Ankyrean Anguish - Aetolia-based RAGE

Illikaal

I'm not sure what it is, but Aetolia has seemed to be incredibly dead lately. Maybe its just me getting bored with PK since nobody ever wants to duel, yet they'll show up to a 5v1 clusterunicorns and or make excuses as to why they don't want to fight. I've never really been a fan of group combat because fights seem to be incredibly one sided, most of the time. Unless they're small skirmishes. 

Anyhow, I've just started spending my time with all dese steam games, and trying to get myself up to at least Plat on LoL. I dunno if its just because Aetolia is incredibly slow with content releases, or what, even though this is always been the nature of Aetolia. There's just not very much oomf to keep me playing at his particular point in time. Sure, there's always potential for war, more group fighting, etc, but I find group fights to be really boring as they don't require much of anything besides someone spamming 2% of their AB's. Else, nobody wants to fight because they're afraid of losing.

The Sect of Blades goals are just looking less and less realistic to attain these days, especially with how crazy high the values of the marks are. Here we are, 5 months into the SoB being released, and nobody has even come close to the first tier of marks. I mean good lord, nobody wants to grind that much, let alone have to fight that much. 

If you killed 5 people 5 times (140 points) every single day, it'd take you right around 142 days to get to the endgame goal in the sect. I get that the Sect was meant to be a long term thing, but 142 seems a bit crazy. Not to mention, you'd HAVE to kill 5 people 5 times every single day. Most people will quit after the first or second death, and not even want to fight you at all after that. People don't like losing, and someone's going to end up getting burnt out, very similarly to how people are sorta burning out with leylines too. 

I suppose that's my rage. It's not exactly this game's fault that they can only release so much content at a time because of the limited manpower they have, and even then, we can't expect them to work on Aetolia 24 hours all day erry day and every single day of the week, cause I sure wouldn't if I was volunteering. A lot of the pre-existing content is either just dull and lackluster, and or needs to be fixed entirely. At any rate, until something really catches my attention, or I resummon this magical desire to start playing as frequently as I used to, I'm going to go play other games in the meantime. And there's a -lot- of them. 

Piper

You know, I've been hearing a lot of people saying that lately but the game's honestly been feeling like it's been hopping, in my opinion. Constant activity from this point of the game.

Though, I have been having the urge to play a few of the others games that I have on steam and keep forgetting to. I rage that Aetolia makes me forget about the other stuff that I actually invested money in just to gain access to.

Kaeus

I'm really not sure why people are afraid of losing these days. The experience loss is so negligible that it means nothing but a small loss of time.

I actually enjoy losing a good fight, because it means I have things to look over to learn from and improve. There are still a few people I know that cause me issues, and I want to eventually find ways to handle their offense. Unfortunately, that seems to be a mindset shared by only a few people.

A LOT of my frustration with sect of blades is not the lack of people wanting to fight, it is the bugs that cause annoying things like me losing points on death, but not gaining points on a kill. Add in broken bounty system, which means even less opportunities for points, and you have a very frustrating system to participate in.

Ezalor

There's a lot happening in Aetolia non-combat-wise, combatants just get bored because no one ever wants to fight. As Illidan and Kaeus said, people are afraid to lose.

I love losing a fight (when it's not due to something like hunger or willpower drain) because it generates a log to improve with. When I started out PKing I went after Illidan every single day, and died every single day, but reviewing those logs let me improve my offense to what it is today. I died to Isto something like 7 times in a row over the span of one night because I just kept fighting him. When I was learning to PK was one of the most fun times for me, even though I lost more than I won, because people were willing to fight me and I could improve almost every single day.

Now that I've improved my stuff to this point people just don't fight me any more. I've had people ask on market for spars and duels and then turn me down when I respond to it. It got to the point where I made an alt, and suddenly I got a flood of PK for a few days, then once I started beating people no one fights my alt any more either.

A lot of people go into PK for the wrong reasons and with the wrong attitude. They fight purely to win and for the bragging rights. They're afraid to lose, afraid of having their name pop up on the wrong side of deathsight. You should be fighting to improve; I improve my system after every fight, win or lose. People I lost to weeks ago I would completely dominate today, because they get content with where they are and just stop improving. Me now would beat me of one week ago, and me one week from now would beat me now. If you look through forum posts, it wasn't all that long ago that I was a complete noncom and blustering around trying to figure stuff out.

I love Aetolia PK, it just grows incredibly dull when Kaeus, Rammus, Isto, and laggy Haven are the only people ever willing to fight. 

