I'd like to see if others agree with what I think has been Lusternia's direction.

I know that what originally attracted me to the game was (1) heavy roleplay, (2) reasonably unrestricted PK and (3) great design.

(1) is still mostly the case, (2) has been kicked down and beaten into shreds, then urinated on, and (3) seems to be in decline (for example the amount of buggy new quests and areas with typoes).

I agree on most points.. I wish I had made Ciaran earlier when there weren't so many restrictions, and when the highways were scary I was still messing with alts at that point, I feel Lusternia is slowly moving towards what we all feared it would become. I hope the gods see that the most dedicated, and the most likely to buy credits liked it better when there was more emphasis on the fundamental things, and less on things such as miniatures. Dunno
/endrant

Like you two, the thing that primarily drew me to Lusternia was the fact that it was dangerous. People actually left their cities/communes to go out and pk, in the last 3 solid days of waiting and watching I have gotten to jump two whole people, no one else left their city! Naturally this leads me to beleive this is primairly a realm of bashers and questers/influencers which greatly saddens me. I think the pk part of Lusternia is great. Like the poll says bashing has become the name of the game, all I ever see people do is bash bash bash, which really sucks Last but not least the general direction has gone from "Lets go raid and pk" to "Lets go influence and bash".

Less combat due to peaced villagers and karma cursing, bashing is stupid anyway, and as for minigames, shortly it'll be renamed Mario Party.

Well, people like Thoros are refreshing, but really, there is very little draw to leave your city. Here's my suggestion: With the recent change (in villages) experience loss in enemy territory should be lessened drastically. Perhaps EVEN less than on neutural gruond. and it will also promote raids (influence or mob killing) to rub up well on the villages, earn respect etc. Should help pk, while not hurting pacifists so much. Perhaps something like neutural ground is more peaceful, therefor the gods punish you more for attacking/dieing there, while villages and such are considered warzones, where death is expected and acceptable. Lets all petition for this change since I see no real drawbacks

To be honest, I think the people who have spent the most money on credits at this point are people who are not active in combat.

Make praying cause less experience loss and there will be more PvP on prime. Make champions freepk, and able to pk anyone without others getting suspect. Make declaring last a full OOC day and last through death, so if someone attacks you first, you can get revenge.

etc
etc
etc

Well... If you aren't active in combat do you need cameos of the changeling, weapon runes, regen arti's, transed skills... etc. etc. I really doubt the noncombatants spend very much at all...

Ask Richter why he needed omni trans for so long then

Narsrim's list of non-combatant artifact whores:

Ialie - cubix, cameo, gem, huge manse, pet, etc.

Richter - mega manse, artifact weapons, pets, etc.

Sonata - cubix

Elryn - cubix, gem, huge manse, etc.

Gorokan - cubix

Tatezun - he got like 1 of everything from the artifact auction

=====================================================================

I could probably name more, but its early in the morning... none the less, there are lots of big credit customers who don't fight. Just because you want a cameo for combat doesn't mean Ialie can't have it for style

Fair enough, but there are a lot more fighting types that buy/have bought a heck of a lot of arties, people like Ialie and Richter are quite rare in my opinon.

Lusternia for me was a welcome break from the achaean pk laws, however wih a system so many people tend to abuse it....

In fact the OOC "you do'nt have PK on me nyah nyah" has simply changed form into "You're on my bully list, nyah nyah nyah 30 days of immunity no matter WHAT i say to you, even if i jump your buddy in front of you on prime you can do NOTHING"

Also, you can only jump and kill 10 people on prime, no matter who or what they've done, so for the next 30 days you have NOTHING on anyone.

Not only that, but no-one really goes off plane anymore, astral isn't nearly as populated as it used to be, celestia nil faethorn no-one goes on there except for teams.

As a last point, I know EXCATLY what torak is on about. When i'm 'idling' i hit who every 30 or so seconds, to see who's about on prime and if their name is red and they are out of territory (and EVERY SINGLE COMBATANT on either celest or serenwilde is marked red, sometimes i'll go raid somewhere just to see if there are any new combatants to add to the list) I'll kill them.

