@Wizz This also meshes with my own experiences there, up to the present day. Hadrix Kora is a heavy contributor to the uncomfortableness on Pub, as is the general clique he belongs to that basically seems to control the game.
Best posts made by Warlander
-
RE: Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo
-
RE: Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo
@kalakh Speaking of… this just hit the boards last night.
=========================<* 8: Game Updates - 199 *>=========================
Message: 8/199 Posted: Jan 20 2023 Author: Discordia
Timejump XP Updates (Non-FS)As we approach closer to the timejump, post-time jump XP and Sheet adjustments going forward will be:
For all Non-FS, 1000 XP base award
PLUS 150 per 5 years of a 15 year age-up.Thus:
0 years: 1000xp
5 years: 1150xp
10 years: 1300xp
15 years: 1500xpFS Characters will be handled separately. The goal with the XP award is to allow our Non-FS characters to come to greater parity with their level of skill after a fifteen year increase.
All XP adjustments will be handled by hand and annotated per character so that if a PC is shelved and their XP is rolled into a new PC, it will not include the XP gained by the time jump. Only their normally accrued experience points, as has always been the case.
Any Non-FS who wish to change their decision on whether or not they will be aging up and by how much, please either add a reply to your existing job or submit a new +request if you have not done so yet. Anyone who does not submit a +request will be assumed to be aging the full 15 years.
If you have more than one alt, you may include your decisions for all of them in one +request, just make sure to note each alt and your choice going forward.
------------------------------< +bbread 8/199 >-------------------------------The original ‘awards’ were 0 XP for not aging, 150 for aging five years, 300 for aging 10 years, and the full 500 for aging the full 15 years, just so nobody has to scroll back a mile or two. Quite a difference, don’t you think?
Sound like damage control (to the tune of, ‘Please stay! We’re handing out oodles of goodies!’) to anyone else?
(Note: Edited to fix the message header.)
-
RE: Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo
@Narson What was that motivation? Just 'cause I’m morbidly curious…
FWIW, not a fan of AoA, and likely never will be. Even if the subject of this board weren’t an issue (which I’m sure it is), there are too many sketchy things and flying monkeys for my taste, and too many good players run off by blatant favoritism, and a slightly less blatant habit of ignoring their efforts to contribute to the game. Who could blame them? If nothing you do is ever allowed to have any effect/meaning, why stay?
Skipping ahead 15 IC years and letting the Sith Empire have the galaxy, ostensibly to get the game back to ‘Star Wars’s best vibe, rebels vs. the empire’ is just the most recent sketchy decision, and I still wonder if it’s not another attempt to create A Game of Thrones IN SPACE. I also wonder which Sith Empire staff alt decided they wanted to win the game…
But I digress. The ones who have quit have the right (and healthiest) idea.
-
RE: Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo
@CuriousGamer These things remind me a great deal of a Rollins Band song I used to play on the campus radio station. Think it was just called ‘Liar’. This isn’t nearly the whole song, but these are the words I remember when I think of abusers like Cujo and Hadrix.
'I’ll hide behind a smile… and understanding eyes…
And I’ll tell you things you already know, just so you’ll say, ‘I really identify with you, so much!’
I’ll come to you like an affliction. I’ll leave you like an addiction.
You’ll never forget me! YOU WANNA KNOW WHY?!!‘CAUSE I’M A LIAR!!! YEAH! I AM A LIAR!!!’
‘I DON’T KNOW WHY I FEEL THE NEED TO… CAUSE YOU SO MUCH PAIN!
MAYBE IT’S SOMETHIN’ INSIDE, MAYBE IT’S SOMETHIN’ I CAN’T EXPLAIN…
‘CAUSE ALL I DO… IS MESS YOU UP AND LIE TO YOU!!!’‘I LIE! I LIE AND LIE AND LIE! OH, I LIE…
I’LL LIE AGAIN! AND AGAIN!
I’LL LIE AGAIN AND AGAIN AND I’LL KEEP LYIN’!
I promise… HAHAHAHAHAHAAH!’Groomers and cliquesters are a lot like this. Other players are just a disposable thrill to them, or a place to hide when the whistle is blown… or even the flying monkey squad that squashes all criticism of them, so they can continue to prey on vulnerable people.
In what little experience I have with this kind of abuse on games, ones in which staff have near-total control of the information flow, things tend to simmer just beneath the surface, invisible to most of the player body of the game, for a long, long time. Most players go out of their way to avoid the clique the problem player is part of, if there is any warning at all. It’s only when the incidents begin to pile up, and victimized players begin to talk to one another outside of the game and discover patterns in their own experiences, that things come out, and usually it’s in one big rush. The game may or may not die as a result of it.
On the game I was on when I first saw this (a Fallout game run by the infamous Kat), a large part of the playerbase disappeared over the course of a month, and most of the players found out through paging one another, or talking to fellow players outside the game via emails or places like Discord. The game slowly withered and died for six or so months afterward, and by the time Kat actually banned the predator in question, it was much, much too late to save the game or what little credibility she had as a staffer.
Given that Cujo refuses to even acknowledge that any abuse occurred, let alone ban the player/staffer responsible, I don’t know how long it will take AoA to wither away, if it ever does. Remember that SerenityMUSH stuck around for a long, long time in spite of having similar problems, and an equally toxic staff culture. The same may happen here.
-
RE: Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo
@Jennkryst Why does it not surprise me that AoA would waste time and effort on a kinks code system?
They wasted plenty of time on working elevators and trams, some of which eat coded money, in some locales, to say nothing of ‘balancing’ the coded weapons and ammo, most of which doesn’t begin to match old or new canon… and adding modifications that tend to be very rare (except for the garbage-grade versions that clog up the vendors everywhere) and cost many, many times more than the weapons themselves, just to turn those weapons back into something besides useless junk. Mostly what they managed to do is turn the gap between newbies and dinosaurs into a huge gulf, which I doubt was accidental.
