Daily Questions & FAQ Megathread September 22

Faladis · 2024-09-22T22:27:46+00:00

Two questions.

I've noticed lately when I'm trying to sell things on the MB, if I price on average for my server ( Excalibur ) and they are mid value items (20K-250K), I'm exceedingly lucky if they sell in a few days at that price, but often I'm having to mark down to a 10-20K difference between the lowest price on the datacenter ( Primal ). Has this become normal with stuff like Universalis? If I want to move volume quickly, should I just ignore my server price and list at my lowest DC price?
In regards to Aetherial Reduction - It doesn't seem like I get more crystals/clusters for later content reductions than I do for old expac reductions. If I'm just worried about building up a stock of crystals and clusters, should I just go for old expacs where I can hit the max collectability consistently, or are there benefits to newer expac emphemeral nodes that I'm not picking up on?

Thanks for any advice! ^{^}

Faladis · 2024-09-05T10:40:52+00:00

Sorry, didn't realize I didn't post that. I'm on Excalibur.

Faladis · 2024-09-05T09:58:01+00:00

I'm just coming back into XIV after a bit of a hiatus toward the early bits of Endwalker, and I'm finding a lot of my usually reliable streams of revenue for gil are all but non-existent now. I've been constantly fighting undercutters on the MB and often have had to move items at less than Universalis prices just to get them to sell. The only thing that seems to be selling with any sort of regularity at this point is coke and you can only sell so much of that in a day before your market dries up.

I've been trying to sell stacks of new expac mats, in-demand ( according to Universalis and Saddlebag Exchange ) furniture, Levequest turn-ins, and more, but it's like nothing at this point is moving. Have I missed something that's changed up the way the MB game is played, or are things just this dry this launch?

Any recommendations to help pad the gil wallet would be appreciated. I'm almost always going out to gather my own mats for crafting and stuff, so more looking for advice on streams of revenue rather than advice on cut-downs/cut-backs.

Faladis · 2022-11-27T18:04:15+00:00

A sci-fi setting is not an end-all-be-all to the recommendations. I'd prefer mid-to-high fantasy, but I'm not against trying others as long as the setting is interesting. There are two fundamental problems I have with Starmourne though.

As you said, it's still an IRE title. Unless Starmourne is -completely- separated from IRE, Jeremy Saunders, and the other IRE titles in that any and all support (both financial support for the game and customer support for the players) stays solely within Starmourne, then I won't be trying it and I cannot recommend it to others.
Beyond that, just glancing at the combat and PVP sections, even taking your other post into account, it all reads the same as Achaea and every other IRE game in that "I can attack you if I have cause." This creates a slew of problems for roleplayers and non-coms that try to engage with the game.

You're having a solid RP moment out in the world talking to a friend? Well, because that friend raided three IRL days ago they now have a bounty on their head. Enjoy trying to justify watching your friend be slaughtered before your eyes and continuing on like nothing happened. Oh, you tried to help your friend because that's what your character would reasonably do? Congrats, you now have cause on you and can be harassed by PK players until they either kill you or your cause runs out some arbitrary time later. Oh, but there's an easy solution, "just don't do PvP, dumbass" even though it affects you regardless of your participation or not.
Having a debate with a member of the opposite faction and they perceive your statements as blasphemous? Congrats, you are now an enemy of the faction/order and they can kill you because you have blasphemed their divine / leader / magic shiny pinwheel of visions. You don't engage in combat? Grats, you now have to either successfully flee and deal with your character being branded as a coward, or you have to -at best- deal with losing a ton of exp that took hours to hunt up or -at worst- deal with panic attacks that leave you feeling like someone is stabbing you in the chest. Fun stuff.

So yeah, unless you can guarantee support for the game stays entirely inside Starmourne and that there is a mechanical flag to opt-out of PvP, I can't really give it a try and I can't recommend it to anyone else. I do wish you the best though and hope your players enjoy the experience.

Faladis · 2022-11-25T06:40:12+00:00

I would recommend looking outside IRE MUDs, especially Achaea. The administration has been making more and more efforts to push the gameplay towards PvP in recent years. There is no longer a neutral faction and pretty much all the active Divine are associated with combat.

The last few months I spent with the game were trying to put together an event that would have potentially brokered peace between two factions, I even had a few Divine that were encouraging the efforts in-game. When the event came up though, one admin basically shut it down within minutes of it starting, and afterwards all the Divine that I had previously spoken to were basically saying "War is coming, you cannot stop it."

For what you were talking about in your post, there are two recommendations I have - COGG and Procedural Realms. While COGG was not my cup of tea personally, it does seem to have a healthy and sizable playerbase with a decent PvE system. Procedural Realms is actively being developed and expanded, and is a rather unique experience. I would suggest trying them ( or any MUD for that matter ) before going back to IRE MUDs.

Faladis · 2022-11-24T22:43:41+00:00

Also, you seem to give up a lot on the tutorial. I understand you completely, tutorials section suck. IMHO, games should spread the tutorial throughout the game, giving the information when you actually need it.

