Auction Decisions

Atalkez

I kept waffling on posting this to bring it up but I think it's worth discussion and should be pointed out that inconsistent approaches to decisions are really frustrating from a player perspective to deal with.

This current auction is selling a custom angel/baalzadeen customisation, which historically has not been allowed. From what I have heard and seen, this typically was stated that due to the code back-end involved, it just wasn't possible. So either that has changed by back end updates (which should be lauded) or simply is not as much of an issue as once stated.

My problem with this though, is that by auctioning this option off, it effectively means that going forward customisations for this class loyal will not be possible either by normal (customisation) or abnormal (RP-driven/Divine) means because it exists as an auction previously.

It's inconsistent that I can customize my class loyal falcon, and my class loyal serpent, but not my class loyal angel or baalzadeen. It's further frustrating seeing it auctioned off knowing that it's possible, just not for normal players, and only for the people who are willing to spend thousands of credits for it.

I am bidding on the auction, but I really don't like it and I think it's worth a reassessment from the admin level that something like this just really isn't okay. Custom dragon/elemental descriptions are one thing, because those are not allowed otherwise in any capacity. A class loyal though as stated above is seemingly just an arbitrary decision on what can and cannot be changed, and that is super frustrating to contend with and watch happen.

Creativity is a big part of this game, and being able to make your items unique to your character is a huge draw to most players. I would like to see these things offered widespread, not limited to auctions and effectively put behind a paywall that only the elite of the elite can access. It's not a direction that I like seeing the game go down.

tl;dr Make RP and creativity an option for everybody, not those who can spend 4000 credits on an auction.

Saonji

tldr lol

Gurklukke

I had assumed Angels/Balzaadeens would have been already a customisable class loyal here.

I mean we have falcons, snakes etc...

I know we are not Aetolia, but one of the best parts of being a Priest class was personalizing your Angel to be more representative of your faith/roleplay. I understand there has been a precedent already set to have these....then not have these....which is a bit silly if you ask me, it is no different than any other summonable class loyal, pop a collar on it and customise it.

Why charge an exorbitant amount of money for something other classes get at a reasonable cost.

Not everyone is @Seragorn sitting on a hoard of credits.

EDIT: Sorry Seragorn, I just know of your hoard....I know there are others.

Melodie

I agree with @Atalkez wholeheartedly.

This is a discussion that has been kicked around for various kinds of auctions over time, but this one hits a particular sore spot since it's a) Something many have wanted but was never able to access prior due to restrictions, and b) Not only is it suddenly possible, but an auction means it isn't going to be reproducible for most players. I'll even go so far as to say I don't agree with selling custom descriptions in auctions on their own. It's one thing if you get a particular kind of artefact and the team is willing to help you create something - that is completely fine - but selling purely 100% RP descriptions that otherwise serve no benefit beyond telling a (lore-consistent) story really rubs me the wrong way.

In the hopes of having at least a start, I think the current baalzadeen/angel auction should definitely not be a thing, but rather an avenue open to all players by far more reasonable means, BEFORE it becomes a set precedent. I understand descriptions (dragons, elemental forms, viridian forms, deathsights, etc) are already a bit of a done deal, but even so I think options should be discussed to make them more viable, as well. Why can I spend 500cr to custom the mail whistle (on top of 500cr for the item itself, which is still too expensive in my opinion but that's a different battle for a different day) to send mail to anyone at any time, but something like a personal water form description could cost the equivalent of a mostly-running used car?

It's disheartening and embittering for many players who put in a lot of creativity into the game, to only be told their creativity is behind an unreasonable paywall for utterly arbitrary and inconsistent reasons at best, and money-grabbing greed at worst.

Shirszae

I am always a little sad whenever any kind of ability to customise a description is auctioned. Whether elemental or dragon or viridian or now entities like angels or balzadeens, I really wish it was something available to the broader spectrum of players instead of a tiny few.

After all, customisation is probably the most interesting aspect of the game. It doesn't really need to be easily done. Just available outside of dropping a shit-ton of money on it, make it one more longterm goal for the people who care.

Stheno

I have to agree with all of this. Creative gatekeeping has only gotten worse in the few years I've played, and I say that as someone given a fair bit of leeway with designs and customisations in the past. It's deeply discouraging to know that some (meaningful, personal) cosmetic changes are paywalled behind unreal dollar amounts, when these are aspects of a character that can and should be earned through dedicated Order/city/class roleplay, or at least some interaction with the game itself. It closes off that possibility entirely, and favours opening your wallet over engaging with a story. The inconsistency with what will and won't be sold, and when, and to whom (legacy items being another bitter pill) is just unpleasant.

Dochitha

I think otherwise...

