May 31, 2007

Answer to the Hair Question

Hair has always been an issue for some people in our community (i.e. "Why does my hair look like crap?") Well, OneEye finally answered one of these questions with a little story that goes back to the age before DemonSpire:

OneEye posted in Devs question-extra 105 and above skills:
I didn't say there wasn't a fix, it just isn't something that can be done quickly or easily.

The story basically is when the paperdolls were being changed over to the next system it was only completed to say 85% before TKO refocused the Austin team onto other projects and then eventually shut down the studio.

Then, those original paperdoll assets and source files (there are lots and lots and lots of different files that make up the paperdoll system) were not in the dump of assets IWG got when we purchased AE back.

So, the combination of a not fully complete data set to start with plus the lack of any source files makes updating specific animations almost impossible (a single hair piece for example has about 1,000 different frames that would need to be edited by hand).

The reason that some hair pieces don't work is the TKO art team (Denis, Todd, Brian and Matt) were tying some 'new' things like long hair as 2 pieces so for example a pony tail could swing independently of the top part of the hair. The studio was shut down before any of that really came on-line, so all 2 piece hair (ie long hair - mostly 'women' style) never had the tech programmed for it to actually make it work. Without the source max files it's pretty much impossible to reverse-engineer this tech.

A long term solution is to of course re-do the paperdolls completely. The process however is very time consuming and just hasn't hit the top of the queue of stuff we have to do yet. It is something that is still planned, there is just no firm timetable.
So the reason we have no hair? TKO jipped us on the art. I'm curious to know what hair would have looked like, though.

Skry Scrolls are now 50 tokens.

Skry Scrolls price adjustment straight from the horse's mouth:

OneEye posted in Skry Scroll Price Adjustment:
The Skry Scroll price is now 50 tokens.
So now it's roughly $2.50 per Skry Scroll instead of the old price of 25 tokens ($1.25 per). I have a friend who complained about how often people would skry for her and her friends and follow up with a massive PK raid. While OneEye provided no details, this could very well be a related issue. Still, it's nice to see that this isn't as "easy" to get as it used to be. Though I have to think that those who were popping $1.25 per scroll so often won't be too effected by another $1.25. It's still less than the price of a Big Mac, after all.

[Begin Editorial]
The problem with proving the "badness" of Skry Scrolls is that you need to first prove that bad things are happening because of Skry Scrolls. Most people will often just say "what do you think they're used for?" and leave it at that. I agree, there is potential for harassment and grief caused by the Skry Scroll. But to say that everyone with a skry scroll is using it to harass is generalizing the people who buy these things. It's important to identify griefers, not the potential for grief.
[/End Editorial]

May 29, 2007

Some things to look forward to in the next update.

Ask and ye shall receive. Finally, we get some details about what's going to be in the next update.

OneEye posted in New Update Wish List:
This update isn't going to be of the major orb/race changing variety. It will have:
  • Bug fixes
  • more taskmasters
  • more items
  • more monsters
  • new dungeon(s)
  • more quests
  • more book quests
I am also thinking about a few new spells, but i am running out of time, so those might have to wait.

it will also have a few new store purchases, including a few sets of masks to let you change into various creatures. masks will only change your looks.

The[re] is also a story twist coming with Lotor getting married and all...
Perhaps this means that all the taskmasters will be working now. I'm interested to know what he means by "more book quests" myself. But this really looks like a really worthwhile update if you're into hunting, tradeskilling, or questing.

It still makes me wonder, though...what are we going to see in terms of the big Warden discussion?

May 28, 2007

Well, that's one detail about the update.

A lot of my friends who hang out in Meroven complain about the Chaos Knights there attacking them. I've seen a few screenshots about it and I thought it was funny--the Knights there had Good Alignment. And, naturally, they started acting like Good Guards.

Well, Fugi posted about this and got a response from one of the DEVs.

OneEye posted in If you know theres a problem...:
It will be fixed with the update on 6/4. That isnt something that we can hotfix.
There's lots of rumors going around about what's going to be in this update. Hair, Quest Logs, new weapons, nerfs to old armors, new armors, etc. To be honest, I've found that it's a lot easier to just sit back and expect nothing. That way, when things don't happen, I'm not mad that they didn't happen. But, hey..whatcha gonna do. At least on this detail, you've got something to look forward to.

May 24, 2007

Update, June 4

OneEye posted in Next Update:

As an FYI, we will be doing an update on June 4th. More info will be forthcoming in the near future.
Shortly after that, theTyrant posted:
And I must say, its going to be awesome ;)
which probably means that their sticking to their terms about what an "update" truly is. For those who haven't heard:
  • a "patch" is a general bug fix
  • an "update" is a patch + some minor additional content (new npc's or quests)
  • an "expansion" is a patch + major additions (npc's, quests, landmasses, towns)
DemonSpire qualifies as an "Update", since no new landmasses or skills were added (well, except mage weapons). Talazar's Revenge and Sands of Creation are the only expansions to Ashen Empires.