As for Sect...yeah. I can find maybe 1 Sect duel a week (despite there being like 10 Sect members online), and that's usually either Kaeus or Isto, both of whom give me about 10 points now since we've fought each other so many times. I don't think I'll ever reach the point to even get the Sect channel at 10k. I don't think the problem is the scaling of points, it's the lack of willing combatants. Sect should probably introduce much harsher penalties for being inactive duel-wise, and the Sect arena should definitely be fixed and opened again.

Haven

I'm always willing to die!

Benedicto

Haven said:

I always die!

Fixed

Illikaal

Piper said:

You know, I've been hearing a lot of people saying that lately but the game's honestly been feeling like it's been hopping, in my opinion. Constant activity from this point of the game.

Though, I have been having the urge to play a few of the others games that I have on steam and keep forgetting to. I rage that Aetolia makes me forget about the other stuff that I actually invested money in just to gain access to.

Yeah, Ezalor sorta beat me to it. There's plenty going on on the RP scene of Aetolia, but those of us that are interested and invested in the PK scene have become incredibly bored by the lack of participants. If you win too many fights, people aren't going to want to fight you, for the most part. Roleplay is all well and good, but if I wanted to go and seriously roleplay, I'd just go pick a mud designed specifically for it. 

I mean, @Ciarelle mentioned this to me, and it really makes a lot of sense that Aetolia is heavily geared towards its combat and PK systems because of Credit sales. I hadn't really thought about it until then, because really, artifacts purchases and credit liquidation into lessons are easily the top two reasons people buy credits to begin with. Sure there's housing and crafting, but those are dirt when you look at the grand scheme of investments to omnitrans your skills, and buy artifacts so you can Keep Up With The Qefins(tm). 

tl;dr Rp is cool, but PKers don't RP as religiously as they do when it comes to fighting. The PK scene is incredibly lackluster, and we either need more content to keep ourselves entertained with Aetolia, or the pre-existing content needs to get fixed. Else, we're just gonna fly around in our helicopters and shoot at junk cars, and solo baron at level 9. 

Ezalor

Yeah, I think that onus is on the players, not the admin though. Admin are doing their part with the liaison changes, combat tweaks, stuff like that (though please give Sect some love ). We just don't have enough people interested in PK in Aetolia.

Benedicto

Ezalor said:

Yeah, I think that onus is on the players, not the admin though. Admin are doing their part with the liaison changes, combat tweaks, stuff like that (though please give Sect some love ). We just don't have enough people interested in PK in Aetolia.

It's despairing sometimes. You'll see about 15-20 people online in your own city and you ask for support at a lesser and you end up getting members of a different org coming to support you. It's almost like everyone pretends not to hear you. I end up having to send individual tells to people etc just to scrape 3 or 4 people together.

Toz

Benedicto said:

Haven said:

I always die!

Fixed

now morbidly curious of what would happen if @Xenia and @Haven had a child it would never stand a chance.

Haven

>:[ I don't always die!

Rivas

You'd have to log in for that.

Calipso

Hmm im not sure why death in aetolia has more stress and confliction to it than the other ire. Part of me believes it stems from the early gaming life of a character and their first experiences with being thrashed around. When they look around for some way of retribution or assistance, thet find they have to stick it out on their own and there is no system in place to strike back (such as Assassins in achaea or Vengeance system in lusternia). So perhaps the mindset of "avoid getting into PK" settles into the minds, as they are seeing PK as common as livestocks being put up ready for the slaughter of the tough players of the game.
Imo until some form of defense/protection mechanic is made for fledgling and new dabblers in combat to feel a form of support incase they fall, then they will just avoid it like the plague. Frankly put, nobody in reality wants to "lose" and feel they gained nothing. Everyone loves the sensation of gaining and winning -something-

Calipso

Sorry if post seems constricted. Typing from phone

Arbre

Illidan said:

Keep Up With The Qefins(tm). 

Ogawd I giggled.

Corlin

I've been borrowing a computer for the last while, but I've got a laptop of my very own now - still not used to laptop vs desktop, but I'm getting there - and I know I'll be pking more across my characters/factions.

I'm not all that good, but like Ezalor said, the opportunity to improve after a loss is still there.

I have a few hurdles - such as a very limited, almost entirely ic budget for artifacts - but it doesn't stop me from participating. I come against some things that I simply don't know how to handle, like the massive affliction output from a spavi (whatever the popular one is) vampire with their ghast, or keeping people in the room who really want to leave when I'm using one of my profs with limited capability to hold someone down.

I will say though that there's not really a middle tier. Finding people who'll spar/duel with me that aren't entirely out of my league - meaning even if I did figure out how to survive their offense, their pile of artifacts would flatten me or allow them to survive me anyway - is usually a matter of finding an ally to stand in for an enemy. Class pick helps, but sometimes you need to know if your offense / defense actually works against the side you end up fighting for real.