As a matter of fact, i've been trying so hard to get to 10 suspects over the past 3 weeks, and i've failed because no-one goes out, and even if they did i'd have 30 days to 'cool off'.

It's like, defeated the original reasons i was drawn to lusternia

I dunno Lusternia seems fun, as long as no ones tries to abuse the system like murphy said sitting with bully and taunting away. Faethorns like a big arena anyway only two thirds of the time your out numbered 3 to 1 .

You can get jumped in faethorn by 5 people then later get revenge on them one by one on prime, which you couldn't do in achaea or aetolia, open pk zone conflicts couldn't extend outside them really.

If people don't leave there city or comune though there isnt much you can do really its just kinda they are stuck in the city doing nothing and your waiting for them to come out doing nothing. Were you sitting in your own city though all the time when you were looking for a fight? Could be that a lot of people are doing the same thing just sitting in safty waiting and watching for a fight in which case everyones just sitting waiting doing nothing?

You cant remove all protection everwhere though or you would get asses who just constantly killed everyone for no real reason and in the end that would just send more people packing away from lusternia.

I think worlds as big as Lusternia are rather like a rock sitting exposed... At first its got sharp edges, looks really cool if you pay attention, but after a while the elements just wear away at everything and it becomes round smoothe and polished. (For clarification, Lusternia would be the stone, people and their mindsets the elements. Some like combat, so they nerf some things that bashers or influencers like to make combat better, but then bashers and influencers get something else nerfed. Its an endless cycle that does nothing but wear away at what makes it interesting. Its all destruction and no rebuilding. For instance, rather than making damage, afflictions, balance, or whatever worse, make the healing and defencive skills better. But most of the people who acctually bother bitching about stuff just bitch about wanting it nerfed. *Cough*Narsrim*Cough* And don't try to find a roundabout way of making it better. All things considered, Lusternia is fast becomming another Achaea, with the only acception being that it has a much richer Roleplay possibility. I find it sad that world with so much work put into combat are forced to dull their teeth.

Bolded to establish my point:

At one point, we had a "Push PK off prime" drive. The idea was to accept that Prime was to be a rather PK-less place while giving enough reasons for people to go to PK-free off-prime.

The problem is that we sort of forgotten that.

It's already been stated elsewhere that there needs to be more ways to attack a nation. All we need, then, is to put those ways off of prime. Then, if Murphy and I are around, Murphy can go hunting off prime. If no one's around for him, I can punish their cowardness with attacks against their nexus. As Celestia and Nil shows, once you start an offensive, the PK targets show up in droves (that is, when you're not using it to draw attention away from a village revolt).

note: Since it's darn well hard as anything to attack Cosmic without a Cubix, the raids on these areas are limited. Limited raids off-prime mean less opportunities to PK. Compare it to the Sea battle where any novice can perform it and, thus, become a potential target.

Now they've added Conquest fighting, which means more reasons to raid in prime. That WOULD add more PK except that it's..well..prime. It'll appease the 'hit and run' people who can get in and out without getting spotted. The PKers will just get frustrated.


My idea: Don't work to change the Prime PK laws: let it remain the 'semi-safe haven'. Instead, add more reasons to get out of prime. Make raiding Celestia/Nil easier, to the point where a HARD press can result in a half-formed death. Give other ways to assault a nation OFF prime, ( ESPECIALLY THE COMMUNES) and make it relatively easy if no one's around. Force people to HAVE to go off prime to protect their homes while use Prime for the non-combatants to help build their homes (more power and comms via villages, more supplies through trade, ext.).

True, it'll mean individuals CAN run to Prime to hide, but you know what: that's a good thing, since then they can sit there in prime and watch their nexus rot. If they want it to stop, they'll have to leave home and visit the Murph.

Imagine a huge, neutral plane with denizens, quests... maybe not as big as prime, but with many areas. No PK laws, lots of things to do (not just simply raiding/defending).

Cwins idea works perfecty, the sea battle is great. More things like that would be interesting.

