Ankyrean Anguish - Aetolia-based RAGE

Alexina

Achaea's are done once every three months as well. They started with that almost a year ago.

Oleis

If you want to see them more often, your best bet is to stir up as much genuine participation as possible.

Areka

I feel like several people stopped participating because we never know when they'll get judged or when we'll hear back on them (since it tends to be 2-3 months judged in one go, so you're left waiting for an excess month or two to hear back on your work), which can be really frustrating on the end of people submitting things.

Moirean

Agreed. I also have not bothered that much with bardics for two reasons: I feel weird submitting stuff on my alt, when most of the stuff I write is from Moi's perspective, even though I was told it's what I should do, since I hit max rank (in Lusternia, you can just cycle back through on your main, they have a second set of ranks). The second reason is that I've been encouraging newer Aet players like Denser and Illinian to submit and I didn't want to compete with them, so I've been taking months off here and there.

I mean, I guess we don't really have a place to complain - free credits are free credits - but bardics and artisanals are one thing I do highlight when I advertise the game to people from other MUDs, citing them as an example of ways you can earn credits outside of direct money investment. I know that those credit rewards definitely can lead to money purchases, too - both myself and my ex have spent money on IRE games after winning bardic prizes, since the credits got us learning skills and excited to keep getting new shiny stuff. Odd as it sounds, from personal experience, getting a chunk of credits from an IG reward is usually when I am most tempted to buy some with money on top of that. I could just be odd, but I'm sure there's some psychological factor at work there, something about perceived cost or a hoarding instinct or whatever.

Roux

I wasn't happy to hear about the new 3 month thing for artisanals. Just another grumpy voice amongst those already here on the matter.

Elyni

Atleast they aren't combined together, like Achaeas is, now...

ON TOP of being at a 3 month cycle.

Areka

@Oleis - if we're narrowing it to every three months and sticking do that, will they become themed? I know there's mixed feelings on that, but I really liked when we had the one themed month (halloween a year ago, aetolian bestiary). Having a direction/constraint might help people focus for entering. 

Eleanor

I stopped entering because I got the feeling people were getting discouraged!

Also I have asked the dudes in charge before, and they get LESS participation when there's a theme, and even then the entries are mostly pretty sketchy re: being on-topic, so I don't think that'll be a thing.

Areka

That makes me sadface. I had so much fun with my Chempala. Sometimes I get a bit listless trying to figure out what to work on and will fuss with ideas to the point that the month's passed and I didn't submit.

Nola

I started entering MKO's artisanals (which they never advertised) just before they decided that it should be every 3 months. They let that run for one month, without a word more about it, and there was a few contestants - much more than before because I tried to hype it up on the forums (their main reason was lack of participation so we hoped with more participation shown via proper advertisement/announcement about it that they'd change it back.. because a large part of the issue was people thought that it wasn't running anymore), then after that they decided it should be twice a year, and we didn't understand why. 

No more artisanal and bardic entries now. Why would anyone ever bother at that point? If you extend the points of announcements about it to a longer period of time, less and less people will be aware of it. Aetolia actually has one of the larger pools for contestants, imo. 

Honestly extending it to 3 months is more demotivating than it is encouraging. Instead of extensions, why hasn't more announcements been made about it to remind people?

Teani

@Sessizlik just informed me she's having trouble posting on the forums. Says 'Body required' or something like that. However, she wanted to say something in regards to the arts and bardic discussion.
She says, "I don't mind the three month deal, since it gives more time to work on detail, but I would love to see themes. Inspiration is sometimes hard to come by."

As for me, if the Admin say there's been a decrease in participation holding them less often might give people more time to finish a piece they are happy with and enter it. 

The Admin has a lot of things on their plate and perhaps setting aside time every month for judging these things is difficult. Perhaps not everyone up there has an interest in it, leaving it to a few poor souls to handle. Making it every third month, or perhaps every other month, might lessen the workload some.

However, I also agree that not knowing when the actual judging might take place is very discouraging. HELP says it's supposed to be judged about a week after closing date, which rarely happens, and we've had no announcement that I'm aware of (might be wrong here) that tells us of a change in this, making it only every other month. Making it three months without pushing people to participate in some way might cause the competition to fall completely. Perhaps every other month?

And if there could be more ranks (or cycling through them again), that would be awesome. <.<

Neithan

I love Ironbeard, his gifts and everything. I hate that there's so many non-responsive people online during it. It makes me bored.

Ezalor

Personally, as someone who has never participated in them before, I would definitely be more encouraged to if they had a theme.

Xiuhcoatl

People who start attack you out of the blue, you kill them, and then they start attacking you again because you killed them. Then when they come back to fight, they don't actually fight. They just run in and out of the room trying to hit you once with something, fail it and then run out the room. OVER AND OVER AGAIN. Like we're talking like 3 minutes of them knowing they can't kill you just trying to waste your time. Then trying to "ambush you" at the entrance to your city. You proceed to almost kill them, but they run away again. Now you've beaten that person 2 rooms outside of your city, but there's this weird purple ball blocking the entrance to your city. Like, we're talking some kind of weird thing going on. Go whatever, worst it does is it kills me and then I don't have to worry about this chump attacking me. It doesn't, it just drops you somewhere else for them to keep attacking you. And by attacking you, I mean hitting you once or twice and then FLEEING LIKE A LITTLE UNICORN.

