Announce post #3171: Where's Mining and Mirrors?

Tetchta

Rhyot said:

Talk to me about mining. Where are we on that?

This guy still thinks he's getting mining 😂

Tiur

We'll talk mining after these are done. We haven't done descoping, been too busy.

Iesid

Tiur said:

We'll talk mining after these are done. We haven't done descoping, been too busy.

Makes sense. Thanks for making these such a big priority.

Is today the day?! 

Tiur

The Revenant event has started.

Tiur

Event 95% complete. The class will be given tomorrow, when that last bit can happen.

And I get one last paranoid check that it works, because for once, I want to load code that doesn't immediately break.

Macavity

@Tiur is there anything in the works for when people start to hit the 12 max mullti class cap? Are you going to expand to allow the additional mirrors when they come out and push us over the 12? or for those that already have 12 slots full, to expand for mirror classes?

my apologies if this has been asked and answered some place else.

Tiur

It hasn't! I think, most likely, I'll just up the slot maximum and keep the cost static from there.

Jhin

Tiur said:

It hasn't! I think, most likely, I'll just up the slot maximum and keep the cost static from there.

Will there be any considerations made to the transfer of lessons from currently owned opposite tether classes?

Tiur

That is not the plan, no. Since you still have the class and lessons, it's equally valid as it was yesterday, so it doesn't make sense to transfer them.

Bulrok

Imagine waiting over a year just to still not be able to pick up the mirror class when it finally drops. REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Tiur

Revenant has been released. Tomorrow will be Warden and release in the same day.

Naos

Honestly, it may have been worth delaying yet again rather than releasing a class with obvious typos, misplaced line breaks, and zero AB files to speak of. 

Tetchta

When can we expect class-specific artifacts to drop?

Drystin

I'm not able to be on and check at the moment but if it hasn't already been added, can we get the custom prompt tags for revenant's bladecharge equivalent? 

Tetchta

Bulrok said:

Imagine waiting over a year just to still not be able to pick up the mirror class when it finally drops. REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Apparently that's how it was intended.

Elene

A few questions to ask from the get-go, @Tiur:

 - Are we waiting for the Warden event to wrap up before a post announcing the release of Revenant and Warden is thrown up?

 - How are you settling the distribution of the classes? From what I'm hearing currently for Revenant, it's given to all active members of the Sciomancers, but if those who obtained it has no desire to master/put lessons in them, then there is a player-induced chokehold on class distribution. What is the solution to alleviate this?

 - From what I'm hearing, there's only two or three available individuals that are interested in dropping lessons on Revenant and can apprentice it, and once they meet the hardcap of two apprentices per IG SEASON, they have to wait for 12.5 days to hand it out again. Based on whether the apprentices decide if it's worth investing all the lessons into the class or meet the requirements to apprentice, there will still be an overall delay on class distribution. Is that intended?

 - Have you considered releasing the class to the Tether for a limited 48 hours before restricting to its intended Guild? RP can then begin from there, because as far as I'm aware, to nail down what the Revenant addition will mean for the Sciomancers in terms of safety to Czjetija will take a long while to firm up and enforce. If you're worried about the initial RP direction of it, have the NPC espouse a lengthy diatribe of the potential consequences of it before letting them gain the class from the denizen.

EDIT:

 - Revenant skill messages please! I want to get a head start on my shitty coding. ;(

 - You dropped a str based class into an int based guild. If one is not invested enough to have polymath or play with the class more, they have even less incentive to pick up Revenant.

Tetchta

I issued for clarification on this and the answer seems to be "there's enough non-sciomancers with the class," so slow, bottlenecked distribution seems to be by design, not mistake.

(Mass: Tetchta, Raynia) Issue 21977: Mirror classes will have some bumps in their release due to the unique nature of the class spreading. It has been investigated, and we have found more non-Sciomancers with the class than expected. There is no reason for the admin to step in at this time.

Tiur

That reasoning was for why we will not punish someone who doesn't want to give it to you, not because we felt the spreading was sufficient. There is enough spread that we don't mind them being choosy.

Artifacts in a few days.

I am so sorry, I never even considered the custom prompt! Thank you, I'll go figure that one out while Wardens are doing their thing.

I waited on the announce post until I had made a few decisions, which I did, so I'll post it now.

The post will explain how I am increasing the distribution.

Messages to come, there's just no easy way to dump them from code still. I will post what I can.

We didn't really consider the stat base of the class when distributing it. Not because we didn't bring it up, but because we just saw it as a way to increase the breadth of a guild. One need not be good at -everything-.

edit:

Also, please BUG any bugs, and TYPO anything appropriate. We will do our best to fix them.

Elene

If you said that there is enough spread that you don't mind players being choosy, how do you justify your consideration, then, to increase the class distribution a few lines after, @Tiur? I only know a handful who has the class, and some of them can't distribute it yet due to the average 5 hours per week restriction: Mazzion, Raynia, Kanivara, Mjoll, Bulrok, Ehtias, Drystin. Out of all the Sciomancers available, note that only two bothered to learn the class fully, and only one (Raynia) can currently give it out as a guilded Sciomancer.

I felt that it was really unfair to release the class like this as the weekend approaches, and there are certainly a lot of people looking forward to spending the weekend digging into bug and stress testing the Revenant code, but could not. I hope that this doesn't happen for the Warden class as well, at the very least.

Also, that is a reasonable response on choosing the Guild where the class should serve as the base of. I don't expect the stat base of the class to be of a significant factor in deciding where to place it. It's roleplay oriented, which is understandable but when you leave the distribution to the playerbase, this feeds into the decision-making as to whether it is worth investing lessons into a class they can only use sub-optimally.

