May Promotion (Ancestral Stones)

Khizan

@Jesse @Jeremy @Garryn

Up until today, I was pretty happy with this promotion. The races were interesting yet not too powerful and, although the design seemed a bit cash grabby, it wasn't that bad. Interesting permanent effects with some small bonuses, and some nice cosmetic rewards.

All that changed with the introduction of the new races today. Specifically, it changed when the race I paid 100cr for on release day suddenly got a massive stealth nerf that's so large that the race has become utterly unplayable. Specifically, I am speaking of this:

Racial hatred:
When in the room with a fallen
Fires when the other race is in the room with them.
- -5% to -15% health and mana sips (Builds up the longer you are in the room with them)
- +5% eq/bal speed from anger

The race I purchased on release date now suffers from a massive tanking penalty. Being in the same room as a Fallen now almost cancels out my 1000cr sip ring! That makes this race completely unusable and means that I effectively threw the hundred odd credits I spent getting it away, because this is a race I just can't use anymore. Is there a fallen on my team? We nerf each other. I can't even bash with them without us nerfing each other. Is there a fallen on the other team? I get an RP penalty to tanking that is in no way made up for by the RP benefit.

And not only does this change make my investment in Arel a complete waste, it also means that I'm not going to buy more races. My initial response here was "Well, maybe I'll go Asuwan, they also fly and have mana regen", but I thought twice about it; I will not buy Asuwan because for all I know you're going to introduce moth people next week and give THEM a gigantic RP-based PvP nerf that will make THEM unusable. Furthermore, this has implications on your future promotions. I was a day one participant on the ancestral stones; I had Arel within an hour of it going live. I will not be doing this in future promotions because I no longer trust that you will leave my purchases intact. This was not a case of the cherufe, where a race was found to be too powerful, and nerfed for balance reasons; this is a case of a race being awarded an L1.5 anti-sip ring for RP reasons after a significant amount of people had already bought the race.

This change is very badly thought out and I would greatly appreciate if you'd reconsider it.

Jesse

Jeremy and I have been talking about working on the numbers of the sip penalty. Fundamentally, we like the mechanic and hope to iterate on it to get something that works well.

I'd also like to point out that arel and fallen get a speed buff as well as a sip debuff when both are in the same room. Yeah, the sip debuff roughly equates to a 1000 credit artifact. Given that we don't even sell a general balance buff artifact, what's the value on that?

It's kind of funny, because we were pretty sure we'd have to make changes based on the fact that the speed buff was going to be too powerful.

Anyway, thanks for your feedback. We're listening and discussing.

Khizan

Here's something that occured to me.

By being in the same room as me, a Fallen is lowering my ability to heal. This is undeniably an aggressive action; there are several attacks in the game that do this exact thing(albeit with different numbers). So can I kill a Fallen explicitly because they are Fallen? After all, their presence in the room is unarguably an aggressive act against me.

Jesse

The way that I've always looked at it is that you can kill someone for something that they've done, but you should not kill someone for a state of being.

So, in this example, if a fallen is just chilling with you while you're not doing anything, you cannot kill that fallen just for being in the same room with you.

But, if you're trying to bash or kill other people, and that fallen is following you around, deliberately trying to weaken you so that you cannot bash or fight effectively, then I'd say you have sufficient reason to kill that person.

And, as always, moderation is key. You're presenting a hypothetical extreme that's probably never going to be acceptable, and I think you reasonably know that.

Risca

Khizan said:

Here's something that occured to me.

By being in the same room as me, a Fallen is lowering my ability to heal. This is undeniably an aggressive action; there are several attacks in the game that do this exact thing(albeit with different numbers). So can I kill a Fallen explicitly because they are Fallen? After all, their presence in the room is unarguably an aggressive act against me.

As it stands now, I honestly think that you should be able to kill them within limits as mentioned by @Jesse. First of all, you know what you're getting yourself into by being a Fallen/Arel and it's a similar effect to other attacks as mentioned. Organizations can figure out their own rules on races.

