I'm your assistant producer. Ask me (almost) anything.

Elie

I'm pretty sure he encompassed the dragon issue adequately with, "HOLD MY POODLE."

Aarbrok

Setne

I spent about a minute watching that gif and trying to understand if the third guy over his left should was the same guy who jumped from the roof, which is confusing, since the time taken to go from roof to the position on the ground seems off to me.

Toz

When are we getting lunch again?

Moirean

Haha I knew that would be the question before the page even loaded.

Trager

A talk came up today, wondering what your opinion on the matter is.

Aetolia advertisement seems to be slightly canted in favor to the Shadow tether, more predominantly to Vampires and the like. Do you think this is an issue worth looking into, if it isn't already, given the difference in tether activity? Are there currently plans to help even the marketing scheme?

Oleis

Trager said:

A talk came up today, wondering what your opinion on the matter is.

Aetolia advertisement seems to be slightly canted in favor to the Shadow tether, more predominantly to Vampires and the like. Do you think this is an issue worth looking into, if it isn't already, given the difference in tether activity? Are there currently plans to help even the marketing scheme?

Because Aetolia very rarely gets advertised, I'm not sure that's an accurate statement. We don't pay to market anywhere currently. I will agree that Aetolia's representation on TMS and other websites focuses on the dark part, but that's arguably our unique feature. For all our attempts at role and nuance, we're still "the Vampire MUD", and it's all but impossible to communicate much beyond that. Attempts at showing off the Spirit side in an image would probably just tread the same generic "Paladin" stereotype that every other game tends to have.

Trager

By advertised, I mainly meant the Aetolian website, yes. Because it does just that: advertise for something in the game, a specific faction, a general theme. I can understand the overall theme being focused on Vampires sure, but when you look at the number of novices that enter the game, (And correct me if I am wrong) there is a strong tendency for more novices to enter in Bloodloch, or Spinesreach (Though I can't for the life of me recall if novices Vampires can choose Spinesreach).

I am in no way making excuses for any lack of engagement/event/player interaction that might occur on the spirit tether of the game, because in a new players entrance into the game, it has yet to play a part. I guess I'm just wondering if at any point in the future, it is an 'issue' that is to be worked on, in hopes of adding just as meaningful, non-stereotypical hooks for the spirit tether as well.

EDIT: And a myriad of ideas for hooks have been thrown out there over the years I've payed attention, at least, ranging from Vampire 'Hunters' to more not-so-nice twists on shadow-tethered classes.

Oleis

I guess I just misunderstood the premise of your question while agreeing with your solution.

Yeah, we definitely want to make the Spirit side of things more interesting. How that reflects in our promotional art and website is a decision that comes way down the road once we've accomplished Part 1.

Trager

Or, I might have ended up branching out on a tangent I didn't mean to. Personally, I think the Spirit Side has some really great, engaging ideas. I mean, we have angels, I roll around with a damn crocodile following me, shooting arrows from a crossbow, Templar's have(had) dat sexy brute retribution: Just, people don't so much get to see it when it's layered beneath, "SIRE AN ARMY OF PROGENY TO DO YOUR BIDDING!"

Oleis

Like I said: the nuance is there. Breaking it down to an engaging buzzword level (especially as our corporate mission is to appeal to MUD newcomers above all others) is the hard part. Something to work on, for sure.

Zsadist

Trager said:

And a myriad of ideas for hooks have been thrown out there over the years I've payed attention, at least, ranging from Vampire 'Hunters' to more not-so-nice twists on shadow-tethered classes.

All hail the vampire hunters!!!!!

Alternatively, are there any plans in to make new classes (vampire hunters) or anything else that could add general open conflict between the two tethers?

Areka

Aetolia was the last IRE MUD I tried due to the Vampire thing. I really didn't want to deal with it, the pseudo-goth Hot Topic Anne Rice bonanza, and it was only after I tried the game and really looked around IC that I realized that there was a lot more depth and variety to be had. Buuut, that's for another thread.

Trager

There is absolutely -nothing- wrong with Anne Rice.

Teani

On the subject of advertisement: The other IRE games put up posts on the Facebook page every now and then, but there is next to no information from Aetolia (nothing at all since the overhaul of the Carnifex got released) and other games post artisanals to show off player art. Do you think that Aetolia could benefit from making itself more visible in this way or is it not worth the effort?

Oleis

This is one of those "KABLAM" questions for me, because you phrased it so politely but it still cuts right to the core of one of our weaknesses. We absolutely need to be more active on the IRE Facebook. There's no real evidence that it does anything for us, but it also doesn't cost us a thing. 

The only problem is that it's a pain in the unicorns to post, but I'm going to see what we can do to make that easier. 

Teani

I'm sneaky like that! If there's anything we can do to help, don't hesitate to ask the playerbase. I'm sure there are more people out there than myself who wouldn't mind helping out with small things if it's possible. Perhaps that could be a viable option?

Setne

Oleis said:

This is one of those "KABLAM" questions for me, because you phrased it so politely but it still cuts right to the core of one of our weaknesses. We absolutely need to be more active on the IRE Facebook. There's no real evidence that it does anything for us, but it also doesn't cost us a thing. 

The only problem is that it's a pain in the unicorns to post, but I'm going to see what we can do to make that easier. 

Release ylem mines and I'll do it for free.

Aishia

Get your pickaxe, enter fracture, chip away at giant eld crystals and hope no one pks you.

