If/Else If/Else

[Deleted User]

Hello from Achaea's coders!

We've been hard at work on various backend updates this year, some with results that are more visible to you and some with results that you don't see as directly. Beyond general bugfixing and new content, there are always things to do though, more things we'd like to do than we have time to do!

For our next focus, we couldn't make up our minds between a few different backend projects, so we're asking for some input on what we should work on next. Here are the choices:

1. A better, unified backend for recipes (anything that uses ingredients, like Remedies and Augmentation, not just for Cooking!).

• This will simplify and unify a lot for us behind the scenes. Conjuration and Enchanting would probably benefit the most! The goal is to retain the flavour of the tradeskills (and bring back some lost flavour for Remedies), reduce the need for client scripts, and give us the ability to add other learnable recipes in the future, perhaps even outside of typical skill learning.

2. Work on player house security.

• For a long time, people have been frustrated by the security of player housing: what seems like it should be among the safest places is in some ways the most risky place to spend time. Simultaneously, housing can sometimes also be used as a place to hide from consequences in a way that we don't find very healthy for the game. We've spent some time thinking about this before, but this choice would likely take more thinking and more design time than #1. Accordingly, we don't know if or how this would affect ship housing at this stage.

3. Screw all that and spend some more time with the IDEAs list.

• This would involve shifting our focus to implementing many of the approved one-off ideas. We probably still wouldn't get to all of them (there are a lot of them!), and if you are hoping we would get to yours, please bear in mind when voting that this is no guarantee that yours will be one we'll end up getting to!

Note that we'll likely be fairly busy during the holidays, and much of the work will probably remain somewhat invisible even once we start plugging away at it in earnest. We'll leave the voting up until then!

Ysela

All three look like good options to me. Hope you get to number two or three eventually, no matter which one ends up number one.

Azare

While the first two do have merit, the third is the only one accessible to all players (at least early on). I've seen people submitting ideas about being able to add comments to ideas, a command for showing new ideas like NSTAT does, and a way to look a list of ideas that you haven't read yet.

(none of these are my ideas, I just saw them submitted and not gain traction)

Ismay

Personally, I think that more focus should be put on things that the players complain about. Areas such as seafaring and some of the promotions, for example.

Asmodron

I thank you for your hard work, but in all earnest I expected the options to pertain to more game changing fixes and implementations. I look at these and if they are the options for what is to be the focus for the first quater of 2019, then I cant help but feel disheartened.

Wicella

While I would love recipe oriented stuff to get fixed, seeing the idea people have worked hard on get implemented would be great!

Prythe

Ideas is a real time look at what is and isn't working. The balance of the projects are important, but IDEAS reflect much more global needs and thoughts.

Sobriquet

There are some really dumb ideas in that list though. 

Melodie

IDEAs was a super tempting option, but honestly making player housing more generally functional (both with security and with other things) would make me happy as a clam.

(Also plug for clan-owned housing too, please. Plug plug plug.)

Sobriquet

To add something useful, I would like to see Player housing become more of a thing. 

Jinsun

Reads thread after hearing many unified calls to fix seafaring including dedicated threads and sees that recipes and house security are getting the dedication, NOPE. 

Minifie

Jinsun said:

Reads thread after hearing many unified calls to fix seafaring including dedicated threads and sees that recipes and house security are getting the dedication, NOPE. 

this is just the first thing, and something they probably have ideas and plans on how to approach it, while seafaring they still have to think about, draft and plan potential changes. I don't see the problem here?

Solnir

Azare kinda hit it on the head in my opinion. Housing is for a smaller section of the population, as are recipes, but out of just the IDEAs I've read myself they cover a much larger percentage of the playerbase. And I don't even read them as often as I should.

Makarios

Jinsun said:

Reads thread after hearing many unified calls to fix seafaring including dedicated threads and sees that recipes and house security are getting the dedication, NOPE. 

This is the list of things we've not started on yet.

(That might have been a spoiler, who knows!)