I dislike the notion of "easy" raiding. I find it enjoyable that there is some skill involved other than raw numbers. For example, I raid Ethereal Glomdoring and Nil all the time. I access both by weaving around guards and reaching deep into my bag of tricks to produce useful and effective strategies to by pass such things as silly totems, 25 guards, etc.

I am most disappointed that there aren't really that many people interested in learning said tricks and using them. While I suppose I could hand them out, that in essence defeats the point.

I don't know why but in Aetolia (and perhaps we can thank Spirokai, if you ever knew him), it was ideal to be on top of your game. You needed to understand and be able to manipulate mechanics to give yourself an advantage if you wanted to achieve.

For example, I bash lots of guards. People throw fits over this as if I'm abusing something when in reality, it is the fault of the person who set the guards because the position/formations used were flawed. The only reason I know this is because in Aetolia, a single guard can kill a single person (or perhaps 2 guards to a tanky person). We are talking single guards who have 1,500+ damage attacks (with afflictions) and yet entire cities get guards bashed from time to time.... so is it all that shocking when I kill small pockets of 5?

==============================================

And just to share a neat trick, let's consider Serpent. We have prismatic barrier (read: guards can't hit through it) coming up on a 6 second delay upon movement. I often access Nil by going 2 rooms outside the Megalith on earth, casting Serpent, moving 1 room closer, waiting 5 seconds, entering the Megalith at earth, transversing to Nil, and 95% of the time, my barrier is up and I'm moving out of that one silly room with guards to demons so my posse can tesseract into me.

I don't understand why more people don't do this. I have less than 4k health. If I were a warrior with surge and Lowmagic, this would be incredibly/ridiculously easy. Or my god! Imagine trueheal! Enter megalith of doom on earth, transverse Nil, trueheal, southeast. Instant access!

Nice.

If I had serpent I'd probably try it. But I don't.. and probably never will.

The Sea battle is, to me, the #1 example of how a good conflict quest should be organized. Each of the individual aspects are important and, most importantly, EASILY DONE WITHOUT AN ARMY!

Let me say it again.

EASILY DONE WITHOUT AN ARMY!

With a half hour of time, I can single handedly gather a batch of corpses, revive Ladantine, and then grab a bunch of dolphins and rush back to make seawolves. Meanwhile, I'm pretty darn sure that someone just like me in Celest can just as easily rush over, kill Ladantine and pick off a few of those sea wolves.

Things turn VERY violent and difficult when the enemy notices you, but that's when you either rush back and count your blessing or summon the army and go to town. The army, though, is only in responce to PLAYER interference, not a requirement just to do the blasted quest. It's also, unlike the Gorgogs, easy to repair: If you're a youngin that's afraid of Jacquin (you should be ashamed of yourself) you can wait until I'm not noticing, then spend a few minutes to erase my damage. Bah, if you're fast, you can do it even IF I'm noticing.

The result is a dynamic flow. When I come in, I can expect anything from the Ship sailing to Maryl singing and each time I KNOW I can do SOMETHING about it, and need to. I also know that doing so will probably mean getting killed but I know I still have a chance at it.

Can you say the same for Old or New Faethorn? For Cosmic? For the Gorgogs, or any other quest out there? No? Thus the issue with the conflict quests off prime.

You need certain skills get get past the guards, not everyone can get them, At the moment there isnt much skill involved in most raiding, in large raids its all about sheer numbers in smaller one or two people raids its about having the paticular skills to get in fast before someone notices and run away when trouble shows up.

Its not shocking at all when you people kill groups of 5 guards on there own, everyones already said its pretty easy for almost anyone who has the level for it.

Everyone knows the trueheal and serpent tricks, the reason why people dont do it often is because just well true heal is limited to two guilds and serpent is usally pretty low on the list of things to learn. Thus limiting raiding.

Theres no way I can get past 20 guards and a totem at my level and might total.

EDIT
heh you cant compare aetolian guard or army killing to here, I remember two people being able to easily kill 50+ guards and even the large 200 man army mobs on the roads with correct timing, until the gods changed that tatic and said that you really arnt ment to be able to really kill the armys on your own, I admit it was probally bordering on abuse, but young and foolish :roll: