Announce post #3123: Experimental Changes

Swara

The celerity/recovery is being looked at a lot from a combat perspective but I also want to say for people who aren't involved in combat, these changes really damages the game. It takes longer to do everything. Hunting foci, hunting in general, questing, exploration, shopping, doing milestones. Being able to do these things quickly with celerity artifacts allows you to do and be involved in more. Also I have the directory artifact so I can shop in different cities when doing an event for culture, etc and buying a lot of things. Now I'm not sure that that will be worth the effort to walk. You all are getting one set of drinks at future events, takes too long otherwise. XD

I'm really annoyed especially in terms of questing as a bunch of quests already went down in their payout and now, surprise! It takes 2-3 times longer to actually complete a quest route now. Is the point to make questing for gold pointless?

Combat is only one aspect of the game and some people don't get involved in it at all or only during group fights. For them this change on speed is drastic and negatively impacts all aspects of the game aside from RP basically.

In terms of combat, as a shapeshifter I'm not happy that I have one less recovery than any other class which can fight while mounted (which is basically all of them) unless I mount every time before trying to leave. So I get to be squish and now I can't run away. I might as well come in and use quietus as practice for what is about to happen at any group fight.

Church

Jokes aside, I think the elixir thing is fine and creates interesting new design possibilities for damage-based classes/strategies.
 The celerity/recovery thing has the potential to be something neat but isn't developed enough for a sudden live push.
 The stealth and illusion stuff is positively baffling.

Tetchta

Swara said:

The celerity/recovery is being looked at a lot from a combat perspective but I also want to say for people who aren't involved in combat, these changes really damages the game. It takes longer to do everything. Hunting foci, hunting in general, questing, exploration, shopping, doing milestones. Being able to do these things quickly with celerity artifacts allows you to do and be involved in more.

Yep. Precisely this. I'm, largely, a noncom (although I do participate regularly at lessers), and Celerity was probably the mechanic I took advantage of most while playing the game in non-combat environments (although it will also harm bashing, if that counts as 'combat').

The more I think about these changes, the more maudlin I get, honestly. My will to play and log in has more or less evaporated, to the point that, if these changes don't get redressed in the near future, I may just cancel my iron membership and go to playing, I dunno, Elite Dangerous or something. I'm currently 50,000 lightyears away from Earth, but the tedius jumps back to civilization seem way more validating than the tens of hours of play in Aetolia that have now been flushed down the toilet for no reason I can think of.

Sryaen

At the risk of sounding like a broken record here - I came back after being gone for 10 years to some amazing, wonderful quality of life improvements to this game. These changes feel like a massive step back to the days of Classic Aet where changes really didn't have any rhyme or reason to them.

Going to echo the Syssin sentiments here with my displeasure at the hiding changes. Heatsight is okay, I suppose. Since there's far more people as endgame than there used to be, it seems like hide was essentially only a skill that only worked against non-endgame players without any class vision abilities. It also makes Shadowslip p much useless unless you're using globes.

After buying some chests the other day, I noticed the disclaimer on the purchase page about artifacts changing with an ever evolving game (paraphrasing obv), and I've never been more wary about spending my hard-earned real-life money on IG artifacts that can be changed on a whim that 1) don't appear to have been playtested and 2) are clearly massively unpopular with the playerbase.

In the words of Michael Scott: "Nope. Don't like that."

Drystin

After taking some time to consider these changes all the way around I just wanted to throw in my two cents on why I think reverting these changes is a better solution than trying to make it work. Firstly, IRE is a business and literally none of your customers like this. I've never seen such a united outcry from both tethers before and that's reason enough in my view, but I'll continue.

The intent behind the hide change was to buff it, which I agree needs doing because without cold blood your average sneaky type is seen by all because of the availability of heatsight. Simple fix: don't allow heatsight to be an option for raceskill purchase. This also makes the lifevision arti worth the credit price which most agree that it currently is not. This change to hide has made it so that if I want to backstab someone, I have to enter the room, hide, wait for balance to come back then backstab them but.. oh wait.. you can't use hide if someone else is in the room with you which means I can only backstab someone from phase as long as they too are not phased. See how clunky this whole thing is? I can think of some ways this could be forced to work, but why? Just revert this change, get rid of heatsight from racial skill point purchase and you're killing 3 birds with one stone.

The celerity change wasn't accompanied by an explanation of why it was needed so we're all just guessing at the catalyst for but in short, the community at large obviously doesn't like moving slower at all. For myself, I like to move fast because I don't have unlimited game time and I want to hurry and get where I'm going to do the thing I wanna do. For that reason, I have the celerity artifact, a blessing or two usually, winged slippers of dude that doesn't play anymore, I'm mounted and galloping 90% of the time and I have the riding crop. I used to be faster than Michael Johnson 3 cups of coffee deep in a prune eating contest but now I'm basically moving at the speed I did when I was a nublet. Its not a good change at all especially when you've invested into all those movement enhancements. If you're really insistent that people just need to not be so fast, then I'd recommend getting rid of recovery entirely (this is a bad mechanic..) and lowering the base celerity that everyone has. At least this way, those who invest in speed enhancements are getting a legit speed enhancement and the values make sense.

