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Best Of
Re: LOVE
A general love to the community at large. Today has been a wild ride, but god it's exhilarating to see QW poppin' and have such big turnout for group combat, and a lot of people seem like they're in revitalized spirits. I'm glad for it.
Edit: Oh and a massive love to the admin team and godspeed! You have your work cut out, but we're all excited.
Edit: Oh and a massive love to the admin team and godspeed! You have your work cut out, but we're all excited.
Mati
6
Re: Announce post #3208: Hello and New Beginnings!
Welcome aboard Ictinus! Brace yourself cause I bet the first question at the town halls will be about mining. 
Neoma
6
Re: Announce post #3207: Important Staff Changes
I'm here to say all the good things I can say about Sam Kendall. 100% am interested in returning if he's taking over.
Xenia
7
Announce post #3208: Hello and New Beginnings!
8/16/2021 at 17:28
Ictinus
Everyone
Hello and New Beginnings!
Hi everyone!
Firstly let me say a big thank you to Jeremy for his warm welcome and for all his support as I start to catch up and orient myself.
I'm Sam, you'll know me as Ictinus here in Aetolia. For the last four and a half years I've worked as Head Builder and Associate/Co Producer in Achaea. My IRE career started a long time ago in 2010 as a player in Aetolia, but in the AP role in Achaea I have had a major hand in virtually every event, every area and content release, and in all of the overall day to day management of the game. I've also spent a massive amount of time on the ground running my own events and storylines: believe me when I say I am enormously passionate about roleplaying and I am here to roll up my sleeves and work.
With all that said, Aetolia is not Achaea, nor do I want it to be. The unique identity of Aetolia is something I want to build upon and nurture while I am at the helm. Some of my key ways of achieving this will include:
1. Minimising the development time spent on promotions and monetisation, instead prioritising making the game as fun and engaging as it can be. Yes, this means more events and more stories. Aetolia's lore and history will be a steep learning curve for me to catch up on, but this return to focus will be something we all work on as a team.
2. Healing the rift between you, the players, and the staff, particularly when it comes to efficient handling of requests, problems, issues, and so on. If you reach out to me, I will answer you.
3. Maintaining an open and ongoing flow of communication. I will do my level best to set realistic expectations and deadlines for projects that you know are in the works, and be honest with you when something gets in the way.
4. Shouldering responsibilities that free up our coders and volunteers to do what they are best at. I know there are several stalled projects in the pipeline at present. We will be looking over these week one and coming up with a plan to eliminate the roadblocks. I want our coders to be able to do passion projects and make shiny new things. I want our Gods to feel empowered with the agency and autonomy to tell compelling stories and create intense experiences and conflicts.
While I continue to situate myself and get up to speed over the next week or so, I will be scheduling two Town Hall meetings. My aim is for everyone to be able to attend at least one of these without being negatively affected by your timezone. I'll announce the dates and times for these as soon as they're decided. Everyone will be welcome. These will be an opportunity for you to get to know me and for me to get to know you, as the FIRST step in an ongoing dialogue. There will certainly be questions I cannot answer yet, but I want to hear your concerns and your ideas so that we can move forward with a distinctly Aetolian vision.
Ultimately, the producer and the Pools as a whole exist for you: to make your experience the absolute best it can be so that you are excited about logging in and immersing yourselves in the world. None of us would exist without you and I am incredibly excited to dive straight in and get my hands dirty. I have great memories of Aetolia from my player days and I hope to be making a great deal more as we look ahead!
To close this out, should you need to get in touch with me, you can reach me via ictinus@aetolia.com. If you have any outstanding requests that you've sent to Tiur, please do send these across to me. There is a lot to get caught up on, but I will make this a high priority so that you are not waiting for responses any longer than absolutely necessary.
Let's get to work!
Penned by my hand on Falsday, the 1st of Ios, in the year 497 MA.
Ictinus
Everyone
Hello and New Beginnings!
Hi everyone!
Firstly let me say a big thank you to Jeremy for his warm welcome and for all his support as I start to catch up and orient myself.
