Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo

[Polk]

@Warlander The theory behind the minigames is that it keeps people engaged with the game in order to make RP happen.

But I find the downside of real-time travel is that it nukes RP.

[Wuff]

@Polk

You’re either spamming your screen with flight stuff and you might miss poses. Or your not looking at it cause you’re typing a pose when you might need to be landing the shift and not just crashing into a planet,

Remember folks. Don’t RP and drive!

[Warlander]

@Wuff @Polk You’re both exactly right. While there are commands to keep from flying past or crashing into things you’re trying to reach, they make no actual difference; 99 times out of 100, if you’re running cargo, you’re not RPing.

And that remaining 1 out of 100 is most likely a very slow and laborious scene.

[Istus]

@Polk More likely in play to inflate online player numbers.

[Kyppi]

@Warlander It’s a dopamine mine that’s tied to the most boring part of exploration. I don’t enjoy yucking someone’s yum but it’s more than a little silly that it’s such a demanding system with so many people strictly adhering to its schedule. There are infinitely better codebases that handle space trucking in both active and passive flavors. Honestly it might be a blessing more than it is a curse because the people I got stuck with were absolute creeps and turned me off from SW:AOA entirely.

It was bad enough that it changed my opinion about how monitoring in codebases like these need to be ran for the sake of moderation. There’s nothing I can possibly do to prove what happened in any meaningful way. I could have provided the log that I saved but I’d just be concern trolled to hell and back about it being altered. There becomes a point in which a MUSH is a platform and not utilizing or having auditing tools is a choice.

Most of what I have to say would be off topic though. I never directly interacted with Hadrix or Cujo. Staff was in their towers very much aloof and above the players. I don’t know if when I played Hadrix was staff when I was a player.

[Warlander]

@Istus Speaking of inflating player numbers, Cujo is chasing new players HARD ATM. These announcements hit the boards during the wee hours last night:

=========================<* 8: Game Updates - 218 *>=========================
Message: 8/218 Posted Author
Free Starter Ship Dec 09 2023 Cujo

Hello all

We’re instituting a new Chargen feature, in the form of a free starter ship. If you make a new character, and want to request a free ship once you are IC, then we offer you the newly updated Slingshot cargo hauler.

The new Slingshot comes with 200 tons of cargo space. Max Speeds of 50 MGLT in space, and 80 MGLT in atmosphere. It is still a 1 crew ship, with a bunk behind the pilot’s station, with interior room for 2 passengers to at least sit fiairly comfortably while traveling the space lanes.

In the end, we are now offering free ships out of chargen. If you make a character, and want a ship to start off with, and the new Slingshot variants sound appealing to you, then make that new character, and put in the request once you are approved and IC!

• AoA Staff
  ------------------------------< +bbread 8/218 >-------------------------------

======================<* 7: Game Announcements - 176 *>======================
Message: 7/176 Posted Author
Year End XP Bonus Dec 09 2023 Cujo

Hey all

Throughout the rest of the month, we are offering 1000 XP in bonus for your new characters. If you create a new character, get approved, and want the bonus XP to start fresh and new on the grid, put in a +rquest once you’re IC!

We’ll happily support your new characters leading in to the new year!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and prepare for 2024!

• Cujo
  ------------------------------< +bbread 7/176 >-------------------------------

The desperation is real. A year ago, any bonuses to new players wouldn’t have passed staff’s laugh test (after all, the pointless gulf between newbies and dinos MUST be maintained!). And new characters who wanted a ship would either have to join an org and hope they felt like loaning a ship out (good luck, Chuck) or go into debt to a crime lord to buy one and hope they could pay off the loan through trading (or outlast the crime lord character, which, given the rate at which players quit AoA, is a weak but viable strategy).

Not that I think this ship’s going to sink much faster. But I got a good lol reading the obvious newbie/alt bait. Makes me wonder if the dinos will demand an equivalent bonus.

