The Muster is a weekly gathering of all the news and announcements for Chronicles of Elyria. This week one of the main things that happened is you arrived. Thank you for coming into the community, it is a nice place to be as you get to be involved early with a studio that actually seem to listen to us. If you are a longer term community member then you get a shout out too because you have helped Soulbound Studios reach quite the milestone this week.

We also bring you a reminder about Influence Points, do not try to cheat they are on to you! As well as some other interesting topics, can ban players or guilds from your Kingdom, should seasons be longer, and also a little bit about the games AI.

Welcome to the Community

This weekend something happened. Imgur! As an official Imgur lurker, yes I know lowest of the low, I was very excited to see it hit the front page. I am also really excited for more people to see this game. Soulbound Studios were also pretty happy!

Thank you all. Your continued support means the world to us and helps us build confidence we’re providing you with the game you want to play, and if you’re like us, the game you’ve dreamed about over a decade. [Source – Announcement]

It is a great community to be apart of. Especially with members like Rahunei who are going out there and spreading the good word. It is a game worthy of attention, as well as good solid feedback, so make sure you are getting your thoughts onto the official forums.

Influence Points

Firstly what are they? Influence Points (IP) are a reward currency given to community members for helping to make the game successful. They can then use that currency for things at launch. Some ideas for what you may be able to buy have been custom surnames, parcels of lands, even noble titles. All things that give you a boost at the start… but how long you keep that boost is up to everyone on the server!

However, have you noticed your influence is not going up when you recruit others? Well, unfortunately, some bad apples in the barrel caused problems for all. Referring someone gave you predicted Influence Points. They were predicted because that player had to buy the game or get 400IP of their own for that referral to account. Some people seemed not to understand:

Remember folks, Influence Points are supposed to be a measure of how much you’ve influenced the success of the game. If your influence has gone up because you created multiple accounts and “friended” yourself, not only are you not making the game more successful, but you’re causing us to get a false sense of confidence in the number of interested community members. You’re actually working against the success of the game. [Source – Forums]

So sure you can still make multiple accounts, but don’t! It does you no good, it does the community no good, and it does the game no good. If you are thinking “But how do I get IP then?” in that same thread Caspian talks about how to go about it the right way, and it is not that hard! Just join in, be a part of the community, and give your feedback on this game.

Exiling Characters and Organisations

Often times there are people and organisations that people might want to stop entering their land. But can you do that in Chronicles of Elyria?

Right now the contract system does not allow you to specifically keep a group out. We just do not have clauses for that. You can write laws, but what we do not want, at least, we do not have a mechanic for at this point, is to allow players to actually just blocked other players from entering their Kingdom or County. You have to have a reason. There has to be a status effect on it that says this group is not allowed in for one reason or another. So if they are criminals, and are flagged as criminals, you can say “I am not going to allow criminals in here”, for whatever reason, you could do that. But at this point, there is no way to block a specific group or person. [Source – YouTube Q&A]

This means you can block people of a particular type, a particular status effect. What the list of different status effects are we do not know yet, but it does not appear that being a member of an organisation will be one of them. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Is it good to be able to arbitrarily block members of a particular group? Or should it be based on the actions of the individuals? That is a bit of a debate in the community, so do let your voice be heard too over at the official forums.

Season Length

A topic close to my heart is that of seasons. Farming is my deal and one of the main systems affected by the seasons is that area of the game. One thing that often comes up is the length of seasons. Currently, they plan is that each season is 24 hours with all four passing by in an Elyrian year. Some think that will be too slow:

This is one of those “be careful what you wish for” kind of things. [Source – Caspian IRC]

What Caspian was suggesting is that some seasons were not great to be in and if you extend the season you are extending that misery.

What people are missing is… snow sucks. So what they’re wanting in exchange for snow today, rain tomorrow… is snow, impaired movement, and reduced visibility for the next 3-4 days.

Is that really a good thing? Is it really worth having a longer summer if we have to sit inside for four days later on? I think this is one of those things that play testing will solve. It might be one of those systems that feel different to how they read. Play testing is going to be a big part of making this game work and I am sure we are all desperate to help out!

AI Kiting

Pulling monsters out of the wilds into town to cause mayhem is always an entertaining pass time. Perhaps huge monsters could be lured…

None of them are going to be stupid enough to be like “Oh my god we are getting close to civilisation, but he keeps hitting me once in a while so I better keep following him.” [Source – YouTube Q&A]

Darn that smart AI.

Muster Point

Welcome aboard, thank you for joining the community. Please make yourself at home and get involved. Your feedback makes this a better game for us all to play.