Whenever anything new is introduced or even mentioned, I hear some people express the opinion that "everything else" should be fixed first. So what is "everything else"? For all intents and purposes, reported bugs are almost nonexistent (our bug to-do list is at an all time low). The envoys appear to be on top of balance issues and haven't reported any major concerns. So what would you like to see us focus on? Be very specific!

Personally, adding new options to existing archetypes is exactly what I would like to see happen once the bugs are under control. That being said, I'd love for the Wyrden terrain bugs to go away!

- Monks and bards made more like the other 3 guilds of their organisations in terms of how they're integrated. That means discretionaries, skillset options, guards, preferably stronger ties to their org's roleplay it may be only the Shofangi and Spiritsingers that care about this but it comes up anyway. (Major issue and most in need of help!)
- Fixes to monks (upcoming, though I'm still unconvinced on how fun the class will be)
- Fixes to construct combat (upcoming)
- Still think we could use a more thorough racial balancing than the last one, which shifted power around and eliminated some major concerns but didn't actually -balance- things per se (not likely)
- Fixes to ascendance (unsure if this is even under consideration)
- Fixes to commune/city political dynamic (upcoming, hopefully properly instead of half-way)
- A fix to the bug system so we can actually tell where our bugs are and if they're being ignored, rejected, misunderstood, fixed after a long-ass time or whatever (Fain said not to expect it for a while last time I complained about this but if we're looking for things to fix, it's up there)
- PK system needs fixing - avenger loves protecting people ganking bashers for no reason, also loves ganking people trying to stop damaging quests like gorgogs, broadcast centre, duum
- EDIT: aetherspace, covered a bit more below. Combateer and empath are terrible compared to commander, which rocks solely because of flashpoints as it is too much of a PITA to get anywhere otherwise. Also the isolation from casual conversation imposed on anyone except Xenthos. And it's painfully spammy, but at least significant steps have been taken to reduce that.
- EDIT: Decided to update this with other people's more pertinent concerns for the sake of completeness until I go to bed: forging and weapon runes.
- EDIT: Deciding on what constitutes balance and considering adjusting the envoy system to compensate. Envoy system could probably use rethinking anyway as it can only very, very limited things, see my post below and Xavius' below that.

That's all off the top of my head. I was gonna go to bed but I guess I'll wait a bit and see if you have any opinions on all that.

EDIT: For the record, I am totally in favour of new stuff, including maybe a new org with five classes (not three) or a new archetype/two similar archetypes (with as significant a dividing line as druids/mages, not all four guilds the same class - it doesn't need to be forest/city or taint/untaint, it could be magnagora/serenwilde vs. celest/glomdoring for all I care)
EDIT: Nm, going to bed...but I should totally write all these down if they don't get fixed so I can bring them up the next time this is mentioned.

What would be nice is an actual focus. There are many different types of players in Lusternia, and it seems like it must be difficult trying to please all of them. I think the biggest problem is atmosphere, which can be summarized as a "lack" of focus.

So the "other things" would be to fully flesh out all the ideas that have been touched upon, and completing them, before adding more into the game.

Examples are: aetherbubbles and the construct system. Though an interesting system, I think the addition of these elements made Lusternia lose a lot of its atmosphere, by mixing elements of sci-fi and fantasy. Few people bother with aetherspace, or aetherbubbles, and even though there are some very good ideas out there, Lusternia has kind of left that as it is.

As another example, the elemental and cosmic planes are very small. For a game where the different planes matter so much, it would be nice to see more to do in all of the planes, instead of just prime and astral. The planes other than Prime are, in my opinion, incomplete.

Don't get me wrong, I like the game a lot, but sometimes it feels like one of those stock CircleMUDs, where people put zones from all sorts of time and fantasy settings together in the same environment, and try to make them mesh.

Another is the conflict, and on a related note, the ease of escape. I think the amount of conflict right now is not fun. There's a lot of problems with the ease of escape, which makes conflict constantly having to be "toned down". If it weren't so trifling easy to escape from others in this game, conflict could be made harder, and have more of an impact. Skills like Trueheal, Ghost, Hermit and cubix make it so easy to escape that it's easy to jump in and out of elemental, cosmic, and probably Ethereal (although I don't know much about it) that the only way to defend against these is to overwhelm the raiders with one massive strike. As a result, raiders often don't stick around long enough to get overwhelmed, and abuse the escape options liberally. Consequently, defenders get frustrated too, seeing their loyals get attacked, and feeling like the raiders are just going to disappear as soon as they show up.

I understand that it's more fun to be able to get to wherever you want quickly, so you don't have to spend time in the boring process of walking around, but in my opinion, the bulk of these "instant travel" moves should be taken out, and should be replaced by walking, or use of the riding skillset (which also seems quite pointless at the moment).

