Forums Home Forum Rules Achaea.com Lore Wiki Vote for Achaea! IronRealms.com
Home› Everything Achaea› North of Thera

Achaea and Rewarding Play

12467

Comments

  • CyrCyr
    Laodoke said:
    It’s just a frustrating concept and maybe I need a huge break from the game cause it is no longer even fun. If the same sets weren’t milked so hard on promo months over the last 3 years it would feel different. 
    Burnout is a real thing, and sometimes a break is the only cure.

    Dunn tells you, "I hate you."
    (Party): You say, "Bad plan coming right up."
  • KlendathuKlendathu Eye of the Storm
    Bu.. bu... SHINIES!

    As someone who has been a long time player, and can no longer afford to drop $$$ on credits (apparently, my family having food / somewhere to live / clothes to wear is more important, go figure!), I'm really happy about this change.

    Tharos, the Announcer of Delos shouts, "It's near the end of the egghunt and I still haven't figured out how to pronounce Clean-dat-hoo."
  • SobriquetSobriquet
    Babel said:
    There is much more to Achaea than just collecting promotional pieces and artefacts. I respect that some people choose to play the game this way, but I would encourage everyone to dip their toes into the more fundamentally roleplay heavy things like ritual, civic leadership and IC socializing that benefit very little from your artefact purchases mechanically speaking.

    These things tend to dramatically enhance your enjoyment of the game for a much longer period than having a shiny artefact does. They also make having the shiny artefacts feel a lot more meaningful, too. This doesn't mean that there's not ground for us to tread regarding making Talismans more engaging to interact with from a systems perspective, but still.

    It's rewarding for us in the Garden when players are proactive with their roleplay, and it also lets us make it rewarding for you too, with all the victories and defeats to match.
    My perception of the admin team is the total opposite of this. Talismans, promo items and artefacts are a KEY and Major part of Achaea. If not, why do we have yet another new shop, with new items and new currency? I appreciate the need for new content to keep things fresh but trying to balance things around the enormous miriad of items is beyond frustrating. The cards in particular. The entire game has been revolving around these items from the day Talismans were released. It's also interesting to hear you say that Rituals, RP and interaction are good for the Garden when the God system seems so flawed. You're pretty much the only active Divine, and if you're not, the other interaction is so limited it's not visible. We have so many dormant orders and city patrons and have seen what happens in Ashtan when people like yourself get involved, so it's all well and good saying these things are in Achaea when it's happening to you,  We have nothing elsewhere. 

    The talisman changes are a great one for balancing these items across the player base  and should absolutely be available through bashing, so the changes above are a good one. 

    (Party): Mezghar says, "Stop."
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User]
    edited March 2019
    Sobriquet said:
    You're pretty much the only active Divine, and if you're not, the other interaction is so limited it's not visible.
    Only one that cares to post on the cesspool known as 'the forums', maybe.
  • SobriquetSobriquet
    Trey said:
    It must be exhausting not being able to enjoy anything.
    I wouldn't know, I enjoy an awful lot :)

    (Party): Mezghar says, "Stop."
  • BabelBabel Oblivion
    Penwize said:
    Babel said:
    There is much more to Achaea than just collecting promotional pieces and artefacts. I respect that some people choose to play the game this way, but I would encourage everyone to dip their toes into the more fundamentally roleplay heavy things like ritual, civic leadership and IC socializing that benefit very little from your artefact purchases mechanically speaking.

    These things tend to dramatically enhance your enjoyment of the game for a much longer period than having a shiny artefact does. They also make having the shiny artefacts feel a lot more meaningful, too. This doesn't mean that there's not ground for us to tread regarding making Talismans more engaging to interact with from a systems perspective, but still.

    It's rewarding for us in the Garden when players are proactive with their roleplay, and it also lets us make it rewarding for you too, with all the victories and defeats to match.
    I know this is probably a pretty big derail from the thread's current theme, but I'd like to touch on this, and go a different direction with it.  I wish there was a stronger tie-in with promotional items, artefact powers, talismans, and such.  I wish when asked about how my character can do x, I had an in-character answer and not just, oh I bought x talisman, or oh I pieced together x talisman from a thousand caches.  Even elder dragon sort of has an awkward tie-in because I'm not sure how we're finding parts of dragons, and the talismans don't actually complete to form an item.  It all just feels very meta, and not very well integrated with the game world.  I really try, especially with any of the customised artefacts I have, but there's an ever-expanding list of things that I can't explain better than that.  The in-game customisation system (one of Achaea's greatest strengths) would be a decent solution to this, but that isn't allowed to be used for talismans and such.

