Retirement Values & Artifact Updates...and lessons.

Enadonella

Okay. So I am not as half as upset as some others I have spoken to because I never intend to retire Enadonella ever. She is permanent to Lusternia. :P

But I am upset nonetheless because you have taken value from items I bought. Specifically dingbat items.

Here is what has happened: Dingbats have retirement value > Dingbats become goop > Goop loses retirement value as it was never intended. > Dingbat items have lost credit value.

Dingbats were always worth credit value. As far as I am aware. If I am wrong here then let me know but even in the roll-over, they were equal to never less than. 

On that premise, you have taken value from dingbat items. Whether this was intended or not you have done it. I believe this should be resolved. People who have lost value that bought aethergoop items that were traditionally aethergoop items that is too bad so sad. People who had dingbat items that have lost value because of the dingbat transition should be compensated. And not with those bloody useless coins! Although I do appreciate you bothered to reimburse people at all after that screw up. It was nice. 

Also, while I am here, what you did with lessons was a real douche move as well. People paid credits for those lessons and have been refunded in a currency that isn't relevant to their needs whatsoever. I'd have liked an option between lessons and bound credits or hell even goop would have been better than lessons. You are refunding us or making an attempt to compensate with the wrong values. Right idea though!

Anyways. Good luck with all the changes I'm here to support you regardless. Just please stop trying to screw us over with ill-thought out concepts. Cheers!

Steingrim

Ena has the right of it. Lessons should have been refunded as bound credits. Which would have allowed people who were omni-trans to benefit from the refund and to those who would have rather have had the lessons be only minorly inconvienced in having to convert bound credits to lessons.

Rivius

Is there supposed to be a huge discrepancy between escrow value and retirement credits? I don't really intend to retire, but something seems off...

Arkh

Escrow counts artifacts, etc. at 66% (tradein value). Retirement counts them at 50%.

However, there are a lot of minute intricacies (such as retirement value not counting arties won from wheel spins) that can nudge the actual discrepancy upwards.

Enya

Oh that's a good point, were common skills downgraded to core in such a way as to preserve value?

Deichtine

Common skills had their lesson cost reduced to be cheaper to buy but you also got a refund of any lessons if you had already learned them.

So the common skill change should not effect your value or escrow I think.

Basically you had x lessons invested in your character before now you still have x lessons invested but some are sitting in lesson pools instead of skills but for the value that should be the same thing. I think.

Xenthos

Goop candy is terrible, I don't want it. 

This is in reference to the other change regarding nerfing maps/pots/genies/traps.

Orael

@Deichtine is correct here. The core lesson change would have had zero effect on your retirement value because all the lessons were refunded. You didn't lose them.

Again, dingbat items were never meant to count toward retirement. If they did, that was an error that we've now corrected.

Minkahmet

Yep....Enadonella pretty much confirmed what I discussed with Romaan yesterday since I could've sworn some of these artifacts/dingbats were for years purchasable as credits, then end up being goop items and now this. I understand it came from higher-ups, but I am nonetheless firm in believing this was a big setup and the fact that the subordinates were explicitly not allowed to tell the IRE pbase about the real deal behind retirement values. Sorry but not sorry and I'm not going to be spending a dime before the changes take effect to regain the lost half. Granted, I'm not going anywhere anytime soon unless Starmourn picks up and rocket off as they are on a good note as it is, other than that, nothing more can be done about that and these coins are and give out terrible "consolation" prizes. That's just me personally, I have never liked 90% of the prizes it gives out, except maybe credits whenever it does happen.

Xenthos

Items that started life as credits and then got skinned to goop theoretically still count.  I pushed back because that didn't make any sense with how much I lost.

Turns out there was a much bigger bug where the help file stated retire value was 50% of artifact value, but they were not being appropriately halved.  So fixing that bug is what really dropped everyone.  Announcing the change and pinning it on dingbats has led to a lot of "dingbat conversion should not have lost me that much so you are not counting stuff appropriately."  When I factored in the bug fix I ended up not losing much at all in value, almost all of my drop appears to have been due to the bug.