Off topic, but it's a little frustrating to see new races slowly being added to the promotion list. This isn't like in previous promotions where we are getting MORE out of it throughout the month. Instead, it feels like it hurts the early adopters who purchase the promotions early because of the RNG.

Prior to the last 3 added, I had 4 out of the 9 races. Now I have a higher likelihood to get a repeat when aiming for one of the new races. If I had waited until more races were introduced, I wouldn't have to worry about repeats as much?

I wish when a new set of promotions is released during the month (ie Fallen, Sangefel, Vyurdrag), the RNG rate would be temporarily tweaked so there was a higher chance of getting the newer races similar to how the assembly sets were done.

Sarrius

I thought we were done with combat bonuses being attached to races? Isn't that why statpacks exist?

I don't like things like the Arel vs. Fallen frenzy thing. It steers me away from even considering purchasing those artifacts, to be honest. Especially because I can already see some organizations trying to make being an Arel or Fallen illegal or frown upon.

Khizan

@Jesse Of course I knew that; I was just bringing it up as a possibility. Though, I would like to add that killing for roleplay reasons is explicitly allowed and Arel clearly hate Fallen with a passion; Arel and Fallen having free PK on each other makes sense

Risca said:

As it stands now, I honestly think that you should be able to kill them within limits as mentioned by @Jesse. First of all, you know what you're getting yourself into by being a Fallen/Arel and it's a similar effect to other attacks as mentioned. Organizations can figure out their own rules on races.

  I didn't know this when I used my Arel stone; anybody who picked Arel before ~5pm-ish CST today did NOT know what they were getting into. because this weakness didn't exist before then. And that's my biggest problem with it. This weakness was foisted off onto everybody who had already decided on Arel with no prior warning whatsoever. When I bought Arel, I didn't realize I was going to get a racial enemy and a corresponding tanking penalty that applies to all damage taken from any source. Had I known that, I would not have been an Arel because that kind of thing is far too punishing in the team combat environment that I enjoy.

Here's what I'd like to see for the Arel/Fallen situation:

1. Remove the balance bonus: This is probably a good idea anyways as a situational 5% balance bonus is the kind of thing that's often sort of useless but that can suddenly become overpowering when it nudges something juuuust over the edge.
2. Remove the sipping penalty: This is a huge tanking penalty that hurts me when I bash with a Fallen, when a Fallen is on my side, etc, etc. Racial RP has never been pushed heavily in this game and it's very possible to have Fallen and Arel in the same city; if this is the case, teaming with them gives me a massive tanking penalty that I cannot turn off. 
3. Replace them with a damage bonus to attacks against the other race: Their attacks against each other are fueled by their hatred and so they swing that little bit harder. This is an offensive bonus(I hit them harder) and a tanking penalty(they hit me harder) all in one, but it doesn't hit me in situations where there's a Fallen in my city and I can't get out of teaming/hunting with them without being a major **** about something that's from a promotion that's supposed to be beneficial to us.
4. Allow existing Arel to change to Fallen: I'm in Stavenn. Had you released Regular Seraphs and Fallen Seraphs on the same day, I would have been a Fallen. You did not, so I became a regular seraph who went for a sort of wraithy-falleny look. Now that actual Fallen are out, I would like the option to be a Fallen, which is what I would have chosen all along.
5. Allow Arel who bought before a free switch to another race: This one could be limited to the races that came out before the Fallen did. Their promotion race got a penalty added to it after their purchase of it, which is kind of a **** move, and I think they should be allowed a redo. I'm pretty iffy on this one if the changes I suggested make it through, but if they keep a "You are bashing with a Fallen citymate, you lose tanking potential and can't avoid it other than not socializing with a fellow citizen" thing, they should get the option to opt out of it.