I'm Sam, you'll know me as Ictinus here in Aetolia. For the last four and a half years I've worked as Head Builder and Associate/Co Producer in Achaea. My IRE career started a long time ago in 2010 as a player in Aetolia, but in the AP role in Achaea I have had a major hand in virtually every event, every area and content release, and in all of the overall day to day management of the game. I've also spent a massive amount of time on the ground running my own events and storylines: believe me when I say I am enormously passionate about roleplaying and I am here to roll up my sleeves and work.
With all that said, Aetolia is not Achaea, nor do I want it to be. The unique identity of Aetolia is something I want to build upon and nurture while I am at the helm. Some of my key ways of achieving this will include:
1. Minimising the development time spent on promotions and monetisation, instead prioritising making the game as fun and engaging as it can be. Yes, this means more events and more stories. Aetolia's lore and history will be a steep learning curve for me to catch up on, but this return to focus will be something we all work on as a team.
2. Healing the rift between you, the players, and the staff, particularly when it comes to efficient handling of requests, problems, issues, and so on. If you reach out to me, I will answer you.
3. Maintaining an open and ongoing flow of communication. I will do my level best to set realistic expectations and deadlines for projects that you know are in the works, and be honest with you when something gets in the way.
4. Shouldering responsibilities that free up our coders and volunteers to do what they are best at. I know there are several stalled projects in the pipeline at present. We will be looking over these week one and coming up with a plan to eliminate the roadblocks. I want our coders to be able to do passion projects and make shiny new things. I want our Gods to feel empowered with the agency and autonomy to tell compelling stories and create intense experiences and conflicts.
While I continue to situate myself and get up to speed over the next week or so, I will be scheduling two Town Hall meetings. My aim is for everyone to be able to attend at least one of these without being negatively affected by your timezone. I'll announce the dates and times for these as soon as they're decided. Everyone will be welcome. These will be an opportunity for you to get to know me and for me to get to know you, as the FIRST step in an ongoing dialogue. There will certainly be questions I cannot answer yet, but I want to hear your concerns and your ideas so that we can move forward with a distinctly Aetolian vision.
Ultimately, the producer and the Pools as a whole exist for you: to make your experience the absolute best it can be so that you are excited about logging in and immersing yourselves in the world. None of us would exist without you and I am incredibly excited to dive straight in and get my hands dirty. I have great memories of Aetolia from my player days and I hope to be making a great deal more as we look ahead!
To close this out, should you need to get in touch with me, you can reach me via ictinus@aetolia.com. If you have any outstanding requests that you've sent to Tiur, please do send these across to me. There is a lot to get caught up on, but I will make this a high priority so that you are not waiting for responses any longer than absolutely necessary.
Let's get to work!
Penned by my hand on Falsday, the 1st of Ios, in the year 497 MA.
Autoposter
32
Re: Your Favorite Event
My favorite event in recent memory was Toz's office getting blown up. All of the world stuff was cool and all but exploding office wins it.
Ardent
6
Re: The thing I did
As it is a channel from the game, posting a log of it is valid. I get the consent argument, we certainly use it in regards to RP logs and all. I'm going to say, in this instance, it's posting a log of a conversation and not 'content' that needs to be okayed. It's arbitrary, I know. Drawing attention to OOC behavior and how people are interacting is good. However, the nature of the content... we can pretty much assume this is going to go off the rails.
So, it is good for the community to see this problem and be made aware. But the moment the thread itself veers off into that realm I'll have to close it.
Sidenote: We have discussed making it possible to let the web starter kick people from it. Or maybe add in a sort of non-speaking role where you can hear but not contribute. I know webs and the IGNORE command interact badly. I dunno, I'm open to it if people want to opine. I don't think it will fix anything, but who knows?
So, it is good for the community to see this problem and be made aware. But the moment the thread itself veers off into that realm I'll have to close it.
Sidenote: We have discussed making it possible to let the web starter kick people from it. Or maybe add in a sort of non-speaking role where you can hear but not contribute. I know webs and the IGNORE command interact badly. I dunno, I'm open to it if people want to opine. I don't think it will fix anything, but who knows?