    For that matter, I kind of wish there was a way to advance personal stories of collecting power (gaining talismans, significant customisations and new artefacts, etc) that wasn't just uh, a masturbatory ritual or something.  I have absolutely no idea how to approach that, and that's probably a failing on my part, but I so wish it was something available.  It's a multiplayer game, and I doubt anyone wants to sit through a ritual or something dedicated to one person getting an artefact, so I don't really know what the solution there is.  It still feels like something's missing there though, and that feels even more true every time a quest NPC treats my character as weak or stupid (which is about 95% of NPC encounters, let's be honest).
    I agree with you fully here re: having more "worldly" explanations for character growth. There's a lot of work we could do here to make this more believable instead of just handwaving it off as a system thing. The problem arises in that Achaea is really rather big playerbase wise, and the Garden is rather small - it's entirely conceivable that a person could dedicate all of their time purely to fulfilling these kind of "endowment" requests and still have more work than they could reasonably handle.

    The quest NPC thing is a difficult issue since there's a lot of quest text that would need to be rejiggled to reflect a player's reputation, if we could even reliably quantify that in the first place. I understand where you're coming from, though - presuming that you're referring to actual NPC stuff and not Garden-animated denizens. The latter thing we can probably look at.

  • TahquilTahquil
    Next talisman set when completed grants ascension to godhood.
  • SobriquetSobriquet
    Laodoke said:
    Would love to have an active God or Goddess for every faction. I’m jealous of Ashtan for having Babel. A lot of times if you do get following a God or Goddess that is active, a lot of times they disappear without a trace. That would be appreciated way more than any promo and without a doubt enhances the experience in any city or village. 
    This is kind of what I was getting at, you just managed to say it without sounding like an ungrateful arsehole like I did. 

    (Party): Mezghar says, "Stop."
  • ExelethrilExelethril
    That's what you get when you don't compensate ppl for their time, hard to find volunteers 

    [ SnB PvP Guide | Link ]

    [ Runewarden Sparring Videos | Link ]
  • CooperCooper
    Tahquil said:
    Next talisman set when completed grants ascension to godhood.
    If you have completed ALL available talismans, you become a God (until the next talisman set is released, then you become your regular self again and have to complete that one to become a God again).


  • ShirszaeShirszae Santo Domingo
    And you all share the Divine Realm of Loot Boxes, and since everyone hates them so much you all become the villains of the next event, like cheap Bal'met knockoffs  :p

    And you won't understand the cause of your grief...


    ...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.

  • IniarIniar
    Pay to God(tm)
  • CaelanCaelan
    Laodoke said:
    Would love to have an active God or Goddess for every faction. I’m jealous of Ashtan for having Babel. A lot of times if you do get following a God or Goddess that is active, a lot of times they disappear without a trace. That would be appreciated way more than any promo and without a doubt enhances the experience in any city or village. 

    Were you at the ritual Torrent held?  If so, that was to address this very issue. (24 Sarapin? 793)  Still waiting to hear though.. :(

  • LaodokeLaodoke
    I wasn’t @caelan but I’m glad it’s at least being talked about! 😊 
  • AmunetAmunet Spokane, Washington, USA
    Laodoke said:
    Would love to have an active God or Goddess for every faction. I’m jealous of Ashtan for having Babel. A lot of times if you do get following a God or Goddess that is active, a lot of times they disappear without a trace. That would be appreciated way more than any promo and without a doubt enhances the experience in any city or village. 
    We have had long periods of inactivity between volunteers, too. We also had several real-life years between the founding of the Revolutionaries of Chaos and the implementation of Babel as a God-role. There wasn't an active patron for the Chaos faction - or even, really, for the Occultists - during much of the time that I was the Demiurge. We spent a lot of our time begging other Gods/Admin to throw us a bone with events that we would pitch. The key is maintaining the enthusiasm for, and dedication to, your roleplay, no matter how discouraged you might feel. Consistency and persistence are infectious, and your effort will eventually pay off. 
    My avatar is an image created by this very talented gentleman, of whose work I am extremely jealous. It was not originally a picture of Amunet, but it certainly looks a great deal like how I envision her!
  • LaodokeLaodoke
    @amunet thanks for the solid advice. I likely would get a lot more places with a better attitude about things. 😊
  • CyrCyr
    Babel said:
     presuming that you're referring to actual NPC stuff and not Garden-animated denizens. The latter thing we can probably look at.
    So I've been thinking about this regarding Garden-animated stuff a bit recently, and looking back over all of the events I've been involved in that were not strictly order based (and even some that were), I can't think of one where there wasn't at least one, and often more than one Garden-animated denizen that treated the people they were talking with like they were stupid/weak/clumsy/clueless/etc. None of them are terribly egregious by themselves, it's all been fairly justifiable from the denizen's perspective I guess, but it is a pattern that I've seen in my limited playtime on Achaea. Obviously the plural of anecdote is not data, and I don't want you guys to just stop running events, but it just feels like it's become too justifiable a trope that the denizens that get animated for these things are so whatever that even the majorly accomplished player-characters pale in comparison, and that gets a bit boring after awhile as the player. 

