trey

Is the real reason we still can't nondecay fullplate that you hate me? (#2387 from Tecton on 01/06/23:27. If you're dead-set on custom armour, we'll probably have artefact armour available in the future.)

How irritating was that abuse potential I found with artefact power transferring to fix?

When will my reflection show who I am inside?

Tecton

Penwize said:

Tecton said:

Penwize said:

As dragon numbers continue to grow, and as new players (and supernoobs) seem to be rushing to dragon as a goal more and more often, has your stance changed at all with regards to looking into PvE endgame and enhancing/extending/expanding it for those who love that aspect?

Adding more high-end content is one of our building focuses at the moment.

...well then, if you're trying to buy my love, it's working.

Is there going to be any additional endgame choices or goals beyond or in addition to dragon?

No plans for rewards beyond/besides dragonhood, no.

Szanthax

Tecton said:

Skarash said:

With the proliferation on the new, non-creditsale promos,  would you consider orgs getting a kick-back to purchases of these that are in line with the kick-backs given for creditsales. I don't want to seem greedy here - but really cities especially, over the years have evolved in such a way that their main source of revenue are these creditsale kickbacks, despite my attempts to diversify at least Ashtan's sources of revenue. 

No plans to, no.

I think this happens... When I bought 10k lessons the city house got 43 credits...