Xenia

Calipso said:

Hmm im not sure why death in aetolia has more stress and confliction to it than the other ire. Part of me believes it stems from the early gaming life of a character and their first experiences with being thrashed around. When they look around for some way of retribution or assistance, thet find they have to stick it out on their own and there is no system in place to strike back (such as Assassins in achaea or Vengeance system in lusternia). So perhaps the mindset of "avoid getting into PK" settles into the minds, as they are seeing PK as common as livestocks being put up ready for the slaughter of the tough players of the game. Imo until some form of defense/protection mechanic is made for fledgling and new dabblers in combat to feel a form of support incase they fall, then they will just avoid it like the plague. Frankly put, nobody in reality wants to "lose" and feel they gained nothing. Everyone loves the sensation of gaining and winning -something-

Coming in as a new player that has been involving myself in PK, I would have to say that things are mild. Death is part of the game, I can't speak for others, but the fear of dying has never settled in...perhaps that's why @Toz made his joke earlier ....

Toz said:

Benedicto said:

Haven said:

I always die!

Fixed

now morbidly curious of what would happen if @Xenia and @Haven had a child it would never stand a chance.

On a more serious note, I would say that there really isn't an abusive situation in Aetolia when it comes to new players fighting. If anything, I've had to instigate reasons to even make myself a target for PK. My first experience was when I'd been playing for about a week, and Taygeta enemied and bountied Xenia for hunting one of the protected areas. What spurred from that was an intense desire to get retribution for the attacks and deaths. It resulted in me taking the time to start to learn about my skills, the venoms and the very basics of PK. The next time I had a serious PK experience was instigated by me, again, when it resulted in my death, a fire was lit and I progressed further in my PK skills through effort and focus. 

The point I'm making is that there really isn't a need for protecting younger novices from PK because there's really not much aggression out there against them unless they instigate and create it. 

Areka

Combat is really overwhelming, and the PK playerbase can be pretty fickle with how it treats people coming in. Sometimes it's really supportive, other times it's really disparaging, both among allies (not communicating well, being really rude and inconsiderate, giving half answers but not wanting to give away their combat secret mojo, being dismissive with 'just figure it out on your own') and enemies (some of the trashtalk makes it really unpleasant - there's one thing for combatant banter, and another when you're getting chewed out about how terrible you are when you're learning - yes, of course I'm terrible, my strongest and most cohesive combat approach is the same way I bash).

So you've got this fairweather environment with the combatants paired with the complexity of curing (having a good healing system is great, but you also need to track an opponent's curing), your class, and others' classes. At least for some of us who are interested in becoming more involved, looking at all of this is both daunting and a headache of issues that outweighs the appeal. 

Edit: We all have different entry points and skills when it comes to it, and often times, those who naturally pick this sort of thing up or are already involved in it, really take their knowledge and aptitude for granted. 

Haven

There are those of us willing to teach still.

Ilyon

Areka said:

being really rude and inconsiderate, giving half answers but not wanting to give away their combat secret mojo, being dismissive with 'just figure it out on your own'

Wouldn't really worry about that much - I've found out that people with this kind of attitude rarely have combat knowledge worth having.

Kaeus

Haven said:

There are those of us willing to teach still.

There are definitely those of us willing to teach. Hell, I don't care what side you are on, I'm always happy to try and answer questions about combat.

Ezalor

I've actually never had a problem with getting griefed or getting shoved down when I was going through the steps as a new combatant. I also never went out of my way to grief or piss off people either then. Chances are if you feel like you're being targeted and shoved down, you did something to deserve it.

It's actually not -that- hard to get into PK, especially with great curing systems publicly available. Tripwire and Citadel are both top-notch. I came into Aetolia with no coding background at all and no idea how to make anything, but with Haedyn and Lanira's help it really wasn't too hard to piece it all together.

A big part of it is also the attitude of the person asking for help. I've had multiple people approach me before about how to get set up, but it quickly becomes obvious they aren't actually interested in learning or they give up very easily; most of these people just want to be handed a system.

And Ilyon is absolutely correct. You'll find that most people who are unicorns about combat aren't worth learning from anyway.

I've found a lot of help on both sides of the game; I actually spend a lot of time in OOC webs with lifers and darkies alike. I find that at the top level, most combatants are pretty chill with each other and are completely happy to help each other improve.

Areka

It's easy to say it's 'not that hard' when you're already involved, or already have an aptitude, and to be dismissive of issues that do exist simply because you haven't personally experienced them. That doesn't mean your experience is standard, let alone for the broad multitude of aptitudes and starting points. 

