Q&A Livestream - 11th April 2020

Aonia

On Saturday 11th April at 7pm GMT, Orael and I will be hosting a Q&A livestream on Twitch!

We'd like to ask that you submit your questions ahead of time so that we use as much of the hour we'll be streaming answering questions, rather than having to sort through questions on the day. Please drop them into this thread - we can't guarantee we'll answer every question but we'll do our best to get through as many as we can.

You can follow us ahead of time if you haven't already, and hit the bell so that you're notified when we go live. We'll also be alerting you on Twitter and Facebook when we do.

Xenthos

The push for scarcity of commodities has significant gameplay repercussions, especially when some organizations have had essentially zero commodity income for RL months.  They are a basic prerequisite; without them you cannot really play the game, at least in some classes.  Kata weapons, warrior weapons, instruments, all of these take comms.  Can you please discuss why you feel that having commodities is a problem that needs to be rectified?  Why do they need to be scarce?  Is it not preferable for people to be able to get what they need to have fun in the game vs. not?

Zagreus

Some positive feedback first. Timequakes have been fun. I wasn't sure how they'd play out but I think they've proven exciting and a good design. Thanks for the recent changes to aethertraders, demipowers, and I'm looking forward to round two of endgame content. By all accounts I think the game is in a much better spot than a year ago. Thank you Ianir, Orael, Aonia, and all the others who pour their love into this game.
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[Bug #28694] Could Plaxios get some attention please? That's an entire epic quest that has never been fully completed due to bugs.

Could live adders be added to Oleanvir so that the atrociously broken and bad quest to get anatine can be removed?

Can we get a general idea of when Ascension will be, in May, June, July?

[Bug #27236] The Supernal conflict quest was broken last we killed them, any hope this major conflict quest will be fixed?

Jolanthe

Xenthos said:

The push for scarcity of commodities has significant gameplay repercussions, especially when some organizations have had essentially zero commodity income for RL months.  They are a basic prerequisite; without them you cannot really play the game, at least in some classes.  Kata weapons, warrior weapons, instruments, all of these take comms.  Can you please discuss why you feel that having commodities is a problem that needs to be rectified?  Why do they need to be scarce?  Is it not preferable for people to be able to get what they need to have fun in the game vs. not?

IMO The hidden stockpiles and ability to stockpile endlessly out of org comm shops did a lot to create the appearance of rabid abundance, despite the fact that from a player side view there's already been some feeling of scarcity for many players. I personally feel like once the old caches are gone, there's no way baseline production of villages will keep up with the entire game, especially while also fueling consumption via aethertrading. Some commodity issues could be adjusted and band-aided well enough (like just cranking up the mature tree growth rate to increase lumber production), but metals might be particularly problematic once that time rolls around.

Xenthos

Followup question to one of Ixion's: Why do these "conflict quests" still exist (supernals, demon lords, avatars, etc)?  They are anything but conflict.  You have to do them when no defenders are around and it is just mob bashing / staying alive, and take huge amounts of time to recover from (far disproportionate to the time to kill).

As has been brought up before, it would be preferable to a number of players to just disable these because they are so lopsided.

Xenthos

Previously you said that Alliance Mechanics were on the table after the demi rework.  Is this still the case?  If so, are there any details?  How will it work in regards to the current alliance situation?

Misericorde

With the design revamp having settled some, is there a chance we can start seeing new design patterns soon? Jewellery is especially limited in what you can make. I think you have enough people eager for new patterns that if you put out a call for a basic design to give an example of what a pattern should be you could crowdsource the base patterns pretty easily!

Has it been decided when the next round of classleads will open up?

Is there an avenue we as players can take to help get quests added to the QUESTS system? I know a few quests I can easily pinpoint to provide a short writeup that we see in QUESTS <quest name> and give other details to ease its adding to the system.

Ayisdra

Misericorde said:

Is there an avenue we as players can take to help get quests added to the QUESTS system? I know a few quests I can easily pinpoint to provide a short writeup that we see in QUESTS <quest name> and give other details to ease its adding to the system.

In the past, admin have said adding quests to the QUESTS system is a bit of work because it is more than just a writeup you see with those commands, it requires new code to track things properly.

Misericorde

Ayisdra said:

In the past, admin have said adding quests to the QUESTS system is a bit of work because it is more than just a writeup you see with those commands, it requires new code to track things properly.

