Roleplay-oriented ninjutsu, eh, gotta try that.

As for burnout, I think it's improving. Celestians don't actually lose every freaking battle anymore, so that helps a bit, and there's just less death in general I'm seeing about. *think* Maybe just 'cause I'm not in the thick of it, mind, but it seems to be improving.

You have to give him credit for having the balls to say something that stupid

Heh, I thought it was a cool way of putting it! I have probably just been watching too much Naruto though.

One can never watch too much Naruto.

I didn't get burned out - I just have better things to occupy my time at the moment (job, girlfriend, writing).

Eeh, Rhysus watches Naruto? I thought you were supposed to be all cold and not-cool and stuff.

Anyway, back to non-hijack, since this is important even to me, yep I sorta agree with Daganev that Glomdoring would help. Yes, it IS an event, but it's an event that will draw away part of the playerbase and the conflict's focus from the other 3 things, which as it has been stated are all opposed. So yeah, conflict is good, but with so few parts to it it gets a bit heavy at times, which I think is the problem.

Well, I've been having a lot of fun with ernia, and I haven't really gotten burned out. Some things have been frusturating - like dying a lot, and especially the recent election - but it's been a fun ride overall. It also probably helps that I've never at all PKed before in any IRE game and I've found it extremely fun here, so that's a fun thing that still hasn't worn off (and I don't see it wearing off any time soon). If I get bored, I just log off and talk to people, or play The Sims 2 or NWN or Halo or whatever for a while, and usually something's happening by the time I get back on.

I think the best way to avoid burning out some people would be to make things less mandantory and necessary. I don't know how that'd be done, per se, but ideally, you'd have the people who want to fight or quest or influence or whatever doing their thing, and the people who don't doing their own thing. This isn't necessarially possible, but it's an ideal situation.

I have never been a fan of the heavy xp loss for death. I know it's a just a weight that comes from Achaea in which one on one PvP prevailed.

Maybe something could be done for the xp loss of the attackers as well unless conflicts are expected to end naturally by burn out syndrome.
How about using demense and an enchanted flag, so that the rooms under the influence of this demense could be considered as allied ground..
ok that's just an idea i'm throwing..

But the huge xp loss is what is putting me off. After all , i'm just "lending" my character i.e participating in a global event that i probably won't get any benefit from anyway..

At any rate, i'm really happy to defend against a raid.. as long as my character is standing on allied ground.

I think the real problem is that people are on, spending their time doing the same thing over and over (It doesn't have to be a quest, it could be standing around and doing nothing, which, strange enough, is becoming repetitive). Of course people are going to want more things to do rather than take a break because they're heavily addicted. I mean, c'mon.. this is a fun environment, but people just expect things to be handed to them. So.. to make my jumbled paragraph make sense I just suggest the following things:

Enforce a certain roleplay - As you can see from the thread about whose guild plays their role the best a lot of characters are out there, roaming around undefined, trying to define themselves due to the fact that they're either unable to grasp the mold that was predefined in the histories or they want to be an original character (I almost said "Gangsta").

I.E. Eurytus sends the Serenguard on a hunt to find said item that's supposed to detail their history. Serenguard enters a non-conflict quest, finds scroll, finds role, defines role.. better roleplay.

The same can be said about the Gaudiguch/Hallifax quests. Maybe give them some false hope. It's kind of silly that they give up their quest based on the OOC reason of "Oh, it's not done yet." or "There's not enough players to open it.. so no use in trying." It's THERE, DO IT. What kind of a seeker are you if you don't mindlessly run for the gold?

----

So there. I think once everyone has a nice, defined role that's being enforced by a good set of players we'll see less "burnout" because there will be something to do. Or.. you guys can go jogging and stay away from Lusternia for a bit so it's fresh, but what fun would that be?

In chemistry, if you have a reaction like A+B=C, it really doesn't matter how much B you have if you have a limited supply of A. In other words, if you have an excess of one component and shortage of another, the limiting reagent, in this case A, dictates how much C will be produced.

Imagine that C is 'fun.' or whatever you think the primary output of Lusternia is. Obviously the reaction is more complex than A+B, but it is possible, I think, to isolate things to some agree and see where there are bottlenecks or shortages that change the dynamic and production of fun.