Khizan

Double posting to break up my Arel/Fallen comments and my overall promotion comments. With that said, my thoughts on the entire promotion:

• I like the races. Interesting without being too powerful. A nice promotion item, especially since limited time offers mean that the world won't be drowning in them.
• Arel and Fallen should have been offered simultaneously. First, because adding them in this staggered fashion means that Arel got a surprise weakness after spending 100cr/$40 on a race, which is not cool. Second, because releasing both sides of a grudge match simultaneously lets people pick a side THEN. 
• The RNG here is problematic. If I want to get Fallen with credits, I've got pretty crappy odds of rolling a Fallen(1/12)! and so my best bet is to hope some other poor sucker rolls an unneeded Fallen stone looking for something else and then sells it at a reasonable price. This is going to really hinder people from getting these later stones. It doesn't help at all that I am much less inclined to gamble because of an oversaturated market in the early release stones.
• This heavily staggered release feels kind of scummy and punishes early participants.Somebody who really wants a promotion race and buys one early can find themselves missing out on awesome things later in the month because they already spent their money. It's easy to end up regretting your purchase here, which is not a thing you want to aim for.

Things I'd like to see changed:

• RNG Mitigation: With 12 races released, buying stones with credits is not practical anymore. Perhaps change it so that 100 credits buys you a specific stone, and 50 credits buys you a random one. Tweak the numbers a bit, maybe. 125 for a specific, maybe, so that market speculators don't have to sell at a loss to beat the store prices.
• Release 'mirror' races at the same time: If you release Fallen Angels and Regular Angels at the same time, the people who want to be Fallen will be Fallen and the people who want to be Regular Angels will be Regular Angels and it will all be good.  If you release Regular Angels a few weeks before Fallen Angels, all the people who want to be Fallen Angels will already be Regular Angels who RP having fallen when the Fallen Angels are released.
• It would be really cool if you let Arel and the Fallen choose between flight and shield: There are people who would otherwise be Fallen who can't justify giving up the mechanical benefits of flight; similarly, there are arel would don't care about racial flight and would rather have the shield. I can live without this one, though. While I think racial shielding is undeniably awesome, I've had a flight artifact for more than a decade now; people without one find it very hard to pass up the mechanical benefits of flight, and a rivalry like this works best if one sided doesn't have a vastly more desirable racial benefit.
• Announce the release schedule: If you said "Hey, we'll be releasing a set of races every week! Be prepared!" right up front, well. I'd still have cherufe and yeti and Arel. I'm sure Iluv and Iroth and such would still have every race too, and I'm sure all the people who wanted to be dryads and angels would still be dryads and angels. But people wouldn't be nearly as salty about how this feels like money grubbing if you just said this stuff up front.

Gurn

You know what would make people want to spend even more money?

If you stopped doing this whole "vomit of money making things" at once.


I said it before, but come on. If you released one new set of cloaks/chokers/whatevers per month and one new race per month on top of whatever credit promotion is going on, people would be a lot happier, and have something predictable to look forward to. Not only that, but it really helps the people who think these things up-- If we keep going at the rate we're going with this new special stuff, Imperian will be flooded with a thousand crazy weird additions that no one gets excited about and only serves as clutter in the long run.


Also, something to be said about RP. Like, it's cool and all, but once again, going at the current rate... It really comes out of nowhere and it's a little weird ICly for everyone to suddenly be all angels and demons and cat-people and yetis and whatever suddenly. If it were one a month with a little RP event every month? That'd be crazy good. As of now? Ehhhhhh.

Sarrius

Cosmetic feedback: I like the Selkie, Dryad, Arel, and Fallen. I am less enthused by the veritable zoo of animal people races.

More fae and cosmic beings. Less strains of lizard person, bird person, dog person, and cat person. For some reason, I am less offended by Minotaur than the rest, but not by much.

Also echoing Gurn - is there some sort of event going on and I'm just not around during the prime time for it? The race vomit would be a lot cooler if we had an event to explain..

a. Where were these guys? I know the races were 'sealed in a stone', but that seems like a really serious sacrifice of opportunity for cool storylining here.

b. Are there communities of these creatures now?

c. Why are they just now able to come back, besides Christof's discovery? Wouldn't Aetherius remember these ancestral races somehow? "Where did all the catpeople go?"

I'm sort of just frustrated by the amount of event possibilities we are haphazardly throwing away in a mad quest to rival Lusternia's racial compendium (which, in itself, rivals a bookshelf of DnD splatbooks.)