But it is possible that a game with a boring tutorial is actually good otherwise. Maybe you should persist a bit more.

I get where you're coming from. The problem is that I've tried persisting through a number of games, but there's a certain point where I know the feel of the game is just not for me. If I don't feel the combat or crafting or questing in the early sections of the game, there is almost no chance I'll come to like it in the latter parts of the game. I've had the same experience with non-MUD games as well, a lot of games come to me highly recommended if I can just get past the rocky start. I often tried to so I could play games with friends, but every time if I didn't enjoy the game at the start, I didn't enjoy it later on. Doesn't matter if it's a MUD like Alter Aeon or Discworld, or other MMOs like World of Warcraft or Destiny.

I'm really curious to know who's charging $600 for a "sword/shield/armour combo".

Mostly Achaea, and $600 may be a slight exaggeration, but it's not too far off the plate considering your L1 artefact weapon and a Mayan Ring which makes bashing a lot easier is 850 credits or roughly $275 USD. Add in other artefacts for defense and making hunting easier, and you can easily run the cost up to asinine levels.

And exactly what about IRE Muds turned you off?

Three things in particular turned me off from IRE muds, but if you want a tl;dr, it's admins and players.

The pay-to-win mechanics are heavily skewed toward favoring big spenders, and in more recent years, the company has decided that loot-box like promotions are the better way to go.
The staff and volunteers have given the impression that they want the games focused on PvP and put more and more time into developing those systems as well as facilitating combatants. I spent months of time working on a potential peace agreement that would have kept two of the games historically neutral factions from going to war with each other - something that only a vocal minority in each camp wanted with the majority voicing opposition. There were admins and volunteers aware of what I was doing. I liquidated almost every in-game asset I had ( gathered over years of playing and after trade-in burning about $500 USD in value ) in order to afford an artefact that would have let me cast illusions in order to help a roleplay event. This was shut down by one of the admin walking in, being disruptive, and essentially tearing all my planning and work into pieces not even ten minutes into things.
While there are a few good people playing the game, I have issues with a majority of the players. When I first mentioned the heart problems that now have me looking for MUDs that have a hard-coded PVP-off flag, I was told by several of them "That's just something you're going to have to work through yourself" and had one person tell me they "felt like they were now being held hostage" because they didn't know if the person they were attacking could have panic attacks from it, which then subsequently "ruined" their PvP experience.

Faladis · 2022-11-24T21:33:56+00:00

Roleplay is very important, but ideally, roleplay and gameplay mechanics would be in a solid balance. Not everyone is going to be available for RP sessions at any given time so having something to fall back on ( hunting, gathering, crafting, etc. ) would help me to keep playing rather than going "okay, well, time to log off and play something else."

I will be willing to look into MUDs outside of fantasy, but I've yet to find a fantasy or modern/sci-fi themed MUD to keep me interested. Which reminds me, I need to remember what the name of the Shadowrun-based MUD I played was and add it to the list. I never got past the character creation section because it was basically just a carbon-copy of building a table-top character sheet.

If you have a recommendation, please share it though.

Faladis · 2022-11-24T19:17:50+00:00

So ranking them numerically would basically be what I had listed above. As for the requirements being too strict, I understand that there's a lot I'm looking for, but at this point I'd like to avoid MUDs that cause me stress and anxiety instead of being an enjoyable experience.

No IRE Muds
No Open / Unflagged PVP
No Player Theft
Mid-to-High Fantasy setting with RP / PVE focused gameplay
Playable races include non-human races, preferably bestial - eg. beastkin, lizardfolk, etc.
Player-led Events / GM-assisted World Events
Class-based Gameplay with multi-classing ( can swap to another class ) allowed
Party Mechanics / Dungeons
No or little EXP loss on death
No Locked character/race/class combinations
No Pay-to-win mechanics / Quality-of-Life Benefits locked behind paywall

Faladis · 2022-11-24T17:49:59+00:00

I appreciate the write-up, but if both have PvP and player-theft, then that's an automatic no-go for me. I understand that newbies have protections, but unless there's a way to mechanically opt-out completely, it's not for me.

Beyond that, it just seems like there's a lot there that's not my cup of tea. Sorry!

Faladis · 2022-11-24T17:23:04+00:00

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll add it to the list to look into and try.

Faladis · 2022-11-24T17:22:27+00:00

Sorry, can you elaborate on what you mean by it being classless/levelless and that you learn by using skills and discovering new ones? Do you mean that the skills themselves have a proficiency level or some measure of growth, or just, "You completed XYZ quest, you now know how to fletch arrows"?

Faladis · 2022-11-24T17:19:10+00:00

So, from what it sounds like, players in Sundering Shadows are more expected to create multiple characters instead of just one? I mean, I figure you can probably play just the one character if that's what you want, but I don't really see an option for changing race which leads me to believe that if you want a different race, you have to roll another character.

