Best Of

This are ALL dumb changes.

First of all, the elixir change is going to cause so many problems that people are going to start dropping like flies to voyria. If not that, then they'll get cheese damaged out because of poor immunity/health handling. Additionally, not everyone has the capacity to go into the system, modify their curing to handle for both and then move on. It was honestly best when they were two different balances.

Pit change - so essentially, this was nerfed drastically into pointlessness. Only strips once every 4 seconds but no longer immediately pulls if the target is prone and has levitation. This means that it's essentially a waste of time to try to use Pit. The Indorani has to summon Pit, ensorcell it, make it strip levitation (which is on a 1.4s balance time), and not die in 8s. Keep in mind that Pit yanking is on a tick timer not an immediate yank (unlike Purgatory). So really, Indo summons Pit, they get targetted, they die, Pit is over. Now.... the Purgatory equivalent is -superior-, is faster, and has absolutely no counter except "kill the wabbit". Zealot walks in, starts Purgatory and so long as they don't die in 6s.... it fires off pulling ALL aggressors into it. There's no check of levitation, no check of speed, no check of anything except that someone hit someone else. For a side that has very few entrenchment breaking abilities (whereas Spirit has many), this has eliminated yet another Shadow ability to get rid of entrenchment. Good job.

The celerity change is so bad that I can't even begin to explain how mind numbing it is. If I wanted travel to be slow as shit, I'd go play Eve Online. Have you ever had to jump 25 systems? You ever try to walk to BL from NoT with the recent changes? Feels very similar to me. Travelling to lessers/majors/orrery is going to be a giant pain and gives even less time to fight because of snail speed travelling. Even if it was a change to account for people running away from fights, there are a bounty of things you can do to stop people from running. Icewalls, web walls, web tattoo, piety/gravehands, Impale, Psi Tether, JPK stun, indoor room to stop leap/fly, BLOCK. Hunting Grounds and Sect are small enough as it is that you don't need these hindrances on speed movement to fight (which is where most combat is anymore barring global PK events like lessers/majors/orrery).

I'm not even going to touch on hiding abilities/illusions because I feel everyone else has done that superbly.

Either way... I think these changes are absolutely dumb. And I'll reiterate Rijetta: I don't like them.

I'll just say that getting this news when I wake up, after work continually being a nightmare, really doesn't make a good start to the day. Everyone has made great points, but I want to throw in that I play the game to escape and relax. Now, I essentially feel like if I want to bash/PK/DO ANYTHING BESIDES RP - I have to dedicate hours of time to tweak system settings and I just don't have the time or patience for it in myself right now to do that level of work. Maybe if we had warning, and gradual changes on these, it wouldn't feel like such a heavy blow.

As others have said, these should have been warned about and people should have been testing them prior to implementation to give feedback. I don't even want to bother logging in right now because I know I'm going to get frustrated, so I probably won't. I'll go find something else to play (if I even have time TO play anything else) and see if any of these get reverted back to something sensible.

I really, really hope the celerity change is just reverted. Honestly, walking simulators just aren't interesting in a MUD context. Just let us go from point A to point B quickly enough so we can actually play the game. One of the biggest problems I had with flying through Starmourn's space system is that while it's cool to do the first 10 times, after that it just became a monotonous affair flying (i.e. autopiloting while I did other things) for 5-15 minutes just to get where I wanted. It just doesn't feel the same as travelling through space in a 3D game. In the context of Aetolia it's even worse because movement here is even less interesting.

But, if we really must live with this at least make it diminishing returns with "recovery" as it is now is just based on celerity rather than a separate value. For example, maybe the first 4 points of celerity each give 1 recovery, but after that it becomes 2 celerity for 1 recovery. This essentially raises the base recovery to 4, with most people being just 1 or 2 slower than before, while not requiring people to invest in celerity just to find that there aren't that many sources of recovery. Just makes the whole design process much easier (i.e. why should X skill give celerity and not recovery or vice versa).

Having no access or very little access to the new 'recovery' stat makes all manner of celerity worth way less than it was previously. If I have 5 celerity and 3 recovery, I may as well have 3 celerity.

With a mount and the celerity artifact (600 cr btw) I am at 4 celerity and 3 recovery. Without the celerity artifact, I am at 3 celerity and 3 recovery.

Please explain why this artifact is not useless save for 1 additional room on my very first movement.

Blessing - provides 1 celerity but 0 recovery - useless
Grace - provides 1 celerity but 0 recovery - useless

And for those of you who remember this one off promotion that I was assured would make a comeback and not make items promo items I have(a desert terrarium toolkit) worthless:

a ravine terrarium - provides 1 celerity but 0 recovery - useless ON TOP OF it doesn't stack with some celerity bonuses that was never included in the announce post or helpfile about terrariums.

These changes have destroyed all movement speed sources. Even ones paid for via credits or promotions with real dollary-doos.

And for context if Tiur and Keroc happen to be reading: The solution is not adding recovery to these. The solution is reverting the changes. Though, if I could get context on what kind of problem that Recovery was attempting to solve in the first place, I might be able to think of another solution that isn't as negative and drastic as this one. As it stands, I have zero idea as to what this was trying to solve. The only logic I can think of that brought this one was lore reasons and that admins didn't like how people were presently blazing across the continent. If my assumption is correct, then my response is: Mechanics trump roleplay, and some suspension of disbelief has to go into play in order for a better playing experience at large. No one wants to spend a ton of time trekking across the continent to get from Point A to B.