Bathan

I'd like to echo the desire for something more than a paragraph long explanation.

Iniar

Also, @Jeremy/@Jesse, I made wiki pages for new races but like. I used the Kohdon deathknight for all of 'em.

Wysrias

The speed at which these came out and the lack of any event to coincide makes them feel less like a real addition to the game and atmosphere, and more of a tacky vanity purchase; it wouldn't take much effort to turn it into the former, but there has to be SOMETHING. The presence of any storyline in the game is already stretched thin without doubling the races without explanation on top of it.

I can't help but think back to the Xiur event (however unfair/botched it may have seemed at the time), and the amount of RP and storyline that went into releasing a single race versus this grab bag.

Ahkan

My feelings seem to be in line with everyone else's. Your past two promotions have been pretty tacky. It's not to say they were bad, so much as that they were poorly executed or just plain money-grabby. Honestly, having played games with ye ol Boss (Jeremy), I'm willing to believe that someone came up with the promo idea and he just kept thinking "hey this is cool" x 10 throughout the month and adding more content. The problem with this is that it seems an oversight, possibly deliberate, that these releases lower the probability of you getting the item you want, which in turn increases the up front investment to get what I want. Your 100 existing credits right now give you a 1/12 chance to be a cat person (like Khizan eventually will be, lol). The only way to sidestep this is to purchase ANOTHER batch of 100c via the website to get your race. This is tacky. I already paid you. Why are you making me pay you again for something I should already have?

100 credits = $40 (USD). Behave like it is.

Now, if you want to make like a bandit and rake in more dough, you should have planned this better and functioned like Walmart or something (you still can!). You sell your stones in-game for 100 credits a pop. Then on the website you sell ancestral stone artifact packs. The sky is the limit here. You can have Tu-pacs, three packs, or 12 packs. But you sell them at a more efficient rate. Example, your racial Tu-pac would be $75 for two races. Congrats dude, you just made 75 dollars you wouldn't have anyways. Psychology says they'll pay for it. Psychology also says more people will buy it for $74.99 than they will for 75, so keep that in mind. I'm also sure you already thought of this, but if you want me to buy **** on the website, only release it on the website. Sell like dragon tokens, orc racial stones on the website. People -will- buy it. Any scummy retail system is better than the shenanigans you're rolling with here.

I am not against freemium content. I am against the way you people treat it. At least in ToR if I buy cartel coins, I am 100% in control of my purchase. I can drop my coins and pick up Chiss, Twilek (races) without having to go through some bs RNG.

Also, late entry, you missed out on a ton of roleplay #imperian #yolo. You can totally go back and save some face and pretend you care about storyline by 

-releasing histories

-holding mini-events

-holding a contest where mortals write 'creation stories' for the new races and then rewarding them with something cool, like credits, so they can 1/12 get  a race.

Khizan pretty much covered the whole 'altering existing races in huge ways with 0 refund' pretty well.

Khizan

I like the changes to the racial hatred.

However, I did have one problem with your post. Specifically, this line here: "Although we loved how it was making people get all racist against the Fallen (kicking them out of cities), the points about combat were valid."

It costs hundreds of dollars worth of credits to change circles and cities now and you have intentionally taken steps to make that process more expensive. It's a pretty **** move to be talking about how you loved how your promotion got people thrown out of their cities.

Ahkan

So far the only person who would have kicked someone out of cities for being Fallen was Khizan.

Khizan

I wouldn't have actually done it, I was speculating on the legality/fallout of doing so.

Ahkan

 BUY <race> STONE FROM CHRISTOF

This will cost 200 credits instead of 100. It is more expensive, but as stated before we want the new races to be on the rarer side vs everyone having access to every race.

Good plan. Now what are you going to do with people like Aleutia/Kanthari who invested +/- 600c to RNG their way to races. You offering them refunds? You should. 

Aleutia

Message #12449 Sent By: Jeremy          Received On: 5/15/2014/20:51
"We are putting in the standard tradein rate."

