Couldn't agree more.

Anyways...maybe guards could be boosted? For some reason, I find it ridiculous that in order for a commune/city to properly defend their village, we have to summon 30-40+ guards. Walking into ten guards should result in absolute death (coughlikeinimperiancough). People should not be able to tank guards. It's -extremely- disheartening to log in to find 40 guards are dead thanks to two or three tanky people.

Other than that, demesnes in villages atm are ick. Influencing is no longer about, uh, influencing but rather who can get a demesne up fastest. Oh, and I'm almost positive that if more people concentrated on roleplaying (and I mean actual roleplaying, not "my character likes to kill stuff because his dad was in the army rarara raid"), less people would get so touchy about raids, because it isn't exactly motivation to play a game where all you do is lose.

It's great how Alger karmic cursed 5 people when a village opened, too.

Even the original 50 karma curses were more acceptable than this 'fair' system. Alger is hardly the vulnerable type you were trying to protect with the karma system, so it seems to have failed.

Hmmm. The situation was going pretty well in our forest. We weren't having many problems. Then that worldburn crap happens.

Now, the whole place is Tainted, and we find ourselves incapable of winning. I find it hard to believe sanctuary is supposed to cover for this. Remind me why Avechna protection was removed on villages again?

If you're talking about all power skills:

* sanctuary is a power skill
* most useful guardian skills are power skills
* about all I can kill with is souless and that doesn't work anywhere near as well as you'd think in group combat
* ie, you're basically reducing combat there to warriors and a few mage skills. yay.

At this point, I don't care if you have to kill Stag, Runes, AND Druidry, demesnes in influencing are total crap. I hate to see us be useless, but this is insane.

1) It makes sense village conquests should be about martial strength. PK deciding the outcome of villages makes sense.

2) The current system needs work. Debating also needs work, since in a team all it takes is 2 people chanting laetitia and it's ineffective.

3) Basically, I think villages need to be about combat, but the impact of big teams needs to be softened and toned down, so it becomes more about tactics, strategy and individual skill.

I realise this is what has been attempted so far, but it has too many flaws (demesnes, debating, sanctuaries, worldburn).

And there I thought debating and sanctuaries were supposed to be an alternative to fighting during an influence.

But if worldburning THROUGH sanctuaries is ok, then why in Nil do we even try? Lusternia is apparently pk-only.

I know there's some issues with influencing villages (which we'll look into) but I'm hoping this discussion can more address the overall issue of balance and conflict. (I know its difficult as there's a heated influence battle going on now.)

The problem is always going to be that anything balanced for 95% of the population is going to be all out of whack when the other 5% show up. 10 guards will easily kill me. 10 guards is nothing to a fully deffed ur'guard. And so on, and so on, with Serpent and such just making it worse.

I'd be gratefull if the exp-loss for being killed in villages while influencing would be decreased a bit. I just lost 50 % because I ran into a normal room with shafts, no taint no forest, and I died there. Okay, I could easily put up with that if it wouldn'T cost me another 2 hours - at least- to get those percent back. I am now at level 66 again, and I need to kill like 38 krokani, seeing that I don't have access to a better bashing ground. Normal, the krokani tower contains like 20-25 krokani, and I have to wait for them to repop for something like half an hour to an hour, I don't know. And I have to hunt there at the most insane times, because otherwise, the tower's always empty. *shrug* The hour or so I fought in stewartsvill cost me between 80-100%, but I don't care, because I died 4 or five times. But still, one dead took me as much as four other deads.
Okay, maybe this post is a bit confusing, but I am in a bit of a hurry.

Personally... the overall conflict is quite high, even when not involved in the influencing thing. The times when Amaru/Malicia/Narsrim/Munsia are *not* raiding are few and far between... and tend to only stop when Magnagora begins raiding THEM.

As to how this can be fixed... I don't know. Anything which lessens the amount Magnagora can raid is likely just going to increase attacks on Glomdoring, as we are still working on being able to defend what we hold. :/

Could the size of demesnes within villages during influencing be limited somehow? That might at least lessen its dominant role without crippling mages.

Edit: Sorry, just realized you asked for less influence-specific discussion.

