Given the size of Lusternia and the current number of players, there's plenty of quests and many of them are really involved - the tome of remembrance took me nearly half a day to do from start to finish and the village quests have me stumped mostly. Also, with the lost cities on the horizon, we know they are coming.

I think there's scope for a lot more non-violent gameplay. At the moment it's way better than the other IRE MUDs and has the advantage over Achaea since there's still room for roleplay. I think RP would be better served with option 3.

2 and 1 should develop as the realm grows, like when it hits number one on TOPMUDs.

Well I think I've made it pretty clear as often as I possibly can what I'd like to see in the future of Lusternia. I'm hopeful that future direction is not determined wholely by player preference or my hopes are already dashed.

I would like to see some form of award system for roleplaying. Artisinal/Bardic contests would be great too.

I love quests, and my character's RP was built around the possibility of moving to Hallifax in an RL year or two. Loyal Magnagoran Viscanti, of a generation of loyal Magnagoran Viscanti ever since 'The Tainting', but a direct line of male decendancy that is bent on returning to Hallifax, as pure-blood Lucidian.

As for PK, I think the whole 'ALL hardcore PKers are in Magnagora' is false. Tuek, Narsrim, Ethelon. Not saying they're bad RPers, just that they seem to enjoy PK a bit, and are good at it. Myself, my character enjoys battle to a degree, but I personally am not good at it. Hence, I will probably never hit level 70, and definitely will never hit 80.

I WOULD like more Influence abilities. Transed Influence, and it really isn't worth it at the high 60s. Village Influence seems entirely city rank dependent, splendor robes are worthless, and Trans Influence skill - not worth it. Oh well.

I'd like a bigger control over PK (option 3) if only so people don't give up due to being attacked for no reason by a bunch of hopeless bloodthirsty magnagorans (not all of them, just some) because their demons told them to slay anything on sight (specially if it's 20 levels below them, and won't be a challenge).
Also, it would be good if the link with the Nexus (and the nexus skills) stayed if you're in a guild aligned with a city. Otherwise, the guilds have to see rogues of their guild (even people they've outguilded) running around the city, while the city knows that if they outcitizen somebody that somebody won't stay in the guild because he's been cut of half his skills. Make Guilds and cities entities that need to cooperate to work together, and not the city the big boss who has more power over the guilds than ever the guilds will have over the city.

I think the city having power over the guilds is the point. The guilds are just supposed to be different parts of the city, not independant.

Correct. The premise is that the guild is a part of the city rather than a distinct seperate entity. If one city leader boots someone from the city of a different guild, since the GM sits on the city council then he can readmit that person back into the city and restore that player's nexus link.

I hope Lusternia will continue to develop in the direction it’s already started to diverge from other MUDs: increased emphasis on strategic (big picture) decisions that will have a tangible effect on the world, and that don’t necessarily involve bloodshed. The more inter-player cooperation those decisions require, the better.

There will never be enough staff to keep all players happy with staff-driven role-play; and rewarding players for expertise at hectic, tactical combat can only encourage them toward more hectic, tactical combat at the expense of player-driven role-play. And since anyone who wants a completely free-form role-play experience would have zero incentive to come here and buy credits when a chat room would do quite nicely, improving the web of strategic decisions to be made here is by far the most practical way to build a richer role-play environment.

I feel that Lusternia has already done so much to improve the quality of roleplaying in any game. Emotes are nice, but they're dependent on everyone else's belief in what someone is doing. The abilities that allow us to freeze a lock and them bash the door down or to climb a tree or even work at our trade skills are the abilities that really make the difference in the roleplaying possibilities in Lusternia.

Many people have been frustrated during events in Achaea because they needed to confer/conspire with the Divine to get anything approved and then roleplay it out as scripted. Changing their tactics and going with the dynamics of the player-run events was nearly impossible, as was seen during the Moghedu and Jaru wars. Lusternia is not plagued by such things, thus far. We are able to control our own destinies and play out much more interesting and realistic scenarios.

Not everything has to be directly related to killing or making a profit. The abilities that are used solely for roleplaying, or allow it as a nice side effect, are key to the success of Lusternia.

Having said all this, I've heard and seen things in the other IRE games that would benefit the realms of Lusternia, but let's not be too hasty to mimic everything we see. Originality counts for about as much as playability, if not moreso.

sorry but when i saw that it got way outa hand if you ask me. Lusternia, you can actually have fun with shouts without being told "shaddap *ZAP*" only time the gods step in if it gets *WAY* out of hand. For those who say "take it to tells!" its easy to SHOUTSOFF for abit. But, I like the way the gods are. They are in events, and yet, don't stop what happens unless it breaks a rule. Perhaps more events with the gods though is what would be good.

I voted for more areas. Honestly, three hours in astral for 50% and dieing only to lose it all isn't the best way to bash Quests would be fun as well, though I like both 1 and 2. I have to disagree with 3. I like it all, except how we lean only on cities. There should be a way to not have to be so city-dependant. For people that like, would like to be cityless or guildless. Though, I do agree influencing does go by quickly. I like the way the fighting system is. Even if the avenger gets annoying I don't like the avenger much, but it lets us have a chance to RP a reason to fight, and not get issued over it. though, if someone is defiling and gets killed....and gets suspect/vengeance that gets annoying fast.

