Alright, so after I posted in rants, a thought came to me while I was eating. I've been going through it in my head for the past 20 minutes and I think it's got some real potential. There's already several possible ways to do this that I can personally think of, which I think is good and can make at least one of them doable in the future. This has to do with figurines and miniatures by the way. I'm already starting to have some high hopes for this so all suggestions/advice and critique is welcome. Even from you Xenthos.

So here goes:
The basic idea is to have a contest involving miniatures and figurine battles. There are several, several ways to run this. So first, I'll go with my reasoning. I pretty much based this off of what we have already: Artisinals, wildnodes, bardics, village revolts, Domoths. Why are these popular? Probably various reasons, but I think the main reasons are that they are either A) Fun or Offer enough of a reward to participate. These are all competitions by design, which is what makes them thrive amongst us. And so we're looking for a new gold sink, which figurines started off really popular. They're not a huge gold sink, but that's even better because anyone can participate. But nowaday, ring battles have died off. Despite the fun, it seems like it's only initial for the majority, though I know people still enjoy them time to time as I've seen others with stored away figurines. So my idea is to add competition to this already implemented idea.

I'll just put separate parts to the idea in different sections because this can go so many different ways, but I think if we can pick one and implement it, we'll add more to what makes Lusternia awesome.

who Two ways to do this that I can think of:

1) All players compete at will. This means like the bardic/artisinals. You join if you wish. It gives everyone a little something to do with their gold and provides business to all trades.

2) This competition will be an org/org one. Each organization will be allowed to send their best to compete. Two great things about this:
-Each org can start their own within organization competitions to decide which is the best (maybe more than one? General idea anyways, finer details will be worried about if this idea is accepted)

-During the actual competition, it can literally be a freeforall since we don't control which figurine attacks which so no more org teaming complaining. The drawback to this is that it would be short, one battle obviously. A better idea I'm just thinking is a round robin style. Also, I just thought that each org could send multiple figurines, a designated limit would be allowed. A freeforall for each one and then one final freeforall between the winner of each.

what A figurine competition. This part is a bit difficult on how it would be run. But with such active ephemerals like Fleyrina and those who I don't even know the names of, I think we could really get this working. I mean, it'd be really awesome to just have one large, monstrous, ginormous freeforall of every competitor. But that could be really boring if only a small number of people get interested. 3 styles I can think of at the moment:

1) small # of competitors could be a round robin fight. Best record takes it. Tie records duke it out

2) large number could be a smash bros brawl freeforall

3) probably the better one is to have random pairings. All figurines go inside a box with the rune of dimensional instability attached. All shaken out.

At the end of each, we could have a for fun wtfbbq smash bros FFA. Option 3 is probably the best.

There's also two ways to run the player v player competition if that style is chosen:

1) everyone enters 1 figurine. Probably using random pairings to determine a 1st place and runner ups.

2) Different level brackets. Everyone still is only allowed to enter 1 figurine overall. But this gives everyone a chance to win in something and not just weight it in favour of the highest people. Brackets could be like levels 1-10 in one competition 11-20 in the other. Or 1-15 in one, 16-30. Just depends.

when How often should this happen? When should it happen? Once a month? Once every 2 weeks? Those two are what I'm mostly thinking at the moment, but this will depend based on what we would choose to make the rewards.

where Since the idea is to have this more administrative run, we'd likely need some neutral place, but they can probably create such a place fairly easily if this idea goes through. Also, depending on how this is chosen to run, each org could also have within org competitions (whether it's chosen to be an individual all players compete competition like bardic/artisinal or whether it is an org/org competition where each org sends it's best figurines)

how There are several ways how to organize this, but it will mostly depend on what we want the rewards to be. I will list several possibilities that I have thought up of. Obviously, only certain prize rewards will work with only certain organizations of this event (such as credits for the bardic/artisinal style or power for the org v. org style):

1) Small 50 credit prize to winner. 25 for runner ups.

2) Use different level brackets so it does not skew the event towards those with the most amount of gold and time to power up their own figurines. levels 1-10, 11-20, 21-30. Credit prizes for the winners of each, possible credit prizes for the first runner up of each.

3) In either of the above organized patterns, whether just who wins the fights or who wins in each level bracket, a personal object could be given by the divine currently hosting the event. As examples, people have one glass slippers. Krellan personally has a finely sewn doll himself, made by Viravain. These things are pretty trivial, but a great alternative if credit prizes are a complete no. I think a lot of us like these souvenir type prizes (I mean I bet most of us still have the scavenger hunt objects)

4) In the org v org set up. Each org will compete for power and awarded for winning. That's the usual org v. org competition set up anyways.

5) Another alternative is to grant the winning org credits. Maybe 100 credits to the winning organization, which would just be sold in an eventual credit sale. Just depends on how much incentive is needed to compete

For the top of my head, that's all I have. Please feel free to contribute and critique. Flamers allowed, but I'm gonna pre-empt you, Kharvik, you filthy bastard. I'll update as I get new thoughts.

Organisations competing against each other in figurine battles for power. I like.

It'd put some actual use to figurines which almost NOBODY uses. I've never ever, ever, ever, ever seen anyone use them.

I think it's because of the amazing decay rates on them, but that could easily be fixed.

I like!

*pulls out an Ironbeard Figurine ftw*

Heh, thanks! Decay rates are managable with shops or something. Please try and specify which set up you'd like out of all the choices. Feel free to add, amend, or alter some of them as you choose. Competing for power is great in the sense that even if it has to be run by an Admin who is usually US timezone, off peak players are free to compete as well because the orgs will choose which figurine goes. So as long as you win that, you can store it with the leaders of your org who can use it when the time comes for the competition.

Also, I was wondering what the best way to go about proposing this idea would be because obviously there's the IDEA command, but this would be one heck of a long idea to write especially in it's unrefined form.

I loved the ideas of the miniatures when they first came out, but I quickly realized it wouldn't catch on because of the decay rates. As an addendum to this suggestion, we need figurines that last longer from the start. Raise the base decay time and make the figurine last longer if it's modeled after a higher level mob?

Yeah, really. Decay rates. I absolutely LOVED my first pixie figuring, as much as it sucked, but it only lasted a few games before it decayed.

Could we have some way to train up figurines without having to sacrifice multiple figurines in the process? Like really expensive training arenas that are far less rewarding in terms of figurine level and decay time restored.

Or you could just sell more miniature rings and scrap the decay thing entirely.

lol, bind the soul of your miniature to a ring?