Better communication here would also have been helpful, it was so confusing to say the drop was related to dingbats when their effect was actually a drop in the bucket to the change, but apparently there were concerns about the IRE retirement calculator.  Since the help file already stated the 50% thing though they were able to clarify that is where the main problem was.

Stratas

Some of this is hard to swallow, given how the changes have been handled, not just now, but in the past as well. Take this for example:

>--------------------------[ Changelog Entry #1524 ]--------------------------<
   Entered by: Ianir the Anomaly                   Date: 2018-08-15 21:18:34

   o Post-dingbat fix changelog thread
     - Fixed a bug with the extra standard present open on jar open not
   using new present tables or displaying a line.
     - Fixed a bug with the standard present open throwing an untrapped.
     - Retirement value fixes due to a deletion of a currency.
     - Due to retirement value changes/simplification, several items lost
   their values. These items are slowly being fixed, and will be listed
   below.
     - All dolls have regained their retirement/tradein values.
     - All ascension discs have regained their retirement/tradein values.
     - All mantles have regained their retirement/tradein values.
     - All tongue studs have regained their retirement/tradein values.
     - All of Tink McFierce's wares have been converted to aethergoop and
   added to ASHOP.
     - Skinned variants of artifacts should now have their
   retirement/tradein values restored.
     - Dingbat keyword no longer functions in ashop.
     - All dingbat beasts are now sold in goop.

What is this about? We're expected to believe 5 months later that these specific and pointed changes were... what? Unintentional? Accidental? Not approved by Estarra? Ianir, reworking the retirement values, didn't know IRE's policy on what counts towards retirement when doing so? This conversation never came up? In addition, at this time, you could freely exchange dingbats for either credits (1:1) or aethergoop (20:1). So something that was never supposed to count towards retire value could be traded 1:1 for something that could?

And there may very well have been a bug about artifacts counting for 100% when they should have counted for 50%. I can accept that. What's harder for me to swallow is that it wasn't part of the original announce on retire value. Instead Orael comes by later and says "oh hey this WAS only supposed to count for 50%! That explains the drop!" How byzantine are your retire formulas that you can change a value and not know what it is you changed? Or... there was a glitch where goop artis counting made all artis count at 100% but fixing goop changed that back to 50%? What? I'm not much of a coder, but based on what little I DO know, there's no way that makes sense to me. What changed that could halve the calculated values of artis, the people who changed it not realize it until it's pointed out to them what artifacts should contribute, and Ianir also not realize it when testing this crap back in August?

I'm generally on the side of the admins, I want Lusternia to succeed, and I generally want to give everyone in Havens the benefit of the doubt. But goddamn. You're making it hard.

Xenthos

They knew they changed it, but thought they were prevented from discussing it by IRE mandate because all retirement calculations are supposed to be top secret, apparently.  But since they had previously announced the 50% thing, that made it okay to discuss (IRE restriction did not apply).  They were not aware that the door was open for talking about it.

That resulted in a pretty big communication issue.  When 95% of the change is to a bug fix and the only thing stated is the part that affects the remaining 5%, the numbers just don't add up, hence all... this.

Stratas

Fine, I'll accept that point. It's still kinda weird to me given all the previous talk about retirement value that's seemingly been fine, or the newsposts and help files that have said 50% since day one, but whatever. They were under the impression the only thing they could talk about was goop.

The goop thing 5 months ago is still egregious to me. The being able to trade 1:1 a currency that allegedly was never supposed to hold retirement value for one that did, then acting like this was an oversight bothers me. The attitude of "if we had made the workings public, people would have found these errors sooner" is baffling given that every indication to that point was that dingbats and aethergoop held retire value and things were done to reinforce that. If the situation was that Lusternia was doing things one way, and then IRE comes in and says "you can't do it this way and never should have" then tell us that, so at least we can be upset at the right people.

Versalean

Credits currently available for purchase:

       2 credits at 41234 gold per credit.

     276 credits at 42000 gold per credit.

     200 credits at 50000 gold per credit.

Total credits for sale: 478 shown (478 total)  (Average sale price: 38659)

Use CREDITS BUY <number> AT <max gold per credit> to purchase.

Deichtine

Fair point @Stratas
 

We have changelogs and news posts directing that goop items do have a retire value.