Jinsun

Makarios said:

Jinsun said:

Reads thread after hearing many unified calls to fix seafaring including dedicated threads and sees that recipes and house security are getting the dedication, NOPE. 

This is the list of things we've not started on yet.

(That might have been a spoiler, who knows!)

Hope is all we need! Thank you!

Dochitha

Revamp is good . Probably helps future ideas development too! I also agree, ideas tend to show global demand, especially if there are repeated ones . But whichever way, is progress worth thanking! Awesome work you guys!

Antonius

Sobriquet said:

There are some really dumb ideas in that list though. 

The list you see isn't the approved list, though. The really dumb ones generally don't get enough support to even be considered, let alone approved.

Ygia

Ideas go into consideration once they hit 10 support. All the ones on the list you see have less than that.

Sobriquet

Antonius said:

Sobriquet said:

There are some really dumb ideas in that list though. 

The list you see isn't the approved list, though. The really dumb ones generally don't get enough support to even be considered, let alone approved.

This is a blessing. Still makes me wince at some of the things being suggested.

[Deleted User]

To be clear, this is about the smaller, more backgrounded projects that we're usually quietly working on alongside larger, more visible changes. Often, things that seem like small changes mentioned in an off-hand Announce post are the result of these medium-size backend projects.

It doesn't mean that whatever's chosen is all we're working on or all that will get done, or that all of us will necessarily be working on the project as a priority (certainly not for the whole quarter). And while certain things might not have made the list of options here because we're unlikely to work on them soon, other things aren't on here because we're already sure that we're going to be working on them, and don't need to put them to a vote. Likewise, the losing options from this poll certainly aren't off the table for future development.

Accipiter

Player Housing Security - I go dormant fairly often and come back to it being locked up because no one replaced they eye sigils and someone souled in and made a wormhole or something.

Please just make the doors to houses from the subdivision unable to be walked through as a soul if you aren't going to actually focus on it /hope

Aereidhna

I voted for one, then thought about it more.

My personal preference is for 2 because I think it will most substantially impact RP and “flavor" of the game - and will trickle out to things like furnishing,  use of items intended for houses (and thus money spent on customisations), etc. It would certainly mean a lot to me if I could encourage people to use houses more without feeling like it’s a huge risk to city security. I know there has to be SOME risk to avoid people using houses as a way to escape RP/interaction/consequences. But the way it's currently set up, my experience is that houses get very little use, which is frankly depressing. Some of my best RP experiences with groups of people have been in my house (including hosting city-wide parties/events, which would be an awesome opportunity to have more often, but currently just feels like you're putting out a beacon for a raid).

That said, 1 would also be great and would probably make the most difference for the most people, given that a lot of people use the mentioned tradeskills, and a lot more have need of them (particularly enchantments, which I've been actually putting to use recently).

Omi

Housing, I would love to be able to utilize my house for more RP events and such. People tend to spend alot of gold and time building houses as well, it kinda sucks that it's something rarely used/shown off. Omi takes people to his house for conversations quite often, but I'd like him to be able to hang around more frequently and recieve visitors.

Drauko

I used to use a house as a private library and study. Never really had many folks over though. More house parties/gatherings would be cool. 

Dupre

Houses are awful and some people's room descriptions (or even totally blank ones) make me wanna hurl

Mathilda

houses are awful because the current mechanics surrounding them don't really encourage people to invest time/energy/creativity to make a really cool-looking house

(except for the valiant few @Kyrra @Jurixe)

Melodie

Uncultured swine!

Aralaya

Excuse you I have a pretty house!
Albeit not one I can enter anymore, but it's pretty!

Dupre

Pretty awful

Penwize

Honestly, I'd really like to request a fourth option: devote significantly more time to fixing bugs.  My list of BUGs filed keeps growing, and a lot of them aren't minor.  A non-zero number of them are major, paid-for features flat out not working, that have sat languishing in the bug list for months.

Sobriquet

But. New class!