Mael

I feel I should qualify this and state that I'm doing a fair bit of data collection and analysis for my job and it's made me curious about various things.

What sort of data does Aetolia capture to try to figure out trends and successes in the items they deploy. For example, do you capture login days/hours to capture unique players, and be able to see how the trend has progressed, trends in organizations, time spent as classes (median) to determine if there might be un-diagnosed issues, etc.

Oleis

Mael said:

I feel I should qualify this and state that I'm doing a fair bit of data collection and analysis for my job and it's made me curious about various things.

What sort of data does Aetolia capture to try to figure out trends and successes in the items they deploy. For example, do you capture login days/hours to capture unique players, and be able to see how the trend has progressed, trends in organizations, time spent as classes (median) to determine if there might be un-diagnosed issues, etc.

On a corporate level, IRE does a relatively large amount of data collection about new players and tracks their progress through character creation, the introductory tour, first levels, first purchase, etc. The raw data are not made available to us. Occasionally, we'll get amateur statistical analysis of those data. Experienced players or people playing on clients that aren't the HTML5 client are excluded.

Mael

Thanks for the answer, it's too bad they don't make it more available to you.

Oleis

Teani said:

On the subject of advertisement: The other IRE games put up posts on the Facebook page every now and then, but there is next to no information from Aetolia (nothing at all since the overhaul of the Carnifex got released) and other games post artisanals to show off player art. Do you think that Aetolia could benefit from making itself more visible in this way or is it not worth the effort?

Jeremy helped me get easier access to the IRE Facebook page, so expect to see many more updates when things happen in Aetolia.

Gwenith

@Oleis : What was your feelings on the new rapture roll-out when it happened? What are your feelings now? Are they dampened a little with all the issues people seem to be having with it?

Oleis

Gwenith said:

@Oleis : What was your feelings on the new rapture roll-out when it happened? What are your feelings now? Are they dampened a little with all the issues people seem to be having with it?

That puts things in a very dire perspective! We should have a little history of Rapture lesson:

Rapture was developed by a guy named Chris Kohnert for a share of the company way back when. Matt had been using something called Vortex, which was just plain hideous in retrospect. Much of our oldest code was converted from Vortex, and many things about Rapture were tailored to match what Vortex already used (with some significant improvements along the way).

For all its quirks, Rapture is actually a very good engine. It's stable, it makes complicated tasks very easy to accomplish, and it provides just enough flexibility that nobody really hates it. When we complain about Aetolia's codebase, we're complaining about the converted Vortex gamecode and the foibles of undereducated coders from years past, not the actual Rapture engine.

That said, Rapture is not the most efficient creature, nor is it easy to modify. When IRE moved Jesse from Imperian to become Achaea's Mortori, it was with significant wisdom: Jesse and Justin (Tecton), really the only two guys familiar with Rapture, could work on some important updates to it. Prior to this update, we really only had one in the last two years, and it was basically for bugfixes. Efficiency has been solved by throwing 4GB of RAM and a good processor at it (consider that it was built to run on 1997 servers!), but modification is still tricky.

Taking into account that (other than the randomly-turning-on thing, which I am totally fixing this evening) the only REAL problem with this color implementation is with Mudbot, I'm feeling okay. It's a good step toward forward progress with Rapture. And I'm in love with all these colors.

Gwenith

@Olies: Sorry I didn't mean it to sound so dire! But that is some damn good insight you gave (p.s. love to Tecton).

Trigru

Oleis said:

When we complain about Aetolia's codebase, we're complaining about the converted Vortex gamecode and the foibles of undereducated coders from years past, not the actual Rapture engine.

I can't emphasize this enough. Ask Oleis how many times I've tried to tweak a small bit of code, decided NONE OF THIS WILL DO, and just rewritten the whole stupid thing, usually with a comment like (* I want to find whoever wrote this routine and beat them with a hammer*).

Rapture is super fun, though!

Ishin

Trigru said:

Oleis said:

When we complain about Aetolia's codebase, we're complaining about the converted Vortex gamecode and the foibles of undereducated coders from years past, not the actual Rapture engine.

I can't emphasize this enough. Ask Oleis how many times I've tried to tweak a small bit of code, decided NONE OF THIS WILL DO, and just rewritten the whole stupid thing, usually with a comment like (* I want to find whoever wrote this routine and beat them with a hammer*).

Rapture is super fun, though!

I think almost anyone who has ever written a piece of code has at least an idea about how this feels, lol. I've felt that way about my own code, written late at night or when inebriated and look at it the next day >.>

Now for my own question @Oleis - Do you guys get sidetracked a lot by passed-down code from IRE? Like, say you guys are up there working on liaison code and IRE is like IMPLEMENT THIS. Is that how it works, or is it more of a 'Put this in ASAP' type of thing, or what??

Oleis

Ishin said:

Now for my own question @Oleis - Do you guys get sidetracked a lot by passed-down code from IRE? Like, say you guys are up there working on liaison code and IRE is like IMPLEMENT THIS. Is that how it works, or is it more of a 'Put this in ASAP' type of thing, or what??

There have definitely been times where an IRE initiative has diverted our labor. For example, we had to put in a lot of backend work to help round out the HTML5 client's featureset. On the whole, IRE is actually very good about providing sample code and great instructions when we have changes to our shared codebase. What other games like Imperian and Achaea run into is the fact that their primary coders are the ones WRITING that shared code. We don't have to worry about that. (They just steal our stuff after the fact )

Teani

Do you decorate your home during the holidays? If so, how much?