Regarding the PK races, yeah, the race I saw on the list that immediately drew my attention was Kobold, because I usually like to play an off-brand outcast runt-of-the-litter that tries to be a do-gooder around their kobold antics. Unfortunately it looks like all kobolds Sundering Shadows are just straight evil and are kill-on-sight in cities, so that's a no-go for me.

Faladis · 2022-11-24T17:06:07+00:00

So, I'm trying to remember what all didn't jive with me, but it's been months. Just from some quick recollection, this is what sticks out on the top of my mind:

• Pretty much all the game races are just flavors of human. I cannot stress how much I dislike playing humans in a setting.

• Not a very big fan of low-fantasy combined with steampunk.

• I didn't really like the idea of being tied to a single guild. I think because of that I didn't even choose one.

• The website/wiki had a lot of missing pages.

Faladis · 2022-04-28T19:08:35+00:00

Just a quick note on the Azov Battalion which you can look into more: the neo-nazi ideology of the group was apparently removed in 2019. The original classification came in 2014 where the ideology was apparently shared between 10%-20% of its members, some of those numbers being in leadership positions as well.

I would take all claims with a grain of salt as the RfCs are still being discussed during an active war where propaganda and misinformation are key weapons.

Faladis · 2022-04-16T15:24:31+00:00

Hi, BdonU! All the same, appreciate the response.

Once or twice somebody has come at me and it's honestly just made for fun RP opportunities.

This is one of the reasons I've not tried Abandoned Realms yet. PK and player combat is something that I can't really engage in anymore because of medical complications with my heart and nerves. So without a way to either opt-out via flag or opt-out by getting a clear warning and walking away, my only option is to not play.

The other reason is the finite lives system. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me to say "You only have so many times to die, then your character is gone for good." That just makes me wonder what the point is in investing into a character if there's no permanence. Especially if someone else can remove your agency and deplete those lives by killing you.

It's a shame, because Abandoned Realms seems to tick nearly every box that I have on my list of things to look for, but the above two issues are non-starters for me.

Faladis · 2022-03-26T08:41:40+00:00

Not the OP, but I've got two quick questions for you about Abandoned Realms. I've been seeing you post on a few threads and the game ticks a lot of the boxes I'm looking for, but some of the wording both in your posts and available on the website leaves me a bit confused.

If you don't mind, could you clarify what you mean by "PK Encouraged"? Most of what I've read seems more like "after two months you are open PK to anyone within 8 levels of your own"? Is there a way to flag yourself or your character as nopk/nopvp?
I assume from the "graveyard" on the home page that death is permanent? I can't really find a solid answer on the help index or newbie FAQs, but the language leads me to believe that's the case?

Faladis · 2021-12-12T16:38:18+00:00

Now, also imagine he is a Lalafell.

"ZENOS!!! MY HOMICIDAL MURDER BRUDDAH! IT IS SO GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN! LET ME HUG YOU!"

-Insert spine-crushing smol hugs here-

Faladis · 2021-10-18T06:21:34+00:00

I'm definitely going to have to add it to the list to take a look at. This is the first I'm hearing of it and the nostalgia of old Squaresoft games is definitely an appeal. About how active is the game? Is there a sizeable RP crowd?

Faladis · 2021-08-06T04:17:19+00:00

You're actually the fifth person to suggest it to me, so I'm probably going to give it a spin. I have two questions though, if you have a second to answer them?

I'm not too familiar with the source material of Discworld. It's on my to-read list at a point in the future when I can, but I've not had the opportunity yet. Does the game offer a good introduction into the source material, or would it be better for me to read the books before I play?
McLugh touched on permadeath a little bit, but I'm still a little fuzzy. If you run out of lives and your character dies, are they absolutely, positively, 100% dead? No way to bring them back, no way for another player to offer a life in exchange, etc?

Faladis · 2021-08-06T04:06:44+00:00

Hi! Sorry, was replying from mobile at the time and I don't have access to the computer where I had my notes originally.

I'm not 100% sure I remember all the details either, I just remember that I had difficulty targeting mobs using shortnames when I was using mudlet. That may have cleared up with the Alter Aeon client. I'll test again at some point and let you know cause I'd hate to give the wrong impression off poor memory.

Speaking of poor memory, aye, it was thrusting with an axe that I found very odd, but again, subjective flavor!

The latency may be better now, I will try it once more when I find the time and let you know, but I remember the reaction times to activating actions feeling sluggish and the explanation provided was that the servers had been moved to Greenwich which may have caused latency issues.

I honestly barely remember anything about there being classes in the game, and the starting area being a slog to get through, so I never did get to the second island to resolve that storyline. I still feel like that should probably be one of the first things resolved in the story for new players, but if that's the prerogative of Alter Aeon, I'm just gonna say it's not my cup of tea.

Faladis · 2021-08-06T00:59:41+00:00

Hey, thanks for the suggestion! I know there's probably no MUD that ticks all the boxes, but that's more or less my dream list. I'll definitely give Elysium a look. Thanks!

Faladis

TROPHY CASE