Tiur

Let me be clearer, there are two issues: Breadth and depth. Depth being quantity of people getting the class, Breadth being the variety. I am absolutely fine with letting breadth be handled by RP, and depth by mechanics. If an insufficient, in -my- mind, quantity of people have access to the class, I will readdress this.

I removed the quantity restriction on apprentices, provided you are in the Sciomancer guild. That should let them mass hand it out, but also retain some identity.

I just am unconvinced that I should add a command to let everyone gain the class, regardless of their RP or similar consideration. If it were an untethered class, that makes sense. Imagine I released a new subspecies of vampire and didn't let Bloodloch have any say. They would revolt.

Elene

I'd like to think that it is possible to gate the breadth you are concerned with. Meyondu is in the Scios GH. Not everyone can enter the Scios GH, only if you are a guilded Sciomancer or have Guild Sanction. This means if you allow the class to be obtainable through the denizen, the Sciomancer still needs to seek permission to bring someone in to get Revenant, even if they themselves aren't interested in picking up the class. This improves accessibility, and still requires someone to go through the RP route.

Food for thought, regardless.

EDIT: I don't mean to be ungrateful, but I'm just severely frustrated.

Haven

https://forums.aetolia.com/discussion/3789/mirror-mirror-who-can-divine-the-future/p1

Is this still a thing?

Tiur

You bet it is! I'll deal with that in a bit.

The NPC has plans, he isn't going to sit there and give out classes. Of course, that doesn't negate your point. I'll take another look over the weekend and see if it remains too hard to get.

Tetchta

I do really think the rollout for Revenant could've gone a lot better. Mirrors have been hyped up for months with the (perhaps erroneous?) impression that it was going to be something to invigorate PVP and PVE across the game. Many players were under the impression that they’d be able to have access to the class with relative ease so they could begin the long process of understanding how it functions (not to mention the excitement associated with having a new toy.)

The rollout of Revenant stood in contrast to this expectation, where the class was, essentially, unavailable for the game at large, and from a player perspective it seems like it was handled without certain considerations; considerations such as the diminished activity in the game over the past quarter or so, which leads to decreased average playtimes, which mechanically limits the viability of spreading the class about. If you don’t have enough average playtime hours, you can’t apprentice.

Mirrors created an influx of people who’d previously stopped playing due to various reasons, many of which were excited to get their hands on new content that was, frustratingly, inaccessible. And I have to echo @Elene’s observation that the weekend is upon us, which is when a lot of people have the most free time available to play, and a lot of the people who have been waiting for months for the first spot of content in ages are going to be stymied in their play experience.

It really feels like this should have been considered when dropping the class, and that’s the source of many folks’ frustrations. The above considerations aside, instead of Revenant being a tether-wide reward/content drop, it feels more like it was exclusively a sciomancer guild event. I’m hoping that class access frees up more in the future, but I really hope wider player activity and player desires are taken into account more with future Mirror class releases.

Bulrok

Putting up a pointless and artificial barrier to getting the class on the release day sure seems like a great way to discourage people from picking it up. Isn't it usually better to do the exact opposite, and make it easy to get at the start but then remove that ease of access later if you want it to be Scio's thing? In 2 weeks from now it won't matter at all, probably, but still seems backwards.

Seurimas

Bulrok said:

Putting up a pointless and artificial barrier to getting the class on the release day sure seems like a great way to discourage people from picking it up. Isn't it usually better to do the exact opposite, and make it easy to get at the start but then remove that ease of access later if you want it to be Scio's thing? In 2 weeks from now it won't matter at all, probably, but still seems backwards.

"Pointless and artificial barrier" as in... the well understood, default barrier? Generally, you get a class as a newbie or from its guild, either by joining it or from someone in it. Mirror classes were rather explicitly advertised as a guild-based thing, with a whole contest to go along with it. I think there were some unreasonable expectations, if people thought they could easily scoop up the new class regardless of guild day 1.

Bulrok

It's pointless and artificial because of how long it's been since we've had a class released like this. Default doesn't excuse it from being bad. It just means the default way of doing it is dumb. It's a stone age thing. I agree there were unreasonable expectations, but I don't think we agree on what makes them unreasonable?

They 100% should have just had full access to it on day 1, day 2, and day 3 at the very least. After that, let players work it out if you really want to keep leaving the seeds of player based gatekeeping when it comes to other players real life cash being screwed with.

Aetolia is a business when it comes to squeezing the life out of people for quality of life purchases like Polymath and Adaptation but we're a super rp based game when it comes to squeezing the life out of players for quality of life access.

It's whatever, though. Like I said, 2 weeks tops, it won't matter anyways.

Jeshu

Aren't most classes tied to guilds? As a new player watching from the outside (who wants to start as a Revenant), I have to say, I kind of assumed this would be the case. It also seems like a good way to strengthen the sense that a class has a particular lore role.

I don't mean to burst in as someone who's still an outsider and try to denigrate what you guys are saying, and your points do make sense to me, even in my relative ignorance. It's just that the way things were done does seem to make sense to me, too. IDK.

Sibatti

Could we get some version of the liaison arena, where players can join and select any class they want to play around with it? It would give them the ability to play around, without cutting into RP concerns.

Just my two cents, as someone who isn't actively in the PvP scene.

Seurimas

Sibatti said:

Could we get some version of the liaison arena, where players can join and select any class they want to play around with it? It would give them the ability to play around, without cutting into RP concerns. Just my two cents, as someone who isn't actively in the PvP scene.

ClassPick is an arena mod. Ask your friendly neighborhood culture aide, I think.