I'm aware of what goes into adding a quest into the system, which is why I'm asking what we can do, if anything, to help make the process quicker!

Esei

How to pronounce Orael and Aonia?

Uzriel

What's on the roadmap for 2020 (and beyond)?

Esei

Oh! Does anyone have a general concept of what the constellations look like, or the night sky in general?

Parhelion

Never mind.

Aonia

Choros said:

Sorry, but I'm going to throw this in.

Who thought up the powers list on the Wondersaddle, and why do they still have a position in the Havens?

We are doing this Q&A voluntarily and out of generosity. It is not something we are required to do for you. It is something we are taking the time to put on because we think it's really valuable to communicate with you about our plans and to give you the opportunity to communicate with us. 

It should not be necessary for us to ask you to phrase your questions politely. Politely does not include suggesting in your question that we should be fired for a decision we have made. You may think you are being funny. You are not. We are here to try and help you, not as an invitation to belittle us, jokingly or otherwise.

Parhelion

Never mind.

Kali

I personally think the wondersaddle is in a good spot - while most of its powers aren't super dramatic, it does push your beasts to be stronger than they would be otherwise, and it has at least 1000cr of value without adding in tons of power creep like some of the other wonderitems.

The bottom line is that if it doesn't appeal to you, you don't have to build it. There's still a pile of other wonderitems that you can put crystals towards.

Nelras

What would be an appropriate IC explanation for the range of demigod powers that were opened up to everyone being available now? Is the release of the next part of the endgame overhaul likely to be tied into an event or will it be released as primarily being a mechanics change?

The nodes on Astral have often been drained lately to the point where it is not possible to hunt there (responsibly). Would you be open to either adding a way to speed up the recharging of them or adding other, comparable, areas for late-game hunting?

If there is one thing coming up for Lusternia that has you really excited, what would it be?

Orael

Choros said:

Aonia said:

Choros said:

Sorry, but I'm going to throw this in.

Who thought up the powers list on the Wondersaddle, and why do they still have a position in the Havens?

We are doing this Q&A voluntarily and out of generosity. It is not something we are required to do for you. It is something we are taking the time to put on because we think it's really valuable to communicate with you about our plans and to give you the opportunity to communicate with us. 

It should not be necessary for us to ask you to phrase your questions politely. Politely does not include suggesting in your question that we should be fired for a decision we have made. You may think you are being funny. You are not. We are here to try and help you, not as an invitation to belittle us, jokingly or otherwise.

I'm not trying to be funny, I'm trying to be absolutely serious. You guys are trying to juggle a million things at once, and I appreciate the fact that you're stepping out to have this livestream where you answer questions. Looking at the powers set for the wondersaddle, I'm absolutely befuddled that anyone in the Havens thought this list was something desirable outside of the first and last powers. I'm not trying to be insulting here, but it feels like to me that someone said "Hey, we have the idea for a beastmastery wonderitem. Now we need to fill up 20 slots with powers to give people a reason to make this thing", and it was simply padded to come up with 20 powers. 

Aonia, I've seen your work, and it's absolutely head and shoulders above this. I know this could have been done better, and unless this was made up last minute, I can't understand why you released it in the current format. 

I've edited my question to make it more friendly, but my opinion is still the same.

It was my work, and I'll answer the question of Why we went this direction on the Livestream. 

Parhelion

Thanks for everything.

Ayisdra

Kali said:

The bottom line is that if it doesn't appeal to you, you don't have to build it. There's still a pile of other wonderitems that you can put crystals towards.

This doesn't work out in practice for some items. A few wonderitems basically become required (wondercorn being the prime example) because of just how good it is. In the case of wondersaddle - level 18 (better bodyguard, 2%) may not seem like much, but when you look at the other 'block all PvE damage', it starts to add up.

Jalaras

A pattern that I took notice for the last two years or probably more is that I think there is an unequal balance of competition for conflicts. Conflicts such as flares and revolts have continuously for I want to say 98% of the time fire off between the hours of 1 AM-6 AM lets say in CST and that can be converted in what would be your respective timezones. This I believe ties into questions regarding comms becoming an issue for all orgs that haven't had a supply of them in real life months. Are there steps being taken to address the imbalance of the supposed random firing of revolts/flares to allow competition for these villages/flares?