Tiur
6
Re: The thing I did
Considering I've been pasted a handful of Shadow web logs where people are shit talking me and other Spirit players, this isn't really an isolated incident, but rather seems to be the narrative.
I've taken a big step back from Aetolia in terms of how active and engaged I am, partly due to the lack of global events and RP, but also due to the continued smack that's talked about me in OOC webs for IC actions my character does (looking at you Chassity, Didi, Mileta, Rhyot, etc). But apparently you can't call players out for being toxic like this, lest you catch a 3 week forum warning, as per my last post about this in the Pet Peeves thread.
What an absolute joke, because you have people like Elene, Alela, Mjoll (I may have missed others as well!) who try to rein in this behavior but largely go ignored. It's discouraging because some of these people are LEADERS on their tether and are trying to set the tone and make things less shitty, but seem to be spinning their wheels in the mud.
I've taken a big step back from Aetolia in terms of how active and engaged I am, partly due to the lack of global events and RP, but also due to the continued smack that's talked about me in OOC webs for IC actions my character does (looking at you Chassity, Didi, Mileta, Rhyot, etc). But apparently you can't call players out for being toxic like this, lest you catch a 3 week forum warning, as per my last post about this in the Pet Peeves thread.
What an absolute joke, because you have people like Elene, Alela, Mjoll (I may have missed others as well!) who try to rein in this behavior but largely go ignored. It's discouraging because some of these people are LEADERS on their tether and are trying to set the tone and make things less shitty, but seem to be spinning their wheels in the mud.
Sryaen
7
Re: What do you think would improve the game?
None of you are going to like what I have to say and almost all of you are going to smash that 'disagree' button, write up posts about how I'm wrong and essentially argue feelings over facts. But sometimes it's good to have that rock thrown in your ice lake to break up all the ice.
I will start off by saying that Rasani is absolutely right and Aetolia -could- have a paid writer to help streamline events more, a position who's sole focus is content creation, events, and storylines. However, and this is where the button smashing is going to happen, the playerbase of Aetolia doesn't deserve one.
Time after time, event after event, storyline after storyline complaints are made. You can scroll through pages of the forums and find people's aggressive/passive-aggressive complaints about all types of events ranging from org specific related to Apocalypse Now events. You can ask an increasing amount of players about the emails they sent Tiur, Oleis, Razmael, Galleus, Matt, Jeremy, and others about their absolute negative thoughts on various events. You can ask about the overly negative communication people have had verbally in webs/clans regarding a plethora of events that all it amounts to is hating on the event that VOLUNTEERS spent weeks building to accomplish. Even to this day, there are people who are crying out about the whole Bloodloch Rebellion arc going on because "it's taking too long to accomplish". And this is just against the volunteers.
Let's not even get started about the fact that even if there WAS a paid position for a story writer, half of you wouldn't even respect them either. This is held up by the fact that the Celerity change back in 2020 done by Keroc (who made a change based off massive player complaints about people running away from combat) and he stepped down as combat head IN PART due to the players blasting him PERSONALLY via messages and emails about the experimental change. Rumor has it that Keroc was even sent death threats. Come on, people, really?? If you can't respect a long term paid admin about an experiment, what makes you think you're going to be respectful enough for a paid storywriter? If you can barely respect volunteers that DO hold events for you, what makes you think you're going to be respectful enough for a paid storywriter?
In the end, paid admin have stepped away because of the playerbase. Celani have stepped away because of the playerbase. PLAYERS have stepped away because of the playerbase. The players complain about a lack of storyline and content creation and by all means that is true. What the players fail to accept or realize is that they are the reason why storyline and content creation has been dwindling. So much like an unruly child, the players are being punished with the very same thing in which they complain about. And much like an unruly child, you don't get to come out of timeout until you've learned your lesson. A lesson the playerbase -still- hasn't learned.
I will start off by saying that Rasani is absolutely right and Aetolia -could- have a paid writer to help streamline events more, a position who's sole focus is content creation, events, and storylines. However, and this is where the button smashing is going to happen, the playerbase of Aetolia doesn't deserve one.