I much prefer a game that charges for look and aesthestic, than a game that puts a paywall behind artefacts, lessons, abilities, multiclasses... They could auction more customisation of class loyals in future auctions and with every such auction, ends the customisation of class loyals other than through auctions.

I hope this is a move towards shifting revenue source to look and feel, and in future we see artefacts, items, lessons, multiclass etc all starting to be more affordable and eventually close to free.

But if this is not done because they are shifting revenue strategy, then, I wholeheartedly agree with @Atalkez.

Saonji

@Dochitha

Sobriquet

Slight tangent, but the cost of multi class is ridiculously steep.

Argwin

@Dochitha

You're basically saying that combat stuff should be cheap or free and rp stuff should be expensive. There's already a divide between fighters and rp'ers. Let's not make it worse.

Personally I'm not a fan of anything that's only accessible to players with hoards of ig wealth, but I'm also fairly poor ig so I may be biased.

Shecks

@Atalkez is 100% right.

I'd like to make a similar argument about the artefact armor. It's absolutely stupid that the highest level of class switch allows for instant class switch, but the highest level of morphing armor is very clearly handicapped to 10 minutes purely to sell auction versions without this hindrance. I don't want to use the word "stupid" lightly here, but this feels like an intentional design flaw purely to shill auction armor. And it's not just the cooldown on the paragon, it's the fact that ____ you can't remove the paragon for the entire cooldown. ____

L3 paragon should give instant morph (or optionally, just have L3 rondel match your class switch cooldown so they are in sync). Alternatively, just give it a cooldown but let us remove the damn paragon so we can use our armor. Still makes the auction version far better, without screwing people with normal morphing.

I saw this design decision as basically a kick in the nuts to everyone who bought artefact armor AND bought multiple classes. We have to pay for the class slot, pay for the lessons, pay for more arties, pay for EXTRA lessons, pay for artie armor rondel, pay for the class switch Paragon, then even after paying 1600cr just to be able to WEAR your armor, I come to find you can't actually use it for 10 minutes.

Like for real, my "normal" armor and paragons are like 8,000 credits. Do you really need to force me to buy an auction upgrade (taking a trade-in loss on top of this) in order to actually use it when I change class?

I was confused about how such a silly design mistake could be made, and was hopeful that eventually it would be fixed. Then, I heard about the previous (and now current) artefact armor, which basically works exactly like L2 armor with L3 morphing paragon should work, and realized that purely because of the existence of this armour, it's de facto gauranteed that IRE is never going to actually fix this, and quite probably designed it broken intentionally for this reason.

Very disgruntled about this, as it's extremely misleading (it never mentions that you can't remove the paragon while on cooldown), and forces people who actually want to use multiclass as implemented to either buy MULTIPLE L2 armor sets or forces them to buy extremely expensive auction items (this option only being possible for a few people, as only a few such armour sets exist).

IMO the right way to handle this would be to make the artefact armor do something standard armor doesn't do, and make standard L2 armor, L3 Paragon, and Multiclass work together the way they obviously should work, without auction items.

tl;dr: L3 morphing paragon intentionally doesn't work the way it intuitively should work, purely as a money grab, and the existence of an auction solution to this means it's never going to be fixed.

Dochitha

@Argwin if there's a divide between rper and fighter, is definitely not caused by credits issue. Most likely i believe it's just preference and play style. That reminds me, these are two different segments of revenues, they don't have to choose one over another, so I was wrong. If you want both fight and rp, it's gonna be expensive...

Sobriquet

For Everyone:

- INSERT <paragonID> INTO <armourID> [EMBRASURE 1-3]

 Insert a paragon into an empty embrasure.

- EXPAND <armourID> EMBRASURE WITH <rondelID>

 Expand your armour's number of embrasures with a rondel.

 Up to a maximum of 3 embrasures.

- PRY <armourID> EMBRASURE <1-3>

 Pry a paragon from an embrasure.

 Pry is consumed on use.

 You cannot pry a paragon that is on cooldown.

- PRYALL <armourID>

 With a pryall, pry all paragons from an armour's embrasures at once.

 Pryall is consumed on use.

 You cannot pry a paragon that is on cooldown.

I mean, you are making it too easy now.

That said, I agree that cooldowns should match up with things like Class Swaps and Armour morphing, it seems like a big oversight and pretty sure I've seen the Admins mention it before. Morphing paragon doesn't really make any sense until you are well into multiclass across different armour types anyway

Shecks

@Sobriquet - my point is that it seemed like an oversight until they sold an auction artie to fix the oversight, which 1) means it wasn't an oversight and 2) means it's very unlikely it will be fixed. Sincerely hope I'm wrong ofc.