[Popes]

@Warlander said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

======================<* 7: Game Announcements - 176 *>======================
Message: 7/176 Posted Author
Year End XP Bonus Dec 09 2023 Cujo
Hey all
Throughout the rest of the month, we are offering 1000 XP in bonus for your new characters. If you create a new character, get approved, and want the bonus XP to start fresh and new on the grid, put in a +rquest once you’re IC!
We’ll happily support your new characters leading in to the new year!
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and prepare for 2024!

Oh look, the thing I suggested when I played there, but not flavored as a bonus.

[Warlander]

@Popes I thought I remembered something about such a bonus straight out of chargen, but I couldn’t remember whose idea that was… it was pretty far back in the thread.

Completely unsurprised that he’d steal your idea. Though genuinely startled that he stole an actual GOOD idea.

[GF]

@Warlander said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

The new Slingshot comes with 200 tons of cargo space. Max Speeds of 50 MGLT in space, and 80 MGLT in atmosphere. It is still a 1 crew ship, with a bunk behind the pilot’s station, with interior room for 2 passengers to at least sit fiairly[sic] comfortably while traveling the space lanes.

Maybe this is a me problem, but I cannot imagine joining a Star Wars game to play a trucker who has to micromanage cargo capacity and standing room for other people to roleplay with but seemingly has no capacity to engage in the whoosh whoosh pew pew laser fights the movies are full of.

[SpaceKhomeini]

@GF said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@Warlander said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

The new Slingshot comes with 200 tons of cargo space. Max Speeds of 50 MGLT in space, and 80 MGLT in atmosphere. It is still a 1 crew ship, with a bunk behind the pilot’s station, with interior room for 2 passengers to at least sit fiairly[sic] comfortably while traveling the space lanes.

Maybe this is a me problem, but I cannot imagine joining a Star Wars game to play a trucker who has to micromanage cargo capacity and standing room for other people to roleplay with but seemingly has no capacity to engage in the whoosh whoosh pew pew laser fights the movies are full of.

Speak for yourself. I for one am itching to tell the tale of Blorf Medtrix, Imperial Insurance Adjuster.

[Popes]

@Warlander said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@Popes I thought I remembered something about such a bonus straight out of chargen, but I couldn’t remember whose idea that was… it was pretty far back in the thread.

Completely unsurprised that he’d steal your idea. Though genuinely startled that he stole an actual GOOD idea.

Like I said way back in the thread. I never felt like I was treated as an outsider or a lesser, nor was I sex pested. BUT I did feel real goddamn useless in big combats because I did not have the XP to keep up. Of course, nor did I get murdered either.

[Pavel]

This post is deleted!

[Warlander]

@GF Some people do go for that sort of tedious keyboarding and waiting to “simulate” flying a starship and loading and unloading coded cargo to earn money.

I don’t think I will ever understand those people. It’s certainly not what I imagine when I think of flying a starship, or when I think of roleplaying. And especially not when I think of FUN.

To each their own, I guess.

[Warlander]

@Popes I suspect yours is a pretty common experience for a newbie there. They are big on discussing options that don’t involve killing characters, such as capture, or being wounded and incapacitated and then dragged off the field by your friends. Or maybe they realize your health is about gone and stop sending attacks your way. This is more for the benefit of the dinos, who don’t want to lose their borderline maxed-out charbits, but since the cat’s out of the bag now, these benefits are spilling over to newbies as well, to avoid losing PCs after one or two battles.

But you will definitely feel useless in any kind of combat without a weapon with high-end mods to make it useful. Your average stock pistol, the most common weapon for newbies, has an accuracy of around 70 percent, which means you lose almost a third of your skill with the weapon before you even roll your attack. So even a character with a skill level of 100 with pistols would only have a 70 when using one. Combine that with the often high defensive skills of coded NPCs and the generally low skills of new players, and you’re going to miss A LOT. Stock carbines are only slightly better than pistols, and even stock rifles will have 85 percent accuracy at best. Get used to missing a lot more than you hit.

