Hypnos's Office Hour

The intent by Hypnos

Every Friday, at 4pm-5pm game time from August-December 2008, we will be trying out some office hours. Each week I will log onto a different ocean (announced in the title of this thread.)

I'm in the Three Rings office five days a week, and sometimes it's nice to kick back in the game that I work for and chat.

During this time, you're all welcome to come to my in-game residence, and chat to me about what you think about the latest release, things that concern you about your ocean, and other things.

You are welcome to log in on alts if I am not visiting your ocean that particular week, but I will try to rotate to a different ocean each week and give every server a turn.

Right now I am reserving the in-game chats for talking rather than partying and throwing tournaments and things, but if for some reason people are happy and there's nothing to really discuss, I am not against putting up a tournament board and some competitions in the future.

I reserve the right to refer people to an FAQ that will be expanded in this thread.

I'm sorry if this is an hour that is not convenient for some of you mates. Please rest assured that you can always PM me or e-mail me if you cannot chat with me in-game, and that I will also be scheduling another round of conference calls in the near future. (On a Saturday!)

The meetings

Malachite (August 1st)

• Embargoes - They don't work. People swap ship deeds like carefree hippies and use alt flags to port. What could be done to change that? We note the crew that a vessel was traded to and from in the vessel logs, could there be some kind of check of whom the vessel has belonged to upon trying to port, to block vessels that used to belong to an embargoed flag?
• Puzzle Competitions - While people are generally looking forward to seeing them in action, people also don't want to see the old, social style of bake-off on vessels disappear entirely.
• Other shoppe racks are indeed on the list
• Yes, we are planning future iterations of adventures (both Atlantis-sea-type and land-based) that will be more suitable for smaller ships (and groups) than frigates. I'm afraid I cannot say any detail on this whatsoever!
• Black familiars - Will there be a type of competition that these are awarded for in the future?
• Lime dye - It's rare, useless, and we loves it. Bring back dye for future events!
• Antix wants afros. (Later conversation in the forum thread revealed that Antix's actual request was for afros on monkeys, which was promptly shot down by Hypnos as having negative racial connotations.)

Viridian (August 8th)

Cancelled, as Hypnos was sick.

Viridian (August 15th)

Posted by Jolyma

• Actually, we spent a little time on the Atlantis board reset issue, and the fact that while it's great they killed spawn shopping, it was hurting legitimate navvers who would kill off a bunch of monsters, then give jobbers a 5 minute break while rejobbing, in order to get the next round of monsters.
• Then we discussed the new foraging puzzles, and the upcoming tailor and weaving puzzles that are in the works, with a hint that we may possibly see one by the end of the year.
• Greeter chat and the way people use it for their own personal questions was brought up.
• Competitions were discussed a little, but there was only 3 of us there at the time. Since my frustrations with them deal more with the wish that scores were cumulative, rather than one league of luck, and otherwise I enjoy them, they weren't discussed much.
• Someone from Hunter came over and complained about Hunter's island opening choice, and th way Hunter has been handled, only to be assured that Hypnos has heard there is 'A plan' for Hunter.
• Someone brought up the possibility of pay caps for blockades, and that was talked about for a while. Some felt that they should cap it, and others (including myself) thought that OOO shouldn't dictate how flags should spend their poe, especially since it is a player driven economy.

Cobalt (August 22nd)

• Mixed feelings on the competition's Ahoy! popups- about half of pirates asked said they found it disturbing while puzzling.
• A request to hold trinkets in portraits
• When are the new cloth colors coming out? Suggestions for a fall cloth color was golden brown, distinct from gold.
• Will we be releasing a new limited edition pet? (Not at the moment)
• Cobalt and Viridian each only have 4 types of fruit. They want more! Bananas/rambutan? (Unfortunately this is non-trivial to fix. I spoke to Arcturus who said that islands and what they spawn would have to be mucked about in the database.)
• If you do not set a ship to blockade voyage mode and enter a blockade, jobbers don't get paid. Is there a way to check if flags have offers up when a ship enters a blockade?

Follow-up to past issues:

• Atlantis spawn has been tweaked so that hopefully more things spawn when good navigators have killed everything on the board. This was causing problems because they could no longer 'reset' the board to quickly spawn fresh monsters.

Hunter (August 29th)

• Greeter chat - it has become a place for people to ask questions about the game. Should we provide another avenue for this, such as an Ask A Greeter button for greeters? Or change Greeter chat into Questions chat? Lots of people go yellow without knowing a lot of things about the game.
• Gaming in duty puzzles - getting high bilge with lots of crabs, turning around and around without hitting the league point (does that hold off on scoring?) a way to make a special set of ships for shipboard puzzles, so that conditions are uniform? Factor in puzzle difficulty- number of stars a player has.
• Gems - do the new aggressive thieves put a limit to how much a pirate can make for sailing a long distance?
• Tan familiar tournaments - are the schedules convenient for when the most people are online?
• Customizable pirate page - putting a mood down?
• Competitions - a regular schedule like the tan familiar tournaments request
• Treasure haul scoring odd? Lots of people getting incredibles that weren't before.

Midnight (September 5th)

Posted by Talisker

• Where are the ladies at? Actually Hypnos guessing at the question I said he would guess I would ask. What I actually asked was:
• MOAR Governor Controls - "I'm glad people are still asking. Will bring it up at the next meeting." (I think.)
• Embargoes, make them effective? "How?" "Whitelist rather than blacklist." (I think this was Uni's idea. Nice work!) "Oooh, that's an interesting idea."
• Speculation and talk about how increasing the ability to "make an impact" makes an ocean last longer. Comment from The Big H that some Ringers were looking to "fix" colonization, in that they realize that once everything's colonized, there's less motivation to take islands.
• Can we have tophats? No comment on upcoming clothing releases. (Curses! I still want them! Make them black and you can pick a colored band and/or colored patch on them.) This segued to:
• Halloween switching to Ghosts, Zombies, Skellies, etc? Won't say yet, Hypnos likes the voluntary switch idea, and hinted at possible new masks (Don't take that as gospel, I might be reading what I wanted to into it).
• Titan? I think I was ignored here. <.<
• Can we have foraging trophies, people practicing are messing up labor? Trophies soon, segue to:
• Labor Fixes - Some interesting ideas. A possible "bid ticket" system for labor. Concerns over ensuring you work in a friends/flagmates/crew shoppe.
• Lag - Cephy and Bungleton are working on it.
• Can I get an official statement from OOO saying that "SMH=Pillaging" to stop the silly forum threads about it?

Links

• Hypnos's Office Hours (Forum thread)