I'm not really thrilled with this, but I'm going to assume there's little I can do. I guess the lesson learned on this is don't participate in a promo until the end

Kanthari

Aleutia said:

Message #12449 Sent By: Jeremy          Received On: 5/15/2014/20:51
"We are putting in the standard tradein rate."

@Jeremy

This is an amazingly shitty response.

Basically, we have now gone from 'you have to buy these for $40 on the website or spin for a random one in-game' to 'hey, everyone who spun randomly, now you're boned because you could have just directly purchased what you wanted in the first place'.

I would 100% have saved the 600+ credits I spent on stones and just bought three races I actually wanted instead of playing the crap RNG roulette if this had been implemented at the start.

Now everyone who already purchased stones is being penalized for wanting to tradein an item that wouldn't have been necessary to purchase in the first place if the 200 credit for a guaranteed race had been implemented from the get-go. Those of us who purchased multiple stones should not be getting 66 credits back on a purchase because you decided to change the rules halfway through the promotion.

For example:

@Aleutia has 1100 credits worth of stones still in her inventory, after purchasing god knows how many attempting to get selkie. This is one race that she can now purchase outright at 200 credits.

Now if she would like her credits back (which I am certain she would have spent on something else in the first place) she looks at a refund of 726 out of the initial 1100 credits she put in.

This is a loss of 374, almost TWICE what she would have spent on selkie at the current double price for a guaranteed race rate.

Ahkan

In a moment of probably gut wrenching honesty.

Get your **** together.

It really seems like this promo idea was a last minute ordeal with zero forethought or planning. I mean, I know that you're overwrought with the sweet stink of profit, profit, profit, but you're making us feel like **** for buying into fun little promos that end up screwing us on days 7, 14, 21, 23,24,25. It's making us not want to participate in the promos until the absolute last second, if at all. Then where will your profits be.

Kanthari

To clarify. I think the racial stone as an idea for a promo is fantastic. I love the ability to have more than just the default races. If I didn't love it, I wouldn't have spent so many credits on it in the first place.

If I could pick out whoever put in dryad and selkie, I would highfive them so hard their arm fell off.

I just dislike the way it has been handled otherwise.

Jeremy Saunders

I apologize for the quick response to @Aleutiaon that. We were in the process of coding the process and writing a full post to explain it all and I had several people messaging me the exact same question. I'll have a post up soon.

Aleutia

@Jeremy thank you for allowing us to trade in the excess stones we wanted at full price. I, and several others, really appreciate it.

Iniar

I would high-five them too if they made drow. 

Jeremy Saunders

The problem with a drow race is that it would not have been a descended race from sylayan. 

As the story goes, the sylayan came to pass and some left to live in the cities, slowly evolving into sidhe. I feel like a drow race would have evolved at the same time, but we have no story for that. 

Anyways, it has come up, and that is why I have resisted adding a race like that. The story is harder to come up with because we would have to attach them to existing elves in someway (I think).

Mereis

GNOMES?

Iluv

Jeremy said:

The problem with a drow race is that it would not have been a descended race from sylayan. 

As the story goes, the sylayan came to pass and some left to live in the cities, slowly evolving into sidhe. I feel like a drow race would have evolved at the same time, but we have no story for that. 

Anyways, it has come up, and that is why I have resisted adding a race like that. The story is harder to come up with because we would have to attach them to existing elves in someway (I think).

Yet we have emo angels.

Ahkan

There is no preexisting storyline for seraphs or fallen angels. His point is that there is a preexisting story line for elves. Drow are dark elves (incredibly stupid dark elves). We already have existing elves who have been thankfully drow free since eternity.

Jeremy Saunders

Well, arel are fine as a new race that were locked into stones. I admit the fallen (arel) idea is that they are a variation of arel and would fall right into that dark elf category. 

I suppose part of it is that the whole dark elf idea seems so overdone in games, literature, etc. I will have to think about it some more.

Jeremy Saunders

Okay, that post looks like gibberish, but hopefully you get the idea. I am too tired to fix it.