Demesnes maxing at 10-20 rooms would be awesome, in general.

I agree.... the biggest burnouts are regaining exp, and death is the most frustrating thing of all, for many many people. I know for a fact that Estarra is a genius, maybe there's an alternative to the current way deaths are handled?

And as for non-stop raiding, give us some achievable goals and we'll do these sort of things less. Or simply increase the effectiveness of guards and other automatic defences against serpent, dashing, etc so that people are forced to fight on neutral ground.

The fact is that for a city or commune to compete, they currently have to burnout doing as many repetitive or frustrating things as their opponent, or more. The place with the most and most willing to burnout, succeed.

I'm serious, just disable demesnes in village influence. I don't care that it's destroying mage/druid usefulness in them, just do it because village influencing might as well be called village demesneing right now. Or perhaps you could make demesnes created in villages decay rapidly (ie. have the melding vanish randomly from rooms every few seconds).

Another imbalancing factor that I think most people agree on at this point is Serpent. Downgrade it. Downgrade it MASSIVELY. Make it last much less time, or make it go away when you move, or something. And make guards hit through it, you shouldn't be able to do that serpent trick to distract all the guards.

I still think Lich and Ghost are imbalancing factors (lich in particular). There's a whole big thread on the problems with Lich, but I think the major problem is the escape it gives; you basically get free escape in most cases and it's extremely hard to track you down. I don't care that much about the 0% experience loss; I wouldn't mind really if lich was like vitae except it had no experience loss and made you undead (this also means that it would have no equilibrium loss, just the normal power loss).

And a one-hour village peace is absurd, it would remove all point from raiding.

EDIT: I forgot about the experience loss issue too. Yes, reduce it somehow - why do we really even have it in the first place? Obviously there should be SOME penalty for death, but there should be a way around it. Maybe if you have karma, you can lose 5% karma on your death instead of experience or something? I dunno, eh, but something should be done about it. The experience loss discourages conflict, which is what this game seems to be all about.

This has been discussed on IRC. Here's what I see your basic problem is. You setup this realm with three sides. Two of them had conflict as a secondary outcome. Magnagora is simply the drive to conquer everything, conflict is obvious. Celest is Light - but there are two types of light. there's the crusading type of wrathful light our own european histories are full of. Then there's the snuggly type of democratic "everything is good, we're all happy" type of light which, as someone who has logs of Celest going back to like day 5, will tell you that is what happened. Fighting wasn't pushed forward in Celest, not until recently. Seren suffered the same problem - they exist to protect their spirits and nature, I think. Those who ran around killing weren't held highly in the commune because their interests and goals were elsewhere.

So you setup the realm in such a way that one side had a clear path to domination. The people it attracted were the established fighters from other realms. Some came to celest but left because it was full of arguing, happy fluffy people who thought that their voice mattered more than anyone else and had no real understanding of any type of authority. I can't comment on the specifics of Seren as I haven't made a character there.

Here's a example of this. Seren lost Estelbar to the Magnagorans. Why? Because Magnagora attacked Ethereal at the same time and Seren, who are defending the fae in their RP, rush there instead. They couldn't make the specific link that they needed villages to keep themselves powerful. Their RP, from everyone I spoke to at the time, was this: firstly, the Fae mattered, secondly, the only thing else they care about is their commune. They couldn't make the link to "defending village means we're stronger to look after our commune interests and defend the fae", because they were being screamed at, apparently, by their leaders about the Fae.

Thats the beginning of where the problems were. Things are starting to look up for Celest as people are now realising that you can't sit on your butt and have everything given to you. But here's the next problem. People stop coming back when things aren't fun anymore. Its a game, right. There's only going to be so many die-hard addicts who love PK. The rest of the people are not here to specifically PK. So when they die during village influencing, they get pissed off and leave. Then, and this is my favourite, you somehow decided that artifacted warriors are able to pull off insanely stupid amounts of damage against anyone who hasn't transcended resilience and combat. Well, they bought artifacts, didn't they? Of course they deserve to be overpowered. This is great right until you try to explain to a bunch of novices how the heck you're meant to hold down and kill a liched serpented ur'guard. When one crush from someone like Daevos, Ixion, Murphy, causes most of your novices to die. Who the heck wants to stay around when tanky people like that are your opponents?