In my mind, the serious limiting reagent in Lusternia is the number of cities/communes. I present the following arguments as evidence:

1. Most of the items that would potentially limit the end result exist in Lusternia in abundance. There are plenty of 'things' everyone needs (comms, power, etc) and plenty of organizational goals (villages, power, etc--things which are more notably absent in Achaea at least), plenty of economic work (since everyone has a trade skill), plenty of design work to be done in trades (especially as the world is young), many many quests on every scale, etc. I don't think lack of any of these things is hurting the realm, as we have a great amount.

2. Political interaction is severely limited in the status quo:
a. There is, at present, no visible reason Celest and Magnagora would ally. As long as Celest pursues the (much more interesting!) zealot route, it would take something on a major scale for them to work with Magnagora.
b. Given the above, the scale-tipping power is Serenwilde, who has zero reason to form long term bonds with anyone. In theory, they should have zero reason to work with anyone at all unless for very good specific reason, but they haven't taken the zealot route.
c. The outshot of this is that macro scale political changes are almost limited to watching who Serenwilde sides with in any given year. Unfortunately, the way the realm is currently set up, the swing power in terms of world political balance on a moral level also wields the most powerful economic power I've ever seen, in any game, ever. And they don't wield it because they worked hard, or made good decisions, or did quests or won villages, they have it because there simply aren't any other communes. They have a de facto gift that is beyond anything anyone else can earn.
d. Thus, neither city can afford to piss of Serenwilde unless there is something major going down, because there is literally no balance to their economic might. Magnagora beat Celest into the ground so badly I didn't want to log in some days because I felt bad for the Celest *players* but my *character* had no reason to let up. The resulting conflict between Magnagora and Serenwilde probably made just as many people mad, and it certainly didn't make me want to come back any time soon.

3. The cities have nothing they can hold above Serenwilde, because the small scope of political entities and the polar opposition in idealogy prevents an alliance vs. Serenwilde in all instances I can imagine except two: Divine intervention to invent some artificial reason, or Serenwilde deciding to deny alchemical services to both cities simultaneously. Which they would never do because they aren't actually anti-cities, they are only pro-Serenwilde and have no issue allying with cities and breaking said alliances whenever they see fit. Given that the cities would never ally, enchantments can never, ever be denied to Serenwilde.

4. The cities can't even hold Serenwilde responsible for its own political actions. Making and breaking treaties has NO consequences for them in the long run, because next time they extend an offer that turns the alembic back on, anyone with half a brain would accept. We should be able to say, "hell no, now that you've broken your word, you can take a flying leap" but we can't, because of alchemy.

Thus, I think the major problem that trickles down and negatively effects all of Lusternia in the most powerful way can be summarized as this: There are too few political organizations for interesting macropolitical changes, and prevailing moral and economic factors built into the history and commerce related coding of the game limit even these 3 in their interactions.

My suggestion is to add another entity, a commune, with a belief system that different in a very significant way from Serenwilde. This would help the above points by:

1. Adding another political entity to break up the current two way flip flopping of Serenwilde and potentially provice new alliance combinations.
2. Provide a moral/ethical counterbalance to Serenwilde so they are forced to make a cohesive foreign relations strategy.
3. Break up the alchemy monopoly that colors interactions at nearly every level of the realms and is admittedly not an intentional power bestowed all and only on Serenwilde.

RP is all well and good, but once the building the statue, etc., came to take more time than I can play in a week, without sacrificing work, sleep, girlfriend, or a combination thereof, I gave up . (I don't know if it was designed to be on a sliding scale like that, but I liked it the first few times the nodes were drawn - very dull, from an OOC standpoint, now).

To put it simply - if it's going to take me 40 hours to do it, I'm not going to do it . I don't have that much patience, and it is a game. The first thing I had to do to get rid of my Lusternia addiction was to realize - I'm not coming out of this with anything positive to my name. It's fun, that's it.

Olan, I think that was very well written, but you could have just said, bring in Glomdoring sooner than planned

I think if the administration is worried that there is not a large enough player base for glomdoring, that they will be pleasantly surprised when they open it.