Eryl

It was not an oversight. The morphing paragon is meant to sacrifice utility for quality of life. The auction gets so expensive specifically for that reason. The auctioned innate morphing armour (that also comes with a free fire glyph thing for PvE) is perfectly fine as an auction.

That said, I continue to think if your class swap is already a 1 minute cooldown, the L3 morphing paragon/armour should get bumped to match it. This only needs to happen for those people who already have the max class swap artie and five classes, though, and if your morphing armour is not level 3, it should not just magically match your class cooldown.

Edit: Tagging @Issam

Shecks

@Eryl That was my suggestion. Just make L3 paragon match your class swap cooldown, if class swap cooldown is lower than 10 min (which applies for 1 min as well as instant class swap). Again, alternatively, just keep the 10min cooldown but let us remove the paragon.

Design oversight or design feature, it's a plague - and neither of them deprecates the auction item which simply has no cooldown at all.

Eryl

Okay pal, but see here you are again with false information.

The auction morphing armor DOES come with the ten minute cool down, unless this year in particular is different. That’s why I tagged Issam - he talks about how annoying it is that his innate morphing armor has a ten minute cool down.

Shecks

Seriously, feel free to chill.

Point is, you can still use all of the slots after morphing it, which is exactly what I was saying should be standard on ALL artefact armor with morphing paragon.

Class aggro timer (which again, has it's own timer which doesn't line up with class swap arties OR armor cooldown) takes care of any kind of abuse, so I don't see any reason at all why there needs to be a cooldown on 6000cr+ non-auction armor that is specifically designed to morph already.

Why does there have to be a penalty for morphing armor at all, aside from the balance required to wear it after you change class? It really blows my mind that it's 850cr + 1600cr + 3000cr+cr for paragons, on top of all the costs of multiclassing, and you still can't actually just multiclass with your armor. Even WITH the auction armor, you can't - and that's dumb.

Can't even argue it's a balance thing at all, because you can easily accomplish this by just getting MULTIPLE L2 rondel shields so you never have to morph it, and have no cooldowns/penalties whatsoever. (as others have pointed out, this is actually cheaper for people who only need 2 types of armor. You can also buy 2 sets of armor with the paragon and ignore the cooldown by just rotating them, so again - it's just a paywall to use the thing you already paid exorbitantly for in the first place.

Atalkez

Yo take that elsewhere. We’re talking about arbitrary limits on creativity in a game that is entirely dependent on the creativity you can put into the world only to then sell that ability back to us.

Stay on topic, please.

Shecks

@Atalkez to be fair, the topic was "Auction Decisions" and your point was pretty much made, but fair enough - your thread your rules.

Argwin

Latest Announce news - the auction in question has been canceled.

Taryius

I am very appreciate of this change, and the pace at which it happened. Thank you Admin! I'm eager knowing the option can remain open or be implemented in other ways, even if it isn't an easy 100cr customisation in the system because of the stringent lore restrictions.

Atalkez

Very excited to see what comes of this change absolutely. I want my angel to reflect my character, and will do whatever I have to do RP-wise to see this become a thing.

Echo'ing Taryius here, thanks for the swift response to this. Really, really appreciated and all my thanks to the team.

Namino

Let's fuckin' goooooo.

Argwin

As a random note on this though. I once asked if I could customise my stationary kit to produce unique letters. I was told that since it required changing code, like the angels and baalzadeens, it would cost 700cr. If, and it's a huge if, they approved a custom angel/baalzadeen I would assume that the cost would be at least that much since angels and baalzadeens are a lot more complicated than letters.

Trey

@Shecks as usual, you might want to fact check yourself before flying off on a tangent on how you have to win an auction. Innate morphing armour just has a slotless power on it, freeing it up for another paragon. It does not eliminate the 10m cooldown

4515h, 5262m, 20200e, 21619w ex|0/0|0/0|0/0|99-morpharmour scale into ringmail

Drawing upon the power of the paragon, you morph a suit of scale mail into a 

suit of ring mail.

4515h, 5262m, 20200e, 21625w ex|0/0|0/0|0/0|99-morpharmour ringmail into scalemail

You have morphed this armour too recently, have patience.

4515h, 5262m, 20200e, 21649w ex|0/0|0/0|0/0|99-cooldowns

Current cooldowns:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Morph armour 146684:          9 minutes and 46 seconds.

In addition, if it's such an annoyance, just morph your armour 10 minutes before you plan on swapping to the next class. You can't swap class for the same time period after a hostile action anyway.

EDIT: ninja'd several posts ago, what I get for reading while working

Melodie

Really appreciate the swift response to the feedback!

I have some unique options I want to explore and I am so ready to spend some creddies to make it happen.

Very excited to see what comes from this!

Dochitha

Admins been so responsive lately! Thank you!