Time after time, event after event, storyline after storyline complaints are made. You can scroll through pages of the forums and find people's aggressive/passive-aggressive complaints about all types of events ranging from org specific related to Apocalypse Now events. You can ask an increasing amount of players about the emails they sent Tiur, Oleis, Razmael, Galleus, Matt, Jeremy, and others about their absolute negative thoughts on various events. You can ask about the overly negative communication people have had verbally in webs/clans regarding a plethora of events that all it amounts to is hating on the event that VOLUNTEERS spent weeks building to accomplish. Even to this day, there are people who are crying out about the whole Bloodloch Rebellion arc going on because "it's taking too long to accomplish". And this is just against the volunteers.
Let's not even get started about the fact that even if there WAS a paid position for a story writer, half of you wouldn't even respect them either. This is held up by the fact that the Celerity change back in 2020 done by Keroc (who made a change based off massive player complaints about people running away from combat) and he stepped down as combat head IN PART due to the players blasting him PERSONALLY via messages and emails about the experimental change. Rumor has it that Keroc was even sent death threats. Come on, people, really?? If you can't respect a long term paid admin about an experiment, what makes you think you're going to be respectful enough for a paid storywriter? If you can barely respect volunteers that DO hold events for you, what makes you think you're going to be respectful enough for a paid storywriter?
In the end, paid admin have stepped away because of the playerbase. Celani have stepped away because of the playerbase. PLAYERS have stepped away because of the playerbase. The players complain about a lack of storyline and content creation and by all means that is true. What the players fail to accept or realize is that they are the reason why storyline and content creation has been dwindling. So much like an unruly child, the players are being punished with the very same thing in which they complain about. And much like an unruly child, you don't get to come out of timeout until you've learned your lesson. A lesson the playerbase -still- hasn't learned.
Rhyot
10
Gold sinks and you
Captain's Log - Midnight Age Date - 9 Variach 497/9 August 2021: Yet another bi-yearly attempt to bring attention to a lack of gold sinks within Aetolia. Hopes are minimal, changes are fortuitous, and ambitions are high. However, the crew deserves to hear their Captain's thoughts and perhaps Starfleet Command will finally listen to reason this time. Perhaps not, but one can only try.
--------------------------
Something that I still often hear complaints about is how there is literal millions of gold in the game with nothing to really spend it on. Hell, this was seen in the current auctions when items were going for 4M-22M gold. This gold primarily is just swapped from one hand to the other, in a neverending cycle of usage. While this is cool, it does make it feel very lackluster when you have nothing to do with the gold you obtain. Sure, Aetolia is a game and there's never going to be a set amount of currency available in the game (because that would be very, very bad), but that doesn't mean that we can't have more things to spend our hard earned gold on.
There are a dozen ways for players to accrue mass amounts of wealth but as of right now, there's only a few gold sinks (not gold just swapped hands) listed below:
- Purchasing comms/items from village shops/NPCs
- Prize bags (these are absolute shit and not even worth mentioning because no one ever buys them because of how bad they are)
- Auctions (on the rare occasion they are hosted)
- Gambling (though you can also win a lot of gold too. So this is 50/50)
While not having gold sinks isn't necessarily a bad thing, it definitely isn't a good thing either. People want to be able to spend their gold on -something- (as seen of the millions of gold spent on the most recent auctions).
So how do we fix this? There's a couple ways of fixing this.
1) Prizebags - For the love of all things that are holy, please fucking fix these!!! The premise of these are nice, but they could be updated.
a) Change the pull amounts to the following: bronze gets 1 (15k gold), silver gets 3 (50 gold), gold gets 5 (75k gold). This has already been accomplished with varying amounts of success in terms of prizes with stockings and such.
b) Add in a few other relic items like carvings, flairs, etc. Remove the hearts/eyes and throw in iterators and style scrolls. Doing this gives players an opportunity at getting at minimum 8 credits or more if they get some lucky pulls (compendium pages, chocolates, etc).
2) Cryptic chests or "Prosperity Chests"- I understand why Cryptic Chests were removed as a gold purchase, especially as one of the people responsible for causing such extreme measures. However, there is a way to bring them back without having the same situation that was abused to arise.
a) Since Cryptic Chests are ever changing due to their constant use in promotions, create a new form of chest. Let's call them Prosperity Chests.