Lastly I just wanna say, I really think this is a bad use of resources that produces very little return for IRE or the players. This is just my opinion but I really think time could be better spent creating those mirror classes two at a time (ie. one for spirit, one for shadow). Its been admitted that creating these mirror classes isn't even difficult, there is no balancing to be done, and its just a tedious task of rewriting skill messages and creating a theme. I didn't like the idea at first, but mirror classes would solve SO MANY more issues than changes like this one, not to mention that they would bring a big profit to IRE. They inherently balance tethers because each tether would have exactly the same skills available to them and you'll never have to approve/deny a classlead report based on "Thats a good change, but I don't want to buff/nerf <tether> currently." They also inherently halve tether tribalism based around perceived favoritism toward one tether or the other, a headache that I'm sure our staff could do without. They add additional lore to the game, more things for people to do, more artifacts to buy, more classes to spend lessons on, etc. etc.

Just my thoughts, and I sincerely don't mean to sound like a jerk but the majority of your customers definitely enjoy playing the game a whole lot more than running from point A to B or making drastic system coding fixes to accommodate game changes that just seemed needless to begin with.

Ayastia

So... imma just say it. This was titled experimental changes. It seems, without a doubt, the player base feels the experiment failed, in less than an hour mind you. Please revert it. You have killed the enjoyment of the game for so many people. I came back after 8ish years and was having a great time, making new friends and all. But if the game stops being fun, stops being the escape for the giant pile of bull feces that is going on in the world right now, why even bother continue logging in? Discord will keep us connected. Please, for the love of all that is holy, trash these "updates". 

Ehtias

FIGHT MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Anahera

I am adamantly against the celerity changes. The difference was so noticeable that I got halfway to Itzatl rain forest before being so annoyed/frustrated at it all that I logged. It was tedious, and this is from someone with speed-walk bonus, wings, and mount. I felt like I was walking through molasses or lagging it was such a sudden change for my character.

Please reconsider these experimental changes.

Stine

Ehtias

Ehtias

Also

Stine

I went through the trouble to make the meme and forgot the Slippers of Xon which give 2 celerity when speedwalking.

Koda

I most certainly did not have Aetolian movement speed nerf on my 2020 disaster bingo card.

Xavin

I have been trying to think of a single change that I've seen in the last 12 years that has been universally disliked as much as these celerity and hiding changes and I have come up empty. But what is more concerning to me is that no one on staff seems to be bothering to respond to the concerns of the playerbase.

Oonagh

I feel like this should be on the iceberg meme that Lin made as well....

Somewhere maybe attached to the titanic sinking off the side. Though to segue to @Xavin is that the Pools about to look like a CVS during a riot if someone doesn't respond.

Bulrok

Wow interjecting here to toss out some perspective.

It took like 6 months to get Tiur to respond to an email that had a list of concerns from Shadow side players. Concerns that topped this minor inconvenience and actually (not threateningly?) had people quit the game. (And he lied about shit anyways)

It hasn't been 24 hours and some of you are losing your shit.

I'm not downplaying what's going on here, but I'm not missing this golden opportunity to give you guys some perspective about why some of us are so salty about, well, anything.

Savas

After taking awhile to consider, I think these changes aren't very good.

I understand they're being presented as experimental, so I'm not going to completely lose my shit.

Celerity 'recovery' changes totally invalidate a lot of time (augments)/credit (artifacts)/iron coin (speedwalking boon) investment. Not cool.

I'm not sure why the hiding changes were necessary. The one class that spies regularly isn't going to stop using Phase to do so. Completely dumpstering spiritsight was probably not the best move.

The hide being lost on movement is a big middle-finger to Syssin, in more ways than one. Shadowslip has lost a lot of value, and we can't open fights with backstab anymore unless we have the chameleon skin artifact (or start from phase, which is not an option in some cases).

Anti-illusion on lifevision is a big part of why I picked up my artifact, so I feel especially salty there.

I'm trying to look at the bigger picture here. It's just not a picture I like.

Naos

In my line of work, I can not imagine leaving customers hanging for even 24 hours before formulating a response if an uproar anwhere near this level arose. If what has been shared here is true, I certainly can't imagine leaving them for six months.

Czcienn

Tbh I'd really appreciate a postmortem from Tiur. Like, how do changes that are so obviously detrimental to enjoyment of players who just want to play the game make it not just past the idea stage, but actually get implemented and pushed to live.

Of course, I have a strong suspicion the postmortem would just be something along the lines of "Keroc thought it was a good idea so he implemented it". Not trying to point any fingers, but it's just very difficult to understand how any of this happened, and how we can be reassured that it won't happen again.

Tetchta

Czcibor said:

Tbh I'd really appreciate a postmortem from Tiur. Like, how do changes that are so obviously detrimental to enjoyment of players who just want to play the game make it not just past the idea stage, but actually get implemented and pushed to live.

