Best Of

We get your frustration, you are heard. When things take off this quickly I am, frustratingly, slower to respond. It takes me a long while to parse things that won't just make things worse. A post goes up, I start formulating... see six replies, change my reply, see more replies, get frustrated, take a break, etc.

That's on me, and I apologize.

1 - Elixir Changes
Most of Aetolian combat revolves around priorities and this/that choices. A number of things like levitation had no choice involved, it was just act/react. The intention here is to bring them in line. Act-React is BORING.
2 - Celerity/Recovery
Distance means little. Ranged combat just doesn't work in Aetolia well. Before, room blocking and movement hindering were the only real lockdowns. The thought here was to give a midrange concept. People could be faster than one another, you might even have a chance to catch up. It also opens up a new range of afflictions, like shock, giving design space for new classes.
3 - Hiding
Beyond the irritation of act-react, there's the passive counter. If you have heatsight or lifevision, illusions and hiding do nothing. Illusions/Hiding have a cost, the counters are passive and do not. The idea here was to bring those things into a more active scenario.
4 - Test Servers
They aren't resource free. They either run on alternate virtual machines (and are slow) or technically use Aetolia's resources, affecting the main game. Aetolia Classic took more resources than intended to make sure it wouldn't affect Real Aetolia. Historically, test servers only get momentary attention by a few players, which makes the data not useful for normal gameplay. A test server also needs admin attention. Keroc running a test server is a Keroc who isn't working on normal Aetolia. We literally cannot even pay enough for them to be worth the effort, it's been tried.
5 - Allocation of Resources
I don't know how to say this any more simply: Resources are finite. Razmael works on X, Keroc on Y, Tiur on admin things, and volunteers whatever strikes their fancy. Mining is not done and adding Keroc to Mining will not make it faster, two people is not twice as fast. Every schedule I've ever had puts Keroc on classleads four times a year, so this is all within normal. I could ask him to help Razmael, but then classleads will stop while he gets up to speed. Volunteers do not just get thrown at tasks. For instance, Ylemnics was a volunteer project and was not scheduled officially, it was done when it was done and it had no effect on other projects.

While these changes seemed random and tacked together, from our perspective, they were all focused around the same thing: Design Space. Each change opened up room within existing design to add more possibilities within the game. This is a bit of our focus sometimes, to avoid constantly adding new things over top existing.


In the future, please know that immediate requests for artifact refunds, personal attacks, and dog-piling... these just hurt and discourage us. While we're always open to a dialog if you feel your monetary investment has been impacted, doing so respectfully can make these types of discussions much more productive. We are not a AAA game studio, everyone employed here does it not just for the money, but because we love Aetolia and want to. Keroc does a lot of this out of desire to see the game better and more interesting. No one is trying to invalidate your investment or ruin your time. It does mean, however, that we have an emotional investment too!

Sidenote: That's my explanation of the methodology behind the changes. Keroc has smarter opinions.