Can the admin clarify this point please? I'm a little confused by it now. When we have change logs saying that some goop items will have a retire value and it was the assumption that they do why is it now decided that they don't?

Enadonella

I think there is a lot of backtracking going on here and what would help to clarify the situation is for people to stop claiming it is all a 'bug' when what really happened is that they decided we were garnering too much from items for their liking and they tacked on this solution to another 'bug' and tried to confuse the people so they wouldn't ask any questions or maybe just hoped I don't know if they are smart enough for that kind of maneuver.

But some of the people are actually waking up and starting to question the authority and they don't like it. And they don't have a valid answer without making themselves look bad. And if we keep pushing all we will see are the terms and Conditions.

A statement from Ire would certainly help to clarify any of these claims that they pushed for all of this, that they prohibited the release of retire value calculations, that they gave an option of FTP or 'else' because I personally have no reason to trust any of this nonesense and I think others read the same post about transparency and honesty and then got hit with the reality that it is the same utter bullcrap that has been happening always. Sugar coated lies wrapped up in Terms and Conditions. 

Versalean

Thread closing in 5... 4... 3... 2...

Enadonella

I already called it. When they don't have an answer or they get called out they just shut it down. But you never know!

Orael

Here's full disclosure about what happened as far as retirement.

I was looking at retirement values and how it was all calculated. Not only were we discussing doing the audit, but there were also various issues and bugs about items and the retirement value. People noticed that they lost retirement value when trading things in, which doesn't make sense. This was occurring with both goop and credit artifacts. Looking into this, I discovered it was calculating artifacts (both goop and credits) at 100% of their value. At this point, I was under the impression that it should actually only be counting at its trade-in value. I admittedly skimmed HELP RETIRE and missed the line about only 50%. I brought this up with Estarra, who then consulted the past emails from when this was initially implemented and we discovered that we were incorrect on both accounts, that artifacts should be valued at 50% and anything that couldn't be traded in for bound credits shouldn't count. Estarra brought it up to IRE to get their opinion on it (given we've been incorrectly calculating retirement value for well over two years) and we were told to correct it, and give out the czigany coins as compensation. 

The reason for the lack of initial communication is because the retirement calculations were not to be public, but once it was pointed out that we had already stated that artifacts count for only 50% of their value, I felt that the cat was out of the bag and I could point out that it was the biggest contributor to the corrected retirement values.

Again, I'm sorry for the confusion, that was never the intention. We're not trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes by any means. I've been as open as I can be about the whole situation. I'm not sure what else to say beyond this. It was being done incorrectly and the results were unintended (hence a bug) and we had to fix it. We were being vague initially because we thought we had to be, but as it was brought to light that some of this information was already revealed, we opened up to reveal more info. 

Deichtine

I'm still a little confused by the whole thing. Can I just clarify to make sure we are on the same page and what I think has happened has happened. If this isn't right please correct me because the whole thing is a bit confusing.

Aethergoop used to be part of retirement value, there are a bunch of posts and changelogs saying this and admin confirmed this as well on discord and messages.

But yesterday you were doing the audit and discovered after reporting to IRE that this stance was incorrect and that aethergoop should not count for retire value.

You fixed this issue and aethergoop and aethergoop items now no longer count for the retire value.

That's whats happened so far right?

Orael

It wasn't just yesterday, it was a protracted investigation, but that's basically it. I had been looking into it off and on for the past month or so.

Deichtine

Ok that clears it up a bit. 

Lusternian players and admin believed athergoop was a true and accurate part of retire for years like you said and then got confirmation from IRE recent-ish that it wasn't so changed it last night.

Deichtine

One thing that happened in Imperian was that their promo items(their equiv of goop stuff and curio stuff) that didn't have a retire value were given a retire value when the game went free to play so that people who had paid money for these items did get some retire value out of it.

I don't entirely understand why IRE is treating two of its games differently unless they intend to let you give goop items a retire value soon before you switch to free to play.

Malayn

I'd like to note that, even unintended, this borders on suspicious.

