We continue to see complaints about influencing villages, so we'd like to have some idea of what direction players would like to see it take. Although many like to complain specifically about demesnes, some of us feel that this is treating the symptom rather than the root cause of dissatisfaction. In other words, complaining about demesnes is the 'flavor of the day' and by constantly downgrading those skills, we would not be addressing the root problem which could be that influencing villages is just too violent. Making village influencing completely non-violent, however, would cut off an outlet for those who do enjoy the combat side of things. One idea of a middle ground was having any village that revolts during a time when Eroee is conjunct the Sun that day be peaceful while all other times it's combat.

Is there even a problem? Is it really demesnes or is the root cause just combat fatigue? Should we make influencing peaceful? Is there a middle ground?

Let us know!

I would add that the idea of looking when Eroee is conjunct with the sun is just one idea for "middle ground". So the "middle ground" voting option does not mean you do or do not want to see the Eroee implementation, but rather something, like the Eroee idea, that makes some villages violent and some peaceful.

Edit: In addition, if we deem there to be honest problems in demesne independent of influencing then those will be addressed regardless of what happens with influencing.

What I seen in the last influencing of Stewartsville was fine. It wasn't stuck on demesnes, though they surely make a battleground more biased to whoever is holding it, it was one because the other team had far more influencers on the job. Even fighting in a Tainted demesne we still won alot of the fights there, but we just didn't have the influencers. I like influencing, tis fine!

Edit: To back this up, last few rounds prior when Celest was getting villages in their sphere we had a more vast amount of influencing people than Magnagora or Glomdoring on at the time. Win some, lose some.

BTW, we also opened a public referendum in-game. This is just an experiment to compare the two to see how much the forums represent the playerbase. Please vote in both!

I think the imbalance is truely the dedication of the playerbases. Magnagora has people who are willing to sacrifice their social lives for a game. Which is their decision, I'm not knocking it. But I would kill anyone who called me while I was clubbing "omg Stewarts revolted" or IMed me or called me whilst I slept.

That said, I honestly can't vote. I believe I would like to see what form of skills druids will be getting in comparison to Psionics. As it stands, a psionics mage could quite probably beat the snot out of a druid in a druid's demesne.

If a change is deemed necessary/beneficial, I liked the idea proposed a few times back this was discussed. Certain villages (Estelbar, Delport) would be peaceful every time it revolted, while places like Angkrag and Acknor would be innately violent. Where villages like Stewarts and the rest would sometimes be violent, and sometimes not.

I would also like to see more external factors added into influencing. Honors quests, for one. Have an honors quest from a village, makes it a little easier to influence. I do believe comm quests, as is, affect it. Perhaps make them a bit more influential?

I see you made an in-game referendum on it. Wow, you're serious.

I voted for the middle ground. While I have always maintained that a Demesne is a huge factor in influencing, I think removing it completely is going to far, but something needs to be done. Statues all vanish on a revolt, Demesne could fade as well, forcing a theoretical level playing field.

As for combat fatigue. I think always having to fight is fatigueing, but there are times where I do want to come on and blast people with my cudgel even if they will kill me. So making it about influence sometimes and combat sometimes is a good balance. You get to make everyone a happy camper, just not at the same time, and hey that's what life is all about.

You can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.

As a hijack, when you make a referendum, please don't put periods at the end of each option - or, fix the coding, because when you vote you see "You cast your vote for I want a middle ground, make it peaceful sometimes.."

Yea, anyway. /hijack.

I've long said it would be balanced to make village influencing non-violent because every single other thing that happens in the game is violent. However, I kind of stopped bothering when...



I assume that's now redacted.

Frankly, I am considering not voting in the referendum at all because it all feels so irrelevant to me. I won't go so far as to log off because a village went into play, but when I learned I missed another village being in play last night because I was spending almost four miserable agonizing hours at the hospital, I thought, "well, at least some good came of it".

I dread villages coming into play at the moment. I like the idea of peacing at least some (Estelbar, delport) and so on and so forth.

Wow, people actually do that?

Anyway, I vote for a middle ground.

Middle ground.

The middleground is always the best.

To cater to all players, there HAS to be a middle ground.

Fact: There are more non-combatants in Lusternia than there are capable fighters WITH systems. Naturally, influencing becomes a burden to have the combatants grouping up and beating down on them.