Oh yeah, I forgot about aetherspace. It's still pretty annoying, since everyone except Xenthos is isolated apart from messages, it's a pain to get anywhere without trans commander, and no one aetherfights enough for anything other than commander to be worth it because empath and combateer have little to no incidental use. The combat itself is kind of sketchy too because of the way you can move and fire if nothing else (and the annoying miss rate, and space-tripleflash.)

Ahh! Leave my bards alone, Nejii! We finally know how we fit because we all sat down and took control of what we wanted! Harbingers have a focus for the first time, and I'm darned proud to say I helped. I did it by propagandizing over and over again that we're the cultural hub, and eventually, it stuck with the newer members. From there, it's cake to implement new ideas now that the groundwork's stable. These new bard trades that are rumored will help with that even more if I have my way with it...

I would love for the catacombs (Under Shallach) to be fixed. As it has been quite some time since you have been able to go from the top of the catacombs to the bottom through normal means (not using those cheap perma-rifts)

The problem I think is on the 2nd level something to do with the chains/etc that don't ever allow you to access the bottom level. I would ask Ixion though since he knows more about what part messes up in that level to make it so it doesn't work.

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I would also love to see totems and statues be brought in line within reason. Order shrines should be tuneable to orders while statues/totems should be tuneable to orgs. Not like they are now, where you can tune them to orders and use them to root out members from other orders.

That was fixed about six months ago, and if it's broken since, no one has rebugged it.

well then. ignore me I haven't been there in about that long come to think of it ^^

Oh yeah, and just so I don't forget: the envoy system can't report any "major balance issues" because that is simply not what it is set up to do. The envoy system is allowed only to make tweaks to individual skills. If a guild has a skillset mostly full of suck or that doesn't do anything (obvious example Shofangi, because we have the opportunity to redo it so it meshes) an envoy could theoretically take a whole year trying to fix that skill, by which time a tonne of other things would have changed.

It's hard enough to get overpowered skills nerfed if their envoys won't agree that they are (see lich, choke debates since forever), so expecting to see real balancing out of the envoy system is unrealistic. Plus, it still has never really been clarified what constitutes balance anyway - the ability of an ecology spiritsinger to pretty much always win given enough time is perfectly balanced using some definitions and wildly out of control using others. Same applies to dreamweavers on a smaller scale, and Magnagorans with access to hunger effects. AND there are guilds with enormously different access to utility skills and in fact usefulness in general, which could stand to be corrected.
AND sometimes envoys have to waste their slots on trivial things like that one time with ground sap where some poor Druid envoy had to waste their slot on an admin mistake. With all of these things added up a lack of productivity in the envoy system is almost guaranteed.

No one explode this thread while I'm asleep, I want to be able to read it all in 2-3 pages tomorrow morning! (I hate how these threads always start at 4PM.)

I came into this thread thinking I could babble about my thoughts for the focus of Lusternia's roleplay. But this seems to be just talking about mechanics.

Oh well.

I would like to imagine that an envoy who sees a large problem would have the patience to see it through, and a bright envoy can fix other things in the process without losing sight of the big goal, or sometimes just picking up a more pressing issue instead of working towards the big goal. I know it'll be a year (actually more), but I still want druids to have the flexibility of mages through tertiary upgrades and a sap nerf.

I agree with you on the rest of it. The new system helps with envoy bias a lot, so there shouldn't be as much of that. There's still not much envoy-admin dialogue, but that's getting better too. The disagreement on what is and isn't balance, though, you're absolutely right.

Taking a serious look at the warrior specialization choices, and how they relate to the class as a whole. Differences between them is good, but when some of them are almost strictly better than others, it's not so good, no.

Making aetherspace more accessible to the masses! Yay masses!

Taking a good look at trade skills, namely forging, and the whole "sit in one place for real life days at a time just to get a weapon that lets you break even with other archetypes". This would probably be hard to do without taking a look at the "stick magic runes on said weapon until someone gives you your very own rant thread, and when that happens, you probably have enough runes" effect.

Thats not entirely true, but I think issues we give would be brushed off for time consumption in some cases. For instance I know the Spiritsingers and Cacophony would like to change their focus away from attrition, but to do that slot by slot means they wont be done till at least 2009. A mini report to alter a few songs would fix this.

I do like the idea that Nil and Celestia and such have more to do, maybe some minor quests to interact with the denizens, and maybe even another area with lots of demons that you need a Demon Lord/Supernal to take you to (for influencers).

Constructs have some minor issues, as has been discussed elsewhere in their use and how 'fair' they are in comparison (communes actually feel like they got the short straw I believe because theres doesnt do 'as much').

Monks still need fixing but are being worked on.