Expect some downtime next week. Don't try logging off at the last second ;)

106-110 Bonuses (for those that missed it the first time)

There have been many posts asking what the 106+ boons were. This latest one came from Leah, asking what specific bonuses they are. GM Siyone responded to her thread with the original announcement, making it at least worthwhile to take note of.

GM Siyone posted in Devs question-extra 105 and above skills:
This is the original announcement:

quote:
The upcoming Sands of Creation expansion will allow players to advance to level 110. From level 106 through 110, players will be able to pick character specialization skills to further customize their characters. The following is the tentative list of skill choices.

Level 106
A) Health of the Ogre (Increases Max Base Hit Points)
B) Stamina of the Bull (Increases Max Base Stamina Pool)
C) Capacity of a Packmule (Increases Max Base Carrying Capacity)

Level 107
A) Speed of the Viper (Increases Base Attack Speed)
B) Wizard's Haste (Reduces Spell Cast Time)
C) Crafter's Precision (Lowers Crafting Failure Rate)

Level 108
A) Giant's Hammer (Increases Melee/Ranged Damage)
B) Mana of the Arch Wizard (Spell Stamina Cost Reduced)
C) Resistance of the Diseased Snake (Increases Resistance to Disease and Poison)

Level 109
A) Magic Shield (Increased Resistance to Spells)
B) ManaStorm (Increases Spell Damage)
C) Arch Crafter's Precision (Lowers Crafting Failure Rate, stacks with level 107C)

Level 110
A) Health of the Dragon (Increases Max Base Hit Points, stacks with level 106A)
B) Criminal's Folly (Increases Alignment Gain Recovery)
C) BackPack of the Packmule (Increases Backpack Size to 32 Slots)

Characters will not receive orb (stat) increases past level 105.

With this in mind, you have to look at the bonuses as a whole, not just on a per-level basis. If you take Health of the Ogre and Health of the Dragon together, then you're going to get a pretty substantial boost to your max base hit points overall--something bigger than what someone who didn't take those bonuses will have. However, you're not going to get the big bonus at the lower level. If you did, what would be the point of obtaining the bonus at the higher level?

The same goes with stacking Crafter's Precision with Arch Crafter's Precision. Combined, your fail rate will* be noticeably lesser than those with just one or neither bonus. But you can't expect getting a 0% fail rate for just taking the bonus at 107. Even so, if you were to stack them both, you might have a small, minute chance of failing. But it would be so small that others would have failed a few times where you didn't.

Realize that these things can be tweaked and have been since they were introduced. That's why specific timings, bonuses, percentages, and intervals aren't provided. While achieving these bonuses is definitely an achievement unto itself, things like game balance and challenge do have to come into play. Your feedback helps to determine whether or not the devs feel that these bonuses are where they want them to be. So please keep that coming. However, they do reserve the right to disagree. After all, it is their game.

Remember, you don't have to use your level bonus right away. Take some time to think about it. If you have problems with your bonus, or you want to leave feedback, by all means post here or file a bug report.
That last bit was in response to Leah, asking why the bonuses blow. I think I have to agree with Tempester's response, though. The crafting bonuses were made before the changes to crafting came in--changes that made failure near impossible. Maybe the DEVs will look into changing the crafter bonuses. But in reality, I doubt many people who would take advantage of those bonuses have hit 106 yet, much less 107.

So what do you think the DEVs should replace those crafter bonuses with anyway?

May 18, 2007

Wedding Bells can't be too far off

A couple of months ago, Jolie started a topic about wedding outfits going into the game. This was on the heels of the Valentine's day and St. Patrick's day sets, so it seemed natural to ask for a set of clothes that weren't holiday themed. Tyrant responded early on that this was something he'd like to do, but we haven't heard word since then.

Well, now there appears to be some work going in.

TheTyrant posted in I know it's not Top Priority, but . . .:
I made the wedding dress today, It came out well. I still need to figure out the rest of the set. Paperdolling really put a damper on things when creating art that makes whats going to show on the character view screen.
Now, in case you forgot, when the valentine's day armor first came in, it looked like the girls had no shirts on. The tiny art looked nice (I'm assuming they get the icon art from modeling it in 3DStudio first), but in the game it looked like the women were beat by a particularly pink Pimp. So don't be surprised if a spectacularly modeled dress turns out to be a robe of some sort.

Tyrant had this further to say, for you folks not particularly interested in wedding clothes:
TheTyrant posted in I know it's not Top Priority, but . . .:
I didnt finish the wedding set, but, I did make some new monsters that I'm really excited about, and you guys should too. And don't post, fix the hair and paperdolling, I can't fix that. But I did make some sweet mobs.

Now that's pretty interesting. New monsters are nice. And though I'd like to not have a bald character (well, she looks bald to other players :p), it's nice to know that we can narrow down the dev in charge of hair-dressing. Ladies, it's long past time to style hats instead of worrying about whether or not the perm has been ruined.

My money's paying for what, exactly?

Several people always come up with comments about how the game must be floundering and that IWG isn't making money from us. Or, they say that IWG is just taking the cash we pay and not doing anything with it. Well, I was going over some old posts by OneEye while trying to find some info about boss spawns and I ran across this gem.