These Prosperity Chests would have the same functionality as Cryptic chests, but with a much more limited and less expensive, diverse series of prizes. Cryptic chests can get some very hefty credit prizes in the forms of fireworks, general credit prizes, discount tokens, hunting boon tokens, upgrade tokens, various artifacts ranging from stats, to rebirth necklaces, to custom artifacts. Very, very hefty and could result in some very hefty losses for IRE as a whole.
So Rhyot, what would you put into Prosperity Chests?? Well Tiur, I'm glad you asked!!! As stated previously, Prosperity Chests would function very similarly to Cryptics, just with a reduced prize pool. The prize pool could be as follows:
Now, before you argue the whole premise of why Prosperity Chests can't be a thing due to the fact that IRE still has to make a profit, I would agree on the profit part but wouldn't agree that they can't be a thing. Here's why. IRE has adapted to allowing people to get 20 credits a day, which is roughly 600 credits a month ($200). So they're already eating $20,000/month in revenue ($200*100 players), so it's already become an accepted loss. Adding Prosperity chests won't change much for the negative. In fact, this could actually end up working IRE's favor because if you have a full list of minipets, mounts, chocolates, compendium pages, talisman carvings etc available... more people might be inclined to buy credit packages to get said items. At worst, people occasionally get some credits from cheap artifacts to trade in. Hell, more people might buy credits just to sell them for gold for these chances to get previously released minipets/mounts that they were not around for but might want oh-so-dearly.
Additionally, with commodities as difficult as they are to get these days (ice/ash/metals/stone) the Prosperity chests would be a minimal manner of accruing this over time too. At least until Mining and the third Production skill is released.
By all means, I'd be glad to hear everyone else's thoughts. Maybe things will change and we'll get more gold sinks.
------
Captain Rhyot, signing off.
--------------------------
Something that I still often hear complaints about is how there is literal millions of gold in the game with nothing to really spend it on. Hell, this was seen in the current auctions when items were going for 4M-22M gold. This gold primarily is just swapped from one hand to the other, in a neverending cycle of usage. While this is cool, it does make it feel very lackluster when you have nothing to do with the gold you obtain. Sure, Aetolia is a game and there's never going to be a set amount of currency available in the game (because that would be very, very bad), but that doesn't mean that we can't have more things to spend our hard earned gold on.
There are a dozen ways for players to accrue mass amounts of wealth but as of right now, there's only a few gold sinks (not gold just swapped hands) listed below:
- Purchasing comms/items from village shops/NPCs
- Prize bags (these are absolute shit and not even worth mentioning because no one ever buys them because of how bad they are)
- Auctions (on the rare occasion they are hosted)
- Gambling (though you can also win a lot of gold too. So this is 50/50)
While not having gold sinks isn't necessarily a bad thing, it definitely isn't a good thing either. People want to be able to spend their gold on -something- (as seen of the millions of gold spent on the most recent auctions).
So how do we fix this? There's a couple ways of fixing this.
1) Prizebags - For the love of all things that are holy, please fucking fix these!!! The premise of these are nice, but they could be updated.
a) Change the pull amounts to the following: bronze gets 1 (15k gold), silver gets 3 (50 gold), gold gets 5 (75k gold). This has already been accomplished with varying amounts of success in terms of prizes with stockings and such.
b) Add in a few other relic items like carvings, flairs, etc. Remove the hearts/eyes and throw in iterators and style scrolls. Doing this gives players an opportunity at getting at minimum 8 credits or more if they get some lucky pulls (compendium pages, chocolates, etc).
2) Cryptic chests or "Prosperity Chests"- I understand why Cryptic Chests were removed as a gold purchase, especially as one of the people responsible for causing such extreme measures. However, there is a way to bring them back without having the same situation that was abused to arise.
a) Since Cryptic Chests are ever changing due to their constant use in promotions, create a new form of chest. Let's call them Prosperity Chests.
