Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo

[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.

[Zephyr]

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

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 can back this up. It was the inactive staff member Halcyon that decided it would be hilarious to abuse his continued access to his staff charbit/powers and log into a long time idle feature character, then give out anonymous gifts in the form of my characters ‘used panties’ to several people. I know because I happened to be in the room at the time and saw several people opening them. There were quite a few more gifts that the coder of the game, Yeti, had to go in and manually remove before they were opened. It was not great, especially as it was the first year the tree was ever put up for players to give silly gifts to one another, and it kind of ruined the whole thing for me.

I will also note that this wasn’t something like ribbing between friends. I had maybe two or three brief interactions with Halcyon in my entire time on the game because he was part of the original game, not the revamped version for the last trilogy. He hadn’t been active staff since probably before 2010. This guy was basically a stranger to me, and when given even the most mild of push back against it, rather than apologize the dude just fucked off the game and didn’t log on for a year. Cujo claimed he told him to apologize, but there were never any consequences to not doing so. Cujo flat refused to do anything about him having a staff bit, or staff powers even if he didn’t want to take the entire bit away. I don’t think he viewed it as a problem at all other than it became something that someone complained to him about, and he was annoyed that he had to do something.

[Warlander]

@imstillhere And let’s not forget the old ploy of non-Koras (often newbies) in Kora clique scenes being used as blaster fodder while Koras did everything important in the scene, which is at least as bad as staff alts steamrolling the low-level targets. At least the newbies had a chance of being relevant to the scene the other way.

And as for the OTHER thing… gross and vicious doesn’t begin to scratch the surface. I don’t remember witnessing one of those ‘gifts’ being opened, and I’m glad I didn’t, but I’m deeply sorry you had to suffer through that particular horror and humiliation, Zephyr.

Seriously, what normal human being could ever think another person would ever find that anything but sick? On any sane game, with half-ass decent staff, that guy would be GONE.

[Das Auto]

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

And let’s not forget the old ploy of non-Koras (often newbies) in Kora clique scenes being used as blaster fodder while Koras did everything important in the scene, which is at least as bad as staff alts steamrolling the low-level targets. At least the newbies had a chance of being relevant to the scene the other way.

Don’t forget the use of @remit to cheat rolls so they’re always succeeding. NOSPOOF is your very noisy friend.

Also, tiny update, there’s been zero activity on the wiki since November 22.

[kalakh]

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

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.

[MeToo]

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

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.

Like Hadrix dropping out of the sky, without so much as a roll, landing on one of the ‘guard dog’ NPCs that was there for the newbies to kill, destroying it, and then opening fire on the remaining guard dogs? Yeah. This sorta shit happened all the time.

That, of course, was the same scene where he said ‘Oh hey my wife needs me to move something heavy, hurr hurr, can my friend come in and take my spot? kthanx!’ at which point he… switched alts.

[SpaceKhomeini]

Like any game with obscenely ancient legacy characters, maybe it’s time to just wipe the slate?

Or quit, which is what sane people seem to be doing. That works too.

[Popes]

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

Like any game with obscenely ancient legacy characters, maybe it’s time to just wipe the slate?

Or quit, which is what sane people seem to be doing. That works too.

I don’t regret quitting. I just want a better Star Wars game with some crunch to it and that doesn’t allow minors. None of which exist right now.

[Jennkryst]

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

I just want a better Star Wars game with some crunch to it and that doesn’t allow minors. None of which exist right now.

Someone remind me to start poking the Evennia code with a stick again.

[SpaceKhomeini]

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

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

Like any game with obscenely ancient legacy characters, maybe it’s time to just wipe the slate?

Or quit, which is what sane people seem to be doing. That works too.

I don’t regret quitting. I just want a better Star Wars game with some crunch to it and that doesn’t allow minors. None of which exist right now.

Unfortunately the crunch aspect is my weakest area, I have plot and characters ready to go. And in spades.

Isn’t that always how it goes?

[Coin]

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

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

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

Like any game with obscenely ancient legacy characters, maybe it’s time to just wipe the slate?

Or quit, which is what sane people seem to be doing. That works too.

I don’t regret quitting. I just want a better Star Wars game with some crunch to it and that doesn’t allow minors. None of which exist right now.

Unfortunately the crunch aspect is my weakest area, I have plot and characters ready to go. And in spades.

Isn’t that always how it goes?

You can make FS3 function for Star Wars with like… barely more work than @blu and @Roadspike put into Savage Skies.

[Roadspike]

@Coin I actually think that Star Wars is one of the few universes which could really be well-served by some additions/changes to FS3. Last time I was looking at it, I figured that it would be really good to add/change/carefully balance the following (at least) to make it really feel like Star Wars:

Force Boosting Stats in combat
Deflecting/Redirecting Blaster shots (check for Blasters only?)
Force Powers (listing, defenses, non-attack uses, attacks)
Armor = Unnecessary but useful, definitely not overpowering.
Permissions to use gain skills (Control/Sense/Alter/Lightsaber).
Permissions to use armor/weapons?
Racial bonuses.
Balance between autofire blasters/grenades and Jedi with lightsabers.

I’ve tried to do most of those things with base FS3, and I was not very successful with it. It’s doable, but the balance has to be done very, very carefully, and there’ll definitely be some kludging to make it feel close to Star Wars.

[Jenn]

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

@Coin I actually think that Star Wars is one of the few universes which could really be well-served by some additions/changes to FS3. Last time I was looking at it, I figured that it would be really good to add/change/carefully balance the following (at least) to make it really feel like Star Wars:
I’ve tried to do most of those things with base FS3, and I was not very successful with it. It’s doable, but the balance has to be done very, very carefully, and there’ll definitely be some kludging to make it feel close to Star Wars.

Ok. Considering I knew absolutely nothing about anything related to combat 6 months ago, and factoring in that I’ve never seen any of the Star Wars movies all the way through from a start to an end, and considering it’s been six months and I have a brain made out of swiss cheese… I understood WAY more of that than I should have. And I blame YOU entirely, Spike.

[Krautistanian]

Why do I log on there to check stuff anyways. Every login I lose stuff. Lost gear due to their announcement, fuck it. I log in to check the grid and BBPosts. Well, I can read BBPosts but am in the old guard lounge, since they decided I am too inactive to be allowed to keep my old characters, apparently.

I don’t know. I shouldn’t care, but being moved there kind of felt like a punch to the gut. I don’t do anything there. I won’t do anything there anymore because I have no reason to frankly return there anymore. I had a great time but I feel unwanted there. I mean, I know Cujo made his decision last year and I had nothing to return to, but it feels sobering. It feels sad, somehow.

I’ll miss AoA.