OneEye posted in Possible new game to be developed by IWG:
As far as AE not being a success, that cracks me up. AE has been far more succesful than we thought it would be when we first put our own money into buying it (it was going to be turned off within days by TKO (it was only up because a QA guy liked the game and he was fired the week we took over). The game has been running for over 2 years straight without 1 cent of outside investment. We have had 2 expansions added construction, switched over to micropayments, lowered the costs, re-written 100% of the server code, taking it to a real codebase instead of a spaghetti-uber hack mess, added a trackable affiliate program and a web based account mangement system.

Since we have taken over AE has returned about 6x of our investment. We have been able to upgrade every piece of hardware (and software), gone from T1 lines to fiber, moved from a 700sq foot craphole office to a 2000sq ft professional office, been invited to lead a panel at the austin game developer conference on 'how to run a small MMO' (which ~200 people attended) and used the AE server tech to develop an online poker game from the ground up.

But besides all that, ae is a wreck...
Things to take from this is that a lot has changed since IWG bought the license from TKO. Those of us who remember the end of the TKO hold on AE remember that very few people were still playing the game (more play now than under TKO) because those that were leaving were doing so out of boredom. The GMs weren't really doing anything at that point either, save a couple who were trying to do an event on Sanctuary involving Talazar.

Ultimately, though, we're always going to have people who think that IWG earning money from Ashen Empires is a sin, despite the new $8.00 a month subscription fee or the token items that cost less than that per use. But I thought this was something worth archiving. This is what our money has gone to pay for. We can only expect more if they're doing this much, right?

May 17, 2007

Where's my Chugga Bam Bam?

If you've been looking for some of the mini-bosses for the Mckelsky quests, you're one of many like me who are looking for a way to finish that quest you get after you kill those three proudbloods. (Well....maybe not me...I'm still trying to find those proudbloods). At any rate, Lara Orcsplitter posted a topic requesting that the devs look in to the spawns. Based on an impromptu survey (more on that in a bit), seems that none of these bosses have been spawning for the Legends community, at least.

OneEye responded in the McKinsky Bosses topic:

all of these have placeholders. until a placeholder is killed the boss won't spawn.
which could mean one of two things:

Either these bosses are spawning as they should be, and the people Lara polled aren't killing the placeholders (or are, and other people are getting the bosses)

or

OneEye thinks they're spawning, based on the code he's written.

Here's the thing. It's stuff like this that's not easy to verify.

For one, it's a boss that can spawn at any given time. We only get the timer based on when the boss spawns, normally. Who's to say that some bosses have a delayed reaction on a server restart? So the whole "I was there when the server restarted" statement isn't wholly accurate for judging whether a boss spawns or doesn't.

Also, if a boss is killed, normally nobody tells everybody about it. Sure, they might tell a few friends, but many bosses are usually kept as a trade secret. It may be greedy. It may be selfish. But it's reality. I'm sure even the Legends server has these practitioners. I remember when I found out about the Meklor spawn being "broken" on the P server turned out to be a couple of people getting him before other people could.

If anything, take this away. Bosses have placeholders that must be killed before they spawn. Who said that? A DEV said that.

May 15, 2007

Reporters and Housing Winners

Hello there.

As with any first post, there isn't a whole lot of information to start with. That is, unless what you're blogging about happens when you create the blog. Unfortunately, that's not the case right now, though I've got a couple of things to share with you.

Generally, this blog will try to document one of two types of things: Things the devs are saying now and things the devs said in the past. One is harder than the other...I'll let you guess which one ;) You can generally find out which one it is by looking at the label. I'll have one for archived stuff and another for current stuff. If you want to help me keep up, by all means, do so.

Going to start with the in-game news reporter feature currently going on right now. OneEye's started a search for a player to report just what's going on in game. He's even sweetened the deal with a bit of incentive:

From Job Opening - In-Game News Reporter:
Want to play AE for free? All you need to do is write a column at least once a week that highlights what has been happening in the community. Examples of stories of interest would be who won the various contests, what bosses were killed, who leveled up, where a hot spawn is. A new item that dropped, etc.

Send a sample story to support@ashenempires.com with the following title:

[Reporter] Server Name - Character Name

The best entry on each server will be made the official AE News Reporter and will be able to sumbit stories to the official news page. A free subscription will be provided as long as the player continues with his/her reporting duties.



I haven't thrown my hat into the ring for one simple reason--I'm not good with keeping up with the players on the H server. I try (sometimes), but to be honest, there are just some places I can't stand. That alone makes me a bad choice for this gig, even if it would mean a free account for life.

Also, a couple of winners have been announced in the house contest.


From: Best House Contest - Winners!
We are declaring Still Da Mom, the winner of the Best House Contest!

Congrats!

Still Da Mom receives a free month of Ashen Empires.

Because was such a close vote, we are also giving Sybil and Siabhra a free month as well.

Thanks to everyone who participated and who voted. All the houses were cool and very well thought out!

Way to go to the winners who managed to make their houses look nice while functional. Though I do have to think about how they manage to eat or sleep, let alone stretch, in those places.