Kaizynne

There have been plenty of conflict events occurring at times when our side has next to nobody.  I have also played during a time when my side of the game had literally nobody almost all the time. I still never complained about the 'randomness' of randomly timed events, or the 'off peak' nature of them.

If it's randomly timed, it's random. There's no need to adjust it.

Edit: Not trying to start arguments or derail the thread. I just don't personally think it's a thing that needs addressing.

Jalaras

Kaizynne said:

There have been plenty of conflict events occurring at times when our side has next to nobody.  I have also played during a time when my side of the game had literally nobody almost all the time. I still never complained about the 'randomness' of randomly timed events, or the 'off peak' nature of them.

If it's randomly timed, it's random. There's no need to adjust it.

Edit: Not trying to start arguments or derail the thread. I just don't personally think it's a thing that needs addressing.

I think we have all played at times as such. I am not disputing that it doesn't happen at other times, no. Though the pattern of the "randomness" doesn't make true sense if it is to be random. The prime evidence is noted in politics news and if you have time to convert the times of it, you will see that the "randomness" of this rng is predominately or at least 90% of the time or more than it is during your prime time if I'm not mistaken. A quality of life concern that others have discussed this concern in private, I am asking if there are any steps to look into this and see about making it truly random as most of us understand what random means, rather than being an obvious guess as to it being the usual "2 am revolt" to put it in the humor of it. Besides, this is a question for the admin I have as they have a deeper understanding of how the game works or how it suppose to work anyway behind the code, etc, and I feel that it deserves some attention otherwise I'd not have bothered to ask a legitimate Q&A question as we are encouraged to do so.

Kali

Quick chart of when the last 766 flares/revolts occured, by hour. Data was gathered from the politics newsboard.

Jaspet

Ixion said:

Could live adders be added to Oleanvir so that the atrociously broken and bad quest to get anatine can be removed?

This is my question.

What economic or balance related reason requires the two baby Adders in Oleanvir to spawn dead with no poisons. It's like someone accidentally modified the template, and then everyone else just ran with it. Can this be looked at and fixed, or at least explained?

The Only Koi

Nelras said:

The nodes on Astral have often been drained lately to the point where it is not possible to hunt there (responsibly). Would you be open to either adding a way to speed up the recharging of them or adding other, comparable, areas for late-game hunting?

Bumping this comment/question up. Someone mentioned about having an artifact that would let people see a list of all nodes and their energy levels remotely anywhere in Astral, is this something you'd consider? 

Also and I am joining the bandwagon, any chance of other avenues for late-game bashing please?

Last question, I can see that aetherhunt can be a good bashing and RP bonding feature but correct me if I am wrong. What I know is that collectors get less xp than pilots, empath and turrets. Is it possible that "active" collectors i.e. the ones who literally link should also get the same xp benefit vs the ones who are, for example, just leeching off?

PS: I am glad to see that Lusternia's been improving in all aspects if not day by day, thanks to Orael, Aonia, Ianir and the various volunteers on the background.  I know you've been quite of busy lately and with the threat of what's going on, people are basically at their homes and you guys are there to alleviate that, cheers! 

Maligorn

Oh huh. I was hoping I'd be able to submit this question anonymously so my friends wouldn't side-eye me <.< Oh well.

What do the admin think about the current 4v2 situation? From an IC standpoint? But (imo) more importantly, from a meta, OOC standpoint?

I don't think that 4v2 is very sustainable as far as making sure everyone is having a quality experience and having a fair chance at conflict events etc. Obviously Glom/Celest is winning a few of the fights against the other 4, I'm not denying that, but...anyway. Curious on the admin's thoughts.

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More fun question: Any verdict on what stars are in Lusternia? How do they tie into Astrology, and how are Lusternians drawing so much power from the constellations? Where are these Meteors coming from? Is Papaxi in Lusternia's system's habitable zone? :>

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If I think of anymore before the day's out I'll edit the post.

Jolanthe

Maligorn said:

Where are these Meteors coming from?

I always had this fun little head cannon of my own for this, but never really fleshed it out. Would be fun to know if there's a legit background for them.

Esei

What was the thought process for changing the rules on automation? (Not trying to judge! Just curious.)

Gysolem

1. When can I expect to see drinkable mud in the game?

2. Do you play other MUDs since you can’t play characters in Lusternia? And if so, how has being a builder/coder then producers altered your perception and viewpoints when playing other games?

Esei

With the change to squad xp gains (changelog 2053), what does it mean by tiers?