Some villages should be completely violence free, because not everyone wants to fight. I like fighting. I hate demesnes.

I'd be happy just to see demesnes scaled down to two-four rooms (just to give the druids mobility in order to survive damaging warriors) but that's it.

Demesnes control the flow of a village influencing. Never did any of the organizations lose a village that was completely melded by their own people.

Yes, Magnagora has more numbers and nothing can be done about that. They only have about 5-6 really good fighters. Just more numbers and mages that -never- ever log off, heh. I can't complain about that.

So yeah... I don't know what can be done. I know that a lot of people want to quit Lusternia over influencing. I hope Magnagora/Glomdoring has fun once they've finally chased the entire population off.

*cough* I'm not sure why you're pulling us into this... just a short bit ago, we were the ones being driven off by overaggressive others.

Oh em gee. Such crap. I don't even care enough to get into it with you right now, Xenny.

That's my point, though. Non-violent village influencing is a middle ground because every single other interaction or conflict in the entire game is driven almost entirely by violence. So having 95% of the game be violence instead of 100% is barely worth using the word "middle" already. There's no need to soften it still farther.

What, pray tell, are you talking about?

Especially since raids are impossible with the distort changes.

We must be playing a different game, because I've seen very little violence. Admittedly my play times tend to be when it's quieter, so maybe that's why.

I think part of the problem is that the game is already biased heavily in favour of those who don't like to pk and just want to snuggle (rp?), trade, politic (bitch?), or bash there way to uberness/demigod/whatever. Fair enough though, they probably represent the majority of the paying playerbase. Why not let them have yet another aspect of the game they can fully participate in at little or no risk to their xp level?

Ok, several things.

If you change demesnes, I'm personally done with Lusternia and discussing with several of the other mage types from other cities...they are done too. As I posted in another thread, the skillset is now useless (depending on how much you nerf it) and I have just wasted all the credits I used to trans it out. If you decide to change it so influencing is either non-combative or you change demesnes, you need to either compensate those of us with demesnes or take out the skillset completely and give us something else. I would have no problem with a different skillset, but don't take the use of them out of influencing and give us nothing in return. I would have a useless skillset (well, two if you count illusions).

If you make influencing non-combative for the most part, you have now made us Achaea. Many of us were drawn to Lusternia for its combative/clashing nature, and turning it now would be what I believe to be a bad move for the playerbase. You would make some happy, but lose a ton in the process too.

Suggestion: Make it so you can work on a village when it isn't uninfluenced. That way your non-fighters can work on it when it isn't up for grabs, and when it goes up for grabs...you send your fighters in to go to work. Whomever does the most work on it during the offtimes starts off with a better shot at influencing it or something. A middle ground is a tradeoff, not the total removal of combat.


Oh, and Malicia, lots of people quit Lusternia whenever they do ANYTHING. Your side (cel/ser) is quitting now, but when Mag started to get their skills neutered back in the day, we lost a TON of folks too.

Distortion, enemy territory huge xp loss, territorial magical defences.
All of these features make me believe that we're not supposed to raid, or fight, or whatever, that we're supposed to stay at our nexii and huddle and cuddle.
I don't know, I really hate sounding negative, especially in such a public place, but things are really getting too quiet. Even the skill TELEPORT contributes to combat being limited and not very rewarding, Melanchthon had a nice idea about teleport, maybe he'll post about it sometime.

I don't know if making influencing combat-free is a good idea.

Don't get me wrong, I love teleport, it's awesome, and I realize this is not the thread for it. I just think it can use a little tweaking, and, I think combat in Lusternia is heavily affected by that skill.

I really hate how people go "If you do this or do that, I'm quitting."
Let's all be mature about this, come on, we're basically just starting out.
If you don't like combat, don't participate in it.
It is that simple.

It's the same as with any business. If you don't like service in a restaurant/store, you don't come back. Usually you make your displeasure known to the manager about why you think your experience sucked.

If someone is going to quit, I would want them to post why. That way we don't have to listen to people post later on about, "This is the core of why so and so quit".

The point of my posting was, if you are going to affect demesnes in anyway for influencing, something needs to be done with the skillset. I left the Ur'guard, which I gladly would have stayed in, had I known the skillset was about to get wracked due to it being bitched about. The only way you seem to get things done is this game is to complain about them, so hence I ranted.