Yeah, this is something I've been wondering as well. My suspicion, honestly, is probably just that that's what the practice has been for most of IRE's existence, and it's kind of a legacy workflow that certain people that have been working long enough just get a level of trust with regards to implementation. That said, while probably a test server is unfeasible, I feel like there's not a ton of back and forth between the playerbase and the upstairs folk about the game (in some ways this is good, you don't really want players to be dictators of what gets put in or taken out), and a lot of headache could have been avoided if someone had said "Yeah we're thinking about making these changes but we don't actually play the game we enact changes for, so our sense of what is important and minor are warped. What do you guys think?"

Iesid

I think these changes are fine, but I'm looking at the big picture.

Fast movement speed devalues:
Travel skills
Travel artifacts
Setup time and clever ganking

The actual power of getting a pick during a lesser

I think the celerity changes are fine and y'all are just overreacting. This actually opens up ways to differentiate kits and maybe travel skills will be more highly valued in those kits.

I would actually say that the way to find a middle ground here is not to reverse the brave experiment, but to:

Add a racial skill for recovery.
Add recovery augmetic bonus.
Add recovery skills to several classes.
Revise celerity artifacts and offer full refunds.

Having absurd movement speed has a trickle down effect on other player behaviors and systems. Please ask yourself what you are "losing" via these changes and then look at it from another perspective: was what we all had in the first place even fair or healthy?

Big fan of the celerity changes. Think recovery needs some tweaking. Think maybe we should have done it as its own thing and the shock affliction needs to be widespread. We prob could have handled the combat side of this from just adding shock as an aff that prevents celerity recovery anyways. 


The hiding changes are dumb though. Dislike them, they seem pointless. The only hiding skill that even matters is phase and it remains untouched (as it should be.)

Kaiara

Re: Celerity is ok, you guys are overreacting

I can no longer move from the left side of my farm to the right side of my farm without hitting the too hasty message (I had to recode it to get around that, which is fine if irritating - I'm not a fact coder person). I'm not buying another artifact (**for walking** - not staying alive, not getting fancy exit rooms, not fast-traveling, but literally just moving from one side of my farm to the other) because my self-loathing isn't that bad today.

Everyone hates lag. Everyone hates the game being slow. Everyone hates driving slow, walking behind people who are slow... We're a society that likes to move - and quickly. Being forcibly slowed down for no particular [read: given] reason is frustrating at best, irritating enough to play something else at worst.

There are plenty of games to play - particularly games that don't make me do work to enjoy them.

Tetchta

Iesid said:

Please ask yourself what you are "losing" via these changes and then look at it from another perspective: was what we all had in the first place even fair or healthy?

Yes.

Iesid said:

Big fan of the celerity changes. Think recovery needs some tweaking.

Okay, fess up, how much money did Keroc slip you before you wrote this?

Lin

Iesid said:

Please ask yourself what you are "losing" via these changes and then look at it from another perspective: was what we all had in the first place even fair or healthy?

Yes? It was perfectly fine? What even is this?

Tetchta

Lin said:

Iesid said:

Please ask yourself what you are "losing" via these changes and then look at it from another perspective: was what we all had in the first place even fair or healthy?

Yes? It was perfectly fine? What even is this?

Yeah, like, I mean, just a quick answer to "what have you lost" is, for me alone, 100-200 hours of bashing to get to level 140 so I could have a base celerity of 4, only to have it utterly and completely gutted to uselessness for...no discernible reason whatsoever. Four base celerity being what vampires get out the gate as little newblets when they got the Celerity skill.

Was celerity somehow breaking the game in a way that I'm not seeing? Was there some massive celerity-based meta that nobody told me about?

Bulrok

It was ruining my immersion. If anything, Keroc needs to go harder. Spinesreach and Bloodloch are on opposite sides of the continent. It should take RL days to get there.

Lin

Since there's still no official response and we have plenty of time to admire the scenery between areas, this is now a "low celerity sight-seeing" thread.

What's your favorite room desc

Bulrok said:

It was ruining my immersion. If anything, Keroc needs to go harder. Spinesreach and Bloodloch are on opposite sides of the continent. It should take RL days to get there.

There's an entire Grecht civilization north of Spinesreach my dude, if anything it's like 2/3rds of the way to the continent's edge

Tetchta

Bulrok said:

It was ruining my immersion. If anything, Keroc needs to go harder. Spinesreach and Bloodloch are on opposite sides of the continent. It should take RL days to get there.

Bulrok

The ones with quest clues. All other rooms are the same.

Nisavi

The only reason to have changed Celerity was that admins didn't like how quickly people were getting from one part to another, but Aetolia is not an RPI nor should it strive to be one. The solution to anything in a game should not be to add monotony and drudgery. I also see that Tiur did a reaction to Iesid's post, so I'm waiting to hear the admin response on this. I will preemptively say that any statement involving: "You don't know what you want" or "you don't know what you're talking about" isn't going to go over well. This is a vastly unpopular decision, and I for one can't even remotely fathom any of these changes.