Guardians need minor tweaks to work at base speed (if everything from the last report and special report goes in that will help alot).

Nihilist hexes IS possible to use if they can get a few tweaks to give them more flow or synergy. Also would be nice to have an inquisition like focus, where you dont need aeon so much because your goal is to achieve X Y and Z instead of needing aeon + anorexia + stupidity + hope.

Hyperactive and Contort could use some changes (contort is 1.7 second writhe, either that needs change or will need a way to keep them entangled ).

Influence needs some revision and changes (I asked about this awhile ago, were always too busy to do the coding though, we always have something going on).

And a few other things, but that seems like enough for now. The key is, we dont want new things till the old things work out (mainly combat, conflict, and some of the things like aetherspace and constructs).

Hope that helps Esty!

P.S. (Bards would need a report, a 'fixer' report could handle Nihilist hexists and maybe the rest of the guilds too. Plus maybe one for influence as you see fit.. alot of people like influence and would like to see it have a larger role to play).

EDIT: While I think about it.. make the area the Lords can lead you to have a bit of exploring (but not be large) and have lots of influencables so it can be a pacifist area.

EDIT2: What Nejii said.. there can still be some balancing done.. like bard specializations (races) seem rather bland to me, though in some cases that isnt all bad I suppose.

Time for class

New stuff is always great to have. However, there are a few things that should be focused on first. While many things have been said earlier, I'd just like to add "Tertiary skills" to the mix. No class should be "forced" to choose one Tertiary over another, such as how Bards (apparently) don't work with Tarot, or how Celestines don't work with Healing.

And Aetherspace ain't so bad. Not for me at least.

Bear with this poor befuzzled Fain, but I'm a little confused as to why half the things on the thread have been mentioned. Whether you like them or not, many of the candidates for 'fixes' thus far are things that aren't actually broken* - rather, they're aspects of design that the individual poster happens to dislike.



*I am by no means attempting to derogate the submissions at large - many of the points made are v. reasonable. I'm just positing the suggestion that there will always be cries that things should be fixed if there is a gulf between different attitudes as to what is and what isn't broken.

I think most of the things here are combat balance related which is important for Lusternia.

Things like aetherspace and constructs I think are more about their value, such as constructs being almost invincible that people just dont see a reason to try to break them anymore.

The Nil changes as harder than normal influence or something would be nice for pacifists, and maybe open up a few special denizens like named archdemons and such who are worth alot and can give some more rp.

So yes some things may just be ideas.. but we will leave you in your 'befuzzled' state.


Also.. Fains pulled out the Tae'dae! RUNAWAY before he chucks one!

Well, maybe this comes down to the fact that it could not just be that poster. They are just the first to say something about it. You can't automatically assume that 1 person = 1 voice, 100% of the time. Granted the others should come forth if they agree, but you can't always just shut it out because one person said it. Fixes for things that aren't actually broken is the main problem. Alot of the skillsets, alot of things that exist right now do not need 'unbroken' they need fixed. As in, redone, relooked at, removed, reeverything.

Edit: Also, Estarra you say that you don't know what we want, granted we haven't specified. But you (general word...you as in all) continue to add things to the game when I know you see people constantly complaining about things the way they are now. I mean, shouldn't that be a sign to slow down for quite a few months and alter what we have already? At the rate things have been going, I've seen Lusternia deteriorate in morale for fighters. Cept those who are extremly cheap and such. You're going to put it at the point where you have this mess of inbalance and 'crap' that noone is going to wanna play a couple years down the road.

Edit2: Last thing. When you hear people crying 'Fix this, fix that' they don't just mean 'bugs' they mean the way it's done...

I agree, a lot of things people have mentioned (see: Contort) are just problems people have with one or two skills they dislike, there are some valid concerns.

I think the biggest ones Nejii touched on, in that various skillsets have a lot of buggy/not working items that can't be envoyed because envoys have to use their one precious slot to upgrade/downgrade. There's no telling whether your BUGged things are being looked at. Personally, I know Geb has BUGged that cracked elbow does nothing like what it describes and is obviously bugged. Is that being worked on? How about Harmony chants that don't actually do what they state? Things like physical dmp, more damage while chanted, etc. Combatstyle aggressive doesn't actually add damage, precise doesn't add precision or accuracy. Etc. I'm sure there are a LOT of these things hanging around in skillsets that I don't even know about.

Again, this thread isn't meant to address monks as they are under reconstruction currently.

Also, this thread isn't meant to address areas (which have nothing to do with coders), so expanding planes, etc., aren't really what I meant.

Regarding envoys bringing up larger changes for the sake of balance, we are open to special reports if one is proposed and is deemed necessary. However, the last few suggestions for major changes/special reports (that I recall) have been deemed either wildly overpowered or unnecessary.