It's been brought to my attention that some remarks by the admin have been interpreted to mean that Lusternia is too unbalanced towards Magnagora. I'd really rather have such discussions open up in the forums rather than on IRC or through a clan that a god happens to be in. This allows the entire community an opportunity to participate and gives me and Roark direct feedback rather than second or third hand accounts. So let's open up such a discussion!

What I want to know is do players feel that Lusternia is too hostile? Is there too much aggression? Is raiding of villages too much of a stress on players? As you know, I'm open to addressing such concerns. It is true that some players have left Lusternia because we are too intense and hostile. But we don't want to cripple the conflict system either. A balance must be found. Do we need a tougher karma/Avenger system? Do we need more potent nexus powers to protect villages? Maybe nothing needs to be done. Maybe not. Tell us your thoughts and feelings.

The PK-off-prime thing is working out really badly, for one thing. Better discretionary powers for villages would also be nice. Er...I'll comment more when I'm not influencing.

First of all, toughening PK laws, and harsher PK rules/measures further isn't what players want, from what I've seen.

The Avenger system was one of the main factors for so many PK lovers being drawn to Lusternia in the first place; the freedom to use combat freely as roleplay dictates.

one gripe i have, is a person who demense's a area during influencing can sit in a sanctified room, and there demense outside the room can attack people but you can't kill them because of the peaced room. i think if a person decides to sit in a peaced room the whole demense should go inactive untill they move.

Influencing needs to be changed somehow so it doesn't rely so much on who gets the demesne first.

That's one important thing. The role of demesnes has got out of hand. If Estarra or Roark would (I don't know if you do or not) just come and watch us in Stewartsville right now, you'd see how insanely demesne-based the whole thing is.

Sanctuaries have just become cop-outs for losing combatants, or measures to stop demesnes from ever being broken.

I don't mind any amount of conflict personally, but if that many people are actually leaving, something probably has to be done...I just wish I had an idea of "what" can be done.

I agree, demesne in villages is just bloody stupid and i like amaru's idea.

Seems to me that the main thing differentiating Lusternia is that there are lots and lots of quests and situations where one city/commune can affect another. For instance, in an imaginary situation in which Magnagora were completely empty, Celest (or whoever) could drain all their power, cause them to generate no readily-available commodities, and remove an entire skillset from one of their guilds. This is a lot of power for cities and communes to hold over one another.

The upshot of this is that any biases in the playerbase are reflected in the game world, and become a sort of spiral. Since Magnagora is generally considered the most powerful city, with a larger number of well-organized combatants than most other cities (possibly excepting the Serenwilde), they can do a lot to hurt other cities/communes, which makes life harder on them.

But, I think so long as this doesn't get completely out of hand, it makes things interesting. Celest is currently winning back some villages, nobody's crushed anyone else's Demon Lords/Supernals for a while that I've heard, the Necromentate and the Star are doing fine. So the main thing, at least from a Celestian perspective, is morale. The larger balance of the world seems OK enough, maybe a bit skewed toward Magnagora (as it should be, as they're bigger) but not to the point that Magnagora is stripping everyone else of all their resources. But I think the most demoralizing thing is somewhat more minor: the constant raids that you can't really fight off. It sucks when a city tries to put in big groups of guards and they still just get slaughtered. Logging in to see dozens of "A guard loyal to you has been slain by" citylogs is horrible. People popping in and out of your cosmic plane with their cubix artifact is aggravating. People going to a village, only to throw up Serpent and mock you is irritating.

There's a lot people can do to "grief" others. But I think the overall balance is OK, though it occasionally goes screwy and causes one city or another to spend countless hours questing underwater, which is a bother.

Bleh, I'm rambling.

Regarding demesnes during influencing, we could conceivably block all demesnes in villages during influence time but I wonder if that wouldn't be too much of a detriment to mages and druids.

Regarding morale and stress of raids, what about a nexus power that peaces the entire village for 60 minutes? It'd cost a lot of power (of course) but it'd be something proactive to do.

(Not saying we'll implement any of the above, just throwing out ideas to get reactions.)