I agree with Yuniko on the shouts things, if a specific person abuses it block them from it or make them pay a fine every time they want to shout. Like shouting OOC stuff but if it is IC and not too stupid, leave it alone.

I voted for the areas and quest because it seems there's only few places to bash once you get into the higher levels without risking so much like Astral. Also, exploring is fun and I've been to most places so something new would add another place.

I agree with the Gods joining in on more events but something I'd like to see more of is people -and- Divine doing something. That would probably be harder but it would be more interesting and make it a little more relevant for some people if you actually knew who was invovled in the event.

PK needs to probably be looked at a bit more still. The avenger although good in principle, has dubious effectiveness... What I'd like to see is a little more done to dissuade group combat, but that's just me.

As for Lusternia's Divinity, I love the way how closely they seem to mingle with the ordinary populace. It is nice to have that. Commands much more respect from me if they are very present and personal.

I think there needs to be a lot more done to encourage RP. I continually get the feeling that I shouldn't try to RP because few put in the effort. Ordinarily, that would make me forget about the game entirely, it was the stunning sytem that kept me involved for so long. RP is something you need to kinda 'enforce' from the ground-up as opposed to try and introduce later. I want more! ^_^

Punishments for going ooc and showing bad RP only goes so far, there's a limit on their effectiveness, which both achaea and lusternia already reached a long time ago, the only way to create a better RP environment, is certainly not dishing out harder punishments, that'd just drive everyone away...

Only way to do it is to REWARD good RP, but that takes much more effort and invested time from the divine, seeing as how incredibly busy they already are, we really can't expect that from them. So...live with it and create RP on your own as good as you can, untill the divine fixed and balanced the things we're all whining (yes, the whining includes me) about so intensely. RP is still something you do yourself, if a realm is badly roleplayed, it's mostly cause the players are crappy roleplayers and don't give a shit, the divine can keep the ooc within bounds by punishments, but they cannot improve it unless they reward it, which they can't cause of above reasons, only the players can improve it right now, which is not gonna happen by constantly complaining about bad RP.

Although Aetolia's system wasn't ideal, I liked the way that worked to encourage RP. Means it requires some kinda observation to make sure it isn't being abused of course, but sort of thing is a nice touch.

I gave up on Achaea pretty quickly for the terrible roleplay, but I was drawn into Aetolia more because of a better atmosphere of RP. I enjoyed Karyn there more because she was fun to RP... I don't really get enough RP with Elaria. (Probably a good thing really, else I'd lose any trace of real life )

When I said tougher gods, I also meant in terms of their response to people's attitudes.

For example, I personally think that the non-deterant of death leads to an attitude which rids people of the consequences of their actions. Thats fine (it would be unplayable in its current style - which we all evidently like - if it weren't). I think though that it makes people take up a far more militant ideology.

They think, "Hey, so what if I'm trying to destroy everything that they hold dear, whats the worst thing that could happen? I'll lose a few hours bashing? Psh, bring it on cletus!"

Or then there's people holding attitudes that are formed based on very shallow principals, ideas that in a real, dynamic world, would've been hammered out (or at least dulled) by their upbringing. The problem ends up being that these attitudes constantly conflict (in a bad way, not in the good conflict manner) and there is absoloutely nothing you can do to stop it, because anything you say is instantly met with a "What authority do you have?" if not "You're wrong and nothing you can possibly do will prove otherwise".

I hate to say it, but we need to be told what to think more. The creative freedom of cities with very few mentions in history, and no definitive culture except what is inferred from those histories, leads to an unrealistic situation with "Fundamentals" being entirely different for each member. Anyone who attempts to say, "Okay, these are what we stand for" gets overthrown as a dictator, or naysayed into oblivion.

I personally think that the Gods should be a little more authoritarian on these matters, even if it is subtle. A little piece of (possibly made up) history revealed by an npc here and there (people know that the gods are controlling the npc, therefore they take the words seriously), the occasional "I think your ancestors would disagree with you" spoken in response to an argument, its all good.

Some people don't like this kind of thing, but I think it brings the gods forward from administrators to roleplay generators (Just keep them full of coffee fuel, make sure they're hosed down every so often, and keep 'em well lubed). The benefits of this kind of thing far outweigh the downsides.

*gives the "God Power" salute*

To clarify, I think its an immersion issue. One of the things with roleplaying is that if you don't feel "Immersed" in the setting, its just not fun, and you stop doing it. I don't feel particularly immersed in Serenwilde's roleplay, because SO many people hold SO many different FUNDAMENTAL views...views that we would've all learned as children. We're directionless, and it won't change until someone with super-mortal authority (i.e. a god) steps in and says "This is how it is", or at least leans that way.

Especially as we just came out of 100 years of isolation to figure all this out, and there's no canon explanation for why everyone forgot it all, all at once, as I've written before. But we've been told we're not going to be told what we thought up during that 100 years, so we'll just have to hope we survive long enough to shake things out the slow, hard, painful way.

For Future direction of Lusternia, I would like it if the People who create the quests and such, ignore the abilities of the players and assume each player has perfect abilities with semi perfect knowledge. Also, that player ability because of hard work and player ability because its easy be taken into account. This can best be seen by if 3 players are able to do the quest or if 10 players can do the quest.

Number Two. Even though this thread is longsince dead.

Anything to make things more interesting.

amen