My rage is against whatever that item was that SHOULD NOT BE USABLE TO STOP PEOPLE FROM WALKING 2 ROOMS INTO THEIR CITY. That's just annoying. Shouldn't be usable like 6 rooms outside of the city, specifically because of how terrible the entrance to Spinesreach is.

Daskalos

You know what, it's not worth it. Everyone knows you're a unicorn.

Haven

@Daskalos: Don't you get tired of arguing with Xiuhcoatl in the rage thread? >_>

Toz

Edit: Not worth it.

[spoiler]

I just want to feel included, sometimes.

[/spoiler]

Ezalor

9x report @Toz for verbal abuse plz.

Slyphe

With pleasure!

But no really ladies, you're both pretty. 

Demarcus

Moirean said:

Agreed. I also have not bothered that much with bardics for two reasons: I feel weird submitting stuff on my alt, when most of the stuff I write is from Moi's perspective, even though I was told it's what I should do, since I hit max rank (in Lusternia, you can just cycle back through on your main, they have a second set of ranks). The second reason is that I've been encouraging newer Aet players like Denser and Illinian to submit and I didn't want to compete with them, so I've been taking months off here and there.

I mean, I guess we don't really have a place to complain - free credits are free credits - but bardics and artisanals are one thing I do highlight when I advertise the game to people from other MUDs, citing them as an example of ways you can earn credits outside of direct money investment. I know that those credit rewards definitely can lead to money purchases, too - both myself and my ex have spent money on IRE games after winning bardic prizes, since the credits got us learning skills and excited to keep getting new shiny stuff. Odd as it sounds, from personal experience, getting a chunk of credits from an IG reward is usually when I am most tempted to buy some with money on top of that. I could just be odd, but I'm sure there's some psychological factor at work there, something about perceived cost or a hoarding instinct or whatever.

Fact. After getting my NaNoWriMo hoard, I now want to drop lots-o-money on the game. Real dollars are hard to turn into electrons by which to pay ze game.

Areka

Grump grump when folk quit without a word, despite the time, roleplay and investment in them.

Ferrik

Somehow I got this stuck in my head... and then it made me think, "This pretty much sums up Aetolia(ns) quite neatly sometimes."

Daskalos

Idiots who deliberately enter a city they're enemied to, drop holocausts on AFK players they have no reason to attack, then whine because they got bountied and claim it's illegal to be bountied because some of the players that they killed with no reason also filed issues. You chose to enter th city. That's raiding, that's your bounty. You also chose to kill random people. That's on you and between you and the administration. Quite wasting people's time with your whining., especially for someone who always proclaims they can't get conflict, well, now you've got it when people come to try to claim the bounty.

Aarbrok

I want to draw, but I get nervous of my artistic abilities, the only thing I have ever been able to draw is naked women. (Weird I know!) The female figure seems to be alot easier for me though, and forget about drawing faces

Piper

Everyone likes a good set of drawn boobs, just saying.

Meyvitch

Teani, I was having the same problem for over a week with the posting. I downloaded an antivirus and now it works. But it was weird. Whatever I typed in, it said Body is required.

I rage because I would be delighted to join Bardics, if ever I had a fartin clue what to write.

Toz

Coding something for a full 10+ minutes, complete with debugging. Only to realize the function I was working with wasn't being called - another one was. The whole time.

Moirean

Losing guards because bugs keep making us have them wander to limbo, leaving gaping holes in the city. At this point, I'm just letting Daskalos kill them so I can recruit more and return them, as that actually makes the bugs more tolerable for a few days.

Daskalos

And, once again, never once have I killed a guard as a result of a bug. I don't go 'find' holes in your guard layout, I walk in and MAKE a hole. You have a terrible layout (and part of it is your city layout). You have a very haphazard system in place. Also, the room I was using to radiance for a while, here's a hint: It's a locked office you never tried to put a guard in because you thought it was locked (but I have a key!)

Also, that moment you know your raid is about to fail looks like this:

Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.
Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.
<>----------- His staff crackling with arcane, shadowy magic, a Spirean Sciomancer entered from northwest -----------<>
Stopping amidst the crowd, a Syssin Inquisitor wanders in from the northwest.
Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.
Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.
Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.
Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.
Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.
Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.
Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.
Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.
Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.
Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.
Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.
Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.
Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.
Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.
Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.
Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.
Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.
Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.
Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.
Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.
Eyes scanning the area for trouble, a conscripted Spirean soldier strides in with a clank of heavy plate armour.

Moirean

They layout is "crappy" because we cannot put guards places. They walk off, they stack elsewhere, they vanish into limbo. You try having your guards screw up literally the second you redo everything.

I really don't care if the guards die, anyways. It's cheaper to just use low cost ones and recruit a few more after you derp around solo raiding with your hood, our guard holes and a locked room that I can't really do anything to find (why the heck Aetolia doesn't have a KEYS command for doors, I'll never know) than it is to have a super solid layout that costs 3x as much.