I know this sounds like whinging. but its why people weren't hanging around. I hate to say it, but Magnagora right now could quite happily walk all over the realm, worldburn whoring or not. You left the realm to the players, and one side won. The only reason they haven't is some have started realising that its a game, that the whole purpose is to have fun rather than to always win. Magnagora's RP seems to be "win at all costs". Seren/Celest RP wasn't anywhere as clear.

I would agree with limiting demesnes, pretty much in any area during any conflict. 10-20 rooms might be a little extreme, except during village influencing, but 400 seems extremely high to me.

I've never been a fan of any passive effects in the IRE games, though. Setting up effects ahead of time and being able to use them halfway across the world is not something I can do, and I don't feel anyone should have abilities like this. One or two rooms away, targetting attacks like a boulder or an arrow is fine, but demesnes and fae are ridiculous in the sheer number of effects.

I have felt overwhelmed by the constant conflict in Lusternia many times, and when there's peace, it's a still a tense sort of agreement between parties. If we're not fighting over one thing, it's another. Some new reason will always be there, not to mention those who make up their own reasons with very limited RP application ('I don't want you gaining experience and getting bigger than me.' type of mentality).

http://lusternia.ire-community.com/index.php?showtopic=2501

Reference the above thread wherein I tried to make the point that these problems were inherent in the way the world is set up -months- ago.

Expanding on the ideas presented in that essay, I would say that the effect of conflict needs to be treated differently by the administration than it has been. For one thing, I think active involvement in the death process would be helpful, particularly if doing things during this time could decrease the pain of death. One of the worst periods of time for me as a player is sitting there with those stupid messages about the Fates scrolling by after I've been killed during influencing or whatever. I would far prefer to be spending that time actively involved in a quest-based death scenario that I had an active hand in.

In terms of realm balance, the largest concern is the failure to address avenues of conflict advancement outside of PK capacity. This is, I imagine, largely due to the fact that the vast majority of the realm's coding deals primarily with these systems. But given that we have so many more quests and non-PK related skills as compared to other IRE realms, it is disheartening that in the vast majority of circumstances, they are trumped entirely by the ability to kill to stop their use altogether. I think we need to expand on the importance of non-combat related conflict scenarios, as without the threat of death, I think we will see a surge in player participation on the grand scale.

One final suggestion before I consider responses would be to provide more in the way of roleplay assistance. I have found it difficult at times to consider Lusternia as any more than a game, whereas other realms feel far more to me a "world." I think this is largely due to the fact that everything is so tied together as to make your every action feel in some way a necessary act. This sounds great in theory, but people end up becoming enslaved to the processes of power renewel, demesne holding, village raiding, etc, just so that they do not feel as though they are being left by the wayside. While it will be a difficult concept to embrace, Lusternia needs to examine the ways in which it allows characters to live in the world without the stigma of constant requisite action always at their heels.

In my opinion, influencing villages is supposed to rely purely on your INFLUENCE skill. Take out any possibility for violence in a village that's UNinfluenced and you've got a very good set of props to really roleplay with. Resorting to violence in an uninfluenced village, plus competing with actually influencing, is tiring as many are noticing with Stewartsville. Heading up on 6 hours now of it.

If you remove any possibility to cause violent actions, and make it so that shrines are either unable to be erected in villages period or that any shrine ability is void in an uninfluenced village, I think that people would focus more on what the goal really is and that's just plain old influence.

As a side note: the Geomancers even have a path that encourages members of the guild to focus on influence only and the requirements within are not gearing towards any setup of combat at all.

Unlike in Achaea, I don't have a problem with dying and losing experience in Lusternia. In Achaea, it peeved me to lose experience. Here, however, I have conglutination, resurgem, and other ways to soften the blow. Even without those, I've done my best to shrug off the experience loss as just part of playing the game. No, for me the real problem with these conflicts is the sense of hopelessness that comes from being on a team of three against a team of ten or being worldburned for doing nothing more than influencing.