Having a good curing system helps with survivability, but not with the combat itself - and figuring out all of the skills you need to know, how they are involved, venoms, empowerments, what the different messages mean, how to track them in the chaos and speed at which information is thrown at you, your own status and balances, etc, is really difficult. It's increasingly difficult with classes that have to juggle a lot of information and commands to be effective. 

Whether or not the d*cks really know what they are talking about is irrelevant for the impact they make upon the combative environment. Yes, there are people willing to help, and that does help to a degree - however, many also aren't very good with groundwork and helping someone who can barely put together an alias. Dismissing the negative aspects of the system because you haven't experienced it as others have is part of what makes getting in so difficult, as well as 'if someone's a shit to you, you probably deserved it'. 

Xavin

To be quite blunt, while the PvP environment here has potential to be caustic, it is nowhere near as bad as it was even five years ago. You don't really see instances of someone going after a character repeatedly just to stir up crap like you may have back then. You don't really see many instances of people just fishing for excuses to attack people anymore.

That said, yeah a lot of the banter that goes on can be excessive. And there is still some lameness that goes on - attacking complete noncoms for things that don't really involve them, for example.

But like Ilyon said, the people who give half-answers or don't really make an effort to help usually don't completely know what they're talking about. And there's always the problem of misinformation. The first example of that that comes to mind is the talk about a stormtouched bug when what was being described as a bug is actually how the affliction is supposed to behave - reducing the afflicted person's electrical resistance to 0%.

Munsia

It seems there's just not enough conflict oriented game-side events. Aetolia seems extremely...quiet

Calipso

Xavin said:

To be quite blunt, while the PvP environment here has potential to be caustic, it is nowhere near as bad as it was even five years ago. You don't really see instances of someone going after a character repeatedly just to stir up crap like you may have back then. You don't really see many instances of people just fishing for excuses to attack people anymore.

That said, yeah a lot of the banter that goes on can be excessive. And there is still some lameness that goes on - attacking complete noncoms for things that don't really involve them, for example.

But like Ilyon said, the people who give half-answers or don't really make an effort to help usually don't completely know what they're talking about. And there's always the problem of misinformation. The first example of that that comes to mind is the talk about a stormtouched bug when what was being described as a bug is actually how the affliction is supposed to behave - reducing the afflicted person's electrical resistance to 0%.

yes and no. Though it is better, it is far from appealing or engaging. Also i believe ilyon was more talking about combat knowledge rather than those that engage in PK.

I've said it 100 times before and i'll say it again. Any combat system in a game that allows for the players to deem and give judgement over who they can pummel and for what reasons and how often, is bound to fail. The concept of "have faith in the community" doesnt work because frankly if it is thought that -everyone- will be understanding and open-minded, then that is just unreal.

@arbre my posts may seem negative but it is my nature to call something out on how it is. I dont beat around the bush or bullshit about something. Im plain in my replies and frankly that isnt going to change

Areka

Grief-killing isn't the issue, it's the environment. It only takes one unicorn-head to completely ruin a newcomer's experience with PK. 

Xerp, you're missing the issue there. It doesn't matter if a person has good or bad knowledge on PK, their handling will make an impact, and dismissing it with 'they just don't know what they're talking about' doesn't change that they leave an impression of the PK community and system. 

During one of the Order wars, Lyl got on my back about how terrible I am on Areka with PK while I was defending Aisling working on a shrine. I've been on an alt trying to learn a new class and utterly dismissed and belittled when asking what I could do to contribute, and to 'not bother' until I'm tritrans because I'd be useless - this from someone on the city council. This, on top of asking people for help for how best to use what skills I possess, regardless of the character and class, and having known combatants go "figure it out on your own it's not that hard" or spewing a lot of technical information when you're still figuring out what's going on with firstaid and your configs, or how to assemble basic aliases, is extremely off putting, and I've had similar complaints from noobs I've worked with as they come into the game. "Just get a system" helps with survivability, but not the rest. And yes, there are people who will help with things - I've spent a lot of time with Belgarion trying to work through Templar, but it is still overwhelming, and I don't have the technical aptitude or skills to really keep up with his suggestions and what needs to be happening, so the headway made is minimal. 

Munsia

Duiranites being kind of...moronic lately.

Macavity

I am really mad that the first set of liaison changes were released and I STILL CANNOT LOOK AT THE AB FILES WITHOUT CHANGING CLASS!!!!    Even though I have all 10 shadow classes at trans!!

Ezrax

I am enemied to 100% more dark-aligned organizations than light-aligned organizations.