These Prosperity Chests would have the same functionality as Cryptic chests, but with a much more limited and less expensive, diverse series of prizes. Cryptic chests can get some very hefty credit prizes in the forms of fireworks, general credit prizes, discount tokens, hunting boon tokens, upgrade tokens, various artifacts ranging from stats, to rebirth necklaces, to custom artifacts. Very, very hefty and could result in some very hefty losses for IRE as a whole.
So Rhyot, what would you put into Prosperity Chests?? Well Tiur, I'm glad you asked!!! As stated previously, Prosperity Chests would function very similarly to Cryptics, just with a reduced prize pool. The prize pool could be as follows:
Main prizes:
- Credits (no more than 25 credits on a low probability chance: Cryptics gives about 500 if lucky enough)
- Iron Coins (no more than 5-10 coins: Cryptics have given up to 25? I might be wrong, but this is open for admin views)
- Artifacts (pick from a list of artifacts that are worth no more than 50 credits when purchased normally as on tradein they would be worth 33 credits. This could be hefty over time, but you could have these set as a low probability anyway. That or people find an interesting use for them)
- Minipets/Mounts (ALL minipets/mounts from creation to now. It's a large pool, yes, but oh so fun to play collector. Aetolia even made rankings for them!)
- Chocolates (all 8 types because we rarely get to see the newly made 4 and why not? Could be fun)
- Compendium pages
- Stealth crystals
- Talisman carvings (The talisman is nice and the benefits are paltry, but there is absolutely no way to get environment carvings EXCEPT during very specific promotions. Blasphemy I say!)
- Relic pieces
- Shapeshifter Pelts
- Herbs/Curatives/Commodities
- Torch of the Underhalls (sure, these can be traded in for 5 credits apiece, but they are typically also used too. Receiver's discretion, really)
- Grimstim pills/Bull's eyes/Phoenix hearts
- Credits (no more than 25 credits on a low probability chance: Cryptics gives about 500 if lucky enough)
- Iron Coins (no more than 5-10 coins: Cryptics have given up to 25? I might be wrong, but this is open for admin views)
- Artifacts (pick from a list of artifacts that are worth no more than 50 credits when purchased normally as on tradein they would be worth 33 credits. This could be hefty over time, but you could have these set as a low probability anyway. That or people find an interesting use for them)
- Minipets/Mounts (ALL minipets/mounts from creation to now. It's a large pool, yes, but oh so fun to play collector. Aetolia even made rankings for them!)
- Chocolates (all 8 types because we rarely get to see the newly made 4 and why not? Could be fun)
- Compendium pages
- Stealth crystals
- Talisman carvings (The talisman is nice and the benefits are paltry, but there is absolutely no way to get environment carvings EXCEPT during very specific promotions. Blasphemy I say!)
- Relic pieces
- Shapeshifter Pelts
- Herbs/Curatives/Commodities
- Torch of the Underhalls (sure, these can be traded in for 5 credits apiece, but they are typically also used too. Receiver's discretion, really)
- Grimstim pills/Bull's eyes/Phoenix hearts
Now, before you argue the whole premise of why Prosperity Chests can't be a thing due to the fact that IRE still has to make a profit, I would agree on the profit part but wouldn't agree that they can't be a thing. Here's why. IRE has adapted to allowing people to get 20 credits a day, which is roughly 600 credits a month ($200). So they're already eating $20,000/month in revenue ($200*100 players), so it's already become an accepted loss. Adding Prosperity chests won't change much for the negative. In fact, this could actually end up working IRE's favor because if you have a full list of minipets, mounts, chocolates, compendium pages, talisman carvings etc available... more people might be inclined to buy credit packages to get said items. At worst, people occasionally get some credits from cheap artifacts to trade in. Hell, more people might buy credits just to sell them for gold for these chances to get previously released minipets/mounts that they were not around for but might want oh-so-dearly.
Additionally, with commodities as difficult as they are to get these days (ice/ash/metals/stone) the Prosperity chests would be a minimal manner of accruing this over time too. At least until Mining and the third Production skill is released.
By all means, I'd be glad to hear everyone else's thoughts. Maybe things will change and we'll get more gold sinks.
------
Captain Rhyot, signing off.
Rhyot
6