And when you do hit, it’ll often look and feel like flea bites, since most coded NPCs have better stats and armor than new players, and attack roll results play a role in determining damage. Even a high-damage weapon with 90-100 percent accuracy can have its damage cut in half or more by the time rolls and armor are factored in.

When those same NPCs shoot YOU, on the other hand, you’ll KNOW you’ve been shot, for the same reasons as stated above; higher skills, better gear. It’s like a blind puppy trying to fight two ogres waving sticks around; you’re trying to nibble them to death when you can even hit them at all, while they can almost casually whack you just a few times and you’re done for the night.

Doesn’t exactly feel like the movies, does it? By AoA standards, farm boy Luke Skywalker from Episode IV would be a dino char, if his results on the screen are any indication. Made up to actual farm boy stats on the game, he wouldn’t have survived the escape from the Death Star. Not even with a captured Stormtrooper blaster and a lightsaber, and with the Stormtroopers deliberately missing him (Vader and Tarkin WANTED the rescuers to escape, after all).

[GF]

@Warlander Oh, I get enjoying those things. It’s the basic reward loop that triggers the dopamine receptors in the brain and can even lead to addiction. To a degree, I even enjoy it; I like grinding in RPGs, for instance, if it’s the kind of thing I can get into a mindless groove of.

What gets me specifically is doing that in Star Wars. That really, really doesn’t seem to me like the draw of the franchise.

[Wizz]

@GF said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

What gets me specifically is doing that in Star Wars. That really, really doesn’t seem to me like the draw of the franchise.

there’s a specific portion of the fantasy that is often iterated on that just about owning a starship like the Millenium Falcon and living that sort of life, which is where a big chunk of the inspiration for Firefly came from, for example.

space trucker games also have a significant fan base overlap I imagine, so “play a sort of simulation game you already enjoy inside an IP you also coincidentally enjoy” doesn’t seem like much of a stretch. certainly explains why so many SW MUDs/etc were like this in the 90’s and early aughts.

[Polk]

@Wizz It’s like an online, multiplayer version of the old Space Trader PalmOS game, with actual role play involved.

[MisterBoring]

If I’m in the mood to do space trucking, I’m usually not trying to RP. I’m just trying to chill and get loads of neutrino power cells for battleship guns from one side of the galaxy to the next, in the most efficient way possible.

I’m also not trying to stare at a wall of text while doing it, so I’m usually playing Elite or any number of other various space sims out there that accomplish the same stuff.

[Jax]

@Warlander It was always a hard balance when I tried to run +events for the Irregulars and Saber Squadron in the end. I was always trying to run things where the newbies and non force sensitive pc mattered. Everyone did something epic and half the party nearly died. I probably failed most the time but I hope my players had fun.

[Ashkuri]

It wasn’t difficult to set NPCs at varying levels so that ABC targets are appropriate for the high skill dinosaur people and XYZ targets were appropriate for the newbies.

The problem there was preventing the dinos from instantly wrecking the newbie targets. Which should be common fucking sense but here we are, lol. One of the worst people for doing that was staff when I left, so that’s pretty awesome.

While I’m here, on an unrelated note, did you know that we had a Christmas Tree object to give fun holiday cheer in the OOC area? You could give and receive ooc “gifts.” Cool!

Did you know that one of the staff fucked with it to Anonymously give out “CharacterName’s Used Dirty Panties” gifts to various people, including me? That was @Zephyr 's char, she can verify that it was very much without her knowledge or consent.

I told staff there needs to be an apology, after our coder identified who did it. There was never an apology. There was never any action taken on him. He stopped logging in for a while then slunk back later like nothin’ happened.

So in case you’re wondering if there are more stories of the game being sexually disgusting, lol, yes, there’s always more stories.