Best Of

The second quote directly contradicts the type of game you're trying to be. Please keep in mind what Aetolia is. This is a game where we partake in genocide, we behead each other, afflict people until they're helpless then drain the blood from their bodies, sever limbs, smash skulls, burn each other alive, and devour people while they're still alive. Some of us are even rumored to murder the family members of our enemies but those are likely baseless, unwholesome allegations with no evidence. Please, give us players some credit. We're not snowflakes, we understand the difference between fiction and reality and we're mostly all adults.

Question #1 - If you can't have fire, disease, racial tensions, tyrants, injustice, anything too stressful when stress is a relative term that varies person to person, what is left that you can work with in creating an interesting Gothic horror environment?

Question #2 - Will the recent changes that were made to the hide skill which also made the shadowslip skill and coldblood relic worthless remain in place despite the unanimous backlash that was received?

Question #3 - Are there any plans to add a new skill to the antiquated goggles since the usefulness of lifevision was severely reduced by the hide changes?

Question #4 - Are there any plans to compensate players who have purchased lifevision previous to the hide changes?

Question #5 - Can you give us some transparent answers as to some of the themes that are being considered (or have been decided) for mirror class themes? Will spirit fex wield polearms made of pure wholesomeness and sic their pack of trained war-squirrels on their foes? Will they drain salt from the soul of their enemies and turn it back against them?

We are taking player input into account! Your ideas have influenced some of the concepts we've locked in, though we won't lift 100% due to IP concerns. When we started the ideas a lot of the slots were filled with loose placeholders, and your input has cleared up a lot of those.

We have two Mirror Class concepts being worked on with indefinite timelines. There are a few hurdles to go over though. One is that we won't just be dropping these in, they need full events like any other class release. We would get stung (and rightly so) for just sneaking them in without considering lore implications. Another is the code.

There is a hidden code cost to the first two Mirror Classes we aren't ready to pay. Essentially, say a skill…

Subroutine carnifex_mirror_hammer_smash(ply, tply)
{
Insert copied carnifex code here
NEW CLASS MESSAGES
}

If I copy that from the Carnifex, it'll work the same. But what I REALLY should do is make a NEW thing that both classes now use, so there's only one place to change it. It has zero impact on the game as a whole, but makes it hundreds of times easier to make other mirrors… so it needs to be the first task, and we haven't paid that price yet.



I appreciate the phrasing to give me an out here! I am contractually obligated to get the promotion going each time. It's #1 on my job duties list. You can see the above as to why stories are slow at the moment. And, I can be frank, I'm not GOOD enough to handle all the RP without volunteers and Razmael. So often, I try to just enable, taking out the 'musts' to keep the lights on, like promotions and background code.

In fact, I write the code behind promotions for ALL the games (they don't necessarily use it) because… well, what I found when I took the job hurt me right in the statistics. So in my time with IRE I've coded a new promotion handler, multiple new styles of promotions, converters to make sure prices are fair, put in some monitoring to make sure each person is treated fairly, etc. It looks like I emphasize promotions too much, but it's more that I feel often my best use of ability is in making sure your money spent is done correctly.

That does kinda reinforce the impression I'm sales oriented, oof. I have made it my hill to die on in IRE itself that bad promotions do well when people are having fun, and any promotion succeeds DURING an event. I've been championing switching our metrics to consider logged in time and engagement over dollars, and even tried to remove the 'whale' factor, so we see how the average player is doing. The fact remains that if sales go below a certain point we'd lose our paid staff. Basically, I do the $'s so that everyone else on staff is free to tell their story and make the best possible game.

Zeh and Brax again with our difficulties lately regarding stories:

Zeh: Coming up with ideas for small events that will actually gain attention is not as easy as it sounds! The last event I held for a group got cut in half because the players decided that the admins would ‘automagic’ the thing they were doing. We love events too, but be patient and understand that it isn’t as simple without our main storyline moving ahead as well.

Brax: Echoing what Zeheia says here. I had to try 3 times on the final phase of my little Celani event to get anybody to show up, and even that only happened after making my mob send direct tells to people asking them to come! Twice we rescheduled due to lack of interest (with people logged in), the third time we got a little attention-grabby.