    Dunn tells you, "I hate you."
    (Party): You say, "Bad plan coming right up."
  • JiraishinJiraishin skulking
    @Cyr: by 'events' do you just mean denizen interactions, or something larger-scale?
    ________________________
    The soul of Ashmond says, "Always with the sniping."

    (Clan): Ictinus says, "Stop it Jiraishin, you're making me like you."
  • CyrCyr
    Jiraishin said:
    @Cyr: by 'events' do you just mean denizen interactions, or something larger-scale?
    I mean interactions pushing a storyline over a longer period than just a single conversation. Some of them have been pretty small in terms of people involved, and some were pretty big by that metric. 

    Dunn tells you, "I hate you."
    (Party): You say, "Bad plan coming right up."
  • LennLenn
    For a game that literally sells power fantasy via artefacts, Achaea lore loves to belittle adventurers.
  • JiraishinJiraishin skulking
    Cyr said:
    Jiraishin said:
    @Cyr: by 'events' do you just mean denizen interactions, or something larger-scale?
    I mean interactions pushing a storyline over a longer period than just a single conversation. Some of them have been pretty small in terms of people involved, and some were pretty big by that metric. 
    Honestly, I haven't observed the same pattern, but most of my interactions are one-offs.

    That said, I observe and read logs more often than I participate in storyline-type things, and I do kind of know what you mean. I don't really see it as a problem, though. Just like IRL or among adventurers, some denizens are going to be superior assholes. The interactions I've had, even if one-offs, are pretty varied: here's a selection from since I started playing again in August 2018, to add different anecdotes to your anecdotal knowledge.

    -The time deathsights showed Hatha'yin being sacrificed and we went to talk to people who might know about Kashar. I dealt with two denizens then: Kavaya and a priestess of Nerry in his public temple. Said priestess was quite nice. Kavaya was less superior than sarcastic and frustrated that everyone seemed to think she knew everything about Kashar despite  a) being a young slave when she lived there and b) having not seen it for hundreds of years. I loved that interaction, actually.

    -The Wild Hunt event. I know Farrah had a brief interaction with Oberion that didn't go great, but my involvement was a long conversation with Shaylee. She started out saying I'd be 'boring', but ended up seeming entertained and frankly rather flirty.

    -When the orcs attacked Shastaan. I had conversations with four or so denizens, all orcs except for Shanugis. Shanugis was a bit traumatized, the only orc who tried to act superior was bluffing on a really poor hand and ended up openly acknowledging his defeat and slinking away. Because we -were- more powerful than him, and showed it.

    -The chat on religious tolerance  I had with the priest who hangs out outside Eros's temple. Eros himself was very superior and commented on how 'fragile' Jir was, but Eros is also a former Elder God so it does seem pretty appropriate.

    -the raven denizen that randomly showed up in Targ last rl year. Not quite a conversation, definitely a one-off interaction, but it didn't act superior or lofty. It acted like a bird. I liked that bird. More ravens please.


    So I do think there's a good variety in denizen personalities.
    ________________________
    The soul of Ashmond says, "Always with the sniping."

    (Clan): Ictinus says, "Stop it Jiraishin, you're making me like you."
  • CyrCyr
    Like I said, I'd struggle to think of any one time that it was not justifiable (some of them less so than others though) but it is there as a pattern from what I've seen. Most of those event/storyline style things have other denizens who aren't (at least not always) completely dismissing the players as well. I just thought it might be worth bringing up.

    Dunn tells you, "I hate you."
    (Party): You say, "Bad plan coming right up."
  • ShirszaeShirszae Santo Domingo
    I personally like it, because it gives us the excuse to treat them in belittling ways as well.To me its more interesting than perfectly-respectful denizens and people fawning obsequiously over them, even those who clearly don't deserve the treatment.

    And you won't understand the cause of your grief...


    ...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.

Sign In or Register to comment.