The administration pushed dingbats with the stated stance of them being 2:1. When this number was no longer the norm (1:1), we saw a number of artifacts retired because they had become too cheap (like torus). These items had value. These items converted to goop items. Goop then lost all value.

I have thousands of credits of items that were purchased in credits that are suddenly worth 0 after changes. At no point would anyone expect an item being valued in dingbats would suddenly have no value to them. This was a bait and switch, as we decided afterward to take all value away from something.

I've a plethora of curios I cant move, a 30K credit value loss, and a number of items that may not be counted as having value on top. I've sunk a metric ton of credits into things and have a tiny tiny fraction left. I feel genuinely robbed of far more than the substantial time I have spent in the game. Much of what I had to show for it feels lost for no further reason than "because a currency shouldn't have a value now".   There is also a shift in lost confidence (as stated above), so expected credits on hand is lower, so it becomes even harder to adjust values by sales.


(For idea of coin value by the way, before spins: 18191, after spins (232 coins):  18729.  232 coins gave roughly 530cr value. Not terrible, considering that is also retirement)

EDIT: To be clear, I am not questioning the loss of the base half value due to changing from 100% value to 50%. But when you also consider wonder crystals, curios, goop, dings, manses, pets, customizations, etc also dont count, you realize that a large chunk seems to be excluded now, often more than you buy of credit artys).

Orael

Things that were originally purchased for credits should still count. If you're absolutely sure something that you paid credits for isn't counting, bug it or send me a message and I'll look into it. 

We keep track of what you purchase an item with, whether it's goop, dingbats or credits. None of that has been changed. If you originally purchased something with credits, and skinned it for instance, that should still count towards retirement (the credit portion).

Malayn

Orael said:

Things that were originally purchased for credits should still count. If you're absolutely sure something that you paid credits for isn't counting, bug it or send me a message and I'll look into it. 

We keep track of what you purchase an item with, whether it's goop, dingbats or credits. None of that has been changed. If you originally purchased something with credits, and skinned it for instance, that should still count towards retirement (the credit portion).

Awesome. Will double check items later...... I've a ton of them... so it takes me awhile.

I will make sure they are old. Like, I traded cameo for goop cameo in full, not just skin, but at least those boundies are still in my retire value (cut of course). 

Xenthos

ANNOUNCE NEWS #2890
Date: 1/9/2019 at 3:15
From: Orael the Anomaly
To  : Everyone
Subj: Retirement Values and Orael's major screwup

Greetings,


  Yesterday we made a change to retirment values based on information I had gathered. It turns out that my investigation was flawed and I was only looking in our own source code for information. All IRE games are built from a set of core code that I, in general, do not touch or mess with.

 After telling people that I would look at their audit values and check to see what was going on, things were not adding up. So I again, dove into the code and searched to see why it wasn't adding up. It turns out tha the 50% reduction in retirement value is taken in the IRE source code and not in our own code. Basically, the change I made reduced retirements to 25% of their value rather than 50%.

 There really isn't any excuse here, other than to say I messed up and I'm extremely sorry. There definitely was issues with things counting at full value that people were pointing out. I've restored the artifact values to their previous levels.

 Feel free to let me have it, this is all on my shoulders.

 - Orael
 
Penned by My hand on the 4th of Kiani, in the year 521 CE.

Portius

So. While I'm not one of them, it seems like a lot of people liquidated their resources to prep for retirement. I am guessing a lot of them are going to be deeply annoyed right now, especially if they were only retiring because of the value change. Are you planning on a rollback or anything along those lines to revert everything? Or some other such plan?

Xenthos

Portius said:

So. While I'm not one of them, it seems like a lot of people liquidated their resources to prep for retirement. I am guessing a lot of them are going to be deeply annoyed right now, especially if they were only retiring because of the value change. Are you planning on a rollback or anything along those lines to revert everything? Or some other such plan?

I bought a genie from someone, he knows who he is, if he wants it back he can just ask me.  I'd hope other players would be understanding too.

Estarra

You mean roll back 24 hours?

Portius

Estarra said:

You mean roll back 24 hours?

Something like that. I don't know how you handle your backups or anything. But it's a thing that I would be considering in your place, and probably something worth discussing to see what players in general want with it.