Magnagora is playing their role-play.

And the next person to suggest that Celest gives up it's role-play and surrenders or doesn't spit into the eye of Magnagora until the day it dies likewise should quit their role-play and snuggle Celest.

Sorry. We all role-play. If people want a challenge, join Celest. It's no one's fault. Sorry.

Maybe I'm just dense, but why is it harder to go from the Taint to the Light than vice versa? Is it purely how people roleplay? Heck, even the help file on the viscanti infer that some reject their tainted nature:

The problem, Estarra, is taint vs light. Viscanti = taint. Celest = anti-taint. Or so how the mind works.

EDIT: Thought I would clarify. The basis of Celest's RP is to remove the Taint. Period. Or, that's how it's come across. The belief that Taint can be cleansed from someone stems from the Celestia/Nil conflict - and the Faechild event. One can reject it, one can be purified of it. However, what seems to be forgotten on both ends, is that, unlike a mortal player or a mortal race, fae are spirits. Their bodies are just shells. When the shell is broken, it can be cleansed or corrupted. When an angel dies, it's the exact same. It's the light given a body.

However, not everyone realizes that they're different from a mortal player.

Although, the histories also back the belief one can go from light -> taint, because of the whole thing, and people don't realize that it was only tainting things because Kethuru was present. Same with the Glomdoring event.

Sooo, my theory is that it is due to the player's perception.

Don't have time to read posts.

Oppinon: Magnagoras not griefing, but due to circumstances in Celest in an OOC sense, they should ease up. I would like to see City vs Commune conflict, but don't see it happening after talking to Kalodan.

Again, why is roleplay simply reduced to "You're my enemy! Hack, Slash, Kick kick kick!" I realize on a larger spectrum it's "Operation: Celest Conquest! Revenge for shunning us and thinking less of our lives when we were helpless!" in terms of history, but seeing as it has always been like this since the beginning the idea of that is wearing thin. However, like I said earlier, I don't think the problem is the combat. I think the real issue lies in the fact that combat seems to be essential to roleplay here due to everyone being everyone's enemy. Roleplay decisions aside, it's a continuous circle of conflict that escalates higher than it should at times.

Like Cwin said, there needs to be a larger focus that don't involve us always hating on each other. Power was that "focus" in the beginning when we had a fairly new playerbase to plant totems, gain supplicants, and etc, but now that even that has worn thin there needs to be something that people can strive for that involves a roleplay situation, but not in the sense that it's "You're in the way, Magnagora! Let's dance!" or whatever the case may be.

Heh. I'm with you. I want a city vs commune, but I just don't see it happening. Either Glomdoring cedes all rights to the Faethorn, and co-operates with the Wilde, ooor we're just not going to see it.

The only other option would be an event, that would more or less force the communes to work together (or, at least, make it much easier on them to achieve like goals). Perhaps in relations to the alleged druid skill we're all waiting for.

I'd love to see actual 'reformed' Viscanti. If you're going to be in Celest as a Viscanti, there will be restrictions. Most people just reincarnate, as no one has decided to put 'roleplay' or whatever ahead of things like racial stats, power, etc etc.

And some people may have forgotten but... I'm pretty sure, no, I'm certain that Celest has formed an agreement/treaty with Magnagora in the past about not raiding the cosmic planes. (and when that treaty was finished, voila, Celestia was raided. Sorry, I try to be empathetic to both sides, but that's the truth.) So if we keep on making treatises and whatnot, the cycle will just continue.

More suggestions!

Hack slash, kick kick kick! = total and absolute destruction. Which seems to be the goal.

Wrong. The treaty included the outer planes and the mining villages under the control of Celest and Magnagora, basically agreeing that we wouldn't raid each other for the period of the treaty. This got broken by a Celestian when they decided it would be fun to raid Angkrag and get miners, as far as I know no one from our side broke the treaty until this had happened.

Maybe we need another Kethuru event where everyone works together. I remember that it was... peaceful. What could happen is, the Basin realizes that the Taint(ed) cannot be removed entirely, and accept the fact that they are another life form, and everyone forgives each other and lives with their differences, and then everyone will live peacefully side by side forever!

Okay so that's pretty radical and I was being slightly sarcastic, but I do often ponder over the fact that 'the Tainted are just another inhabitent of this world' and ... well it'd be very hard to adjust the ideals of the Light and the Taint to suit this. Haha not sure how to go on, meh not like it's gonna happen anyway

Edit: Reply to above post. Oh, I heard differently. *shrug* Oh well

Trying to figure out why I play here...

My example wasn't limited to Magnagora (At least I don't think my first sentence labeled anyone, but thanks for clarifying how they act), but to the whole population of the game. Had taint and the "light" not be associated with Evil and Good from the beginning (The admin TRIED to make it open-ended, but people didn't see it that way.) I'm sure that the Celest/Seren assistance wouldn't exist. The three (Four now) factions would be in a constant circle of conflict and players would've lef... oh.

I'm trying to say the fault isn't in Magnagora since it is indeed their roleplay, but in the design itself that conflict will always be the center of Lusternia. It just happens that players tend to stretch that center since there isn't a necessary focus otherwise (That and they enjoy it). It's being worked on, but what's happened thus far can't be fixed until that's complete.

