Right, which is where I was going. Make individual achievement feel more important as compared to the villages, while simultaneously decreasing the amount of work necessary to maintain the same levels of power.

Yeah, if you only had to do it from time to time you could even enjoy it, even if it's boring and repetitive. It would feel good just to know you've done something what serves the city. But if you're doing it over and over, and cannot even really see the effect...


Putting essence gathered while hunting certain mobs should matter more because it's time consuming. Killing ten mobs for 10 power doesn't seem right comparing to node draining. Guardian's link that transfers 10 power from one surge seems fine to me, and invoking mobs that way is indeed very good way to encourage people to do that. High level characters go there to bash in order to make experience and/or gold anyway. Everyone's happy - players can bash until node is drained too much, city gets quite a lot of power from that.


Astral plane serves it's purpose perfectly fine to me. What more would you like to see there? The way it is - vast, detached and dangerous place where people powerful enough can hunt and gather power - is just perfect. It's well-thought-out and the most interesting plane there.

Elemental planes (and Ethereal too), I can see how it should be expanded. I think they should be much bigger and contain quests, but my guess is that it's already in plans, it's just the creators don't have time for that right now. I think it will be done in future (far future maybe, there are two cities and a commune that need to be made first )

And cosmic planes seems to be so tiny... It's a home for supernals/demon lords and nothing else. Like a big mansion.

I still think the avenger system is leading to more pk in the villages, not less.

It might be neat if sanctuary completely isolated people from using pk or being pk'd in a village, and that included laetitia etc. Then, everyone who is influencing is alone, but everyone who is boosting the influencers is open pk? The avenger system just keeps one side from getting a decisive pk victory in a village so the pk never stops until the end.

Another problem is the idea that if people can't take someone alone, they'll just try to team them, which opens them to pk again. If each city would organize its fighters and non-fighters into squads of sorts and not request the non-fighters help kill the latest raider it would work better.

I don't know. Astral gives alot of gold, but the experience is slow. A goat can kill you faster than you kill it if you are a mage type. And they don't have alot of defenses. So, mages would be losing more exp than anything by trying to bash there. That is, unless they are dwarf or something...but then their attacks would take longer to kill it.

Still, there is no better place to bash at high level. It might be more dangerous and time consuming for certain archetypes, but you won't be able to achieve titan on prime, it would take forever. Even making level 80 would be very problematic. If you can take the mobs there, number of them is limited only by node's capacity. You can bash them constantly. There's no other place like that, is there?

Aye, a lot of things are getting old, and I'm highly burnt out myself... or rapidly approaching it at least. The recent Delport hit me hard, I put a lot of work into it and feel like it wasn't worth much bothering. I see dwarfs dying and think "sigh, not again". I have to keep slaying dwarves just to keep us balanced - and there's not many in the city prepared to do it. (I don't wait to 3-6 am... just my 'normal' Lusternia time is at the time when there's no-one around. I'm frequently the only Celestine, and sometimes even Celestian in the realm. - that's a rant for another day however).

Influencing the villages was fun at first.. but there's a lot of hard work, and it rarely feels worth it. Too much I feel I have to do because no-one else does. It's extremely exhausting.

When my two year old gets tired and cranky, he'll ask very clearly and urgently that he be given "x". Then, when you offer it to him, he indignantly declares that he doesn't want "x"... until you withdraw the offer. Then he shrieks that he does want "x". From there, he'll continue the cycle in an ever escalating tantrum for as long as you're willing to indulge it.

Oddly enough, my wife and I used to get this same sort of behavior from the adults who attended/helped-out with the SF/Fantasy convention we sponsored. Give them exactly what they asked for, and we'd get barraged with complaints (often from the same people) that things weren't the way they were before.

And of course, I've lost count of the number of MUD "town squares" I've seen brimming with people standing around complaining that they were bored, bored, bored... but couldn't bother to budge to attend a single event that was held.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, Lusternia is breaking new ground, and of course some of the things it tries are going to need refinement; and some are going to work better than others. But I'll be dreadfully disappointed if conversations like this one are allowed to blunt the design teams' eagerness for meaningful experimentation.

Ah, the woes of a Brit. Although in the Moondancers we barely ever go below 5, but yeah. (Yay large guilds.) I don't know where this "No one else does" comes from though. I saw a TONNE of people at Estelbar - including about 2/3rds as many Celestians that stood to gain nothing from it, and didn't have to or anything. I think your example was probably a time-of-day thing.

I'm getting to the point of being burnt out as well, and it mainly stems from the fact of the lack of consequences or such for death. I understand the attempt to make this less PK restrictive from the other IRE realms, but I honestly believe it is really hurting the quality and amount of players who are staying in the realms. I had someone who had killed me a while ago, and they were literally off my PK status as a bully for less than an hour when they showed up and killed me again. I ranted about Ethelon before, and he sought me out in game and spoke to me about what he is trying to accomplish, etc. I have respect for that as he made some concessions as did I about the various things done IC, which was great. I'm personally sick of losing 50% per death for random things, and having no IC recourse as they have to kill me twice to get Vengeance. Even at that, they just come back in a few days after getting unpeaced and butcher me again.

I think, and feel free to disagree, that the amount of total combat and deaths is leading to many of the purely RP folks leaving the realms and heading back to their respective place. I agree we need conflict, and the villages are good for this, as are the various guilds that defend their planes. But the slaying and yelling, "You are evil, i kill you now" or the reciprical "you are Celestian, so I kill you for that" is losing its fun very, VERY quickly. I've seen come good folks leave already, and from the rants posts I've seen (logs from various folks) it looks like we get more idiots joining the realms by the day.

Here are a few suggestions (feel free to say if you hate them or argue them):

1. Keep planes and villages as they stand now in regards to PK, but perhaps find a way to severely limit the PK in places beyond those. I don't want restrictive rules to the degree of Achaea, but getting jumped for being a Mag while picking herbs is a little over the top.

2. Make Vengeance more against random killings: Lets say Joe goes out and kills 20 people in 3 days, after a certain number of aggressive actions (making the first attack leading to death) he gains something like Infamy. From that point on, he or she gives away automatic Vengeance for killing anyone outside of the villages, his city, or the various upper planes.

3. If someone gets Vengeance on someone, let them choose to either use it, or perhaps turn it in for a longer stay of attack against said person. Double it or something. (I.E. Joe kills me twice. Instead of Vengeance, I forgo the death and get 60 days protection from Joe killing me outside of villages, planes, or enemy city. My attacking him destroys that protection).

Just a few random ideas.

Anyone that kills you for "being from -place-" deserves to be slapped unless its "You're from -place- and are in -village my city controls-, Leave or die."

A certain someone and I think an astral superior denizen should be made.It roams around all astral spheres slowly and when it gets to you or you run into it, it "sweeps you away on the astral currents" where it takes you to one specific room and proceeds to attack you (lets say it has a 50% chance to sweep you away when it comes to your room). No one can follow or teleport to this room, it's one on one until it or you die. Only the strongest can survive the encounter. I think this would add an exciting new facet to astral hunting while providing a step in between the toughnesses of a Demon Lord/Supernal and regular astral denizens and disallowing people from gainging a sense of "safety" on astral, which is quite easy to have now.

Then add on the damn beggers runnin just before the final msg and wasting a bowl