As they say, if you build it, they will come.

Hey, I have to prove I'm not the only tae'dae whose player can write page long posts!

Yes...if you build it, they will come...back.

point... check... mate or whatever you say, on all points.

While I'm not convinced bringing in a new player organization will solve all problems, the simple fact is that not only do we have to gauge if the playerbase can support it but also looking at how much of our resources could be devoted to it at this time. In other words, while it is fine in theory to say, "open a new commune/city", we are looking at months of design and coding to even begin to implement. If you are talking about building one from scratch, you're talking about 6 months minimum. And, during that time, we probably either couldn't focus on envoy reports, major events, new features, etc. or we could simultaneously do everything (opening a new commune/city plus doing new features, envoy reports, events), in which case these time esimates could probably be doubled or more.

Anyway, while I appreciate some people would like to see a new commune/city, the timeline and prerequisites for these are already firmly in my mind and, even if I wanted to open one earlier than I had planned, no matter how many times I snap my fingers, the design and coding won't magically appear in any time period that I imagine people expect.

I can't speak for the massive coding involved, but you could always abuse that massive stack of builder applications to design areas in advance to help your timetable along. Of course I'm saying this because...

Makes sense though. I still think urging roleplay along would be best, but I guess that will depend on who or what is control of that in the end and how much control they can apply without overstepping the IC/OOC bounds.

I believe the reason why people think a new commune would help is because of the following points.

1) Alchemy monopoly which was not in the original design.

2) No real fluctuations in alliances or cooperation. (new Lich laws in Serenwilde don't help)

3) 4 teams makes it possible to have 2 vs 2 or 3 vs 1 instead of ALWAYS 2 vs 1

4) People like to play charachters they never had a chance to play before in such an environment.

Its probabbly possible to solve those problems without creating a new commune, but making a new commune seems simpelest.

OK, if a commune or other organization is too far out, consider some possible 'band aide' caliber solutions:

1. Allow miniature alembics. It at least makes an alchemy ban harder to police.
2. Focus events to constantly prevent solid alliances from forming. Generally speaking, actually, I think you all do a good, good job of this. This includes, however, making it harder for Serenwilde to flip flop alliances like underwear.
3. Help Magnagora and Celest find some common ground. Everything, from history to quests to roleplaying etc sets us at odds, which is another limitation on political interactions that isn't necessarily related to or solved by another city.
/edit 4. Change the way some sources of conflict are introduced/handled. I don't know the whole story behind the forests suddenly not liking liches, but the forests themselves dictating such directly political laws? Do Magnagora and Serenwilde really need more (and more permanent!) bad blood between them? This whole development seemed out of the blue IC and...doesn't make sense to me OOC either. But, I'm just some guy.

Working on Number 3...

I agree wholeheartedly with Daganev and Olan, the whole Crow event, constantly having to fight on two fronts while spending obscene fortunes on Bob, seeing the quests constantly altered to negate efforts from both magnagora and Serenwilde, caused my burnout.

And after that fiasco of a war had finally finished, we started recovering, getting back power and resources, we suddenly get forbidden to enter the forest cause Someone thought it to be funny having the forest dislike liches. It just never stops. Pushing an alliance between Celest and Serenwilde to crusade against Magnagora is really not a good way to prevent burnout.

When I raid rockholm or delport (Celestian villages) to capture miners and farmers, ore and hemp, I get attacked by more Serenwilders than Celestians, but I can't fight back cause if I kill one, they'll enemy me to Serenwilde, making it completely impossible getting refills, like it's not hard enough already. If you desperately want Serenwilde to keep an absolute monopoly, at least have 'em back out of this and be neutral untill Glomdoring comes around so the balance is somewhat restored again...you can't have Serenwilde with their monopoly pick sides eitherway for Celest or Magnagora and expect people to think it's fair.

The two main reasons for burnout in Magnagora, as far as I know, were having to fight on two fronts and desperately trying to fill the nexus with power, after the power changes one of those reasons dropped away, and if the divine won't push Serenwilde into a crusade against Magnagora again, I don't think any other changes need to be undertaken (for magnagora), to release pressure and prevent complete burnout.