Not only restrictions. I was told to reincarnate, otherwise I would have been thrown out of the city. *shrug*

I didn't really say Magnagora, did I? It's both for Celest and Mag. And Serenwilde, really.

Really? I'll have to look into/change that.

In that case then I guess it shows that people do view the conflict as the huge center. Sorry for my assumption on what you meant though.

It was broken on multiple occasions by people claiming they had no knowledge of the treaty, but it was a while ago and by the point it was formally rejected the period we had agreed upon for it to stay in effect had expired anyways.

Estarra said when the game was in development still that they were intentionally aiming for a simplified Good/Evil axis that players could easily identify with. I'm not sure why you think Light/Taint isn't the axis that was talked about, unless you're just basing your statements on false assumptions.

So then Serenwilde and Glomdoring would equate to the Good/Evil forests, right?

It really seems skewed, though I suppose this following statement should be chalked up to Serenwilde's failure to roleplay properly (Well, I guess roleplay is supposed to be dynamic) since the Supernals can convert Fae just as they can Demons. That aside, the fact that they're supposed to be shunning cities (And Glomdoring) supports the "Free For All" aspects of Lusternia and not the buddy system we've grown to adapt during situations.

Can't blame people for having a conscious though. However, I don't understand why people are dancing around the issue underneath the current one. Maybe, despite the complaints, it's fine and isn't worth discussing since by this time it has grown to be commonplace.

Talking about Magnagora as griefers is missing the forest for the trees. The problem here is not about Magnagora; they're just the folks that got to be at the center of the problem, they're not the problem itself.

Magnagora is made up of players, and players should never be put into a position, or even allowed to walk or happen into a position, where they're forced to choose between pursuing their roleplay, and saving the game. They should be able to pursue their purposes with as much vigor and drive as they can summon. It's not their problem to make sure that doesn't ruin the game, and it shouldn't.

It's not Celest's, either. They should be able to refuse to surrender if that's their roleplay, without fearing that the game will die from that. The same is true for everyone in the game. We should all be able to pursue our roles without worrying about the game's health. That's not our jobs, we players.

Sure, we should avoid things that are egregiously unhealthy for the game. Things like exploiting bugs. And yes, Magnagora has some minor crimes in this area: being insensitive, taking too much delight in the misery of other players, being too quick to tell everyone there's no problem because they're not suffering from one, being way too prone to gloating and mean-spiritedness. But every nation has people who've done that. Magnagora does it more mostly because it has more opportunities. I used to think otherwise, but then I watched Serens kicking Glomdoring like a helpless puppy with just as much black-hearted glee as any Magnagoran ever did, and I concluded it's not the people, just the situation that affords the opportunity.

But apart from those kinds of overt things, it's not the players' job to ensure that the game doesn't perish from imbalance, and it's not the player's job to pull their punches to make sure that no one else gets so frustrated and demoralized that they go find something fun to do instead.

The main reason we have mechanics like skills and program code to carry them out, and admins and builders and coders, is so it can be their job. Not ours.

They're not doing their job. The game has, in game theory terms, way too much positive feedback and way too little negative feedback. Once you have a lead it's easy to defend it -- the costs for power are nowhere near the benefits (I don't mean nexus power, I mean power in the more general sense). The more you get, the easier it is to get more and keep it. The more you lose, the harder it is to get it back.

This kind of game theory is perfectly good for short-term games like board games, where getting an early lead meaning you have a very good chance to win is no problem because you can always set up the pieces again. For a game meant to last a long time, it's a death sentence. A game meant to last has to have a way that the underdogs can realistically hope to triumph again, for the tables to turn. It shouldn't be easy, but it should be a lot lot lot more possible than it is in Lusternia.

This should have been built into the game from the ground level. There was a point where it could have been added without too much trauma, with the kind of changes like the village influencing changes that have marked almost all of Lusternia's history -- griping about the change, and the sense of the gods coming in and punishing people for being too effective and victorious, but we grin and bear it because it's just tolerable. Making those changes wouldn't be easy and I don't claim I could have done it, but that's what was needed, regardless if I or anyone can figure out how to do it.

I think even that time is passed. Far too many people have been driven away from the game and it's a snowballing effect -- the more people in UnMagnagora leave, the quicker the rest are to leave. Magnagora isn't going to have anyone left to crush.

Which sucks for them, maybe not as much as it sucks for everyone else, but it sucks for everyone. It sucks for the game. It sucks for people who look at what Lusternia promised us and still, after all these scars, get a little dreamy-eyed about what might have been.

But Magnagora isn't griefing. They're doing what they're supposed to. It's unfair to ask them to do otherwise. It's just that right now all the choices are unfair, and maybe that's just a little less unfair than the others. I don't see any happy endings here, so I'm going to look for them elsewhere.

Well, this isn't to say that the implication that there is one axis which is meant to inherently imply Good/Evil posits the suggestion that there can be only one axis on which all relationships are based. I don't feel this is the case in Lusternia. But there's enough merit and evidence to support the idea that, yes, they were intended at least to some degree to fit along that axis, with the anti-city sentiments being more a side-issue to provoke internal conflict and some minor shifts along the axis. Serenwilde moreso than Glomdoring though, as I don't think anyone would ever think that Glomdoring would aide Celest, whereas I can see Serenwilde aiding either Celest or Magnagora in different circumstances depending upon contemporary events.