Here's another wild thought. Rather than killing one skillset of druids and mages, what if no demesne and no power skills could be used in a village when its in play?

that suits me fine estarra....just make it so you can sanctuary while having a shattered ego and it'll be all good

I'm not quite certain how a peaceing effect would be helpful. I see two situations occuring because of that:
1) Raider runs in, kills and kills until someone gets over to the obelisk, and then leaves the village because nothing's gonna happen for the next hour, then comes back. This will essentially remove any need for a city/commune that gains enough power monthly to defend anything.
2) Raiding dwindles to practically nothing because someone will always be fifteen seconds away from an obelisk due to hermit/spores/whatever, making raiding pointless as the window of opportunity between entering and getting peaced is so slim.

More powerful nexus powers and some slightly weaker ones that are cheaper (so that security won't be afraid to use them) would be great.

I agree entirely.

Cubix: look, you paid a lot for this, fine. Can we make it so you can't pass it on to others though? Buying it once shouldn't give a city the ability to do that.

Serpent: help. This skill is insane. Yes, we can get it, that's not the point, anyone who doesn't have it is going to have some serious difficulties, and greater pentagram still doesn't work and is nowhere near comparable. And make guards hit through it, or ignore the user when it's up?

Liching and never losing experience since it's yes, possible to kill a lich and infinitely easier for a lich to avoid getting killed is a problem. Not only from game balance, but for morale. "Oh, did they get away?" "Yeah, they liched." "What'd they lose?" "Nothing." "How do we stop that?" "Run all around them dropping eye sigils and hope they don't move, or sigil out an entire area before they get there and pick and choose with ghost. Or inquisition them, which you also have to trap them for, and have that skill." "Oh."

Another thing, regarding your comment about the game being too unbalanced in favor of Magnagora: they are better not because their skills are overpowered. They are better because they're better run, better organized, and more disciplined, and they have more competent fighters.
This MAY, however, be a sort of spiraling effect. Magnagora is a strong city, so more people will want to go to Magnagora to be strong as well.

And as for worldburning a sanctuary.

That is absolute . Then we're told a God suggested this? What kind of staff do you employ? That's the kind of crap which makes people want to quit.

EDIT: Watch your language. ~Shiri~

I know that no one really wants to retool an entire archetype, but I think the issue is more demesnes themselves than desmenes in villages. We feel pretty harassed when Revan pushes his demesne right up to our gates. It could kill our novices! Upgrade mage active abilities, tone down the demesnes. Or, better yet, just flat out remove some demesne abilities in favor of active afflictions. (I actually liked the old Dazzle. Can three versions of that be made? Mages would appreciate it, I'm sure. Us Celestines just couldn't actively afflict well enough for it to be really meaningful.)

As far as peacing an entire village...that seems a touch extreme. I don't even mind the raids themselves that much. The bigger issue is that we can't get there in a timely manner. City raids in other IRE games were easy to handle. Everyone was there in 7.5 seconds. Maybe, instead of peacing the village, make painting travel quicker, and a power-intensive skill that slows enemy movement like they were surrounded by rubble everywhere they went?

First, to address the issue of the game being overbalanced on the part of Magnagora, I think we have to look into the matter of numbers of active players. If I'm correct, I believe that Magnagora has a rather large population, and they have drawn a fair number of good fighters as well. So, they have numbers, and they have strength. I don't imagine this is too terribly much of a problem, because we've not heard unified posts on the forums stating that Magnagora needs to be downgraded.

I think Celest needs some more citizens and fighters perhaps, but I cannot say for sure, as I deal with far, far fewer Celestians than any of the other places.

On the issue of overall conflict... My only other MUD experience was from Aetolia. I believe a bit before I left for Lusternia, there was a war that had gone on far too long, and players were getting frustrated. From what I've seen, we've been warring since Lusternia was released. Some people are enemied to others just because they are from the opposing place, and the places are too black and white. Though they could be played differently, they fall easilly into good/evil. There is no wild card. There is 2 on 2, or a free-for-all. Ideals of once place will not let them ally with others.

We need things to keep us entertained, yes. But we need to stop fighting each other so much.

I'd LOVE to scrap demesnes and get more active abilities.

Not being able to put up a shrine in an open village to world burn would be nice.