Starship mods are treated much the same way, though the stock ships aren’t nearly as junked-up as the weapons (even if they are far more rare, since only a small number of each ship model exists on the game at any time).
And if you want anything modded, you have to find someone with the skills and coded equipment to do it. While this makes some sense, a staff member has to be available to adjudicate the actual modifications, just in case the tech succeeds wildly or fails; in the latter case, the mod is lost and the item being modded can be permanently damaged, reducing one or more of its base statistics. Needless to say, it takes very high skill levels in the necessary skills to generate consistent results. Like automated cargo running code, this is supposed to ‘encourage RP’. I don’t know about RP, but it certainly encourages frustration, as scheduling is the worst enemy of using coded mod systems.
There’s also pricey color codes for armor, weapons, etc., and something called ‘screambucks’, relatively recently added, that are supposed to be gained through RP, and can be used to purchase other coded rarities, like beskar metal for making Mandalorian armor. This is great for large groups and orgs, who have a habit of nomming one another heavily, but not nearly so useful for less active and/or ‘well-connected’ players, which are usually newbies; usually by the time the dinosaur groups finish nomming one another, they’ve run out of noms.
All of this code and coded objects may explain why the game suffers from persistent and often severe lag. Just typing +paycheck or +bbnew guarantees a wait of several seconds, minimum.
-
RE: Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo
@SqeakyClean This confirms a LOT of things I’ve suspected for some time now.
And I can confirm that the playerbase emphatically did not want the time skip; that was a staff thing all the way, and Cujo admitted that he had been steering the metaplot of the game toward the Sith winning for a good while before deciding to announce the time skip. The playerbase was not even asked if they wanted this; they were just told ‘this will happen, and unless you figure out a way to opt out, you are aging 15 years’ (BTW, it’s a lot harder to opt out than go with the flow). And while noises are being made about the Sith Empire faction ultimately losing, the faction is recruiting heavily, much like the First Order back before that faction was made NPC. So I’m of the opinion that even if the Sith Empire loses, it will be a very long time coming, and even then I’m sure Aryn will fight it every step of the way.
Just one more chapter in the long-running ‘Imps win, LOL,’ side of Star Wars.
-
RE: Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo
@Jennkryst It should be noted that most of the original Koras used to be First Order PCs, who started chargen with the best stats and gear on the game. Except possibly for Sumi Kora, who is head of the Bounty Hunters’ Guild and built to a standard at least equal to the First Order PCs, none of the Koras started life as Mandalorians; they were all First Order PCs who somehow adopted the Mandalorian way of life after the First Order ceased to be a PC faction, so they didn’t have to retire their overbuilt PCs, or go totally Civilian.
It’s probably no coincidence that Clan Kora first popped up within a month of ‘The Mandalorian’ first airing.
-
RE: Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo
@Wizz I suspect more newbies than we will EVER know about had a similarly horrible experience there, whether immediately or much later.
-
RE: Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo
@Popes Or maybe they’ve just learned that they have to hide their bad behavior better, since the word’s out about it and the playerbase is a lot smaller than it used to be (because the word’s out about it).
Time will tell.
-
RE: On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof
@Pavel I wish you the best of luck in your recovery, and I deeply appreciate your candor. It’s possible that some abusers, if caught very early, and either helped quickly or slapped down hard, might not devolve into problem players.
But the line between toxicity and predation is neither thin nor easily crossed. The difference is between irritation/impatience with other people, and total and outright contempt for them, or a total disregard for their worth as fellow human beings.
And while a toxic person can come back from the brink, it’s usually too late for a predator. Much, much too late. Assuming any opportunity to intervene ever existed. The term sex pest seems far too mild for them.
Latest posts made by Warlander
-
RE: Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo
@Jax Best. Advice. Ever.
Honestly, I wasn’t planning on trying it, not least 'cause I’m not a newbie there. But boy, would I love to be a fly on the wall in THAT scene!
-
RE: Non-AoA Star Wars Games
@EDI7078 Thanks for the heads-up. I’m already playing there, and have been enjoying the place.
-
RE: Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo
@STD Never heard about anyone trying that. IMO, it’s pretty clever. Since it’s never happened to my knowledge, all I can do is speculate; sorry I can’t be more helpful here.
If a new and well-liked member of a staff-favored faction did it, I could see them pulling it off and getting away with it. Maybe more than once.
Someone else doing the same thing might be accepted as a running joke character. Don’t know what they’d do to the player/character if that didn’t happen, though. Winding up with permanently nerfed dice rolls just to keep the ‘loser’ losing comes to mind, since they have no problem spoofing dice rolls for even less reason.
Since cowardice goes against The Way, I doubt such a character would be accepted among the Koras. They might even kill the character themselves. Which, since the Koras are the faction most likely to benefit from such trolling, would probably get a character ostracized or killed for nothing.
-
RE: Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo
@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.
-
RE: Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo
@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).
-
RE: Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo
@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.
-
RE: 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.
-
RE: Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo
@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 CujoHello 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 CujoHey 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.
- AoA Staff
-
RE: Non-AoA Star Wars Games
@Warma-Sheen Duly noted on the quality thing, and thanks.
-
RE: Non-AoA Star Wars Games
@oknow Sadly, no longer so. The game remains open, but activity is largely nil. One fachead has been working hard to make things happen, but I suspect he’s getting burned out.
Also, most of the new arrivals from Jan - Feb seem to have left. Not sure where they’ve gone. A few may be on Rebirth.